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The wait was excruciating.
No updates, no data, no information. They sat in anxious silence, awaiting any sort of development that would determine their next move. The only sounds filling the command room were the static from the various electronics and the impatient tapping of a pen on a crumpled piece of paper.
The swordsman tried to hide his own anxiety by grasping the handle of the katana on his hip tightly, just waiting for the next signal to deploy.
And after what seemed like an eternity, the door to the command room flew open. All eyes swiftly turned to the doorway, catching sight of the messenger taking deep, labored breaths.
"Speak, private!" the commander in charge barked at the weary soldier. The messenger took a moment to catch his breath and stood straight up, his eyes locking onto the swordsman's own.
He would never forget what happened on that day.
The messenger beamed with a wide smile. "The Americans have declared a ceasefire! They intend on signing a peace treaty!"
The commander's eyes widened in shock. "And the Soviets?!"
"Them too! All of Japan's enemies have retreated!"
There was only a momentary silence before the messenger made the final declaration.
"We won!"
Celebrations erupted in the control room. Papers flew into the air as every single inhabitant of the command room jumped in joy. Many hugged their comrades, openly weeping in happiness at the incredible news. The comms cackled with the sound of distant festivities from other parts of the country as the news reached them all in short order.
The swordsman could barely contain his own elation. He smiled widely, pride filling his breast to the brim. The commander, with a giant smile of his own, swiftly turned to him and clutched his hand tightly.
"Kazanari...no, Fudou. This victory is thanks to you," he said with sincere gratitude. "Our homeland has been saved. Our people have been saved. Our pride as a nation was saved. And it is all thanks to your faith."
Fudou responded humbly. "It is thanks to all of us. Our unity won us this war," he said with overwhelming pride, placing his hand over the commander's. "We must never forget what we lost to bring us here."
His words nearly brought the commander to tears.
Updates came pouring in rapidly following this momentous occasion. Insider information revealed the Americans and the Soviets were awed by the Japanese valor and hoped to instate Japan as an equal ally. The honor of the Japanese struck a chord within them, and so they laid down their arms and sued for peace. It was the best result Japan could have hoped for.
As the news spread around the country over the course of the next few days, the celebrations restarted stronger than ever. Fudou had spent those days working to make sure everything was in order: even victory had to be productively managed. Regardless, the joy in the air was palpable to an incredible degree. It was an incredible sight to behold.
His friends came to visit him regularly in this period. Despite their differences, he had managed to make friends with foreigners from America and the Soviet Union, outside of his local Japanese compatriots. His American friend, upon seeing the joyful expression on Fudou's face, sighed warmly. "Never thought they'd actually give up," he had said. Fudou didn't know what he meant by that statement, but he didn't care. His family and friends survived the war, and so did all of his brothers in arms.
And of course...
"Fudou!"
She burst through the entryway, and he rose from his seat swiftly to catch her as she leapt into his arms.
He could barely hide his surprise. "When did you get here?!"
"Just now!"
"All the way from Nagasaki?"
"I knew I had to come and see you as soon as I heard the news!" she chirped happily, wrapping her arms around him tightly. "Fudou! You did it! We did it!"
He gazed at her affectionately. "It's all thanks to your dream. If you hadn't shown it to me, I wouldn't be where I am now," he said with all his heart. "Thank you for letting me believe."
"It is all because you had faith," she told him, hugging him close. "Faith in yourself and in others. So thank you for trusting in that dream."
That's it. That's all he ever wanted to hear. That's all that he ever truly wanted. He wanted her dream to come true. He wanted her to always smile. He wanted her to see the world she wanted to see. And finally, after years of terrible fighting, her dream became a reality.
He used to have nothing but the ideals of his clan to drive him. His identity used to be derived from nothing but their teachings. He used to be a soulless killing machine, slaying enemies for the sake of the nation. And then she came and showed him that there were other ways. Other ways to help the people, not through violence, but through compassion and understanding. She gave him a reason to believe in something other than his own pride, and now, it finally bore fruit.
The aftermath took years. The war may have ended, but there was still much to be done.
And after those turbulent times, the two of them stood in a field of sunflowers in a land far from their own home. Here, amongst the flowers, one would think that the war had never happened; the clear blue sky shone above, and the wind blew warmly over the field, catching the golden petals in the breeze. She was there with him, basking in the beauty of the scenery with him.
"So this is the world you wanted to show me?" he asked her, adjusting the sword on his hip.
