From vol 14

As the carriage advanced on the road to Kou Province, it shuddered as it crunched over the gravel. Shouka would have rushed back on horseback, but with Reishin along, that was impossible.

Reishin looked out of the window while playing with his fan. He had been silent, with the corners of his mouth turned down.

“You must be depressed because Yuushun-dono has chosen his majesty over you.”

The movement of the fan suddenly stopped.

“I haven’t been rejected.”
“Even though you announced you were going back to Kou Province, he made no move to stop you. I feel sorry for you.”
“…..Hmph, it’s okay because we have understand each other well.”

Shouka couldn’t help bursting into laughter. ‘Understand each other well’? What language was that? Was that a message from outer space? Totally impossible to decipher.

“You know, Reishin, ‘Work or me, which one will it be?” is a forbidden phrase to people who take their work seriously. To working types like Shuurei or Yuushun, saying ‘I understand you enjoy working. I’ll support you too, so go for it!’ is much more effective. However, you’ve said ‘Stop working and pay attention to me!’ in misplaced anger, and thoroughly gotten in the way of Yuushun’s work. You have magnificently sabotaged yourself.”

Reishin froze. He looked incredibly guilty.

“……………………………………elder brother.”
“What?”
“Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
“I was waiting for you to realize that yourself. Well, mistakes are necessary in life. Especially for someone like you.”

So that was it, Reishin confirmed to himself.
Ever since they had left Kiyou, Shouka had been incredibly ill-natured.

“Uh, elder brother.”
“Hmm?”
“Are you angry?”
“Well, I can’t say you’re completely off-base. You’ve caused a lot of trouble for Kouyuu too.”

Faced with this rebuff with a smile, Reishin trembled. He was really angry…

“I’m sorry…”

Reishin wilted like greens that had been salted.

If he was any meaner to him, he would be crushed, so Shouka smiled.

“…That was a lie. I’m not angry at you. I’m just taking things out on you. Sorry.”

Although he recognized it himself, when he was frustrated or irritated about something, Shouka had a bad habit of taking it out on Reishin and picking on him. It was not at all different from how Reishin would harass Kouyuu.
(….Really, I guess we are siblings after all…)

They were just like each other, up until how, because they knew that someone loved them, they could pick on them. How dismaying.

“I’m not really angry. I know that you’ve worked hard, considering. There were also some things that couldn’t be helped. If I’m angry at anyone, it’s myself.”
“Eh?”
“As for me, Reishin… I really did know, that you were not at all suited to be head of the clan. I ran away. Luckily for me Kurou and father’s will agreed with that, so I pushed everything on you and ran off.”

In the trees that could be seen from the carriage, the small pears swayed.
In Kou Province, the pear blossoms and plum blossoms bloomed at the same time. Their petals were snow white, and blossomed in dream-like profusion.

Shouka had rarely been at the main house of the Kou clan. Before he reached ten, he had left the house, and afterwards, he had moved around the country as the “Black Wolf.” If you counted it up, probably he had spent less than half of his life with the Kou clan. What he remembered were the solemn notes of the biwa, and the forbidden garden buried in snow white blossoms, the mountain ranges almost like a watercolor. But, what had really made the house his home were his two brothers waiting there.

In spite of this, Shouka had in the end pushed everything onto his brothers, and left the Kou clan.
He had decided that he alone would live quietly.

“Everything became too much trouble for me. I’m sorry.”

Although he tried to laugh it off, Reishin was not laughing. He closed his fan, and looked out the window. He muttered, “….that’s not true.”
“Eh?”
“It wasn’t that everything had become too troublesome. You were tired.”

Shouka looked at Reishin, surprised. However, Reishin didn’t look at his brother, but continued to gaze out of the window.

From the time he was a small child, Shouka had fought, straining both body and soul. For his two brothers, for the country. To make the country peaceful, even a little faster, he had accepted this job of killing before innocents would be killed. But really, his elder brother, really had no interest in plots or stratagems. He was the sort of person who was satisfied with reading books and quietly playing the biwa. However, he had sealed all of that off, and continued doing the exact opposite.
He did not rest his nerves even for a moment. Nor did he return home.

That was just like how Shuurei was now.

