The Twelve Kingdoms: Dreaming of Paradise

Way. But at every turn, Chuutatsu only piled on more harsh laws and made the situation more dire.
    "At that rate, I truly believed the people of Hou would soon go extinct."
    Beneath the patio and beyond a small garden, the Sea of Clouds sparked in the moonlight. Below the Sea of Clouds, the faint lights from the world below spread out toward the horizon. The ground had once been covered with corpses. Instead of the flowers in the spring, the smell of rotting flesh. Elegies instead of traditional folk songs.
    Has the King lost every last shred of humanity? Gekkei raged within himself. The ever-growing graveyards horrified him. The King's actions aroused feelings of bitterness and disgust. And yet Gekkei couldn't find it himself to hate him personally. He was the pure and undefiled minister he had once been, the one righteous man in the corrupt Imperial Court.
    "I wanted His Highness to return to the man he had once been. That was the hope I clung to. But he continued to defy those expectations. I came to believe that it would have been better if he'd been corrupted by the trappings of power from the start. Then I would have expected nothing of him. But he was a selfless ascetic to the end."
    "So you resorted to the high crime of treason because you had no other avenues open to you?"
    Gekkei nodded. "Saying that I acted on behalf of the good of the people is probably just an excuse. What actually goaded me into action was the pain that came from loathing somebody I did not want to loath. It wasn't a matter of righteous indignation. More a matter of personal enmity. That's what makes this a run-of-the-mill sin, no matter how fancy a name it goes by."
    "And yet weren't you brought to such hatred for the Royal Hou out of your compassion for the people of Hou? It was your pity for the people that bred such loathing."
    Gekkei shook his head. "I don't think so. It's not that their suffering wasn't on my mind. While watching people get hauled off to the gallows for crimes that barely qualified as misdemeanors was indeed painful, far more trying for me was witnessing the bitterness their survivors bore toward His Highness. Such hate being completely natural and comprehensible only made it all the more unbearable."
    "Unbearable that the Royal Hou should be so hated?"
    "Yes. I am not the ally of the common folk that my followers want me to be."
    "But didn't you make yourself their ally in any case? You wanted the Royal Hou to do right by the people, didn't you? By making their lives better through compassion and wisdom, they would in turn love him."
    This observation caught Gekkei by surprise. "I wouldn't say you're wrong."
    "You wanted the people to love the Royal Hou as much as you once had. To that extent, you were on their side. Their peace was your peace. Their happiness was your happiness. A good king was a king who did the best he could for the people. That that's what you wanted on behalf of the Royal Hou?"
    When Gekkei didn't answer, Sei added with a smile, "As far as I'm concerned, that's the same as acting on behalf of the people."
    His eyes downcast, Gekkei answered, "But if I elevate myself to that position, then I would have in fact stolen it from His Highness."
    He hadn't been able to remonstrate with Chuutatsu. And when Chuutatsu strayed from the Way, hadn't been able to bring him back to the straight and narrow. And so he struck him down out of personal enmity. To then take that which had belonged to his liege and make it his own would be the greatest theft of all.
    "A literal usurpation. No room for excuses."
    "Excuses? Who must you excuse yourself to?" Gekkei didn't reply. Sei continued, "From my perspective, it seems that you are mistaken about to whom you should be offering explanations." Sei immediately retracted the statement. "Sorry. I was letting my mouth get ahead of my head there."
    Gekkei shook his head. He pressed his hands against his temples. "Your assessment is correct. It is His Highness to whom I wish to explain myself, to say that I did not kill him for mean or malicious motives. No matter how despised or detestable he might have become, my intent was not to usurp the throne. That is the apology I would offer. But I would definitely be offering it to the wrong person."
    If he was to apologize, it should probably be to Heaven or to the people. He had trampled on the Will of Heaven, and that sin had robbed Hou of Divine Grace. That what he should apologize for—or at least that was what his head