Story:

A lesser man would have withered. Nobunaga's tension simply broke—and he smiled, broadly, warmly, because the arrow had struck a target he was proud of.

"I am indeed the one being controlled at home," he said cheerfully. "And I love it that way."

The brush stopped.

Michiru-sama regarded him for a long moment—this warlord who, having been offered half the world, had just publicly confessed to marital happiness—and found no opening anywhere in his smiling face.

Infuriating. Almost idiot. Mostly infuriating.

She said no more on the matter.

She instead lifted the finished scroll, inspected it, and set it aside to dry. "I have organized a banquet," she announced, tone restored to imperial serenity, "to honor the generals who came to Kyoto's aid. Tonight, in the palace."

A pause, delicate as a blade between silk. "I request that Nobunaga-kyo bring his two famous wives as well. I should very much like to hear from them—directly, from the source—the funny stories of their husband."

Nobunaga's smile remained physically intact while, behind it, his soul began quietly composing its farewell.

He ran the reasons for refusal through his mind: state affairs, military councils, an urgent campaign against nothing in particular. Each one collapsed under the weight of the amused eyes across the desk.

One does not decline one's empress. One especially does not decline one's empress twice in the same audience.

"...It would be our greatest honor," he said, sweating.

He left the imperial castle with his escort, riding beneath the red banners of a triumphant army, hailed by the citizens of a capital his discipline had won over.

In his hands, wrapped in ceremonial silk, he carried a scroll of exquisite calligraphy in a pretty woman's writing style—flowing, graceful, and utterly without mercy—the four big characters reading: Tenkafubu.