Chapter 22
Kaneko
Iwoke before dawn, my heart already racing.
Today. It was today.
I lay on my sleeping mat, trying to calm my breathing, trying to convince myself I could do this, that I was ready. But I wasn’t ready.
Who could be ready to sell themselves to another? Who was prepared for such?
The door slid open, and Hana entered with tea, her movements quiet and graceful as always. She kneeled beside me and poured, the familiar ritual somehow soothing despite what waited ahead.
“How do you feel?” she asked softly.
“Terrified,” I admitted.
She smiled sadly. “I was, too, on my first day. I threw up twice before I even reached the common room.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“No, I suppose it’s not.” She handed me the cup. “But you are more ready than I ever was, Kaneko-san. You have trained longer and learned more. You are skilled in ways I was not.” She paused. “And you are stronger than you think.”
I took a sip. The tea was bitter and perfect, and I wanted to make it last forever, wanted to stay in this moment where nothing had yet happened, where I could still pretend.
“The customer . . .” I started.
“Will be kind,” Hana said firmly. “It will be . . . bearable.”
Bearable.
That word again. The highest aspiration we were allowed.
“Come,” she said. “Let me help you dress.”
I glanced down at a bundle folded neatly at the foot of my mat.
Parts of the clothing laid out were unlike anything I had worn before.
There was my usual sheer kimono, yes—the one that revealed more than it covered, clinging to my body in ways that left little to imagination; but over top of it, Momoko had provided something extraordinary: a luxurious coat that fell below my knees, styled in an idealized imitation of a sailor’s outfit.
It was nothing like what I had actually worn as a fisherman, nothing I’d ever seen any seaman wear.
Its fine needlework and golden thread belonged more at court than on the planks of any ship.
The fabric was fine—deep navy silk embroidered with golden waves.
The cut was elegant, the fit too perfect.
It was a fantasy of what a sailor might be if sailors wore silk and moved through the world like works of art rather than slaves to their labor.
Momoko clearly planned to play up my nautical background, to sell the illusion of the fisherman transformed into a work of refined beauty, the mighty sailor ready to surrender to the will and whim of the highest bidder.
I wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it.
Or weep.
I wasn’t sure which.
Hana helped me into the layers, her hands gentle and efficient. She arranged my hair, applied subtle color to my lips, and adjusted the collar of the coat until it sat just so.
“There,” she said, stepping back to look at me. “Perfect.”
I looked at my reflection in the small mirror. A stranger stared back.
He was beautiful and exotic.
And empty.
“It is time,” Hana said quietly, turning and guiding me toward the door.
The common room was already filled when we arrived. Men lounged at tables, drinking sake and wine, some playing dice games, their voices a low rumble of conversation and laughter. More stood near the back wall, arms crossed, watching and waiting.
I counted perhaps thirty more than I had expected. Far more.
And they were an odd mix.
Military men with wide frames and stern bearings, their uniforms crisp, medals gleaming. Elegant nobles in expensive robes, their painted faces bored and jaded. Fat merchants whose wealth showed in their rings and the quality of their silk but whose bodies spoke only of excess and indulgence.
None appeared particularly pleasant.
A few looked downright disgusting—with leering eyes, wet lips, and sausage-fingered hands that already reached as if anticipating touch. One man was so obese he had to be supported by servants. Another had a scar that twisted his mouth into a permanent sneer.
My stomach turned.
But I smiled. Flirtatiously. The way I had been taught.
I let my eyes travel across the crowd with practiced interest, let my posture suggest availability and desire.
Inside, I was screaming.
At one end of the common room, a small stage, not unlike the one in the slave market where I had been sold months ago, had been erected. I was merchandise once more. Property to be auctioned. Nothing had changed except the setting and the price.
Momoko appeared at my elbow, resplendent in crimson silk embroidered with golden cranes. She scanned me from head to toe and then nodded once, the strongest approval possible from the house’s mistress.
“Come,” she said, and guided me toward the stage.
I climbed the steps on trembling legs and stood at the stage’s center.