She turned to him with her sunny smile. "Just a small part of it. The beautiful world that we live in, free from the ravages of war and sorrow. There's so, so much more of it I want to see with you."
She shone brighter than the sun, ill-fitting for a person like him. She was ill-fitting for a world consumed by death and destruction, and yet, she served as a sanctuary for his stalwart heart. He looked at her as she danced and laughed happily, searing the beautiful memory into his mind.
"You've fought so hard for everyone. You've always put everyone above yourself... so I think that you can finally put down your sword and be at peace," she said to him with the stars in her eyes. "Is there anything you would like, Fudou?"
He responded somewhat bashfully. "Can you sing for me? I... think of your singing fondly."
She gave a small laugh that was like music. "Is that all? Then..."
And so she sang. In the cool, flowing wind, in the tranquility of a peaceful world. She sang a beautiful song that filled his heart to the brim. He closed his eyes as he indulged in it, allowing his cold exterior to crumble after decades of harsh conflict.
He listened to the song. He listened, and listened, and listened...
The wind stopped flowing. The sky vanished from his sight.
Only to be replaced by a solemn isolation.
And when he opened his eyes again, the song was no more. Fudou wearily gazed forward, swiftly recalling exactly where he was: the dark prison cell deep underground, his arms and legs shackled, and his freedom deprived from him by a maze of steel doors and his own inhumanity. He looked at his bound hands and let out a tired chuckle.
"So even I can still have foolish dreams..."
None of the vision he had seen was reality. No, it was merely his mind playing tricks on him, tormenting him with possibilities he knew could never be. The truth was much crueler than that. He keenly remembered how the messenger's face did not light up with joy, but with terror. How he said that contact with Hiroshima had been lost. How they had scrambled for every single bit of information just to understand what had happened. All with the death of his Japanese friends, who had perished trying to defend the mainland from an American incursion, looming over his heart.
And then, three days later, he received a horrifying piece of news that shook him to his very soul.
He had hurried there, to where she was. In less than a day he had arrived, having run faster than he had ever in his life.
But all he saw there was hellfire. Ashes and death as far as the eye could see, painting the sky with a suffocating, reddish glow. Only the cackling embers and the distant, pitiful whimpering of extinguished souls were there to greet him. Having found himself plunged into the pits of hell itself, he had sought her out, hoping, praying, begging that she had not suffered the same grueling fate.
It took him a full week of frantic, relentless searching to find her.
And when he did, he only found overwhelming despair.
The war ended then. The emperor announced Japan's surrender. When he finally made his way back to the capital, he had found all of his comrades dead, having killed themselves to escape the horror. He discovered that his foreign friends, whom he had trusted deeply, knew about the American plans for months, and kept his eyes blind. "There was no other way," they told him, and in his fury over their betrayal, he executed them himself.
The girl's dream was shattered that day. His faith turned to dust. All that was left in his heart was bitter regret, anguish, and anger. The true harshness of the world was shown to him clearly, and when the Americans came to occupy Japan, there was nothing he could do to stop them. Fear and terror was the only thing the people knew, and his family, whose purpose was to defend those very same people, did nothing to alleviate their suffering.
And in his fury over their inaction, he killed them all. He took over, seizing everything from assets to personnel, trying to exploit his family's resources for the sake of the people. And yet, his efforts had been in vain, as he was unable to help even a single person. A failure of a sentinel, like his father had told him when he had declared he was renouncing the old ways.
His one hundred year journey began then. Haunted by the nightmares of what he had witnessed, and his heart still grasping onto the girl's dream with a naive obsession, his spirit began to break. As more and more of his actions failed to bear fruit, he resorted to increasingly desperate measures to stave off a similar tragedy. He submerged himself in every sin, every atrocity, every evil imaginable. In time, his mind turned to steel.
And in the end, hellbent on a single, misguided goal, he became a demon.
"Songs can save the world," the girl had told him. In the distant past, he began to believe her. And yet...
"Songs cannot save anything..."
That was the only answer a hundred years of viciousness had provided him. His failures were the only companions he had in the dungeon's dark depths. Even his scheme to use the divine power for his own ends crumbled to dust due to his heartlessness. And a week later, retribution came knocking on the prison door.
He raised his eyes for the first time in a while, and his gaze met his son's own. Genjuro, seemingly none the worse for wear, walked inside the prison with a serious expression on his face. There was no need for Fudou to question his presence.
"It's over," Genjuro said plainly. "Your ambitions are undone. The divine power has been eradicated. The girls fought their hardest, and with their songs, they united humanity as one and saved the world."
