After I struck down my brother, I couldn't speak to anyone for a while.
But the world—read even that silence however it pleased, and spun it into an outrageous story. That was nothing new. But this time, more than ever before, it froze me to the core.
"Our lord has at last laid hands on his own brother."
"They say he feigned illness, summoned him to Kiyosu, and slew him by deceit. What cold-bloodedness."
"Here is a man who severs even the bonds of blood. As for us retainers—should he judge us harmful, who knows when we too shall be cut down."
"Defy him, and he shows no mercy, be it his own brother... There is no path but to obey."
A hush fell over the house. And in that hush, the house of Oda—ironically—drew together as one. After I struck down my brother, not a single retainer defied me again. Hayashi Hidesada bowed his head. Shibata Katsuie had already come over to my side. The voices in the house that scorned me as a fool fell silent at once.
"A merciless man who spares not even his own blood."
That reputation was what lifted me up as a lord of the warring age. Into the very thing I least wanted to become.
No.
Let me say it as many times as it takes.
I'm not merciless. I didn't deceive my brother and strike him down because I'm cold-blooded. It was because I didn't have the courage to look him in the face and turn my blade on him. Because I was too much of a coward to confront him properly.
I didn't sever the bonds of blood. I couldn't sever them, and even now, night after night, I dream of that night I wept before his body, and wake up moaning. I'm more bound by those bonds than anyone. I regret killing my brother more than anyone.
And yet that—is feared as proof that I'm merciless.
My weakness, every single time, gets twisted into strength. My kindness, every single time, into cruelty. And that's how it spreads.
That night,
in front of Kicho, I spoke for the first time about what had happened on the plain of Ino. The thing I had never been able to tell anyone.
"Kicho. At Ino, I... something strange happened."
"Something strange."
"Yes. Back then, when I was surrounded and thought I was about to die, right at that moment... something inside me started to wake up."
I looked down at my own arms. These arms that had filled with a strength I had never known.
"The fear just vanished. Instead, there was a voice at the back of my head. Kill, it said. Mow down everything in front of you, and live. My body tried to move on its own. That... that wasn't me. There's something inside me that isn't me."
My voice shook as I went on.
"I'm scared, Kicho. It's not the enemy I'm scared of. I'm scared of myself. There's something I can't name sleeping inside me. If my men hadn't shouted when they did, it would have woken all the way. And then I... what on earth would I have done?"
Kicho was silent for a while. Then she wrapped my trembling hands in both of hers.
"My lord. Whatever it may be."
Her voice was quiet.
"It was trying to keep you alive. Because deep in your heart, you wished not to die, wished to come home alive. Your body was trying to protect you. It is no monster."
"But—"
"I understand that you are frightened. But do not forget. After you came back to yourself, you were weeping again, were you not? Before your brother. Without a sound... Monsters do not weep. You are still yourself."
I clung to the warmth of Kicho's hands. I, who was supposed to be afraid of people, couldn't let go of these hands alone. And still. That thing that had begun to wake inside me hadn't gone away. It had only gone back to sleep. Deep down, at the very bottom. Waiting for the next day I would stand at the edge of death.
I was afraid, from the bottom of my heart, that the day would come when it truly bared its fangs.
The thing that had begun to wake inside me was still asleep.
But the day it would bare its fangs was much closer than I thought.
From the end of that year, ominous rumors began drifting in from the east. Imagawa Yoshimoto of Suruga. The great daimyo hailed as the finest bowman of the Tokaido was said to be preparing to swallow Owari whole.
His army: twenty-five thousand. A host so vast that all my forces combined came to less than a tenth of it. Its shadow was already stretching right up to the edge of Owari.