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The room is heavy with the smell of sweet jasmine incense and sex. The air is laced with it. Full till the brim of bursting. The walls, decorated with canes taking flight on an indigo deep background and detailed with golden eyes that gleam in the shine of my lonesome oil lamp, are all paper and panels pricked with little hidden peepholes.
Madam Kaji assured me that I would not be watched tonight, but I cannot trust her abstinence for good business. I’m almost sure someone is already watching. Satisfying a voyeuristic perversion in getting a good look at the onryō. It could be any of the staff as well as the paying customers and I don’t condemn them for their morbid curiosity, however, I do loathe them for it.
I cannot undress because of them. I cannot unbind. If they find out what I am I will be expelled from the premises immediately, and I cannot afford it.
The gold mirror in front of me shows me a blurred reflection of the face I carry, but feel so detached from. I take off my glasses, the orange catching the light for an instant, giving any audience a soundless thrill, I’m sure.
Let them see. I think. Bitterly, because how could I not be. Let them watch me, like they would death. With estranged horror and a sense of inevitability. Because I honed myself into a blade and my eyes spark the same alien blue shade as my steel, and both it and they, will cut you apart. There’s no room for kindness in a sword, much less for a hired one ordered to take the life of another ill fate.
I keep eye contact with my shaded and distorted reflection until the bitterness turns to exhaustion. A heavy sigh presses itself out of me and I pinch the brim of my nose.
Swordfather’s wisdom echoes from the corner of my mind ‘leave a broken man on your path for blood, and return a broken man just the same’. There’s truth in that, I know it, but I cannot stray. For, what is left if I do?
Somewhere in this house of secrets, a faint moan seeps through the paneled walls and reaches my ears. A girl, a woman, beckoning her own sort of assassination, her own kind of dirty work, of finishing off a man.
It stirs in me, like a drop of ink mixed into a glass of water with a gentle hand. That sound. Equal parts disgust and hopelessness, and … something else. My own secret, too perverted to even reveal to myself. That I am a person and I do feel.
“Excuse me, master samurai, may I serve you?”
I snap my head up as a soft voice outside my sliding doors addresses me.
The voice reminds me of someone I’ve heard before but I cannot place it without a face. It doesn’t matter who she is though, if the madam has sent me a ‘present’ before the mission she begged me to complete, she is either testing me or she doesn't know me at all.
“I’m in the want of nothing. Leave me,” I say, dismissing the girl.
“Please, if you do not let me enter, the madam will beat me.”
I am about to shape the words ‘I don’t care’, when the girl bursts in without permission.
I snatch my glasses and place them back on my face, quickly, routined, just like the draw of my sword. I wasn’t fast enough and I can tell that she saw the shade of my demon eyes as her own open wide before relaxing again.
Her face is soft. Rounded features shape her cheek and chin and she’s painted perfectly to enhance them, just like a porcelain doll. She is a striking sight, ‘a star in a night sea of black’ as Swordfather would’ve said. But it is her dark inveigling eyes that strike me the hardest. No pretense of fragile ceramics in sight there. Their black gaze is a sudden blow to the jaw and they push me off my balance. I mentally take a full moment to regain my footing.
I then realize … I recognize her. I feel the smallest of twitches in my brow.
“You’re trespassing.” I straighten myself, a physical manifestation to the mental battle inside of me. She is no ‘present’ and she is not one of Kaji’s employees.
The girl ignores me and steps forward to place the tray she’s holding between us. She slides the door shut and klaps the lock over the exit. Her movements are all calculated and elegant. Too poised, I think with a scowl. She’s not a servant who has served a master a hundred times over and therefore knows her place and her duties, instead she’s a noble girl, acting out a caricatured version of a tentative maid.
“Maybe just a sip,” she says again and pours two dishes of steaming tea. No not tea, the steam swirls in the air and stands in the room, and I can smell the alcohol now now, “for the nerves.”
It’s saké.
