One year before the revolution, in the climate of the fracas surrounding the Asclepius murders, Tsubone Endou was recovering at her home after a clamorous day of bureaucracy and demon–hunting to be intercepted and thrust the latest victim in the arms of her vanished student Shinobu Kochou, who the records later identified as the anonymous and untalented Giyuu Tomioka, bisected and bleeding through the ribs.

It was her obligation to treat him. But she must've had a cut, or slight graze, or any stage of wound on her arm, that when she reached in the chest cavity and performed the surgical nuances on his heart would encounter an erring jet of blood, to render her vision susceptible to Nisegami Youma when she descended the patioed operating room and saw the ghost in the clarity of the green summer moon for the first time in a millennium.

Afterwards, when Tsubone announced her intentions to make Giyuu her Tsuguko, their agendas strayed from the parallel path and clashed. It was inevitable. She met the phantom, who had proclaimed himself as the original mentor, in an isolated section of her ivy garden, and offered him tea. Before Youma remembered he tried to take the cup but he could not. That gesture of his holographic existence explained everything to Tsubone.

"You see?" Youma said. He smiled, sadly. "That's the punishment for dead men who cheat death. Nothing at all."

"The fitting thing, for you," Tsubone replied.

Youma turned and said sharply: "The fitting thing for us, is to realise neither has much more than the other."

That exchange began the mediatory period in which Tsubone Endou and Nisegami Youma laid out the terms for the tutorship of Giyuu Tomioka. She asked how long he had known Giyuu, and Youma said six years, and then she asked how long of that they had spent as mentor–mentee, and he said every moment since his death and halfway resuscitation, which was four. She asked how they met, and Youma replied vaguely: in 1910, on a wandering route, and not with him but his girly half, and she asked if he would consider them close and if so had they always been, and he said yes with so little hesitation she could not doubt it. Then she asked him the exact methods of his mentorship, and Youma listed all the martial arts he had taught, the histories, the doctrines, the motley beliefs, the passions of he and a brother he had and their travels, as Hessian observers in the time of Washington, and this revealed to Tsubone that he was inhuman even before he became a ghost. She asked him if he was ready to die for Giyuu, and he said that he already had. Then she asked him if he loved Giyuu better than he loved his mentioned brother, and he said yes. She was not satisfied yet, and she asked why he permitted Giyuu to join the demon slayers if he cared for him so well, and Nisegami Youma was torn. He said to avenge, and Tsubone asked for whom, and he revealed his vow of eternal fidelity and affection to Tsutako Tomioka then, and that she was the target of their salvation. She asked if Giyuu felt so strongly about retaliation as he did, and Youma said he must have. Tsubone lost her patience with this answer and seized Youma by his imaginary collar and shook hard. She asked, finally: "Have you ever considered that you might be leading him by the nose down a path he only feels obligated to?" And to that, Nisegami Youma had no reply.

After Tsubone cooled, neither party had remaining capacity to stay in the presence of the other, and their congregation ended with nothing flared besides tensions, but some of the governance of Giyuu's tutorship had been established. They would not get in one another's way and the way of his education, but neither would they jointly facilitate it, and that also meant Giyuu would not know of their bond. But they decided this: if Giyuu were to eventually situate himself a side, there would be no bigotry, no rancour, only the quiet and slow degradation of the opposite ideology.

It was one year later and a revolution when Tsubone Endou entered her yet rubble–ridden house and saw the messenger note on the supper table. I've gone to Tokyo with Kanae to find who killed Miyamoto. Simultaneously, Nisegami Youma had returned from wandering and he entered the room from the parallel side and stood opposite Tsubone at the table and he read it too.

"Do you see this, Nisegami Youma?" Tsubone asked.

Youma was the first to declare it.

"It would seem, it would be apparent, it would be obvious," he said, "that Giyuu has deserted both me and you."

That was the unexpected answer to the paradox. A year after it was incurred, Giyuu Tomioka would unknowingly solve the crisis of who was going to direct the course of his life by doing it himself. The rest, it would seem, it would be apparent, it would be obvious, was the simple intervention of fate.


The most sensational event of all was not the beginning of the revolution, but the direct product of it: seventeen hours after the firefight at Seventeen Heiseigahama, the announcement came that six of the belligerents had been found squat in the nearby forest, reportedly in the midst of their withdrawal but too slow, and that their trial was underway but sufficient punishment was sure to be enacted. The news only reached Tsubone in an augmented state: six traitors were caught fleeing, and they had been shot in Heiseigahama square.

