Chapter 47
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 47
Chapter Title: Do You Love Him?
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Those who betrayed them by following Hideyoshi numbered roughly thirty. Half of them lost their lives at the hands of the Hirate family, while the other half were forcibly dragged to Kiyosu by Il-yeong.
The treatment of the traitors was straightforward.
Starting with water torture, they endured every manner of torment as they were interrogated about why they had betrayed their lord.
Soon enough, someone cracked.
―H-Hideyoshi! Hideyoshi said that if we swore loyalty to Mino's new master, we'd bask in wealth and glory!
Once the first one broke, the rest came easily.
Those who had sided with Hideyoshi out of mere opportunism were rounded up first. Perfectly lucid, they were slowly dismembered with a saw—ending their lives amid regret, despair, rage, and agony.
The futures of those who remained were no brighter.
With their wrist tendons severed so they could never hold a sword again, they were banished from Owari Province. Most fell prey to bandits, becoming their playthings or beast fodder.
That was far from the end of it.
Oda Nobunaga captured the pursuit force that hadn't made it back to Mino—over a hundred men in all—and subjected them to torture without mercy.
She shattered their bones, sliced their tendons, and flayed their flesh.
Even Ikoma Kitsuno and Kicho begged for death, pleading until their lives were taken.
It was a true bloodbath.
All this unfolded in just a fortnight since Il-yeong had barely clung to life.
Yet the mood in Kiyosu, now the new stronghold of the Oda clan, remained oppressively grim.
"Has she still not awakened?"
"...No, Lord Hirate."
Hirate Masahide gazed at the Tenshukaku—home to the clan lord and his ward-like foster daughter, Nobunaga—with a profoundly troubled expression clouding his face.
'It's been seven days since she shut herself away.'
After dealing with the captured traitors, Nobunaga hadn't left Il-yeong's side for a moment.
Nor was she alone in that.
The physicians did the same, as did Mori Yoshinari. Even Nobuyuki, upon hearing the news, sent medicinal herbs said to aid wound recovery, along with a letter.
And yet, Il-yeong showed no signs of waking.
Hirate Masahide considered stepping inside to check on his face but soon shook his head.
'It is his fate.'
He hadn't truly adopted the boy out of affection; he'd merely taken him in because his lord—the clan head—had taken a liking to him.
There had been no time to form a true father-son bond, so it was right to let fate take its course.
With that thought, he turned to leave.
His steps felt heavy for a fleeting instant—a momentary lapse.
Just then, he noticed a girl standing behind him as he pivoted.
"Uemon."
"Yes, Father."
She dipped her head in a slight bow upon facing Hirate Masahide. But his eyes were fixed on the small basket she carried.
"Ah."
Understanding his gaze, Uemon gently peeled back the paper covering the basket. Inside lay a small gourd bottle filled with decoction.
"I thought it might help my brother recover..."
Hirate, still stone-faced as she spoke demurely, glanced at the samurai escorting her. The man nodded and mouthed silently.
―The young lady brewed it herself.
Now he noticed the dark stains on her hands she hadn't fully washed away. Hirate Masahide regarded her wordlessly for a moment, then turned once more.
"Come along."
"Yes, Father."
Together, they ascended the Tenshukaku.
*
Hirate Masahide and Uemon lingered briefly, hoping Il-yeong might stir. But they couldn't bear the pus seeping from his wounds or his pained groans, and soon descended the Tenshukaku.
Once they departed, only Nobunaga, Il-yeong, and Yoshinari remained in the top chamber—Nobunaga's quarters.
The sun sank slowly.
The moon rose in the black sky, feeding on the fallen sun beyond the horizon, as winter's silence blanketed the world once more.
A towel stained red with blood, used to wipe Il-yeong's wounds, dangled over a basin. Red streaks seeped from the soaked futon onto the tatami mats, creeping forward inch by inch.
"...Cough."
With Il-yeong between them coughing dryly now and then, Oda Nobunaga and Mori Yoshinari tilted their cups without meeting each other's eyes, lost in heavy silence.
