What kind of report is this?
The silence in the great hall did not last long.
The first to rise was a minister of martial origin, a man said to have made his name on the battlefield.
His face had flushed red, and the fist he clenched trembled faintly.
"What kind of report is this?"
He raised his voice as he swept his gaze across the hall.
"You lost the castle and still let them live and send them back?"
"Goryeo is playing with us."
The words split the hall.
"They dress up what they did not cut down as mercy, and they wrap what they returned as virtue."
"This is not war."
"It is humiliation."
Another hawk pressed a finger to the floor and continued.
"Why do you think they spared Hosokawa's direct bloodline?"
"It is a tactic to divide us."
"They spare one and discard another, so that we begin to doubt each other."
He did not pause to breathe.
"We must punish them at once."
"Gather troops and send them to Kyushu."
"Retake Kokura and drive the Goryeo army out of this land."
A few nodded.
Then another man asked quietly,
"Who goes?"
The hawk fell silent.
"Who provides the troops, who takes command, and if we lose—who bears the responsibility?"
The question was calm, but its edge was sharp.
The hawk ground his teeth.
Speaking was one thing.
Carrying the weight was another.
In the end, he could not answer the question of "who," and only righteousness remained.
"So that is why we strike now!" he shouted.
"If we hesitate, they will go deeper."
"They have already gone deep," an old politician said.
His voice was low, and the hall sank again.
"They did not merely break one castle."
"While we delay our decision, they are taking fiefs across Suzhou."
The hawk shook his head.
"We answer with the sword."
The old politician spoke slowly.
"Did you not ask a moment ago?"
"Who answers with the sword?"
"Is it Kokura, already occupied?"
"Or is it Kyoto?"
Several faces hardened.
The hawk shouted again.
"So you mean we do nothing?"
The old politician did not reply.
He left a single sentence behind.
"Anger cannot decide in our place."
The hall stirred into noise again.
"Humiliation."
"The shogunate's authority is shaken."
"Where is next?"
Voices overlapped, and the necessary conclusion failed to form.
In the end, there were only two paths.
Send an envoy and negotiate, or send an army and fight.
Trying to avoid both only delayed judgment further.
At that moment, someone spoke softly.
"Goryeo is waiting."
It was not a threat.
It was a statement of the situation.
The hawks raged, the moderates calculated, and the shogunate could not decide.
Hosokawa stepped forward slowly and knelt before the shogun.
The air in the hall sank once.
"Summon the daimyo of the realm and destroy Goryeo."
"Command the mobilization."
"If we leave it as it is, they will take control of Kyushu."
He chose that phrasing deliberately.
It carried the meaning of rule.
A word the shogun feared most.
In this country, authority over rule converged into a single center.
All other governance had operated as delegation and favor.
The moment that boundary was crossed, order took the shape of a challenge.
Hosokawa did not avoid the word.
He had already been struck.
He had already been robbed.
From his position, there was no room left to soften it.
This was not a plea leaning on personal emotion.
Not a petition for revenge in exchange for a lost castle.
It was a warning that all Kyushu was shaking—
and that the crack could run into the main island.
Hosokawa understood the structure.
So he placed the most dangerous word on his tongue.
The hall held its breath.
The shogun did not answer at once.
But his fingers moved, almost imperceptibly.
That alone was signal enough.
The shogunal house and the Hosokawa clan were not separate within politics.
By blood they divided into main line and branch.
Yet in questions of authority and system, they had long functioned as one axis.
Hosokawa's kneel was not personal submission.
It was the system delivering a warning in formal shape.
The shogun received the weight.
From that day, Kyoto's political sphere began moving again around a single word—mobilization.
Because the shogun's mind had tilted that way.
Sunflowers sense the wind's direction first.
After Hosokawa's appeal, the shogun's will was clearly in motion.
I was staring down at a map, wondering where to move next, when Akai came running in, out of breath.
"What is it?"
"My lord—Fukuoka Castle, Kokura Castle… at this rate, won't you get indigestion?"
That merchant mouth of his was at it again.
"Eat," he says.
The word should have grated, but now I let it pass.
If the meaning gets across, words are only shells.
A man grows gentler.
Because his study has gone deeper.
"You're here."
"I might, at this rate, eat too much and get indigestion."
"Huh? Really?"
"Do you not understand we came with very few troops?"
"Just sending people everywhere is already chaos."
"If they march an army down, this place collapses like a sandcastle in a moment."
"Well. Life itself is hollow, anyway…"
Akai swallowed hard.
The sneer I kept only in my head—he spoke out loud.
"Do you truly think so?"
He spoke like that, but he did not truly believe it.
"I do."
"At some point, people's words started to show."
"Before, I could hear without listening."
"Now it isn't that I hear. I see."
"You're a fortune-teller."
"Heh."
"So—why are you here? Not doing business?"