Tsubone arrived at the site with Youma and saw Yobusake Iesato Hirobumi Ittōsai. He came in the grandeur of a nicely-cut suit with sapphire medals, shiny shoes and purple leather gloves, and he took one off and offered his hand. Tsubone shook it and he looked disappointed.

"Those men were executed on my orders," he said. "I came down to send Morinaga a message."

Tsubone's reply was contrary:

"Have you seen your son yet?"

Yobusake had. The Hero's Auditorium, not so much decayed as it was destroyed, had been cleaned overnight by the Kakushi – predominantly loyalists – and though the dead were taken before they began to stink, the stench of mortality still stuck like rust to the nose. Yobusake began to walk and Tsubone followed. He was officially here on appointment to the southern branch of his bank, an activity he undertook every spring from his other residence in Nagoya, and in reality a dual arrangement so that he could also preside over the demon slayers which he funded. It was a system that worked until the day before, but neither was there much to obstruct it – not the rebels, because they would not risk attention and patrol the railways – should Yobusake have wished to resume going home. Tsubone questioned that.

"Yes, I'm still going, though Nagoya seems to be a rebel base," Yobusake replied. "But I thought I should first impart some Genrō do–how to you."

They arrived at Heiseigahama square. Tsubone crossed the granite flats, passed the shooting poles, and entered the little tent set up on the grounds. She found the corpses in a mound covered by blankets to stop the flies that were swarming. A soldier watched it from the corner. Above all, there was the scent of gunpowder.

"Why'd you shoot them?" Tsubone asked.

"As I said. To send Morinaga a message. What's due to happen after the way he crossed us like he did."

"It's war. He already expects a harsh response."

"And you were never going to give it to him."

They went outside again and faced away from the tent, where the air was newer. Tsubone massaged her temple and took out a cigarette and lit it. Yobusake did the same with his corncob pipe.

"It's a good thing we're so far from the city centre," he said. "Our government has been very wary of dissent since the bastard samurai Takamori's revolution. Surely, with our swords and chivalry, they will see us in the same light."

"That's always been an issue."

"But now there's gunplay involved," Yobusake said. "Not good for a low–profile. Either civilians get caught up or they hear it. All the more trouble for us when that is the most efficient way to kill a man."

He nodded to the tent.

"And Morinaga knows that too."

Tsubone wasted no time. "What's the course now?"

"This revolution will burn hot but it won't burn long. Like some drunken putsch. If Morinaga is killed, even more so."

"Big talk."

"And I believe we've already found him."

"Nagoya?"

"That's right."

Tsubone flicked away the cigarette. "…Then that's where I'll go."

"You can do whatever you want, our Endou. But remember also your obligations."

Because Nen Kusakabe was dead, Ubuyashiki Kagaya was infantile, and Yobusake Ittōsai was not obliged; and that left the only senior of Tsubone Endou.

"I'm unknown, Endou. The boys do not see me. The guys here around me, they're bodyguards," Yobusake said. "Point being, you're the only one to lead."

Tsubone shrugged. Later, when she had returned home, the totality of the emotion of the last week inexplicably came crashing on her shoulders. She kicked a chair over and then went to the table but forced herself calm. Because she had sworn out everything but the children who ran, Youma was quiet. Then Tsubone slid down the wall and sat between the rubble for a while.

"I should call a meeting," she declared.

One was called. Gyoumei Himejima, Tomita Jurou, and Tsubone Endou hid from the rain under the thatch hut, and the humidity was light but ceaseless. Tsubone held her head. She thought she felt a fever battling on the back of her eyes.

"Where's Ubuyashiki now?" she asked.

Jurou, who had been sent to evacuate them, said they had been taken to the Rengoku estate. Tsubone initially saw Shinjuro's declaration of neutrality and was furious, but now it confused her, and the only rationale she could come to was that Rengoku was loyal to Ubuyashiki but not willing to die for him.

Himejima was the youngest and the most honourable. He had a large bandage on his bicep, where the bullet had hit, but was otherwise shaken by insomnia, and his breath smelled of medicinal painkillers. He had heard of the execution at Heiseigahama, and he questioned if Tsubone ordered it. She gave a reply that dodged any grounded answer. After that, they began the observation of the revolutionary situation.

