The air within the Seiryōden hung heavy with the cloying sweetness of aloeswood, its smoke curling like the fingers of restless spirits around the painted screens. You sat upon the dais, the weight of the Chrysanthemum Throne pressing into your bones, as the court unfolded before you in its usual dance of silk and subtext. To your right, slightly closer than propriety might dictate, knelt Mizukume Takako.

She was a paradox wrapped in brocade. Her face, pale as the underbelly of a moonlit river carp, held the delicate features of a maiden barely into her second decade—yet her eyes burned with a knowing that belonged to something far older. The courtiers called her "The Jewel of Heian-kyō," though none could recall who first bestowed the title. When she spoke, it was with the cadence of someone who had already heard every question before it left the lips of the asker.

You had tested her. Once, after a debate on the Lotus Sutra left even the abbot of Enryaku-ji stammering, you posed a riddle from the Kokin Wakashū—one so obscure the archivists had needed three days to verify her answer. She laughed behind her sleeve, a sound like wind chimes in a forbidden garden, and replied with such fluency the nobles gasped. Another time, you asked of the Yamata-no-Orochi’s eighth head, and she described its fangs as if she had plucked them herself.

And so, like a man bewitched by a tsukumogami, you drew her nearer. She attended your morning audiences, her presence a cool shadow at your elbow. She lingered in the nightingale-floored corridors, her voice threading through your private councils like a needle through silk. The ministers muttered—first in admiration, then in unease. Fujiwara no Michinaga himself once dared to suggest her insights were "uncanny for a woman of her station." You dismissed him with a wave, but the seed had been planted.