Chapter 12
Kaneko
After that first lesson with Sakurai—if it could be called such—my days divided.
Mornings belonged to Hana.
She came to my chamber as the first light touched the paper screens, bringing tea, gentle corrections, and an odd sense of normalcy to a world turned on its head.
We practiced poise—the angle of my shoulders, the tilt of my head, the way I held my hands when idle.
We studied literature, reading poetry aloud until the rhythms became natural to my tongue.
She taught me songs on the shamisen, her patience endless as I fumbled through chord progressions that should have been simple.
Some days we rehearsed the tea ceremony again, refining movements until they became something more than technique. And occasionally, she taught me to dance, guiding my body through movements that felt foreign and beautiful and strangely intimate. I enjoyed our dancing most of all.
Evenings belonged to Sakurai.
He returned the night after our first encounter . . . and every night that followed. Our lessons began simply enough—how to kiss without fumbling, how to touch with intention rather than hesitation, how to read the signs of pleasure in another’s breathing and movements.
But Sakurai’s training quickly grew into something more.
He taught me all the ways one man might pleasure another: how to use my mouth, my hands, where to press and where to tease, how to make someone gasp or moan or beg for more. He guided me through the mechanics of desire with the same precision Hana used for tea ceremony.
More than anything, he taught me the performance of intimacy: how to make each look feel like a promise, how to infuse a kiss with meaning when there was none, how to touch someone as if a bond existed, as if our connection was more than a simple transaction.
“Customers do not pay for mere release,” he said one evening, his voice a low murmur in the darkness of my chamber.
“They pay for the illusion that they matter, that one as beautiful as you desires them, that for this brief time, they are special.” He traced a finger down my arm, demonstrating.
“See? Even this simple touch can feel like worship if done correctly.”
He taught me how to capture a man’s gaze and hold it as firmly as one might grip a sword. And he taught me how to grip each sword just so—the pressure, the rhythm, the variations that made pleasure spike or sustain.
Sakurai’s lessons were methodical, clinical, despite their nature. This was craft, not passion. Technique, not desire.
But there was passion.
I saw it when he entered my chamber, when his gaze lingered a moment longer than any lesson required, how his fingers refused to lift from my skin. I never knew if that—or if any of it—was real or feigned.
Perhaps he simply a highly skilled slave performing his duties.
Or was this Sakurai, the man, however deeply buried, reaching up from a dark abyss to grasp a moment’s joy in a world stripped bare.
I didn’t know. I might never know.
So I learned. I practiced. I improved.
And somewhere in the blur of instruction and repetition, I stopped feeling that searing edge of shame. It dulled into something more manageable, into acceptance, perhaps, or simply surrender born of exhaustion.
The days blurred, one bleeding into the next with no clear beginning or end. I lost sight of the shore, swallowed in a sea of sensuality and seduction, the waves pulling me farther and farther from home . . . from whoever I had been before.
At some point—I could not say exactly when—Mistress Momoko added a duty to my training.
Wedged between Hana’s mornings and Sakurai’s evenings, my afternoons now belonged to the common area.
Customers came to drink and talk and enjoy the company of beautiful people.
Some hired courtesans for the evening. Others simply wanted to be served by them, to bask in proximity to beauty while conducting business or entertaining friends.
As did each slave, I wore my sheer kimono, the one that hung open at the chest, whose fabric was so thin as to be nearly invisible.
I moved through the room with the refined glide Hana had taught me, poured sake, tea, and plum wine with steady hands, smiled and met eyes and deflected advances with graceful refusals.
“You are not yet ready to be offered,” the mistress had said when she’d given me this new role. “You must learn to work a room, to flirt without promising, to tease without delivering. You must learn to shape desires and drive your price higher. In this, you earn back a fraction of my investment.”
So I served drinks. I laughed at jokes that were not funny. I accepted compliments with demure gratitude. I let hands brush against mine when I poured and gazes linger on my exposed chest. I let suggestions hang in the air unanswered.
Momoko’s leash had lengthened beyond my chamber, but it was ever present.
I told myself that serving drinks was better than the alternative, that as long as I was pouring sake, I was not being purchased—or rented, or whatever it might be named.
Sakurai was the only man to have me thus far, and I’d grown accustomed to his presence. In ways I couldn’t explain, he had become my grounding, much as Hana had become a sister.
No other possessed me.
It was an afternoon like any other when the entire house tilted beneath my bare feet.
I moved through the common area with a tray of cups, refilling empty vessels, clearing away finished meals. The room was moderately busy—perhaps a dozen men and women at various tables, some alone, others in pairs or small groups.
