43 minutes ago, MirumotoKatsuro said:

Do we know that for sure? I thought it had been left ambiguous whether that was the task he'd given her or not, which is actually why I didn't mention him, because my Hametsu sense fires up at all sorts of things. Maybe I'm misremembering though, and it was made clear.

Well, she said that the task of planting the letter was the most important task, it was given by her daimyo (Haimetsu) and she was planting the letter in the crane guest house specifically. I'm not sure how much more they could spell it out.

Frankly, that's exactly the kind of assumption I've been trying not to make when reading these stories, because I'm enjoying trying to figure out where it might be going. No need to be rude.