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They had spent the day before flipping through the slick pages of magazine catalogs for wedding dresses together — even if their walk down the aisle isn’t really going to go exactly as planned now that George knows what he knows about their circumstances, he had taken the time to look over different varieties of gorgeous dresses in white and cream-colored silk and point out to Shannon (She asks him that she be called Shannon, not Sayo, and who is he to not heed that request?) certain numbers and ask her what she had thought. She nodded softly, telling him which ones she preferred although there were an alarming number of dresses that she saw that made her shake her head and say that oh no, she couldn’t see anything as lovely as that suiting someone like her.
(Why won’t she see what he sees? She had called herself disgusting, called herself furniture in such a shaky, horrified tone of voice when she had first told him the truth. But even if that was a lie — a lie George is prepared to forgive — their love surely is real.)
“What do you think of this one, George?”
She faces away from the mirror outside of the changing room, delicate lace creeping up her throat. The skirt to her dress is long and frothy and pools down a little past her ankles, gliding across the floor with each practiced step she takes in her high-heeled shoes — white and satiny, a bow on the front of each. The veil she wears drapes like mist over her face, her most discernible feature being her dark, blue-gray eyes.
Her frame is thin and slight in her wedding gown, she is every bit the lost princess in a fairy tale that has been found once again. And George can’t help but wonder what Shannon would look like wearing this not in the sterile-smelling dressing room of a wedding dress area in a department store, but dancing together with him at a proper ceremony as her skirt swishes along the floor, or cradling a bouquet of orange roses (She had told him that orange roses were her favorite) in her delicate arms.
He adjusts his glasses a bit when he realizes they sit askew on his nose. Nothing changes, Shannon still looks breathtakingly lovely and demure in this wedding gown. “You look absolutely gorgeous, Shannon. Just like a princess or queen.”
“Thank you. I’m happy to hear that.”
Her words of thanks are just as resigned and sad as the shy, tight smile she gives him beneath her veil.
The wedding is a small, informal affair if you can really call it anything like that at all. One wintry white afternoon they stop by the local municipal office to sign their marriage papers together (Shannon does not have a wedding gown on, she just shows up in a white dress with a flared-out, stiff skirt — something that has a silhouette so reminiscent of the uniform she wore during her days back at Rokkenjima, George realizes — with the engagement ring glimmering on one finger and the wedding ring on the other. She says it wouldn’t be practical for the weather.). The people who help make their arrangements are cordial and kind, guiding them on all the slips they need to fill out as snowflakes drift about outside. But it surely isn’t the same as having guests or a family for the sake of it.
Maybe it’s a bit silly, he thinks to himself as he writes out his signature, But I guess I really did hope for one of those sorts of fancy weddings. All the photos of Aunt Natsuhi at her wedding scattered throughout Rokkenjima were so… somber. It won’t ever happen, but I guess I sort of imagined one of those big fancy Western-style weddings where our family got to rejoice alongside Shannon and I. Not that that would ever happen.
He offers his pen to Shannon so she can sign her name. “Here. For you.”
“Oh. Thank you, love…”
Her inflection upon the endearment “love” is a bit trembly and hesitant. She signs her name in clean, tidy script, careful to put down the kanji for not her off-duty name, but for her blessed name: Shannon.
They leave the municipal office together, with Shannon no longer Yasuda Sayo or even just Shannon but Ushiromiya Shannon, wife of Ushiromiya George.
Even in the heavy coat he wears, George still shivers against the snowfall’s harshness. His glasses fog up, misty from the cold air, the bare skin of his face feeling battered at every snowflake that falls upon him. But Shannon rests her head upon his shoulder, tucks her arm under his as they walk, and he can’t help but feel a tad warmer. Though she wears gloves to ward off the cold that would redden her hands and fingers, she still had slipped on her rings – a gold wedding band alongside her engagement ring, the little diamond adornment glittering beneath a layer of plain gray wool.
“I know we’ll be eating dinner at home tonight,” says Shannon, “and I’m perfectly happy to cook for us. But I was wondering if you’d want to stop by that bakery we like so much on the way back to pick up dessert?”
