He felt the ice break down into cold water on his closed eyelids.
Misao lay on the bed by himself, buried under a quilt.
Rain continued to fall outside the window.
Misao was thinking about a story that Masaomi had told him after dinner about a huge boat. Misao had never even seen a picture of one, let alone the real thing. He told Masaomi it made him want to ride on one, and Masaomi nodded, saying that one day he would.
Misao wondered, sad.
Even if he really could ride on a boat like that, Masaomi wouldn’t be with him.
Feeling a puff of sultry steam, Misao removed the bag of ice water from his eyes.
Masaomi had just gotten out of the bath and was wearing a light summer robe. He sat on the edge of the bed. Misao sat up, and Masaomi twisted around to look at him. He drew his face closer.
The sight of his wet hair surprised Misao.
“It’s back,” Masaomi murmured, his eyes twinkling, stroking around Misao’s eye with the back of his hand. “You’re as beautiful as ever.”
Misao looked away, gulping.
Masaomi pulled away and picked up the robe that lay folded on the pillow. He held it out to Misao. Misao took it dazedly and got out of bed.
He went into the bathroom, which was filled with white billows of steam.
He wiped the mirror off with a hand and checked his face, foggily reflected back at him. What sort of face was he making? It was vacant and dreamy.
But Masaomi had called him beautiful.
This might well be the first time he had ever felt happy to have his appearance complimented.
His hand trembled against the mirror. An unbidden wish coursed through his body.
He washed himself thoroughly, and before he left the bathroom he looked once more into the mirror and took a deep breath.
He opened the door.
His fingers were tense.
“Kobe? That’s much earlier than we planned. Incredible.”
Masaomi was at the claw-footed desk at the back of the room. He was sitting in a chair, his legs crossed, resting his elbow on the desk as he spoke on the phone. His back was almost completely turned to Misao like this, so he didn’t seem to have noticed that Misao had come out of the bathroom yet.
“Are you all surviving without me?”
Masaomi joked with the person on the other end. He was speaking more casually than Misao had ever heard him.
Masaomi barked with laughter.
“Hey, you’re not allowed to laugh. No, you’ve been a big help, thanks. I think it would be bad to force things.”
The first half of this exchange was lighthearted, but the second half was more subdued. There was a brief silence.
Misao had totally missed his chance to speak. Now it would look like he was eavesdropping and he didn’t like that. He felt so uncomfortable, he wanted to run from the room.
“I haven’t made any progress,” Masaomi continued tranquilly on the telephone. He switched the receiver to his other ear.
“No, I was just blundering about it, and”
Masaomi seemed to sense something behind him and turned his head in the middle of the conversation.
Misao raised his head slightly and looked at Masaomi apologetically.
“Sorry, I have to go.”
Smirking at the embarrassment on Misao’s face, Masaomi explained quickly to the person on the phone. He stood up and turned back to the desk.
“I’ll come say hello in Kobe before I head back to Tokyo. Make the offer before I get there. Right, thanks. Okay, bye.”
Masaomi hung up, then took a breath, as if shifting gears, and turned to Misao apologetically.
“Sorry. I didn’t notice you.”
“No, it’s my fault.”
Misao shook his head uncomfortably.
“I was talking to my younger brother. I left him in charge.”
Masaomi walked away from the desk as he explained. He moved to the bed and sat down. He rested his left hand on the bed, gesturing to his side, and looked up at Misao with a smile.
“Come here. I’ll dry your hair.”
Misao’s heart pounded.
He gave a slight nod, then went to Masaomi’s side. He sat down silently where the man indicated.
His throat was tight and his neck stiff.
Masaomi took the towel from around Misao’s shoulders and wrapped it around his wet hair.
“You have such beautiful hair,” Masaomi murmured, as he wiped the water away with the towel. His voice tickled at Misao’s ear. “It’s so straight and manageable.”
Misao’s mind was a blank, searching for some response to these kind words. In the end, he wound up not answering.
If Katsuragi ever saw him like this, he would toss his head back and laugh, unbelieving. He would say that Misao pretended to be a master of love, but he was actually mastered by it.
Despite the fact that he’d been born and raised in the brothel, Misao hid a morsel of purity inside himself and Katsuragi had seen through him. That was why he had always found Misao’s lascivious bravado so amusing.
The towel fell from his hair.
Masaomi touched Misao’s ear with a long finger to tell him he had finished. Misao shut his eyes at the feeling of Masaomi’s finger brushing over his skin.
He had always believed that a passionate gaze without control was something filthy.
But now…
He raised his trembling eyelashes and turned to look at Masaomi.
He gazed earnestly at Masaomi as Masaomi gazed back at him, a slight bewilderment showing on his face.
It didn’t matter if it was a lie. He just wanted to be with this man once.
He opened his lips slightly.
“Shall we go to bed?”
He could barely speak: Misao’s advance was more a series of breaths than words. Masaomi’s eyes widened at it. His head moved awkwardly then, taking the hand that rested on his knee and covering his mouth with it.
The man beside him let out a deep breath.
