Wu's first memories were of the inside of the typically unnamed orphanage and monastery dedicated to Irori. His young life was very normal for such circumstances. He did the work the monks assigned him. He was bullied by the older children, and he learned to bully the younger in turn. He never was in danger of starving, but he never had as much as he wanted of anything and fresh fruits were as close as he ever got to what we think of as treats.
Once he was old enough to begin training in a craft, the monks provided Wu with a challenge. They arranged for him to have sudden access to more prepared food than he could possibly eat in order to see what he would do. As everyone expected, he stuffed his face and took as much of it as he could. As none expected, he put his haul in a common space where the other orphans could share in the bounty.
The next day, Kun Shi asked Wu why he had shared the food with the other children. Wu started, and then hung his head in shame. "As I was eating, I could think only of the years where I felt hunger which I could not satisfy, and I knew that if I wasted what I could not eat, then these others would have only those same memories. It is one thing to take pomegranate from a younger child, it is another to keep the child from ever knowing that pomegranates exist. Our days are spent ensuring that all have what they need. How could my night be less?"
That day, Wu's training with the monk's began. When he completed the "final" test indicating that he had mastered the most basic of the monastery's skills, he was allowed to choose a name. He chose Phi. The next day, he walked out of the monastery, beginning his trek to learn more of the world and of himself than he could learn inside the walls of the monastery.