When he had returned to Kou province with Shuurei and his sister-in-law, Reishin saw in one glance. Shouka was exhausted in both mind and body, dead tired.

Possibly, Reishin thought, if he had not met his wife, Shouka would have not returned to Kou Province after finishing his task as the “Black Wolf,” but have chosen to end it all along with himself. That was why Reishin had decided to love Shuurei and his sister-in-law, whom Shouka had brought along to Kou province with him, as he did Shouka himself. His elder brother had never once lived for himself. He had spent all of his time exhausting himself for others. But, just this once, he had done something for himself.

….For that reason, Reishin had accepted the leadership of the clan. For his elder brother, who did not want to be tired any more.

“That was also why Kurou chased you out. Even if he knows nothing about you being the “Black Wolf,” he must have felt then that you shouldn’t be made to do anything.”

Reishin and Kurou had protected him during those few years he had spent, like a dream, in some corner of the Kou house.

Shouka remembered what Kurou had said to him last year in the spring.

“Even now, I think I was right to have chased you out. If you had stayed in that house, you would have been eventually collapsed.”

Even though he was confident that he could continue to lie perfectly. Would he have really been found out, in such a way?

“…..But, you were so angry then.”
“It was because you had forced out of the Kou clan, and because of that, right after you were sent on the previous king’s errands, and you had to pick up the exiled prince as the ‘Black Wolf.’ Even though I could have protected you somewhere else. He should know that once you leave the house, you don’t come back, so he’s the greatest idiot in three countries. And to have set up a house for you in Kiyou? That’s the worst choice, just letting Shou Taishi and the previous king snicker and go ‘we can always easily summon the ‘Black Wolf,’ great.” And while I wasn’t there, to have done this entirely without consulting me? To have entirely ignored me, his elder brother? What impudence. I will never forgive that fool Kurou.”

That of course, could not be helped because Kurou did not know that Shouka was the ‘Black Wolf, but also, probably Kurou had not thought that Reishin could be sought out for advice.

(…Come to think of it, I have never ‘consulted’ Reishin too….)

He didn’t want to either. He would probably just receive some strange answer.

“So, don’t apologize.”
“Reishin….”

Shouka smiled.
For a moment, the atmosphere became warmer, or so he thought.

“No, I really did make a mistake. I shouldn’t have left things to you. I sure regret it. What a mistake. A—ah.”

Reishin was shocked at this sincere outburst.

“Didn’t you say before that you weren’t angry? You liar!”
“Okay, I am a liar! I knew! It was okay if you harassed the Kou clan. But I didn’t intend to just relax and let my daughter and nephew pick up the tab later. I was not seeing things clearly at all. I was relaxing too much because time were peaceful. My timing was off. I’m disappointed in myself. Really disappointed.”

His elder brother was unusually desperate. It was a new thing for Reishin to see Shouka like this.

“Isn’t it okay, really? That loser king has fired the head of the Kou family. Then he won’t be labeled as favoring the Kou and Ran clans. Really, what a joke. No one told him they wanted his favor. That kid just wagged his tail by himself. It just made trouble for us.”

Shouka scolded him for his usual badmouthing of Ryuuki.

“—Now, Reishin. You’ve said too much. You shouldn’t take that kind of attitude.”
“Hmph. If you have a problem with it, complain to Shou Taishi and the previous king in his coffin, since they made me the Secretary. I didn’t let myself get fired for king or country, but for Yuushun and Shuurei and Kouyuu.”

As if to say he would never give way on this, he put his nose in the air.
Reishin’s personality was really like a distillation of the Kou clan’s characteristics. Although he was intelligent, he was impulsive, and put feelings before reason. He hated what he hated. He like what he liked. Once he had decided which was which, he would never yield. He hadn’t the capacity to skillfully smile and smile even at something he hated, like the Ran clan. Running from extreme to extreme, stubborn, high handed, soft to his friends and family. And once he trusted someone, he wouldn’t betray them, even if he had to die. For better or for worse, he could only live true to himself. Maybe if he had been raised better, he would have ended up with an almost impossibly upright personality like Shuurei or Kurou, but since that had failed, he had become the selfish demon king, Reishin.

(…..Yuri-hime raised Kurou, while I raised Reishin…. was my education bad?!?!)

Maybe he couldn’t really say it was good.

