Two flirtatious new girls came down the hall from the other direction. They were at the proverbial base of the ladder. New girls were still training to be companions and could not yet take customers. When the courtesan who served as their older sister and mentor took customers, they accompanied her to the tea rooms. In the entirety of the sequestered life that they would lead, this period was the easiest. They had a lot of free time and one often encountered them wandering the hallways. This was one of those times.
They cast a glance into the so-called reception area, the room for first-time customers, and chirped, “Hello, handsome.” The room was set abuzz instantly and they giggled charmingly behind their sleeves, and scurried primly away.
They were so innocent. How long would that last? Misao wondered as he took a vacant, dispassionate look into the reception area. He saw at once why the girls had fled.
The sliding doors had all been pulled open to create a room big enough for twenty beds. Four new customers sat inside, three of them cross-legged on the floor. Their respective girls sat a slight distance away from each of them, looking professional in their embroidered kimonos.
Only one of the customers was sitting in formal seiza position.
He was so stiff, it looked like he was waiting to begin a tea ceremony. He watched how the girls sat across from him with a peaceful look on his face.
He looked to be more or less the same age as Katsuragi. It was the customer the owner of the introductory tea house had brought here personally only a few minutes ago.
A very young girl in a flirtatious kimono, her hair arranged tightly atop her head, kneeled down beside him to offer a cup of tea and an ashtray. This was Sazu, the maid to Ukigumo, one of the Oumi Tea House’s prostitutes. It seemed they were going to offer their finest jewel to their finest customer.
Too bored to witness the same rituals performed yet again, Misao was on the verge of continuing down the stairs when he heard a voice cry out in an unfamiliar musical scale.
“Thank you very much.”
Misao halted in his tracks, as if he’d reached the end of a leash. He turned around awkwardly. He saw Sazu gazing at the customer, her eyes so wide they looked ready to pop.
Misao was sure he had the same look on his face.
He had never seen a new customer acknowledge the maid before.
“And how old are you?” the man asked Sazu kindly. This was a rare opportunity to hear someone speaking the language with a cultured accent.
“S—se—”
Sazu stuttered, her face filled with shock.
“I am seven… sir.”
“Seven…”
The man mulled over Sazu’s whispered announcement of her age, a look of anxiety flitting over his face.
Eager to escape this unfamiliar situation, Sazu quickly started to get up from her seat. The man lay a hand on the kimono that covered her knee and stopped her, then took something out of his coat pocket. He wrapped it in a white handkerchief and gave it to the girl, whose tiny hand hesitantly scooped it up. He drew his face closer to Sazu and whispered something in her ear.
Sazu shot him a dubious look, but held tightly to the object in her hands.
The man smiled at her placidly and nodded. He had a kind face. Misao found his eyes resting naturally on the man’s profile.
“He works for a big company in the east. His grandfather is the president of the Towa Corporation,” someone said out of nowhere in a secretive whisper. Misao turned his head in wide-eyed surprise. “And he’s an entrepreneur himself, despite how young he is.”
Misao hadn’t noticed anyone come up beside him. Kazushi, a friend of his among the servants, was staring into the reception area as well. Out of all the men at Oumi, Kazushi was the closest to Misao in age: only three years older.
Misao’s face was rigid with confusion, which seemed to make Kazushi uncomfortable. He jerked his eyes over at him and lifted his eyebrows. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Misao continued staring at Kazushi as he asked this question, then shook his head haltingly.
He could never admit that he had been captivated by one of the customers.
“No reason.”
Pushing his hair behind one ear, he lowered his eyes awkwardly. Only then did he notice the great tray that Kazushi balanced on one shoulder. On his tray were wine cups, bottles, and a plate of fish. Misao recognized it as the menu given to first-time customers.
“You’re going to serve him?”
“As you see.”
Kazushi looked at Misao triumphantly and winked.
“Can I do it?”
Normally, Kazushi wouldn’t hesitate to agree to it.
He knew Misao had a huge debt to pay off. So when he could help Misao make a little extra money, he would ungrudgingly give his trays to Misao to serve to the important customers. After that, it was up to Misao to inspire the customer’s predilections and make the situation profitable.
He looked back into the reception area.
Sazu bowed again and again to the man, then finally stood up.
Kazushi watched the man escort the maid to the door graciously before he finally answered.
“That’s all right. These men aren’t used to your tricks yet.”
“Do you think young master Katsuragi has made me too good?”
Kazushi gave a short laugh, then walked into the room with his tray as if nothing had happened. Sazu squeezed past him quickly and walked straight toward Misao. She tried to duck past, but Misao reached back and caught her fingers.
Sazu turned to Misao in surprise.
“Come with me,” Misao ordered, and dragged Sazu into a hallway hidden from the view of the reception area. Sazu looked a little guilty as she was pulled along. A coquettish little girl normally would have cut off a shriek, but she followed Misao as silently as a mouse.
