The place I came home to was never the realm.
Kiyosu Castle was boiling over with the joy of victory. My retainers praised me one after another. The commander of a new age, they said. The Demon King of the Sixth Heaven.
But every one of those voices went straight past my ears. In my head, the sight of those fallen people was still stuck fast and wouldn't come loose.
Night.
At last, I could be alone.
No, I wasn't alone. Kicho was there.
When Kicho came into the room, one look at my face seemed to tell her everything. With eyes entirely different from the way the retainers looked at a hero, or the way the world feared a Demon King. Kicho just looked at me quietly.
In front of everyone else, I had lived by hiding my trembling and swallowing my words. If anyone sensed my cowardice, they'd be after my life in no time. So I couldn't face anyone with my heart open. That was the other sickness I carried.
But in front of this person alone, I didn't have to hide.
"Kicho."
Saying her name was all I could manage.
"I... in the end, I couldn't stop it. That thing. At Ino, it pulled back just in time. But this time... I let it wake up completely."
My voice shook.
"I killed so many. More than I could count. Even Lord Yoshimoto... with these hands, I..."
Beyond that, it wouldn't come out as words. I broke down crying in front of Kicho again. The master of the castle, on the night of a victory, like a child.
Kicho didn't blame me. She wasn't even exasperated. She just knelt beside me and wrapped both her hands around mine, still stained with sweat and blood. Then, with a cloth, she wiped the dirt away, carefully, bit by bit.
The blood soaked between my fingers, the grime hardened under my nails—Kicho wiped it all away slowly, without the slightest look of disgust. As if she were trying to wipe away the sin caked inside me, too, along with it.
As I watched her hands move, my heart, which had been running wild, little by little grew quiet.
"My lord."
Her voice was quiet.
"You are weeping, as you should."
"Where else is there a man who wins and can still weep for those he killed? The world calls you a Demon King. But I know better."
Kicho's hands were warm.
"Monsters do not weep. You are still yourself."
I clung to those words.
I, who was supposed to be afraid of people, simply couldn't let go of these hands. No matter how much the world revered me as a Demon King, a fearsome man. The warmth of these hands alone let me stay what I was: just one cowardly man.
Come to think of it, there were only a very few times I could ever touch another person's warmth like this. The one moment in the ring, grappling with an unarmed opponent. And here, in Kicho's hands.
For me, so afraid of people I couldn't help keeping my distance from everyone, this warmth was the one and only place in the world I could run to.
The place I came home to was never the realm. It was only here, in the warmth of these small hands.
And yet, ironically. The name "Demon King of the Sixth Heaven," born at Okehazama, would take on a life of its own from here on, regardless of my will, and push me up to heights I never wanted.
And then, the following year—a strange monkey would appear before me.