There was nothing in the ruins.
The charred black stumps of pillars. Collapsed roof tiles. Heaps of ash. The smell of burned wood still hung in the night air.
And what ought to have been there—was nowhere at all.
"...There's no body."
Hideyoshi muttered it to himself.
A fire this big would leave bones at least. He'd had men crawl under the floors and beneath the rubble, searching down to the last scoop of ash. But neither Nobunaga's body nor that of his heir Nobutada ever turned up. Not a single fragment of bone, not even a scrap of unburned cloth.
And that wasn't all. That man, who had feared assassination so much, who wore his nerves to shreds every night over the guard on his bedchamber—on this one night of all nights, had brought an escort so thin it was laughable.
Then, part of the floorboards in the inner room was oddly new. As if someone had recently dug beneath them. There were, for some reason, few signs that Akechi's army had pushed into the depths of the temple. And—the end of Mitsuhide, who was supposed to have been struck down, had been just too simple, somehow.
Each one a trifle. But to a man who sniffed out the subtleties of the human heart better than anyone, those trifling dots lined up, smoothly, into a single line.
Hideyoshi crouched down on the ash. With his fingertips he scooped up ash still faintly warm, and gently let the wind carry it off. And then, for a while, he didn't move.
—Ah.
So that's how it is.
My lord.
You, so timid. So kind. You, who wanted to kill people less than anyone.
You, who kept shouldering that heavy armor all this time, trembling.
At last.
You got down, didn't you.
What welled up in Hideyoshi's chest was neither anger nor sorrow. Not the hatred of revenge, not the grief of a man who'd lost his lord.
It was.
I'm glad.
Only that one feeling.
That a man who'd kept walking in fear for so long, so very long, had finally been able to set down his load. It was a warm relief, like breathing out and letting your chest ease.
He'd watched, all along. Warming the sandals inside his robe. Working out castle layouts through the night. Beside his lord, pale-faced, clutching his stomach.
Called a Demon King. Praised for divine strategy and demonic cunning. Feared as ruler of the realm. And yet every time, deep in his heart, shaking and shaking, that man.
Where no one was watching, his clenched fist trembled faintly—only this Monkey knew that.
I want to go home.
I want to be ordinary.
That lonely back, murmuring those words.
Hideyoshi smiled softly at the ash.
"Lord Nobunaga."
He said it aloud.
"You've worked so hard, my lord. Thank you."
"Leave the rest to this Bald Rat."
"I'll take the realm. And no one, ever again. Will have to be afraid."
"I'll make a peaceful world."
"So now."
"Rest easy, somewhere."
"Till a field or something, my lord."
When he finished, big tears ran down his cheeks as if a dam had burst. Nothing at all like the tears he'd shed in Bitchu, believing his lord had passed. He was alive. He was simply so glad of that—tears he never meant to show anyone, his alone, real tears of joy.
The wind stirred the ash up a little. As if their master were laughing and waving, Come on, stop crying.
So that no one would notice, Hideyoshi gave a quick little bow toward the ruins. Then he stood, wiped his tears roughly on his sleeve, straightened his back, and walked off into the rest of his performance of taking the realm.
—He never once looked back.