Misao bent down to look at Sazu.
“What did he give you?” he asked with a serious look in his eye.
Sazu hunched her shoulders and stuffed the handkerchief she clutched in both hands into her kimono, trying to protect it. Her eyes were squeezed tightly shut. She looked like a child afraid of being beaten. The courtesan who was responsible for Sazu, her “older sister,” was Ukigumo, a beautiful woman who combined modesty and flamboyance, inside and out. She would never raise her hand to her maid. But for the children in the brothel, being beaten was a fact of life. Whenever something happened, they drew themselves up like this. Misao remembered the reflex well.
“I’m not going to take it,” he said with a rueful smile, patting Sazu on the head.
Misao just had to know what the man had given her. He felt like it would tug at his memory forever if he didn’t find out.
“You swear?”
Sazu looked up at him warningly, then finally let her clasped hands, held like a tiny flower bud at her chest, bloom open for Misao, revealing their prize. The handkerchief seemed to bloom simultaneously, opening itself in her hands.
It revealed an adorable translucent bottle in a rainbow of colors.
Misao picked it up, and his eyes traveled back to where the bottle had come from with something like jealousy.
He brought the bottle closer to his eye and saw the smoothness of its surface, unmarred by even a single fingerprint.
Shaking it from side to side, the high-quality multicolored candies inside it made a small tinkling sound.
“Ukigumo loves these,” Misao murmured.
Sazu’s eyes snapped open and she flew at him. “He gave it to me!”
Sazu snatched the bottle back, the handkerchief dancing out of her fingers.
“Oh—”
A small cry escaped Misao. He reached for the cloth before it had even completed its snowflake tumble to his feet.
“Are you going to tell her?”
The anxious question fell like a stone between them.
“Dummy.”
Misao looked up, as he scolded her with a stern voice.
“Even if I don’t tell her, you have to. If she doesn’t know that her maid has received a gift, she won’t be able to thank the customer for it. And that will make your sister look very bad.”
Sazu’s face was tortured as Misao lectured her, her lips pressed into a thin line. When he saw that she wasn’t going to argue, he decided that she had understood. But even when she nodded obediently, she still seemed upset.
“Who is it that makes it so you can wear pretty kimonos and eat as much as you want every day? Who’s paying for that?”
“My sister,” Sazu answered, in a voice tiny like a mosquito’s.
“So you mustn’t hide things from her,” Misao affirmed with a gentle smile. “Do you think your sister would take that from you? When it was a gift to you?”
This time the small head shook from side to side and the little girl’s hands fidgeted, at a loss.
“That customer…” Sazu murmured slowly, staring down at her hands. “He’s nice.”
“Why do you say that?”
Sazu fell silent when Misao asked her for proof, unable to offer any solid evidence.
“Because he gave you candy?”
Misao smiled patronizingly. Sazu glared, leaping to his defense.
“He’s nice!”
Apparently unsure that her argument would be effective, Sazu ran away down the hall like a fleeing rabbit.
Her long sleeves fluttered behind her like butterfly wings.
“I’m sure he is.”
Misao whispered his agreement in a voice he knew she would never hear as she fled down the hall.
He could tell, even as her tiny figure grew distant, that Sazu still clung protectively to the little bottle of candy.
But that wasn’t the nicest thing that man did for you, Sazu.
Misao didn’t believe that people who had been blessed by property and wealth brought only good things to those around them.
It was better not to believe that, in this wretched world stained by lust and sex.
Misao gazed at the pure white handkerchief Sazu had dropped, then folded it carefully.
It had protected the bottle the little girl had received, and he tucked this small kindness inside his kimono, against his heart.
At two in the morning, the monitor on the second floor walked through the empty hall beating his wooden clapper.
This let everyone know that the time had come for last call.
Misao walked down the hall on the second floor, stifling a yawn.
Moans came from every direction, muffled by pillows, but Misao had been used to that since childhood. He found it absolutely degenerate that the men who came to these places enjoyed when the women made such noises. After this critique, the next thought that came to Misao’s mind was of the customer in the reception room whom he’d discussed with Sazu. It was not the first time Misao had thought of him that evening. Everything that happened triggered the memory of him in his mind.
Of all the customers who came to the Oumi Tea House, there had been only one whom Misao had adored. They first met right after Misao became a maid andhe would never forget itthey had passed each other in the hall.
The man asked Misao how he had gotten a certain injury on his face and when Misao didn’t answer, he stopped the junior courtesan parading ahead of him and began to lecture her severely. The girl beat Misao for it later, but Misao knew it would pass. He was simply overjoyed that anyone had bothered to be concerned for him. The second time they met, Misao had run up to the man.
He felt an aura of selfless kindness from him.
He hadn’t come by in months, though. Why was Misao thinking about him so nostalgically all of a sudden? He supposed it must have been the effect of the new customer.
Masaomi Towa.
