by India Millar
Another man was sitting with legs akimbo, his knees almost knocking on the matting. Masaki was sitting on his lap, facing him, looking as if she really was an exquisite porcelain doll. Naked, she was perfectly beautiful, her skin unmarred in any way, her tiny breasts just big enough to be grasped. I had often wondered how tiny Masaki managed to take any man’s tree, but she appeared perfectly unconcerned and was juddering up and down in time to her patron’s movements. Unlike Kiku, her exclamations I recognized as practiced rather than pleasure.
Naruko was on top of one of the other men, riding him as if he was a donkey. I gawped foolishly as she raised herself up, up, up, until only the very tip of his tree was still inside her. Just as it seemed he would pop out, she slammed herself down on him and leaned forward, dangling her breasts in his face. The man raised his head and tried to take her nipples in his mouth, but she swayed away teasingly.
I leaned back against Danjuro, my breath coming in short pants. Even the antics of the Boys were deeply erotic. Both of them were engaged with the remaining two men. I stared in mingled fascination and horror. Big had his man pinned down to the floor, as much of his tree as he could manage jammed into his patron’s gaping mouth. For a horrified second, I thought the man was choking to death – hardly surprising, given the size of Big’s tree – but then I realized that he was still managing to gasp encouragement and the plum color of his face was caused by excitement rather than pain. Or possibly both. In any event, he was clearly deeply excited, as his own tree loomed rigidly. As I watched, Big glanced at me – or did he actually look at Danjuro? He leaned casually back to pluck at the penis of the man beneath, sliding it back and forth almost idly in his grip. The man’s voice rose in a scream of pleasure and Big’s grip tightened until the organ in his grasp was almost the same plum color as the man’s face.
Bigger had his head buried in his client’s lap. The man was laying back, his robe flung open, and he, in his turn, had Bigger’s tree of flesh in his hand. The pair had all the grace of a dance. As Bigger’s head bobbed back and forth, the man’s hand moved up and down Bigger’s tree in time to music I could not hear. Bigger’s lips were drawn back from his teeth in an expression that was more snarl than smile, and as I watched, fascinated and unable to look away, I saw his mouth open wide and bite down so hard that blood spurted from his patron’s penis and dribbled down Bigger’s chin. I expected his patron to scream, to hit him, to call a halt to proceedings and cause chaos, but there was none of that. Instead, he gave a breathy wheeze and flung his head back, his mouth wide open as if he was gasping for air. At the same time, I saw Bigger swallow deeply, and I realized that the patron had burst his fruit in Bigger’s mouth.
My own mouth parted in shock.
Danjuro gestured at Suzume, and the maid came at a run, clutching a flask of sake. Danjuro asked her for two cups, as quietly as if we were alone somewhere, as if we were not surrounded by bodies coupling and breaking and coupling again, sometimes in the same combination, sometimes moving on to another partner. He gulped down his sake and held his cup out for more. I sipped mine, but still the cup was soon empty. Suzume refilled both and then trotted off for another flask.
The sake went straight to my head. I had rarely had more than a sip or two of the liquor before, and now I had downed two cups in a couple of minutes. And I was on fire. The sake was making the room spin around me. Danjuro at my side was making me even hotter. His tree of flesh was still in my hand. I drank my third cup of sake and put the cup down, determined to concentrate on Danjuro.
I leaned across him, brushing my hair against his chest. Moving as slowly, as deliberately as I could, I lowered my head to his penis, taking it in my mouth and moving back and forth as slowly as I could make myself. I wanted, desperately, to gulp him down. To take as much of him as I could manage in my mouth. I pressed my breasts against him, and – try as I might – I could not stop myself rubbing against him, as blatant as a cat in heat. I could hear his heart beating against my ear. The skin on his chest and belly was smooth as silk, but in my state of heightened awareness, my flesh felt inflamed where I was rubbing against him. Abandoning all pretense, I threw myself against him, oozing like oil across him.