The room’s attention shifted, focused, and pinned me in place.
Momoko rang a small gong, and musicians who’d been playing from chairs in the corner ceased their melodies.
The mistress’s clang note cut through conversations, and silence fell.
Anticipation flooded the room like a physical presence, thick and hungry.
“Gentlemen,” Momoko said, her voice carrying effortlessly. “Today, the House of Petals is pleased to offer something rare, something precious.” She gestured to me. “A new courtesan has completed his training and is ready to begin serving our honored guests.”
Murmurs rippled through the crowd.
Ravenous gazes roamed my body. I could feel their eyes, their hands, their mouths and tongues. Some were gentle, others rough. Some loving, others vile. There were so many men, gaping and pawing and—
“This young man’s first experience,” Momoko continued, “is a once-in-a-lifetime pleasure, an opportunity to be the first to taste what has been cultivated with care and expertise, to claim something untouched, unblemished, and pure.”
After all the nights with Sakurai, I wasn’t sure “pure” was a description I deserved. Familiar bile rose in my throat. I swallowed it down and maintained my smile.
“Allow me to introduce Kaneko,” Momoko said.
“Formerly of the northern isles, a fisherman who braved the dangerous seas, who knows the strength of winds and waves, who has been transformed into something refined but retains the wild spirit of those wild places . . . and the delicious, sun-kissed muscles that go with them.”
The collective rumble of the crowd reminded me of dinnertime in a massive hall, when the cooks brought forth a roasted beef, and soldiers began to drool.
Momoko’s tale was all fiction—a beautiful, seductive fiction.
I had never braved dangerous seas, had never been anything but a boy hauling nets and mending lines, but truth did not matter here, only the story, only the fantasy men could purchase.
“He has been trained in the arts of pleasure and conversation,” Momoko continued. “In music and poetry. In the delicate balance between submission and seduction. He is skilled, gentlemen, quite skilled and eager to please.”
That was no fiction. It was a lie.
I was not eager. But I would pretend.
Because that was what I did now.
Pretend.
Momoko turned to me and flicked her wrist. The signal to raise the stakes.
I reached for the collar of the sailor’s coat and let it slide from my shoulders.
The heavy cloth whispered as it fell, pooling at my feet.
Beneath, only the sheer kimono remained.
It clung to my body, revealing lean muscle earned from years of labor.
My chest was partially exposed, and my stomach and the lines of my hips were visible through the translucent fabric.
The crowd gasped.
Then erupted.
Voices rose—in appreciation, in desire, in crude comments I tried not to hear. Hands gestured. Eyes devoured.
I stood there, exposed, and remembered every lesson Hana and Sakurai had ever imparted: Keep my expression inviting, my posture open. Smile promising things I do not want to give.
“The bidding begins at fifty mon,” Momoko announced.
“Fifty!” a voice called immediately.
“One hundred!”
“Two hundred!”
The numbers climbed rapidly. Fifty mon became one ryō.
Then two.
Then five.
Momoko tsked and shook her head. “Oh, my dear gentlemen, surely, one as fine as Kaneko deserves more . . . appreciation . . . than five pitiful ryō, yes?”
I watched, detached, as men competed for the right to use my body, as they reduced me to a commodity worth measuring in currency.
“Eight ryō!” a military officer called.
“Ten!” a merchant near the front shouted. It was the obese one who needed servants to support him. His face was flushed with excitement or drink—probably both. His eyes traced my body with unconcealed hunger.
Please, I thought desperately. Please, not him. Please.
Momoko scanned the room. “Ten ryō. Do I hear more?”
Silence.
The merchant smiled, his jowls quivering. He gestured to his servants to bring him closer to the stage.
No. Gods, no.
“Ten ryō, going once,” Momoko said.
My heart hammered.
My smile remained fixed in place, but inside I was fracturing. This man, this disgusting, cruel-looking man, would be my first. Would be the one to—
“Ten ryō, going twice.”
I was sure my stomach would empty, that I would spew all over the stage and anyone nearby. Momoko would be horrified. I would be punished or banished or worse. The gods had abandoned me to a fate worse than—
“Last call—”
“Twenty ryō.”
