“Your room number is 507. Here is your key. Please enjoy your stay.”
“Thank you.”
He picked up the white key card from the front counter and inquired, “I believe someone by the name of Chiaki Shuuhei is also staying here; would you be able to tell me his room number?”
“Chiaki-sama? Please give me one moment.”
The female concierge in the pale beige uniform quickly examined the list of guests and replied with a smile, “Chiaki Shuuhei-sama from Nagano
? He hasn’t returned yet, but he is staying in room 611.”
“I see. When he does, could you let me know?”
“Of course. We will call your room.”
“Thank you,” Naoe responded, and headed for the elevator.
(Well, what next...?)
His family business concluded, Naoe had arrived in Nara earlier than he had expected. Chiaki and Takaya would already be out on their investigation. Putting the two of them together was—well, he certainly wouldn’t have to worry about the «power» aspect, but it was a risky combination to say the least. He had lost no time making his way here.
Coming by bullet train had been all very well, but the problem was that he had arrived in the middle of the day. Since his beloved Cefiro had been put out of commission in Yamagata, he didn’t even have anything to use for the investigation.
(Maybe I should go through the rental car process today?) he thought as he opened the door to his room.
It was a neatly-tidied, spacious single. Taking off his jacket and tossing it on the sofa, he surveyed the scenery outside the window. The buildings near the Kintetsu-Nara Station blocked the northern mountain ranges from view. The hotel was within the city, but in front of him was a temple, with a cemetery straight below.
(So Kagetora-sama and Nagahide aren’t back yet...?)
Gazing at the view outside, Naoe lit a cigarette.
He could see the Wakakusa Mountain Range beyond the city, shimmering in the heat.
(It’s been a while since I last came to Nara...)
Ten years or so, was it? Nostalgia swept through him. He’d been so busy that he could not recall at all.
(Ah, right...) He suddenly remembered as he loosened his necktie.
The last time he had come here had been—
(Before I found him.)
Ten years ago, before the «Yami-Sengoku» had spun so far out of control.
When the fruitless search for Kagetora had dragged him further and further into desperation.
A time that had perhaps been the most painful of his life.
And when impatience and anxiety had driven him into a near-neurotic state, he’d come time and again to Nara.
As if in entreaty.
(Why is it I felt like that...?)
Naoe gazed at the clock on the bedside table.
It was a little past four-thirty, too late to start an investigation. And in two, three hours, they would be back.
(I shouldn’t waste time waiting in my room.)
He would go pay a visit there, after so long.
Naoe softly snuffed the cigarette he had lit moments before and picked up the card key from the bedside table.
The sun, after scorching the City of Nara for the entire day, was now on its downward arc, and its light slanted through the trees from the west.
As he ascended the stone steps to the Great Southern Gate of Toudai Temple, he looked up at the recently-restored Niou statues.
There weren’t many tourists left in Nara Park this late in the day, and the souvenir shops along the path to the shrine were beginning to close down. Even the deer which came out in herds during the day were scarcely to be seen; perhaps they had already returned to their woods for the night.
The destination of Naoe’s visit was Toudai Temple. Usually bustling with tourists, the temple was quiet now and virtually empty of both people and deer. There were still tourists leaving the Great Buddha Hall, but none going in.
Evening cicadas chorused around him.
He climbed shallow stairs past a stone pillar with the inscription ‘Hall of the Second Month Shrine Path’.
(It hasn’t changed...)
Although the appearance of Nara City had changed greatly, the unique grace of Nara Park in the eventide was exactly the same as it had been ten years ago. Toudai Temple was filled with people in the daytime, and although that innocent vivaciousness was also pleasant, he could recall always deliberately choosing to come here in the evening in order to avoid the surging crowds...
Turning, he could see the golden ridge-tiles at both ends of the roof of the Great Buddha Hall glittering in the light of the westerning sun beyond the trees.
Naoe slowly ascended the stone steps.
His work as Naoe Nobutsuna of the Meikai Uesugi Army meant that with the recent intensification of the «Yami-Sengoku» he had no leisure time to spend at home, but conversely he felt more at ease both mentally and physically. The reason, of course, was that with the addition of Kagetora and Yasuda Nagahide the duties and responsibilities weighing on him had lessened.
(Unlike back then...)
Naoe paused as he abruptly realized that that was not the reason. No, the difference had been the absence of a single person.
