I let it take me over. Hands were against the side of my face, the back of my neck, through my hair, everywhere on my body, holding me down, the presence of so many hands I couldn't count them. I let my body fall in time to it, as I had been trained to do. Those hands felt so familiar, as they ran their course trying to calm me, trying to still my heart from the beating of my fear. This I knew was a moment to be calm, because pleasure would follow. Pleasure would always follow hands wandering with maliciousness. I felt a soft touch of lips against my cheek, then those lips touched my own, and I opened my eyes to see a blackness seeping into the air, as if being drawn out of my heart. It took shape, as if coursing through invisible veins, but it was shapeless all at once, a mass that was indescribable. A demon, I recognized as it was so accurately told through every folk song of Edo that I danced to. I suddenly recognized its movements, its voice, as it was something that I had become on stage so many times before. I was unsure if it was still Mori, the truth of her, or if this demon had been lying to me since my arrival about her.
"So, what will it be? Salvation, or destruction?" The apparition addressed me, the monster in me, and appealed to the side of me without reason, with only instinct. My instinct was to live. My primal being wanted pleasure.
A glass was in my hand again, and the black figure of the oni was a blur in my vision as it held its own glass to meet me. A toast, to the monster and vanity in me that burned away my sense of reason. A toast with a devil who would appeal to that monster in me and sell my soul to his keeper. I drained my glass in a mouthful, and squinted into the burn of the liquid. "It'll be life then." I could do nothing to fight my survival instinct, when I wished for death in my conscious, the depths of my mind found some other torture I had yet to bear.
There was a kiss upon my cheek. A kiss I knew, when even the lips of a demon were supple. A haze settled over me, and all I could see was a fog, like my eyes had flooded with tears when the sadness of a life left breathing overcame me. And I thought for an instant that my wish had come to pass. That I had been given death by the hands of the one who promised me salvation. It wasn't true.
It was dark where I had been, where I had come from before, and in the present my eyes snapped open to relinquish me of it. There was light. There was light, and I breathed in the air like it was fresh, the new breeze off the ocean. I blinked into the sky, the bright sun boring down on me as if it would burn away what sin was still left in me. I touched a hand to my cheek, a vague tingling left there. And all at once I remembered the demon who had spoken to me, and the wish I had that was so denied. The kiss placed upon me burned away any last bit of innocence that I had, like a kiss of Judas when I was once a saviour and had been stripped of my crown. Eternal life was given to me like a curse with that kiss. I was damned with it as if it was a mark of death drawn harshly over my skin, and I truly was made to be used. If I had no time to waste in my life, if I had nothing to regret because my beauty would not leave me, then I was a creature made to be hated for certain. Nothing else in this would stand up against the wrath and violence I had taken, and nothing else in this world could have crawled through even an inch of the life I had run from. I was the only being that was made to be punished, because I could remain standing, over and over, and without wasting a second of my life, I could repeat every sin that was ever repented.
I awoke floating, and gradually my nerves settled into the stone floor. I felt my body heavy against it, sinking, as if I was still being pulled to Hell. As my eyes came back into focus, I blinked away the blur of the thawing dampness of the snow. A body was laying limp over me, draped over every limb. I rolled quickly, harshly, my head spun. and I entangled my fingers into the cross of the front of a kimono.
"Seishin!" A voice rang through me with familiarity. Pressing my knees into the stone floor, I rose to brace my free hand into it as well, lifting the body. I used my fist, all of my strength, to force the body back into the floor. I prepared to do it again. "Seishin!" It stopped me. "Seishin, it's me."
I released the hold I had on the kimono, letting the body within it fall to the floor, replacing my hand on the other side of it. The face of Mori came into my view, her eyes that I hadn't seen in some time shone as she held the emotion back with every ounce of her strength. She had cried for days already. I placed my hand over her eyes, forcing her head to one side. "Don't look at me." She fought against me, took me by surprise, but I was stronger. She grabbed my wrist and wrenched my hand away from her face. I simply watched as she writhed beneath me, looking for an exit, and I smiled, taking in the sight of her helplessness.
