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Kozue saw how boys fell over themselves for Anthy, and some of the girls, too. It was hard to miss, when nearly every girl in their school talked with jealousy and scorn about how all the boys were obsessed with Anthy and she didn’t even try.
Kozue tried. She worked for it. She knew exactly how to hook a boy with a look, a touch, and then the calculated ignorance that drove them wild. She knew Anthy didn’t just sit there and wait for boys to fall over her; Kozue saw the precision in every look and every touch, and knew she was in the presence of a master.
They didn’t talk to each other, except for once, when they were both watching a basketball game in the lunch break. Kozue had been toying with two of the boys on the court for a week now, debating which to sleep with. It was a treat to see them compete for her like this, as if she cared how many times they could put a ball in the hoop. Even better, every time she uncrossed and re-crossed her legs, one of them would funble the ball and Utena would score.
“Well done, Utena-sama!” Anthy cheered.
Kozue didn’t make much effort to talk to other girls, usually, but this seemed like it was begging for a response. Perhaps Kozue was supposed to defend her boys.
Instead she said, “Tenjou must be very special for you to choose her, when you could have any boy in the school.”
Anthy smiled at her. “I don’t think that’s true. You already have most of the boys in the school, Kozue.”
Kozue let out a sharp, surprised laugh. “Not all at once!”
“You must feel very loved, with all the boys who like you.”
That cut through her laughter. Because when had Kozue ever felt loved? Once, in a garden, with her brother. Once again, with the first boy she slept with, until the next day when he wouldn’t even look at her and she felt like she was going to shatter into pieces. The duller, deeper ache when Miki wouldn’t even acknowledge the hurt, couldn’t stand the thought of her ‘growing up’ without him, being ‘dirty’.
She looked back at Anthy, tilted her head. “Did it make you feel loved when Utena fought off Saionji for you?”
A shout went up from the basketball court. Someone had comitted a foul, and now the players were arguing over who had been the most wronged. The basketball rolled towards Kozue’s feet, forgotten.
Taking her first ride in Akio’s car felt like a triumph of all Kozue’s skills. Once she had wondered whether she could be a duellist alongside Miki, the two of them a pair again, but the rose signet she hoped for never came. So she got into the arena her own way; confident on the arm of the chairman, making eyes at Miki in the back seat, until he took her to the arena, to forge her heart into a blade and go into battle.
And yet, it wasn’t enough. Otherwise she would have been happy to stand behind Miki as his substitute Rose Bride, watching him fight. For Anthy, not for her. Instead, while Miki fought, Kozue was back in the car with Anthy, laying her down on the back seat.
This girl, the girl they were all fighting for, and Kozue could just have her. She could have Anthy’s lips on hers, parting, willing. She could straddle her and have Anthy between her thighs. She could dive under that absurd confection of skirts and find out whether, underneath it all, this woman they all fought for was the same as her.
Anthy was not a wild animal like Kozue was. Anthy didn’t kiss her back with hunger. She stroked Kozue’s hair while Kozue tasted her, licked inside her, strove to taste. Even when Anthy was losing control, when she shuddered and gasped under Kozue’s hands, she never stopped stroking her as gently as if Kozue were a cat.
Anthy didn’t want this the way Kozue did. But she still wanted.
Kozue wondered if she was too tainted to be a duelist, the way she’d become too tainted for Miki, so dirty that he had to imagine some long lost version of her instead of who she was now. And maybe she was; there was no ring coming her way. But in that back seat with Anthy petting her hair as she pulsed under Kozue’s tongue, Kozue just felt the thrill of power. All the duelists were fighting for Anthy, and Kozue could have her right here, without ever picking up a sword.
She may be too dirty to be a duelist. But in a delightful turning of the tables, she was exactly the right kind of dirty to be a bride.
Miki lost. Of course he lost.
Kozue wasn’t even competing, but she won.
Anthy haunted her thoughts after that, more than ever. Kozue was growing bored of the boys she played. They were always the same, now; a fun game to begin with, seducing them and making them dance for her pleasure. The sex was fun. But there was no art to it any more.
She thought of Anthy’s brother, inviting her for a drive. A man who saw her lack of innocence and thought it made her more worthy, not less.
She thought of Miki drawing a sword out of her, a brief moment when they seemed like a pair again.
Herself and Anthy, in the in the back of the car. A different kind of matching pair. Dirty enough to be brides.
And then one day, Anthy was gone. The boys and girls who had fought for her hand had forgotten their fights, suddenly content with fencing and playing the piano. The way to the arena was gone as though it were never there.
Kozue could sit with Miki now, at peace as they hadn’t been since she first fell from innocence. She could run as wild as she wanted, climbing trees and sleeping with boys, and Miki loved her just the same. He welcomed her to the piano if she wanted to play, and didn’t push her when she wanted to sit and listen. It was what she’d wanted. It still felt empty.
It wasn’t easy to find her way to the Chairman’s office. It seemed to repel her. The elevator didn’t always open for her. The stairs led to nowhere. But she found her way anyway. To the top, to where the Chairman lay on his lounge, staring at the ceiling like there was nothing there.
“Hello,” she said, and she was gratified to see a flicker of recognition, of interest in his eyes, where before there had been nothing.
“Is that what you’ve been doing?” she asked. “Staring at the sky?”
“What is left but the stars?” he asked.
Kozue was silent. She felt very small and young, suddenly. What could she say that would mean anything to an adult who saw nothing to do in the world?
“There must be more,” she said, at last. “There’s a world outside your tower. There are so many pleasures in the world. There are games to play.”
He sighed, an arm over his eyes. He would be a prize to win, Kozue thought. It would be something to do. He had come to her the one time they slept together, but she would seduce him this time, the new challenge she’d been looking for, to take this grown man trapped in stasis and move forward once again.
