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There is going to be a bid for her first time, she hears the others whispering. Hiyori lies in her bed the night before her twelfth birthday. Quiet and alone. Perhaps for the last time. The Madam hasn’t said anything to her yet, but outside her doors, some of the girls whisper just loud enough for her to hear. Hiyori knows they are jealous. Or envious might be the better word.
Ever since her arrival at the Madam’s house, her popularity only improves day by day with her impeccable manners, lustrous hair and angelical face. She has Madam wrapped around her little finger, the girls say. They don’t like it. People’s eagerness for Hiyori’s debut are a direct hit on the others’ income.
Ever since she first bled – or flowered, as the Madam says – Hiyori’s been sent to Mistress Black Maria for learning. She knows little to none are given this opportunity, the honor of learning the arts from Kaido’s own mistress. Hiyori, despite understanding the extent of her beauty, often wondered why they’d do all this for her. To her.
She’s been steeling herself for her debut. She’s known from the beginning this would happen. Not even Denjiro could help or save her from it, unless they want to be on the run for the rest of their lives, and Hiyori isn’t putting another loved one through that hardship. She knows what she must do. She’s remarkably pretty, so the Madam must only want to improve her profits and Kaido must have been properly bribed.
Hiyori’s been steeling herself. She has. Properly so. With prayers and tears and hatred. But then the night falls on her twelfth birthday and from the center stage, where all can see her and she can see all, Hiyori’s resolve falters at the sight of Orochi up front, the same smile that taunted and robbed her father of his country, now taunting and robbing her of her body.
Orochi outbids them all. And back at Madam’s house, the girls stand in front of her door, unaware of the trashed room within, and whisper of luck.
***
He likes to play with her hair. They all do, honestly. But Orochi in particular, always demands she lie, bare and sufficiently abused, with her head on his lap as he plays with her hair. He speaks of forever and love and fate and plays a wonderful dream that sounds of nightmares in her ears. He promises his bed, but never his crown because “my love, my Komurasaki, my treasure, you are beautiful, more so than all, but you are a whore and whores have no place in the throne” and Hiyori bites her tongue until it bleeds so she can keep her words in and later, when he’s rested and well and craving, she lets him taste the blood in her mouth.
***
Hiyori doesn’t cry. Not alone in her room. Not in the cold of Orochi’s room. Not beneath any man or woman who comes and goes and calls her blessed. Not in Denjiro’s arms when he holds her after and begs her forgiveness. She has not cried since the lights on the center stage went out and her birthday cake was given to her by Orochi’s hands as he took her yukata off.
Instead, she dreams. Of her father’s laughter. Her mother’s voice. Her brother’s hand in hers.
In her waking moments, she counts down. The seconds and minutes and hours and wonders how long twenty years actually is for it feels as forever and ever as the nights and days spent on soft beds and silk sheets and frames of gold bought by sweet smiles and bitter tastes.
***
Her name, she holds safe and close in her heart. She has not spoken it out loud in years, neither has she heard it spoken by friend or foe. She yearns for it sometimes. So much so that she often opens her mouth to beg Denjiro to call her the name she loved, given to her by the people she loved, if only so she won’t forget who she is and where she comes from. But Denjiro has long warned her of hidden eyes and ears and trust is something she has only ever lost time and time again.
On her coldest nights, covered in the burning hot sweat of a body that is not her own and held by passion that she’s never felt, she wonders if Hiyori was ever real and not just a fragment of her imagination. If Denjiro is a friend she’s made up in her loneliness and pain. If the memories she longs to relive and dread to forget, aren’t the fragments of a broken mind.
But Hiyori must be real. Because if she isn’t and never were, then it would not hurt this much.
***
Hiyori starves herself and is praised for her dutifulness with her body and image. Hiyori gags and vomits at smells and foods and memories, with involuntary heaves, with the force of a patron’s anger and displeasure, with two fingers down her throat that taste like her own and people call her fragile and pitiful and how it all adds to her beauty.
