"You don't have to do this anymore." His voice slipped through the silence, mixing in and out of the tendrils of smoke from the candle. Burning low, a starving fever begging in the tone of his words. After I had witnessed what he had done to my little sister, he seemed to be everywhere. He was with me, surrounding me, every second, and I was terrified. I was terrified of him, of what I saw, of how he could have somehow shown me such grace with such a creature within him. I was terrified that some day, I would meet the same fate by his hands, and I would allow it to come to pass. He seemed to be desperate for my attention, placing himself where ever I was, between what I was trying to do. I felt the sting of isolation.
The candle flame flickered, dancing in a balancing act on the tip of the wick as the breeze from my kimono pushed it. The night pressed on and I was in mid preparation to be present on stage, running through my dance in my mind's eye. But he held me, as he walked me toward the wall and blocked my way to the vanity where I was headed, looming over me with his eyes glowing in a way that shied away from the light, and I only thought about the wood of the floor beneath my feet, how the protrusions of my body fell into it, and how it was just painful enough to remind me it wasn't my game anymore. "This is my life, Sugai." I turned my face away from him, casting my gaze instead to the makeup and brushes that I had prepared to use for the evening's performance. "I have to be on stage, I have to dance, and I have to entertain."
What I had always craved to hear, what I tightened my muscles for, why I hid my face in shame; "But I love you. I could give you some different life."
And yet by the way his lips moved, the way his voice trickled out, I could see through the dark the way his smile held a genuine emotion, and for a moment there was only that smile lingering like the sliver of a moon through the clearing. Suddenly what I wanted was nothing more than to sink into the biting wood of the floor, kick and scream until the candle flame would jump unnoticed by my torment, writhe and shake until the smoke reached my lungs, breathe it in deeply, and begin to understand what regret was.
I shook my head. What I was breathing then lacked the luster of a thick choking smoke. It was a delicate and tender afterthought, fleeting and vanishing before I could recognize what flower it smelled of. "I suppose you do."
"Isn't that all you want, Seishin? A game from me? If I lied to you, lead you on, made you a fool, would you be happy? I tried to save you from this life, to show you that tenderness exists in this world."
I could feel the hate in my eyes. I could feel it snaking out and around him, turning him cold and distant. Like chains weighing heavily, pressing bruises into his wrists, marking the target for my kisses to be placed.
There was nowhere for him to run despite my body being the one held back, no dark shadowed corner for him to cower in; no matter how powerless he felt with that shine playing over my eyes, he knew there was no place for fear in a way that I might overcome him. He knew that I was drowning in devotion, choking on the sulphur of passion, intoxicated with the terror of hallucination as I continued to speak. "I thought that's what I wanted." Words slipping out battling with the thick air. "That's what I wanted from everyone else." Voice quivering, anxious. Watching through the warm light, backing into the comfort of the shadows. The devil in me I knew lurked in those corners, where he was sheltered in the darkness. I needed his strength. "And then there was you." Knowing there was a part of me only meant to be a jester, stifling the other part begging to sing like an angel's righteous gaze. "I didn't want to fall in love."
I didn't want to feel. That won't make me strong.
I peered up through my hair, carefully as it guised me, hiding from the emotion I could steal from him. He was waiting, observing me keenly, hunting with his eyes sinking deeply into my soul. I wanted to be preyed, pounced upon. "You won't love me forever. Even if you do now."
"Why do you say that? I do love you now. That should be all that matters."
I shook my head, lifting my head higher to ward off the piercing sting of his presence. "That's how it starts."
You want me while I'm fresh.
"Then we get used to each other, and realize the love was pretend for a while."
But then I grow up.
"I'll end up hating you, and you'll end up leaving me." I clasped my hands behind my back, not caring anymore about the closure of the kimono, feeling only the way my fingers tangled together. I had him. I knew I was his weakness. "That's always how it works. How would I dance then, Sugai? How would I dance with that heaviness in my heart?"
And I get too big to sit on your lap.
There was a dark cloud shadowing the alien contours of my heart; the ones that loved, and the ones that were kind. It rained and sometimes hard enough to wash the feeling over the boundaries, letting it leak into the wretchedness, an army penetrating an enemy, winning the land. But my guns were stronger, my swords sharper and cut deeper, and it wasn't long before I chased the prey back cowering under the forest of my anger. It didn't phase me anymore, back against a wall or shackled and whipped. Whatever my pleasure, it was a new rain that fell then; like a mist of summer in the cooling spring nights, beads clinging to hair and eyelashes, blurring the vision into calm when they would be blinked away. No matter how dark the night, how bright the lightening flashed, in the morning I was a bitter man.
