Taigen Sessai.
That name carried a weight along the Tokaido east of Kanto that, in some measure, outstripped Imagawa Yoshimoto's own.
Dharma name, Sofu. Strategist of the Imagawa clan, teacher to Imagawa Yoshimoto, and in all practical terms the chief administrator of Suruga Province.
The world called her the Black-Robed Chancellor.
"Black-robed" did not mean she went about dressed in black. It was simply the byword for a monk.
"Chancellor," naturally, stood for the power she wielded.
A person who had left the world, holding a province's civil governance, its military strategy and its internal affairs in one pair of hands — that was not unheard of in the Warring States age. But no one else had taken it as far as Taigen Sessai. Hers was the only case.
It would not be wrong to say she was very nearly Imagawa Yoshimoto's brain.
That the Imagawa clan had risen from the single province of Suruga to become overlords of the Tokaido was, above all else, her doing.
In the original line of history, Taigen Sessai died before Okehazama — before the decisive clash with the Oda of Owari.
That defeat, the famous few-against-many rout that dropped the Imagawa clan from heaven straight into hell, happened in large part because the Black-Robed Chancellor was no longer there.
With the brain gone, the body could hardly be expected to reason or choose.
And at this moment, that same Black-Robed Chancellor sat cross-legged three paces in front of Kobe Hikaru.
Okehazama had not yet come.
And she, plainly, had not yet died.
Kobe Hikaru knew this person, knew this name — though the last time he came here, he had never laid eyes on her.
As for the matter of gender, he had long since grown used to it. Numb to it, more like.
Anime worlds run on women. Don't like it, don't play.
He grumbled it privately, and let nothing at all reach his face.
Still, from the look of things, she seemed to have known well in advance that he had come to Suruga Province — and had come here deliberately to wait for him to return the blade.
"How long have you been waiting?" Kobe Hikaru asked.
"Two days." Taigen Sessai's answer was flat, and the prayer beads turned one notch between her fingers. "This humble monk reckoned that you would borrow the blade tonight, and that you would come to return it as well."
"Is that some divine power of the Buddhist path? Or dharma power?"
Kobe Hikaru was genuinely curious. In a sense, she was the first monk — the first practitioner of any real attainment — that he had met since arriving in this world.
Not an exorcist. Not a shrine maiden. And certainly not one of the native onmyoji, whose art had been stitched together from fragments of the continent's yin-yang philosophy and then refined again and again, centuries ago, by the great onmyoji Abe no Seimei.
She belonged instead to something with far deeper foundations: a religion of the wider world, the Buddhist path.
In this age, the strength monks drew upon differed from that of exorcists, of shrine maidens, of onmyoji.
What they used was dharma power.
What is thought is dharma. What is done is dharma. What is seen is dharma. What is realized is likewise dharma.
Everything that is wished for is dharma.
Dharma power is also called vow-power.
It is what a lifetime of good intentions and good deeds condenses into.
But although the Eastern Isles had no shortage of monks, those who actually possessed dharma power were vanishingly few. Kobe Hikaru had been active across Kanto for nearly a year, and to this day he had glimpsed only one or two, and only from a distance.
Most of them had been weak, besides.
He was certain, though, that this celebrated Black-Robed Chancellor before him would have dharma power — and that it would be anything but weak.
Taigen Sessai only shook her head.
"It is not divine power. Nor is it dharma power."
She raised her blue eyes, calm and mild.
"It is merely inference. Once word spread that the Tono yokai had come south into Suruga, you were certain to deal with it. Those yokai are no great trouble to you, but they are trouble all the same, and judging by the manner of acting reported of you in a hundred rumours, you were certain to choose the least laborious method — to settle it with the Raikiri enshrined here.
"Afterwards the Raikiri would have spent its power of faith, and you would just as certainly bring it back. From the passing of the news, to the time it takes you to travel from Kaede Village to Suruga, plus the battle, plus the returning of the blade — two days. No more, no less."
It was, in truth, no divine power.
Only plain calculation.
Then again, wasn't calculation like that a kind of divine power in itself?
