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Itsuki could see why Mei liked the place. Despite its old-fashioned appearance Seidou was the kind of high class that made Itsuki want to hide his wallet, as if one of those newfangled x-ray machines was lurking behind the very nice ink painting on the wall, waiting to reveal how empty his pockets were. He couldn't have afforded a visit on his own, and definitely not a private room. Any of the famed houses of Yugao were out of his salary range—he'd grown up knowing that just like all the other average young men who set their sights on Yugao and only ever reached it in their dreams. Itsuki was only a secretary for pity's sake, and a new hire at that. He'd spent his first two weeks on the job deathly certain that he would be fired any minute for one reason or another. For doing his job, as the chairman's son ordered him about. Or for not doing his job, since most of what Mei asked him to do wasn't within the parameters of the position Itsuki thought he'd signed up for.
By the third week Itsuki had moved beyond fear. After all, sometimes life presented opportunities. Sometimes those opportunities came in arrogant, spoiled, born-with-a-silver-spoon-in-his-mouth packages. …And sometimes those packages needed to be chauffeured around town, so Itsuki did as he was told, because honestly there was no other way to handle the likes of Mei. Itsuki was past fear and past optimism and standing firmly in territory that could only be called resigned and perhaps a bit awestruck.
So whenever Mei said, "Let's go," Itsuki said, "Yes, sir," and he went and brought the car around. The noisy, rumbly, one-of-the-first-on-Hanano-soil cars imported over from Ester, which Itsuki had been generously trained how to drive, and he wasn't convinced that if anything unfortunate happened to it he wouldn't be held accountable. Mei loved the car. Mostly Mei loved riding in the car and collecting enthralled looks down every street. Itsuki suspected Mei had named the car, but he had yet to catch the name being spoken aloud.
They'd driven to Seidou a few times now, and everyone knew the drill. One of the household guards or servants would be called out to keep an eye on the car for a few hours—Mei never stayed the whole night, always claimed to have other things to do, but Itsuki had driven him to work enough mornings to figure out that Mei liked to sleep in, and there was no way he would endure the indignity of being kicked out of a courtesan house as soon as the sun rose. So visits were brief, usually in the early evening, sometimes catching the last flares of sunset giving their final hurrah on the horizon. The courtesans and food were both served fresh, and the fawning began as soon as they stepped through the door. After the first few visits Itsuki began to wonder if the fawning was customary across the board or for Mei's benefit. He never had the chance to find out before being escorted from the main building to one of the private rooms.
That was where Itsuki lost sight of whatever it was that kept bringing Mei back. The luxury, the food and drink, and most of all the fawning—all of that made sense. Most customers came to places like this for reasons like that. Some came for specific people. Itsuki had seen a variety of different faces each time he visited with Mei, but there was one that remained the same each time.
Eijun never fawned. He was outright rude when his fellows let him get away with it. More than once Itsuki had found himself calculating property damage costs in his head when Mei started throwing tantrums.
"Feel free to ignore them if you want."
"Pardon? Oh." Itsuki blinked and reminded himself to loosen his grip on the teacup, lest he become the cause of property damage (and he would have that kind of luck). "I can't help it, I—we wouldn't want to cause Seidou any trouble."
"You won't," said the courtesan, the one with long, blushing pale hair pinned up and garlanded with seasonal flowers—purple aster and pink cosmos. This one's name was… Haruichi, Itsuki was pretty sure. He was usually the one booking the courtesans in advance, but he didn't have to match faces to names for that. Or in Haruichi's case, part of a face to a name. A tilt of his head and he was instantly coy, all petal-soft smile and pretty neck on display. "They've always been like this. No one's died or been seriously injured yet."
Itsuki dragged his eyes away from the collarbones peeking out of the loose folds (scandalously loose, if they'd been anywhere else but Yugao) of a girl's purple-and-gold kimono. He had a feeling he was following a script when he said, "Always?" Followed by, "Yet?"
Haruichi laughed modestly behind his sleeve and nodded. "It's true. Everyone was sure Narumiya-sama would storm out after being left alone in a room with Eijun-kun for a minute. Then it was two minutes. By five minutes there were wagers being made…"
"How long did they last?"
The smile on Haruichi's lips quirked, and Itsuki instantly regretted his choice of words.
"On second thought maybe I don't want to know the answer to that."
"Answer to what?" Mei asked, inviting himself into Itsuki's space with a flash of bright blue eyes and wide, manic grin—and by doing so, he deliberately turned his back on Eijun.
