Story:

The four of them stood in the entrance of the greatest command tent in Yamato—and stared.

Inside, in full silver armor, sitting at the war table covered in maps and dispatches, was a woman with long blue hair flowing loose over her pauldrons—and before her, arranged in a neat row, five bowls of rice, each stacked mountain high.

And she was eating. Enthusiastically. Joyfully. Without the slightest hesitation about the apparently catastrophically wrong ration amount for a lady of her size.

She was engulfing rice at a rate that explained several Uesugi supply manifest entries, chopsticks moving like a master swordsman's blade work, cheeks working, eyes half-closed in bliss.

The Dragon of Echigo. The brightest of the age. The top strategist of Yamato. Having her ration session. Nobunaga stared, utterly poleaxed.

The rumors—every campfire in the realm told the story that the Dragon of Echigo was a glutton beyond compare, that her army's baggage trolley carried more rice than arrows, that no feast could survive her attendance.

But in Nobunaga's mind the Dragon had always been some enormous hulking ogre of a man, a mountain of muscle with an appetite to match. He had never imagined the legend was... a cute and pretty lady like this. Dainty-faced. Delicate-handed. Politely homicidal-looking even mid-chew.

His gaze lingered one full second past the boundary of diplomatic safety.

Kicho let out a dry cough beside him—the cough of a wife watching her husband ogle, distinguished only by volume.

Nobunaga returned his eyes to the middle distance with the discipline of a man who had survived years of marriage.