As soon as Takeshi and Sota reached the old cart, Takeshi leaned directly against the pile of hay, while Sota sat in his cabin to take the reins of the horse, which had already rested and even managed to eat some hay from Sota's cart.
Sota would surely have been angry had he known the horse had eaten from his merchandise. Takeshi quickly checked if his bag was still under the pile of hay, and to his modest luck, he found it.
'It's good it wasn't stolen as well...'
He covered it stealthily, without Sota noticing—who was already struggling to keep his eyes open as he tried to urge the horse forward. Takeshi noticed the exhaustion on Sota's face and in his movements. After a quick glance at Sota's back, he said:
"I'm going to sleep. If you get tired, tell me and let me take the reins."
Sota shook his head.
"No need. I won't sleep until we reach the city. I'm used to long travels and going without sleep for days, so don't worry, Takeshi."
As soon as he finished speaking, the cart began to move. With the rotation of the wheels and the horse's hooves striking the fertile ground, Takeshi closed his eyes, trying to set his thoughts aside to get some rest and sleep.
***
Very slowly, Takeshi opened his eyes to find himself in a closed, square red room. There was nothing in it, no sound—just a fleeting silence. He raised his hands, seeing they had become much smaller and softer; he felt his body grow lighter. In other words, he had become years younger.
Furthermore, his vision was poor and his thoughts were entirely muddled. He felt a somewhat familiar sensation regarding this room—a familiarity he wished were not so... He couldn't yet grasp it; he couldn't yet realize he was dreaming, until a massive door appeared in the red room and slowly opened.
'You...'
As soon as the door swung wide open, Takeshi saw a man who looked exactly like him. His features were sharp and polished like a sword, while the red light reflected off his coarse white hair. It was Takeshi's father.
His clothes were stained with blood—blood splattered from someone's head. A head Takeshi could not recognize at that moment due to his confusion, but in his deep memory, he knew exactly whose head it was.
Takeshi could not utter a word. Had he been able to, the room would have been filled with insults and curses, given Takeshi's perpetual hatred for his father. This dream likely illustrated the reason for that.
'You bastard... why won't you just die?!'
Takeshi's father took a heavy step forward, then another, and another... With every step, the red of the room shifted toward a vivid crimson, then to the color of dark blood. Although the room was somewhat small, Takeshi's father did not get any closer to his son despite his many steps. The room only grew redder and more blood-soaked.
Takeshi's father had taken ninety-nine steps. As soon as his foot dropped for the hundredth step, the red color vanished from the room, replaced by a pitch-black darkness in which Takeshi could barely see his father. Silence reigned once more, then faint blue candles appeared in the corners of the room to highlight the sharp, deathly features of Takeshi and his father.
"This was your fault,"
his father spoke for the first time since the dream began.
"If you weren't a weak fool, none of this would have happened... your mother and I wouldn't have died that day. You must bear your mistake, for it will haunt you for the rest of your life."
Takeshi's father was a powerful man, incomparable to anyone on earth; the idea that his son was born a weak human was a sin against him. In particular, Takeshi had tasted nothing but suffering in his life. Since the source of 'Ki' in humans was closed, 'Yin' was the only component of his aura, and from his cursed life and constant suffering, it could be inferred that the amount of Yin he possessed was meager.
It was true that Takeshi was talented according to Orphen, and this was supposed to make his amount of Yin high. Since its maximum limit did not decrease but increased, Takeshi's aura should have been extremely dense. However, at one stage of his life, Takeshi lost his aura according to his own words—he claimed this was why he was nicknamed 'The Pest.'
'No, the fault is yours, for you are the reason I exist in this cursed life...'
Takeshi stared intently at his father's empty face, which showed no emotion whatsoever. The more he focused on his father's face, the more the features of rage intensified on Takeshi's own. His brows furrowed gradually, and he gritted his teeth so hard he felt a red liquid sliding down his lips.
'My existence is your fault, you damned bastard... my mother's death is your fault, you wretch... my entire suffering is your fault, you damned bastard...'
Rage was evident in his features and even his thoughts. Takeshi hadn't been able to show this immense amount of anger the previous time he had conjured a version of his father in his mind, as he believed, because he had been in a moment of despair and on the verge of surrendering. But here, if Takeshi had the power to move, he would have tried to shatter his father's face until he woke up.
Takeshi's father took a real step that brought him close to his young son's body. He raised the hand holding that muddled head and, without a thought, threw it violently at his son.
From the force of the throw that struck Takeshi's stomach, he was propelled backward toward the rear wall, which in turn vanished, replaced by a vast abyss with walls stained with blood flowing like a waterfall. Although he was in a dream, he felt the pain. A free-fall like this was supposed to make a person wake up immediately, but Takeshi had not woken up yet.
This time, he was able to move and shift that cursed head that had been unclear to him the whole time, focusing on it to know who it was. And indeed, he remembered him. He remembered him because he had seen him only once, and his condition was exactly as it appeared in the dream.
He turned his head downward to see when he would reach the lowest point of this abyss, which was near and filled with the corpses of people he had killed with his own large hands and his precious sword. The bodies were lined up—some completely severed, others with crushed faces.
All had been killed in brutal ways—methods Takeshi still remembered using to kill his victims throughout his childhood and early youth, until his gloomy isolation and long loneliness began. He realized that he had been in a state of grace all those years, for he had not been forced to kill a human soul during them. But now, he would return to his old habits.
Before hitting the ground and joining those lined-up corpses, he thought to himself regarding his father:
'I kept a promise to kill you with my own hands, but my promise vanished with your death... However, I promise to kill you in my dreams and rid myself of you, so that I never see you in my nightmares again...'