Again he stares up, shredding his hard palate with the last of his konpeito. "We'd just met. I'd left some food on the ground for the birds. I was joking. I nodded at it, said you can have that if you want, I'm feeling generous."

He'd even been masking. It's the sort of nasty joke he made all the time. But it wasn't that bad. Yet he knows, if someone had said the same to him, it would have cut him to the core.

Maybe that's why he said it?