When the Battle of Nagashino was over, the world went into an uproar fit to turn it upside down. I had broken the Takeda cavalry, hailed as invincible in all the realm, with guns, they said.
The enemy was, after all, the army of the Tiger of Kai. Everyone had feared it, everyone had thought it unbeatable. And it had sunk beyond the smoke of the guns. The rumors grew fins and tails and raced all through Japan.
My retainers talked about it proudly. Eyes shining, as if the glory were their own.
"Our lord divided the gunners into three groups and had them fire by turns without end. Thus the pause for loading vanished."
"Firing without a break—this new form of war. Truly a revolution in war, bringing the old age of cavalry to its close."
"Is there any other who wields the gun so masterfully? Oda Nobunaga is the genius who changes the times."
A revolution in war. The genius who changes the times.
Hearing that, my eyes drifted off into the distance.
It was nothing so grand. What it really was, was a line of men with upset stomachs waiting their turn.
People in later ages will surely write something like this too.
Oda Nobunaga ranged three thousand guns in three ranks and had them fire by turns, and broke the Takeda cavalry. This was the tactic that changed the times.
The three-rank volley, they called it.
They praised it as the height of divine strategy.
The invention, they said, of an innovator who saw the power of that new weapon, the gun, sooner than anyone.
But no one knows what really happened.
I wasn't particularly trying to invent a new tactic.
I was just scared of the Takeda horsemen.
I didn't want them getting close.
I just wanted to keep shooting from far away.
And the idea for how to "keep shooting" came from the latrine line I stood in with an upset stomach, the night before the battle.
One out, step back, the next one in. I was blankly watching that unbroken flow.
And I thought, "Oh, so that's how to do it with guns too."
That's all it was.
I'm just a coward. A scaredy-cat pacifist with a weak stomach. Just one man who ran to the latrine the night before battle, stood in line, and shook.
And yet the world called me the greatest firepower in Japan, the man who saw the might of the gun, and praised me as a once-in-an-age genius who created a tactic.
The gap was so huge that all I could do was laugh.
But.
While I was laughing, a thought crossed my mind.
Whatever I do, the world goes ahead and fears me, praises me, and turns me into a monster no one can get near. The Demon King of the Sixth Heaven, who drove out the shogun, broke the Takeda, and mastered the gun. The child of the new age. That monster kept getting bigger, thicker. It was like wall after wall piling up between it and the real me.
No one tries to see the real me.
That was a terribly lonely thing, too, but.
—Maybe.
If one day I just vanished, slipped away behind that thick wall of misunderstanding.
No one would be able to follow me.
Someday, that misunderstanding might set me free.
That ridiculous idea flitted through a corner of my mind.
But I didn't know yet that the day would come when I'd give it shape.