“Well, it’s not like we don’t still have time. Yuri-hime will probably quiet down the Kou officials in the capital, before they run off and do something on their own.”

Suddently, both Shouka and Reishin felt a familiar presence. It was “Kage,” the elite troop answering to the head of the Kou clan. Reishin opened his fan, and just like magic, a document appeared upon it. It bore the direct seal of the Kou clan, the “Paulownia, Bamboo, Phoenix and Kirin,” which could only be used by those in the direct line. Reishin’s brows furrowed upon seeing the writing, which, considering Kurou had written it, was an unusually rushed scrawl.

He didn’t take it, but passed it to Shouka with it still on his fan.

“You go first, elder brother.”

Shouka unhesitatingly took the document, and opened the envelope. In a flash, his expression changed.

Without saying a word, he passed it to Reishin. When he had finished reading it, all expression vanished from Reishin’s face. Shouka’s question was short:

“Your impression?”
“This is interesting. All of the Kou officials have refused to attend court, and there is a blockade? Isn’t this a magnificent plan, to make the Kou clan destroy itself? They’re lucky it was before I got around to it.”

With a face that suggested this was not entirely a joke, he sardonically laughed. As ever, he hated the Kou clan.

Before Shouka could scold him, Reishin closed his fan with a snap. His eyes had quietly become as cold as the snows of winter.

“However, for someone else to have done it, does not agree with me at all.”

The end of the message asked for seal of the clan head to be applied immediately, to give orders to stop all of this. In other words, the clan was stubbornly ignoring even Kurou’s orders.

Something that should not have happened, had happened.
Shouka put a hand to the side of his mouth. In the blink of an eye, his face had transformed into that of a man of the Kou clan.

“They’re ignoring Yuri-hime and Kouyuu-dono. They’re not even listening to Kurou’s orders… this is impossible.”

All in all, Kurou, as the representative of the Kou clan, had authority second only to Reishin’s. The only order Kurou could not withrdraw was a direct order from Reishin as head of the clan. However, Reishin had certainly not given a stupid order like that.

“There’s someone behind this. They’re easy prey for You Shuu. That guy will have them all fired.”
“Hey, Reishin, do you think that there is someone, someone besides us who the whole clan will obediently follow? Even to ignore Kurou, who is trusted deeply by the clan. That shouldn’t be possible.”
“That impossible possibility has probably become reality.”

Reishin, with a sigh, waved his fan. Upon the clasp of the opened fan, was the crest of the Kou clan, “Paulownia, Bamboo, Phoenix, and Kirin.” [ed: The name probably derives from a certain kind of kimono pattern http://thumbnail.image.rakuten.co.jp/@0_mall/tenyou/cabinet/00362080/img55469868.jpg]

Shouka and Reishin had come to the same conclusion.
It couldn’t be, but there was only one possibility.

“When you became clan head, did you meet him?”
“No, and when the previous head became the leader, nothing happened either. But what about you, have you never met him? Isn’t it said that Hourin only appears at times of chaos, when the fate of the Kou clan is at stake?”
“No, I’ve never met him. It was the end of the chaos, and also there wasn’t a battle where the clan was at risk. The “Crimson Military Strategist” was not needed. Maybe great-aunt Gyokukan met him?”

The crimson military strategist.

Just as the Ran clan had ‘Ryuuren,’ so the Kou clan had “him.” However, unlike the case of the Ran clan, ‘he’ was not part of the Kou clan, but came from another one.

It was said that he only existed to protect the Kou clan, and actually, historically
suddenly appeared for great battles, and had saved them countless times from tight spots. When the battle had finished, he disappeared as if he had never existed. Because of this, their enemies had come to fear the phantom clan of military strategists .

Due to their legendary accomplishments, within the Kou clan they had a level of authority second to that of the head. Above Kurou, even. When ‘he’ acted, the Kou clan was in mortal danger. Because of this, the Kou clan, up to the farthest branches of the family, even if they did not know whether or not he existed, would be absolutely obedient to his orders. And in reality, they had never been mistaken.

The crest “Paulownia, Bamboo, Phoenix, and Kirin.” From this was derived his name within the Kou clan.

“‘Hourin’ is living on somewhere.” [The kanji for phoenix and kirin together read hourin]

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