Goryeo warrior Park Seong-jin.I came to strike pirates
When things calmed for a moment, Park Seong-jin asked Sagara what he truly meant.
"Why are you going this far, so proactively.
Most people freeze first, until they've tasted the hard lesson."
Sagara swallowed his words for a beat.
He quietly wrapped his hand around his son's hand beside him.
The child's hand was small and warm.
"I was weighing whether the rumors were true."
He opened his mouth slowly.
"A master of the Flower Realm.
An absolute who pacified Jiangnan.
Stories of flying through the sky, of cutting down dozens with a single sword—
we kept asking ourselves how much of it we were supposed to believe."
Park Seong-jin tilted his teacup without speaking.
"I also asked who benefits if such stories are spread."
Sagara continued, counting them off with his fingers.
"A rival.
A lord of a neighboring domain.
The King of Goryeo.
Or the shogunate in Kyoto."
He took a breath, then shook his head.
"No clear beneficiary appeared.
So the conclusion leaned the other way—
that it was not a lie."
"So you believed it was fact?"
"Not exactly fact.
We simply lacked grounds strong enough to discard the suspicion."
Sagara gave a bitter smile.
"And I thought about when you would come.
If you'd already been to Hitoyoshi, then we would be next."
His grip on his son's hand tightened slightly.
"If you were moving in person over the pirate matter, I could guess what you wanted.
So I prepared in advance."
Park Seong-jin muttered low.
"Hm… that makes sense."
"I am human too."
Sagara's voice sank a little.
"I was afraid my heart would waver.
So I hurried.
Before my thinking hardened.
Before excuses grew.
Before a justification settled inside me—
I ended it first."
Park Seong-jin did not give him an answer.
He does not trust people.
He does not trust what people say.
A person's sincerity can change direction at any time.
A truth in this moment shows up a few hours later wearing a different face.
And the reasons it changes are usually small.
That is human.
Very rarely, there is another kind of human.
Someone whose words stay fixed even when circumstances change,
whose heart does not fold even in front of profit.
Such people are rare.
That is why they are respected, and why they are revered.
In the dark where everyone only seeks their own way to live,
they are like a thin beam of light that brightens the path without demanding payment—
their existence alone consoles those who remain.
---*
"I have a request," Sagara said carefully.
Park Seong-jin set down his cup and looked up.
"Go on."
"In the end, I think it is a matter of people."
Sagara drew a quiet breath and rested a hand on his son's shoulder.
"While this child stays in Karatsu, I want him to receive instruction.
If he learns from the sages of Goryeo, he will not go astray."
A faint smile passed Park Seong-jin's lips.
It was neither mockery nor satisfaction.
It was simply the face of someone about to state a fact.
"I do not take disciples."
"Ah…"
A short, suppressed sound slipped from Sagara.
Because his hope had been large, his disappointment was clear.
Still, he bowed his head and did not press further.
Park Seong-jin added,
"To watch and learn is the learner's burden."
Sagara lifted his head.
A look of chewing on the words passed through his eyes, and then his face brightened.
"Ah… that is what you meant."
He bowed deeply.
Not once, but again—one more time.
"Thank you.
Thank you."
The boy bowed with him.
He likely did not understand every meaning yet.
But the posture alone was enough.
Park Seong-jin said nothing more.
He knew well that "teaching" is not handing someone words,
but letting them stand in the same place and look up at the same sky.
What the child sees while he stays, what he feels—no one can decide for him.
Park Seong-jin sent Sagara's son and the letter with the next person who came the following day.
---*
Sagara asked him to stay a few more days, but Park Seong-jin left before the Hour of the Ox.
It was a land woven from dozens upon dozens of tiny countries, and there were many places to go.
Even in those small countries, it never stopped at a single castle.
No wonder later ages established "one province, one castle."
"One province (one domain) must have only one castle"—
the Edo shogunate's 1615 decree, the Ikoku Ichijōrei (一国一城令), enacted to restrain the power of the daimyo.