Behind the oni mask, the corner of Kobe Hikaru's eye gave a small twitch. Where had they dug up a walking computer?
"All right then, Taigen Sessai." He used her name straight out. "What is it you're waiting on me for? It can't just be to see the blade back on its rack."
"Naturally not."
Taigen Sessai's thumb finally pushed the next bead along.
Click.
The small sound echoed through the little shrine.
"Demon God, this humble monk has waited here for three matters only, all of which she wishes to lay before you."
"Speak."
"The first — your road."
Her gaze settled on Kobe Hikaru. More precisely, on the faint, barely-there film of yokai aura clinging to his body.
"You gather both dread and faith into one being, and yet in the end you still walk the road whose foundation is the nature of a yokai.
"Among all the demonic fiends this humble monk has seen, your road is a rather particular one. On the great continent across the sea they say that the holy ones of high antiquity could pass through eighty transformations in a single day.
"That way of change seems to match precisely the path you walk."
Kobe Hikaru did not deny it.
His own scale for ranking yokai did indeed take exactly that as its standard.
Nüwa and her eighty transformations.
The Great Sage Equal to Heaven and his seventy-two.
"This humble monk is human, and knows nothing of the yokai path. But the dharma and the yokai path, at a certain point, run through the same ground."
Taigen Sessai spoke slowly, her voice somewhere between chanting sutras and giving a lesson. "And this humble monk can see that your road still runs forward — yet at the far end of it, at that place the world calls a great yokai, you do not know how to take the step."
The nun's eyes were placid and remarkably bright.
Kobe Hikaru began to think this one really did have some power of insight.
At the very least, what she said — imprecise as it was, as it could not help but be — was not wrong.
"In a warring age, with demonic fiends running loose and men's hearts unsettled, only that which stands upon its own ground and stands alone beneath heaven may be called great.
"In the dharma we call this a 'realm.' In one flower, a world; in one leaf, a bodhi. Every awakened person sees a different world — and that is not a matter of the eyes. It is a matter of the heart."
"It is the understanding that touches the very source of your own being, and also a principle of heaven and earth that you accept from the bottom of your heart."
"If one day your existence has been brewed to its limit, then what remains is to make yourself the vessel of that principle you hold to be true."
"And before that day, you must know what your 'principle' is."
The shrine was quiet for a heartbeat.
The candle flame jumped.
And then —
Kobe Hikaru laughed.
Not a mocking laugh. The sort that surfaces, faintly self-deprecating, when someone asks you a question you have already turned over in your head a hundred times.
"This 'principle' you're talking about —" He spoke unhurriedly, neither rushing nor dragging. "You mean an idea carried all the way through one's own existence. Right?"
Taigen Sessai's gaze shifted a little, as if caught off guard.
Kobe Hikaru did not wait for her answer. He went on.
"Great yokai are called great yokai not because their yokai aura is thicker than anyone else's, and not because they live longer than anyone else — though it's true their aura is dense enough to change a whole region, and true they endure far longer than ordinary things.
"But that's only the surface. Their existence is itself a phenomenon, and the essence of that phenomenon is an idea — the same thing you're calling a principle."
"Take the Tsuchigumo. It can turn the world to stone because it has always treated the world as an arena for battle, and an arena is packed earth, and packed earth is stone."
"Or Kidomaru — not a great yokai, but a vengeful Demon come back out of hell. He treats himself as a traveller passing through the world, so under the weight of that idea, as long as the surroundings suit him, he can ignore every resistance and keep accelerating without end."
"So Phenomenalization, stripped of the fancy words, just means taking the idea you affirm and pushing it outward until it shapes the world."
"Making heaven and earth acknowledge that you are that principle, until at last it becomes a way — a principle of the Way."
"And then you're no longer merely a yokai. You are the wellspring of that principle."
"The ceiling on your yokai aura is no longer your flesh, but the reach of your principle's influence. One region, one province, or the whole realm under heaven."
Kobe Hikaru talked on easily, and all of it was genuinely what he had been chewing over these past months.
Same as with the road of continuous transmutation ahead of him: he had a direction and no concrete method — but his grasp of the thing itself ran far from shallow.
