I sent everyone away.
Pages, attendants, I kept them all at a distance. Mitsuhide and I sat alone, facing each other in a dim room with a single lamp. Mitsuhide was terribly tense. On his knees, both his hands were clenched tight.
No wonder.
Summoned in secret like this by his lord, it would be either a scolding or some new, difficult task. This worn-down man was surely bracing himself for that. Lately I'd done nothing but scold him. Nothing but treat him coldly.
—All of it, to keep him at a distance, but.
What good would an excuse like that do now?
I hesitated for a while.
Once I said it, there'd be no turning back. For the first time, I'd be laying bare in front of a retainer the secret I'd guarded for nearly thirty years. My heart was beating twice as fast as usual.
Even so.
For the first time in my life, I made up my mind to tell a retainer the truth.
"Mitsuhide."
"My lord."
"I'll tell you something. I'm no Demon King. Nothing of the kind."
Mitsuhide looked up. His face said he didn't understand what he'd just heard.
"I'm just a coward. Even killing a single bug scares me. When I cut someone down, I have nightmares every night. The dark scares me. What's behind me scares me. The reason I keep my voice low in front of all of you is that I'm too scared to get the words out."
I said it all in one breath.
"Okehazama, Mount Hiei. It wasn't that I was strong. I was scared, so scared I lost all sense of what was happening. And before I knew it, that's how it turned out, that's all."
As I spoke, I lowered my eyes.
When I remember those mountains of bodies, it still makes me sick.
"Before I knew it, there were people piled up like a mountain in front of me. And every time I saw it, I threw up and cried. It's not that I'm strong. I was just so scared I broke, that's all."
"My lord... what are you saying..."
"Listen, Mitsuhide."
I lowered my voice.
"I want to get down now. From this realm, from the name of Demon King. Leave everything behind. I want to vanish."
Mitsuhide was speechless.
His earnest face was wavering somewhere between understanding and confusion. Eyes that couldn't believe it. As if he wanted to say he couldn't possibly think the man in front of him was the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven whose name rang across the realm.
But it wasn't a lie.
Right now, for the first time in my life, I'd taken off every piece of my armor of lies.
And here, I made the most ridiculous request of all.
"Mitsuhide. Betray me."
"...My lord?"
"Surround Honno-ji and set it on fire."
"M-my lord...!"
The blood drained from Mitsuhide's face before my eyes.
"Afterward, you can be taken for dead, struck down by Hideyoshi. And then you and I, together, will vanish from here."
Mitsuhide stared at me, unable to make a sound.
He must have thought it was a joke. Or that his lord had finally lost his mind.
There was a long, long silence before he understood it was neither.
At last.
From those earnest eyes.
Plip.
A tear spilled.