Um, yeah. This one's just really short and kind of weird. It's half-way an inside joke, and halfway speculation about certain very disparate characters running in the same social circles. Spoilers for episode 15, and references to things from the rest of the series that you probably won't pick up on if you haven't watched it. Thanks to MariphasaHectene and Lotusseed for assuring me it was worth posting despite the weirdness, or perhaps because of it. I'm not quite clear on which.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When Imano Yatsuha was 19, her father Jinpachi abruptly decided that dropping hints was simply not enough, and it was time he took a more active role in getting her betrothed—before she did anything crazy enough to make her permanently unmarriageable. He started asking around his friends in the martial arts world…because there was no point in trying to hook his daughter up with anyone who couldn't keep her in hand…sort of…more or less.
And so one pleasant spring day when she would have given anything to be outside viewing the hanami from the tops of the trees themselves, Yatsuha found herself drinking tea and making painfully proper conversation with the master of some arcane kendo dojo, her over-enthusiastic father, and the master's adopted son, who was blissfully unaware this was a mi-ai. He was undeniably handsome (in a way that made Yatsuha wonder who'd be wearing the hakama at their wedding), an excellent swordsman, from a good family (she noticed the master conveniently omitted the part about that family being on the outs with the shogunate), highly accomplished, a perfect gentleman, blah de freakin' blah. He was also too polite to even so much as gaze directly at her, so it had been very, very boring…and hence Yatsuha was shocked when he suddenly fixed her with a stare of white-hot passion. She thought that maybe this one had some potential after all….
…until she realized that the stare was directed at the felinely graceful boy who was tending the tea, and who was returning it with equal intensity, and a highly suggestive crooked eyebrow.
It was then she decided—once and for all--that she was not marrying any goddamn samurai.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A mi-ai is a formal visit arranged by a go-between or by a young man and woman's parents for the purpose of meeting a potential mate.