CHAPTER 130: CHAPTER 81: IF YOU CAN’T FIND THE MONKEY, FIND HIS WIFE FIRST!

Ah Man racked her brains for a long time, wanting nothing more than to kill the villain but unable to turn the tide. She was just about to ask Harano if he had any more clues, when she saw him also frowning in deep thought, hand on his chin.

He’d been doing that a lot lately—mainly because shaving by hand in ancient times made his chin uncomfortable, so he couldn’t help but touch it all the time. Ah Man was a fast learner and loved to imitate him, so she’d subconsciously picked up the habit. But when she touched her own chin earlier, she didn’t feel much of anything. Seeing how into it he was, she couldn’t help getting curious, so she leaned over and reached out to feel his chin—hers felt like Ah Qing’s butt, all smooth; she wondered what his felt like.

There had to be something magical about it, otherwise why would he keep touching it? She had to try it for herself!

Harano smacked her paw away with a "smack" and glared at her—how dare you! Is a lowly household retainer like you even allowed to touch your lord’s chin?

Even generosity has its limits! At least get promoted to head of the family elders first!

Ah Man was a bit disgruntled at having been blocked, but seeing how troubled he seemed, she didn’t argue with him and focused on the matter at hand: "You’ve been racking your brains for ages. Any other clues? If there are, I’ll hurry off and check! Not being able to find this person is driving me nuts—I can’t even get on with anything else!"

"Don’t rush! Let me think a little longer!" Harano actually had a bit of a lead, but this wild kid Ah Man had interrupted his thoughts, so he had to start over again.

There definitely was such a person as Monkey in the historical record—but right now, he couldn’t be found... Not farming in the village, not one of Oda Danjo Chonosuke’s lang faction, so maybe he had to look from another angle. For example, after the Battle of Okehazama, Monkey was given the name "Kinoshita Fumijiro" by Oda Nobunaga—so "Kinoshita" was the family name he used.

So theoretically, family names weren’t something you could make up at random—especially since during the Japanese Warring States Era, the "Kinoshita" surname already existed. Nobunaga couldn’t just point at Monkey and stuff him into some random family—that would be pretty suspicious, as if he were trying to force one of his own household retainers to inherit the Kinoshita clan, which easily led to misunderstandings.

Thinking this far, Harano asked Ah Man, "Are there people from the Kinoshita family in Owari? Is the Kinoshita clan a big deal here?"

Ah Man paused, not getting why he asked, but answered right away: "Of course there aren’t any Kinoshitas in Owari anymore—they died out, didn’t they? The house we’re living in now used to belong to the Kinoshita family!"

Her answer jogged Harano’s memory—the previous owner’s family name really had been Kinoshita, and had actually been shot dead by Oda Nobunaga when he accidentally set off an iron cannon.

He slapped his head in self-reproach and asked, "Then are there any other Kinoshita families left anywhere in Owari?"

"There shouldn’t be, I’ve never heard of any at least." Ah Man was pretty clued-in about family lineages and answered directly, "The Kinoshitas are mainly active in the Kinki region, and there are a lot of people with that name in Kyoto. Remote places like Owari wouldn’t have many, and I was actually pretty surprised to find one here."

Harano nodded slowly, recalling something Okurakiyebi had said when they’d first moved—apparently, the Kinoshita line really had died out, leaving only two young daughters, who would wait until they grew up and then take in adopted husbands to carry on the name...

Wait—could it be that Oda Nobunaga had Monkey marry one of the two sisters, thus reviving the Owari Kinoshita bloodline?

Wouldn’t that mean that one of those sisters is none other than the future "Three Wives of the Warring States" star, Ningning?

Am I living in Ningning’s childhood home? And planning to renovate her ancestral house?

What a small world. Never would’ve guessed...

Harano pondered for a while, feeling like this was highly possible but that he should check, so he instructed Ah Man: "Go find out where the two daughters of the Kinoshita family are living these days. Dig up some detailed info on them!"

"Huh?" Ah Man was baffled again. Weren’t they supposed to be searching for someone who looked like a monkey? How had this morphed into investigating the Kinoshita family’s two daughters? Had Harano really lost the plot? Or maybe Ah Qing didn’t keep an eye on that used donkey, or that donkey was so skilled at martial arts it still managed to break in every night and kick him in the head?

This doesn’t add up at all!

She couldn’t begin to fathom what Harano was thinking, completely confused: "Why? Why do you suddenly want me to go find those Kinoshita sisters? What do they have to do with you? What do you want with them?"

Harano suppressed his frustration, unable to explain properly. He could only heave a long sigh and look utterly miserable, saying nothing.

"Fine, fine, quit sighing—I’ll go right away!" Ah Man gave in as soon as she saw his expression. One Harano sigh, and he looked so troubled that she immediately felt uncomfortable, like she owed him a ton of money, guilty to her bones, and couldn’t rest easy unless she helped him out.

She surrendered, didn’t ask any more dumb questions, and turned to leave, muttering as she walked, "Today’s really a dung beetle eating a bean bun—the weirdness is off the charts! What the hell is even happening!"

......

Ah Man spent another whole day running around for intel, mobilizing all her old drinking buddies to help. Very quickly, she’d gotten the full scoop on the Kinoshita sisters, sped all the way home, wiped the sweat off her brow, and started reporting to Harano: "Found them! They’re living in Nagano Castle right now. Their adoptive father is Asano Nagasuke. The older one’s called Mimi, the younger one’s called Acheng."

As soon as she’d finished, she plopped down on the ground and shouted for Yayoi to bring her water. The past half month had just about worked her to death—tonight, she was determined to eat two chickens for a proper reward: one boiled for soup, one fried for meat, time to really treat herself!

