Written By
VENIO TACHIBANA
Scorpio - November 9 – Blood type O
On the horoscopes they do every morning on TV, they said, “Watch out for burns!” I laughed, but then I burned my middle finger.
Illustrated By
TOOKO MIYAGI
Last year, I said I wanted to redecorate my apartment, but I never did. I think it’s going to be another year like that.
LOVE WATER
Love Water - Girou No Koimizu © VENIO TACHIBANA/TOOKO MIYAGI 2007. All rights reserved. Original Japanese edition published in 2007 by Taiyoh Tosho Publishing Co., Ltd.English translation copyright © 2010 by DIGITAL MANGA, Inc./ TAIYOH TOSHO CO., LTD. All other material © 2010 by DIGITAL MANGA, Inc. All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the copyright holders. Any likeness of characters, places, and situations featured in this publication to actual persons (living or deceased), events, places, and situations are purely coincidental. All characters depicted in sexually explicit scenes in this publication are at least the age of consent or older. The JUNÉ logo is ™ of DIGITAL MANGA, Inc.
Written by Venio Tachibana
Illustrated by Tooko Miyagi
English translation by Karen McGillicuddy
English Edition Published by:
DIGITAL MANGA PUBLISHING
A division of DIGITAL MANGA, Inc.
1487 W 178th Street, Suite 300
Gardena, CA 90248
USA
www.dmpbooks.com
www.junemanga.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available Upon Request
First Edition: October 2010
ISBN-13: 978-1-56970-049-5
e-ISBN-13: 978-1-931712-55-2
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Other novels published by
JUNÉ
Only The Ring Finger Knows vol.1-4
Don’t Worry Mama
The Man Who Doesn’t
Take Off His Clothes vol.1-2
Cold Sleep
Cold Light
Little Darling
Ai No Kusabi – The Space Between
Vol.1-6
Sweet Admiration
Better Than A Dream
S vol. 1-4
The Aristocrat & Desert Prince
Caged Slave
The Guilty vol. 1-4
Immoral Darkness
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Conclusion
Postscript
Prologue
Evening was approaching in Shibai-machi, and the traffic in Dotonbori was made more clamorous by vehicles like rickshaws and horse carts.
The gas lamps that had come in the first years of Meiji dotted the street. Lamplighters thrust their flames into the wicks and the cherry blossoms lit up with a gentle white glow in the deepening darkness. A row of these magnificent cherry trees ran from Dotonbori past the western side of Kadoza and straight up to the grand temple of Hozenji, where they stopped abruptly in front of the soaring western gate.
Across from the great portal was the newly-opened district of Namba.
Home of the Otobe pleasure district and the premier brothels of Osaka, where even the cherry blossoms changed color.
Chapter 1
The evening cherry blossoms were dyed by the light of paper lanterns.
Nights in the pleasure district always seemed red. Why was that?
I suppose it’s the color of madness, Misao mused, resting his hands on the vermillion railing. He raised his chin ever so slightly and narrowed his languorous eyes like a cat.
A breeze blew through the spring evening, making Misao’s hair dance freely over his shoulders, despite the fact that he was a man. The movement exposed the delicate skin of his neck, which stretched up beyond his tall collar.
The merry sound of singing came through the sliding doors, muffled by the distance.
A sigh escaped him.
He wanted to dance, his mind free to float and play without restrictions, far from the shackles that bound his body.
At times like this, he didn’t want to feel or think about anything.
“Why hello there, Misao.”
A voice called out to him from the western hallway, dragging him back to reality.
Hiding a sigh of disappointment, Misao turned his head indolently. This was all reality was.
The guest was on his way back from the washroom, his face reddened slightly by alcohol. He came toward Misao, looking content. He was the owner of a large kimono shop.
“Well, this is a rare sight. Nothing to do?”
The merchant spoke cheerfully, and Misao put on a modest smile and shook his head delicately.
“I’m visiting Seno’o’s room. There was a bit too much wine, so I told them I was going downstairs to get some warmed wine. But...”
Misao turned languidly then, and cast his empty gaze over the railing.
“The cherry blossoms are so very red. They just captivated me.”
He pretended not to see the man’s face licking at the corner of his vision.
Ever since he was a child, he had known how to act to ensnare someone’s interest or get what he wanted without much thought.
Words could be so inelegant.
Seeming to follow the path of a single petal as it fell through the air, Misao tilted his head. As he did so, his gaze fell finally on the toes of the guest’s socks and Misao raised his eyelashes. The man caught this upward glance and his face filled with affection. He swallowed noticeably.
“Are you... eighteen yet?” the kimono merchant asked, sidling cautiously up beside Misao, closing the distance between them as he might with a skittish cat.
“Yes, last month.” Misao nodded gracefully.
“I’ve known about you for a very long time, Misao, but you just keep getting more and more beautiful.”