Behind one of the tall screens, two men lounged with the ease and comfort of lovers. Their laughter drifted out—low and intimate. It was the kind of laughter that spoke of a shared history and complete comfort in each other’s presence.
I paid them little mind as I moved past.
Then one of them shifted, and through the gap in the screen I saw them clearly.
They reclined against cushions, bodies relaxed, legs entwined.
One had his fingers tangled in the other’s hair, twirling the strands idly, while the other trailed kisses down his lover’s arm—slow and reverent in the way of genuine affection rather than performance.
They were beautiful together.
Something in my chest ached as I watched.
This is what Sakurai had taught me to mimic, but these men were not mimicking anything. This was real. Even from a distance, from behind a partition, I could see that much.
The screen pulled back as one of the men gestured to a woman across the room. “More sake, please,” he called out, his voice cultured and warm.
The woman hurried over with a fresh carafe. As she poured and the screen remained open, I saw the man’s face for the first time.
Gods, no!
My tray nearly slipped from my hands. I caught it at the last moment, sake sloshing in the cups.
It was Haru.
Prince Haru.
The same Prince Haru who had visited Tooi what felt like a lifetime ago. The same Prince Haru who sat in our village and shared tea, who had seen Yoshi and me together and smiled—and knew.
He was the one who had so gently said, “Do not wait for your love to be written into song. You must seize it lest is slip free of your grasp.”
Haru looked exactly the same—still beautiful, still refined, still carrying himself with the easy confidence that came from never having to fear. His companion—Esumi—leaned into him like he was home.
They were happy. So clearly, so obviously happy.
And I was—
I was this—this thing in sheer silk serving drinks in a pleasure house, trained to simulate the very intimacy they shared naturally, the one Haru begged me to enjoy lest it be torn away.
Haru didn’t see me. His attention was on Esumi, on the woman pouring sake, on the comfortable bubble of their privacy.
But if he looked up. If he recognized me. If he saw what I had become—
Terror seized my chest.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I could only feel the crushing weight of shame and horror and desperation.
I turned and walked—not the refined glide nor the practiced grace—just raced as fast as I could without drawing too much attention.
I abandoned the tray on an empty table, ignored a customer calling for more wine, even ignored Momoko’s sharp gaze from where she oversaw the room.
I needed to get away. I needed to hide. Gods, I needed to disappear.
I pushed through the sliding door to the back corridors and ran, my feet slapping against the polished floors, my breath coming in sharp, ragged gasps.
I reached my chamber and slid the door shut behind me, pressing my back against it as if I could physically bar the world from passing through its paper.
My legs gave out, and I slid down to sit on the floor, my whole body shaking.
Prince Haru was here.
In this house.
Drinking and laughing and loving freely while I—
While I was a slave, a courtesan in training, a boy who had been captured and molded and taught to pleasure men for coin—a boy who had betrayed his one true love, even if at the point of a blade.
If he saw me, if he recognized me, what would he think?
Would he even remember me from Tooi? Would he recall the boy who had blushed and stammered when talking about his friend, the love he had yet to acknowledge? Would he see the connection between that boy and this thing in silk?
And if he did—would he pity me? Or would he be as disgusted as I felt in that moment? Or worse—would he simply not care?
I pressed my hands over my face, trying to control my breathing, trying to hide my shame, even from myself.
I shouldn’t have run. Running made me conspicuous, made me memorable.
It would’ve been better to have stayed calm, kept my head down, served drinks until my shift ended like nothing was wrong.
Anything would’ve been better than to have fled like a child racing toward the safety of his mother’s skirts.
But I couldn’t have stayed in that room, couldn’t have risked him seeing me.
I couldn’t have borne the weight of recognition in his eyes, the weight of his judgement.
The door slid open.
I looked up sharply, expecting Momoko’s fury or Hana’s concern.
Instead, Sakurai stood in the doorway.
I searched his face, hoping to find pity or compassion or anything other than an icy glare. He hid behind his mask, the one he wore when he made his heart stone so it might bear the burden of his work.
“The mistress wants to see you,” he said quietly. “Now.”
My stomach lurched. I had abandoned my post, left the common area without permission. Worse, I had made a scene.
There would be consequences. There were always consequences.
I stood on shaking legs and followed Sakurai through the corridors, each step feeling like walking to an execution. Behind me, in the common area, Haru laughed at something Esumi said. The sound followed me down the hallway.
They were happy and free, everything I would never be again.