Akai put on an exaggeratedly troubled face.
"I live always with concern for you, my lord."
"Hmph. If you could not speak at all, you'd at least be less annoying."
I should have offered him a seat, poured tea.
But once I sink into one thing, I stop seeing the rest.
I bent over the map, and it felt like I might be pulled into it.
My eyes rolled across that yellowed paper.
But I was not looking at Hyuga or Miyazaki.
Not the two places in Kyushu we had not yet touched.
I was looking at Kyoto.
It was a merchant's map, deliberately drawn vague around Kyoto.
"What are you staring at like that?"
"Can't you tell? A map."
"You're looking at Kyoto."
"Yes."
"I was wondering why there's no movement."
"Part of me thinks if we strike Choshu, they might wake up."
Akai lifted his hand like a child.
"I brought that information."
"Do you think news comes if you sit still?"
He comes close without any edge.
That makes him easy.
In Japan, the person who has grown closest to me is Akai.
It is the result of what I risked to save his life.
If someone values my life that much, how could I not do my utmost?
In a world where most take what they can and spare what they must, Akai was wholly mine.
Not because I declared it so, but because he believed it so.
Park Seong-jin leaned back.
As always, he had a tent set up at the highest point inside the castle.
A field bed, a desk, a chair.
Plain.
That was all.
"Sit."
"Where should I sit for you to be satisfied, my lord?"
There was nowhere to sit.
Only one chair.
Park Seong-jin pointed at the bed.
"There."
"Isn't that where you sleep?"
"Hey. I'm not sleeping right now."
"…Understood. Thank you."
"All right. What else."
"What is it?"
"They are preparing an army."
"They?"
"Kyoto?"
"Yes."
"…Damn. We sent them back trying to settle it with words, and they still do this."
"People like that do not accept kindness as kindness."
"They have tasted power. They will not let go."
"If they bow here, they think others will look down on them."
"Is that so… Hah."
Akai continued.
"You released Hosokawa's kin."
"Yes. I tried to go the gentle way."
"And now you wonder whether it was right."
Akai's tone sharpened slightly.
"The shogunate's kanrei is the highest post that assists the shogun."
"In other words—your chancellor."
"So I've heard."
"And that Hosokawa kanrei… his momentum has fully risen."
"Please use a more refined expression."
"He pleaded with the shogun for a general mobilization and an extermination campaign."
"Ugh… If I'd known, maybe I should've killed them all."
Akai grinned.
"You could not do that, and you know it."
"I can kill."
"I've killed plenty."
"Of course, I regret it, but…"
"I know."
"Anyway—the mood that had delayed deployment has completely shifted on the shogun's side."
"A great army may come."
"They intend to issue a general call to all daimyo."
"Target: the subjugation of Kyushu."
"It's a matter of the last day or two."
"I heard and ran straight here."
I smacked my lips and shook my head.
"Hm."
"Unfortunate."
"I wanted to solve it with words, and it's grown bigger."
"I meant to catch pirates, and now it looks like I'll be fighting a grand war."
Akai glanced at my face.
But his worry was thin.
"Aren't you worried?"
"I am."
"Then why do you look so calm?"
"Because it's not my worry."
"It's theirs."
"Pardon?"
"Because a lot of people will die."
"An army—once it swells, it doesn't stop until it crosses a certain line."
"Even when family, friends, comrades, brothers-in-arms fall, it keeps going."
"Power is… frightening."
"Why are you suddenly wandering off the road?"
"They say the most entertaining thing in the world is power."
"So people who know nothing climb up and try to swing it."
"It's power that petty men swing."
The conversation slipped, and Akai lost his words.
He had come to say we must flee quickly, since the enemy was coming.
"… "
"If we just deal with them, it ends."
"But still—many will die."
Park Seong-jin sprang up and stepped outside the tent.
From this high platform where the tenshu stood, everything could be seen at a glance.
In the distance, lands still quiet lay stretched out.
Quiet—and therefore more dangerous.
Park Seong-jin knew this silence would not last.
Akai managed to speak.
"You must run, my lord."
"They have ordered everyone to gather under the banner of 'Kyushu Subjugation.'"
"You must avoid them."
Park Seong-jin looked at Akai.
He saw the sincerity.
"I know."
"And thank you."
"But you—do not get dragged into this war."
"Hide far away."
"Ah. I'm busy, though."
"If you go to the honmaru, you'll find the busiest man here."
"Lord Yun Dam?"
"Tell him as well."
"And behind that—where the rough-looking men are puffing up their necks—you'll find Song I-sul."
"Tell him too."
"Make sure."
"Why are you telling me to deliver this?"
Park Seong-jin smiled as if it were nothing.
"If I say it, they won't believe me."
"Heh."
"Haa…"
I worry for a good man,
and that good man is already standing inside another set of calculations.