"It is Akechi's rebellion! What will you do, my lord!" Ranmaru cried out again. His voice was thick with tears.
The flames were already crawling across the ceiling. The whole temple was burning like a giant torch. The beams groaned, creak, creak. The scorching wind seared my cheeks, my throat, without mercy. Every breath burned my lungs.
The war cries outside drew closer, then fell away. Not a single one of them could get past this wall of fire and come in.
Of course not, I thought.
No one could come near. All those years, all those decades of making them believe I was a "Demon King" had paid off. Everyone was afraid of me. So there was no one who would walk into these flames to make sure.
That was fine.
That was what I needed.
"Your orders..."
I looked up at the burning beams. My throat ached as if the smoke were scorching it. My heart was still thrashing, frighteningly hard.
Even at a time like this, I was afraid. My hands, my knees, wouldn't stop shaking.
Even so, I thought. I parted my trembling lips.
"It cannot be helped."
It cannot be helped.
Ranmaru caught his breath.
I was sure the boy heard those words as a declaration of resolve. The fierce final decision of a Demon King who would neither flee nor regret. Later ages would surely write it down that way too.
That's not it.
It was a signal.
For a plan—one I had nursed for a long, long time, deep in my chest, with only one other person. What it is, and what it means, I'll keep to myself for now.
"Ranmaru. You live."
That was all I said, and I turned on my heel toward the inner room. The flames roared as if to push me along.
This is how the story of a man like me ends.
Oda Nobunaga, the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven, burns here and turns to ash. That is how history will record it.
But—
In the beginning, I was a coward, a great, great coward.
This is the story of a man who was nothing but scared—who couldn't kill a bug, who was frightened of women, who trembled in the dark, and who wept every time he cut someone down.
Let me tell it from the beginning.
How I ended up being made into this "Demon King." And how, right now, I can stand here in the flames like this, laughing.
—From the days when they called me "the Great Fool" in Owari.