Hashiba Hideyoshi kept his promise.
He struck down Akechi, defeated Shibata, and eventually rose all the way to Imperial Regent; at last, Hideyoshi unified the realm. He had brought the age of war together, for the time being.
That Monkey.
That Bald Rat.
Just as he'd sworn to the ash—"Leave the rest to me"—he went and took the realm.
But Hideyoshi's age didn't last long either.
And the one who inherited the realm after him was—Tokugawa Ieyasu.
My other partner.
For a while from here, I think I'll hand the telling over to him. Because the one who knows best what came after isn't me, but him, the one who inherited the realm.
—Nobunaga.
Ieyasu looked up at the keep of Edo Castle.
The long, long age of war was over.
After Sekigahara, after the Siege of Osaka, war had at last disappeared from this country.
I opened the shogunate in Edo.
When I was a hostage child, I was always shaking. I might be killed tomorrow. I couldn't trust anyone. I was so scared I couldn't sleep at night.
And a strange boy called out to me.
"Are you—scared of dying too?"
I froze. I mean, he was the heir of the Oda. And yet his eyes were the same color as mine.
The eyes of a frightened child.
"Muscle never betrays you," he said.
"If we're scared, let's at least get strong. So we can survive."
The two of us trained like idiots. Shaking side by side. Sweating side by side. He was the one and only friend in my whole life who was my equal.
The two who split the realm, the world said. The old raccoon dog and the Demon King.
Don't be ridiculous.
We were just two scaredy-cats, workout buddies.
Ieyasu put his hand on the railing of the keep.
—Nobunaga.
Were you watching?
This country that you, so scared, with a bluff you staked your life on, tried to protect with shaking hands.
This time, at last.
No one has to be afraid. No one has to grip a spear in the middle of the night. Even on the days your stomach's upset, you can sleep in peace.
I made it that kind of world.
Two hundred and sixty years.
An age without war would go on that long.
People will tell it, in ages to come, like this.
If the cuckoo will not sing, kill it—that was Nobunaga's verse.
If the cuckoo will not sing, make it sing—that was Hideyoshi's.
And—If the cuckoo will not sing, wait until it sings—that was Ieyasu's, they'll say.
Ieyasu smiled a little.
No.
He never killed anything.
Truth is, he didn't even want to make it sing.
He was just scared.
He didn't want to hurt anyone.
He was just crying, all along, all along.
The kindest man in the world.
And the most cowardly man in the world, that's who he was.
Ieyasu looked up at the sky. And he thought.
Right about now, he's surely laughing somewhere out in the countryside, not afraid of anything.