Chapter 88
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 88
Chapter Title: The Final Struggle and the Approaching Choice
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“Wha, how...”
Hayashi Michikatsu couldn’t hide his panic at the sight of Nobuyuki appearing before him. No wonder—who could possibly imagine she could emerge from that place?
There were ten samurai standing guard right away, along with a fair number of ashigaru. Even Nobuyuki’s personal samurai had been detained just in case.
“I clearly told you.”
But Nobuyuki had no intention of resolving Hayashi’s doubts. She simply fixed her icy gaze on the old retainer brimming with greed and murmured to the samurai following behind her.
“Kill everyone except Hayashi. If necessary, you can half-kill Hayashi too.”
—Shing.
At her words, the samurai behind her drew their swords in unison. At the same time, the samurai remaining at Hayashi’s side rolled their eyes and looked to their lord.
What should they do in a situation like this? They were asking Hayashi that very question. But of course, Hayashi had no clever answer to give.
‘Incompetent fools!’
It wasn’t even a difficult task.
They just needed to hold out for about half a shichen—roughly an hour—until this side was dealt with. Yet seeing them flounder like this over something so simple made his anger boil over.
He rolled his eyes.
How could he break out of this situation?
No matter how hard he racked his brain, no good ideas came to mind. In front stood Il-yeong and Shibata Katsuie with swords at the ready, while Nobuyuki’s warriors pressed in from behind.
It was truly a hopeless dilemma, no advance or retreat possible.
Hayashi instinctively realized it.
‘Is this the end?’
He couldn’t deny it.
Where had things started to go wrong?
Hirate Hikage. Or had that man from Joseon, Baek Il-yeong, simply been far stronger than expected?
Or should he have taken a harder line, even if it meant losing some ground afterward?
What had been the right path, truly?
Nobuyuki stepped before the aging retainer.
She might have seemed overwhelmed standing before the burly Hayashi Michikatsu, but unarmed as she was, Nobuyuki merely glared at him with cold eyes and parted her red lips.
“You said it was done out of loyalty.”
Of course, she had calculated everything.
Hayashi Michikatsu could serve as a pillar in the power structure, but he could never be the symbolic figure to rally a faction behind.
That was why he had struck at Il-yeong under the pretext of enthroning Oda Nobuyuki—and now, with everything fallen apart, every path led only to death.
Nobuyuki knew it. Dota Gozen standing behind her knew it. So did Il-yeong and Shibata Katsuie.
A death foreordained.
And so, Nobuyuki intended to offer him a choice. Though of course, there was only one true answer—the same one he had forced upon others.
“Hayashi Michikatsu.”
By now, most of the Hayashi clan samurai had already lost their will to fight. They too could sense it from their lord silently letting his sword hang limp: there was no escape left for them.
At that moment, one of the samurai beside Nobuyuki drew a tanto from his waist and placed it in her hand. She tossed it indifferently toward Hayashi.
—Thud.
The dagger landed at his feet with a heavy echo. As his gaze fell upon it, Nobuyuki spoke as if she had been waiting.
“Commit seppuku.”
Seppuku.
The samurai’s way of preserving honor: slicing open one’s own belly, with another severing the head from behind.
That was what she offered Hayashi.
No—precisely, what she commanded.
“Haa...”
Hayashi Michikatsu let out a sigh. Her command to commit seppuku here and now was the final punctuation mark on everything.
Though he had woven personal ambition into the greater cause, this old retainer who had once held true loyalty turned to his former lord’s second daughter and asked,
“Do you truly believe that is the right path?”
Oda Nobunaga was brutal.
Rude and utterly unpredictable.
She might make a fierce general, but as clan lord? Unfit.
And so he asked.
“Can you—and Lady Dota—endure that?”
Il-yeong, too, listened closely to the question.
And in that instant, Nobuyuki replied.
“I won’t answer. Die.”
Hayashi’s eyes wavered at her words, and in the same moment, Shibata Katsuie—who had been standing beside Il-yeong—stepped forward boldly.
—Shing.
