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It is a dark and dreary night, the stuff of children’s horror tales, when Ojiro sets out to kill the girl. Befitting, he thinks; he’s never found it to be particularly rewarding to be paid for the death of a woman. He’s been told a time too many that he is much too polite for the business of assassination, a heart of wet clay and covered in fingerprints, ill-fallen in his plain goodness. He stares up at the humble half-lit tavern and wonders if this is what his plain goodness should drive him toward.
A handsome reward is always important to consider in times like these, though this is a much different affair than most of his other commissions. A faceless girl with no name to match. Quick-handed and even faster-footed. Able to sneak not only into a noble man’s chambers but also to steal his coin purse from his side and kick over the easel housing his half-painted portrait, ruining his modest carpets in the process, with the portraitist and the man himself reeling in the shock of the wind she left in her wake. The man had been hysterical, wild hand-gestures and an outrageously red face, as he recounted the event. Ojiro had skinned his apple and bit back a laugh. She’s stolen from me, the minx, she’s stolen from me and soiled my carpets to boot! It had been almost funny, the way the man paced the back of the bar with his eyebrows knitted together, almost swimming in hilarity—until, of course, the man had stood stock-still at Ojiro’s request for a description to sketch. “You must have seen her,” Ojiro thought to say, but the man only swallowed around the lump in his throat and rubbed his reddening neck with shame.
“She wore white gloves,” the man offered. “With neat ribbons at the fingers. Pink ones.” Standing once again like a child struck with shame, the man licked his lips. “It’s all I saw of her as she tore the coin purse from my trousers.”
Ojiro is an assassin, not a magician; how he’d been expected to find the girl with no face or name was a mystery to even him—but the reward the man had proffered, well. Putting in the little skim of extra work is a small price to pay for more money than Ojiro is sure he’s ever seen with his own two eyes. They had shaken on it, and Ojiro had spent two full days stalking the town from the cobblestone streets, for a girl with white gloves and a green-stringed coin purse at her hip. And a glimpse of her hip had been all he’d seen, sure, but his eyes are sharp—he’s never been wrong before and he’s sure he isn’t now, as he stands before the overgrown tarven, the rain pouring down overhead.
He feels terrible, truly, watching from down the street as the shadow in the upstairs window glides around the yellow backdrop of the second-story bedroom. He’s never seen the girl’s face, and is ashamed to know the first time he’ll look her in the eye is when he’s taking her head. Her silhouette is elegant and young and—well. He supposes some things are unfair to notice from this far in the shadows. Perhaps his associates had been right about him; soft hearted at the sight of anything smaller than he. He swallows and takes a step forward, reminding himself of the reward, of the justice that will be served for the thievery he so disparages, as he approaches the high wall of the tavern and takes hold of the sturdiest vine he can spot.
The room is empty when he finally peers through the window. On this side of the tavern there are no curtains, and so any silhouette would be perfectly clear to him here; what he finds, instead, are discarded clothes all along the floorboards—corsets and thigh garters and tulle-skirts and—he just about loses his footing with the way he turns his head to the side at the sight of the girls undergarments. All he can do is hope she’s dressed in something fit for sleep when he creeps through the window, or this might truly be one for the books. He hangs for a few moments longer in hopes that he’s given her enough time to find something suitable to dress herself with, and then very quietly thrusts himself through the open rose-colored curtains, minding his tail on the windowsill.
It is empty, still. He tries not to stumble when avoiding her clothes, and then all-together avoids the sight of them, staring straight ahead at the rest of the room with his eyes sharp and steady. There are two doors. One, he’s sure, leads to the hall of the housing efficiency, a row of other doors and rooms identical to this one. The other… a bathing room, with the door cracked open halfway.
He startles. Swallows. Contemplates telling the nobleman he couldn’t find the girl, wrecked the entire town with his search. There is a soft humming, clear and loud and unbothered from the bathroom, the sloshing of water and—no, he can’t. It is rude enough to stand in a garden of her undergarments so unfamiliarly as he is, but to encroach on her at such a vulnerable and unguarded time is—well, wrong.
