In the darkness of the morning, the sun rising not yet reaching through the windows, I slid the back door of the Okiya open to see the garden. The air was damp, filled with fog, and the haze of the water droplets lingering in the air made it hard to breathe. Green. Grey. That was all there was. The mountain painted over the sky in the distance made my stomach turn, the thought of another winter coming enough to make my body ache. I leaned heavily against the door frame, crossing my arms in front of my chest. Crossing myself, perhaps, as a habit that would never fade, to tell the demons constantly circling that I was giving no invitation. My kimono, wrapped and tied only enough to save my decency, became heavy with the humidity. Water droplets clung to my hair. I feared the sun would remain sitting low on the horizon.
A brush of fingertips over my shoulder caught my attention, my skin crawling at the sudden and unexpected touch. I turned my head to be caught in a kiss. A forehead pressed against mine, eyes downcast, hands around my shoulders, and we were projected in silhouette against the mountain.
"Why did you hate me so much then, in Edo, and show me so much tenderness now?"
A gaze caught. A heartbeat quickened. "It wasn't you that I hated. I hated the idea of having fallen for you. You were just a toy, but somehow you became important to me. You made me question my nature."
His finger trailed a path through the dampness of my skin, across my jaw, down my neck, further still over the expanse of my chest. His hand around my back was offered no resistance as he invited me close against his body. "Won't living among two Kitsune bring misfortune to this Okiya?"
"You have paid your dues. You have suffered enough for your lifetime. You have earned the love of two Kitsune. Take pride in that you have done things no other living creature could hope to do. Live your life now, like I told you."
Everything I had, I had taken by force. Through dance and seduction, I had taken Sugai. Through fear, I had taken Mori. I lived with the assumption that anything I wanted, I could simply take, but as I had fought through my entire life, fighting was all I knew. The restfulness of Sugai's attention since I had left Edo was enticing, but I made peace with knowing that I would forever live expecting something else.
He grasped the front hems of my kimono in each hand and tugged them gently to straighten them, unconcerned with how indecently I was covered, only with the drape of the fabric over my body. "Mori has tea ready. She wanted to help you set kimono out for the Maiko."
"What will you do?"
He looked more human to me in that moment, watching him put a small distance between us, than he ever had. His fingertips lingered in contact with me. "Hunt. I'll have you back in my arms by sunset."
Mori had not bothered to ask me once which I preferred, as she told me she could already see in my eyes that I didn't know. "Sugai, I love you more." I lived on the edge of a world separated from fantasy by one thin borderline. It spilled over the boundaries here and there, and I was able but unwilling to keep it contained. If my lovers were spirits, at least I knew one cautionary tale whispered in the streets was true. Not only were they spirits, but I hovered between them, being shared as whatever they wanted me to be. Concretely a man, but decidedly, which ever they preferred. In between them, I could experience what it was like to be gentle, to be kind, and I could experience what it was like to feel ruthlessly in control. Where ever my rage placed me. But Mori had been wrong when she had not bothered to ask me, because I did know very well that Sugai was the first love I had ever found, and that my existence was devoted to earning a place at his side.
"I love you more."
I followed the smell of the tea, pungent and aromatic, craving it harshly as I found my way to the main room of the Okiya. If I had to close my eyes in the unfamiliar place, I could be confident that finding Mori would be simple. The way she crafted tea was unmatched even by the master Hiroyuki-san himself, as she created it like an extension of her, a manipulation of her surroundings.
"Will I have to call you Seishin-sama now as well like the Maiko do?" I was met with her outstretched hand, her fingers curled over the top of a tea cup, the steam billowing from her palm as she had the force to keep it warm.
"That depends on my nightly performance, doesn't it?"
I greedily took the cup, breathing in the scent as I drank. The tea pot was set in the middle of the room, a fireplace set into the floor. The energy surrounding Mori was always swirling in chaos, and I wondered often if it was simply female energy, and not her at all. The shoji were pushed back revealing the engawa hallway, the light streaming in from the sunrise had begun to burn away the fog. I clutched the tea cup in both of my hands, the tips of my fingers frozen from the night still, coming to life little by little, my body roused by the warmth of the tea.
She had paused her activities setting out the kimono Iko stands, and I found her eyes on me, reading the language my body alone was speaking. If she could not see my eyes, she could not see what thoughts ravaged my brain, but in the brief moment when our eyes met, she knew the volumes of languages in my mind at once. As she turned her gaze from me, I felt her energy withdraw from my reach. She turned her body away from me as I closed the distance between us, but I was quicker still, and my knowledge of her was deeper yet. My fingers around the front of her hip carelessly pressed her back against me. I felt her deep exhale as I skimmed my teeth against the flesh of her neck. I knew exactly where she could offer no resistance against me.
"What did you see?"
"I saw that I can consider myself just a toy to you."
She made no move to release herself from my grip. She stood her ground against me, yet let herself remain pliable to my advances. I had to do so little. "You know that's not what you saw in me. There is no need to do that to yourself."
"There is no need to think you find me as important as him either."
I turned her to face me, resisting my tendencies to be violent, and instead letting my hands hold her firmly. She knew better than to test me, and she knew that a tease would result in her injury. The animalistic side of my mind found it so pleasing to prey upon her, and I held myself back every time I touched her. "I have loved Sugai longer, but that does not mean I love you any less hard. Look at me." I clutched her jaw to force her head up, but her eyes remained downcast.
"Look at me."
As her eyes flickered upward, I drew them into mine, and they softened. The glass blue of those dangerous eyes she wielded as I wielded my katana bore into my mind, and I invited them. "To think that I would be using such a word as love like I know what it means. To think I would be saying it without careful placement and thought. And what of my two lovers then? Jealousy? Over me, who doesn't even know if I prefer male or female?"
She averted her eyes from mine, reaching up to wrap her fingers around my wrist and wrench my hold from her. She waltzed a few paces forward from me, opening her hand to gesture across the room. "Will you teach me?"
"Perhaps the job of Okiya Okasan should be yours instead of mine." I hid a smile from her sight as I began sliding open the doors covering rows of kimono in woven bamboo boxes. The smell as I revealed them curled around me like fingers of incense would, invisible scents of musk and fresh earth. The kimono were kept out of the reach of the sunlight, protected by a makeshift wall and sliding doors in the corner of the room, creating a hallway big enough for one person. The boxes each wore a tag, a worn piece of parchment with a name drawn in crude calligraphy. I had never learned to read or write, and I had not yet learned all the names that resided under the Okiya roof.
"Hiroyuki-san was given this Okiya when the woman who ran it as the Okasan fell ill and passed suddenly. Okiya are run by females, they are the mothers to the Geisha and Maiko under the Okiya's care, and she is responsible for training them right and organizing their work."
I took a box, one of every different character, and set them down one by one in front of their respective Iko. I would learn, I thought, eventually, and they would have to be patient with me.
"A woman is supposed to run the Okiya?" Mori had seated herself on the tatami close to the sliding door, where the light from the rising sun painted a spot on the floor. "So why are you the Okiya mother?"
I arranged the silk of a kimono on the stand, smoothing my palm over the drape of the sleeve. The softness felt as though it contrasted me so deeply that even my skin could snag it. I felt as though I could have left a stain of my envy on the pattern. "There has never been a dancer better than me. Perhaps though, I can create one."