Shibata Katsuie’s sword cleared its sheath, and Nobuyuki positioned herself behind him. He was slowly lifting the dagger, his face twisted in betrayal as he looked at her in that split second.
“......That will serve as my answer.”
He brought the dagger to his abdomen.
Everyone prepared to witness his end in their own ways, assuming he would go through with the seppuku.
“......”
Nobuyuki simply stared at him in silence.
“......Kuhk.”
The Hayashi clan samurai merely bowed their heads, awaiting their lord’s death.
But Il-yeong was different.
‘Something feels off.’
Hayashi appeared ready to plunge the dagger into his gut at any moment, yet Il-yeong—who had crossed countless brushes with death—sensed an inexplicable wrongness.
And he wasn’t the only one.
Shibata Katsuie, now close behind Hayashi, furrowed her brow beneath her mask. And then—
“Therefore.”
His wrinkled lips twitched faintly.
At the same time, unnoticed by any, he switched his reverse grip on the dagger to a forward one and raised his head.
“I believe this serves as an answer too.”
“......What does that—”
Nobuyuki hadn’t caught the faint whisper and began to ask, but in that instant, Hayashi lunged his hand toward her, standing right before him.
Moonlight glinted off the dagger’s blade just then. Dota Gozen, spotting it belatedly, cried out.
“Nobuyuki!”
Il-yeong leaped forward a beat late as well.
Perhaps never imagining Hayashi would target her, Nobuyuki remained frozen in that critical moment.
Time itself seemed to slow.
His feet hit the ground, body swaying perilously as he swung his half-drawn sword to slash at Hayashi’s back.
Deep down, he knew.
......Too late.
He bit his lip hard.
He could see Shibata Katsuie drawing her sword to strike, but against a dagger thrust at the neck from point-blank range, she would be far too slow.
But in that instant—
“Kuk!”
Suddenly, Hayashi Michikatsu clutched his wrist and rolled to the ground. It saved him from Shibata Katsuie’s blade, but Nobuyuki’s samurai—who had drawn late—now surrounded him.
“Clan Lord!”
“Are you alright?!”
Il-yeong shoved past the samurai urgently shielding her and reached the fallen Hayashi Michikatsu. Moments later, he heard Shibata Katsuie press her sword to the man’s throat, her voice laced with contempt.
“You’re not even worth calling a samurai.”
Had he committed seppuku moments ago, one might have at least credited him with loyalty, however misguided. But the instant he sought to harm his lord for personal gain, he had forfeited even that last chance at honor.
“Kuk....... Kuku.”
Aware of it or not, Hayashi merely chuckled in hollow defeat. Il-yeong glanced down at his wrist.
‘A shuriken?’
A shuriken—the very emblem of ninjas even in the modern day—was embedded squarely in Hayashi’s wrist. Far from small, it had torn through to expose bone, and a small pool of blood was already forming where he had collapsed.
He turned his head.
Tracing the projectile’s path, his eyes soon met those of a ninja perched on a nearby rooftop.
Her dark garb and mask hid her identity, but the black mole beneath her right eye gave her away at once.
“......Takigawa Kazumasu.”
The ninja from Koka Ryu who had joined Oda Nobunaga—and whom he had seen during the strike on Toyotomi—was the one who had pinned Hayashi’s wrist.
‘Hayashi clearly never expected Nobuyuki to show up.’
From their conversation, it seemed the Koka Ryu ninjas under Takigawa had also rescued the detained Nobuyuki and Dota Gozen.
In the end, he owed her one.
He gave a light bow.
Takigawa returned a brief nod of acknowledgment before vanishing into the shadows.
Then, a guttural death rattle—“Kueok”—grazed Il-yeong’s ear. He turned to see.
“Guruk......”
Hayashi, finally accepting reality, with the dagger plunged into his own throat.
—Shing.
Il-yeong sheathed his sword.
His hand, trembling from the shock moments before, had steadied—no need to hide it now.
“......”
Silence fell over the civilian houses, the scent of blood drifting on the wind.
“Lady Nobuyuki.”
And the one to break it—
“Have you made your choice?”
—was Il-yeong’s somewhat languid voice.