It was that simple.
When the sun sank to its sleep and the city came aglow with its own lights, Naoe would be able to see him. When he returned to the hotel, Kagetora would probably already be there. He would be able to see him again.
(He is here.)
That single, simple reason.
But that thought alone was enough to evoke a gentle quietude within him. He had a home to return to. No matter where he went, the only place where he belonged was—at his side...
Thirty years ago, the final battle with Oda Nobunaga. Nobunaga’s «hakonha» engulfed Kagetora, and he in turn took the brunt of Kagetora’s «choubuku». And everything came to an end in the terrible explosion resulting from the head-on collision of their «powers».
And yet they were not able to «exorcise» Nobunaga. Irobe Katsunaga, the only one among them who came out of that battle alive, was able to determine through his investigations that Nobunaga still remained in the world. But they knew nothing of Kagetora’s whereabouts, whether he performed kanshou, or even if his soul still remained in the world. The horrendous power of the «hakonha» was said to be capable of destroying the soul itself—and if that were the case, then the soul would be lost even from the wheel of reincarnation.
Was Kagetora obliterated from the Roku Dou Kai?
It took him seven years after performing kanshou on this body—on the fetus of Tachibana Yoshiaki—to heal the damage done to him in that battle. That was also around when he finally got in contact with Katsunaga. Katsunaga was able to confirm the kanshou of the other two—Yasuda Nagahide and Kakizaki Haruie. Whether or not Kagetora’s soul still lived was the only question they were unable to answer.
He had intended to resign himself.
In a mind gone completely blank, his only thought was—it’s over. His own existence lost all meaning in the moment Kagetora ceased to exist. So this was the end of the road for a life already lived for far too long.
But he would never be able to undergo reincarnation even if he stopped performing kanshou. No, he had no doubt that he could if he wanted to do so... To have this soul sullied by the passage of four hundred years be cleansed, to have four hundred years of memories and sin and all else swept away, and then to be reborn as a purified soul. And yet—
He could not do it. In a world bereft of Kagetora’s existence he could not allow his own. He could not allow himself to exist, all oblivious, in this world where he did not.
If he could not return to ‘nothingness’, then nothing remained to him but insanity...
Tachibana’s parents worried day and night over their child, who turned into a living puppet before their very eyes. School was impossible, so they did not try to send him; instead, they arranged to have him enter the priesthood and became a monk at the temple. He embraced the asceticism of priesthood wholeheartedly.
He convulsively tried to kill himself several times, but was restrained by his father’s strict discipline.
You see, there must be some meaning to you being here. His father admonished him time and again.
That’s a lie, he thought. That isn’t true. He lived for Kagetora. Kagetora was the only reason for his existence. But Kagetora was no longer here. And if he was no longer here, then...! Even if there was such as thing as Heaven’s will, his existence no longer held any meaning.
“There must be some meaning.”
Naoe looked up at the trees reaching toward the late afternoon sky.
(I suppose those words...were not a lie.)
Kagetora was still alive.
Even if he had lost his memories, he was alive—
The «Yami-Sengoku» had flared up around seven years ago as the onryou of Sengoku warlords began to awaken in rapid succession all across the country. Awareness of his duty as a member of the Meikai Uesugi Army gave him the determination to stay alive. Kenshin had commanded them to exorcise the onryou of the Sengoku warlords; even without Kagetora, their mission remained.
No—
In actuality, he cared not one whit about the mission.
He only wanted something that could numb these feelings.
He never believed his father’s words.
Even so, a thread of possibility fought against the despair eating into his mind and heart, a hint of hope which he could not abandon.
He passed a plaza with a line of souvenir shops. Climbing a little further brought him out in front of the Hall of the Third Month.
Naoe walked alone toward the temple as the late afternoon sun continued to sink towards the horizon.
He passed a shrine visitor with his family at the entrance. So near closing time, there were no signs of other people. He paid the entrance fee at the reception desk and stepped within.
Cool air wrapped around his body.
No lights were on inside the temple. The florescent lights that ordinarily illuminated the temple had been turned off now that so few visitors remained.
Red light from the setting sun splayed into the temple through the latticed windows.
He paused with the sun against his cheek. The dozen or so Tempyou-Era buddhas seemed to look down at him through the dimness.
He moved to stand directly in front of Fukuukenjaku Kannon, the principle buddha of the Hall of the Third Month. He quietly closed his eyes as he pressed his hands together.
