“Is that like people in different countries coming and going on roads, ships, or planes?”
“For you, that was pretty quick,” Shino said, looking satisfied as he lifted the corner of his mouth and continued, “Although humans who don’t know how to use the third eye could never imagine it, the fact is that there are countless other worlds that exist. Most of them are very small, which considerably limits the number of specters that enter them. That’s why they don’t become much of a problem. However, what Gentetsu wanted to do was open a gate to a gigantic other world that was far more massive…”
Shino’s words continued to shock Masamichi.
“Did he try to build it right in the capital? Is it okay for a person to do something like that?”
“Not usually. To open a gate to another world is to bring together the walls of two different worlds and merge them as one. It isn’t something a mere mortal can do.”
“Not even Tokifuyu could do that?”
A somewhat evil look appeared on Shino’s face as he shook his head.
“I’m not sure. Come to think of it, I never asked.”
“O-oh, okay. Well, he was working for the court, and you wouldn’t think he’d do anything bad. But this Gentetsu Izumo? He must have been very capable if he had such big plans.”
“I don’t know. I do know that he was a human with more ambition than any individual could ever have. His father…”
“Don’t tell me his father tried to do the same thing?”
“He did. Gentetsu’s father, Gensou, attempted it in the past and failed miserably. Tokifuyu said the people at the Bureau of Spiritual Mediums captured and executed him in secret. Apparently, the son had inherited his father’s ambitions.”
Shino’s old tale was too simple to have any footnotes, but it also gave Masamichi a lot of room to let his imagination run wild.
Experiencing the same thrill that he’d felt when his kindergarten teacher read him fairy tales as a child, he continued to ask Shino more about the Izumos.
“Are you saying that two generations, the father and his son, had been working on opening this…gate to another world? That’s some obsession. But why? A flock of specters would flood the capital if they opened the gate, right? They’d attack humans, and the capital would be ruined.”
Shino sighed.
“How would I know what foolish thoughts go through human minds? Even Tokifuyu didn’t seem to know why the Izumos were plotting something so dangerous.”
“He didn’t? Really?!”
“But Tokifuyu guessed that perhaps they had their roots in some indigenous tribe that the people of the capital had once defeated. Indeed, Gentetsu’s external appearance was nothing like that of Tokifuyu and the others.”
“They belonged to an indigenous tribe? We learned a bit about them in high school, but…when you put it that way, suddenly they feel more real than a topic in a textbook.”
Shino mocked Masamichi’s sentiments with a snort.
“You humans certainly are easygoing. You’ve completely forgotten that you’re the descendants of the invaders who once exterminated the indigenous people and stole their land.”
“Ngh…I guess we just don’t think about it. I doubt that many people in today’s world go about their lives with an awareness of our position, but maybe I’m making an excuse for us.”
“It’s perfectly natural for you to defend yourselves. No one is eager to tell their children and grandchildren the bad deeds they committed. Humans have rewritten the facts about their aggression as mythical tales of exterminating specters, saying they didn’t attack fellow humans and only exterminated demons, which was the right thing to do…”
“Exterminated demons…? That’s terrible! They’re treating fellow humans like devils.”
Shino interrupted Masamichi’s angry outburst in an ice-cold tone.
“That’s the type of thing these stupid creatures called humans do. They don’t consider that their foes are the same as them, and they have no qualms about looking down at and harming them. Even today, you humans continue to do the same thing in different parts of the world. Isn’t that right?”
Masamichi closed his mouth, which had gaped open, and hung his head.
Indeed, the powerful continued to oppress and kill the weak, wielding self-serving justice and selfish causes. Masamichi’s heart ached to think that maybe humans hadn’t become any more advanced in the last thousand years.
“Humans are terrible when you put it that way,” he said, looking depressed. Shino grabbed the remainder of Masamichi’s sandwich and devoured it.
“I don’t know if humans are terrible or not, but I certainly don’t care for cunning humans who quibble in an attempt to justify themselves.”
“Cunning humans?”
“Specters slaughter and devour their opponents. Like me in the past, they sometimes take the lives of other beings for fun. But they do that simply because they want to. They don’t consider it bad, and because of that, they don’t even consider defending themselves for such acts. It’s much simpler than the situation with humans.”
Shino’s words were coarse, but Masamichi thought he made sense.
And the warm smile on Tokifuyu’s face when he watched Shino in his rambunctious days, which Masamichi had seen several times in his dreams, suddenly flashed through his mind.
“Putting aside the issue of whether it’s good or bad, maybe it was this honesty of yours that Tokifuyu liked,” Masamichi said without thinking. Shino looked annoyed and clammed up, then cleared his throat and returned to the topic they were discussing.
“…I don’t care what he thought of me. Anyway, one thing for sure is that Gensou and his son had a strong hatred of the Imperial Court. Gensou tried to open the gate to the other world at Suzaku, and the son, Gentetsu, boldly tried to open the gate at Shinsenen, the forbidden garden.”
Shino continued to speak with a straight face, but Masamichi just tilted his head like a small bird again.
“The forbidden garden?”
“The forbidden garden that the public could never set foot in… A garden built for the lord…or in your vernacular, the emperor.”
Masamichi finally understood and blinked in astonishment.
“In a place like that?! It sure sounds like a sign that they’d have a deep grudge against the Imperial Court, or rather, the emperor.”
“That’s correct. But Gentetsu probably couldn’t hide the enormous evil that seeped into his soul. The Bureau of Spiritual Mediums noticed the irregularity as soon as he entered the capital. No matter how cleverly an individual avoids attention and hides under a bridge, all you need to do is show someone a reward, and the poorer a person is, the more easily they will sell you information.”
“So someone ratted him out, and Gentetsu got caught?”
Shino gave a small shake of his head.