“Who said you could die? To die is to pass into the Pure Land. You’re far from ready for that, very far. You better stay on your journey until you find an answer.”
“An answer for what?!”
“Now, I wonder. Will there be an answer? Of course, death would come as a relief for you. However…”
Miroku-bosatsu turned his gaze toward the mound of corpses at the bottom of the steep hill, the people Fuuka had razed like a blazing fire.
“Don’t think you can die so easily.”
“Is this…a punishment?”
“It’s a journey. If you find what you need to find, you might be able to die as a human being. Maybe.”
Miroku-bosatsu didn’t even tell him what he was supposed to be looking for.
Something warm snuggled up at Sora’s feet—Fuuka. Even as a puppy, he still loved and depended on his older brother.
“Coo.” He let out a soft murmur.
“Fuuka…”
There was no blood on Fuuka’s pure-white fur. Did this mean he could start over with a clean slate? Or did this mean everything had been returned to nothing?
“Just one thing. Don’t tell anyone about Emishi or Aterui, okay?”
“Why not…?” Even in his state of extreme confusion, when Miroku-bosatsu had hardly given him any answers, Sora couldn’t help but ask this.
“Because even I can’t fathom how long your journey will be. This is your journey; remember that. Those who lose are wiped from history. It’s an honor to be remembered by posterity. That’s the way it goes, you see, so don’t let the cat out of the bag.”
“Miroku-bosatsu…!” Sora shouted, but the figure had disappeared. He hugged the puppy Fuuka close.
“Whoopsie-daisy, I almost forgot.” Miroku-bosatsu reappeared the next moment, then turned to Tamuramaro, who had been staring intently at the otherworldly scene. “Mr. Tamuramaro, you still have some stuff to do yourself. Well, if you feel like calling me up on your deathbed, just say my name, and I’ll hop right over again. After all, we’re acquainted now.”
“Miroku-…bosatsu…” Tamuramaro, who knew this entity, murmured their name just a little dubiously.
“As for the soldiers down in the valley, I’ll take them to the Pure Land, so rest easy.”
With that, a celestial light swelled from Miroku-bosatsu.
The light washed over people, mountains, trees, and rocks, obliterating all distinction between them, and Sora began sprinting away with the puppy Fuuka before they could be seen again. That was the last time Tamuramaro saw them for some time.
As Miroku-bosatsu had predicted, this revolt at Awata-guchi was never recorded in any of the officially commissioned historical records—neither Shoku Nihongi nor Nihon Kouki—and was forgotten without a trace in the annals of history.
More than 1,200 years had gone by since then.
“The sei-i taishogun at the time, Sakanoue no Tamuramaro, donated his own residence in his lifetime, and that became what we now know as Kiyomizu Temple.”
The TV screen showed Tamuramaro’s abode from 1,200 years ago.
“How could we ever have defeated a man who lived in a place like that…?” Sora grumbled at the solemn, magnificent facade of Kiyomizu Temple as he sat at the dining table with Tamuramaro, wrapping gyoza dumplings together.
“Not that I had much time to live there. I had a lot to do. More like a fortress than a home, really.” Tamuramaro looked at his own donation, now a mainstream tourist attraction, and shrugged.
“Still wrapping, guys?” Fuuka called out from the kitchen. He was cleaning up the dishes from the authentic-style ramen they’d eaten after the thugs had gone.
“Still going,” replied Sora.
“This is a first for me, making gyoza. I’m finally getting the hang of it now,” Tamuramaro chimed in.
When they were walking down the Shizukuishi shopping street, Sora had bought fresh noodles to have ramen and gyoza for dinner at home. The scuffle with the burglars had made them all hungry, so they’d decided to whip up the ramen first. Tamuramaro proposed drinks, and they all took a bath and relaxed in front of the TV. Sora and Tamuramaro were wrapping the filling in the thin gyoza skins.
From their experience, this was something they simply had to do that night—to drink and do something completely nonviolent. Regardless of the opponent, a serious battle stirred the blood, and they had to calm it down by doing something else.
“I like wrapping gyoza. It’s pretty fun once you pick it up,” said Sora.
The small, repetitive motions were perfect for cooling down, and at the end of it all, they had something to eat, so what was not to like? Sora went on, methodically folding the wrappers.
“You’re right; I’m starting to enjoy it. The shape’s getting neater, too.”