“I have no nerves to speak of. And I do not drink.”
She hands me a dish anyway. Her fingertips graze mine when I accept the gesture and when I look up to decipher whether or not it’s intentional I’m met with the two wells of her eyes. I can read the thoughts behind them although she’s doing her best to conceal them. I see revenge in those eyes. She flicks them down to my neck. My scarf. Ah, yes, Taigen’s scarf.
“Please master,” she pleads and pairs her gaze with an innocent smile.
“Is that the only word you know, girl?” I pause and look into my drink. A sheen of something oily swims on the mirror of the saké. She’s committed to the bit and doesn’t bite back at my insolence, which means this drink will do that for her.
“Is it not to your liking that I am civil?” Her words are wrapped in neat little packets with bows on them, leaving her blush soft lips like honey, but just like my saké, they are laced with poison.
I quirk the corner of my mouth up too. I loathe charades, my whole existence is a damned act as it is, but because of it she thinks me a simple man, which is not hard to perform and use to my advantage.
“Not really.” I raise my dish with one hand and pour the other dish full with the other, “but if I must drink, then at least don’t make me drink alone. I have ugly business coming and suddenly I am glad for company.”
I hand her the other drink. The girl’s eyes flutter. She accepts the dish but I notice the way she holds it at a distance from her own lips.
“Drink, girl.” I bring the dish to my lips, her gaze follows it but she does not sip. “ Or if I didn’t know any better I would think that you’re trying to poison me.”
Realization.
The next few movements happen in a flash. Akemi’s mask falls. I toss my dish away, the table tray flips, saké splash over the mat as I tackle the princess. She lands back against the floor, hard enough for air to get knocked out of her lungs, and I, on top of her.
This is where she reveals her true face. Those burning pits finally match with the rest of her features, anger and hate and desperation blazing out of her like a wildfire.
Finally. No more
“Poison? Truly? As if I wouldn’t recognize you.” I sneer, pinning her under me with my hands clasped around her wrists. We have the same sized frame, but I am stronger and it’s no struggle at all to keep her from escaping. “You think you can kill me so easily for ruining your engagement, Akami?” I drag out her name.
She only pauses for a moment before she wriggles and hisses, “I wasn’t going to kill you. It was a sleeping drug.”
I lift a brow, “and what would you have done with me unconscious?”
Akami’s eyes sizzle into mine, “tie you up and question you of course.”
“Ah.” I say, then flip her over on her stomach and secure her arms behind her back. I hold her there with a heavy knee, pressing her down, as I look around for the rope she must’ve brought. I find it coiled in the silk belt of her kimono, as well as a little pretty knife, which I toss out of her reach. “Solid plan, if you’d taken into account that I have dealt with far more cunning assassins than a love sick princess.”
“It’s a sleeping drug!” She tries to kick me but her kimono is too tight to fight in. It makes my job in tying her up easy work.
The bright red rope is clearly intended for the art of shibari, it runs smooth like butter between my fingers, and it makes me think of the ‘hidden pleasures’ that madam Kaji showed me. She had shown me these things like you would show a virgin boy the twelve and twenty woodcuts, eagerly and slyly, without knowing me or what my talents are.
I’ve never used it for any sexual pleasures though. Rope to me has always been an elegant puzzle, knots tighten and then unwinding with a tug, opposite to the direct slash of a sword. Rope demands patience whereas a fight demands action.
I fasten Akaie in a simple fisherman’s tie that compresses her arms to her chest in a red net of knots and lines. It takes me less than five minutes because I know the tie well and Akemi is small and easy to maneuver, although she fights me. I stand, pick her up by the rope and place her on her ass, facing away from me, like you would place a piece of luggage. Her fingers claw awkwardly at the rope that nets her hands and arms, and then she shoots me a furious stare over her shoulder.
“What did you do to Taigen?”
With the ends of the rope in hand I put my foot against the knot on her back and singe the knot.
She ‘oofs’ breathlessly as the tie squeezes her.