They hadn’t been able to get a proper wedding cake — there just hadn’t been enough time; at least that’s the story that they both agree on.
“Of course… would strawberry shortcake work for you? I know you’re fond of it.”
Shannon smiles delicately. “Strawberry shortcake would work out just fine.”
This bakery is not like those sleek, spick-and-span bakeries with their cakes covered in layers of fondant, sculpted into pastel flowers and mouthwateringly pretty but with a gummy, stretchy texture that feels like eating sweetened clay, everything looking too gold-trimmed and elegant to the point where it looks less like a bakery, more like a plaza. No, this bakery is far more cozier with its pale yellow walls and displays of less-elegantly decorated Mont Blancs and slices of cakes with real buttercream frosting behind its glass displays. George’s senses are overtaken by the perfume of gingerbread and chocolate when they enter the store together.
He wipes the fog from outside off his glasses, blinking before he puts them on again. George reaches a hand up to Shannon’s honey-brown hair, wiping away the snowflakes that haven’t melted yet. She looks so much smaller in the heavy gray winter coat she wears, as though the wool will swallow her up entirely at any given moment.
“Ah, Ushiromiya-san!” The woman — short with dark hair pulled back into a neat ponytail, eyeliner sharp and ink-black — behind the counter smiles at them as she wipes down the glass. “It’s nice to see you stop by on such a cold day, what can I do for you?”
“We got married not long ago, and were hoping that you had some strawberry shortcake available to take with us, Kaori-san.” He gestures softly to Shannon. “Bride’s choice.”
“Congratulations, you two.”
Kaori bustles around behind the counter getting their cake into a package, going on about how wonderful it is, and how don’t he and Shannon make just the cutest couple, that she’s so glad that they’ve finally decided to take their relationship to the next level, and oh, she hopes the honeymoon will go smoothly.
Though Shannon smiles up at him, cheeks still reddened from the cold outside, he can notice the cracks in her porcelain-smooth face (She’s gotten quite good at stowing her feelings away over the years, and even if she can tell she doesn’t acknowledge it.) — that this isn’t exactly what she had hoped for, that even this is something she is undeserving of.
He takes the white package full of cake from Kaori and pays with a “thank-you”. But you do deserve this happiness, Shannon. You deserve this and so much more — how can I show you that?
Deep in the back of George’s closet is a groom’s tuxedo. It’s sleek black and elegantly cut, with a starched white dress shirt and a black bowtie. There is no flower tucked into the buttonhole, but if he had the opportunity to wear one it would be a chrysanthemum — proudly glowing in red, bursting with tiny petals and worn over his heart as a floral “I love you” to Shannon on their wedding day. But there is no sense in wearing something for his buttonhole in his tuxedo when the weather is so cold today, so it sits tucked away neatly, far behind his work clothes so it can gather dust.
He told her it wasn’t necessary to make him happy, but Shannon insisted she pick up more traditional Japanese cooking for him since he’s taken her out to his favorite restaurants before for dates which are always in Yokohama. Tonight’s wedding meal is nikujaga; they eat together with their chopsticks and don’t talk very much between bites of thinly-sliced pork and soft potatoes stewed in rich, sweet soy sauce. They try to make idle chit chat but it falters and sputters and they are left in bereft silence all over again.
“Thank you,” George says, “Thank you so much for dinner tonight. It’s delicious and such a nice gesture on your part.”
“Of course.” She looks as though she’s about to say something like, It’s our wedding, after all.
Afterwards they eat the cake they picked up from the bakery alongside some black tea. With every spongy, fluffy bite mixed with mellow whipped cream frosting and the juicy sweet-sour crunch of strawberries that he takes, George can’t help the fact that his thoughts stray back to that tuxedo he’ll probably never wear hidden away.
He feels no revulsion at all when she shows him the full picture of what she looks like beneath her nightgown — flat chest, scarred abdomen and crotch — and yet Shannon still hastily redresses and acts as though nothing happened.
One blustery winter day when the snow has lost its charm and turned to muddied slush and dirtied ice, George stops by the bookstore on his way home from work.