Entrepreneur and heir to the Towa Corporation. With titles like that, he had the power to keep a woman, and warnings were circulating among them all not to blunder.
Misao had no connection to this person, but oddly, his heart fluttered and refused to settle down.
“Hey there, all done?”
Kazushi called to him from one of the hallways on the central garden as he put new fuel into one of the garden lanterns.
Whenever they saw each other, he always had a look of perfect understanding on his face. Misao could imagine that if he ever left the tea house he would be popular with girls, but he remained wasted on the men of the brothel.
“Are you on watch?” he asked with a yawn.
That day Misao had started work at ten in the morning, when he took part in calling out to customers on the street in front of the tea house, so he was glad that his work was over.
“Yeah.”
Kazushi winked and quirked a corner of his mouth.
“And I have to get the girls in order before they go out on the street tomorrow. I can’t go to bed till that’s done.”
“How sad.”
“You sound real sympathetic.”
Kazushi frowned at him, then laughed. Misao stepped out of the hallway.
The girls slept on the second floor, but Misao and the other men slept on the first floor.
He turned toward the staircase. He was halfway down the hall when he saw a figure leaning on the railing, gazing down at the garden.
The person gave off a languid impression, dressed in a light summer kimono, caressed by the night breeze.
Misao opened his lips slightly and lay a hand to the crossed seams of his collar. He remembered the item he’d placed there.
I should return it…
Why was he thinking of doing something so conscientious?
“Having trouble sleeping?”
He’d spoken before he realized it.
The man turned around.
It was the man who had flickered through his mind all evening, the beautiful man from the reception room, Masaomi Towa.
He looked confused for a moment as he looked at Misao, then seemed to remember him. His expression instantly softened into cordiality.
“Good evening.”
Masaomi greeted him elegantly. It was the voice he had heard speaking to Sazu in the reception area, full of romance and fantasy. It made Misao feel as if he were reading a fairy tale.
Misao bowed slowly. He raised his face once again with the same languorous speed and saw that Masaomi was still staring at him, illuminated by a beam of moonlight. The purity of the scene dulled Misao’s nerve and he found it impossible to look directly at the man.
Maybe he ought to have waited until he was closer to speak.
Misao regretted it now, since he would have to awkwardly walk by so closely under Masaomi’s gaze, his own eyes lowered.
Why was he being so ceremonious for the return of a single handkerchief?
He tried to dampen the uncharacteristic excitement in his heart, but the tension refused to leave his shoulders. In fact, he felt even more stressed than before.
He stopped in front of Masaomi, who seemed to be waiting for him, and slipped his fingers inside the collar of his kimono. At almost the same moment, Masaomi began to speak.
“This is my first time at a place like this. I came without any idea of what I was going to do.”
“Hm?”
Misao raised his eyes with an almost impudent quickness, his long eyelashes cutting the air.
Masaomi looked at him with a weak smile, then turned his face slowly back to the garden.
The night breeze played through his soft hair. His bangs fell into his eyes, casting shadows over his face.
“So a courtesan is a woman who doesn’t speak?”
Misao glanced curiously at the man’s forlorn expression, disbelieving the furtiveness in his voice.
He must be teasing him.
The tiny doubt that floated into his mind never grew to be a suspicion: instead it withered quickly away to nothing.
Misao laid his hand on his kimono, which still concealed the handkerchief. He seemed to have missed his opportunity to mention it.
He didn�
��t think this man was the sort of person who teased others for his own enjoyment.
“Only at a reception,” Misao explained in a soft whisper.
Masaomi twisted his head around to look at him.
“The courtesans never use their mouths in front of a guest during his first visit. Not for speaking, not for drinking, and not for smoking.”
“That’s—”
His mouth seemed to have run away with his interest. Masaomi gasped, and cut himself off. Misao watched the man collect himself once more before turning to him and inquiring more politely.
“That means she will talk to me some day.”
Misao stared at Masaomi wordlessly.
Masaomi seemed unsure of how to interpret Misao’s silence and let out a short, nervous laugh in his embarrassment.
“I’m sorry. I must be keeping you.”
“Not at all.”
Misao shook his head slightly.
But he couldn’t very well continue standing there when he had been given permission to go.
No…
The man standing before him was somehow similar to the old customer who had been so nice to Misao when he was young, but they were also completely different.
The customer who had treated him kindly had done so because he understood how brothels worked. He had always conducted himself skillfully in the tea rooms. He was what might be called a connoisseur of the pleasure quarters.
But Masaomi had just finished his very first visit and understood nothing. He was an amateur.
Misao knew that if this generous man were to enter a tea room with his utter lack of knowledge, he would end by paying out all the money in his pocket.
“Um—I’m sure this is very forward of me to say, but…”
Misao felt annoyed at himself for his stuttering speech.
This was the first time he had ever felt concern for a customer’s well-being.
Love Water Page 2