“I killed him.” I say, taking sadistic pleasure in the lie.
Her face pales instantly, becomes even paler than the chalked layer of makeup that already sits on her skin.
“No … “ devastation turns to fury, “no! You– you monster! How could you? I’ll slit your throat you demon!” She screams, thrashes, and I let the ends of the rope drop to the floor. I take a step back and watch her hissy fit. Watching her writhe, shrieking with heartache, all tied up … it has its own charm.
Tears leap down her cheeks, streaking the paint. Like cracks through ceramics.
I make an annoyed sound, deciding to undo the reaction before anyone come running to check on their employee. On the other hand, it’s fetish brothel. I’m sure screams are a part of the most organic sounds heard in this place.
“Your fool is alive.” I tower over her. Akemi is back on her back, fallen in her fit, and looking right up at me.
“Where is he?” The princess looks daggers up at me through her tears.
“I left him in the woods with a contract to fight and a broken blade.”
“Why are you wearing his scarf?”
“I took it after I’d knocked him out, because it was nicer than my own.”
Akemi opens her mouth to say something but then hesitates. A tear makes a run for it down the side of her face.
“I don’t believe you. Taigen is the bravest and most skilled swordsman in the world, you could not defeat him if you tried your best.”
“I already did. With an audience.”
“That was no honorable fight!”
I push my glasses up my nose with a fingertip, “your boyfriend is a dirty Kohama fish who now acts like a pompous peacock because he knows the most basic of moves. He needed to be taken down a peg.”
“Says the one who carries the air of arrogance everywhere they go.”
I blink, surprised, “I’m not arrogant.”
“He said, arrogantly.” She makes a matter-of-fact face. The princess is bound on the floor and utterly disheveled, makeup ruined and hair torn loose from her hairdo, yet, she still talks with such conviction in her voice.
She has stunned me with that but I shrug it off and the familiar scowl creeps back on my face.
“I don’t have time for this.” I turn, grab my sword that rested against the wall and fasten it to my belt where it belongs. I am about to make for the door but Akemi’s voice stops me.
“Hey! And what about me?”
I half turn, “what about you, princess?”
“Are you going to just leave me here?”
“Yes.”
“But-” she splutters, “you can’t do that, what if I die?”
“Then I guess I wouldn’t have to worry about you trying to poison me again.” I open the sliding doors and peek out to both sides, scouting for Ringo. I can’t see my damned apprentice anywhere, he must be off somewhere, helping himself to the accommodations of the ‘tea house’. I hang my head and let out another heavy sigh. From behind me I hear Akemi struggle against her ties again, “if I die then all of my father’s army will find you.”
I lean back on my heels and clap the doors shut. I can’t leave her here alone before I’m done with my assignment. She would only call for help and ruin my entire night and the fragile business plans I’ve forged with the madam.
“It would seem, judging by your presence in madam Kaji’s care, that you’ve run away from home, so your father’s men are already looking for you. However, it would also seem that they’re not that good at their jobs since they haven’t found you yet. So, since they’re utterly incompetent, how would they ever find me? I travel like smoke, unlike you.” I walk over to her and now I shoot her a truly arrogant glare. “I’m not that worried.”
She smiles venomously, “you should be.”
A sharp pain, originating in my left foot, flashes through me in a blinding white light. I bite back a curse and glare down. Akemi is no longer tied up, she is free and looks smug without comparison. I can’t move my foot.
Somehow Akemi had gotten hold of the pretty little knife, slashed her ropes and stabbed me through the foot, nailing me in place. Red blooms out over my shoes and then pools out onto the mat.
I don’t hold back the second curse as the pain grows searing hot and ripples up my entire leg. “Fuck!” I fall down on one knee and snatches out the knife that has penetrated my foot.
Akemi laughs, triumphantly, then she stills, “you are just like all the other men in my life. Underestimating me, belittling me, thinking yourself better than me, but while your nose is in the skies, you forget to look down.” She’s the one standing now, looking down on me and raising her delicate brows, “men fight like their enemy is already on their knees.”
