When that report reached me, at first I didn't understand what I was being told.
"I must report... Lord Azai Nagamasa has left our side... and turned against us."
The messenger's voice was shaking.
Nagamasa.
Had turned on me.
Behind my back.
"...There must be some mistake."
That's what I said.
My voice had gone high, as if it weren't mine.
"He'd never betray me. He's my sister's husband. He said he was on my side. That whatever came, he was on my side—"
"Even so, the Azai troops have already risen in northern Omi... and mean to cut off our line of retreat."
Line of retreat.
Which meant.
The Asakura in front of me.
Nagamasa behind me.
I was caught between them.
In that instant, my body betrayed me. My heart began to pound wildly.
I couldn't breathe. Cold sweat burst out and ran down my back. My fingertips trembled and wouldn't stop. The edges of my vision blurred white.
A pincer. A rat in a bag. Nowhere to run.
I'll die. I'll be killed.
—No.
That wasn't it.
What filled my head most wasn't the fear of death.
Why?
Why Nagamasa?
What did I ever do to him?
Just then. A bag arrived, sent, they said, to wish me well in camp. From my sister, Oichi.
The retainer who held it out looked puzzled. It was a bag with azuki beans inside.
Except.
Both ends of that bag were tied tight, tight shut.
I took it in my hands.
Stared at it for a while.
And then I understood.
A bag with both ends sealed.
A bag closed off front and back, with no way out.
—Brother, you are inside this bag right now.
That's what Oichi was saying. She couldn't betray her husband. But she couldn't leave her brother to die, either.
In the agony of being caught between them, my sister had entrusted to this small bag a warning she couldn't put into words, or into a letter.
Stroking the tied-off ends.
I couldn't hold back what was welling up in me.
Oichi. What were you feeling when you made this?
Choose her husband, and she would kill her brother.
Choose her brother, and she would betray her husband.
My sister, unable to fall to either side, could do nothing but tie both ends tight, tight shut.
The trembling of her fingers.
I could almost feel it, in how hard the knots were tied.
Nagamasa had betrayed me. My sister's husband. The man I'd unlocked my heart for and trusted, the only time in my life.
I was a rat in a bag, sealed off by the Asakura in front and Nagamasa behind.
And yet.
My head was full of "why."
Before the fear of death, even.
I was just sad, unbearably sad.
Nagamasa.
Why?
I trusted you.