Denjiro is the only person who hugs her. He is also the only person she wishes she could ask to never hug her again. She cannot, sometimes, discern his arms from those that pull at her clothes gently in a show of sweetness and kindness or even those who rip her expensive garments open with no regards for the fabric or her skin or the person that she is, claiming her as their own to mark and bend and break if only for a night.
Once, when her skin was red and bitten and dirty with spit and sweat and more and Hiyori had screamed at the servants to leave her be, that she could shower and clean by herself and she wanted to be alone alone alone . Denjiro had come. In the dead of the night and hidden from prying eyes. She remembers the sorrow in his eyes and the hatred she felt. How dare he? How dare he show sorrow when she was the one being pushed and pulled and used as a plaything? How dare he look down at her with pity and regret? How dare he not kill them all? She had thrown the pitcher at his head. Had watched it break skin and spirit.
Years later, Denjiro still hugs her.
***
Kaido asks for her.
It causes a rift between him and Orochi, she’s told by some of the palace servants as they bathe her the night before she is to leave for Onigashima. Hiyori half listens to them. She has as much love for Kaido as she has for Orochi and his calling her is nothing short of expected. It’s not a praise for her beauty or talents, as the servants seem to think so. It can’t be. Not from Kaido. Perhaps he must only want to check the fruit of Black Maria’s work, she wonders, letting her head fall underneath the bath water, still unable to stop the spark of hope that this time they’ll let her drown.
Kaido, it turns out, does not want her for himself. Not even for his second, or third or even fourth in command. No. Kaido wants her for his son.
He has her wait for him – Yamato , she’s told – in one of the rooms in Black Maria’s domain. It is red and gold and scented much like Orochi’s bedroom. It almost makes Hiyori laugh. These scents – rich and citric and stomach churning – are supposed to be for use of the shogun only. And yet, it permeates the corridors and rooms and corners of Black Maria’s district. How laughable indeed, for the shogun’s pride and possessions to be so freely used by Kaido’s own whores and minions.
After the snake-like women bathe and oil her from head to toe, Hiyori is made to wait. The hour comes and goes as she tries to imagine what Kaido’s son must look like. Belatedly, she wonders if her body can even take such a person.
As quick as the thought comes, it goes. There’s no use in fear and worry. She’ll do as she must and she’ll survive it to see a new dawn. Just as she’s done all these years. And so she waits. And waits. And waits.
But Kaido’s son doesn’t come. He must know she’s there. He must know who she is. He must know her name and her reputation. And yet, he doesn’t come.
When the night comes to an end, and Hiyori has not slept through the reverberation of Kaido’s anger, she leaves Onigashima still wondering what the face she would never get to forget looks like.
***
Her life has not made Hiyori hate men, for women have come to her just as often. She does, however, hate the so-called lust and greed and frail concept of love. She grew to learn to rely on no one but herself. Because if she trusted others, she’d soon be used or betrayed. Or even worse, she’d cause someone she genuinely cares about to be hurt.
And so words of rebellion or not, her supposed death by Denjiro’s hands and pretty funeral only means more hiding and lying and waiting. She's determined to, at the very least, not get in anyone’s way. Cold and hurt and hungry, Hiyori runs and dares not yet hope.
But a flash of green and speckles of red and her brother’s name falling off rough lips that never have and never will touch hers, has Hiyori’s dry eyes brimming with tears that have not fallen for nearly twenty years, and her heart alight with a fire as bright and hot as the one that took her home and her life.
In that small cabin, caring for a scarred young man who fought and bled for her, however unintentionally, Hiyori dares lie next to someone out of her own accord. His freshly bandaged shoulder soon becomes damp with emotions she cannot control as she waits for the fear and disgust to kick in. But this man saved her. This man knows her brother. This man will not rip her apart with kind words and rough hands.
It is not easy. It is not comfortable. But it is her choice.
And when the new day comes, she will smile and bat her eyes and triumph.