His heart cooled and Misao gripped the robe that hugged his knees tightly around himself.
“Please don’t look at me like that and say those things,” Masaomi said, obviously at a loss, glancing sidelong at Misao and smiling ruefully. “I’m not that strong—I don’t trust in my reason to win out.”
Misao raised his eyebrows.
How was he supposed to take words as harsh as these?
It sounded like Masaomi wasn’t entirely unwilling, but he wanted to refuse politely.
“It must be hard for you being told this so often.”
Misao was confused. Masaomi took his hand away and turned to face him.
“Misao, I think I really do love you. So I don’t want to pay for sex with you.”
It took Misao several seconds to understand what Masaomi was telling him.
His lips trembled, opening and closing several times.
“You think I want—?”
Misao’s voice grew harsh and his eyes widened in anger.
Masaomi looked surprised. As soon as Misao saw that, he remembered that he had never corrected his misunderstanding the night before.
As shame colored his neck, his heart broke.
Masaomi thought that Misao was a male prostitute.
When he realized that Masaomi had been looking at him like that the entire day, Misao couldn’t bear it.
“You’re wrong.”
His eyebrows knitted together painfully and he shook his head. He looked pleadingly at Masaomi.
“I don’t sell my body,” he declared keenly.
Masaomi’s face hardened as he gazed at him, and a few moments later he apologized.
“I’m sorry. I obviously misunderstood terribly somehow.”
“What do you mean?”
Misao twisted his head in incomprehension and Masaomi answered with a harsh laugh.
“Now I’ve done it,” he sighed, and stared up at the ceiling. “But no, I’m glad.”
/>
His eyes narrowed in a slight smile and he looked somehow relieved. But Misao could only watch him, still not understanding.
“But you…”
Masaomi started to say something, but apparently had trouble going on.
He turned back to Misao.
“I’m sure a lot of people told you that you were beneath them.”
Masaomi offered this with a complicated expression. Misao gazed at him vacantly for a long moment, then lowered his eyes.
“At first everyone acts kind.”
He spoke in a whisper devoid of emotion, his eyes fixated, unseeing, on the carpet. He blinked slowly, and cursed himself.
“But in exchange for their help they take off their kimonos and expose themselves to me. In the end they just want to lock me away somewhere. And compared to the girls who sell their bodies, my debt to the brothel must be cheap.”
“But you refused.”
“Of course I did.”
Misao was emphatic.
“Spending my entire life locked away with a man I don’t love is worse torture than being in the brothel.”
Misao spit out his words, and Masaomi watched him carefully. Then he whispered, seriously, “I’d like to think I would be different.”
“Wh—”
Masaomi’s eyes left Misao’s face and unfocused slightly, lost in thought.
“On the other hand, it would probably be humiliating.”
Masaomi spoke as if to himself, and it pained Misao to see his face, for reasons he didn’t understand.
“‘On the other hand’?”
Misao caught at Masaomi’s words, driven by his impatience at being left behind in the conversation.
“Do you mean there’s an upside to being locked away by someone I don’t love?”
He was utterly unsure of his interpretation. But the way Masaomi looked back at him in utter silence told Misao that he had it right.
Why had Masaomi’s mind gone to that all of a sudden?
Masaomi smiled faintly at Misao’s confusion.
“Shall we go to bed?” he asked crisply, as if trying to forget about everything.
“Excuse me?” Misao whispered.
There wasn’t even a trace of eroticism in his voice, and Misao knew now that his own invitation had blown away like smoke on the air.
His heart was filled with a variety of complex emotions: regret, self-pity, relief. And it was out of the question now to ask the man to explain himself.
With a soft sigh, Misao stood up. He went around to the opposite side of the bed and got under the covers.
He gazed at Masaomi’s back as he dimmed the lights.
Misao knew that he was too ambitious.
“But maybe… maybe I don’t mind after all.”
Misao’s voice echoed with a strange sadness in the darkened room.
Masaomi got into bed beside him and cocked his head.
“What I said before—about how even if the man didn’t love me… I think maybe, just being with him would be enough.”
Misao looked up at Masaomi, who sat propped up against the pillows. He had spoken his real feelings just now.
Sensing that they had returned to the earlier topic, Masaomi smiled in agreement. His smile was stunning.
“How admirable.”
Misao’s eyes grew round at this compliment. He was so surprised his mouth fell open.
“That’s the first time anyone’s ever called me that.”
After the initial shock wore off, he saw the humor in it.
“If Kazushi heard you say that, he wouldn’t be able to stop laughing.”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Misao covered his face with his hands. His shoulders were shaking.
“Kazushi? Oh, that servant? That handsome man?”
Misao burst out laughing at that. He didn’t know if Masaomi had meant it seriously or as a joke.
“When you say that, I can’t help but compare you two. Kazushi definitely gets the short end of the stick in that contest!”
He looked up at Masaomi, laughing. Misao’s eyes met Masaomi’s, which gazed down at him seriously, and he choked off his laughter. The bed was big enough for three people to sleep in it together. There ought to have been plenty of space between the two of them, but somehow they felt very close. A thrill of surprise ran down Misao’s neck.
