Take a deep breath; relax your shoulders

Context: part 1 (Makoto's hands being nailed), part 2 (the cults' reactions), part 3 (Makoto being taken by this cult)

Makoto was taken to see a doctor before he was taken to see the priest.

The place where he'd woken up seemed to have once been a small commercial building of some kind. A place with offices and desks. The other occupants all stopped moving whenever they saw him nearby, falling silent. Almost like soldiers standing at attention, except instead of standing straight up and staring straight ahead, they bowed and smiled and followed him with their eyes. They seemed to move in and out of the building freely, which made sense; Onomichi was one of the less polluted areas, last Makoto checked. It made him wonder how big this "settlement" was.

Throughout the building, he noticed a few of the same design motifs popping up again and again. There were a lot of images of cranes: children's drawings hanging on the walls, and elaborately painted murals. There were bamboo shoots growing in a pot in his room, on the dining table he'd been taken to for breakfast, and on either side of the main door he'd passed. As if for good luck. And then there were the hands.

Handprints to sign the crane murals, clay sculptures of hands poised on desks and side tables, and one strangely eerie framed photo. It hung on the wall opposite the building's main entryway, about two feet wide and one foot tall. In it was a large group of people, each with their hands positioned, palms-out, in front of their own face, obscuring their identity. It was hard to tell, but it almost looked like their wrists were bound together. The frame was engraved with the words, First anniversary, and the year. The way it was positioned on the wall, it was like they were leaving room for more such photos. But why the bound wrists? Why the hands in front of the faces?

The doctor's office had not only a pair of model skeleton hands displayed on a counter, but also a reverently framed image of-

"Is that my x-ray?" Makoto blurted out, for it definitely looked like the x-ray Future Foundation had taken of his hands when he'd joined them.

The doctor was a woman about his mother's age who had introduced herself as Dr. Sako and greeted him as "Your Hopeness," just like the little boys had. To his question, she smiled and admitted, "The High Priest was able to get his hands on a copy. Every Hands of Hope settlement has at least one. Ours has two: one here and one at the shrine."

"The High Priest," Makoto echoed. "And he's different from the priest, right?"

"Yes, the High Priest gives guidance to all settlements. The priest presides over only this one. If you don't mind, may I examine you more thoroughly? The settlement that first rescued you already checked you over for major injuries, but I'd be honored to perform a follow-up assessment and take a look at your...at your hands, if that's alright." She was composed almost the whole way through, but mentioning his hands seemed to unlock the same odd intensity he'd seen flashes of in everyone else here.

"Uh, sure," he allowed. While she checked him over, he continued his line of questioning: "You mentioned that there's a shrine, and that another copy of my x-ray is there. The shrine isn't...for me, is it?"

"Of course it is," she said lightly. "We had no access to hope before you spoke the path. We couldn't touch hope until you gave your hands."

Makoto reflexively pulled his hands away from her. The little light she'd been using to examine the re-irritated skin sagged in her hand, as she allowed herself a moment of visible disappointment, but then the composed, professional look was back:

"Is something wrong?"

"I'm just...Is that really what people say about me?"

With a sympathetic gaze, Dr. Sako procured a jar of some kind of gel from a shelf nearby and began applying it to his palms. "You gave your hands and body as a shield from despair," she said calmly. Just explaining, like it was something he'd known once but might have forgotten. That tone reminded him so much of his mom, it ached. "Hope kept your hands but gave you back your body, because the laws of nature demand that hope must always outlive despair. The Ultimate Hope gave his hands to hope, so we are all charged to give our hands to him, one way or another. To you."

The gel was actually really soothing. The steady pain in his hands that he'd more or less accepted as a consequence of trying to climb that ladder dulled to a hum.

"Do you accept this use of my hands in service?" Dr. Sako asked. She wasn't looking at him, still focused on applying the balm. Her deferent words made her lowered head seem more like she was bowing to him than focused on a task.

A doctor. Someone objectively way smarter, more competent, more helpful than he was, and she was treating him like–

He felt so unnerved, it almost crossed the line into nausea. "Thank you," he said, hoping the words would get the point across that he wasn't to be worshiped. "Thank you, Dr. Sako. This is a lot better."

She raised her head and met his eyes, and to his relief, she looked merely pleased and not overzealous. "I'm glad. Would you like them bandaged, or un-bandaged?"

"Bandaged, please."

"Fascinating." She produced a roll of bandages. "Pardon me. Do you normally prefer them covered? There's been some debate, within the settlement and between the settlements. Some say the wounds must remain uncovered so they can see the sun. Some say they must be covered until they can see the sun through an unsullied sky. Others say they should be sealed away from the world's impurities at all times, except in cases where the world needs to be reminded of the cost."

They were talking about his hands that much?! "I prefer them covered," he answered nervously.

"Then did those people prevent you from covering them? Pardon me," she said, before he could answer. "I shouldn't mention them. Only the priest is allowed to discuss them with you."

The boys had said something similar. "You mean the Future Foundation?"

But unlike the children, Dr. Sako seemed to have some sense of flexibility in the rules; she glanced at the door and then whispered to him, "They are a sensitive subject. Some of the priests hate them virulently, while others accept or even approve of their role in things. It tends to be safer if the priests are the only ones to speak of them."

"What happens if someone else talks about them?" Makoto asked, just as quietly.

"They risk disagreeing. And in cases of disagreement in matters of hope and despair, no one wants to risk being despair."

"That sounds...But can't they just disagree about something without anyone being despair?"

Dr. Sako smiled. "For the Ultimate Hope, it might be hard to understand. But for the flawed rest-"

"I'm as flawed as any of you. And I've been in plenty of arguments with people who weren't despair."

She kept smiling and began to bandage his hands. "They weren't despair because you forgave them. When the Ultimate Hope forgives despair, he supplants it. But if we were to try to forgive despair, it would supplant us. Plenty of other Hands of Hope settlements have learned that the hard way."

"What do you mean?"

"That you are as easy to talk to as you seemed on TV." She straightened up, having finished with the bandages. "The priest is ready for you, unless there's anything else you need from me."

He took a halfhearted step toward the door, then decided that actually, there was something he needed. "I'm just a person," he told her. "I want you just...to know and remember that, okay? I'm not better than anyone here."

There was a second where she treated his words with smiling disregard, but then she seemed to process them some other way. Not the intended way; she looked more like she was turning them over in her head, looking for some hidden sage wisdom or something. After a few seconds, she offered him a nod and another bow.