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

Then just as suddenly that sensation is gone. “Are you all right?” she asks, but there’s another question in her eyes: do you know me? She frowns slightly, but when you nod in reply, her face relaxes. Her look of cunning may simply have been a trick of her pale face, the snow drifting before it. White against white.

You are tired, and it is cold.

“Kindly follow me,” you say. You lead her to your tent, and hold the flap open. She sets down her belongings, and you hand her the pack the obasan carried. She narrows her eyes at you, then draws the flap closed. “I’ll see you at dinner,” you almost say, but do not.

She makes quite the entrance in robes of deep navy gauze, stencil-dyed and embroidered with a pattern of waves. Her obi, tied at the front, is golden-yellow, and matches the pins she has carefully threaded through her hair. She holds her shamisen lovingly in her hands, the instrument’s circular body white as her powdered throat. Her simplicity from that afternoon is gone. Here, she is radiant and imperial, certain in herself.

The soldiers burst out cheering as she walks into their midst. She scans the table, and focuses on Taichou. Her demure grin disappears from view as she bows deeply, before gesturing with all the tentativeness of a skilled seductress at the empty space next to him.

“Of course,” he says. She takes her seat, and carefully positions her shamisen.

Her fingers skim the strings, and she plays as you walk around the tables, pouring sake for tonight’s celebration. This music is oddly familiar. It makes you think of Kaoru gasping as someone beats him, and how his pain must turn to laughter, how he must pretend to want it. It makes you think of feet getting pulled out of slippers as you run, everything turning to ash behind you: your mother’s smile, the paper doors that were your world. When you serve Gengoro your hands tremble. You spill a little sake, and he slaps you across the face.

The oiran lifts her head at the sound of his strike. She’s the only one who notices—everyone else is used to it. She catches your eye as you shuffle to a different table. Taichou’s hand is already drifting over her knee. She plays more furiously. She doesn’t smile, but the notes do. You are suddenly more afraid than you have been in a long, long time.

Taichou has her that first night, as you all expect him to, then it’s fair game. She’s a prostitute from Yoshiwara, like the other girls before her; but she’s also an oiran. A courtesan of her standing can choose who she lies with. That’s the air she puts on, even now, and the rest of the camp seems happy enough to comply. When she is not servicing someone, she shares your tent, because you’re the youngest and the least dangerous, or perhaps…because you know what it’s like to have your body damaged, the way hers is.

“Make him a man, why don’t you?” Tennosuke laughs, arm encircling her waist. She smiles at him, at you. They don’t think you’d ever lay a hand on her.

They know her name, but everyone simply calls her the oiran, which she says is fine. You think it isn’t right—that it debases her, somehow—but when you tried addressing her as Someyama she said, “Don’t call me that. It isn’t my real name.”

“What should I call you, then?”

She lifted her palm to the corner of her mouth, smirking. “I wouldn’t give that away so easily, would I?”

The fourth night is the first she spends in your tent. She changes into a sleeping robe and removes the paint from her face, undoing her hair so that it flows over her shoulders. She combs it out with her fingers, and you try to look at anything but her. Sweat slicks your hands. You spend a long time gazing at the tent wall, but when you finally glance back she is watching you. What feels like eternities pass, as her fingers slip through her hair.

“Are you waiting for something, Akira-kun?” She finally asks. You haven’t spoken much since your initial meeting. The way she says your name makes you burn. You are surprised she remembers it. “Do you want me to start?”

“Start what,” you say, nervous laughter catching in your throat as she leans close, letting her hair fall against your knee. Her own knee pokes out from her robe, and is suddenly pressed against your groin. She takes your face tenderly in her hands. Her lips part. Her breath, wine-sweetened, is warm in the chill air, as she draws closer to your face. You brace your hands on your thighs. She’s beautiful, and breathing—so close to you—and you could just take her—but you don’t want to. You don’t.

You lift her hands from your face and push back, gently, until she is kneeling in seiza. You try not to notice how her robe gapes.

“I’m sorry,” you say. The apology is useless, but you want to give it anyway. “You don’t need to do this with me.”

She tilts her head. “I know how to work with anyone,” she says, still in that sweet coaxing voice. It’s different from the first voice you heard her use. She wasn’t in character yet then. “It will be fun, I promise.”

“No—I mean it. It’s really all right.” You sit back, trying to ease the discomfort between your legs.

She gathers the folds of her robe in one fist. “You really won’t touch me?”

“I won’t.”

She bursts out laughing. Its like icicles falling away, sharp and crushing—but you like this face better: her eyes crinkled, mouth gaping. It’s more human, less like a doll. She stretches luxuriously, still grinning. “I knew you were one of those …your face is quite pretty.”

“I—no, it’s not like that. You—you’re from Yoshiwara, right?”

She nods, and resumes combing her hair. Her posture is no longer designed to seduce you; she sits comfortably, her legs folded to one side as she listens.

“I was—from the floating world, too. Shimabara. My brother and I were part of a teahouse. Um—I wasn’t one of the kagemajaya. Just a pageboy.” You shrug. “Kind of like what I am here.”

“Aren’t you a soldier, too?”

“Well, yes,” you mumble. You were allowed the title by Taichou last summer—but you know it means nothing really, to these soldiers. You’re still their little servant, the best approximate to a woman when a real one is not around. You are not from a samurai family. They do not know your father’s name, nor would they care if they did. These are not the well-bred nobles of the warrior class; these are men who know how to fight . “They’ve taught me how to shoot, and wield a blade. But it isn’t really my choice.”

“What do you mean?”

“To be part of this war.”

She makes a disapproving sound. “When does one ever get to choose?”

You press your tongue to the roof of your mouth and say nothing more. Your hope is stupidly naïve. She casts her gaze down. “Don’t be too idealistic, Akira-kun. There’s no place for that in our world.” She sighs and lies on her futon, facing away from you.

You fall asleep that night listening to her breathe, wondering how to live.

The first few days, she does not run out of questions. She never helps you with your tasks, but often comes along. When you ask her why, she replies, “I’m bored.” But no sex before dinner, or so the unspoken rule goes. She keeps up with her practice, and plays splendidly every night, so they let her do as she pleases. In many ways this matches the idleness of Yoshiwara before evening. But there are no warm baths and no parades here, no other girls for her to pinch or tease. She sits and watches you, tossing and catching her bachi or plucking her shamisen, while you walk through the forest gathering wood, or beat the soldiers’ bedsheets out in the snow, or polish their guns and swords.