He skips past the usual authors – the one Eva saw to that he read when he was a little bit young for them, Akutagawa Ryuunosuke, Dazai Osamu, those collections of poetry by Saigyō (She meant all of this in good faith, though, after all she made clear to him that she wanted her son to be as smart as can be.) — past the romance section with their covers of scantily-clad women swooning in the arms of strapping muscled men, past the explosion of colors in the manga section, towards the shelves in the back with their mystery novels.
There were times before, both at Rokkenjima and after they had started living together, that Shannon had quietly referenced her love of mystery novels. Though she had brought it up only every now and then, there was always this sudden gleam to her dark gray eyes whenever she did, lips twitching as though trying to suppress her tiny smile from broadening into a full grin. George is ashamed to say that he hadn’t thought of it much, just nodding with a slight “That’s nice” before moving on from it.
That will change today, though.
Agatha Christie… Raymond Chandler… John Dickson Carr… These were some of the English-speaking authors Shannon brought up. He flips through them and then tucks them under his arm, alongside a handful of Seishi Yokimozo and Keikichi Osaka. I’ll make sure to get started on one of them tonight — I think at least some of these books are the ones that Shannon has read before, back down at Rokkenjima. It’ll be nice. We’ll have something more to talk about now.
Their evenings and nights together are rather idle: Not much needs to be said, though whenever he asks Shannon how her day was once he gets home, she falters for a little bit before hastily telling him that her day was alright. She works on crocheting sometimes once they finish dinner, and while George likes to watch her nimble fingers loop soft wool over a silver needle, there is very little conversation to be had. Tonight, though:
“Oh, what’s that you’re reading?”
She looks up from where she’s seated herself on the couch next to George, eyeing the book he’s opened up intently. George closes it softly and smiles at her, making sure she can see the plain, dark teal cover with bold title lettering.
“I got this a few days ago on my way home from work,” he explains, “And now that my evening is free I thought I’d take the time to start reading it. I know you’ve mentioned before how much you like mystery novels and that it always helped to have someone to discuss them with.”
“I…” Shannon swallows, taking a heavy breath as though she might start crying. George’s chest tightens a little at the sight.
“I’m sorry if I upset you—”
“No, it’s alright.” She tilts her mouth up into that forlorn little smile he’s grown so acquainted with. “Thank you, George.”
Tonight he has to stay behind a bit later at the office — more paperwork to be done than usual, it would seem. The plate of noodles that ought to have comprised dinner sit untouched as George clicks his pen to get out even the tiniest trickle of blue ink, filling out names and contacts. He’s awfully tired, not eager to drive through those dark, winding streets all the way back home. At least, though, they were able to afford a proper car, so there’s no need to huddle in the corner of a public transit bus or walk the long journey home on foot.
The phone at his desk starts to ring. George frowns. I’d called Shannon earlier to let her know that I wouldn’t be home for a while. Did something come up at home? Then again, maybe it’s just a client…
His stomach drops when he sees the caller ID.
Nevertheless, George finds himself reaching for the phone, chest growing tight. Tempted as he is to let it ring, it’ll only be a matter of time before his mother tries to reach out to him again, be it through letters, phone calls, or face-to-face. (When Eva had learned about the woman her son had chosen to marry in spite of the omiai they were to arrange, she had spat at him in rage for disobeying him, telling him that he couldn’t just throw away his future like this. She had, of course, forgiven him, if only thanks to his father’s intervention — Eva can never truly hate her son, after all. She does not, however, hold the same capacity of forgiveness for her daughter-in-law.).
“I’m surprised you answered from your work number,” Eva says; her tone on the other end of the line is light and almost musical, but comes out as thin and unpleasant.
“I had more work to be done than I expected for the night, that’s all.”
“How unfortunate… I hope, though, that life has been treating you and Sayo well otherwise?”
“Shannon and I are doing alright.”
She laughs in that uncomfortable tinkle of hers. “Well, Shannon’s only her ‘blessed’ name for when she’s on-duty as a servant, her true name is Sayo… but she can hardly be called a servant anymore.”