There was hardly anything Tamuramaro couldn’t do if he tried. Even with his lack of experience, he was making well-formed gyoza in no time.
“What are you gonna do with all that gyoza? Freeze them? You don’t have to make so many. I’ll do it by myself when I’m home during the day.” For Fuuka, who was kneading salt into chopped hakusai cabbage for the filling, there was no need to do anything to calm himself down. In his case, his state of mind in battle was comparable to that of his ordinary life.
At first, Sora thought this was because of Fuuka’s innate potential to kill a multitude. But this kind of incident was also nothing new for Sora and Tamuramaro in their 1,200 years. If this had just been a fight with thugs, they would only have needed to wrap a few gyoza to cool down again. What concerned Sora, however, was not the scuffle itself, but the fact that Fuuka had tried to kill their attackers.
“And of course I’d have the data of the evidence backed up to the cloud. You would’ve thought it was obvious.” Sora sighed at the criminal organization’s pathetic attempt to thwart his investigation.
“I’d say it’s more a threat than anything else. It’s not elegant, but the suspect must be desperate,” said Tamuramaro, picturing his client driven into a corner. “Simply put, he snapped.”
“He must’ve had some awareness of his own actions, at the very least, or of the damage he’s caused. He’s far too unreasonable.”
Tamuramaro smiled wryly. “Imagine being quietly interrogated and admonished with valid arguments when you know deep down that you’ve done something harmful and deserve the punishment. Of course he’s angry.” He went on softly: “If you can, try toning it down next time. Otherwise, it won’t be the last time this kind of thing happens to you.”
“Well, I’m trying—”
Sora had been trying to mend his ways for a long time now. He’d been working on it for more than forty years. But his nature wasn’t so easy to change.
The TV show was still going on about Tamuramaro. “Legends of Sakanoue no Tamuramaro live on in many shrines across Japan. Even after his death, he was placed in an upright position in a casket, wearing his armor and holding his sword. He was buried facing the east, as a guardian of the capital in Kyoto. Now he is widely known as a god of martial arts.”
“Ugh, ‘god’ this, ‘god’ that. Shut up about ‘gods’ already,” Sora grumbled at the narrator, who was singing Tamuramaro’s praises ad nauseam.
“Music to my ears, whenever I hear it. But being buried upright? Man, that boss of mine, Emperor Saga—talk about working you into the ground. If he were alive now, he’d get in trouble with the Labor Standards Bureau in a second.”
Now a modern man through and through, Tamuramaro shrugged, thinking back to the four emperors he had served under.
“It’s a gigantic place… Kiyomizu Temple, I mean,” Sora remarked as he watched the students horsing around on a field trip. Its formidable structure would certainly pass as a fortress. “Did you build it in memory of those who were forgotten by history?”
Whether or not it was meant to be a fortress, it was a fact that the sei-i taishogun had left behind and donated as a temple a site that would survive for 1,200 years. Sora also knew from history that Tamuramaro had worked tirelessly during his lifetime.
“It’s for everyone.”
Tamuramaro grinned, putting down a wrapped gyoza on a tray dusted with potato starch powder. He knew Sora was thinking of the soldiers Fuuka had massacred that day in Awata-guchi.
“Two sides of the same coin. Back then, we counted heads to determine the winner. That’s just the way it was. When you were little, I carried out a large-scale operation of suppression in the north. Four hundred fifty-seven beheaded, one hundred fifty captured, and seventy-five villages burned down. Even then, they said that wasn’t enough.”
Carefully recounting the numbers, Tamuramaro picked up another wrapper.
“One Kiyomizu Temple isn’t enough to honor them all. Right, Sora?” he asked quietly. “You were born in a well of hatred, but somehow you survived…and grew up like this.”
After Tamuramaro’s death, the three of them had encountered one another countless times as history wore on. In the beginning, Sora could only feel contempt for the man. But as far as Sora remembered, Tamuramaro never showed a hint of hatred toward them. Instead, he always talked to them as a caring grown-up would talk to children. Perhaps even on that day at Awata-guchi, he had spoken to the brothers like that.
“We’ve both killed many. It was an age when the number of deaths was the axis around which the world of politics revolved. That’s why the emperor hid the fact that an Emishi child took down so many soldiers. It’s not in any of the records,” Tamuramaro explained. The sight of his old fortress had apparently inspired a wave of memories.