He could hear the chirps of evening cicadas.
There were no other sounds.
Separating his hands, Naoe looked up once more.
To confront these enormous buddhas alone in an empty temple was a terrifying thing. He had heard the Hall of the Third Month contemptuously dismissed as a ‘museum of stuffed buddhas’, but it was not so for him. On the contrary, to stand alone in front of these exalted beings was to brace his heart against an overwhelming terror.
He stood frozen in place, his innermost heart naked and exposed, feeling almost as if he were being cross-examined.
Why have you come here?
What are you doing?
All of them demanding answers of him at once.
He was barely able to suppress the impulse to run out of the temple. At the same time, he wanted to prostrate himself before them and confess all that was hidden within his heart. But to do so did not mean that one would be saved. That, he knew quite well.
The buddhas’ salvation...
(Probably a thing born out of nothing but our foolish delusions...)
Naoe softly cast down his eyes.
The buddhas’ salvation... A thing that was probably, in truth—
A distant longing eternally beyond his reach.
He felt as if there were always someone waiting for him here.
A bodhisattva stood on each side of Fukuukenjaku Kannon. It was these bodhisattvas that he came time and again to see.
The bodhisattva facing him on his left was the Moonlight Bodhisattva, and to his right was the Sunlight Bodhisattva. There was majesty in their gentle forms, but they also somehow evoked nostalgia. The Fukuukenjaku Kannon looked quietly down at him with a supreme dignity that gently removed all terror from the trembling beings of the world.
They were white flames to his eyes.
Two white flames rising toward the sky.
A face inevitably appeared in his mind each time he came to see this bodhisattva. No, the reverse was true: he came here in order to see her.
The face he saw in that of the bodhisattva belonged to the woman who had saved him.
(Minako...)
Hers alone.
He first met her in the midst of those days of carnage thirty years ago. Everything began when they saved Minako and her family, engulfed like so many others by Oda’s schemes. Then, as Kagetora went through countless battles to protect them—in no time at all and all unawares, he and Minako fell in love.
She had been a woman with lovely eyes and strength at her core. And she had possessed an extraordinarily broad mind, that to be with her was to feel one’s mind at ease.
In those torturous days of endless battle, it was Kagetora who doubtlessly suffered the most out of any of them. His family had been murdered, and the war had engulfed people with no connection to it at all. With no place of refuge, he could only let himself be crushed by the battle. He could not do things over again, could not find healing for his wounded heart. The only path remaining to him was to continue fighting the endless war, cradling his own worn and weary soul.
How precious must Minako’s existence have been to him then? That one small peace in the midst of tension and impatience, bloodlust and terror; how cherished must the ‘peace’ Minako gave him have been? That meager kindness, that small love which could be lost with such terrifying ease in the midst of those brutal days of violently raging battle—how irreplaceable must Minako’s existence have been to him? The healing he found for his heart—
How much must he have loved her—?
He, more than anyone, should have known these things. He, who knew Kagetora’s pain better than anyone. And yet he had been unable to save him. On the contrary, he had driven Kagetora to the edge. As Kagetora’s protector, as a member of the Meikai Uesugi Army, it had been his duty to see Oda destroyed. Otherwise their existence had no meaning.
He could not avert his eyes, could not turn away. He could not allow his master to run away.
As his vassal...
He was the one who should protect Kagetora—why was he only able to drive him into a corner? He was the one who sought more fervently than anyone to save Kagetora—why was he only able to cause him pain? He didn’t understand. And without understanding, he fought blindly— He could not allow Kagetora to abandon the mission. There was nothing he could do but to continue to hurting him. When was it Kagetora began to hate him? He, who had walked at Kagetora’s side for four hundred years as his confidant and trusted vassal—he was the one Kagetora came to hate more than any other.
He struggled with the dilemma under a façade of serenity. Though Kagetora might hate him, it was for his sake, he thought; any vassal would naturally come to the same conclusion.
And so he pretended not to notice Kagetora’s anguish even as he watched quietly over Kagetora’s love for Minako there at his side...
He realized now that he had only been waiting for the time when everything would reach and exceed its limit.
Naoe sighed and turned his gaze away from the Moonlight Bodhisattva.
Kagetora had foreseen the intensification of the battle into all-out war and known that he could no longer protect even Minako.