George swallows. You know full well that she uses the name “Shannon” since that’s the one constant comfort she has now, don’t you? he wants to say.
“I was hoping,” Eva continues, “That perhaps your father and I might be able to stop by to visit you for your birthday?”
George — an outlier, distraught amidst the tidy, cozily-lit living room — is seated on the couch, glasses set aside and face buried in his hands as he wonders when it will just stop. His chest is tight with anguish all over again. This is not the first time it’s happened, not the first time his agency’s been stripped away (And the worst part is Eva had lilted about wanting to see him and Shannon for his birthday of all reasons, there is absolutely no means of getting out of it).
“She wants to stop by for a visit,” is all he tells Shannon. That’s the only context she needs: Her face grows tight, blue-gray eyes brightening with fresh discomfort.
Eva, though largely having forgiven him for his betrayal, is not above expressing her disapproval for her son’s supposedly reckless choices. That much he can bear, the wound will fade in time and even if it was a hasty, rushed affair getting away from Rokkenjima this is a decision he made on a whim that he did not and still does not regret. Eva’s words will not haunt him or gnaw at him.
But Shannon—
She looks at him, face fixed into that telltale expression of fake placidity of the dutiful, homekeeping wife. Her voice comes out as a high whisper, soft hand stroking at George’s shoulder when she says, “Well, Eva-sama is your mother, isn’t she? She does love you.”
“I know she does.”
It isn’t about me, George wants to tell her, it’s about you. I’m not blind to the way she treats you, not blind to her cruelty and how she goes out of her way to make you miserable. Yet you still smile for me all the same and take it. All he does, however, is just hold her close, as though she will slip away and fall back into the depths of the sea they crossed if he lets go.
The scene we are introduced to on the evening of George’s twenty-fourth birthday doesn’t start out so bad.
It’s mid-March; the dirty, dull clumps of ice that are remnants of last month’s harsh winter have started to melt away at last, tiny flashes of green in the trees and little patches of soil where they’re planted have begun to sprout as if to say hello. Eva and Hideyoshi meet them outside of his favorite restaurant in this part of the city all wrapped up in dark coats to ease the lingering cold. Oh, his mother’s words are cordial as she pulls him close into a hug with her black-gloved hands and wishes her son a happy birthday, but then some sort of barely perceptible anger just twitches over her sharply-featured face when Shannon greets her with, “It’s nice to see you and Hideyoshi for dinner tonight, Eva-san.”
Eva-san. Not Eva-sama. God, she’s trying…
But to his surprise, Eva smooths her face over and nods in acknowledgement as they make their way inside to their table reservation.
Dinner is not as full of animosity as George had anticipated it to be. His father takes the lead in conversation, booming voice recounting some of his most outrageous customers and asking George what sorts of work or hobbies he’s been up to as of late. George answers as best as he can, talking about how he’s started picking up mystery novels so that he and Shannon would have something to talk about. Over the tap-tap-tap of dark chopsticks on porcelain plates Hideyoshi even tells Shannon that she looks just lovely in that red dress of hers — “Of course, I’m no expert on fashion. I’m sure Rosa-san’d probably know more about that than me, haha!”
(There is such warmth to his voice when he compliments his daughter-in-law; George can’t help but think how radiant Shannon looks — a blush warming her face pink in the soft orange light of the restaurant — as she responds with a quiet thank-you.)
It’s all almost comfortable, at first.
Almost.
Come dessert’s tiramisu and coffee:
“So,” Eva says, slim fingers lazily waving her fan about her face, “I see you and Sayo-chan have settled down together remarkably quickly — you’ve already got yourself a steady job and a wife. How wonderful.”
“Of course, Mom.”
Now, his mother may not be privy to the entire truth, but she knows that Shannon is unable to bear children. Her smile carries all the sugary-sweetness of broken glass.
“Have you thought about your future? Children, perhaps? We all know you’re so wonderfully nurturing with children, George. And I’m sure that Sayo-chan would make an absolutely lovely mother to her children, if anything, I’d even say she’d be too perfect to be true.”