“The duels are over,” he said. “I failed. The Bride is gone. The duelists are scattered.”
“Is there only one person who could ever be the prize?” Kozue said, lightly. “Only one group of people who could ever be duelists? As if any kid at this school doesn’t have something they want so much it makes them sick?”
“What do you want?” Akio said. There was something else in his eyes now, harder to read than a teenage boy but recognisable all the same. The moment when Kozue knew she had them hooked. She had him.
She couldn’t let on that the first thought, when he asked what she wanted, was I want to know where Anthy went.
“I want to matter,” she said. “I want to be precious, even though I’m not innocent. Even though I’m dirty.”
“Good,” Akio said, his lips on hers. “This is good. I can use you.”
Kozue tried to pull back. She wasn’t useful. She used men. But Akio had her in his grasp, a hand on her breast, and she felt the bite of a sword inside her once again.
The difference between being Kozue and being the Rose Bride, she soon learned, is that the Rose Bride didn’t get to choose.
Oh sure, she still seduced the duelists. She used every trick she knew to convince them to duel, to fight for her, that she was worth it. They were so ready to talk themselves out of it, despite how much they wanted, and Kozue was always coaxing them back. But she didn’t choose the duelists. She didn’t choose who won. And even though they wanted her, she was good at this, she was exactly the girl for the job, she didn’t choose who won the duels, and who took her to bed.
She tried to talk to Akio once, the man who’d seen how depraved she was and thought it was valuable, but all he spoke about was the duelists, who was winning, who needed to win, how to move them around like chess pieces.
“I think Tsuwabuki should fight the next duel,” Kozue said, one afternoon.
“No, he’s not right,” Akio said, dismissively.
“He’s ready. He wants it!”
“You need to get Kyoko back in the arena.” Then he glanced at her for a moment before he said, “Anthy was better at this.”
He was playing her, and she knew it, and Kozue had to fight with everything she had to say she was just as good, she would lure Kyoko in, she would do it right now. And inside she screamed, Where did she go?
The first time Kozue went to a student council meeting, she rode in the elevator with the other duelists. She had arrived. Kozue thrilled at the Presidents recitation. Crack the world’s shell. She was here and Miki wasn’t.
Over time it grew tiresome, though. None of them wanted to hear what the Rose Bride had to say, just like when she was only Kozue. Now she rode the elevator alone, watching the sky through the grille, words flittering through her head. There was no point reciting them to herself, but she knew them all the same. if a chick does not break through its shell, it dies without being born.
The elevator screeched to a halt.
“When the chick cracks its shell,” Anthy said, panting, gripping the grille from the other side, “It still has to leave.”
Kozue grabbed hold of the grille from the inside, Anthy pulling it from the outside, and together they shoved it aside, despite its groans and protests. Kozue expected Anthy to fall into the elevator with her, but instead Anthy tugged her out of the elevator, Kozue falling against her. Anthy was slight under Kozues hands, but she was strong and warm and real in a way she had never been before.
“You don’t need to look so sad,” Kozue said, when Anthy pulled away.
“Sorry,” Anthy said, but didn’t bow her head the way she used to. “I wish he hadn’t taken someone to replace me. I wish it hadn’t been you.”
“I asked for it.”
“Did he tell you what he was going to take from you?”
Kozue scoffed. “And where have you been?”
“Out there,” Anthy said, with a gesture. “The shell is broken. We can just leave.”
Kozue shrank back before she could even make a decision. She stepped back, but found herself on the threshold of the elevator again. A baby bird, trapped between the eggshell and the terrifying vastness of the sky.
“You must know what it’s like,” Kozue said, at last. “I’m not pure enough to be a duelist. Being the Rose Bride is the only way they’ll value someone as corrupted as me.”
“But you don’t have to be either. You can just be you.”
Kozue let out a short laugh. “What am I? If I’m not Miki’s perfect sister, or a school slut? At least as the Rose Bride they treat you like something precious.”
Anthy srhugged. “Something else.” She cocked her head to the side. “Maybe… someone loved?”
Kozue blinked, then. She swallowed. She took a step forward, touched Anthy’s face, far more nervous now than she had been in the back of Akio’s car.
“I hoped you’d come back,” Kozue admitted. “I hoped you’d come to the arena and fight for me.”
“Not in the arena,” Anthy said. “Out there.”
“But why?”
“I know it’s scary to leave,” Anthy said, her hands cupping Kozue’s face. “It’s scary to go from all these rules to none.”
Kozue thought of duels in the arena and games of the playground. The games she’d played for power. The things she’d done to try to get Miki to see her, and then to not see her. How Miki needed her pure, and she was incurably filthy.
“What does it mean if I kiss you?” Kozue wasked.
Anthy cocked her head to the side as she thought. “I think it means you want to kiss me.”
“Do you want me to?”
“I want you do to what you want to do, Kozue.”
And oh, Kozue wasn’t going to stand for that. She pushed closer, until Anthy’s hands fell to her shoulders in surprise, until she had her knee wedged between Anthy’s legs, and their noses brushed together.
“You said you can be who you want out there,” Kozue said. “Are you someone who wants me to kiss her?”
“Yes,” Anthy said this time, and Kozue didn’t waste a moment before she was kissing the words out of Anthy’s mouth.
This wasn’t like in the car, when Anthy had been restrained, trying to act like she didn’t care. This Anthy kissed her back as if she was every bit the wild animal that Kozue was. When Kozue pulled away, Anthy was panting, her eyes bright and fierce.
“We can do that all the time out there?” Kozue laughed. “What are we waiting for?”