"Oi! Don't ignore me, you—"
"Noisy." Mei stuck a hand into the bowl of cherries sitting on the table, scattering some of the fruit as he plucked one out and shoved it into Eijun's open mouth. "Remember it's rude to talk while eating."
Eijun chewed with a murderous expression boding ill on his face, and the whole time Itsuki silently prayed for him to exercise restraint and not spit the pit at Mei's upturned nose (because it would be hysterically funny for maybe two seconds before Itsuki had a raging man-child on his hands). By some stroke of fortune his prayers were answered, and instead of antagonizing Mei into another round of squabbling Eijun selected his own cherry from the bowl and held it out between his fingers, though more like a challenge than an offering.
"Your turn," he said, and Mei rolled his eyes but leaned forward to accept with a bite of white teeth that sank into the cherry's soft flesh, pulling it away from Eijun's fingers. Pink lips closed around the fruit, jaw working.
"Tadano-sama."
Itsuki snapped to attention. He felt brittle in places, small and unseemly fissures opened up that polite company would ignore. The smile Haruichi offered was all sweetness and no secrets as he held a cherry by the stem, plump and red-cheeked over its gold tone. Probably a mirror of Itsuki's face at the moment.
"Oh, no, that's…" …embarrassing, was what he didn't say. From the corner of Itsuki's eye he could see Mei feeding Eijun again, more delicately this time, like he was bestowing a red-jeweled gift.
"Are you sure? They're quite good." Slender fingers twirled the cherry in the air and Haruichi continued to smile like the most disarming thing in the world. "Most cherries are imported, but these are locally cultivated and fresher than anything. Hanano's first home-grown edible cherry. Try one?"
Refusing would just be rude, wouldn't it? And possibly un-patriotic. "All right then…" Still, opening his mouth to be hand-fed made Itsuki burn all the way to the tips of his ears. Haruichi smelled faintly of flowers, a gentle scent that wasn't at all overpowering, but a wave of dizziness filled Itsuki's head to the brim anyway. When the cherry was placed on his tongue he closed his mouth around it automatically, and with a slow-drawing tug Haruichi pulled the stem free.
A subtle sweetness leaked out of the fruit when Itsuki bit into it, juicy and light and yes, very fresh. Not too sugary and not too acidic. His teeth scraped around the pit, which he spat awkwardly into his palm, no way to be decorous about it.
"Good?" Another cherry had made its way to Haruichi's nimble fingers, but this one rested against the corner of his smiling mouth.
"Yes," Itsuki said, still blushing. "Thank you."
He wasn't sure whether to be relieved or put-out when Mei's outraged cry let loose by his ear.
"You little—you did not just spit that at my face."
Of course the heavens had seen fit to allow Itsuki the illusion of hope before cruelly yanking it away. He slowly dragged his eyes from the brilliant scarlet unfurling on Mei's cheeks to Eijun who had a hand clapped over his mouth, looking less shocked and apologetic and more like he was trying to contain waves of hilarity from bursting forth, fearless in the face of petty wrath. Although petty or not, the Narumiya name carried no small amount of weight. There was fearless and then there was stupid, and Itsuki couldn't discern on which side Eijun fell.
"It's not my fault your face was in the way!"
On second thought it was probably the stupid side after all.
Mei growled, "I'll show you in the way…"
Eijun stuck his tongue out, and for a split second Mei's face went even more livid before the expression muddled into bafflement, staring as Eijun wiggled his tongue. Balanced on the flat of it was a knotted cherry stem.
Mei swiped the stem up to eye it up close, then glared at Eijun again. "Not impressed, I've seen this trick before. Hell, I know who taught it to you."
"I'm much better at it than he is!"
"Whatever. You're gonna have to do better than that if you want back on my good side."
"Like I care about that!"
"You could at least apologize for spitting in my face!"
"It was an accident, you vindictive bakeneko!"
Itsuki dropped his head in his hands, and leaned towards Haruichi when the latter started to rub soothing circles over his back. "They've always been like this?"
"They certainly have."
❧
The night had grown late and sleepy with the summer buzz of crickets outside, and Itsuki was feeling sluggish despite staying sober all evening. Haruichi's head was pillowed on Itsuki's shoulder, flowery scent in his nose, and a fan of aster petals tickled against his cheek. Somewhere a few rooms down a loud party was still in full-swing, warm laughter bleeding through the walls.