The voice cut through the room like a blade, clear and commanding, carrying an authority that made every head turn, even that of the merchant whose eyes had not left my body since I’d entered the room.
Including mine.
I strained to see past the crowd, searching for the source. Murmurs rose as two men stepped forward from the back and recognition rippled through the crowd.
I knew these men.
I would know them anywhere.
Prince Haru and his lover, Esumi.
Haru wore robes of deep purple silk, his topknot ringed in a golden collar in the style of the Imperial palace.
Esumi wore simpler but still elegant garb, his bearing that of a warrior despite his civilian dress.
His every movement conserved energy, prepared for a strike.
His eyes darted from face to face, from belt to belt, searching for threats, always seeking, always protecting.
When his gaze fell back to the Prince, it softened like butter melting over rice.
They moved through the crowd with easy confidence as people stepped aside, creating a path. Whispers rippled through the room.
“The Prince . . .”
“What is he doing here?”
“Twenty ryō . . .”
Haru and Esumi reached the front and stopped, looking up at me on the stage.
My heart raced.
Our eyes locked.
Did Haru recognize me? From Tooi, from that brief visit to our village? Did he remember the boy who had blushed and stammered when he spoke of love? Did he see that boy in what I had become?
Momoko recovered from her surprise with practiced grace. “Prince Haru honors us with his presence and his generous bid.” She looked around the room. “Do I hear higher than twenty ryō?”
The obese merchant looked like he wanted to counter-bid. His mouth opened, but his companion whispered something urgent in his ear and he closed it again, then shook his head.
One did not outbid royalty. Not without consequences.
“Twenty ryō from the Prince, going once,” Momoko said.
No one spoke.
“Going twice.”
Silence.
“Sold.” She brought her fan down in a decisive gesture. “To Prince Haru and his honored companion. This auction is closed.”
The crowd erupted again—this time in whispers and speculation rather than crude appreciation.
What did it mean that the Prince had bid? Why such an extraordinary sum? What game was being played? Who was this slave to warrant such a royal sum?
I barely heard them. I was transfixed, still staring at Haru, at the man who had once sat in my home and told me not to wait for life to grant permission, the man who had spoken of love as something to seize rather than something to wait for.
He had been free then.
I had been free then.
Neither of us was the same now.
Haru’s expression was carefully neutral, but his eyes—there was something in his eyes. Recognition, yes, but also something else, something I couldn’t name.
Pity? Sorrow? Determination?
I couldn’t tell.
Neither he nor Esumi leered over my near-nakedness.
Neither stared wantonly or reached to touch what they’d just purchased.
In fact, neither took another step toward the stage.
They simply turned toward the mistress to settle their business, as though I no longer stood on a stage in the thinnest imaginable fabric for all to see.
Momoko descended and approached the Prince. They spoke in low tones. Money changed hands—a heavy purse, a fortune, given freely for one night.
For me.
Esumi watched me as Haru paid his bill. His gaze was steady and assessing but not cruel, not hungry like the others. He looked to be . . . considering.
Finally, Momoko returned to the stage as Haru and Esumi were led away by a nearby courtesan. “Kaneko,” she said quietly. “You will go with the Prince and his companion now. They have been shown to the Iris chamber. Hana will guide you.”
I nodded, not trusting my voice, then descended on shaking legs. Retrieving the sailor’s coat, I pulled it on, grateful to cover myself again even briefly.
Hana appeared at my side and took my arm. “Come,” she whispered.
A thousand questions followed me down the corridor like shadows.
My palms were slick with sweat. In moments, I would enter the Iris chamber, would face whatever waited there, would give myself to Haru and Esumi, for whatever they desired.
And nothing—no amount of training, no practiced masks, no carefully constructed lies—could have prepared me for what came next.
The door loomed ahead.
Hana stopped and squeezed my hand once. “Be brave,” she whispered.
Then she slid the door open and gently pushed me inside.
The door closed behind me with a soft click.
And I was alone with them.