There was still one more member of the cast.
At the time, Ieyasu was in Sakai, the merchants' town. I'd secretly sent a messenger and told him, and only him, about the plan.
My partner in the Scaredy-Cat Alliance.
We'd been stuck with each other ever since we were hostages, when he was still called Takechiyo, and called out to each other in the dark, "Are you—scared of dying too?" We shared the same fear, believed muscle never betrays you, and trained our bodies together in silence. Him, I couldn't keep a secret from no matter what I did. That I was shaking, that I was really just a man who wanted to go home—Ieyasu had seen through all that long ago.
There was an important role in my plan that I could ask of no one but Ieyasu.
Think about it.
Akechi surrounds Honno-ji and sets it on fire. Unless the world believes from the bottom of its heart that "this is a real catastrophe," the plan falls apart. If it looks even a little staged, someone will come to examine the body. "It went oddly smoothly." "As if it had all been arranged." If even one doubt like that is born, everything comes to nothing.
I had to be taken as truly dead. In everyone's eyes, beyond any doubt.
But there was one more reason I confided in Ieyasu—no, if anything, this was the real reason.
If I vanished, the realm would lose its master. Before long, someone and someone else would clash over who got the seat next. What I feared more than anything was that it would happen between Hideyoshi and Ieyasu.
Monkey would hide my death nicely and hold the realm together. Even left alone, that busybody would do it. But if Ieyasu, not knowing the truth, dutifully started a war of vengeance and crossed blades with Monkey—my two precious friends would end up killing each other, in a realm without me.
That, at least, I wanted to avoid no matter what.
So I confided only in Ieyasu. I won't die, I'm just vanishing. And then I asked him. Leave the realm to Monkey after I'm gone. Don't fight him. Please, get along with him.
And I asked him to put on a little show.
When my death was reported, act like this. "Akechi has rebelled. After striking down Nobunaga, I may be next"—go pale, take only a handful of men from Sakai, and flee straight back to his own lands. To shore up his defenses, without a care for how it looked.
The home provinces around Kyoto would be full of Akechi's troops. Ieyasu, who'd only come for sightseeing, had been left stranded with barely any escort. Anyone would see it was only natural that he'd flee in panic, a target for assassins. Which was exactly why no one, not a single person, would catch the scent of a lie in that desperate escape—fleeing for his life along the mountain roads of Iga, terrified of the hunters of fleeing warriors.
The famous Tokugawa Ieyasu, fleeing in panic from Akechi, without a care for how it looked. The more the whole realm gossiped about it, the more unshakable the story would become: "Nobunaga really is dead. That's why Ieyasu is in such a panic."
In other words, Ieyasu's crossing of Iga was the world's best-made shill, there to make my death look real.
Even I think it was a terrible role to push on him.
But there was no one in this world I could ask something so unreasonable of, except him.
Word came back from the messenger. Ieyasu had agreed on the spot, he said.
And apparently he'd said one thing, and cried.
"Nobunaga."
"Can finally be free."
When I heard that message, my eyes went hot before I could stop them.
That man who'd lost so wretchedly at Mikatagahara and sobbed in front of me. Now, for my sake, he was volunteering for another wretched role, of his own accord.
That scaredy-cat best friend of mine had gladly taken on the role of being laughed at as the greatest coward in the realm, so that I could get away.
I'm sure that as he fled through the mountains of Iga, half in tears, tumbling as he ran, he'd be laughing inside, like this.
"Lord Oda. I'll run away as wretchedly as I can. If it means you get to be free."
The cast was in place.
Kicho. Mitsuhide. Nobutada. And Ieyasu.
All that remained—
Was to wait for that night.