In my whole life, only two people ever saw through to what I really was.
One was Kicho.
And the other—was this monkey.
It was the year after Okehazama. By then, no one would come near me at all.
The man who broke twenty-five thousand with two thousand. The man who roared before Yoshimoto's head, drenched in blood. The Demon King of the Sixth Heaven.
With rumors like that taking on a life of their own, my retainers took to lowering their eyes and stepping aside whenever they saw me.
If we met in a corridor, they'd flatten themselves against the wall and hold their breath. The hands of the pages who carried my trays were always quivering. If I so much as coughed, everyone in the room froze.
I suppose I should have been grateful. If no one came near me, no one would turn a blade on me. For a coward like me, that should have been exactly the wall I'd wanted.
But what I truly felt was just lonely.
All I'd done was get scared, tremble, and cry, and everyone was pulling away from me, thinking I was a monster.
I had thought I'd feel safe if I were alone. But once I actually was alone, something deep in my chest went cold and still, and somehow I longed terribly for people.
Not a single person came near me.
No.
There was one.
In the yard at Kiyosu, among the menial workers who carried firewood, tended the horses, and cleaned the latrines. One odd monkey had slipped in among them.
Short, skinny, with a face that was a monkey's through and through. Only his eyes moved, and they moved a great deal.
His station was the lowest there was. The lowest grade of servant, the kind called a sandal-bearer or the like. His name was Kinoshita Tokichiro.
And this Tokichiro, for some reason, kept scurrying around me.
If I hunched my shoulders against the cold, before I knew it, a brazier had been set at my feet. If I withdrew to the inner rooms worn out by crowds, he'd be the first to clear people out of the corridor. Before I said a word, the thing I wanted would be quietly set before me.
And on top of that, this man wasn't afraid of me. He didn't tremble when I came near. When I glared at him (not that I meant to glare—my face was just always stiff with fright), he'd grin right back.
It was unnerving.
With everyone fleeing in fear of the Demon King, this one little man alone, cool as you please, kept slipping right into my inner circle.
What was he plotting? Was he an assassin? Was he waiting for me to let my guard down? Cold ran down my spine, and more than once I tried to keep this monkey away from me.
But every time I tried to keep him away, I hesitated a little.
Because, to be honest, it was strangely easy. Only when he was nearby did my shoulders, always so tense, suddenly loosen.
The household was suspicious of the monkey.
"What is that creepy little man?"
"Why should a servant of no known station go prowling about at our lord's side?"
I was thinking the same thing.
Who on earth was this guy?
Was he just a sharp-eyed man who knew how to play along? Or was he worming his way into my favor, plotting something?
But no matter how wary I was, I just couldn't bring myself to chase this monkey off.
Every time I was feared as a Demon King, every time everyone stepped aside for me, a draft blew through the gaps in my heart. And into those gaps, he alone slipped in as if it were nothing. If I chased him off, I'd be back to being alone. And that—scared me. More than blades, more than the dark. Going back to that cold of being all alone again was maybe what scared me most of all.
At the time, I didn't know yet. That this strange monkey, second only to Kicho, had seen right through to my true nature, root and all. And that this man would stay by my side all his life.