Honno-ji. Kyoto. 1582.
That was the last time I saw you, my dear friend.
My final moments.
The memory seems somehow both vivid and hazy - I can’t quite explain it. It seems almost like a dream, while seeming almost too real to be real.
I had taken several arrows to my body before the killing blow came - even though that itself wasn’t when I died.
Mitsuhide...I must have looked so terribly shocked when your blade went through my chest. Of all the people I expected to come for my head, you were the last. That cold look in your eyes as you stood above me - hatred I thought, like cold ice, but later I wondered if it was sealing away your emotions to do what you had to - or rather, I think that was my wishful thinking.
There were so many thoughts racing through my head in that moment, but the main was simply, “Why?”
I don’t think I had ever felt anything so clearly - it was sharp and cold, that fine forged steel going through me so easily. At first I didn’t feel the pain.
I heard Ranmaru scream for me.
My eyes refocused on your face as you unsheathed your sword from its new home in my body. You still looked so cold...the expression on your face matched your icy appearance.
I managed to speak your name. It was a question. A question of so many words made into four syllables I could barely choke out.
“Mitsu...hide...?”
Blood started to spill from my mouth, and down my side - that’s when I started to feel the hurt. I think the shock of it being you who did this had numbed me at first.
I fell. I saw the sky. I heard steel ring on steel and Ranmaru’s cries of anger and desperation. I could not move.
you cursed. I didn’t know what was happening - I guess Ran must have fought you back a bit, because the next thing I knew I was in his arms, and he was sprinting back towards the temple.
It was a massacre, you know. None of those men or women were soldiers besides us two. What a brilliant strategy, my friend...it sounded like something I would have done, didn’t it? I guess in a way you could say it was karmic justice.
Even though they weren’t soldiers, all of them still fought to stop you from getting to me - hah, see? Maybe I wasn’t a despised as I was made out to be after all.
It was Ran’s idea to set the temple on fire. I was begging him not to let you take my head - hah. How pathetic, huh? I could hear the fighting raging on outside as the flames really started to pick up...
I had accepted my death, but I wanted to stay in one piece. I didn’t want to be cursed to become some onryoki or something. I really think I was starting to go delirious from the blood loss though - Ran was holding me in his arms, cradling me against his chest. He wanted to make sure I wasn’t alone in those moments - that I was comfortable...hah, he was such a good boy, in the end, wasn’t he? I would rather he had escaped and lived on, but I was grateful not to be alone.
My vision was fading, and I felt so cold, even though the flames were raging all around us. All I could say was,
“Ran... don’t let them... come in...”
He comforted me...promised he wouldn’t. I smiled. I could feel the fingers I had so desperately knotted into his top lose their grip. My hand fell away. He held me tighter. Everything went black.
...
Even though that is how it all ended -
I still say it was something that couldn’t be helped.
I honestly wish I could hate you -
It would be so much easier.
But in the end, I still can’t make myself stop feeling love for you.
You,
my dear,
beloved
friend.
This, too, is something than cannot be helped.
Yare...Mitsuhide...
I miss you.
I guess I’m still a sentimental old fool after all, huh?