He had always been good at summarizing, at pulling scattered things together.
That habit had never changed.
As for Taigen Sessai — she did not answer at once.
She looked at the oni warrior leaning beside the blade rack, and slowly, in those eyes far too weathered for so young a face, something like astonishment surfaced.
She had assumed she would need to spend considerable breath translating the Buddhist concepts of realm and awakening into the language of the yokai path, leading this absurdly young oni warrior toward the thought piece by piece.
She had even prepared an entire set of arguments.
In one flower, a world; in one leaf, a bodhi.
All dharmas return to one.
Break attachment and see your nature.
These were what she had drawn out of long meditation — her understanding of yokai, of change, and of certain things Yoshimoto had told her. She was human, not yokai, but the dharma's grasp of awakening and the yokai's pursuit of Phenomenalization were, at their root, the same thing.
She had meant to use them to guide him.
And instead —
He had said it himself.
Said it more thoroughly than anything she had prepared.
More bluntly, too.
Blunt to the point of crudeness.
But Taigen Sessai knew that this was exactly the correct summary.
A false teaching takes ten thousand scrolls; a true one takes a single sentence.
"Your gifts truly are astonishing… Yoshimoto did not misjudge you."
She could not help the sigh in it.
So there it was.
It was Imagawa Yoshimoto who had sent her here to wait for him.
Kobe Hikaru was not remotely surprised.
"Thinking of it is one thing. Doing it is another."
There was not a trace of self-satisfaction in his tone. "I know what a great yokai needs. But what my own 'principle' is — that I haven't worked out yet."
And of course, he understood the rest of it too.
Before that step, he would have to forge this yokai body to flawless quality no matter what — reach the twelve-mutation, death and return to life.
Only when change had been carried to its extreme would he be qualified to manifest an idea, to pursue a phenomenon.
And so.
Taigen Sessai fell completely silent.
The prayer beads stopped moving between her fingers.
She looked at the oni warrior in front of her — a being who had, in fact, been in this world for no more than a handful of months —
and what she saw was less his insight than the way he advanced, one entrenched step at a time.
His growth was already fast, faster than any other yokai's,
and yet he seemed steadier than any of them as well.
"…This humble monk had thought that, in this one matter at least, she might be of some help to you."
Taigen Sessai spoke at last, and there was a note of rare admiration in her voice. "I did not expect that you had already seen it this clearly on your own."
She shook her head.
"It seems this humble monk has been waving an axe at a master carpenter's gate, and has wasted the charge Yoshimoto laid upon her."
Kobe Hikaru glanced at her.
"Not entirely," he said. "Those words of yours just now — they were good.
"A lot better than the muddled terms I'd cobbled together myself."
The corner of Taigen Sessai's mouth pulled up slightly, with obvious effort.
"Then let that be this humble monk's sole contribution."
She turned the beads another notch.
Click.
Lighter than the last one, and more composed.
"Then this humble monk will go straight to the second matter. The first was Yoshimoto's charge — that I offer you some small guidance. That, I have failed at. The second still stands.
"And this one, too, concerns Yoshimoto herself."
Taigen Sessai did not linger on the first subject; she moved directly on.
Her tone had changed.
From lecturing to stating. And from stating to something closer to handing over.
"It is the shape of the realm to come," she said.
"Uesugi Kenshin has been suppressed by you, but Takeda Shingen remains. The shogun in Kyoto and the Onmyoryo are brewing a new imperial decree. Kyoto, the daimyo, and Kanto will become a battlefield of three — no, of four contending forces."
"And beyond all of that, the balance between humans and yokai is breaking."
"This may well be the last counterattack out of an age of demonic fiends."
"Demon God — and Yoshimoto as well — both of you must take care."
Most of this Kobe Hikaru already knew.
But the way she said it was different.
Like… a will being read.
"As for the third matter."
Taigen Sessai's voice dropped lower still.
The prayer beads went completely still.
She spoke one measured word after another, and in the whole shrine only her voice remained, echoing. "This humble monk has not long to live."
The silence in the shrine was so complete that only the sputtering of the candle broke it.
Kobe Hikaru looked at her.