I remembered a dream I never saw behind my eyes, where in a life I had never lived, I had a love I never desired in a man I had never met. I remembered how the tears broke on the pavement, next to my shoes so tarnished they held indents of my childish toes. A wheel spun in loneliness, as if running with my heart to the beat of a drum far away signalling an end to nothing in particular. Where the ground was spotted with a black darker than the rest, another pair of shoes were cleaner, another pair of arms around me protected. I sunk into the warmth of the body without realizing it had been crude moments before, with intensions cruel and riled. It was an almost silent, drifting music box melody that floated by, like the stray drop of blood running a crimson trail to my ankle. Like the car as it rolled to a stop gracefully, I could see the transparent ballerina from the velvet folds before the mirror as she skipped into the puddle gathering randomly in the street. The contents from my basket were strewn around, getting only slightly wet as that delicate dancer splashed without a concern to who may have watched her. I knew in only seconds, the body's warmth would become barren, the arms would retract, the shoes would walk away, and I would be left to pick up the bike and begin again. But the ballerina wasn't there, the bike didn't exist, and I hadn't been sitting on that curb at all. It was my imagination painting a picture of a place where I would have been treated kinder, and would have become gentler.
"Seishin, you really have no shame."
"My shame is not your concern, certainly not now, Sugai-san."
"You're not even touched by what I'm saying to you."
"I'm not."
Because I love you.
Silence enveloped us, a shroud of longing that passed over my eyes, and for a moment the only thing that remained was a looming tension, of fear, looking upon him with tempered obedience, defying a stubbornness that told me I didn't really disgrace him, that he still wanted me. He stared down at me, a position in compromise of the hours before when my eyes looked straight into his.
"I want us to be bound together, Seishin, by more than whatever love we have for each other."
The words seemed to freeze in the dense air, hovering with a thick scent like the smoking candle wax after the flame had burnt out. I could remember a time when I believed words he spoke without guidance; when everything in the world to me was the sound of his voice. But I didn't know what love was, I didn't have a correct definition of life, and so I changed my mind about his trust. I wondered when I had fallen, when he had become irresistible to me, when it didn't matter what he said.
My eyes were wide, as I could suddenly feel him stalking through the curtain of dusted conversation left floating there. As his fingers tangled with the closure of my kimono, I rose off the wall to meet him; as if I was timid, as if the ice of his heart had finally reached me. "You've seen everything of me, Seishin. I have no secrets from you now, you know what I am."
I pictured myself beside him, in a night deeper than the darkness of Japan. There was a comfort there I had never experienced, and with the stable reflection in his eyes, hoped I never would again. I was conflicted as I was desperate for his love, desperate not to feel, and I stared back unfeeling, immune to his lies and tricks, silently thanking him for needing my superficial primal instincts. I hadn't considered myself established. I wasn't supposed to love. I didn't know if I could settle. I didn't know if I had the capacity. "What are you asking?"
He laughed with his breath in that familiar way he did before stealing away when the sun shone through the bamboo curtain. "Did you not see what I did to your slave?"
"You want to kill me?" I knew what he wanted, a creature of the night in fantasy, but I played him. I wanted to hear him tell me how much I needed me.
I was firmly against him, held with a passion never quite realized, never quite determined. I lifted my arms to his back, mirroring the way his gripped with a desperation that for a moment, almost made me believe in fairy tale endings. "No, Seishin." His arms pressed harder, fingertips feeling, palms flattening, as if my body was something precious. "I need you to be with me forever."
He was only with me in the night. He would be gone before the sun rose. He trailed his tongue over the warmth of my neck where the shallow skin gave way to the blood coursing under it. He came out of nowhere, he was an ethereal creature. I knew, even before I had witnessed how he had killed my little sister, witnessed that he was a monster. But he had long ago bewitched me, and I cared for him more than I minded what he feasted on, or whether or not he was mystical. If it was his haunting power of immortality that held me to him so strongly, I didn't care. I wouldn't fight it, I would tip my head back and let him feast from my lifeline if it meant holding on to his love.
I waited. I'll die with you.
"I'm a shrine spirit, and I'm attached to you, so you are the only one who can see me. Did you not notice? But if we were properly bound, I could live with you in your world."
My world came to rest in the palm of my hands, an hourglass dripping the sweat of my fear to be tamed and vicious. Every night the curtain revealed a stage scattered with my dreams; every pleasure I had longed for in my youth came to rest at the satin ribbon of my zori. Every aching muscle, fever, every drop of blood, I had forgotten where my thoughts died and my nature was born. I was taught to be worthless. I was taught to be silent, in pain, and dry so I could be used and thrown away without consequence. Love to me was full of shame and hatred. My body was tarnished and full of sin. But my heart spoke for me to his.