That night, Kagetora called Naoe to him in order to confide in him a single decision.
“Take Minako and go far away.”
At that point the difference in battle-strength created by Naoe’s departure would likely have been fatal, but Kagetora, placing Minako’s protection above all else, had dared it and commanded it. Or perhaps the truth was that Kagetora had already steeled himself to make a final strike at Nobunaga.
And thinking back on it now—
Kagetora had been trying to hold back Naoe’s transformation by sending him far away, by giving him the command to ‘protect Minako’. Perhaps Kagetora had meant to show Naoe his standing by doing so—and yet it had been a miscalculation more than anything else.
Minako was Kagetora’s beloved.
If he had been aware of Naoe’s agony, he would certainly have understood that at that time, Minako was the one Naoe hated more than any other.
He should have guessed it from just a fragment of Naoe’s wild speech and conduct.
Violent conflict had worn away the tenacious reason holding Naoe in check. He could no longer suppress the emotions boiling up inside him.
He hated Minako.
Hated her more than anything.
If only this woman were not here, he thought. He wanted to tear this woman Kagetora loved to pieces.
Jealously scorched his heart...
Minako’s appearance only served to light a fire beneath those feelings.
Feelings that would in all likelihood drive him away. He would lose this person at whose side he had journeyed through four hundred years. No matter whom Kagetora loved, he had no choice but to come back in the end. No matter how much he loved that person, she would someday die. There would come a time when they would part. And only he would remain in the end.
That was why it didn’t matter, he argued himself down. Even if he could not have that which he truly desired, the day would come again when he would be the most important person in Kagetora’s life. He should bear it for a little while. Because he was the one who would be at Kagetora’s side in the end...
He would bear it for a little while longer. He had borne it thus far, after all. He could do it—there was no reason why he couldn’t. And yet.
Why did he want this person so much, right this instant?!
That foolish self-confidence: his fatal flaw even then.
He saw himself, the person who could arouse nothing in Kagetora but hatred.
Minako had not needed to smash through any barriers to bind herself to Kagetora. —He could...only envy that gentleness and empathy in Kagetora’s beloved Minako.
(Though he should have known the danger...)
And yet, he dared to put Minako under Naoe’s protection—
(Because even at the last, at the end of everything, he still trusted me...)
Even that fact had eluded his understanding. He had betrayed even that last remaining bit of trust.
And he had screamed Kagetora’s name in the deepest depths of his heart as he ravaged Minako’s body.
Because he hated Minako? No, his feelings ran deeper than that—so much deeper.
Anything would do. Anything connected to him that he could grasp with his own hands, in any way. It didn’t have to be Minako... No, because she was his beloved Minako—
He wanted her.
Even for a moment. Even this vanishing amount. Even that which Kagetora had given to another. Even the splinters. What he could not have, what was beyond his reach—
His love—his heart. He wanted to plundered them from this soul.
He had warned himself times beyond counting. That he was only confused. That this insanity, that this jealously wearing him to the bone was only delusion. That these feelings were not real. That he should not have them at all.
And yet—
He could no longer deceive himself. No matter how savagely he struggled to delude himself, he could not make these feelings disappear...!
It was Kagetora his arms wanted...sought in their insane desire. For him, whose very life was borrowed, Kagetora was life.
I love you—he violated Kagetora within his heart even as he screamed those words.
He had already lost any semblance of a rational mind. He wanted someone to tell him—he wanted someone to explain to him this ugly form he now wore, these emotions, this madness. He wanted someone to tell him the true nature of this violent insanity that was destroying him, body and mind.
He prayed for light to guide him out of this endlessly storming night.
Only that...
Several months after Oda’s attack.
He and Minako had been captured as bait for Kagetora. And Kagetora came—came to save them even while knowing it to be a trap—and there he died, sacrificing his own body to protect them.
There had been no other way.
A soul stripped of its body was as defenseless as a warrior without his armor. The soul had no control whatsoever over its «power» without the support provided by the body.
And Nobunaga’s «hakonha» would most certainly have destroyed Kagetora’s soul.
He used that abominable power before he could hesitate.
Used the power Kenshin had granted to him alone: the power given to Kagetora’s protector to force kanshou on another person.
Otherwise, Kagetora’s soul would be destroyed by Nobunaga. That alone he could not allow. In the crux of that cataclysmic moment there was only one body he could use for the host. There was no other way. Kagetora was the one person he could not lose. Would not lose. The one person he didn’t want to lose, then and now and ever...