Each domain (藩) was ordered to keep only one main castle (本城) necessary for governance, and to destroy all auxiliary castles (支城).
"Where are you going?"
Someone asked, but he left his plans empty.
He had even cleared that away in advance, lest he be drawn into unseen intentions.
If he did it all before spring, could he pacify even Kyushu.
He desperately wanted to strike Kyoto in one sweep.
But that would not "finish" properly.
Peace comes only when hearts submit, like Sagara's did.
He aimed south.
With no fixed target, he did not hurry the road.
He acquired a horse at a relay post and traveled down slowly.
When he showed Karatsu's token, the courier's eyes widened for a moment, but the questions lessened.
The horse was led out quietly.
The saddle was neat.
In this land, power comes attached before words do.
After several days heading south, he turned off the road.
Seishikijō—Kiyoshiki (清色城).
A name that had lingered in the corner of his map.
This place was not a particular target.
Information about them was thin.
Records of wrongdoing were faint.
The road to Kiyoshiki followed a river.
Along the left bank of the Kiyoiro River—water pale, the bottom clearly visible.
He dismounted and climbed a slope, and a shirasu plateau appeared, a little over a hundred meters above sea level.
A long plateau running west to east, with a northeastern spur jutting out.
Less like something carved by human hands, more like the earth itself had decided it would become a fortress.
And on it stood a castle.
Climbing the ridge path, what came into view first was a hori-kiri—
a cut face of earth, as if sliced clean through.
Deep and sharp.
A dry moat, yet more threatening than water.
The horse hesitated.
A person would have as well.
A structure made to let the few stop the many.
The ridge top stretched long from southwest to northeast, and kuruwa lay on it like bands.
Traces of palisades and earthen ramparts remained, and below them more dry moats continued.
In front of the place where building foundations remained, there was a wide passage said to have been called the Okariya Baba.
A road where horses once ran, where envoys and warriors passed.
At the center were Nakanoshirō and the Honmaru.
High earthen walls layered and stood in tiers, and the layout was not simple.
Not a structure you could crush in one push.
Climb, turn, be blocked again—
less "defense" than "delay."
The ridge ran northeast, then split.
Four tributary ridges fanned north, each forming an independent fortification.
Sixteen in all.
Each one a small castle.
The largest was about five thousand pyeong, and all were ringed by dry moats.
Breaching one was not the end.
Another, and another.
This castle had not been built to win a fight,
but to make a fight last.
Looking down, the Hiwaki River wrapped the east, south, and north as it flowed.
The river said nothing.
It was a moat by itself.
Bases of earthen walls and tower pedestals remained in places,
and in nearly half the area the foundations of complex gates could be identified.
Many gates meant many ways out.
A castle built with retreat in mind, more than assault.
Down at the mountain's foot, a village appeared.
A jōkamachi—where the Irikiin clan and their retainers lived.
The houses were low, and the walls were piled with gravel.
Not so much stone walls as heaps made into barriers.
Sturdy, not ornate.
Exactly this land's temperament.
Samurai residences stood here and there, and the roads still held the marks of an older age.
Park Seong-jin dismounted and looked back up the ridge once more.
Only now did he feel he could understand why the Irikiin, coming down from Kamakura to Satsuma, had chosen this land—
and why they could not avoid clashing with Shimazu,
and why they had to endure by means of outer fortifications.
All of it was inside this terrain.
He stopped at a lodging house again, and because guests were rare they welcomed him gladly.
When he asked about the castle, they said much of the Irikiin had been abandoned as they were pushed back by Shimazu.
Shimazu he knows.
A name that must be crushed.
Irikiin, however, was not on the list.
There was no work to do here.
He had only stopped briefly on the road south.
In a land with complicated internal affairs, they would never have dreamed of mobilizing to sail for Goryeo.
That was also why this land survived.
Park Seong-jin meant to use this place as a stepping stone—
a gauge for what it would take if he ever had to take Satsuma's many castles.
