Chapter 704

New Year's Eve, midnight.

Inside and outside Uesugi Shinai, they had already cleared away as much of the gloom brought by the incident as possible, replaced by the solemnity unique to the New Year and a faint bustle. The stone lanterns lining the approach path were all lit, casting warm yellow halos, while the white "ignorance strings" hung under the eaves swayed gently in the night wind. In the distance, the hum of a gathering crowd came from the direction of the shrine's main hall, and the 108 bell tolls had already sounded.

The fourth year of the Uesugi Era has arrived.

But this place is very quiet, tranquilly so.

These several rooms in the shrine's backyard, specially used for receiving honored guests, seemed to be separated by an invisible barrier, leaving only absolute silence. Outside the paper door, the fine snow of Yonezawa began to fall again at some unknown time, silently covering the stone arrangements and moss of the dry landscape garden, dyeing the world a soft, faintly luminous silver-white.

The air is crisp as a knife, drawing into the lungs with a piercing sense of purity.

My heart and my conduct are clear as a bright mirror; all my actions are for justice!

This is the creed that Uesugi Kenshin practiced throughout his life, and also the starting point of Uesugi Muneyuki's path into forensic medicine.

So, in fact, did Uesugi Kenshin truly have a clear conscience? Was he truly utterly just?

Absolutely not.

For example, the famous Naoetsu talent market (POW camp) was set up by Uesugi Kenshin, who specialized in buying and selling slave prisoners of war there. For example, why did Uesugi Kenshin always launch campaigns in Kantou during spring and summer? Aside from the heavy snows of Echigo winter, he could directly seize grain from the enemy, and wildly plundering Kantou's grain as military supplies was also an important reason; Kantou civilians were ravaged by him every year, simply hating him to death. Another example: was Uesugi Kenshin's elder brother Nagao Harukage truly willing to yield the position to him? In fact, absolutely not; according to the latest research records, Uesugi Kenshin at least fought his brother, and his brother yielded only because he could not match him militarily, and this is already the benevolent version; a more terrifying possibility is that he personally arranged his brother's removal and then said, "Li Yuan had no eldest son, Taizong had no elder brother"; as the sole son of the former Echigo Province Guard, I cannot help but take up this burden.

There's nothing to be done; Taizong of Tang also suffered this way—his elder brother and younger brother died young, his father gave up, and he had no choice but to bear the weight of all under heaven on his shoulders. Zhu Di also experienced this: in the thirty-fifth year of the Hongwu era, his father Zhu Yuanzhang died, then his elder brother Zhu Biao died early and left no sons, his second and third brothers also died young, and as the fourth son, it was only natural that he should inherit the great throne, truly a matter of fate's arrangement.

And regarding how the head of the Ueda Nagao clan, Nagao Masakage, the biological father of Uesugi Kagekatsu, actually died—this remains a mystery to this day, but there is no doubt that Kenshin was the greatest beneficiary.

As Kenshin himself said, he had already done his utmost with not a trace of regret, and in the old morality of the guardian daimyo of his time, he was already a paragon; it is no surprise that he could ascend to become a new god. One cannot discuss good and evil apart from historical context, just as Tokugawa Ieyasu's morality, when compared to modern standards, is merely somewhat better than that of ordinary people, but when compared to his contemporaries among humanoid beings, he was already an exceptionally loyal and virtuous lord—everyone acknowledges him as a good man, an honest man. Uesugi Muneyuki sat alone in the center of the Japanese-style room, at a low table, with an unfinished case analysis note spread before him, his green tea long gone cold; Mai Xuejie and Xiao Yinghua had temporarily withdrawn, and Asuka followed them out as well.

He couldn't help but let his mind wander, yet he also felt a hint of anticipation.

In this solitude, the shrine's inherent solemnity and the quiet of the snow enveloped him—the High Plain of Heaven, the new god, murder cases, strange deaths, the slain middle-aged man, and the threat from the other side—none could outweigh Uesugi Muneyuki's anticipation at this moment.

The sound of the flying snow wind echoed between the mountains and the shrine halls, cleansing the dust and worries of the old year.

Immediately after, footsteps came from the hallway, like the steps of time, steadily advancing toward the new year.

Japanese architectural design often intentionally creates hallways and various passages that produce a loud "creak-creak" when someone passes through, so as to let people know someone is coming and to deter assassins.

Amid this distant, deep background sound, the paper door of the Japanese-style room was silently opened a crack.

A faint footstep led the way, as if the visitor had descended along with the drifting snow.

Uesugi Muneyuki raised his head.

First to catch his eye was the outline of a slender, graceful girl delineated by the dim hallway light outside the door.

She stepped slowly and with utmost solemnity into the room, turned, and gently closed the paper door, sealing off the snow-drifting courtyard and the intermittent bell sounds outside, leaving only a deeper silence filling the room, and the faint scent of yuzu after her bath mixed with the subtle aroma of fresh textiles. Saito Asuka stood there, gazing out, her eyes filled with overlapping phantoms of past and present.

"Mr. Uesugi..."

The girl had obviously made careful preparations.

Asuka had taken off the elaborate furisode she had been wearing, and instead wore a set of exceptionally well-fitting, high-quality deep navy JK uniform—a Western-style jacket with excellent tailoring that accentuated her slender yet already beginning-to-curve shoulders, a pleated skirt of the same color reaching to the knees, with the hem extending down to a pair of legs tightly wrapped in ultra-thin black Venus lace-patterned stockings.

