Between training sessions, I sometimes ride out at a walk to the edge of the castle grounds. To the ridges between the rice paddies, where no one goes. There's no one there. No one comes near. I don't have to worry about what's behind me. That alone lets my shoulders, always so tight, loosen just a little.
Inside the castle, it's not like that. Walk down a corridor and you pass people; sit in a room and a page waits on you; eat a meal and the food taster's tray comes around first. Every hour of the day I'm counting the presence of someone or other, and I can't breathe. So now and then, I run away like this, to a place where there's no one.
That day, too, I stopped my horse and gazed absently at the paddies.
A few farmers were planting seedlings, up to their knees in mud. Bent at the waist, wiping off sweat, saying something to the one beside them and laughing out loud.
I couldn't take my eyes off the sight. For some reason, something stirred and rustled in my chest.
Those people surely weren't planting seedlings while thinking someone might kill them tomorrow. They wake in the morning, eat, till the soil, eat again, and when the sun goes down, they sleep. Afraid of no one. Never minding what's behind them. With no need to tuck a taro in the pouch at their waist, no need to swing a spear in the middle of the night.
Just living, laughing, sleeping.
—I envy them.
It slipped out of my mouth, and it surprised even me.
I have never once wanted to become ruler of the realm. Glory in battle, splendor—I don't need any of it. My wish lay over there, past that ridge between the paddies. Just like that. Afraid of no one, feared by no one, tilling some country field with someone I love, eating, sleeping.
A life where the first thing I do when I wake in the morning is breathe a sigh of relief that "I'm still alive today"—I've had enough of that. I want to not think about such things, and just touch the soil, and laugh, and sleep when the sun goes down.
That was all. My ambition was only that.
But for me, born heir to the Oda, even only that is probably a dream I'll never reach as long as I live. When I thought so, something deep in my chest went still and cold. Even after training this hard, I can't let this one body of mine escape to that ridge.
"My lord. Your color is not good."
A young attendant brought his horse alongside and peered anxiously into my face.
I didn't want him to realize I'd been looking at the paddies, so I hurriedly set my face hard. I didn't want my cowardly gut to be seen.
Then the attendant seemed to think I'd been glaring down over the fields. He must have taken my stiff face for an expression of deep contemplation. He straightened his back in the saddle and murmured, as if moved.
"Our lord holds even the lives of the common folk in his heart... He is truly no ordinary man."
No. I just envied them. Those mud-caked farmers were dazzling to me, unbearably so. That's all.
In my head, as always, I made my voiceless correction. And I thought:
This ridiculously small wish of mine—
Someday, if even just one person would come along—
Someone who'd listen to it without laughing.
—That person would soon be coming from Mino, as my bride.