The sirens were initiated. Echoes of gongs and bells bellowed down the elongated corridor. A wave of hot air thrusted against my scarred face. I grasped my wound. Blood rippled through my damaged plate armour. I had been lucky. The samurai’s Nagamaki sword had pierced me above my left rib cage. 10cm higher, and it would have struck the heart. The temperature climbed and a barrel of explosions caused the three story Hashizume-mon Tzuzuki Yagura watch tower to collapse, engulfing the fair night sky into a propeller of flames. I had to reach the Ishikawa Gate to have any chance of escape. Footsteps approached behind. I pressed against the door, sliding into the depths of darkness. The Maeda Clan samurai advanced and I slithered my sword effortlessly through his neck. I picked up his Nagamaki sword and advanced to the gate.
It had not gone to plan. Not at all. The emperor’s daughter had fallen for me, and I her. Her father had refused to repudiate his own daughter’s wishes for our marriage. He had flagrantly locked her up in the fetid dungeons. I had failed to attempt to rescue her. With the help of an accomplice, my dear friend, Seiya. But Seiya had been killed. We had all promised to meet at the Kenroku-en garden’s water fountain, if the plan were to fail. But with the castle engulfed in flames, I had no idea if she was alive. With my myopic actions, I had cost both of them their lives. I was just a farmer’s boy. Assiduous and acerbic, but by no means of royalty and nobility. She had been due to marry the son of a nobleman, Takehiko Yoshida. But we had fallen in love the day she went horse riding through my local village, Suganuma. And through the help of her servile teacher, we had stayed in touch ever since. I had to get to the gardens. To see if she was alive.
I ripped the fabric from my trousers and tightened it to apply pressure to my wound. I crouched past the collapsed watch tower, ducking as arrows shot across the sky. The entrance gate stood tall with its distinctive style of stonework. I launched my claw hooks to the top. They scraped harshly down the side and returned back to me at the foot of the wall. I tried one more time, this time securing a claw in the top of the wall. I climbed over, praying an arrow did not strike me in the back.
Miraculously, I made it over the wall and hobbled to the castle’s private adjacent Kenroku-en gardens. And as the shadows danced and played with my fevered mind, I saw her. At the fountain, her rose tinted Kosode draped around her, with the sash ’s emblem glistening in the burning sky.
In her hands, and smeared around her soft lips, the helmet flower. Poisonous and fatal. Her body was still warm. I held it as an arrow fired into my back. And then all I saw was red. What it represented, I don’t know. Was it love, was it pain, or was it death? Or was it all the same. Everything faded away. Perhaps I’d find the answer in another life.
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