Adventure of Miyamoto Mifune 1

Miyamoto Mifune steps from the tea house annex into the market crush, the salve on his wrist prickling under sweat and cloth. Ahead, the Noble’s route sketch points toward a cloth merchant’s stall near the square’s center.

The Watchful Retainer moves half a pace behind him, eyes cutting through the crowd. Two monks in temple gray stand too still beside a spice cart, their attention fixed not on the wares, but on the flow of people.

A boy darts between baskets and nearly shoulder-checks Mifune. As he slips past, a folded scrap brushes Mifune’s sleeve and drops near the stall path, as if meant for someone moving with purpose.

One monk turns his head, too sharply, and the other follows. Their gaze lands on Mifune’s hidden wrist, then slides toward the merchant stall, as if the net has already been cast.

Miyamoto Mifune’s fingers hook the folded scrap from the dust before anyone else can claim it. Without breaking stride, he slips toward the merchant stall, the note hidden in his sleeve as the crowd swallows him.

The scrap opens just enough to show a wax-stamped line and a fresh ink mark, the kind a courier would use to mark a handoff. It is not a decoy, and the route on it points straight through the stall’s rear awning.

Ahead, the boy glances back once, startled by how quickly the paper vanished. He keeps moving, but his pace gives him away to anyone watching for a runner.

The monks’ attention shifts from the scrap to the stall, and one of them starts threading through the buyers. Their line of sight no longer searches the whole street, only the place the boy is headed.

Mifune reaches the edge of the stall in step with the traffic, close enough to hear the courier’s sandals slap the boards behind the cloth drape.