He was breathing heavily, and his eyes were half closed, his lips parted. Greatly daring, I rose to my knees and pushed my nipple in his mouth. He sucked on it so gently, I wanted to scream. I wanted him to suckle it greedily, to bite, to nibble. Most of all, I wanted him to put his engorged tree of flesh inside me. To pound his body on me. To find my hidden parts and to drench my fire with his waters.
The noise of complicated copulations washed over us in a wave of eroticism. The girls were trained to please, as were the Boys, and that was exactly what they were doing. I had eyes and ears and senses for nobody but Danjuro, but I could not help but hear the moans and shouts of mingled pleasure and pain that filled the room and drowned out the music of Auntie’s samisen.
Danjuro’s fingers fixed themselves in my hair and he dragged my head away. At the same time, he leaned back and tugged me up his body, dragging me up by his grip on my curls. My scalp was on fire, and I rejoiced in the pain. I felt that every sense was heightened, that noise was louder, colors brighter, even pain more exquisite than anything I had ever known, had ever imagined. He put his hands on my breasts, pulling me down, and I slid on top of his tree of flesh with a scream of pleasure.
Since my mizuage, I had dreaded having sex with another patron. I had dreamed of the horror of it, in my waking moments I had felt nauseous at the thought of it. But never, awake or asleep, had I imagined anything like this.
Danjuro lay still, allowing me to do the work for him. I rejoiced in it, dictating my own speed, my own rhythm. Now slow, now faster. As soon as I felt him rising up to meet me, I slowed down. When he subsided beneath me, I bucked my hips and tightened my muscles, drawing him into me as tightly as I could. When I thought he might be ready to burst his fruit, I slowed to a crawl, pulling myself as far away from him as I could, without actually allowing him to withdraw from me. Finally unable to bear my own torture any longer, I began to bang up and down on him more fiercely, desperate to get as much of him inside me as I possibly could.
The final mingling of juices was a glorious thing for me. Danjuro was panting like a donkey on a hot day, and I cooled him with my own sweat, for the night was hot. Suddenly, he grabbed my bucking hips with his hands, and forced me down onto him, raising his own body to meet me. A final, hitherto undiscovered, part of his tree of flesh found me and pleasure erupted from my private parts, echoing round and round and round and finally receding slowly, leaving me languid and content.
I fell forward on Danjuro, and he lay beneath me, supine and still. After a moment, he rolled me over and pulled my robe around me. I found the gesture desperately tender, as if our coupling had been uniquely caring, and now he was shielding me from the grosser activities that were still going on all around us.
He put his head against my hair and leaned against me, neither moving nor speaking. After a while, he began to sing, very quietly, and I listened, enthralled. His speaking voice was beautiful, his singing voice even more so. The only way I could describe it was to think of a caged bird that had somehow managed to escape and was singing for pure joy. I closed my eyes, praying that another patron would not fancy a change and come and demand my attention.
After a while, Danjuro finished his song and fell silent. He beckoned Suzume for more sake, which I refused. My head was already spinning with excitement and pleasure and alcohol. He finished the cup, and, to my intense disappointment, stood, pulling his robe around him. He bowed politely to Auntie and then to me, though not as deeply, and was gone.
I could have cried. Although I had been satiated once, having him so close had already started to make my juices flow again. I had hoped that he would stay, that I would arouse him again, and we could find new ways to please each other. Suddenly I dreaded the moment when one of the other patrons would realize that I was alone
and I would be called upon to perform with one of them.
But I was in luck. It was as if Danjuro’s exit had broken a spell. Gradually, the noise level fell. When the couplings broke, they did not resume. Patrons stretched and yawned and called for sake rather than glancing around eagerly in search of another partner, another way of satiating bored desires. Even the Boys went and sat with each other, ignoring their former partners quite rudely.
Big stared at me deliberately, sneering. I was drooping with mingled pleasure and a sense of amazement, still barely able to comprehend that this evening that I had dreaded so deeply had turned out so delightfully well. I rubbed my thighs together, and felt Danjuro’s bodily fluid, mingled with my own, sliding between them. The sensation made me shudder with pleasure. Without thinking, I smiled at Big. For a second, naked fury peeped out from behind his well-trained expression, and even in my dreamy, pleasurable state I was frightened. Then Bigger laughed and put his hand on the other man’s arm, and Big was smiling as well. I decided I had imagined it.
