It's just as Ieyasu said. I'm out in the countryside somewhere now. A small village whose name no one knows. In the middle of quiet rice paddies, ringed by mountains.
Hoe in hand, I've been tilling the field since morning. Raise the hoe, drive it into the soil. A sweet smell rises from the black earth I've turned over.
I wipe the sweat from my forehead.
It's a funny thing.
This body I trained so madly. Now that there's no more war and no more need to be afraid, the muscle has completely melted off. That rock-like body I guarded even by gnawing on taro is now the body of a skinny farmer like you'd find anywhere.
No topknot, either. My shaggy, unkempt hair is tied up any old way with a hand towel.
No one turns to look at me.
No one is afraid of me.
The villagers think I'm just a farmer from somewhere else.
"Hey, Nobu. Working hard, eh?"
An old man passing by calls out to me.
"Yeah," I answer.
That's all. That's all I need.
I don't have to worry about what's behind me. I don't have to hide taro in the pouch at my waist. I don't have to wake in the middle of the night and grab a spear.
Wake up in the morning.
Eat.
Till the soil.
Eat again.
When the sun goes down.
Sleep.
—That life I once watched with envy from the ridge between the paddies.
Is here.
History, I hear, recorded it like this.
Oda Nobunaga. The Demon King of the Sixth Heaven.
The man they called a fool. The Demon King who burned Mount Hiei, mowed down his enemies, and perished in the flames with the realm within his grasp.
That's fine.
I'm outside history now.
That terrifying man written about in the textbooks really did die in those flames. But the real me is here.
Just tilling the soil.
Just living, laughing, and sleeping.
As just a man like that.
I set down the hoe and crouched at the edge of the field. And I laid my hand gently on the black earth.
—I haven't forgotten.
Ranmaru.
You, who smiled and said, "Please, flee," and died protecting me.
I haven't forgotten you for a single day.
These days I have, smelling the soil like this. Eating. Being able to sleep.
Are built on your life.
And—on those of so many others whose names I don't know. On the many lives I took with these hands. On all of them.
I'll go on living, still carrying that sin.
I put my hands together, to the earth.
The wind passes, rustling the leaves of the rice.
Just then.
From the far side of the ridge, someone called my name.