But what they drank differed.
Nobunaga sipped tea, while Yoshinari nursed lightly diluted sake.
"...How's the wound on your side?"
Nobunaga spoke first.
She rolled her hazy golden eyes and asked. Yoshinari's cracked voice, unsteady, replied.
"...Y-Yes. It's fine."
She'd struck the injured man across the cheek without tending to him first.
No one would be pleased by such a thing, yet Yoshinari merely stared blankly into her cup.
She wasn't one to indulge in drink.
Yet for the past fortnight, the sake had never left her lips.
Silence enveloped them again.
Soon, Yoshinari spoke.
"I couldn't stop him."
Her cracked, precarious breaths carried the scent of alcohol. Recalling that day so vividly, she confessed as if atoning for a sin.
"I had the chance to stop him. But I couldn't."
"Yoshinari."
"I was glad. And I was afraid."
Nobunaga's pupils trembled for an instant.
At the same time, Yoshinari's hands shook like aspen leaves.
"...The blood stench pierced my lungs. It wasn't the man I knew."
It was unmistakably Il-yeong.
Yet it wasn't.
He was utterly unlike the figure she'd seen on previous battlefields. That was why she was glad—and why she was afraid.
Yoshinari refilled her cup from the bottle that now showed the bottom, gazing at the rippling sake as her pale lips parted.
"This man... rages so fiercely for my sake alone. That's what I mean to him..."
Affection became joy, and joy swiftly turned to fear.
"I told him to stop, to turn back, but he wouldn't listen. And he... he asked me to wait for him."
She'd waited past seven days—into the eighth.
And even beyond that, he'd begged her to wait.
Those whispers had made her hesitate.
She'd been afraid.
"...If I'd held him there, stopped him, I feared he'd hate me."
The man who'd come running for her sake had pleaded as much.
So she'd simply watched, dazed.
And soon realized how foolish, how stupid, how swept up in the moment that choice had been.
Slide.
Yoshinari's hand closed around her cup.
At the same moment, tears she'd held back for a fortnight fell—plink, plink—to the floor.
Watching her, Nobunaga sipped the utterly bland tea.
She couldn't quite grasp why she was drinking tea of all things.
Simply put, the scene before her offered no pleasure in sake.
Yoshinari weeping in her presence. Il-yeong, who'd danced on the edge of death from his arm wound, already back at the half-sword's edge.
'What's the point of drink without revelry?'
It tasted bitter.
The leaves her attendants had brought must have been the lowest grade.
How else could it be this bitter?
Just then.
A pre-dawn breeze whistled through the open window. She'd meant to keep it shut, but the repeated fevers and pus had made the stench unbearable.
Eyes closed against her windswept black hair, she suddenly recalled a memory.
How long had it been?
When she'd first heard of Il-yeong from her grandfather, she'd thought, Just an amusing spy, huh?
How could a spy be so blatantly obvious? Wasn't it entertaining?
The timing had been perfect, too—her heart in turmoil.
Her father had many expectations as a parent, but he was still blood kin who'd sired her.
So she'd drunk.
And walked to the shrine, scattering ashes over everything he'd ever forced upon her.
"...Fifty years in the human world."
Unbidden, the verse from that day resurfaced.
"Are but a fleeting dream compared to the rivers of heaven."
One born never to die. Who could that be?
She paused midway, burying the rest in her heart. Then, with eyes tinged by complex emotion, she gazed down at Il-yeong.
His hair, matted and inevitably cut away, lay neatly trimmed. His lips, stained black-red with blood and medicine, framed gaunt cheeks even slimmer than before.
Yet he wasn't repulsive.
Only her heart ached.
His furrowed brow worried her; his ragged breaths made her fear they'd stop.
'Is that how it is.'
When had it started?
Not so long ago.
Simply, her interest had morphed before she knew it.
She raised her head.
And in a low voice, fixed her still-cloudy gray eyes on Yoshinari, who tilted her sake cup.
"Do you... love Hikage? Il-yeong?"