My heart was on fire the remainder of the night. I lay on my side, watching the fire dance, Mori in my arms held tightly against my chest. I could feel the cold tip of her nose against my throat, her hot exhaled breath. My back was securely tucked against Sugai, his hand idly running the length of my thigh from hip to knee in comfort, a meditative motion. Him and I had always simply waited for dawn.
"She has grown attached to you. You really have a way of capturing hearts, Seishin." Sugai's voice in the silence, stark against the crackling of the fire, seeped into my ears like trickling water. I closed my eyes peacefully for a moment to listen, but he said no more, simply making an observation of how the three of us were arranged.
"I don't capture them at all, I manipulate them until they become so desperate for my attention they can live with nothing else." Over my shoulder, his eyes burned while he listened to my confession. "I have been so cruel to her."
"And yet look at how comforted she is in your embrace. Look at how genuinely you hold her. She feels a very innocent love for you."
"There is nothing innocent about the way she loves me."
His hand slithered over me to place a hold on my chin, turning my gaze. "Would you miss her if I asked you to spend the rest of your time with me alone?"
A stroke of her hair, my arms tightening involuntarily around her, my breath drawing in her scent. Deep in her unconsciousness, she unfurled her hands tucked between our chests and searched for me, her fingertips tracing my outline until she found my shoulders as her anchor. "I used to hate her. She knew things about me, things that I kept in my mind and did not admit to even to myself. She knew them. I couldn't bare it for a long time. Somehow, even through the way I misused her, and how she knew every vulgar thought I had, she found something worthy in me to love."
Desperation had been the only emotion between us, and I had never been able to feel a love less challenging to my soul, never been allowed to. What she had given me was a devotion like a child during the light, but a lust like a demon in the night. The way she laid her hands on me each time felt like the intention of the touch was to erase the things done to me, take the experience from my body, but there was too much of it for one innocent soul to handle. Would I miss that? Could I live without that? Could I revert to a life of desperation, without trust or compassion and be satisfied with the rest of my days in yearning? I wasn't sure if I trusted him enough. Isolation was the way I had experienced life in Edo, it was the definition of my existence, the purpose I was given. I eased the isolation felt by each of my nightly visitors, but I was kept in a room alone, isolated from my Okiya. The solitude it granted me made my profession, gave me a name, but isolation kept Edo from knowing it.
"What are you asking of me?"
"Come with me to my shrine. The place where we met. The forest there is lush, the rooms are large, well kept. The tea is plenty." His speech was languid as he recalled it, a picture in his mind of perfection in his definition. I recalled spending time there, how at ease my soul was as I was allowed to heal. It was a time before I knew what betrayal felt like, before I had been abandoned, before I learned longing, and I ached to return to ignorance. If returning to the place I remembered when my life was devoid of so much hurt, perhaps, as I retraced my steps, so too would my heart be retraced.
"I would like to take the night to consider your offer."
A touch in my hair, gentle, gathering it away from my back. The warmth of a kiss and soft breath against the skin of my neck. "I suppose I can wait that long."
I watched the dawn break in the sky. I lay in the hot spring with my head resting back against the wet rocks, the steam thick in the morning chill, and I was soaked with the humidity. I could think of nothing at all, my mind ran empty, my heart did as well, and I felt far away from any thought that was important. The forest was silent, still, and I held my body just as still so I wouldn't have to hear the movement of the water.
"Is there room for one more?"
I lifted my head as she lowered her body into the water, and my eyes lingered on her form as if I hadn't seen it enough to have memorized it. One look into my eyes and she would know exactly what I thought about seeing her that way, and I allowed myself to watch her every move without discretion. "You were already in a state of undress and taking action before you made the request. So I think you didn't care what my answer would be."
Under the cover of the water, the thick steam rising to create a canopy around us, she reached a leg toward me from the opposite side of the pool, the arch of her foot running the length of my calf slowly, as if it would entice me. "Have you never looked at me from arm's length before? Is my body so unappealing after all?"
I felt amusement wash over me involuntarily, the corners of my lips tugged upward into a smile. "Different. Just different."
"I won't bother asking which you prefer, because I know you don't know yourself." I could feel the energy drain from her into relaxation, as she melted into the scenery. My eyes remained downcast into the water, uselessly, because she knew me well enough I realized to understand where my mind ran to without the need to see it for herself. "You haven't given him an answer yet."
"Were you awake the whole time?"
"I heard every word." Her face hardened, her expression telling me she was in control in that moment. "And I felt everything in the way you were holding me."
I had never felt the need to be modest about the way I admitted emotion through my body, when I was on stage or when I was behind the curtain, and there were plenty of emotions my body gave away without my mind's permission. She knew with one look into my eyes the impurity of the emotion I felt toward her, no matter how stoic my expression, no matter how steel I could make my movements, she knew. Admitting them to her however, brought me a fear I had never experienced. "I would miss you."
She cast her gaze away from me, pretending she didn't care, that she had no use for me and my sentiments. I caught a faint glow in her cheeks, as the perimeters of her skin were reddened by the heat of the water, I couldn't tell the difference between her circumstance and her embarrassment. "I told you before that I had come to enjoy your company in my poor little shrine. I was sure that as I lay in your arms last night that I have come to love you."
"Such misfortune that befalls those who become entwined with Kitsune." Something that had been told to me long ago. "I have survived so much in my short time on this earth. I never expected my greatest downfall would be an emotion so useless as love."
"Is it useless, Seishin?"
Just to relieve myself of her eyes, I lowered my head back to rest against the rocks once more, and turned my gaze to the sky as it gradually turned blue with the rising sun. "If my life is to be taken, I refuse to deprive myself of any pleasure left in it. The three of us will have to get along."
The spring air warmed the earth again, and I made the long walk into the village alone from the hot spring. I took the time to properly dress myself in the shrine maiden's kimono, brushed my hair neatly and let the warmth dry it as I walked. The forest was coming to life around me, and I felt I could watch the leaves sprout and unfurl to drink in the sunlight. I had been a creature of the night for far too long. The sun in the forest was a thing of beauty, and though I imagined it must have touched each hard edge of me to place a highlight upon them, my youth had hardened me, and my adulthood had made me accept those things about myself. As I walked I acknowledged the complacency I had come to gain. In the mountains, sharing time with Mori, my life had been simple. I had eventually learned to let go of the demon in me, and with the lightest touch, she had eventually ironed out the rage that tainted my soul. I could have been an angel in the mountains. I could have earned the right to wear the shrine maiden's kimono. Like everything I touched, though, still despair was created on the earth where I tread. Still, there was destruction.
"Okyaku-sama." The old man at the tea shop bowed deeply to me as I approached him, and I returned his bow, my hair falling over my shoulder, nearly reaching the dirt road.
"My name is Seishin."
"My name is Hiroyuki."
The familiarity in his voice as he addressed me gave away no surprise as I shared my name with him. In the crowd, I was easily recognizable, and I felt as if he knew I wore the kimono of the shrine out of necessity and not out of recognition. I felt as if he knew more of me than I realized, and that I didn't need to offer him anything at all. "Hiroyuki-san, what is this place called?"
"Miyako. Come, I will show you."