“Mister Towa—?”
Finally, he spoke his name, and Masaomi tilted his head, still looking at Misao. “I was just thinking how carefree you looked when you were talking about him.”
It took a moment for Misao to realize that he meant Kazushi.
He nodded. “I’ve known him a long time.”
“You sound different when you talk about him,” Masaomi said quietly. A small, melancholy sigh escaped him.
“Are you going to a special effort for me? Because I’m a customer?”
Misao’s head was sunk into the pillow, but he shook it ever so slightly.
You’re wrong.
He cared for Masaomi.
And even if he had known exactly why, he wouldn’t tell him.
“Well, you sounded totally different when you were talking to your brother on the phone before.”
Masaomi looked a little embarrassed at Misao’s point. It was sort of cheating.
“He’s a relative.”
“Kazushi is like a relative to me.”
Masaomi smiled slightly at Misao’s answer. “I see.”
He lay down fully.
“Well, at least—”
He gazed up at the ceiling as he spoke, his face turned very slightly toward Misao. He had a gentle, teasing smile.
“Call me Masaomi.”
Misao’s lips parted slightly. He pulled the quilt up very slightly to hide it.
He waited for Masaomi’s eyes to turn back to the ceiling.
Then he whispered secretly, “Masaomi.”
He saw the man’s face flicker for a moment.
The silence that filled the room let them know that the rain had stopped.
Masaomi folded the arm closest to Misao behind his head and spoke in a very controlled voice. “If I try anything funny, I want you to hit me,” he joked, still looking at the ceiling.
Misao hid the tight, painful squeezing of his heart and forced a laugh.
He ran frantically, barefoot.
He ran across small bits of gravel, which cut his feet and made them bloody. But since his face and body were covered with injuries, he could no longer tell which part of him hurt.
He was afraid to look behind him, and ran on, clinging to what he saw ahead.
He passed several shop lights burning in the darkness at the edge of his vision.
He stumbled and fell many times. The scrapes on his palms and knees grew deeper each time.
His breath made a white cloud in front of him, and through it he could see the great western gate that he sought drawing closer.
There were two men in front of the gate, blocking it.
Let me through!
He ran haphazardly between the men.
They caught his shoulders on both sides and twisted his arms behind him and forced him to his knees.
His wide eyes saw the gate soaring into the sky just above him.
He stretched his mouth open to its limit.
Let me out!
The sound of his voice reverberating inside his head woke Misao up.
He put a hand to his forehead.
His heart was pounding fast.
He saw an unfamiliar ceiling. A moment later, the entire day’s events replayed in Misao’s mind and he looked hesitantly over beside him.
There he saw the man’s face, handsome in sleep, and he sighed in relief.
But still his feeling of helplessness did not go away. So Misao gently moved over to lie on top of the man’s chest.
He was warm.
Misao’s heart filled itself with his kind warmth.
He wanted to hold Masaomi, and to be held.<
br />
He pressed his lips against the cloth of Masaomi’s robe rather than let the desolate sigh he felt rising escape them. He closed his delicately trembling eyelashes. Misao felt a hand begin to slowly stroke his hair, and when he drew himself closer to the man’s body, Masaomi wrapped an arm around his frail shoulders.
Misao let his eyes roam freely and he gazed up at Masaomi, afraid that he had woke him up. But set deep within his flawless face, his eyelids remained shut.
Chapter 4
Matching the music of the samisen the geisha played, the two young apprentices danced with fans, their long sleeves swaying.
The girls were under Seno’o, taking advantage of the absence of their older sister to introduce themselves through this dance. Katsuragi sat before the stage lazily smoking a pipe, one leg propped up. Sitting diagonally across from him, Misao watched the girls dance too, but there was only one thing on his mind. His heart was somewhere else.
He distractedly served Katsuragi wine when the man held his cup out to him. Katsuragi drained the cup in a single gulp, then smirked at how unhappy Misao looked.
“Late night?” he asked sarcastically.
Misao poured him more wine and fixed his eyes on the bottle before responding dully, “I lost someone.”
Seemingly bored with Misao’s unusual lassitude, Katsuragi set his fresh cup of wine on the butterfly table unconsumed. Instead, he packed tobacco into his pipe and blew a cloud of purple smoke into Misao’s face.
“I heard you left the brothel to spend time with a man, you saucy boy. Your boss was awfully nice to let you do that.”
Katsuragi’s mouth was bent in a smile, but he spoke so quickly that there was no chance to respond. Misao turned his face away, pretending to find the smoke irritating. His eyes rested on the new girls, their fans twirling in the air.
He was jealous of the way the dancers seemed to have forgotten the world.
He wanted to dance like that. He didn’t want to think.
The purple smoke filled his eyes and made them burn.
“I heard the man went up to a girl’s room not five minutes after bringing you back here. And today is their third meeting, isn’t it?”
Katsuragi sounded more surprised than happy, and he gave a wry smile. Misao balled his hands up tightly on his knees.
Love Water Page 7