His meaty hands, warm with the heat of his body, plucked up Misao’s right hand.
“Oh—”
Misao gave a practiced cry of surprise, tinged with naïveté, and the man’s face relaxed.
“You don’t look like a man at all.”
Misao didn’t fight the unpleasant feeling of the man’s caresses on the back of his hand and only fluttered his lowered eyelashes. His only intention with such a refined act was to mock his suitor.
The first time Misao had been visited by the kimono merchant was many years ago, when he was a junior courtesan’s maid. They were called maids in the vernacular of the house. The maids went everywhere the courtesans went, doing their small tasks. The girl Misao had served was wildly popular at the time and had considerable charms, but she was only attractive on the outside: inside, she was a viper, a demanding, proud woman. She would blow up at the slightest provocation and would beat Misao to make herself feel better. Her regular customers were very familiar with this aspect of her personality, but they were paying for a beautiful woman, and so when she tortured her maid in the tea rooms they looked the other way.
But that didn’t matter.
The junior courtesan’s maid bore it, and when she had grown tired of looking after him when he was around twelve the men began to behave in a much more obviously affectionate way toward him. The reason was clear: as Misao began to develop, he was suffused with an asexual beauty that none of the girls could hold a candle to.
And after all, the men who came to these brothels to buy girls only judged people by their appearances.
They became lecherous.
“If you get a
break, why not come by my place? I would love to watch your dances for much longer than I can here, Misao.”
Misao responded to the kimono merchant’s suggestion by bashfully dipping his head. “Thank you. I will.”
The merchant nodded happily three times, then removed one of the hands that held Misao’s delicate fingers and reached into his sleeve. He pulled it back out immediately and rested it once more on Misao’s hand.
Misao felt something rough against his skin.
“Is that a promise?”
The merchant squeezed Misao’s hand tightly as a way of sealing the promise, then pulled away and hurried into the inner hallway. As soon as Misao lost sight of him, the false interest disappeared from his face.
He blew on the back of his right hand, as if trying to remove dirt, then opened his hand to see what the merchant had given him. It was a five yen bill.
“Thanks,” he murmured insincerely to the note in his hand.
Misao had worked a month straight in the pleasure district without a day off, and he might have earned just as much from his performances as this amount. He squeezed his fist and decided that if this was his price, it wasn’t too shabby. Not too shabby, but still a long way from the amount of money he needed.
But if he could keep this up, the day might yet come when it would be over.
His mind wandered, imagining the future.
He slipped the money he had wheedled into his sleeve and leaned his right hip against the railing to look out at the pleasure district.
This was the hour when the world within the gates began to be pervaded by energy. Within the milling streams of people, he found his gaze resting on a young apprentice who was striding along the road carrying her older sister geisha’s samisen and being roundly chewed out. A two-person rickshaw came up behind them and pulled up to stop under the eaves of Misao’s own Oumi Tea House.
The hood was up, so he couldn’t see the passenger, but it could have been a guest arriving at the house or a geisha coming to perform in one of the tea rooms.
The wind blew his long bangs into his eyes and he swept them back behind his ear in annoyance. He peered at the cart and saw the first passenger climb out. It was the owner of an introductory tea house that worked as a guide for customers to the world of the tea house and the pleasure district. Both his hands rested on his belt. He stepped away from the rickshaw and bowed with great refinement as the second passenger climbed out. This was obviously a client. And since the owner had not left the work to the younger members of his tea house, but had escorted the client himself, it was also obvious that this man was a very important customer.
Misao saw a head of soft, pale hair emerge from under the rickshaw’s hood. Then he spotted a shoulder covered in a flocked coat the color of dry leaves. He felt a sudden burst of breath on the back of his neck and cried out in surprise. It had been a prank. But Misao’s voice seemed to have reached the man’s ears, because he turned his eyes up toward the balcony as he stepped down from the cart.
Misao’s eyes met the man’s handsome face.
Even from a distance, he was obviously an attractive man.
Keeping the same offhanded expression, the man gazed at Misao for a long time before giving a bashful smile and returning his eyes to ground level. The entire series of actions was performed with practiced elegance, in stark contrast to Misao who had been caught by surprise and had stared wide-eyed at the man the entire time.
We come from different backgrounds, Misao thought bitterly.
Nothing showed a person’s true breeding better than how they reacted to unexpected situations.
“Oh-ho.”
An amused voice that smelled very slightly of alcohol struck Misao’s ear.
“Quite the fancy man in town tonight. The girls will love it.”
The man chortled and leaned his elbows on the railing to stare down at the street. Misao glared at the dilettante out of the corner of his eyes. His kimono was disheveled and he gave off a powerful scent of attractive masculinity. But the courtesan who was so talented at wheedling his customers had now been outmaneuvered by an attractive man.