I scoff humorlessly, “indeed they do.”
Akemi realizes that she doesn't have another weapon at hand and that, this time, I keep her little knife. She looks around and I can see her eyes go to the empty pot of saké. She plans to grab it and swing it at my head so she can flee, it’s written across her face.
I put the knife in my belt and raise my palms in a non-threatening gesture. The pain in my foot however is pulsing and I can feel my face twitch.
“Akemi, if you attack me again, I’m going to hurt you.” That's perhaps the truest truth spoken tonight in this entire tea house and I can see that the princess knows it too.
“Then let me go.”
“I don’t know if I can trust you to stay calm and quiet until I’ve finished my business here.”
“You keep saying that, state your business and I’ll know why it’s so important to stay out of it.”
I flick my eyes away for a moment, “it’s private.”
“But it’s part of your job. You kill people for money, correct?”
I’ve never heard it spoken out loud so plainly like that before. That is exactly what I do, and have done, for so many years now. Except this time it’s not for coin, it’s for information.
“I do what others cannot bring themselves to.” I say slowly, taking a step towards the girl. I can feel my left leather shoe is already filled with blood and I’m leaving red footprints behind me.
"An assassin … ” Akemi muses to herself.
“Yes.” I slide another careful step towards her. The pain is glowing red-hot in my foot, but I can ignore it. I might have to slit her throat even though I prefer not to. But there is no room for kindness in a blade and this girl has already tried to drug me, and now stabbed me – I am in my right to kill her off and go do my job.
Akemi is still in deep thought when she mumbles, “The engagement is ruined even if you’re telling me the truth about Taigen. He could kill you and regain his honor but my father might still not approve … ”
I shrug my shoulder. I couldn’t care less about their engagement.
“Have you ever killed a shogun, master samurai?” Her dark eyes shot into mine and stops me in my steps. She takes my hesitation as an invite to state her proposal. “How much would you charge for killing Tokunobu Daichi?”
“Your father?” I stare at her, “you want me to kill your father?”
Akemi keeps my eyes in hers, “if you do, I’ll make you a lord.”
I shake my head once in reply.
“I’ll make you rich beyond belief.” She crosses her arms over her chest. I don’t doubt for a second that she could. The image of me in my own palace flashes before my inner eye, but it is a strange fictional picture. Not because of her, but because of 'me'.
“I do not take contracts that don’t aid me in my personal mission.”
“And what personal mission is not aided by gold and power?”
That’s a fair point, but I have my answer.
“Revenge.” I all but growl.
Akemi mulls over my answer and taps her foot gently.
I notice again that she’s gorgeous. The orange gleam from the lamp enhances every soft curve and cuts every angle sharper. Her glossy hair falls over her shoulders like black waterfalls now that her hair-pins have all come loose. She looks roughed up, broken but fierce, a fighter, and I can respect her willpower.
I’ve killed prettier girls than her though.
As if speaking to my deprived thoughts she says; “so there is nothing I can offer you, that would convince you to take this contract?”
“Depends,” my tone is hushed and her face shifts from calculating to … something else. Intrigue?
“On what?” She asks, just as hushed. A light pink sheen has crept up over her cheeks.
It’s a thrill, I can’t deny it. Here she is, the princess, asking me to kill her father so she can have the man she loves, while weighing the costs that might be her body. If I was a man, I would’ve perhaps made her pay just that, but I am not.
It is not a man’s body under my clothes. And even if, if, she freely undressed and pressed herself up against me, ran her fingers through my hair and kissed my neck, she would be appalled to discover that my body is not a natural opposite, but instead a mirror. Like so many others, drawn in by the illusion.
I make my voice solid and cold, like the snow dusted black cliffs that hug the shore right outside, “if you know the whereabouts of the last three white men in Japan.”
.
.
.