I took the shield of my makeup for what it was worth, but you have seen me, my heart said. You know that underneath, I cry for attention. I cry to be loved, feel no pain, nothing shattered which was once beautiful. You hardly hear me when I speak, and you don't come to my rescue when I call. You don't stay the night, and you don't give me what I need. But still, I love you. Still, I'd give you all the strength I have. Still, I'd lean on you with no regrets, because I can be your crutch to help you stand. I look at my life and I don't feel the shambles, I don't feel the tension, because I feel young. I feel that you'll take care of me.
I don't want that to change.
He had committed a murder to my decency more than once that I could forgive him for, and yet having witnessed a killing that meant something; my heart was empty, void of sympathy. It was as if I had to choose who to feel for; the victim, my little sister, or the guilt, Sugai. And I chose Sugai every time. It rained so much, doused me with a soiled sense of false passion to bestow on my ignorance. Every time it rained, I felt myself slip a little farther from reason. Through the rain, the path to my heart's desire was clouded, and I wondered when it had got the best of me, if perhaps I had strayed enough that I didn't realize the difference. I had become so desperate, I was already willing to spread my legs and share my impurities. He just so happened to stand at my feet, he just so happened to come upon me where I lay; he just so happened to steal my soul.
I didn't care that he had a life to re-make his youth. I didn't fully understand his request, but I was a slave to him, I wanted to be, and I bowed my head with submission and let him take from me what he wanted. My happiness was nothing. My grave and shallow pain would be healed with his reluctant smile. I would stand for him, so should he fall, I would break it. And all I wanted was for him to give me a reason to keep surviving.
"Why is it me?" I asked, watching his eyes to recognize if I had caught him in a lie. "Only because it was me who came to the shrine that day?"
I had been content speaking with the nothingness over his shoulder where my chin rested, and my lips were next to his ear, my word muffled by how my lips pressed to the wrinkles of his kimono. He pulled me back by my shoulders, stared deeply. "If that was the only reason I was with you, I'd have finished you the first time I wanted to tell you I love you."
"You don't love me." I kept telling myself, because I didn't want to believe it, I tried to convince myself there was no reason to submit.
His fingers held my chin, chasing my gaze and winning the race into my bravery, when I finally looked at his eyes. "I envy you." He said, his expression softening to my stone eyes. "You don't believe in anything. But when I look at you, all I can think is that I'm so tangled with you, it burns me to touch you because you're so cold. You have something drawing, Seishin, and it makes me want to be afraid of you. If I don't love you, Seishin, then what do I feel for you?"
I wished I could look away. I wished I didn't have to be captured by his eyes, drawn in and drowned. I wished there was something other than love to hate about him, some reason to deny him, but he was perfect. I knew what he felt for me, because I felt that same thing. I knew it was frustrating, because there were times I wanted to rip my heart out, hand it over to him, and walk away.
"Tell me how I can prove to you that you're the only one?"
"You can't. You prey on anyone vulnerable in your shrine. It could have been anyone, and there is nothing special about me."
He stepped back from me, pressing me into the wall with his grip before letting it drop. "There is something, Seishin. I won't let you go."
"I have to perform." I could hear the music fading from the stage, and it signalled the end of the geisha's dance before me. My audience was waiting for me.
He slammed is hand into the wall beside my head, and my body jumped and shrank away in fear. "You're not just a toy to me, even if I am to you!" His voice was angry, full of that frustration my emotion gave to him. "Give me an answer!"
"Then wait. Starve yourself if you have to." A smirk came to my unconscious mind. "Wait for me. If you can, then I'll be yours." My voice as the soap of despair cleansing my corrupted soul.
"What do you mean by wait?"
He relaxed his arm, and I took the opportunity to push it out of the way. I looked back over my shoulder as I strolled to the stage.
"Starve. My blood will taste sweeter to you then."
Promises were uttered quietly, when company drifted far enough away not to hear, under a fluttering breath captured in a spring breeze. Another winter where sighs and whispers lay frozen in the misty breath of the cherry trees. The blush on my cheeks where the air caressed a little less gently, the extra candle to watch over the tatami, a strange hue of silk in heavy layers; signs of a winter where the nights would hang on a little longer into the morning light.
Those nights I laid still face down on the tatami, while the parallel lines of the rows pressed patterns into my cheek. I lay uncovered so he could feel me, my energy, from where ever he happened to be. I lay exposed so every breath I took would tangle with the air and he would breathe it in from me, where ever he happened to be. But he never returned. There were no tears, whispers, strong enough to make him hear me, to force my pain upon him from so far away.