Chapter Six
Clouds pass across the sun.
When will I see
Its light again?
Bigger leaned back on my tatami matting and tickled Nekko under his chin. The kitten hissed and slapped out playfully with his claws. Fearless kitten! Bigger laughed and pushed the cat away with his finger, really quite tenderly.
I watched Bigger carefully, watching for any change of mood, ready to respond immediately to whatever he asked for. The kitten seemed to amuse him, and I was grateful for that. Suddenly, I worried that Bigger might really take a fancy to Nekko and claim him from me. Even the thought of losing my pet was hurtful. I had never had anything to call my own before, other than the odd cricket or firefly in a cage, and they were never terribly good companions. Nekko had been a present from the little maid, Suzume, and I treasured him all the more because of the gift. He was a sweet little boy, very playful, very clean. And the kitten was devoted to me, much as Suzume herself seemed to be. I wondered if I had suddenly gone from having no pets at all to having two.
I hid a sigh of relief as Bigger decided he was bored with Nekko and abruptly stopped playing with him. Instead, he sat back on his elbows and grinned at me.
Since the evening of the party, Bigger seemed to have taken to me. I was torn between puzzlement and fear at his attention, but gradually – as the weeks passed and he did no more than talk to me – the fear began to abate a little. Even so, I was always very careful to treat him with immense respect and to ensure that I matched my conversation to his mood.
One could not be too careful with the Boys.
At least Big ignored me, and I decided that I had imagined that hateful look I thought I had seen after Danjuro left the party. After Danjuro left me.
I know, you would have thought that I, I who had been born and raised in the Floating World, would have known better. What was I thinking, hoping that a patron might actually like me? The other girls teased me endlessly about it. Where was my handsome young man, they demanded. They had all thought he had taken a shine to me, the way he had singled me out. What had I done to him? Or rather, what hadn’t I done? And on, and on, and on.
I refused to rise to the bait. I just shrugged. These things happened, I had told Kiku. As it turned out, neither of the patrons who we had thought were going to make an offer for her had done so, and she was still in the Hidden House. Catching my meaning immediately, Kiku laughed, as good-natured as ever.
“At least you’re not moping about the place, bemoaning your fate anymore.” Kiku grinned.
The girls said I was lucky, and I knew that they were right. My patrons tended to be the middle-aged men, the ones who were fascinated by my foreign looks. Sometimes, they didn’t even want to mingle dew with me, but preferred to allow me to wind my hair around their tree of flesh, and tighten it until their fruit burst. Even the ones who did want to match the bird to the nest were rarely unreasonably demanding. Not always, of course. I had my share of the strange ones. I learned to forget quickly.
But I could not forget Danjuro.
I knew I was being silly. I knew it was likely that the one time he had singled me out had been nothing but a whim. After all, I had never seen him at the Hidden House before. And months had passed since the party and he had never been back.
But still, I could not forget him.
I used his memory whenever I was with a patron. It didn’t help greatly with the ones who just wanted to achieve bursting fruit with my hair, nor with those who favored just a bit of twirling the stem. But the others, those who wanted to put their tree of flesh inside me, those, I pretended were Danjuro.
Often, it didn’t work. Often, I went through the motions and giggled and panted and pretended that they were causing me pain. It was strange, all the girls agreed, that every single one of our patrons, even the ones with trees like bent fingers, were all delighted to think they were causing us such ecstasy that it hurt. Still, we agreed, if it kept them happy we would moan to order, without as much as a single spasm of real pleasure.
Other times, it helped to play act to myself, to try and pretend it was Danjuro who was riding me. Strangely, it didn’t seem to matter in the least whether the patron remotely resembled Danjuro – or at least my memory of him, which seemed to become hazier and more formless by the day – it was more a case of how much I could pretend to myself that they were Danjuro. This was easier when the patron wanted to take me from behind; then, I closed my eyes and tried to conjure up the memory of his features, the warm strength of his body, the feel of his hands sliding on my flesh. When it worked, I sometimes even managed to achieve bursting of the fruit myself with the patron. Never like my ecstasy had been with Danjuro, of course, but still pleasurable, in a way.
