And so the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven was born. From the empty husk of one coward who had done nothing but tremble and cry.
Right around the time I was crying before that head, the news of Okehazama was already beginning to race across all of Owari. And everywhere it went—it grew fins and tails of its own.
"Have you heard? They say Lord Kazusa-no-suke broke the Imagawa's twenty-five thousand with a mere two thousand."
"And slew Lord Yoshimoto himself, the finest bowman of the Tokaido."
"Two thousand against twenty-five thousand... Can it be true? That is no deed of mortal men."
A small force striking down a great daimyo. To anyone's eyes, it looked like a miracle, or else the work of something not human.
The rumors gathered speed.
And the sight of me crying before Yoshimoto's head—as it was passed along, it became this:
"They say that before Lord Yoshimoto's head, Lord Kazusa-no-suke stood dripping with his enemies' blood, roaring, with tears even standing in his eyes."
"Tears...?"
"Tears of wrath. Fierce wrath against the foe. Drenched in blood, and still raging. That is no man."
"I hear he was uttering some words before Lord Yoshimoto's head."
"A curse, surely. Spewing merciless curses even upon the enemy general he has slain. A man to make the blood run cold."
"A demon god. Nay—the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven come again."
The Demon King of the Sixth Heaven. The king of the demon realm, who obstructs the Buddha's law and throws the world into chaos. At some point, that name had become my epithet.
Not one person knew I had only been trembling and crying. Cold sweat became fearlessness. The blood on me became a fiend of carnage. Sobbing became a roar of rage. Everything got twisted on its way around.
"I'm sorry" became "words of a curse," and the choked-out "I didn't mean to kill you" became a victory cry. The weakest, most pathetic parts of me, as they were passed along, turned into the most terrifying thing of all.
It was as if an image of who I was were being cast in metal, all on its own, somewhere out of my reach.
No.
Let me say it as many times as it takes.
I'm no Demon King. I'm just a coward who got scared, went berserk, killed a great many people, and was crying because I was so sorry.
And yet the world calls me a monster. A fearsome man—they revere me, cower before me, prostrate themselves at a distance. Into the very thing I least wanted to become.
After Okehazama, one more piece of news drifted in.
The young lord of Mikawa, held hostage by the Imagawa for so long, had at last been released from their grip by Yoshimoto's death. He had apparently gone home to Okazaki.
When I heard that name, for some reason, my chest grew just a little warm. I couldn't really say why, even to myself.
Maybe I had just suddenly remembered a small shadow from long ago that had been frightened the same way. The days when the two of us trembled together, scared of dying. So he finally made it home to his own house, I thought.
What that would bring me later—I had no way of knowing yet.
And so the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven was born. From the empty husk of one coward who had done nothing but tremble and cry.