In the pleasure quarter there was a saying: a good-looking man has neither money nor power. This man, Yoji Katsuragi, was a beautiful young man in his mid-twenties. Plus, he was blessed enough to have been born the heir to a very old, landowning family.
Customers like him, who wanted for nothing in their lives, were rare indeed. They were born under lucky stars.
How old had Misao been when he’d realized the futility of envying others for the things he didn’t have?
He glanced back at the eaves with a cool eye, but the man was gone. Even the rickshaw had pulled away.
“Why did you do that, Mister Katsuragi? Now you’ve embarrassed me!”
Misao huffed, trying to pull away as he bluntly turned the blame on Katsuragi. Katsuragi blocked his escape with one arm, which he coiled teasingly around Misao’s waist.
He gave a short chuckle against his left ear.
“You may dress like a woman, but your body is definitely a man’s.”
Misao stood, silent and unmoving, within the restraints of Katsuragi’s arm. He stared blankly at a point in the distance. Misao knew his resistance would only encourage Katsuragi.
Katsuragi loved beyond all else to say and do things that made Misao uncomfortable. It wasn’t that he didn’t like him, but when he came to the brothel he always called Misao into his tea room and flirted with him frivolously, as if he couldn’t imagine how depressed Misao was. If he did it with pure motives, then Misao was using Katsuragi at least as much. But Katsuragi wasn’t quite so easy a mark to manipulate.
He had an unnaturally perverse character.
“Let me go. I’ve got cramps.”
Misao resisted tonelessly.
“You don’t look like a girl to me.”
Katsuragi’s throat quivered with laughter and he mimed patting around Misao’s hips with the palm of his hand.
“Though if any man’s going to turn into a girl, my money would be on you,” he continued rudely.
Warm breath surrounded Misao’s earlobe. “You want to check and make sure?”
This was real cold-heartedness, masquerading as a confession of lascivious passion.
He didn’t feel that way at all. Sometimes he just liked to toy with Misao. For Katsuragi, the brothel was never anything more than a place to kill time. He had taught Misao that even if a man said something like that, good-looking men with money could never be taken at their word.
So Misao avoided any unnecessary affection for Katsuragi and instead dealt with him indifferently.
In the pleasure quarters, either you tricked someone or you were being tricked.
Two lovers running away together just didn’t happen here. Misao craned his neck and looked up at Katsuragi.
“Do you want to?” he asked with a cool, victorious smile.
Katsuragi lost interest immediately and let Misao go.
“You’re a real pro. Why can’t you act more like the sweet little girl you pretend to be for Kato?”
“How repulsive! You watched us?”
Misao cast a sidelong glance at Katsuragi and jeered at him. His gaze slid past Katsuragi’s profile and down the hall.
“I thought about it.”
Misao saw a woman in a heavily-embroidered kimono walking with her nose raised a bit higher than usual, looking down at them. She had thin, sloping eyes that matched her upswept hair and made her look like a fox. This was the woman Katsuragi usually preferred, the second highest-ranking courtesan at the Oumi Tea House, Seno’o.
Katsuragi rubbed the back of his neck and looked back at her in irritation.
The people you least wanted to see always showed up at the worst times.
“I thought you said you were going to bring us warm wine. What have you been doing all this time?”
Seno’o regarded Misao frigidly, her tone almost suggesting that she had caught Misao in a
meeting with an illicit lover. It was an absurd accusation, but it was true that Misao had been dawdling, so he decided to remain silent rather than take her bait.
“Don’t be jealous of the help.”
It wasn’t clear if Katsuragi was trying to calm her or incite her as he cut in nonchalantly.
“I’m tired of hearing about the help.”
Seno’o turned on Katsuragi with an annoyed look.
“The only help I know about are the men who do so much hard work for the house up on the second floor. If you mean the sort of work that person can do, that only amounts to basking in the adoring looks of the customers and boring everyone with his interminable dances in the tea rooms. It’s as if he thinks he’s a geisha.”
Seno’o turned her disparaging face on Misao.
“I don’t know how the owner feels about it, but it certainly doesn’t look good.”
Seno’o’s flat declaration annoyed Misao, but before he could answer it, Katsuragi cut in apathetically.
“Could you avoid your shallow politics in front of the customers? I don’t really care about these catfights,” he muttered as if to no one in particular, and walked back to the tea room alone. But Seno’o could not contain her irritation with Misao and she went on.
“I’d like to know how you’ve managed to ingratiate yourself with him so well.”
Seno’o offered Misao a hateful look and her red lips pulled into a cruel bow.
“Perhaps you’re generous with your physical gifts.”
“What did you say?”
Misao smiled lusciously at this vulgar insult.
“I’ve cornered the market on that. I can see that you haven’t picked any of them up, anyway.”
Love Water (Yaoi Novel) Page 1