Mei slouched over the table and propped his cheek on his fist, staring straight ahead at nothing for a concentrated moment before muttering out of the blue, "Tch, that bastard. Who the hell does he think he is, making me his messenger boy? It wouldn't kill him to send something to Seidou. Is he being cheap? That lazy…"
Itsuki raised his head, and so did Eijun from his loose sprawl on the floor.
"Huh?"
"Oi, pay attention when I'm talking to you!" Mei's hand slapped down on the table, which sounded like it hurt more than it served to intimidate, and then he crossed his arms, fuming. "That guy says hello from Raelyn, and the weather's awful, and he probably misses you or something grossly sentimental like that. There. Message delivered. Now he owes me, so hah!"
"Oh!" Eijun sat up.
"Yeah, now you listen, but I'm not saying it again—"
Eijun crossed his legs and held onto his ankles, eyes lit up and excited all of a sudden like a child. "So you heard from him too! I got his letter two weeks ago."
The flower petals by Itsuki's face trembled and Haruichi buried his mirth deep into the crook of Itsuki's neck, little breaths of silent laughter puffing over his skin. Haruichi was the lucky one. Itsuki had to bite his lip and hope Mei didn't glance in his direction.
Fortunately—or maybe for better or worse in equal measure—Mei's attention was riveted to Eijun in the middle of the floor. "Letter?" he said, expression blank.
"Yeah, it was raining nonstop when he sent it. And it was hot, too. He said he should've gone in the spring, he forgot how terrible Esteren summers could get."
"Letter?" Mei repeated as if he hadn't heard.
"He went to see his old school—you went to that one too, right? King-something-or-other. He said to tell you the tapestry has been replaced but there's still a scorch mark on the wall and it kinda looks like it spells your name. What's the story there, huh?"
"Letter?"
("Here we go," Itsuki muttered under his breath, and Haruichi let out a barely audible giggle.)
"That—that asshole sent you a letter?" Mei raged. He shot to feet and began to pace, making slashing motions with his arms. "All I got was a fucking postcard! And he asked me to—oh, that snake. Here I was, being nice and magnanimous thinking he was, I don't know, depressed after everything like a normal human being with feelings might be. But no, not Kazuya." Coming to a stop, he smacked a hand to his forehead and groaned. "I should have known. He always did enjoy haring off on his own whenever he got the chance. I can't believe I wasted a single millisecond feeling sorry for him. I even funded part of the trip!"
Eijun smiled brightly. "He said to tell you thanks again for that, by the way. He'll send you a souvenir."
"How thoughtful," Mei snarled. "I'm so very grateful he'll make time for that in between writing you another novel."
"It was only a couple pages, really. And he wrote a few paragraphs in Esteren which he knows I can barely read."
"What an asshole."
"Yeah, he's kind of a bastard even from the other side of the world."
"That smirking son of a bitch. That—that damn tanuki…"
("Oh dear," Haruichi said, quiet. "Eijun-kun is rubbing off on him."
"That sounds terrible," Itsuki whispered back.)
Mei suddenly whirled. He marched over to where Eijun sat and hauled him up by the front of his clothes, ignoring his protests, and with the sheer, single-minded resolve of the one and only Narumiya Mei, dragged Eijun to the door. "Let's go."
"What? Where? Why?"
There were a few inches of difference in their height, but Mei was all blue-eyed brilliance when he yanked and Itsuki sympathized with the way Eijun went along with it in a daze. Then Mei was kissing him with the full force of his outrageously strong will, the perfect line of his jaw moving with every shift of his mouth, and Itsuki sympathized a lot less as Eijun melted chocolate-soft into the kiss. The kiss with the person who was effectively Itsuki's boss, and Mei was a lot of other things, too. Mei was childish and spoiled and beautiful and fierce. Proud and haughty. Irresistible. Unbelievable from the moment he'd laid scintillating blue eyes on Itsuki his first day at the bank and said, "You, let's go. I want to go to Touka's for lunch."
And then there was Itsuki, who right now was far more sober than he'd have liked to be, because alcohol would be a fine excuse for the maelstrom churning around in his stomach.
Mei released Eijun breathlessly, eyes glittering. "Let's go," he said again. "I'm buying a room for the night."
"Uh, sure, okay…"
"M-Mei-san," Itsuki groped around to find his words, "Mei-san, are you certain…?"
