Twelve Lies I Told Shingen Takeda

Chapter Thirty-Five ...Future

How does a known liar tell the truth about something that sounds like an outrageous lie?

"So... the shipwreck... I um, may have... skirted around the truth a bit, but I had a good reason. I said we ended up here after a storm – and that is true, but most people assume that meant we were shipwrecked." I gave Shingen the same bland, innocent look I had given Kenshin earlier. "Is it actually a lie if I don't bother to correct that assumption?"

As I had hoped, he laughed. "What am I going to do with you?" He rolled onto his back and looked at the ceiling as if there was an answer there. I remembered the night in the training room when he'd given me lessons in combat – we'd ended up lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling, and I'd been so tempted to reach out and take his hand – well... now I could take his hand. So, I did. He gave my fingers a light squeeze. "Alright, Devil. What did actually bring you here?"

"It was a storm, but it didn't drag us across the sea, but through time. It pulled us over four hundred years into the past." He didn't respond to that, either verbally, or even physically, so I hurried on. "The short version is that I am from the future."

"You're from the future." He said it like he was testing out how the words tasted on his tongue. "Four hundred years from now?"

"Closer to four hundred and fifty, to be completely accurate. Although I guess it doesn't matter whether it is one hundred years or one thousand, right?" I turned to look at him, to see how he was taking the news – mostly he simply looked thoughtful. The way he looked when he received a report of new information from one of his spies and was determining how it fit in with what he already knew.

"It sounds like a wild, fanciful tale." He squeezed my hand again. "Devil... you and the truth are not-"

"I know. We're barely acquainted. If I passed the truth on a road, we'd wave to each other, then the truth would scurry away and wipe its brow over a narrow escape. But, in this ca-" I stopped when he put his fingers on my lips.

"As it happens, I'm inclined to believe you. You're a good liar because your lies are plausible. Whereas, this... travelling through time... sounds..." I could tell he was struggling not to use the word 'insane.'

"I know, even to me, it sounds crazy. Because, really... time travel?" I wished I had some future things to show him. Not just to prove my story, but because I imagined he'd get a kick out of them. I bet he would have taken my phone apart to see how it worked. "In the future, something like this would still be considered science fiction."

"Science... fiction?" I supposed it was easier for him to latch onto the last words I'd said. "Myths about science?"

He seemed to have accepted the premise well enough. "Yeah, it's a form of literature – and also tv and film too, but you wouldn't know what those are, so let's stick with literature for now – that speculates about the science and technology, oh and even politics of the future. Like air travel and landing one the moon."

We... were straying a little from the topic, but his eyes lit up with interest at the possibility of travelling to the moon. "Air travel and landing on the moon then are examples of science fiction where you come from?"

"Er, actually not any more. We already have air travel and the Americans – that's a new country across the ocean –will land on the moon, oh, in less than four hundred years from now. But... we don't have time travel. At least. We didn't. Until... it happened to me. One minute my brother and I were taking a walk around the Togakushi Shrine," which, thankfully, pre-existed this era so I wouldn't have to take another tangent to explain that one, "and it was summer. We got caught in thunderstorm, and a lot of fog and mist, and then we were at this era's Togakushi, and it was winter, and before we could figure out what was going on, we were attacked by bandits – and the rest of it, you know."