The dead of winter was shrouded in solace. The days were short, the nights were long, and I was unoccupied. I danced on stage and in the Shogatsu festival for the New Year, but I was uninspired, unindulged, and I suffered. A lack of income. A lack of money, of love, of purpose, all of these things pivotal to my existence. Every moment that I was awake, I was waiting. Every moment that I slept, I called to him with my unconsciousness. I was exhausted, trapped. I couldn't describe another state of being that made my life worth while, I couldn't remember what before had made it worth the pain. But I also couldn't remember pain. He gave me a new existence, a new reason to be beautiful and find vanity in my soul, and he gave me a new emotion. Pain. Desire. These things that burned in me now that I had never felt before, these things that made my life reckless and harmful.
I could see my breath. It was a contrast against the sky where it dispersed and faded into the black of the night, just like I had done, dissolving into the atmosphere of Edo, giving it the last of my luxury so I could fall back to the earth. The colour of the shrine shone into the city, where standing on the top step of the platform, I could see everything below me all at once. I could still smell the smoke where the wood had been burned by the Christians, and the heat still radiated through the cold of the winter. I breathed out and reached out to wave my hand through the fog my breath created with the cold before it once again disappeared. Only my hand was left glowing against the sky, white on black, like the love Sugai and I never had the satisfaction of, because everything we touched turned complicated and disgraceful.
"I'm dancing tomorrow." I spoke out loud to no one, turning to face the shrine. "I'm dancing for someone to save me. Or to completely break me." I fell to my knees slowly and controlled, every muscle screaming for relief, every thought blocking out those connotations. The weight of the kimono was suddenly unbearable, like a grief I had never felt. My mind paced back and forth in my skull. My heart beat faster and faster until I thought the slightest movement would cause it to burst. But I rose again, tipping my head back to look between the rafters of the shrine's roof to the sky littered with stars. I mapped my path to Heaven.
I was laced and tangled with hope. The shrine was made of spider webs that held my dreams on the inside with the beats of my heart creating music like the drum. That way, I reasoned, no matter where I was in the world, I could always dance if I lived. The invisible nets of that shrine became solace, my public resting place, where everyone could watch how I suffered loveless and searching. It was where I called for him. Where I spoke to him.
I watched my fingers as they pressed seamlessly together, and I steadied my heart. I clapped once, twice, and bowed to whatever Kami I had summoned, whatever Kami had the courage to find me, to answer my prayer. I stared deeply into the statue of the deity there in the shrine, watching for a sign that it was listening, that it would hear me, begging it to understand me, begging it to reach out and caress my skin with compassion. The night was drawing to a close, and the morning would soon break over the horizon to spill a new day, the beginning of a new year, in Edo. "I want to be emotionless." I said. "I want to never feel pain, I want to be strong and soulless. Thank you for this gift." I clapped twice, bowed, and turned with a motion so swift that the momentum cast a breeze I could pretend was a nod of the Kami's head.
I didn't sleep. The atmosphere was thick and dark in my room, pressing from all the angles, and I was stretched comfortably on the floor next to the fire pot. I was part of that darkness, I was terrifying so had nothing to fear. I sucked a finger into my mouth, coating it with saliva. I touched it to the pot with soba boiling for my New Year's feast, pressing until I could feel it burn, then taking it away. Testing my ambition. Testing my wish. But in dismay, I still felt pain.
"Where are you?" He wouldn't hear me. The Gods didn't search for me in the place that was overturned with my sin, blocked out of their vision like an eclipse of the moon. "Do you hear me?"
I let my head roll against the floor to face the window, where the curtains hung lose and lifeless, void of breeze to move them. I turned fluidly against the floor and walked upon my knees, grasping the curtains in my hands and putting as much of my weight to them as they would support, while my gaze was far beyond me penetrating the night sky, leaving my imprint there. "Do you hear me?" I said it with as much strength as I could gather in my breath.
I turned back to the sound of the fire pot still boiling dry, the candle casting a pool of light big enough for my face to bathe in, and I could see my reflection in the floorboards. I stroked it with my fingertips, blowing my breath upon it to clear away the dust of the age on my skin. "I locked you away." I told it. "So that he couldn't touch you. Are you what he wants? Are you, because you're the purity in me, and it means nothing if my body is already soiled and tested?"
I sat back upon my heels folded under me, the weight of my body suddenly so lifeless and empty. "Was I wrong?" I whispered so that not even my heart could hear me. "Was I wrong to judge his trust?" I turned my gaze to the window, the fogged moon with cloud cover hovered there, as if to fall at any moment and shroud the city with darkness. I spoke to him. "You should have been the one to judge me." It was my body that was unfaithful, my soul that would wander, my heart that was disrupted. I had blamed Sugai for making me fall in love. I had blamed him for giving me desire.
"But I was the one that disturbed you."