Shannon only lowers her head to the ground, unable to look her mother-in-law in the eye. George curls an arm around her — she’s trembling so horribly — and says somewhat sharply, “Well, we’ve only just married, you know.”
“I swear, it wasn’t that bad.”
This is what Shannon tells him as they make their way out of the restaurant when everything’s gone dark, placing one delicate hand on George’s shoulder. This is what she tells him when they stand together on the ever-shifting train. This is what she tells him when she’s helping him peel off his coat and scarf, freshly dampened with rainwater. She fixes her mouth up into a wobbly crescent-moon smile and sugars her voice with placidity to insist that oh no, it wasn’t that bad at all and that she’s sure Eva-sama was just curious about how things have been since she hasn’t seen them in quite some time, surely it must have been all it was.
“Besides,” Shannon adds on, removing her coat to reveal the cinch-waisted black dress she wears underneath, “With the Ushiromiya clan being as prestigious as it is, I’m sure our in-laws such as Eva-sama would want heirs to their wealth, wouldn’t they? I imagine once — I mean, if — Jessica ends up finding a husband they’d ask the same of her.”
Eva-sama. Not Eva-san, like at dinner. And… you know that Aunt Natsuhi forbade Jessica from writing letters to us, you especially, let alone seeing us in person. George presses her close to him, letting her rest her head on his shoulder as they stand just beyond the doorway. He searches, and searches still, yet he ends up feeling just as hollow as Shannon does, participating in this scripted play where they slip on masks and go about their perfectly wedded life.
On the afternoons where Rosa has to drag herself to the workplace, writing away at bills and invoices late into the night in spite of her perpetually fatigue-addled mind, George and Shannon stop by to look after their cousin.
“I think it’d be good for Maria-chan,” George had said. “If she’s having trouble with her homework, or there’s an emergency while you’re gone, God forbid…”
To his surprise, his aunt had been surprisingly supportive of the whole situation. And she’d been one of the few of his aunts and uncles who had stared at Shannon eye-to-eye, not as though she was still furniture (George reaffirms to her again and again that no, she isn’t.) but as her in-law, a flesh-and-blood human who deserves the bare minimum of respect. Then again, he’s vaguely aware that Rosa has been forced to swallow down her fair share of unkindness from her own family ever since she was a child and had grown up in that gilded cage of Rokkenjima.
Shannon brought cookies today — an Italian kind she’d served on Rokkenjima sometimes called cannolis, lacy little pastries filled with cold, sweet cream and dusted with powdered sugar. Maria eats with an unusual sense of care and delicateness for a nine-year-old, wiping the excess crumbs off her fingers with a napkin rather than eating them when no one’s looking, making sure not to get so much as a dab of powdered sugar on her homework as George helps her. Sunlight pours in through the window with its curtains thrown back, the air is warmed with the rich smell of black tea that Shannon helped get ready. The scene is almost perfect, almost comforting.
Almost.
“...So you just have to add the little number in the corner you carried up here, okay, Maria-chan?”
She frowns, dark blue eyes squinting first at the paper and then at George gently smiling at her. “Sort of. But not really.”
“It takes a few tries to get. It’s normal,” George says somewhat awkwardly.
“Uu… Maria really wishes that magic was strong enough to help with math. I’m trying. Maybe if Maria were perfect in school…”
Shannon smiles weakly, leaning over from where she sits across from them at the table — she has touched a similar sort of magic with her own fingertips, but even then none of it is nearly so simple as math problems, is it?
“I wish that too, Maria-chan. I wish that too.”
A week before the annual Rokkenjima conference, they take Maria to the amusement park.
In warmer months, this place would be bustling with visitors, from children dashing towards whatever ride’s caught their attention to hunch-backed grandfathers trailing behind their colorful family members, air filled with the sound of screams and the smell of stale, sickly-sweet cotton candy. But since it’s autumn, the world is hushed save for the rustling of falling leaves every now and again, the overlapping synthetic smells not nearly so prominent. The few visitors here today are all bundled up in their jackets, keeping to themselves.
For a moment, George believes his little cousin Maria: Maybe there is magic out here.
“Well,” Shannon asks at last, “Which ride do you want to go on first, Maria-chan?”
