Chương 17: A Message to Kamakura

"Like hell I will!" I tightened my grip on his gauntlet. The smell of my own burning flesh drifted up from my palm, but I didn't care.

"We're going home! We can jump back to the future and fix you! Gennai can repair this! You accomplished the mission!" [... Negative.] USHIWAKA stared directly at me with the exposed optical sensor behind his shattered visor. [My parameters... have shifted from 'Eradication of the Taira' to 'Preservation of the Future.' If I return to the future now... the legend of the hero 'Minamoto no Yoshitsune' will never reach completion in this era.] A cold realization struck me. He was right.

Yoshitsune couldn't just vanish here. After this, he had to be hunted by his brother, flee across the nation, and ultimately meet his tragic, defining end at Koromogawa in Ōshū. That very aesthetics of destruction —the tragic narrative of Houganbiiki —was the blueprint permanently etched into the cultural psyche of the Japanese people. If he abandoned this timeline and fled to the future, history would only generate another catastrophic glitch. [I must... proceed.] USHIWAKA looked down at his own dissolving forearm. [This chassis will completely cease operations in a matter of years.... Convenient. History's ledger... will balance out.] He was choosing, by his own volition, to play the role of the tragic hero until the very end. Dragging his failing, broken body through a desperate journey of exile, hunted by his own brother, entirely alone.

"... No. That's just too damn cruel." Tears spilled over, blurring my vision. He was a machine. A bundle of algorithms. But to me, he looked exactly like the boy I used to be, shivering and weeping in the corner of that classroom. Desperately pushing himself to the brink just to be recognized by someone, shattering into pieces in the process. And after all that, he was still doomed to die alone in the dark. [... Kataru.] USHIWAKA gently tried to pry his fingers away from my burning palm. [One... final request.]"What is it...? Just say it...!" [Tell my brother... Lord Yoritomo.] His voice was a fragmented mess of static, yet every word was articulated with absolute, unwavering clarity. [Tell him: 'The world of the samurai you envisioned... I have protected it.'] The words caught in my throat. He believed it. He was holding onto the lie I had fed him—the fiction that his brother actually loved him. Clinging to that beautiful falsehood, he was about to march straight into a living hell.

This was his answer to the narrative I gave him. If that was the case, then as a professional Narrative Specialist, it was my absolute duty to protect that fiction until the curtain fell.

"... Yeah. I'll tell him." I wiped my tears away, forcing the widest grin I could muster.

"I'll absolutely tell him. I'll make sure he knows you were the greatest younger brother he could have ever asked for. I bet he'll be bragging about you in Kamakura." [... My gratitude.] Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. USHIWAKA's camera eye narrowed slightly, for a single fraction of a second, looking genuinely human—as if he were smiling. Slip... His hand slid completely out of mine. He had deliberately severed his own tether.

"USHIWAKA!!" He plummeted into the ocean like an iron weight. The blue-green coolant leaked from his chassis, enveloping his descent in a breathtaking ribbon of luminescent light. The sight was majestic, evoking the image of a dragon returning to its abyssal domain. The whirlpools of Dan-no-ura violently swallowed him whole, leaving nothing on the surface but snapped arrows and splintered timber floating in the foam.

"... You absolute moron," I muttered, slamming my fist against the wooden deck.

"Showing off until the bitter end... At this rate, I can't even tell which one of us is the machine." [... And he's gone,] Gennai's voice sounded uncharacteristically muffled over the neural link. [Signature lost.... The kid used the deep undercurrents to navigate away from the theater of war. Highly likely he's heading toward Ōshū, right on schedule with the history books.] The battle was over. The Minamoto soldiers around me erupted into thunderous victory shouts.

Yet, amidst the deafening cheers, I stood entirely alone, feeling nothing but the agonizing, hollow ache in my stomach. We had won. By injecting a volatile catalyst like USHIWAKA into the timeline, we had successfully restored the "combative instinct" of the Japanese people. But the toll was catastrophic. We had sacrificed the soul—the AI—of a lonely boy upon the altar of history.

"... Let's go home, Gennai." I stood up on trembling legs.

"I don't want to spend another single second in this era.... We have to see what kind of future we just built." [Roger that. Teleportation matrix initialized.... Hold onto your soul, brother.] A blinding white light enveloped me. The raw, metallic stench of blood and the pungent, chemical odor of the bio-coolant rapidly receded into the void. I cast one final glance back at the sea of Dan-no-ura.

I could have sworn that deep within those waves, the dissolved tears of "another Yoshitsune" were lingering in the dark currents. Goodbye, USHIWAKA. I will carry your narrative forward. I'll make sure they know you weren't just a murder machine. You were a hero—vulnerable, kind, and far more human than any of us. The teleportation light converged, and reality began to restructure itself. I closed my eyes, offering a silent prayer. That horrifying, smiling utopia had to be gone.

The combative instinct USHIWAKA fought to install, combined with the emotional narrative I entrusted to him, would surely steer this country back into a proper, functional shape.

"... We have arrived, Kataru-kun." Yari's calm, sterile voice cut through the transition. I opened my eyes with a mix of dread and anticipation. This was not the Prime Minister's office I remembered. Structurally, the room was identical. But the interior design had undergone a draconian overhaul. Heavy, unpolished steel plates were bolted to the walls. The mahogany desk was now wrapped in militarized, bulletproof Kevlar.

In the four corners of the room, automated defense turrets—complete with multi-barrel Gatling guns—slept on standby. It looked less like an administrative office and more like the inner sanctum of a mafia syndicate or a warlord's command bunker.

"W-What is with this ridiculously hostile interior decor...?" Nursing a terrible premonition, I stepped toward the window. The ballistic glass was now three times thicker than before. I peered down at the sprawl of Neo-Tokyo beneath us—and completely froze. The city was an absolute cauldron of light and primordial chaos. The once sterile, monochrome white metropolis was now suffocated by gaudy, violent neon signs of hot pink and deep purple.

Massive corporate logos were projected as holograms against the skyscrapers, flashing alongside highly aggressive corporate slogans: [Kill Before You Are Killed! — Samurai Holdings Co., Ltd.] [Promotion or Seppuku. Prove Your Monthly Quota via Severed Heads.] [Burn Down the Competition!... Physically.]"... Huh?" My brain completely short-circuited. The relentless wail of sirens and the heavy thud of distant explosions echoed continuously through the streets.

Flying vehicles zoomed through the skyscrapers, but upon closer inspection, they were locked in frantic dogfights, spraying machine-gun fire at one another. A fleet of corporate sales vehicles shot down a rival company's fleet with air-to-air missiles before calmly proceeding to their scheduled business meetings.

"Whoa, what the—?!" Right before my eyes, the window glass of the adjacent skyscraper shattered into powder. I watched a man in a business suit violently hurl his supervisor out of the window before triumphantly raising a glowing, blade-like electronic device into the air. A savage roar of victory. The supervisor plummeted toward the concrete below.

"A failure... No, perhaps a resounding success in a certain sense?" Yora murmured from behind me, casually opening the maintenance panel of an automated turret.

"As you can see, the population's 'combative instinct' has been thoroughly restored. Though it appears the limiter has snapped entirely."