Of what came after this, I remember almost nothing.
Same as at Okehazama. The fear vanished, and the person I am was pushed far back behind my body. Someone took the reins from me.
So all I can write here is what people told me later, and the broken fragments that come to me in dreams. I can't write more than that. I don't want to, either.
In no order. With no connection. Only, even now, on some nights, they come back suddenly. Every time, I jolt awake. And then I can't sleep again.
The fear vanished. At the brink of death, it ebbed away smoothly, like a tide going out. The fear that had bound me so tightly vanished without a trace. In its place, the person I am was pushed somewhere far away. Someone took the reins of my body from me. That feeling alone is the first fragment.
A fragment.
Someone was screaming. In a voice that sounded like it would tear his throat. I only learned much later that it was my voice.
A fragment.
There was a torch in my hand. I don't know why I was holding it. Only, a voice at the back of my head kept repeating it. Burn. Erase every threat, and live. I was—setting fires.
A fragment.
There was heat. A heat that seemed to scorch my cheeks, close by. I felt that heat as though it were happening to someone else.
A fragment.
There was wind. That night, there was wind on the mountain. The fire passed from tree to tree, from hall to hall. Red flickered at the edge of my vision. I watched it from far away. Without grasping what I was doing.
I tried to stop it. In the very deepest part of my heart, I screamed desperately. Stop. Please, stop. I didn't mean this. But my body wouldn't listen.
What came after that. I don't know. The order, the numbers—I can't remember any of it. Only—the voice at the back of my head kept repeating, live, live.
And then, before I knew it. There was no one left around me pointing a blade at me. Nothing coming at me anymore. What it meant that they were gone. I didn't know yet.
How much time passed. I don't know that either. It feels like it was just an instant, and it feels like it went on all night.
All I remember is. At the end, the voice at the back of my head suddenly fell quiet. And my body crumpled to the ground where I stood. The fragments break off there.
The next thing I remember clearly. Is from after dawn had already come.
I set fires. What came after that, I don't know. I don't want to know.
But—the mountain was burning. With the fire I had set.