“Uu! The carousel, please!”
He sits with Shannon on an ornate bench, Maria takes the extravagant white horse ahead of them, the one with flowers painted pink and yellow stuck in its pale, carved mane. As the carousel spins, trilling music box tune trickling into the air, Shannon rests her head on his shoulder.
“I’m glad we got to do this today,” she says. “Even if Rosa wasn’t able to come with us.”
(Maybe, though, it’s better that way: Though Shannon says nothing of it, George remembers the times that Rosa returns home from work with reddened eyes and far more ill-tempered than usual, bidding them good night in a baleful sort of voice. And even during those moments when Rosa is in a more graceful mood, tired but quietly thanking her nephew and in-law for taking care of her daughter while she was at work so late, Shannon always tilts her head downwards a little when she says that it’s no problem at all.)
When they at last stop by the bakery to pick up some dessert for later tonight it’s near closing time, so George carries their millefeuilles back home in a white package — there’s a lobster tail for Rosa, too. Maria is allowed to dash to the end of each block and back. Then, a block away from Rosa’s house as the sky darkens to a dull navy blue—
“Oh my,” an elderly lady says, “Your daughter looks adorable. Just like a princess.”
“Uu… I’m a witch!”
Shannon laughs a little. “Oh, she isn’t my daughter,” she explains to the woman, “she’s my cousin.”
Her smile, George notices, looks so terribly tight.
(There’s this ghost story that Shannon has told Maria, one that George has listened in on.
Once upon a time, she’d always say, there was a powerful witch, well-trained in magic and fair of face — witches aren’t all ugly like the folktales make them out to be. She was so powerful that she was surprised when a mere human sorcerer who only dabbled in dark magic had managed to summon her, bargaining with her in exchange for material wealth.
But it wasn’t enough. He had imprisoned her in a cage made of gold, where she was given everything she could want save for freedom. The witch had tried to cut her soul free from the shell of her body to escape. But the sorcerer was more clever than she had thought. He had sealed her in the form of a homunculus and raised her as a doll, a replacement for the golden-haired witch he had lost. It was only through the love of a kind young man that the homunculus managed to escape the sorcerer’s grasp.
You haven’t really escaped, have you? George thinks as he curls an arm over her shoulder in the cab. You still have to come with me to Rokkenjima this year because you think I’d be upset if you didn’t. Shannon, I wouldn’t be. But you who call yourself a homunculus are still trapped in a cage. )
Jessica is the first one at the docks to greet them, beaming with false gaiety. She doesn’t look quite right dressed in gray silk up to her throat, a brooch of the one-winged eagle fastened at the base of her neck — moreso a noose than a pretty work of jewelry. But she still takes Shannon’s hands in hers and pelts them with questions of how have things been going for the past year, and didn’t she get Jessica’s letter last week that she managed to sneak out to the mainland, and how it seems so nice that she and George are able to live together and away in the city.
“You’re dressed a bit more formally than last I saw you, Jessica-chan,” George points out, loosening his scarf and wringing it a little in his hands.
They’d never approve of her sending letters to Shannon, let alone Aunt Natsuhi in particular. And I know they forbade Jessica from visiting the mainland now that she’s finished schooling, she told me so in all of the letters she wrote.
“Haha… Mom said that I ought to get more used to dressing up a lot of the time. Eventually I’ll end up getting married and I’ve gotta be prepared for this sort of stuff with a husband, that’s what she and Dad explained to me. Walking around in high heels is really hard — how do you do it, Shannon-san? Do yours just not pinch as much?”
“It takes some practice,” is all she says.
Maybe it’s the fact that it’s been months since they last saw each other, but Shannon hardly looks her in the eye.
Lion — that’s the name Aunt Natsuhi always uses.
She remains silent throughout dinner, her posture stiff and hazel eyes burning. George observes the rest of the Ushiromiya family throughout dinner (And still, after all of these years, one chair remains absent of an occupant.) where their complements are veneers for insults and the lavish Western meals they eat for dinner are flavored with rising arguments and boasts. Aunt Natsuhi doesn’t say anything in spite of all this, and when prompted simply brings up a bad headache as the reason why she isn’t saying all that much. Shannon remains just as silent, picking at the food she no longer has to whisk out — one of the other servants sent from the Fukuin House, perhaps, will bring in coffee and dessert.
