Why didn't it clear? I knew right away.
Because people had died again.
Katsuyori of the Takeda, his wife, his young child, the retainers who'd followed him to the very end—every one of them had taken their lives at Mount Tenmoku, they said. I hadn't been there. I hadn't swung a single sword. Even so, they died because I sent men to attack them.
The Takeda were strong. Shingen was without question a great general, and his soldiers were braver than anyone. They had only been swallowed by the tide of the times, by a new form of war: guns.
They had done nothing wrong. Just for being my enemies, so many lives had been wiped out, every last one.
I didn't know their faces. I didn't know their voices. Even so, when I pictured that mother, that child, breathing their last in the mountains, something deep in my chest clenched tight, and I couldn't breathe right.
It had always been like this. Yoshimoto at Okehazama, the monks of Mount Hiei, Nagamasa who turned his back on me at Kanegasaki. Driven by fear I'd wiped out my enemies, and then come back to my senses, put my hands together before their remains, and wept. The Takeda were the last of those, and the biggest mountain of all.
At the top of the keep, gleaming with gold, alone, I dropped to my knees and wept, stifling my voice.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
To the people of the Takeda, whom I'd never even met, I apologized again and again, over and over. My tears fell on the tatami and made little stains, one after another. My shoulders shook, and sobs welled up endlessly from deep in my throat.
It seems those sobs leaked faintly all the way down to the foot of the stairs. And my retainers misunderstood, again.
"Listen—our lord's voice. The roar of victory over the fallen Takeda. That is the laughter of the Demon King."
Even my sobbing sounded like a victory cry. The harder I cried, the more it sounded like the Demon King roaring with laughter. Whatever I did, it was all the same now.
When my tears had run dry, I thought, dimly.
I'd always fought thinking this.
I'm scared because there are enemies. So I just have to defeat the enemies. If I wipe out the things that scare me, one by one, someday a world will come where nothing scares me. Then I can finally rest easy. Believing that, crying, shaking, I'd come this far.
And now. Even the last and strongest enemy, the Takeda, was gone. In the east, there was no one left to threaten me.
Then I should have been at ease. That peace I'd wished for all along should finally have been mine.
And yet.
Every time I wiped out one thing that scared me, a new mountain of bodies piled up at my feet. And beyond that mountain, something else that scared me was always waiting. This time, this time for sure, I kept wiping them out, and before I knew it, here I was, standing on top of countless lives.
What was in my chest wasn't joy, or peace, but only a deep emptiness, like a bucket with the bottom knocked out. However many times I won, however many enemies I wiped out, nothing collected there. Nothing at all.
Watching the sun sink into the lake, I murmured.
"I thought if I beat every enemy. I thought it'd get easier."
My voice shook.
"But it doesn't. Not at all. It doesn't get easier."
I'd beaten every enemy. And yet it didn't get easier.
—Then. What on earth do I have to do to finally be at ease?