At that face — young, unmistakably young, and yet pressed so thin by the weariness behind the eyes that it seemed it might shatter at any moment.
He was not surprised in the least. In history, after all, Taigen Sessai's days had indeed been nearly done.
"How long?"
"Half a year. Perhaps less."
Taigen Sessai lowered her head and looked at her hands folded in her lap. "This humble monk knows her own allotted span. Yoshimoto is still young — she is a province's lord already, but to me she will always be the little girl who stole offerings from the altar at Rinzai-ji and had to copy out sutras as punishment. And the girl who, after I came back, would not stop chattering about you."
There was a smile in her voice, very faint.
It was plain enough that her feeling for Imagawa Yoshimoto ran deep.
"Once this humble monk is dead, the Imagawa clan will lose its bearings. Yoshimoto is clever, she has nerve, she has a deft hand — but she is too young. Her vision has limits, and there will be no one at her side who can see the whole board for her."
"For instance… Okehazama."
Taigen Sessai let the name out.
Kobe Hikaru's pupils contracted at last.
Okehazama.
A name he had known before he ever crossed over.
The turning point of the Eastern Isles' Warring States age, as he knew it.
Imagawa Yoshimoto marching a great army toward Kyoto, meaning to take the shogun in hand and dominate the realm — only to be ambushed at Okehazama by Oda Nobunaga of the Oda clan of Owari Province. The Imagawa army annihilated, Yoshimoto dead on the field. One of the most famous few-against-many victories in all of history.
But that was still to come.
By any ordinary reckoning, the Taigen Sessai sitting here now could not possibly know what that place would come to mean to later ages.
And yet she had said it.
"In the false visions this humble monk saw while sitting in meditation, I beheld that place."
Her voice was very calm.
"On the road toward Kyoto there is a narrow valley called Okehazama. The ground there is treacherous, perfect for troops lying in wait. If Yoshimoto marches on the capital, that is the most dangerous place of all."
"This humble monk has already written it into the final strategies she leaves for Yoshimoto — but written words are dead things. Hearts change. Situations change."
"And so this humble monk would ask one thing of you."
She lifted her head.
Those eyes, like dry wells, looked straight at Kobe Hikaru.
And then, like a map unrolled to its end and the dagger showing at last, she spoke.
"When that day comes — if it comes — save her life."
"I do not ask you to fight her wars. I do not ask you to govern in her place. Only that at the most dangerous moment, you pull her back."
"This humble monk knows you can do it."
"Because you are a person outside the mandate of heaven."
The words settled.
And Kobe Hikaru finally reacted, visibly.
Outside the mandate of heaven.
That phrase again…
Taigen Sessai had used exactly the same expression as the previous generation's Uesugi Kenshin.
She knew nothing of crossing over, nothing of systems, nothing of the butterfly effect — and yet by her own road she had arrived at the same conclusion.
Kobe Hikaru was indeed a variable that ought never to have existed on this timeline.
The inertia of history pushed everyone toward the ending it had already set.
But a variable can change the track.
Just as Kobe Hikaru had let Uesugi Kenshin pass her name on to a successor. Whatever the later records might say, in the original course of things there had certainly only ever been one Uesugi Kenshin.
Taigen Sessai had seen that much.
And so, here they were.
The silence stretched a long while.
The candle in the shrine burned down to nothing; the last stub of wick struggled twice in the bronze dish and went out.
In the dark, only the light of Kobe Hikaru's crimson demon-eyes remained.
"I'll do what I can," he said.
Four words.
Not a promise. But not a refusal either.
Only Kobe Hikaru's usual answer — as much as he could manage.
It might look like she had given him little enough, but Taigen Sessai had in fact helped him tidy his thinking on great yokai a fraction. That counted as a small debt of kindness.
Not a large one, though.
Not worth spending much strength on.
Which was not to say he wouldn't act at all.
What came later could be decided later.
Taigen Sessai, hearing him, only closed her eyes.
The prayer beads turned one last notch between her fingers.
"That," she said, "is enough."
Her purpose had been achieved.
No forcing, no grasping. Only letting things take their course.
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