I'm going to tell you about the most irreversible thing I ever did in my life.
What I'm about to tell you won't be a funny story. For a long time, I thought I'd never tell it. Again and again, I started to open my mouth and stopped. Just remembering it makes it hard to breathe.
Even so—if I don't tell this, the real reason I threw everything away and vanished at the end won't come across. Where my small wish began. At the very deepest part of it lies this night.
So I'll tell it. I won't run from it. I'll tell it.
I burned a mountain.
Mount Hiei.
That mountain where the Buddha had been worshipped for a thousand years. Monks, and people who weren't monks—many lives that were on the mountain that day were lost.
How many were lost. That differs depending on who tells it. Some say few, others say a great many. I don't know the exact truth. I couldn't count them. I felt I wasn't even allowed to try.
Only one thing is certain.
Many lives that would never come back were lost. And I did it.
"Oda Nobunaga, the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven."
It was from this day that the world began calling me that. Enemy of the Buddha. A fiend who feared not even the gods. That's what they began to call me. As my most terrible deed, to be handed down to later ages.
That's right, I think. I won't make excuses. The hand that set the fire was, without any doubt, this hand of mine. I can't blame anyone else.
But—hear me out.
I didn't want to burn it. I was afraid of the Buddha. Afraid of divine punishment. Afraid of monks. Afraid, more than anything, of killing people.
All I wanted was to avoid conflict. I didn't want trouble with temples. If I could have, I'd have gotten through without fighting anyone at all.
That's the kind of man I am. The kind who hesitates to step on a single bug. The kind who, if he cuts a man down, always weeps all night. That kind of pathetic man.
And yet.
Why did it come to that? I have to tell it in order.
I didn't burn that mountain because I wanted to. I tried, again and again, to avoid it. I kept bowing my head, begging them to let us get through without fighting. And yet every road was closed off. And at the very, very end. The most terrible thing inside me woke up.
All of that, I'm going to tell you now.
Just remembering it makes me feel my chest will be crushed. My voice shakes.
But—I only wanted to settle things peacefully.
And yet.