He elects to wait. Outside. Outside the door. It takes a long forty-something seconds of deciding which foot to step first with before he finally makes it to the crevice of the half-closed door and leans solidly against the wall, exhales quietly from the stress of the affair. Now all that’s left to do is wait. And keep his eyes off the floor. And off to the left. Away from the door. What is most courteous in times like these? It seems already—almost perverse—to be standing in her room as he is, but to be so close to her at such a time? He puffs out his cheeks and stares out the far curtained window in wait.
The humming continues, loud and sweet and not at all afraid. He almost pities her. He isn’t often commissioned to bring back the head of a woman when sent out on pay; most men are satisfied with their possessions or their pride. Ojiro is usually able to avoid killing women entirely, as a matter of fact—usually keen on talking them into giving up whatever it is they’ve stolen or warning them to stay far, far away from the village whence they came. But the nobleman had been clear. Her head, for my den. I want to look the thief in the face as she did not so allow the night she committed her heinous crime.
A bit melodramatic, if Ojiro had to judge. Luckily, he doesn’t. He waits a little longer.
It is sudden after the long quiet and easy comfort in her sighing at the warm water, that he hears the dripping and the pull of her standing in the basin, stretching and stepping out onto the floor daintily. There is no way for him to see her reflection in the mirror, luckily, or she’d have seen him by now; the door guards him from view, and hides her form as she, by the sound of it, wrings the water from her hair in the sink.
He waits patiently until he hears the rustling of a washcloth and the sound of sleeves unfurling before he moves to reach for his dagger. She hums contentedly; warm, he supposes, in her nightclothes. At least she’ll die comfortably.
She stretches again, it seems, as the push of the wind heaves the door open just a few inches more, bathes the rest of her bedroom in the candlelight of the steamed bathroom. He takes a cautious step forward and ensheaths the knife with practiced silence, creeping toward the door at a crawl. It will be better to surprise her. She won’t have time to think.
He finally turns the corner, a sharp intake of breath through his mask, and shoves the door the rest of the way open with his boot. She’ll be dressed and clean and rosy in the face, and she won’t have time to think. It will be fast, Ojiro. Hurry up.
The steam clears and finally he can see beyond the blinding scent of the flowery candles lining the basin. The coin purse is on the countertop, towel discarded on the floor, and in the midst of it all, there stands—
He blinks. What?
The bathroom is empty. There stands no girl or woman of any kind, no life to be found in any of the trails it’s left behind, not a trace of her by footprint or even a ripple in the water. His grip loosens on his dagger as he reels back, confused. He had been listening to her all the while. The bathroom has no windows. Had he been too slow? How could he have missed her? Where could she have gone?
There is a sudden and sharp pain as nails pierce his throat in a vice grip. The hands are clothed, lace lining each digit save for where her nails dig through the thin material and bear against his skin with a clear threat in their poise. He almost gasps at the shock of it all, but her other hand quickly comes up beside him and she grips the dagger over top of his gloved hand, delicate all-through, far less breakable than he’d thought. The startling speed of it all is so insurmountable that he hardly notices the way he sees no more of her than her beautiful hands, and the exposed skin of her arms, where what looks to be a thick, invisible sheet hangs off of them, stealing the rest of her from view.
She sighs through her nose and the notion gives him goosebumps.
“You know,” she says, and when she twists his arm his legs buckle from the pain that shoots through his shoulder, “it isn’t very nice to sneak up on girls when they aren’t dressed. Creep.”
“Well,” with both hands raised in surrender, her fingers wrapped around the hilt of his dagger, he takes a slow breath. “You’ll forgive me, I hope?”
“Well,” she laughs. The sound is like cotton. Her hand twists his other arm behind his back, tosses his dagger in a spin as it comes down to land in her hand again, aimed for his throat.
“You’ll just have to let me think about it, won’t you?”