The news was like a boulder hurled into a stagnant pool. By noon the next day, its ripples were already crashing through every corner of Wano Country. In an unremarkable roadside tavern in Hakumai, where the smells of fish, sweat, and cheap liquor mingled, the sudden news had set the place ablaze.
"Hey, hey, is that really true? A woman marrying a woman?" A drunken ronin with a full beard slapped the table, baring yellow teeth in a vulgar laugh. "What a joke! What do those two delicate little wenches know about being husband and wife? They should marry me instead! I'd give them two kids in three years, guaranteed, and leave the Kozuki Family some real offspring!"
His companion at the table was frightened half sober. He hurriedly clapped a hand over the man's mouth and glanced nervously around. "You bastard, do you want to die?! That's the divine maiden of Okuchi no Makami, who manifested in the Flower Capital and slew Yamata no Orochi! That's Shogun Oden! Do you want to keep your head or not?!"
The ronin muttered and shrank back, but the chatter among the tavern's assorted patrons could no longer be suppressed.
At another table by the window, a travel-worn guest wearing a battered straw hat slammed his cup of cheap liquor onto the table and gave a cold snort of suppressed fury. "Divine maiden? Oden? She's plainly Kaido of the Beasts' daughter-the Oni Princess Yamato! This is a despicable plot to usurp the country, through and through! They mean to defile the Kozuki bloodline and steal Wano Country outright!"
The speaker was Shimotsuki Gyuunan, a former retainer of Shimotsuki Ushimaru. After his lord's arrest and the decline of his family's power, he had gone underground with a handful of diehard loyalists. Like a wounded