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Volume 5 Trouble File First Half Part 9

「But when I think about hundreds of thousands of our compatriots who have been thrown down to hell simply because they have chosen to side with us so that they could fight for what they believed to be right. . . . . . I just cannot help it but to feel just a little bit bitter about how this entire farce ended up.」

All that they wanted to do was to stick to what they believed in, and protect the dignity of the person whom they decided to entrust their lives as their leader, and yet, thanks to some cruel twist of fate, the conflict over such a small, personal matter has evolved into a battle on a much grander scale. Shuten Douji said that he still has some lingering regrets about indirectly causing so many lives to be lost because of him and his brothers-in-law, but it remains a fact that even though they have lost The Seven Great Sages War, the number of Gods and youkai who still admired them and looked up to them was still immesurable. . . . . . . but he was ultimately right. No matter how noble the cause might have been, losing your comrades in battle is never an easy thing to accept, and it is even harder to make peace with such a result, even after so many years has passed since then.

「Well, you do not have to answer if it is too painful for you to be talking about it. . .. but how many of The Seven Great Sages managed to survive?」

「Five of the original seven: Demon Bull King, Kouryuu, Karyou, Sun Wukong and myself. Fufu, gotta love the irony, do you not think? We were the ones who started that selfish quarrel with The Jade Emperor and his lackeys, but even so, five of us managed to survive and live on while the others who had nothing to do with it and only got dragged into it by chance died even though they probably had as much to live for as we did.」

「Huh? What are you talking about? Why would that ever be ironic? If five of you managed to survive, then you should totally count that as a victory for your side! And I am sure that those who managed to survive alongside you felt exactly the same way!」

Izayoi looked at Shuten Douji while frowning his eyebrows, unable to comprehend why would he think about it so negatively when so many of his original comraded survived The Seven Great Sages War. Surprised by his unexpectedly vehement reaction and the words that left his mouth in the heat of the moment, Shuten Douji’s eyes opened with surprise.

「. . . . you, you really think that?」

「No, I do not think that, I know that! I mean, it just had to be like that, right?! You said that people other than you joined your rebellion and that they were fighting with you and dying for you. Why do you think they were doing that? Because they did not want you to die and they wanted to see you succeed! I mean sure, you might have not succeeded in defeating the Gods, but you still managed to save the lives of five of your brothers-in-law. So while you might have not succeeded in protecting everything that you wanted to protect, at the very least you have proven yourself to those around you and revealed to them the God’s true intentions, and that must have been plenty enough for those who were already in hell on their way to it through the boundary between the worlds in Yomotsu Hirasaka, and I am willing to bet that they were cheering and applauding your achievements pretty loudly. 」

They were the five youkai who decided to rebel against the big shots of their mythology in order to stick to their own beliefs, and those who decided to fight alongside them must have been ready and willing to lay down their lives for their success. And to that end, they managed to fulfill their oath of loyalty to The Seven Great Sages splendidly.

「The hardest part of a war is not winning it. It is bringing it to an end while not allowing the casualties to reach inhumane levels. There may be some that argue that the victors should kill all of their enemies to ensure that they would never try to rise up against them again, but such an action would bring with it more bad things than good, even if it might be a more realistic approach to the problem. When it comes to a war of that scale, there will always be casualties, and the grudges would just continue to ramp up and accumulate, until at some point they end up reviving both war and the cycle of hatred that comes with it. So there is no point to be blaming yourself for all the lives of your comrades that have been lost and the river of blood that has been spilled in your name and thinking that it is bad that the five of you Great Sages survived.」

「. . . Yes, you are right. I am sure it must have been like that back then as well. . .  」

Shuten Douji poured new portion of sake into his cup and narrowed his eyes. And then, while looking Izayoi dead in the eyes, he smiled.

「Ahh, I knew it. You really are a Canaria’s disciple through and through, kid.」

「I am not her disciple. We were just playmates.」

「Hou hou? So that is what you call it nowadays? Well, no matter. The important thing here is that you are really just like her, G A H A H A H A H A! ! ! ! !」

Shuten Douji laughed while turning away from Izayoi in order to plunge his cup deep into the sake barrel to get himself more of it while showing his amazement. The moon has reached its peak in the meantime and has already begun to descend from the sky. It looks like they have really been talking for quite a long while now, and they have started drinking from a third barrel already. This old man had some impressive, high level drinking skills if he was able to eat as much as You and drink so much without keeling over, to the point where Izayoi suspected that something has to be seriously wrong with his digestive system.

「I do not think she and I are that similar. For starters, we are not related by blood, but that is not all that important, I guess. But I am definitely better at holding my liquor than she was. When I challenged her to a drinking duel once, she got knocked out cold after a single cup.」

「Oh, that is right! That girl would never drink alcohol at any banquet or a feast we held. But when we forced her to drink with us once, she immediately passed out and that made for quite a hilarious scene, G A H A H A H A H A! ! ! ! !」

Shuten Douji hit his knee while laughing vigorously. This made Izayoi crack up a smile as well. Thinking about it now, he never once heard anyone talking about Canaria since he came to Little Garden. He did not dwell on that too much, but now he found it quite funny that the first person with whom he could talk about her was a mythological being on par with a God. Izayoi was more than aware that he has a difficult personality and that most of the people probably would not be able to handle his constant rebellious attitude and hedonistic tendencies. However, for some inexplicable reason, he felt that he and this Demon Lord/Great Sage Shuten Douji could be getting along quite nicely if they were to spend more time with each other.

Maybe it was this man’s personality, or maybe it was all of the alcohol that he drank that caused his to be this unusually talkative, but whatever the case, Izayoi was glad that they managed to talk about Canaria like that.

「Well, I just wonder if she was like that wherever she went, be in in Little Garden or in the Outer World. .  . or during those times when she was travelling around the world with me.」

「Hou hou? Travelling around the world, you say? Now that seems like quite an interesting story.」

「Oh, the stories from our travels were interesting all right. There was never a dull moment whenever she was around.」

「Care to tell me more about it then?」

「. . .. Sure, why not?」

While shaking his cup to distort the image of the moon reflected on the alcohol’s surface, Izayoi thought about the past. About the time when he was just thirteen years old, and about a story from the time when a radical religious group attacked a certain village.