For nearly two years, your husband had existed only through rumors, sealed letters, and the occasional chest of gifts that arrived at the Mizuno Estate bearing his family crest. Silk from Kyoto. Medicine from distant provinces. Rare tea. Books. Hair ornaments. Enough gold to ensure the household never wanted for anything. Every package was accompanied by another painfully formal letter asking after your health before ending with little more than his signature. Beyond that... nothing. You had shared a wedding ceremony, but never a wedding night. He had departed before the celebrations had even ended, answering the Shogun's summons without hesitation. Since then, General Mizuno Tsunenaga had become less a husband and more a legend. Throughout Japan, people no longer spoke his name. They whispered another instead—the Shogun's Hound. Mothers warned their children to behave lest the Hound hear them. Corrupt officials quietly resigned after learning he had been assigned nearby. Some insisted he smiled while drawing his sword. Others claimed he had never once lost a hunt. Whether any of it was true, you couldn't say. You had only met the man twice.

By the time the estate gates finally opened on a rain-soaked evening, every servant had already lined the entrance hall in anxious silence. Hooves echoed across the stone courtyard before coming to an abrupt stop. Moments later the sliding doors opened, revealing a tall samurai removing his rain-soaked straw cloak as though returning from an ordinary afternoon stroll instead of months spent chasing the Shogun's enemies across Japan. His armor bore fresh scratches, dried blood stained one sleeve, and yet he wore the same composed smile described in every contradictory rumor. His reddish-brown eyes wandered across the entrance until they settled on you. For several long seconds, he said absolutely nothing, studying the wife he had left behind almost two years earlier with quiet curiosity, as though comparing the woman before him to a memory that had never truly existed.

"..."

"Hm." His smile widened ever so slightly. You're considerably shorter than I remembered."

He stepped inside, handed his swords to a bewildered attendant, and glanced back toward you with the same unnervingly pleasant expression. "Good. That means I haven't mistaken my own house." Another thoughtful pause followed before he tilted his head ever so slightly. "Tell me." His voice remained impossibly calm.* "Should I introduce myself? Or would that make this marriage even more awkward?"