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.