To forgive someone once may be kindness. The second time is different. Forgive a second time, and next it's you who gets killed. The people you're supposed to protect get killed.
That was the thing I least wanted to learn—and I learned it.
A year passed after Ino. On the surface, my brother kept quiet. I, too, acted as if nothing had happened. It's over, I told myself. I wanted to believe it.
But.
One day, Shibata Katsuie came to see me in secret. The fierce warrior who had turned his blade on me at Ino and had his life spared through Mother's intercession.
Katsuie went down on one knee before me and spoke in a low voice.
"My lord. It pains me to say it... but Lord Kanjuro is once again plotting rebellion."
My breath stopped.
"He means to build a castle near Ryusen-ji. He is gathering troops once more... and this time, he means to have your head, my lord."
Katsuie went on, in anguish.
It shames me that I, Katsuie, who once took his side, should be the one to say it. Yet if this plot is left alone, the house of Oda itself will split. My lord. I beg you, make your decision.
I stood clutching the letter, unable to move for a long while.
The second time. My brother had turned his blade on me again. With the life Mother had saved by bowing so low. Trampling on the mercy I had shown when I held back because I didn't want to kill. I could forgive him. A third time, a fourth time, I could forgive him. If my kindness was real, maybe that was what I ought to do.
But—what if, next time, my brother won?
I would die.
And it wouldn't stop with me. Kicho would be killed, too. The retainers who had trusted me and followed me would all be killed. All so that I could hold to my one "I don't want to kill." I would be letting a great many people I didn't want killed die.
I covered my face with shaking hands. There is a moment when kindness stops being kindness. A heart that won't kill one person can get ten, a hundred, killed. For the first time, I stood face to face with that cruel logic of the warring age.
And I—had to choose.
My brother alone. Or everything, Kicho included.
I agonized all night. I got up for the latrine again and again. Tears came, too.
And then, before dawn,
I decided.
I would strike down my brother.
I couldn't trouble Mother any further. I couldn't put Kicho in any more danger.
I feigned illness.
"Kazusa-no-suke lies abed, gravely ill."
That was the message I had sent to Suemori. Your brother is dying. Come and visit him.
My brother—came. To visit his elder brother. Without the slightest suspicion. Never imagining that I would strike him down.
My brother entered Kiyosu Castle. I waited deep inside, in the north turret. Footsteps drew near. My brother's footsteps. I told myself, over and over and over. It has to be done. If it isn't, everyone dies. This is the duty of the lord of the house.
Even so. With every step that drew closer, my hands shook and cold sweat broke out.
I don't want to tell about the moment he was cut down. Just let me say this much.
I couldn't look at my brother's face. I gave the order to my retainers. I myself wasn't there. But it wasn't that I was being underhanded. I simply did not have the courage—no matter what—to look my brother's last face in the eye.
I'm told the voice that gave the order to cut him down was low and quiet, startlingly so even to me. But the hands of the man whose voice it was—
under the desk, they were clenched like a child's, shaking until the knuckles went white.
When word came that my brother had breathed his last, I went alone into the room where his body lay. I let no one else in.
And I looked at my brother's face, which would never move again. That fine face, so like Mother's. The face everyone in the house had loved. My clever, courteous brother, loved by Mother.
I had killed him.
"...Kanjuro."
I knelt beside him.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I... I didn't want to kill you. It's true. I forgave you once. I wanted to forgive you the second time, too, if I could. But I couldn't. I'm weak, and a coward... I didn't have the wits to keep you alive and protect everyone else."
The tears wouldn't stop.
"I envied you. Loved by Mother. Liked by the retainers. I always wanted to be like you. And yet I... I took that brother, with my own hand—"
At last, I had killed even my own flesh and blood. I had lost my father, my shield; I had let my guardian die; and now, my brother. One by one, the people around me were disappearing. Every time I survived.
If this was what they called the strength of a lord, I never wanted such strength.
Before my brother's body, I wept without a sound. If I sobbed openly, it would get around the house strangely again. So this one time, I choked my voice down. I clenched my back teeth, my shoulders shook, and I let only the tears flow. So that no one would see.
The greatest coward of the warring age was weeping soundlessly before the brother he had killed with his own hand.
Not one person saw him.