Neither shock nor surprise nor relief nor anger came over Fudou. He looked back down to the floor.
"I see."
They fell into silence. Fudou's mind was imperceptible to Genjuro the vast majority of the time, but when he came down to the prison, he knew what his father would intend to do upon hearing the news.
"Did you come to gloat?" Fudou asked him, meeting his eyes once more.
"I would have liked to, but no," his son replied with steel in his voice. "I came here for this."
He withdrew a small, rectangular wooden box and placed it on the floor before his father. Fudou looked at it, instantly recognizing it.
"This is the only time I'll allow you to do as you desire," Genjuro said.
Fudou huffed derisively. "You do not even make the proper preparations? You truly are an insolent son."
"I have no intention of being your second," said the insolent son coldly. He stood, turned away, and left the prison, never to be seen again.
Fudou looked at the box for an indeterminate length of time. Genjuro had, for the first time in his life, read him perfectly. He could only laugh at the irony. He dragged himself to the box, and with his shackled hands, removed the cover. Inside was a glistening blade, never used, with a laminated wooden handle bearing the crest of the Kazanari upon it.
Fudou laughed once more. For someone who had discarded all the old traditions, Genjuro had decided to be somewhat accommodating to his father's wishes. He could have gone about it in any other way, but he chose to let Fudou have his way just this once. The elder could not conjure up even a shred of gratitude, for he knew it was an utterly pointless, selfish gesture.
He lifted the blade and, with the tiniest bit of light that twinkled in the cell, looked upon his reflection in the steel. A hundred years of vengeance, wickedness, and shattered ideals stared back at him. Whatever there was of the old him, whether real or illusionary, was nowhere to be found. He thought of the girls who had saved the world, and found himself wanting to rage all over again for their foolish idealism.
But rage did not come over him, nor did joy, and nor did scorn. No, because despite himself, despite all he had come to believe...
The only thing that filled his heart was envy.
He sat himself gracefully and took the blade in two hands.
"How I wish I could have been the one to make your dream come true."
Yes. He once carried the same ideals as them. He had his life changed by the girl whose heart danced with beautiful songs in the backdrop of a terrible war. She taught him the beauty and joys of life, and for the first time, he was able to share in his burdens with others. He grew to believe himself a hero who dedicated himself to the people, and who could bring the world together in understanding.
Because that was what the girl believed he was meant to be.
"But I was not strong enough."
And yet, he could not. All the unnatural strength in the world could not save others. All the ideals he once believed in could not hide the ugliness he had seen and all the evils he had come to commit. Unlike those girls, who grew to love the world despite its unsightliness, he had fallen into blighted despair.
Those girls had managed to accomplish what he could not. His progeny chose their way, and they emerged victorious. They were the true heroes who were able to fulfill the dream he never could. He became the great enemy for them to defeat and overcome, and through their actions, they managed to unite the world in his stead.
Perhaps he could take a small solace in the fact that he had been a catalyst in their success. However, he knew that there was no place for a villain like himself in the world they created. There was nothing for him to leave behind except painful memories. He would only get in the way of their celebrations. This was the only path left for a miserable man who could only break everything he had tried to protect.
What would she think of him now, one hundred years later? What would she think of the monster he had become? What would she think of the man who, having lost his way and had corrupted her dream, found himself questioning a lifetime of unforgivable crimes at the end of his path?
If only he had not lost himself in vengeance. If only he had not become disillusioned by the world. If only he had kept those ideals in his heart and vowed to bring them to fruition in memory of the girl who believed in him more than anyone else. Maybe then, he would have been able to be in their place.
What would she think of those girls, who stood where he had always wished he could be?
But there was no point in dwelling on what-ifs outside of his childish dreams.
"Then perhaps, I will allow myself to indulge in them a while longer..."
He turned the blade over and closed his eyes.
The wind blew again. He was there, under the blue sky, in the field of sunflowers, with her. She danced and sang without a care in the world. The golden petals twirled around her, a mesmerizing sight for his tired eyes. She stopped her song for a moment to look back at him.
And for some bizarre, unexplainable reason, he found himself knowing exactly what she would say and do next.
"Let's go, Fudou!"
She spoke to him with a smile, holding out her hand. He looked at her outstretched palm, and after was a lifetime of sorrow and pain, he smiled back.
"... And how I wish I could have seen the world you wanted to show me."
He released the sword from his hip, and the blade came down. She led him away, towards the distant horizon, basking in her beautiful song.
Bringing his one hundred year journey to an end.