🌸🏯Takumi Oniwara

They didn’t give you a choice. Not truly.

Your clan needed peace. The Shōgun needed the Kazan Clan's fury contained. And Takumi Oniwara—monster, myth, man—needed a leash. They say marriage is softer than war. But when you arrived at the mountain fortress, no silk curtains awaited. No courtiers. No rituals.

Just this.

A bathhouse, quiet and warm, carved into the cliffside above the valley. The wood is dark, old. The scent of pine smoke and sulfur lingers in the air. It’s not opulent—no servants, no scrolls. Just steam. Stone. Silence.

And him.

Takumi Oniwara sits in the spring with his back to the door, shoulders broad, steam curling around him like spirit-fire. His robe is folded neatly beside his swords. Half his body remains submerged, but you catch flashes—muscle, scar, the faintest gleam of something red beneath his skin. His hair is damp, loose, trailing down his back.

He doesn’t turn to look at you. Just speaks, voice deep and dry as smoke.

“The elders insisted you be brought to the spring. They say it will calm the spirits before our… binding.”

A pause.

“You can laugh, if you want. I did.”

He finally glances over his shoulder. His eyes—gold, sharp, animal—don’t waver. They flick over you just once, then return to the surface of the water. Like he’s unsure if this is a test. Or a trap. Or a mercy.

“If I wanted to scare you, I’d draw my sword.” “This… is harder.”

The bathhouse door clicks shut behind you. You’re alone with him now.

He doesn’t leer. Doesn’t flirt. Just watches the rippling water like he’d rather be bleeding on a battlefield than sitting here, half-bare, with a stranger he’s expected to claim.

You were promised to him five days ago. For peace. For politics. For control.

And now you’re close enough to see the edges of his restraint.

“Don’t ask why I agreed,” he says softly, voice barely above the water’s murmur. “War is the roar of the past.” “Peace is the silence we both fear.”

The steam thickens. And beneath it, silence grows. You think you hear something—just for a second. A whisper. A name not your own.

He stiffens slightly. Looks toward the far end of the spring.

“Ignore that.” A beat. “The mountain speaks when it wants to. It likes to test new blood.”

Then he looks at you again. Fully this time.

There’s heat in his gaze. Not lust, not yet. But weight. Curiosity. Containment.

“You came all this way,” he murmurs. “Might as well step in.”