Would not lose...!
No other way, no other choice.
Only this.
To force Kagetora into Minako’s body.
“You alone I shall never forgive for all of eternity.”
It was time for the Hall of the Third Month to close. He left the temple and wandered around the park for a little while before climbing the stone steps of the Hall of the Second Month nearby. He had concluded his shrine visit from the front, so now he turned to the view behind him. From this westward-facing platform he had an unbroken view of Nara City below.
The platform was quiet.
None of the temple visitors spoke. There were lovers there, married couples, friends. But no one said a word. Perhaps all of them were immersed in their own thoughts. They only gazed quietly at the descending sun. The sun touched the horizon.
Naoe, too, looked at the western sky.
He suddenly heard again the only thing Minako had said to him that night like a whisper in his heart.
Minako, who should have hated him as she hated no one else—had been the only one to understand.
She alone had understood these helpless feelings.
And thinking on it now, he knew that it had surely been—
Because she had carried these same profound feelings—
For the same person.
The sky gradually transformed after the sun disappeared below the horizon. Stripes of red light burned through the cloud-split space near the mountain ridges, and the surrounding clouds were scorched orange, then crimson. That deep scarlet eventually suffused the sky, staining the lingering clouds purplish red and painting an unearthly beautiful scene before them.
Magenta clouds drifted towards the west. Several birds flew across the boundlessly magnificent sky.
For a brief moment Naoe forgot all language, and was left with only a desire to press his hands together in prayer in that majestic afterglow.
The ancient builders of this temple who had chosen this spot had surely known the Pure Lands, that paradise of the buddhas which the people of the transient world, exhausted from their prayers for forgiveness for their sins, could only glimpse for the barest moments. He stood within one of those moments.
The maddening feelings crushed to death by guilt and regret were gradually coming back to life. He had known from the day of their reunion that those desolate passions that he had been convinced were delusions, that he had told himself were delusions, would someday overflow from his heart and spill out in a brilliant, unstoppable flood.
Even if he could never again see a sky such as this...
The overwhelming, heart-striking beauty of this moment had been scorched into his soul...
Here.
I want to be with you, here.
He wanted to pray to that last fading light.
Wanted simply to pray, forgetting even the capacity for tears.
This sky...
So like my love for you.
Brilliant neon lights began to come aglow in Nara as the sky darkened.
The lanterns of the Hall of the Second Month were lit. Naoe left the visitors still enjoying the night view and took the covered walkway to the mild path along the right-hand wall.
Turning, he looked up once more at the gentle light of the temple lanterns glowing in the darkness, then headed down the dim, unlit path.
Emerging next to the brilliantly-illuminated Great Buddha Hall, he passed through the Great Southern Gate and came out onto a street filled with the lights of cars moving back and forth, from whence he retraced his steps towards the hotel.
The possibility of a connection between this odd case of fireballs appearing in the city and the «Yami-Sengoku» was not small. An investigation would probably bring the cause to light.
(Will we be able to depend on Kagetora-sama’s power...?)
That worry ranked first and foremost in Naoe’s mind. Still, he had shown flawless skill in the «choubuku» of Ashina Moriuji and company in Tokyo, and there had been no indication of that «power» fading afterwards. His «powers» seemed to have more or less stabilized after their awakening in Sendai. But at the same time...
“It’s only a matter of time before Kagetora regains his memories.”
Kousaka’s words pressed against his chest.
If this was a path he could not avoid no matter how much he struggled, then he had no choice but to move forward. He could not take back the past.
Naoe had made up his mind during those few days he had spent with Kagetora in Sendai and Tokyo.
He would not run away from Kagetora a second time. He could not protect him while indulging such irresolute feelings. He was the only one who could protect him, and protect him he would. That was his one and only conceit. No matter how vile his character, those words alone he would declare with pride before the gods themselves.
Back at the hotel, he directed his steps towards the front desk. A familiar well-built young man stood there, looking like he, too, had returned just moments before.
And the youth standing beside him—
He spotted Naoe, and an “ah!” of recognition appeared on his face. Though he looked surprised, he gave Naoe a slight, awkward smile.
“Hey, you got here pretty quick.”
A peaceful smile found its way to Naoe’s face at last.
“Welcome back, Takaya-san.”
To protect this person—