Twelve Lies I Told Shingen Takeda

Chapter Forty-Three - Full Circle

We stayed several weeks with Toshiie, which, among other things, allowed my brother and I to celebrate our birthday together. But once the weather changed from Autumn to almost-winter, we took our leave, with hugs and good wishes from Hana, one last 'Uki' piggyback ride for Nao, and promises to Toshiie that I would return as soon as I was able.

I gave Toshiie directions to Kasugayama as well as Aki's house on the mountain in case he needed to get in touch with me. "Where will you be – I mean... which place? I don't want to lose track of you now that we've found each other again."

"I'll let you know." I couldn't make any decisions or plans until after the wormhole opened at Togakushi. "There's also a bookseller in Azuchi where you can always leave a message that will find me." I gave him the location of that as well. That would be the most convenient for him since Azuchi was so much closer to Ikuno than the other two locations.

One last bro-slap between Yuki and Tosh, and one last long hug between my brother and I, then we were off. "See you soon!" he yelled after us. Tosh still hates saying goodbye.

As we made our way out of the town, Yuki gave me one of his suspicious side-eye glares.

"What?" I hoped he wasn't going to question all the sly glances and eyebrow raises Toshiie had been unsubtly deploying. If he did, I was going to ruthlessly shit talk my twin and claim it was a tic.

"Bookseller. Azuchi. I knew I'd met you before. You were the old man who spied on me." He punched my shoulder. "What the hell were you doing there?"

"I wasn't spying on you... or anyone... exactly. It's a long story." Although I supposed we had plenty of time.

The journey to Togakushi took a week – which was faster than I had anticipated – as I had been worried we would be delayed by early winter storms when we got into the mountains. We had so much extra time that Yuki suggested we spend the night in his castle, which was less than a day's ride from the shrine.

"I didn't know you had a castle." I tried and failed to picture Yuki as a Kenshin-like lord of a castle. "Of course, you should visit it."

"Thanks. Except I shouldn't thank you – I bet there's a pile of tasks waiting for me," Yuki said, and further explained that he hadn't been there in months.

We turned our horses in the direction of what one day would become Nagano. The landscape was both familiar and unfamiliar in a way that felt jarring. Like a puzzle piece that looked like it would fit, until you tried to place it. "I grew up in this area. It still weirds me out, seeing this part of the country without a big city in the middle of it."

"How big?" We were riding along the banks of the Chikuma River, and I looked around, feeling the displacement in time more vividly than before, especially since this was close to where I had gone to high school... years that I definitely had not enjoyed (hence the truancy to go snowboarding whenever I could get away with it).

"Um, I guess something like three hundred and seventy-five thousand people? So not huge, but bigger than a village." I shrugged. "It seemed like a lot of people when I was growing up, but the first time I visited Tokyo, I realized it wasn't that much, comparatively."

Yukimura paused and looked out at the mountains in the distance, and the war damaged land in between. "I don't know whether to be glad that the area came back from this, but that many people is kind of... well, it's a lot... And this... Tokyo is bigger?"

"A hundred times bigger, I think. Tokyo – well in this era, it's Edo, but in my time, it's one of the biggest cities in the world. Maybe the biggest? I'm not sure." The few times I had visited, it had seemed too big to me. But I had always been one to prefer outdoor spaces. "Maybe I shouldn't be giving you all this information about the future."