Not long after, three samurai appeared with only swords at their waists.
Their steps were light, their gaze low.
Not the posture of men who had come to fight.
"Where do you come from?"
Despite the grim air, the tone was polite.
The man in front looked mid-thirties, with deep eyes.
Experience was written on his face.
He stopped three or four paces away.
One more step, and drawing steel would have been effortless.
"Sashiki."
A short answer.
"For what business have you come?"
"Why?"
"We are warriors who patrol this area.
We heard an outsider arrived, so we came to confirm."
"What proof do you require?"
"Name, affiliation, purpose of travel, length of stay.
I will judge what I need to know as I hear you."
Park Seong-jin looked them over briefly.
"I am a warrior."
"Are you a samurai?"
It was a calm question.
The atmosphere would not let him brush it off.
"I have no business in this district.
I am only passing through.
If anything, anonymity would suit me better."
"I too have someone I serve.
Because conditions here are not good, I must report that you are safe, whether or not you have ties.
Please understand."
An outsider wearing a sword.
Yet the manner was excessively respectful.
The two younger men behind him were clearly his followers, their edges keen like honed blades.
"Goryeo warrior Park Seong-jin.
I came to strike pirates, and I am moving down the coast from north to south.
I passed through Karatsu and Hirado.
This place is not a target.
It was only on the way to Satsuma.
I have no intent to be hostile."
In this age, free travel is not permitted.
Only merchants and those who assist them can cross from domain to domain.
At every chokepoint they raise wooden fences and build gates from brush and timber to control passage.
Park Seong-jin was unfamiliar to their eyes.
From the moment he entered the village, there had already been watching gazes.
Only now, after hearing him, the warrior who questioned him drew in a large breath.
He had been tense.
"So you were the pirate butcher."
To them, waegu are called pirates.
Park Seong-jin tilted his head.
"That is what they call me?"
"Yes.
You are known as a Goryeo warrior who wanders with the purpose of rooting out pirates who trespass across the straits, bringing peace to the country and the people."
"That is news to me.
It's strange to be known in places I have never set foot in."
"You are famous.
Far more than you think."
"Hm.
Then is there more I must clarify?"
"We must confirm whether you have a grudge against us."
"I do not, with Irikiin.
You did not send forces.
And my information on you is thin."
"Fortunate.
We were about to muster the whole garrison."
The middle-aged warrior lifted slightly the whistle in his hand.
For a moment, Park Seong-jin found himself curious about that sound.
What kind of cry does a whistle in this land make.
"Now it seems it is my turn to ask."
"Please."
"Irikiin has not gone to Goryeo, correct.
I am confirming."
"That is correct.
We have never provided troops.
Not once."
"Your name?"
"Irikiin Fukushige."
"Irikiin—then you are kokujin-shū (国人衆)?"
A warrior class that promoted the development of each ritsuryō province (koku).
It is also used to mean indigenous powers who aimed at independent territorial rule in opposition to external rulers such as the shogunate, shugo, and estate lords.
If he bears the name Irikiin, he is a lord's house.
"That is so, but…"
"You don't stay shut inside the castle.
You patrol and question travelers yourself?"
"Circumstances are not good."
"Well, other people's circumstances… are none of my concern."
Park Seong-jin let the end of his sentence trail off and turned his gaze aside.
"It seems we have finished what needed saying, so I would prefer you turn back here."
It was a clear dismissal.
Fukushige's brow tightened slightly.
He had shown every courtesy, and this was the return.
Inside his own domain, such treatment was rare.
But if the other man is the one from the rumors, it changes.
"I have disturbed your rest.
May you have a comfortable time.
However."
"However what."
"I will stop by again shortly.
Please allow us to share a cup of tea."
He wanted to refuse.
Yet at the words "please allow," his head moved.
"Allowed."
"Thank you.
I will send an attendant."
The three samurai withdrew.
When their footsteps faded, Park Seong-jin finally let out his breath.