If the decision to base the rebellion in Nagoya, Shizuoka, and Tokyo was a purposeful decision, then it was inordinately educated. It was a chain of cities on the mainland's south oceanside, in itself not exceedingly strategic, and in fact vulnerable to a tidal attack from the north mountains as histories of old banditry have proved. However it was clever for that it began on the shores of Lake Biwa: the greatest inland spot of water on the main island, that bulged like a pimple in its narrowest conjunction, and left only two slender isthmuses on either side to circumvent it. The dimensions of these pathways made it simultaneously problematic to siege and practical to defend, but the greatest danger was that if it were to be held it would split any unified force on the island belly–wise and in two, and keep one from performing any cooperative action with the other – and if one side were to contain all the leaders, while the other remained abandoned to fight a centralised force, that would be a treacherous position truly.

Tsubone saw Morinaga's ploy immediately. She rushed headlong down the valley and into the information office where only Gotoh and another worked. They were counting letters and making a list and a map. More and more as they tallied, they appeared unnerved.

"How many are there?" Tsubone asked.

"One–hundred and twenty–seven… plus… one–hundred and twenty–three more…" Gotoh looked up, with sweat under his eyes. "Two–hundred and fifty total. 250. Rebels."

"And how many of us?"

"Roundabout a hundred of the remaining said they're neutral. That takes away from our numbers. So… it's…" Gotoh made another calculation. He took off his cap. "We have about four–hundred. And… thirty–one."

"But divided," Jurou said.

Tsubone took a pen and drew a line through the rebel cities on the map. She asked how many allies were above that line, and Gotoh said one–hundred and twenty, the leaderless ones. That left three–hundred and eleven down south who were in Tsubone's presence, and a fair number, but it was that they were all younger boys, no more powerful and steadfast than mice, against the veterans Morinaga had taken with him, and Morinaga himself.

The Japanese Demon Slayers had been gutted inside–to–out without them knowing until only they had looked in the mirror. Nevertheless, it was announced that the rendezvous with the northern forces would be a secondary priority. Tsubone enacted the first and broadcasted a message to the forces in the southern edge of the nation, ordering them to congregate at their side of the shore of Lake Biwa over the next few days. Lest there was an informant, she disguised it under the pretence of a ceremonious scattering of Ubuyashiki's ashes. Tsubone had seen the condition of their war and she approached the answer, after much deliberation, that the only way to beat Morinaga was to break his back before he could stand, and that he was standing fast.

Tsubone may have thought this, because when she departed Yobusake, she had heard him say: "This will be a quick war." She turned around and asked after it. Even if he was conceited, Yobusake was not foolish, and this dual nature was reflected in his reply.

"One has to wonder how dedicated Morinaga is to his cause," he said.

Tsubone again requested elaboration.

"Clearly, he markets himself as an independent man, or what's that other label? – the freest in the world – and though I challenge you to think of a time he has ever badmouthed demon–kind, don't think of him as loyal to his human brethren neither."

Yobusake flicked his finger.

"After all," he concluded, "how else would you kill seventeen men for the image of your government, and then leave that life for a cause you found on the street?"

It was a dilemma of Tetsuo Morinaga's existence that Tsubone never considered, for they had met twenty–eight years ago, on the roadside, and from that moment he had not deserted her once, and in truth it had occurred the other way around.

She was twenty–nine then, yet a Hashira and an established woman, and though she had left her life for an urgent spell of love, she felt unmistakably content and willing under a pretence of a soft existence, all until the day before, when she received the news by post that her husband of nine years and seven months had been killed by an avalanche, and that she would have to endure the rest of her nights with no weight on the other side of her bed to guarantee her fortune.

She wore a skinny mourning set, an heirloom from a culture she did not know, and stood in the waiting–room to greet the guests who came for the wake, one-by-one, but in dignified nods and grunts, without giving particular expression to anybody. When the procession began she stood in the edge of the house, at an angle where no light reached her, as was her intention, until the time came for her to brand formally the odour of worldly departure in the room. She had to speak over a rainstorm outside:

This wake has been called
To commemorate the life of this man
…And my husband
May he be blessed when crossing the Sanzu.