"I called him." She pounded my chest with both fists. I gathered both her wrists in one hand, lifted them to my lips and placed a kiss upon them. Over her face, a shadow was being cast, her patience wearing out. "I used you as a channel to call him."
"Did he answer?"
"He knows where you are."
I lay my hand upon her neck, gently, leaning down so close my face could touch hers. I couldn't focus on her features, but one eye was all I needed to glare into. "Did he answer?"
"You belong to him. I can't do any more with you."
The winter was harsh. It brought piercing winds, cold that I had never experienced, and to the depths of my heart I could feel myself blackening with it. The darkness tread with me, I saw the sun only as many times as I had fingers on one hand. My skin shrunk around my bones, holding me tightly, seeking warmth inside but there was none. During the coldest nights, I lay with Mori, our skin together, wrapped in layers of kimono and fur, and I let her raise my heart rate to create heat between us. Nothing from the world outside of my shrine grounds. Not a word or soul.
There was no other time in my life I had held a body against mine with such tenderness as when I held Mori that night. She clung to me despite how cruel I had been to her, a storm outside whistling through the stone walls of the shrine. We were protected in the small room, the fire casting a glowing warmth over the lifeless walls. Comfort was something that had evaded me since my arrival at the shrine, calling it mine, but that night I felt it in pouring over me. I had let go enough.
"What would Sugai think if he knew you lay with another during his absence?" I had returned her sight to her, feeling something, as she melted me. I thought all I wanted, and she read me, but her taunting was over, and so was my humility. I didn't care what she saw in my memories about Sugai, or about Edo. Most of it was recalled incorrectly, just how I wanted to remember moments, faces, and maybe they didn't align with history.
"He shouldn't have left then." My body was heavy, feeling as though I could lose the sharpness around the edges of me. Under my fingertips so used to numbness from the cold, her skin was a welcome change. Relaxation, after a long coldness, had found and gripped me, and I had forgotten what emotion it forced my heart to feel. Exhaustion caressed me deeply, the view from between my eyelashes fading slowly.
"I have come to enjoy you here, Seishin." She held me tightly, needlessly, as the fire's warmth kept us neutral.
But I found myself more engrossed in the feel of her skin under my fingertips, the smoothness of her under the flat plane of my palms. "Don't you dare say anything about love." See what you want in me, demon, my thoughts are lies. Lies I tell even to myself.
I felt in her strength that it was more than simple desperation she held me with. I felt her desire like flames, and her wavering happiness as she drank in those moments when I showed her something other than wrath. "There isn't anything in the world I would rather not say." Lies were all we could tell each other, and truth was the only thing I felt.
"Gomen nasai, ne." I'm sorry. For the anger I gave to you, for the fear I taught you, for the pain I caused you.
Her hand snaked up between us, her catlike nails grazing the skin of my chest, my neck, and her fingers wrapped themselves around my mouth. A light pressure for emphasis, and those fingers skimmed the angle of my jaw, into my hair, coming to rest with certainty at the nape of my neck. I understood. For once, I was forgiven. "How old are you now?"
I recalled the night my name was tarnished so vividly in my mind's eye. My head forced to the floor, my innocence stolen, the night that gave me lawlessness. The night that gave me fame. It was my seventeenth birthday. "Twenty, come spring." The spring dances. My feet had been aching, and I had been vulnerable.
"Life has been so cruel to you." She could feel hatred as it ran beside my bloodstream, so close to the surface of my skin.
"Life gave me what it would. I was cruel."
"Maybe now you will be granted the peace you deserve."
Finally, the snow gave way to the nourished grass beneath it, and the forest came to life. The sun warmed the earth, and though lingering frosted patches where the rays couldn't penetrate the blooming leaves remained, I tread barefoot. The air was thick, and I tied my white kimono loosely to allow it to touch my skin, painting me with the colour of life once again. My hair hung heavily to my hip, lacking the care it was used to being given. My body felt as nourished as the grass hydrated beneath the melting snow by the sun.
Through the trees I detected life. Movement, slowly approaching without threat or haste. I hesitated to build my guard, watching, scouring for details. A cloak, a golden rope, a tuft of hair, the glint of a tooth through a smile. Familiarity. I was frozen.
"Masaka…" It couldn't be.