#The Third Son's Name
zn03 closing fiction · Seriousness ★★ · pure Scent (fiction). No rules or numbers appear.
I am Kageyama Saburo.
Saburo. The third son. That is all.
My brothers have real names. The eldest is Munehisa, the second is Munetoki. The middle character is the same in all of them — "Mune (宗)." It is the character my house has passed down for generations. My grandfather, my father, and his father's father all lived with that character set in the middle of their names. To receive that character means you are of this house's bloodline, and that someday you might raise the banner of this small mountain castle.
I do not have it.
"Saburo is enough for you." So my father said. He was not angry. He simply said it, the way you watch the rain fall from under the eaves. I know, too, that our house is not large enough to pass the shared name-character down even to a third son. One patch of field, some twenty retainers, one shrine on the back hill. That is all of the Kageyama house.
Still, sometimes I think: Saburo is not a name but a number. When someone calls my name, all I answer back is the fact that I was the third child to be born.
That night, the back hill cried out.
At the ujigami shrine the sound of the bell shook as if gone mad. It was the sound of a Barrier breaking. The eldest had gone down with the second brother to the village at the foot of the mountain, and my father was confined to his bed. The old priest who guarded the shrine crawled out to the veranda and gasped.
"Young master… the inner Barrier… something dark has entered…"
Something neither living nor dead. A thing leaked in from the Spirit Realm. Inside the shrine, it was after the memorial tablets of our ancestors.
My legs trembled. My brothers would not have hesitated. Munehisa, Munetoki — those who had received the character of the bloodline. But I am Saburo. The third child.
And yet my feet moved first. I picked up the torch the priest had dropped and ran up the mountain path.
The inside of the shrine was cold. With every breath, my white breath froze in the air. Beyond the darkness where the memorial tablets stood in rows, a formless thing slowly raised its head.
Run, my mind screamed.
Instead I thrust the torch forward. My hand shook and the flame danced.
"This is… the shrine of the Kageyama house."
Was my voice always this small? Still I did not stop.
"Those memorial tablets are my grandfather, and his grandfather's grandfather. Even the ones I never saw alive — all of them are my family."
The darkness rippled. I saw it reach a hand toward the tablets. The dead cannot protect themselves. Only the living can protect them. Though no one had ever taught me, it boiled up from the marrow of my bones.
I swung the torch. Twice, three times. I tore off the bell the priest had worn and wound it around my wrist, and along the old line scored into the shrine's floorboards I drew the fire. The path of the Barrier joined again. The darkness shrank without even a scream, then touched the first light of dawn and scattered like smoke.
I slumped down before the tablets and trembled for a long while. I was alive. The shrine, and I.
A few days later, my father called me from his bed.
A gaunt hand took mine. My brothers knelt on either side. Munehisa, Munetoki. The two who held the character of the bloodline.
"Saburo," my father said. "I hear it was you who guarded the shrine that night."
I bowed my head.
"That I could not give you the shared name-character… it weighed on me to the end." My father's voice grew thick. "But seeing today, I know your name was not empty after all."
My father slowly went on.
"Saburo. Third son. — It means you have two elder brothers. It is a name born to guard their side when a brother raises the banner. If there is one to carry on the headship, there must also be one to hold the headship up so it does not fall. It was not the eldest nor the second who guarded the shrine. It was you."
Those words fell into the very center of my chest.
The name that had been like a number held a meaning, at last. Not one I had received — but a meaning I had carved myself.
My brothers were watching me. Munehisa smiled faintly. "Saburo." For the first time, that name did not sound shameful.
I am Kageyama Saburo.
There is no character of the bloodline in the middle. But now I know. The name that guards the back when a brother's sword advances. The name that raises again the falling banner. The name by which I, the living, guard my dead family.
That is the third son's name.
I carved the meaning into it, myself.
(End)