Through the day, I attempted to understand what it meant to have pride of place. I tied my yukata tightly for the first time since I could remember, shrugging the fabric away from my shoulders, leaving my skin exposed to my waist. I had tucked the hem of each sleeve into my obi, using a Shuro broom archaically strung together, to clear the hallways. The Geisha and Maiko had gone for the day, preparing in the bath house for the night filled with a luxury I was somehow no longer jealous of.
As the rooms of the Okiya filled with the afternoon sun, casting a glow onto the lacquered bamboo, I could almost forget where I had been in my life before I came to stand in that hallway. I asked myself if it no longer mattered. If the demons of my soul had been chased away, and I no longer had any purpose to protect or defend myself. I remembered though, that some piece of a demon still lay inside my mind, as I recalled how I felt as I pierced the flesh of the Geisha Sakura with her hair pin. For what? To teach her fear? I couldn't be sure. I remembered only pure enjoyment. I wondered how much of that demon remained, how easy it would be to be satisfied.
I had lived endlessly. I thought perhaps I would never die. As I pushed the shuro over the tatami in the main room, I caught myself in the Geisha's dressing mirror. I asked myself if beauty still meant the same thing as it did back then. My straight black hair smooth to the lengths that touched the belt holding my yukata. My face angular. My chest broad, my shoulders strong, my legs toned from years of dance, the rest of me skin and bones. Youth was no longer something I could identify on myself. Youth, however, had been taken from me on my seventeenth birthday. I had not seen it in years.
In each room that belonged to one of the Geisha and Maiko, futons lay abandoned, kimono underclothes were folded improperly, towels from the bath house were hung carelessly, allowing the water to run onto the tatami. As I too had been sold to an Okiya when I was a child, I knew that before me, they had not been mistreated. There I was again the thorn, who had spoken words of fear into the hallways I swept, but since childhood those girls had not learned any of what it meant to be self sufficient. I could see they had become dependant on the Okiya mother, whoever it was, and had not the slightest idea how easy their lives had come to be. As it should have been, I thought. Under whatever circumstance it had been to sell a child to survive, to hope to give the child a better life, to free the child from neglect at least, an Okiya should have become a place of solace. I wanted to change, from the moment the thought was born in my mind. I wanted to provide the solace I had been denied, and I wanted to become the one to take care of those children.
"What a sight I'm witnessing." A voice from the doorway. I found myself on my knees on the floor, a white undergarment arranged neatly before me, and I reached to fold the sleeves in line with the hems, the red silk on the collar safely guarded between the folds. "My Seishin, showing delicacy, even compassion perhaps?"
I placed my hands atop my thighs, my gaze unmoving, and I realized I had put down my katana long ago, and I walked barefoot more often than I wore zori to dance in. "Call it a new leaf." I turned my nose to my shoulder, looking back to the doorway with only a glance, concealing the contentment that I had discovered in that moment.
"A new leaf it is then." Her body was relaxed against the door frame, leaning lazily with an aura of calm. "Come eat with me. We have much to discuss."
We had spoken so little. I couldn't remember when I had grown out of my hatred for her and into some kind of love, if it had happened gradually or all at once. We sat together sharing tea, rice, vegetables, and miso soup, and I watched her as she spoke. The words she was saying I couldn't be sure of, and I was not included in the conversation she was having, although it was directed to me. I watched her face as she laughed while she spoke, while she drank tea from her cup, and all of it so candidly done, without any effort. Her eyes, though empty, in that moment sang with so much life I had never experienced beside her. It was beauty, maybe, but I couldn't be sure of that either. My definition of beauty was skewed and flawed, and to give it to her would have been to tarnish whatever childlike happiness was in her in that moment. I decided that talking was something I could come to enjoy.
The sky had opened in torrential rain the day I learned Hiroyuki-san had passed on. I had accompanied the Geisha and Maiko to the bath house, the doors left ajar to let the rain pound the street just outside, playing a melodic rhythm. The energy between myself and the three girls hung low in the air, but it was light enough to float. The steam from the water surrounded us, wafting up and around with each movement, the cold rain meeting the humid heat on the ground creating more to sit thickly at the doors. The water ran, splashing and overflowing languidly onto the floor, but we were all barefoot wrapped in only linen. I had perched myself on a hinoki stool behind Sayaka and had begun to brush her hair, while somewhere within me a tune came to mind, and I hummed to the beat of the rain. It was a traditional tune, and the Geisha knew it well, having danced to it as many times as I had. She hummed along with me as she lazily lathered soap in her hands. Trust was not something I asked of them, I didn't even bother to learn their names, but they allowed me to act in a manner to earn their trust.
Mori had appeared in the doorway, just a silhouette against the grey sky. I rose to meet her, but she remained unreceptive. She didn't reach for me, she didn't touch me. "Seishin." She spoke my name with grace as I approached, but her tone left questions in my heart. "Hiroyuki-san has passed. It happened quite suddenly."
I had prepared myself for the experience of Hiroyuki-san's mortality. He had lived his life, and I knew he hovered in between worlds, able to see and understand more than human capabilities allowed. "Was he cared for on his journey?"
Mori closed her eyes as she nodded, a proud display. "I saw it to it myself."
"Then he left us in peace." I was satisfied with that much.
"The Okiya is now entirely yours. There is no one left after him, and he left it to you."
My final resting place in the wake of the one before me. My place to belong at last. "It seems I turned that new leaf just in time."