I watched my life before me in patterns of feathers, flowers, beautiful things that stirred my soul in a moment of passion no sooner forgotten. Colours of every shade, every highlight painted the skies in the reflections of the water strewn about the streets, collected in puddles. The sounds of the zori clacking upon the cobblestone faded in patterns I heard repeated in the back of my mind; smeared against the plush tatami mats and hushed enough so those sounds wouldn't leak out into the open. Those sounds, those colours and pictures, burned through me like those weapons I sheathed, and those I was a sheath for.
I lived through the shoguns and merchants as I pleased, taking what I could where I lay without moving to wake the body beside me. The few coins lay scattered over the blood stains on the tatami, catching the glint of the white moon through the window. The moon was pure, clean, and it would repay the rouge in me with that innocence. As I lay sprawled after those acts were committed against me, I hid my face in shame of my name, what my body had become, and prayed I had the strength to continue.
Clash of blades, the screech of steel against steel. I had to learn. That samurai handed me a sword, told me to step back, and in the next instant upon instinct, that sword was raised above my head to block the downward thrust of his. I held my breath, drawing strength from the earth, through the soles of my bare feet, and I could hear his breath in a laugh as he pressed down with the katana, and my arms shook under the weight of it. It was a flash, and I defended myself, no thought, running on instinct.
"Good, Rounin." The samurai chuckled at me as he lifted the katana. I stumbled forward at the sudden relief of weight on me, my arms dropped to my sides. "Your training as a dancer gave you strength and agility."
I peered at him through the hair that had escaped the ties, not lifting my head. I watched his body, taking the cues from his as I did from the audience on stage, from the geisha when we rehearsed. His intentions were given away in the flex of his shoulders, the dart of his gaze, the shift of his weight, and in an instant he charged. He was the wind, a swift current, but I anticipated his every move. Katana pointed to the sky, close to my body, I stepped and felt the movement of air from him past my back.
I spun. I wrenched the handle of the katana downwards. Collision. Straight down, straight atop the samurai's forearm. He tumbled forward, his own sword thumping against the dry ground. I pulled against the forward force I had created. I stopped just before the blade reached his throat.
Time froze. I took a breath, letting my eyes narrow. I hadn't meant to stop. I hadn't meant for the blade to spare him.
The previous night, I had leaned over the stage in the ochaya, outstretching my hand to the very tips of my fingers. My dance was over, I had exorcised everything from the deepest crevasses of my soul. As the lanterns were shaded, he reached up from his seat beneath me, while the muscles in my fingers relaxed, the gentle curling of them forced a brush over his fingertips reaching in the air for me. The slight touch traveled through me, out the tips of my toes, and for a moment, I was paralyzed there. It was long enough to hear a whisper cut through the silence, "Seishin."
The samurai took a step away from the blade against his throat, his body tense and still except for his eyes that darted to mine. "You don't need me to teach you a thing, Rounin. All I did was put a katana in your hand."
"Then you didn't earn me." I let my head roll to my shoulder to peer at his eyes where all his emotion seemed to leak out with his fear.
"Seishin-sama, you have a guest." The girl told me, as I was perched at the vanity staring at my innocent self in the mirror after the performance. I only nodded to her, and in an instant she was replaced with the samurai.
"Seishin, I wanted to compliment your performance this evening." There was no grace in his voice, there was hunger, and in his body there was tension.
"I know what you want." I told him, smiling and nodding my head as awkwardly as my hair style would allow. The sticks of gold and silver trickled together creating a soft sound like a bell, the imitation makeup like a woman of my eyes fell heavily with the lowering of my head, and rose seductively as my gaze traveled back upwards. I was well versed.
I saw his body tremble only slightly with the stale air, a wave of desire like incense smoke drifting. "I don't mean to disrespect you." He wanted to call me Sir.
I waved a hand to silence him. I took my pleasure, making him my puppet in that moment. Every slow, deliberate move of my head, he fell victim to. Every flash and glint of my black-lined eyes, he was weak for. Every tease from my body under the layered kimono, he was lured. Trapped. Forsaken. And he couldn't resist the devil in me over his gentle God.