"Yes," Mei hissed. "This is the only way I can get back at Kazuya when he's all the way in the damn capital of Ester."
Eijun, for his part, only snorted as he opened the door. "You two are the worst friends."
"You take that back. We're nothing of the sort."
"Yes, yes. This way, Narumiya-sama."
Mei stepped through the threshold and then paused, looking back. "Itsuki, you can stay too if you'd like. If you don't, though, make sure to pick me up in the morning."
There was only one thing to say to that. "Yes, Mei-san. Goodnight."
"Night, Itsuki."
"You know," Eijun said, disappearing down the hall. "Even if you tell him you slept with me, he might just get off on it."
"Yeah, all alone with his hand. Fucking bastard."
"You really are a vengeful bakeneko."
Their voices finally faded into the vague noise of other courtesans and clients passing the night as they always did. Quieter and emptier in the room now, the ceaseless drone of the crickets outside became apparent once more. Haruichi stirred, stretching his arms up so that the long sleeves of his kimono fell to his elbows and then streamed back down over his hands when he dropped them, covered by an excess of silk.
"Will you be staying for the night, Tadano-sama? I can prepare a quiet room for you. It's rather late."
"Ah… that is…" How to decline without giving the wrong impression? Was there a right impression in this situation?
Haruichi smiled, simple and straightforward with none of the sweet naïveté. "Narumiya-sama is paying for the room, but you can use it however you wish. Companion not required."
"Oh." Itsuki blinked. "Is that normal?"
"It's not common, I'll admit. Seidou isn't a hotel. But we're here to serve you, and if what you want is a peaceful night of sleep alone, that's what we'll provide."
Right, Itsuki remembered. This was Seidou. This was Yugao. To ordinary people this was where dreams could come true for the right price. A pleasant night of sleep was almost ridiculous considering the cost, and yet it wasn't costing him anything. It wouldn't really cost Mei, either. Very little could cost Mei.
"All right, I'll accept. Thank you."
"My pleasure. This way, Tadano-sama."
The room Haruichi led him to was on the second floor and small, but comfortably so, the window open to let in a mild breeze. As Haruichi brought the futon out and unfolded it his gentle scent perfumed the air. Some of the flowers on the side of his head had been crushed from resting against Itsuki, and a stray cosmos petal fluttered to land on a barely covered shoulder. His whole demeanor was sleepy and rumpled, but unfailingly pleasant, and Itsuki couldn't help but reach out and brush the petal from a drooping sleeve. It stuck to his finger, and when Haruichi saw he laughed quietly before leaning in with lips pursed to blow the petal away.
"There we go," he said, straightening with a ripple of silk. The cut of his bangs slanted to the side along with the tilt of his head, but his gaze underneath remained hidden. His mouth remained smiling. "Is there anything else you require tonight, Tadano-sama?"
"No," Itsuki said, the word small and squeezed from the tightness constricting around his chest. "No, I…" On second thought, his throat was parched. He wet his lips. "Are you—that is, if you're not…"
Haruichi drifted half a step closer. "I'm not busy."
"No other clients? Ah, I don't mean to be rude…"
"No," Haruichi chuckled. "Not at this hour."
This late hour, where many others were surely retiring for one reason or another. Mei and Eijun were in another room not too far. Maybe even close. Or not, Itsuki amended, wry, because with those two volume would tell. He shook his head at himself. Forget it.
"Tadano-sama?"
His hand lifted, at first of its own accord and then with more intent, to settle light but warm over a thin shoulder. His thumb brushed bare skin. "Could you… maybe call me less formally? It feels a little awkward."
Haruichi mirrored his gesture, sliding a hand over Itsuki's collar where his neck curved into his shoulder. "What else can I do for you, Tadano-san?"
He brought his hand up to cup the side of Haruichi's face, and he could just faintly see the shape of keen eyes watching him behind a curtain of soft pink that tickled Itsuki's fingertips. "Stay?" he asked.
Haruichi went up on his toes to press a soft, subtly sweet kiss to Itsuki's mouth. "With pleasure," he said, scent of flowers in his hair and taste of cherries on his lips. The drape of his sleeves flowed back down his arms as they wound around Itsuki's neck, and this…
This was as good a reason as any to like Seidou. He only half-grasped Mei's reasons, and he barely grasped Mei himself at all, but this, at least, was simple. Within easy reach. And Itsuki could work on the rest later. For pleasant company, for enjoyment, that was the only reason anyone needed to like a place such as Seidou.