The black of the stockings was neither a dull 100D pure black nor an overly flesh-revealing, dust-heavy 0D; rather, in the room's weak light, it subtly shimmered with a matte texture like velvet, the lace pattern extremely fine and elegant, like a hidden galaxy of stars flowing in the dark night—multicolored black, tracing her legs from slender ankle to rounded knee, then to the initially formed, smoothly contoured thigh outline, drawn with heart-stopping beauty. The stockings' thinness slightly revealed the skin beneath, faintly showing the healthy glow of the dermis, yet just right to be overlaid with a hazy allure; each tiny movement seemed to have dark water-light flowing across the skin.

"Ashura Rei." Uesugi Muneyuki lowered his pen, smiling and nodding.

Asuka usually wore her long black hair casually tied up or loose, but now it had been carefully arranged into a soft princess half-updo, with a few rebellious strands hanging by her fair neck.

Her makeup was extremely light, yet it highlighted the large, deer-like wet and bright eyes inherited from her sister, and her slightly pale yet tightly pursed cherry-blossom-colored lips; at eighteen, the girl had shed all youthful immaturity, standing here, she actually had a breathtaking beauty like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon—mixed with fragility and resolve.

The girl's demeanor was clear and profound, like a white camellia blooming alone in a snow mountain valley, dusted with cold dew, carrying a desperate splendor, yet also like a young bird about to spread its wings and fly high, full of hope and longing for the future.

She stood there, enduring Uesugi Muneyuki's calm yet piercing gaze; her cheeks could not help but flush, her long eyelashes lightly trembling, but her spine was ramrod straight, her eyes did not waver, instead gradually gathering a kind of near-stubborn resolve.

She said nothing, merely assuming the most standard, most ancient posture, slowly and with utmost solemnity, on the tatami mat a few steps from Uesugi Muneyuki, she bent her knees and knelt.

The deep navy skirt hem lifted slightly with the motion, that flash of heart-stopping black stocking sheen becoming more alluring in the kneeling posture; the girl extended her hands forward, fingertips together, then bowed deeply, her forehead lightly touching the backs of her overlapped hands, performing the most formal, most reverent "highest salute." Her soft black hair slipped from her shoulders, spreading across the tatami mat; this posture made her slender waist and full hips, wrapped in the uniform and stockings, form a beautiful, compliant arc.

Time seemed to freeze at this moment, except for the fine snow outside the window that never ceased.

This is her most beautiful, most youthful prime, and also the most important moment of her life.

After a long while, she maintained the kneeling posture, using a tremor too slight to notice, yet a voice perfectly clear, and spoke softly:

"I, a woman of little talent………"

Asuka's voice paused; she had used all her strength of body and mind to finally utter, in a trembling voice, the words she had practiced hundreds of times, the words that would decide her fate:

"………Please guide me in the future."

The words spoken, she still held the kneeling posture, motionless, only her slightly rising and falling shoulders revealing her inner turmoil, the stockings-wrapped delicate knees pressed tightly together, leaving a soft impression on the dark tatami mat.

Only her barely audible breathing remained in the room, along with the sound of flying snow as if from a distant time and space.

How quiet it is.

Uesugi Muneyuki silently gazed at the girl kneeling before him, at her attire—JK uniform and black stockings that both clashed with and strangely blended into the shrine's solemn atmosphere, at her offering, in the most classical and obedient posture, an oath impossible to refuse.

In his mind's eye flashed Nanami's gentle yet strong smile, then Asuka's hateful and despairing gaze at the funeral, then the sharp conflict where he argued directly with her father to protect her and her father, and her constantly crying, then her appearance at the Sakurada-mon hearing and doing household chores at home like a little bird, and also that "big shot bird" she put on in front of underclassmen and unfamiliar people at school.

Everything had come together.

He did not answer immediately, merely gazing at her in silence.

Outside the window, snow fell silently; inside, one knelt, one sat.

Time stretched as if it were that endless summer day in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, only the background changed to a desolate snowy night and the purifying bell of the shrine, the bell of Gion Shōja ringing, speaking of the impermanence of worldly affairs.

The flowers of the sal trees fade, the prosperous decline like the vicissitudes of life.

Extravagance and lust do not last long, just like a spring night's dream.

Tyranny and oppression will ultimately fall, like dust raised in the wind.

How will the future be? He also does not know.

The beauty before him will ultimately have its day of passing, just as the splendidly blooming cherry blossoms will ultimately drift to the ground and turn to dust, and the once-unrivaled Kantou Kanrei with ten thousand troops who besieged Odawara, Uesugi Kenshin, turned his head and died of a cerebral hemorrhage while using the privy, and the already formally reviewed Oda Nobunaga in Kyoto died in the great fire at Honnō-ji after only a dozen or so days, and the venerable Taikō Toyotomi Hideyoshi perished in an illusory dream in Osaka, and merely seventeen years later, the Toyotomi legacy turned to rubble in the sound of explosions.

Everything has its day of ending.

But at this moment, Saito Asuka offered her entire youth, dignity, and future as sacrifice, presenting this "please guide me" request, together with this snow, this bell sound, and the lace pattern on the stockings; the girl at this moment blossomed into her astonishing beauty.

Flowers bloom and fall, flowers fill the sky; causes and effects arise and cease in an instant.

This bond, which he himself forged and himself protected, finally had its day of blooming and fruition.

Under the sky of affinity, they are still together.

Uesugi Muneyuki reached out and helped Asuka up, but instead he performed a great salute toward the girl.

"I am the one, Asuka Sauce."

"For the rest of my life, please guide me."