"How did you hear about me?"
"The ochaya mistress told me."
A low laugh escaped from my throat. "Teach me how to fight." I told him. "And I'll teach you how to dance."
The samurai let his body fall hard to the ground, dropping away from my blade. He turned his back to me. I was on the ground, his outstretched leg flexing back at the knee, and in one swift motion, he rose. Towering over me. I rolled, planting my feet back on the ground, just before his blade sunk into it where I had been moments ago. "Don't let fear into your eyes, Rounin."
It was when I looked up at him over my shoulder that he spoke to me, wrenching his katana from the earth with the force of his weight. He slung the blade upon his shoulder, the blunt side to his armor, and stood triumphantly, as if he thought he had worn me. "So then, is it your turn to teach me something about dancing?" There was a suggestion in his voice.
I swung the katana to the length of my body with all the force I had, stemmed from all the hate and adverse passion I had for my profession. The blunt side of the blade connected hard with the back of the samurai's knee, sending him toppling to the ground like a weathered building. I used the momentum of the swing to make my body move, and the leverage of the impact to step upright. But I left him there, feeling the ground shake with the weight of his fall, and I walked away.
"If you can't handle training me, Samurai, then you should keep your legs crossed during my performances." I called over my shoulder, dragging the katana so the blade scored the earth as it followed me.
"You're quite the delightful whore, Rounin." The samurai threw the belt of his heavy armor around his hips, as the movement of air created from it threw dust rolling across the floor of my room into my face. I stayed low, with my chest against the tatami, and listened for his footsteps, clenching my eyes shut hidden beneath my arms. "But you won't make a name for yourself with a performance like that."
I did my best to keep my gaze from the door as he left, feeling the plunk of a few more coins against my back and the polished wood of the floor. "Better find another way to fund your training that won't destroy you needlessly." I pushed myself up to my knees, cowering behind the hair that fell over my shoulder, and trailed the back of a finger under my eye, watching the black tendrils as they unrolled to the floor.
But he was wrong, I reasoned. He hadn't anticipated me. Like my dance forced me to overcome my nature, so too did my secret life. That samurai looked at the red kimono I wore, the white skin of my legs showing through the folds, the black shine of my hair that fell to the bottom of my obi, and expected a woman. He couldn't see past the falsity of my makeup, the trickery in the movements of my body, and despite the way I spoke to him, ignored that we were the same. I had to learn to dance like a woman, and so I had to learn to love like one.
That night when the samurai left my room, I caught a glimpse of him looking left to right before stepping into the brazen night air. Testing, I thought, to make sure there was no one to see where he had come from, to judge what he had taken part in. For the first time, I felt a sensation in my eyes like the smoulder of a fire that was about to ignite. Tears overflowed and rolled through what was left of my smeared white makeup down my cheeks. I felt nothing. I was empty. Everything had been taken from me already, as so there was nothing worth feeling. Tears were a waste of my emotion. I raised my palm to my cheek and use the tears to roughly wipe through the remaining makeup.
"Konbanwa." I heard a smooth voice from behind me at the door left ajar slightly by the samurai. Peering over my shoulder through the curtain of black hair I saw a flash of white, red, and pale blue hair. "May I come in?"
As if with instinct, I hugged my kimono tighter around my shoulders, giving one swift nod as I averted my gaze from the doorway. Instantly I felt fingers around my chin, willing my head to lift as the presence of my new visitor fell heavily and firmly at my side. I felt the warmth from the body radiate through my skin into my bloodstream. I was beginning to feel alive again. I was met with an only slightly familiar face, yellow eyes, and a grin perfectly mixed of human and cat. His other hand gently moved the hair from my face, his eyes watching himself perform the actions with care. I felt heavy in his grasp, tired, as if the end of my life was nigh and I could finally relax into sleep. I bit my lip to hold back a smile.
"My poor Seishin." He said. His voice was low, as if it was for only me, no one else was to hear. "I can feel how much you want to give in." He placed his lips upon my forehead, pressing them into a kiss. "But now is not your time. I did not come to you tonight to bring you death. I came to bring you another life."