Especially did I concentrate on my memories of Danjuro when it became obvious that my patron wanted to split the melon. Some of the girls actually preferred this. The doll-like Masaki, of all people, admitted that she actually found it exciting when a man went for her backside rather than her black moss. Kiku said she wasn’t bothered greatly either way. Carpi said wryly that she rarely got the chance to find out which she preferred; all of her patrons invariably wanted her to twirl their stem with her feet. Naruko simply lowered her eyes and giggled, not expressing an opinion either way.
The first time a patron wanted to split the melon with me, I was too terrified that I might disgrace myself and shit on him to worry about anything else. I confided this to Kiku afterward, and she roared with laughter, advising me not to worry about it.
“Some of them love that,” she said. “In fact, I once had a patron who came to me regularly and he actually wanted me to do just that – shit on him. Nothing else, just mess on him.”
“No!” I said.
She nodded vigorously. “He did. He didn’t want anything else at all. He would come in, drink a flask of sake and then lie down on the matting without a word. He had to explain to me what he wanted the first time, but after that, it was always the same. He would lie down, and I would squat over him and shit on his tree. As soon as I did that, he would play with his mucky tree himself and his fruit would burst without me doing anything else at all. Auntie always charged him extra as she had to throw the matting away. Or at least, she threw it away in the first place, but then he said if he was paying for it, he wanted it, and so she started rolling it up for him and he would take it away under his arm afterward. I often wondered what he did with it.”
We all looked at one another, fascinated.
At least I never had a patron who wanted me to do that. I was fairly sure I would not have been able to manage it, but Kiku said I would because that was my job. To do whatever the patron wanted. I made a face.
“Haven’t you had those that wanted you to make golden rain on them and nothing else?” she asked.
“Well, yes. But that wasn’t as bad as all that.” Or at least, not always. Reluctantly, I thought of one man who had demanded not only that I pee on his
naked body, laid out on a matless floor, but then had pulled me down on top of him and rolled me over and over in it until we were both sopping wet. My thick makeup caked like snowy mud all over both of us. Only then had he parted my black moss and entered me. Once comfortably inside me, he slowed down and I could hear him grunting with effort. I was puzzled at first, but soon realized that he was trying his best to pee inside me. I have no idea whether he managed it or not. As soon as he finished, he got to his feet, bowed and went off to the bathhouse. I waited until I was sure he must have finished before I followed him, and on that particular occasion I insisted that I have the bath to myself. Even the other girls seemed to understand why.
Funnily enough, it was while I was sitting in the bath, after Suzume had soaped me and poured hot water over me until I was clean, that I started to see the silly side of it and giggled. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. Here was this man – by his bearing and his clothes he was possibly a minor noble, but certainly someone important – paying a huge sum to Auntie to do something that no doubt his mother had slapped him for when he was a little boy. I would have bet my lovely kimono that he had a polite, compliant wife at home, and probably a mistress as well. The more I thought about it, the funnier it seemed.
Any desire to laugh at the memory fled as Bigger suddenly got to his feet, pacing back and forth. My small bedroom did not give him much space, and he almost tripped over Nekko. The kitten hissed at him and dug his claws in Bigger’s ankle. I held my breath for fear he would kick the kitten, but he did not. Instead, he bent down and detached the claws from his leg quite tenderly. A rivulet of blood ran down Bigger’s ankle. He reached down and rubbed it with his fingers, licking the blood off his hand lazily.
He was restless, and I watched him warily. A tranquil Bigger was bad enough, a nervous Bigger was terrifying. All at once, he clapped his hands and shouted for the maid. Suzume popped her head around the screen and scurried off at his instructions, returning a moment later with a lacquered tray in her hands. Bigger nodded to her to put it on the floor, and I watched him looking at the outline of Suzume’s body through her thin kimono. I winced inside for the girl.