Harano mulled over the pronunciation of "Mimi" and figured the kanji could be written as "Ningning." If so, it was almost certainly her—the future North Government Office, female Taiko of the Toyotomi Family, and one of the future Toyotomi clan’s Three Powerhouses.

After this realization, he glanced at Ah Man and immediately switched to full-on benevolent mode: personally waving a book to fan her, and even taking the tea Yayoi brought to hand it over himself. But he still asked, "So, Lady Kinoshita’s family of birth—that’s the Asano family?"

"Not quite! *hiccup*" Ah Man downed three cups of water, her belly sloshing, and hiccuped, "Her birth family is the Hinohara clan, but the Hinoharas were really poor, with a huge brood of kids they couldn’t feed. So they sent the two girls to be adopted by the Asano family, but..."

"But what?"

"But from what I heard, Asano Nagasuke himself went and begged for them, and even paid a sum of money for it. And apparently it was all done under the table with Nobunaga’s secret approval—but that’s just the rumor mill, I can’t vouch for it." She hesitated a bit more. "Also, when the Kinoshita sisters first arrived with the Hinohara family, they had a sum of money with them, probably proceeds from selling the house, or at least some of it. But the money vanished after it reached the Hinoharas, and supposedly the sisters had a really rough time there, living in the firewood shed and all, but like I said, it’s gossip, so who knows how true."

"And now? Do they have a good life at the Asano place?"

"They’re doing great!" Ah Man had dug up all this info with painstaking thoroughness—no wonder Harano had to feed her all that rice. "Asano Nagasuke’s always been a good egg, plus he’s fairly well-off and has no kids of his own. You even met him before—he’s the Archery General when he goes off to war, high salary, plenty of stipends, and treats the two girls like his own flesh and blood. Hear they’ve both grown up into lovely young women, with plenty of suitors already sniffing around."

Harano nodded slowly, feeling all the puzzle pieces click into place.

Oda Nobunaga was playing with iron cannons, accidentally shot Kinoshita’s thigh, which didn’t seem serious at first, so Nobunaga basically told Kinoshita to go heal himself. But then Kinoshita up and died some twenty days later, and the household retainer club flew into a rage, feeling like their lord wasn’t much of a person and plotting to give him trouble. Nobunaga probably got stubborn and ignored the Kinoshitas completely at the time.

Only after things simmered down did he start feeling guilty about his retainers—he wasn’t all that cruel to his own people, and was only fourteen or fifteen back then. Guess he wanted to make it right, so he secretly had someone find Kinoshita’s surviving daughters, saw they were in a bad way, then arranged for Asano Nagasuke to take them in—and did a good job of it: the older could be used to revive the Kinoshita name, and the younger to marry or adopt someone to inherit the Asano name, killing two birds with one stone. No reason for Asano Nagasuke to do all that work for nothing.

Plus if you think about it, Ningning’s relationship with Oda Nobunaga was always unusual. Supposedly, after Kinoshita Fumijiro became lord of a city and started collecting concubines like crazy—so many that Ningning couldn’t stand it anymore—she sent a letter straight to Oda Nobunaga. Nobunaga blew his stack, wrote back cursing Monkey as a "bald old rat who can’t see beyond the end of his nose," and outright ordered Monkey not to come see him anymore—told Ningning to visit in his place, like her mom’s family was backing her up against her husband.

And apparently in the Kinoshita family, Ningning was top dog too—the records say her maids often overheard her scolding Monkey, even laying into him so fiercely in Owari dialect he’d get red-faced and apologize; she had plenty of backbone.

So looking at it now, it really seems like Kinoshita Fumijiro was assigned to the Kinoshita family as an adopted son-in-law by Oda Nobunaga. As for why him, specifically...

Harano circled the desk, stroking his chin and tumbling further down the conspiracy rabbit hole—maybe Nobunaga had deliberately chosen to nurture him?

Nobunaga wanted to rule Owari as a dictator, and hated the local "dual system"—your retainer’s retainer isn’t your retainer, your retainer’s peasants aren’t yours either—he was determined to get all the local magnates under control. But locals don’t just sit back and wait to be steamrolled; you can bet they’d resist, both openly and behind the scenes.

This would be a slow process, so what you’d need is a total outsider, someone with no ties to the Owari clans, who could serve as a foil to keep the local big fish in check—so maybe that’s why Nobunaga took pains to promote Kinoshita Fumijiro, Akechi Mitsunari, and other grassroots samurai and wandering swordsmen?

In "Taiko 2," the samurai of noble clans like Katsuyori Shibata and Sasaki Nagamasa are constantly popping up to pick fights with Monkey. Even when Monkey is polite, they hunt him down just because they can—probably exactly for this reason.

Of course, you can’t take games too seriously, but in real history, Monkey was also fiercely disliked by people like Katsuyori Shibata. When Nobunaga died, things fell apart and the two camps went at it—no question, they were rival factions.

Nobunaga needed a grassroots guy like Kinoshita Fumijiro, so in order to give him a legitimate samurai identity—maybe also to reduce resistance from the clans—he simply had him revive the Kinoshita family name by marrying Ningning. Makes sense!

As for all that "grand romance" between Kinoshita Fumijiro and Ningning later recorded—seriously? A proper warrior’s daughter, being raised like a real Asano Family daughter, falling for a rootless lang faction grunt? Hard to imagine! Not to mention a thirteen-year-old girl and a twenty-six-year-old man in "free love"... That just sounds too fantastical. Probably total nonsense!

Harano did the mental math and felt almost certain this was how things had happened. Suddenly, he got an idea. He said to Ah Man, "Tomorrow, come with me to pay respects to Lord Asano Nagasuke."

He was very curious about Ningning and wanted to see her for himself—a bit of a historical field trip. And since Monkey was still nowhere to be found, at least he could track down his future wife first!