I feel like an idiot, George thinks between sips of water, for not noticing the special kind of disdain Aunt Natsuhi looked at Shannon with throughout all these years. She’s doing it even now, when Shannon is married and no longer a servant — when she ought to be safe.
He can never quite tell if Rudolf is asking out of ignorance or not when he says that Shannon-chan and George-kun’ve been married for nearly a year and they haven’t even thought of kids yet. His tone is almost too debonair and gentle when he asks it, nothing like his mother’s simpering and the gleam she gets in her eye watching her daughter-in-law shift at the dining room table — but then again, aside from his own cousin Shannon took his Aunt Asumu’s death the hardest. So George, as usual, steps in as ever the savior for his wife.
“Uncle Rudolf, we’ve only been married for nearly a year.” He smiles, but his heart is hardly in it. The pearly chandelier light beaming down on him is far too bright. “We need some time to settle down together.”
He had braced himself for this when Shannon had told him the truth about her body: They fall perfectly into their dual roles, they are the happily married and blushing newlyweds, they are the laughingstocks of the Ushiromiya family. George will bear the brunt of it, and does not think to accept Shannon’s body as mutilated like she claims it to be.
“It’s like I’ve said before,” his mother sighs from across the table, “Shannon would make for just an absolutely wonderful mother, you know? So nurturing and sweet… I’m sure that her children would inherit not just her gentle demeanor but her pretty appearance, too.”
Shannon’s expression plummets; she shrinks even in the protection of the pale blue dress she wears with its flared-out skirt to provide a facade of feminine curves—
George speaks again, hoping his mother hears the quiet anger in his voice: “Mom. I already told you that we’re going to give it some time. We’ve only gotten married recently, and if we’re going to have children we don’t want to rush into it.” Not the way you or Uncle Rudolf did, he almost wants to add. But even that seems too harsh for him.
“You oughtn’t dance around the subject.”
Any pretense of elegance Natsuhi puts forth is gone, her fingers pressing down so hard on the stem of her wineglass George thinks it might break.
“I doubt—” her voice is stiff with anger “—That you and Lion are even considering children in the first place.”
Natsuhi takes Shannon aside just before dessert. George hears everything she has to say.
“How dare you think you can compose yourself alongside the rest of the Ushiromiya family, how dare you have the gall to sit with the one-winged eagle sewn on the breast pocket of your dress. You, Lion, are a disgusting piece of furniture — how can you call yourself human, you who cannot bear children and dresses up to prove himself anything other than inhuman?!”
He starts to open the door into the corridor, but—
“Don’t,” Jessica begs, “It’s not going to stop forever.”
That night, their pulses overlap restlessly in the guest room they are given. She faces away from George, heart-shaped face bathed in blue night shadows and glowing with moonlight, so he slips his arm around her. Shannon only takes his hand, not even turning to face him when she won’t even have to look at him with how dark their room is. Her hand is so cold — It must be because it’s October, he tries to convince himself, and a draft has seeped into our room. That must be it. But the windows are sealed shut, and the quilt they have slipped under are plenty warm.
“God, Shannon…” he says to the dark, “I — I’m so sorry.”
She still doesn’t turn to face him, fingers simply stroking over the back of his hand. (Earlier tonight, she was quietly insistent — just like every other night — that George not look at her as she slipped into that pretty, white scalloped nightgown she had brought with her.). “Just… just rest now, love.”
Kumasawa-san and the other servants sent in by the Fukuin house did not acknowledge Shannon as their own; she can’t even settle into the arms of the life she led as a servant. But now that she has cast off the uniform and conceals the tattoo on her leg with full skirts suitable for women of her husband’s status, she is still not safe.
The gold wedding band on her finger means nothing to the rest of them. Her chastity has worn off its initial wholesome charm for her in-laws.
He can only press against her bones through the night.