That day, I threw powdered incense at my father's memorial tablet. That bizarre act history would record as "the height of the Great Fool's folly."
But the truth is this.
I was just scared. That's all.
I step forward before the tablet. There's an incense burner. Beside it, a small vessel heaped with powdered incense. You take a pinch, raise it reverently to your forehead, and drop it into the burner. That's all there is to it. Even a child could do it.
But that "all there is to it"—I couldn't do it.
Hundreds of eyes were stabbing into my back. The monks' chanting sounded warped, booming and wobbling deep in my ears. The incense smoke stung my eyes. Under my mourning clothes, I was already soaked through with cold sweat.
I reached for the incense. My hand was shaking.
I try to take a pinch.
My fingertips touch the incense.
But the shaking won't let me pinch it. It sifts out between my fingers.
Once more.
Still I can't pinch it.
I was starting not to be able to breathe.
Something deep in my chest whistled. However much I breathed in, no air came. Something white seeped in from the edges of my vision.
This is bad.
This is really bad.
People are watching. Everyone is watching. I have to hurry. Hurry, pinch the incense, and—
My head had already gone completely white.
Between the fear and the suffocation and the panic, I didn't know what was what anymore.
And then.
My hand moved on its own.
My hand, struggling desperately to pinch, pinch, jerked as if in a spasm.
And with that.
I grabbed the incense, vessel and all.
And then, still unable to breathe, my vision still going white, half on the verge of fainting—I'd thrust that hand forward, as if flinging something off.
Whoosh.
The powdered incense flew through the air.
At my father's tablet.
It came pattering down all over it.
Time stopped.
I thought I heard hundreds of people catch their breath at once.
In the grounds, gone utterly silent, only my own ragged breathing, huff, huff, echoed.
I'd done it.
It was over.
At my father's funeral, I'd dumped powdered incense all over his tablet. Could there be any worse unfilial act? Any more disgraceful spectacle?
I felt ready to collapse right there. It was such a colossal blunder that if they'd told me to cut my belly open in apology, I'd have had no right to complain.
I'm sorry, Father. I'm sorry. I was scared. I was just scared, that's all—
But then.
Through the frozen grounds, murmurs began, in time, to spread.
"...Did you see that?"
"Aye. He threw incense at the tablet. At the funeral. At his own father's tablet."
"What a... A Great Fool after all. Has he no heart to mourn his father's death?"
See? Of course. Everyone thinks so. Naturally.
But here's the thing.
One of them, an elderly senior retainer, said this, low, almost a growl:
"...Nay. Hold."
The murmuring stopped.
"If a fool had merely lost his head, he could never have done so audacious a thing. To fling incense at the tablet—that cannot be done without a resolve so great it fears not even a father's renown."
The senior retainer went on in a trembling voice.
"He... he holds something unfathomable within him. Something we cannot hope to gauge. ...Fearsome. Fearsome."
No.
That's not it.
I hadn't resolved anything. I just couldn't breathe, I was scared, and my hand moved on its own. Far from not fearing my father's renown, I was more terrified of my father's death than anyone.
So why does it turn out like this? Why does my utmost panic turn into "unfathomable resolve"?
Wheezing and gasping, I was screaming inside.
Not one of them.
Not a single one of them thought I'd simply been scared.