By nine o'clock a borderline heat had begun to round the house, strange of February, but after the final incense had fizzled someone proposed for the ceremony to be finished early so that the widow could rest. Tsubone saw most of them off in the waiting–room and the rest at the exterior gate so that she could lock it, as she had always done on her husband's behalf, as she would continue to do until the last day, but she saw Tetsuo Morinaga, clouded in a dark kimono and standing alone with a thin umbrella, under a street lamplight that showed his crow's feet. Tsubone understood that he was an occupied man, and she was pleased for the visit, but before she could thank him, he placed his hand over his ribs, quavering and dignified, and the lull that had governed his life nearly burst.

"Tsubone."

He gulped.

"I've come…"

He made a mistake, and began again at the wrong place.

"To tell you…"

Then he lost what he was going to say, until the silence allowed him to recuperate. He gave Tsubone a nod of reassurance and said finally:

"…My eternal condolences, for your husband."

Sixteen years later, Tsubone Endou would sink into the noxious broth of memory in her home armchair, and recall far more than the scene of the wake. To that, it was ineluctable, and actually intended, that when she let her eyes run the bedroom every furnish and vertex would remind her of sentimentality gone, which was why she allowed the ivy that infiltrated the space to continue growing, and kept her marital tea set that was crumbling and accumulating patina.

Nisegami Youma was the only ornament that interfered. Tsubone ordered him to go but he did not.

"It has been two years that you could see me," he said, "and I believe I am getting to grasp your mind like Giyuu's."

"Then tell me what I'm thinking."

"One, about your past," Youma replied. "Two, Morinaga in Nagoya."

She was considering its geography. Nagoya was the city that began the belt: the first beyond the Biwa Lake, and that made it a superior camp from which to command an expected defence of the midland. She realised that was what Yobusake had been thinking when he said Morinaga was in Nagoya. Indeed, now that she had seen the right angles of his logic, it seemed correct.

Without warning, Tsubone went into her shoes and ascended the length of the nation. She emerged from Hiroshima and began to cross the fig valleys, and the soybean rows of Akitakata after that, until she arrived at the inland path and she couldn't feel the sea breeze anymore. The next journey took her to Nimi, a steel town with nothing else, and then to Okayama, by the coast again. She reached Himeji but paid nothing to its great castle, and neither to Osaka in the moonlight glory, and Kyoto too. When she saw the banks of Lake Biwa the sun was beginning to rise, and when she had navigated it, she felt compelled to halt, and she obeyed. Tsubone was still for long enough that day encroached to illuminate a turret clock nearby, and only then did she realise that she had ran without stopping and with no consideration of anything for nine hours and thirty–two minutes, through either side of the night of the day before and the day now, through half of Japan, until it was another morning of wartime, until she had stopped, and until she realised not for fatigue.

"I know this city," Youma said. He had followed Tsubone, and panted the manure air like gel. He pointed to the settlement in the valley: "Nagoya."

"Tokyo," Tsubone replied. "I was on my way to Tokyo."

Tokyo, to recover her students, like she had vowed to do during her invincible sprint here, as she had condemned them all the way, saying that they were dopers and yellow–bellies and brown–nosers to their ignorance, townies and fools in their whole, who wouldn't do ten push–ups if she wasn't looking, yet now she felt nothing, and furthermore, nothing to inspire her to complete her fanatical race. She looked out onto the industrial city of Nagoya with holy abeyance. The greyness of the mechanically kept hedgerows in spring and the telephone poles like phantoms. The only thing here was Tetsuo Morinaga.

"Tokyo," Tsubone repeated. "I was on my way to Tokyo, to save them…"

"You were never sure," Youma said. "And here you are, done, thinking you are halfway."

"What's that mean?"

Youma placed his hand on his heart and told the truth. "Let the children be free, Tsubone."

Tsubone quelched her head and thought of Morinaga. Dawn was breaking. The land was starting to float. Somewhere in the city he would be watching the same sun, because many years earlier he had avowed, and never un–avowed, to always wake before the roosters, and guarantee one victory for each morning of his life. Tsubone resisted sleeplessness and thought longer, and she realised Tetsuo Morinaga would win the day and continue to win if nothing was done, and that was why she was here as a solitary dog with no army and no sleep, no conscience and no student, because neither was needed in the face of overwhelming necessity, and neither was going to be spared in the quest against it. The only way now was onwards, towards Tetsuo Morinaga.


Random trivia: I imagine Tetsuo Morinaga to look like an older Yukio Mishima, the author. Particularly those pictures where his hair is closer cut. For an anime version: a cross between Heinrich Lunge and Old Man Saburo.