Fifty Words for Rain(36)

Not Noriko. Her back is straight, with her hands folded in her lap and her peculiar eyes fixed straight ahead. Even if she is coming apart at the seams, she will not show it to me. She has been raised in a hard school. Yuko, that old bitch, was telling the truth about that.

“Do you know why you are here?” I ask, as gently as I can. It’s not my job to intimidate the girls. I was them once. They come to me with their grievances, and I do what I can, though it is next to nothing.

She doesn’t say anything. Her little mouth is trembling. She has nice lips—already full though she is a girl of eleven, pleasantly soft—but there is a dimple in her chin. Perhaps some will find it endearing. For what we paid for her, she had better end up pretty. Her mother was a famous beauty. And even though nobody knows who her father is or what he looks like, save for his dark skin, I can’t imagine Seiko Kamiza flinging her certain future away for anything remotely ordinary.

I tap my foot. “Noriko-chan, I intend to be kind to you. But you must do as you are told or it will go badly for you. You belong to us now.”

I see something then, a hint of defiance, flash across her frightened face. She bunches her small hands into fists. “I don’t.”

“You do,” I say patiently. This is not uncommon. It’s a hard reality for any girl to realize that her family has traded her like cattle. Especially hard for a daughter of a noble house, even if she is nothing but a bastard. “Your grandmother sold you to us. You are ours to do with as we like.”

Her eyes grow wet. “She wouldn’t do that. This is a test.”

I roll my eyes at her. She’s an idiot, this girl. “No. She has sold you to us. She has relieved herself of an unwanted burden and added to her considerable fortune.”

She looks up at me. “I’m her granddaughter,” she says stoutly, though I know her courage has already failed her because I can see her hands shaking. “She said so herself. I am her flesh and blood.”

“But she never wanted you,” I say, and I make sure to put ice in my voice. “She never asked for you. She kept you locked away and now she has sold you to us. You will live here in the okiya with me and the other girls. And you will obey.”

I can see her deflating, folding in on herself like a paper doll. “No.”

“Your mother passed you off,” I continue, and I catch the swift pang of agony that crosses her face. “Your grandmother has passed you off. They couldn’t bear the shame of you. But here, we have no grand pretensions. We have no aspirations to be anything but accommodating to our patrons. We ask that you be clean, that you be pretty, that you be obedient and smiling. You can do that, can’t you, sweet girl?”

I see the cogs turning in her head as she grasps at a defense. She won’t find one.

“What are you going to do to me?” she whispers.

I show her a ready, charming smile. “Nothing. Not for many years yet. You’re special, Noriko-chan. You won’t be given cheaply. Your virtue is to be preserved and given only to one gentleman who is worthy of it.” What I mean is, one who is willing to pay the highest price for it. Worthiness, really, has nothing to do with it, but it sounds better this way.

She emits a horrified squeak, and I am beginning to think that she has no idea what kind of business this house deals in. It appears that Yuko did not bother to educate her on the facts of life—or any facts, for that matter.

If I told her that this is sometimes a geisha house, sometimes a whorehouse, but always a house discreetly owned by her outwardly respectable grandfather, she would probably keel over dead and I’d have wasted all my money. I doubt the poor girl knows what the yakuza is or the foothold they’ve managed to gain since the war ended. I am certain she has no idea that it has anything to do with her. She has never worried her pretty little head about crime syndicates, or black markets, or where her family’s money keeps coming from even though the government has turned off the tap.

But she certainly looks worried now. Poor little princess, thrown down in the gutter with the rest of us.

Clutching her stomach, Noriko bends forward so far that her forehead is pressed against the ground.

“Please. Let me go.”

I don’t know if she’s talking to me, but I answer anyway. “There is nowhere for you to go. This is the only place for you now.”

She doesn’t say anything else. Her knees slide out from under her, and now she is lying on the floor, silent, broken in like a wild horse that is now tame to my will.

“Will you obey now?”

She raises her head just slightly, and I can see that her face is covered with tears. She chokes back a sob and nods at me.

Perhaps she is not so special after all.



* * *





There was an old shrine behind the main house, with bright red flowers blooming all around it like scarlet tears. Nori liked to think that they were weeping with her that holiness could exist alongside such bitter sin. She spent as much time as she could kneeling beside it, weaving flower crowns in her lap.

Kiyomi, as it turned out, had fewer rules than her grandmother. Nori was allowed outside, she could wander anywhere in the house except the guest rooms, and she could eat whenever she pleased because Kiyomi wanted her to fatten up. There were no maids here, though. All the girls had daily chores. When Nori asked Kiyomi what her task was, the woman smiled and told her not to concern herself with it. Nori was to spend her days reading poetry, learning the art of tea ceremonies and flower arrangements, and practicing the violin, whether she liked it or not.