Chapter Text
It’s like a Noh play: the wild girl, the cool experienced master, and the thrashing-cum-apprenticeship audition.
But Noh actors are distant, unreal. Dead white, thick with the past that cannot do or touch or kill. Their fake blood sprays the wrong pattern over the wood boards, and Go-Go's hands itch to correct them with mace or blade.
O-ren is true. Alive. And burning beneath her mask of indifferent smooth skin, even as her cool slippered foot presses contempt into Go-Go’s heaving side.
When they touch, the world seems to whiten with heat.