SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

“Yes,” he says. “Go ahead,” he says, his mouth already tasting the sweetness, craving it—the truth of a miracle, too bitter to swallow—“But don’t, no, you shouldn’t, it isn’t safe, it isn’t right,” he says, and he is suddenly crying, and JR looks at him with an expression that edges bewilderment and terror. In his closed fist the banana has been mashed to a pulp.

Originally published by Uncanny Magazine

Winter will always remind you of three things: the smoke rising from the fire that burned your home; the cold floor you slept on as a pageboy in the teahouse; and the peculiar shade of your brother’s skin, the way his bruises grayed like melted snow. This color does not make sense in your mouth: spoken, tasted. But you see it every time you close your eyes. His body being folded like a paper fan, broken apart like ceramic. The few nights you could lean next to him, he smelled like wine and another person’s sweat.

When you were twelve, at the onset of war, the teahouse sold you to some passing soldiers. You bundled up your clothes and stopped by Kaoru’s room. He held you briefly, and you exhaled into his chest, where delicate bruises were patterned: stains of the floating world. You didn’t know it then, but the pleasure quarters were starting to crumble. “Goodbye, niisan,” you said.

Your brother did not tell you to be happy, which would have been cruel. Instead he said, “Live well, Akira.” His eyes, when they rested on your face, were loving, sad, and afraid.

The memory of Kaoru’s last words is eclipsed by Taichou’s order to fetch wood. “Yes, sir,” you answer.

As you hoist a gun over your shoulder Kazushige winks and adds, “Get some dinner for us too.” You are not the best shot; Kazushige knows this. He laughs and slaps you on the back, and decides to come along. He hunts four rabbits to your two. You gather wood, and wonder how time has passed so quickly.

When you start the fire, you remember the last village you saw—and the wet smell of terror, the smoky taste of ash. (Someone’s blood on your hands.) Like the floating world, the battlefield is all about survival. It’s simply a different set of rituals, a different locked gate. You will not admit your disgust at yourself, at all of them. You will not admit your hatred or your fear.

After dinner, as you’re gathering everyone’s mess, Taichou says: “An oiran will be arriving soon. This one has supposedly trained in Edo’s Yoshiwara.” Through the hoots and clapping you remember the last oiran: Tamakoto, her pale neck barely visible beneath the collar of her stiff dancing robes. When she snapped her elbows back and lifted her sleeve to gesture at the sun, you felt—strange, beyond yourself. The grace radiating from her curved wrists, her small measured steps, was thick and distracting.

Tamakoto ran away from your camp during an overnight stay at a village. The men raged for days, calling her a peasant bitch, a cunt. (You will not think of what happens next. How they turn to you in a fury, grab your wrists and force you against the floor. How you think, instantly, of Kaoru and how you are not him.) “If I ever see her again,” Saburo said, “I’ll stab those budding breasts.” He hadn’t managed to take her, before she fled. Although some of the soldiers come from samurai families, you would not know it from the way they leer. But they have the means to pay, and that’s all a brothel owner needs to know.

There are few alternatives left for the women of the pleasure districts. Servicing soldiers in the war—side of the shogun, side of the emperor—is a fate left for those who have no better options. Still: some are determined to live, and it is one way to survive.

Taichou informs you that the oiran will be sharing your tent. When Tamakoto fled, the men ruined the spare she was using—pissing on it, setting it aflame, her silk futon still inside it. You never shared that futon, of course—never dared slip in, never asked for a turn—but when you helped her unload it the pattern was burned into your mind. White cranes dancing on a sea of red. (Her eyes flitted to yours then darted away.)

In your tent that evening you trace shadows on canvas and wonder when the war will end. In the hazy dark, you think you see the outline of a creature flitting too close—a crouched figure, with tiny pinprick ears. You scramble out, but there is nothing; just snow blowing everywhere. Probably a fox. Shivering, you slip back into your sheets.

There are youkai in these mountains, or so the stories go. Snow crones, fox spirits—strange smiling devils, drawn by the scent of war. The more superstitious soldiers and villagers say these youkai move among the living, wreaking havoc, taking souls. What pleasure is there in tormenting the already-suffering? These must be lies—invented by some foreign fearmongers, or printers without news to sell. The true demons , people laugh.

If youkai were real, would the snow make them cold? Or would they not feel it, burning as they are?

You cannot hear her, so it takes you too long to see her. It could also be because she is wearing white. Her robes and pale skin blend with the snow. Her hair, bound at the top of her head, is the only thing separating her from the landscape. As she approaches, snow muting the footfalls of her geta, you straighten up. Almost like you mean to salute her, which is stupid, but you never promised to be the ideal soldier. Only then do you notice the bent old woman next to her. You hasten to take the bag from the obasan’s back.

“She is one of our best,” the brothel auntie says to you. “She can play and sing better than any of those silly geisha in Edo. Ah, she is of great skill, our Someyama! I will admit that her dancing could be improved, but she has certainly mastered refinement in other pleasures. We are very grateful for your patronage.” Although the oiran has already been sold, the obasan seems determined to extol her virtues. She bows, although it makes almost no difference to her curved back. The oiran stands silently, assessing the pale green tents, the muted noise of men.

“We are grateful,” you say, suddenly too aware of her fate. The obasan motions to the oiran, who stoops toward her. They exchange quick, hurried words, and the oiran nods. The obasan walks away, back to the caravan that brought them here. Somehow you missed that, too. As you are puzzling over this, the oiran clears her throat.

“W-welcome,” you mumble. She has a pack on one shoulder and a wrapped instrument over the other. An uncanny reflection of the snow dances in the black pools of her eyes. Her robe, you notice, is very thin. And beneath it, her skin—so white. You swallow. “Aren’t you cold?”

She looks you up and down, then shakes her head. “What is your name?” she asks. Her voice is surprising. There’s a rough quality to it, a lack of pitch and affectation. And the way she stands with her narrow shoulders slumped is almost inelegant. She is nothing like Tamakoto, nothing like the others, lacking their grace and maturity. Perhaps, despite the obasan’s words, the brothel sent their worst to sing for your group out of spite, as all the oiran sent before have died or fled beyond return.

“Akira,” you answer. She half-smiles, sharp and dangerous. Suddenly, you feel sick: bile rising in your throat, tremors beneath your skin. Her smile slices through to your bone and reminds you that you are cruel, that you are part of the war; that all this fighting is designed to break you apart, burn the world with innocents in its midst. And she knows this. She knows all of it . It’s lined in her dry lips and unblinking eyes: all the poison in this nation of death. You stagger under the force of that violence.