Story:

"Nobunaga-kyo," Michiru-sama said, grinding ink with unhurried, graceful circles as she prepared her calligraphy desk.

"Why do you not stay in Kyoto, but appoint a representative instead? Did you not do all of this—" a brush-tip gesture that somehow encompassed the banners, the forty thousand men, the fallen Miyoshi, "—to reach the center of political power?"

Nobunaga felt a flicker of genuine pleasure. Smart. And direct. The court he had expected—layers of veiled courtesy, words wrapped in words—had turned out to be a woman who asked exactly what she wanted to know, like a general across a war table.

He offered her the same courtesy in return. No excuses, no ornaments.

"Because there is still a vast land that does not answer to the Tenno's Shogunate reign," he said plainly. "Kantō, Chūgoku, Shikoku, Kyūshū—provinces where the imperial word has not carried through."

"I will continue my Tenkafubu—unifying the nation by force. My place is in the field, achieving. The capital is already won. Winning it twice would be a waste of my remaining years."

The grinding stone whispered. The ink turned black as a night sky.

And then Michiru-sama laughed—a low, knowing laugh, silk sliding over silk—and set her brush down.

"There is a quicker way, Nobunaga-kyo." She looked at him through the morning light, and her eyes held the still confidence of a woman who had never in her life been refused anything that mattered.

"Stay here. Stay at the Kyoto palace—by my side. Become my emperor consort."

Her voice remained elegant, unhurried, as though discussing the weather or the season's first plum blossoms. "And the land becomes yours. Not borrowed, not held at spearpoint—yours. And your heir's. Forever."

She lifted her chin slightly and stared at Nobunaga, waiting for his reply.