His fingers around my chin made their way around my throat, just like our first meeting, firm and in control. Moving like a snake against me, his body was heavy upon mine until my back slowly and gently came to rest against the floor. I could feel my skin give in to the lines of the tatami as I sunk into them under him, a familiar place, and yet I felt no urgency like usual, no anticipation of what was to come. His fingers around my throat, his bent knees holding my hips in place, he used the back of his hand to force my chin up, the back of my head pressed firmly into the tatami. I cast my eyes downward, straining to keep him in my vision, and swallowed against his grip. My dishevelled kimono mixed with his, with the addition of his loose hakama, we were lost and ensnared together. Claws from his free hand roamed over my chest, searching, leaving almost painful trails.
I sensed hesitation in him for a moment, and my hand shot up between us to wrench the closure of his kimono into my fist. I felt his body tense against me, his grips loosen, and I thought for a second I saw his eyes glint with surprise. "You don't have to hold me down, Sugai."
"But I do." He smiled, as if to purposefully place his unnaturally pointed teeth into my view. "You have no idea what's coming."
Darkness. Blankness in my mind. My body weightless, as I could have been floating. No pain. No fear. No sadness. As I came back to myself I could scarcely remember the weight of the body on mine, the feeling of caring hands on me, the smell of a body I was somehow comforted by. I let my mind float a second longer. Opening my eyes to the ceiling I used my elbows against the floor to upright myself, and in the corner of the room a figure was encased in shadow cast by the sun rising through the window. He sat with one knee against his chest, the other bent in front of him, bracing himself with a hand against the floor, an incense stick lit between his fingers, he let the smoke colour him, and watched me. His face was expressionless, but somehow content.
"I think you enjoyed that." He said to me.
My body betrayed me as I let a one syllable laugh escape out of a joy I hardly recognized on myself, and couldn't remember the last time I had felt. "And did you also?"
"I can see why you have such a tainted reputation." A knowing grin crossed his features. "I have to go."
I did not object. No other words were spoken. In the depths of me somewhere I could feel the reassurance that healing at his hands had begun and would continue.
Autumn was kind. The bright red gate of the shrine almost invisible among the red and orange of the forest with the turning season, no longer in stark contrast to its surroundings. Symbolic, I thought, of the way I had carelessly formed a relationship of some kind with a spirit, and somehow, we became less high contrast to each other. I hid away in his shrine most nights as the forest changed colour, my heart casting aside various shades of blue in favour of colours with more life. More life in a season signifying the death of everything. Perhaps in my namesake, I was not unlike a shrine spirit, drawing the energy of the world to survive.
I stepped onto the stone path with my feet in tabi and geta, as the stone bit my bare feet with icy breath. I had put away my red kimono on the first night I saw my breath's frozen vapour in the air, and closed the windows in my room in preparation for the coming winter. I wore a deep burgundy kimono that day, and the bath house I had spent time to purify my soul before entering the shrine. His dwelling, where when we were together I learned there would be no purity after.
We sat together on the steps before the Kamidana, smoke from the incense circling above us. I held a tea cup between two fingers, my head supported lazily in my other palm, elbow perched atop my knee. My kimono was merely draped over my form, outlining me in no particular pattern. The teapot had long since dried up, but the bitter taste lingered on my tongue and I savoured the dryness in my mouth along with it. He came to rest behind me on the higher stair, using his fingers and sharp nails to draw my matted hair away from my face and over my shoulders. My skin crawled at the touch, shivering despite me, and he began to draw a comb through the tangles.
"I have to make a choice." He said. The silence had settled around us and grown heavy, and his words were almost eaten by it. My drowsy disposition was interrupted. "And so do you."
"My choice is to remain here and dance for the Gods." I wasn't interested in what he had to say.
"If that is your choice then you've made things very simple."
"I sense you have real words for me, Sugai, but my mind is elsewhere."
"Time will come, Seishin, and you will have to listen to me or I will make the choice for us both."