.-.-.-.
Tsukuyo slides back the door of her room and a sigh greets her. The sigh is exhausted, melodramatic, and so remarkably prolonged that when Sacchan collapses back onto Tsukuyo's bed once the sigh is over, it could plausibly be from lack of oxygen.
"Finally," says Sacchan. "Keep me waiting, why don't you? Keep stringing me along? Just because you think you're so special that anyone'll wait for you – guys don't like it when you play hard to get, Tsukki, don't you know anything?" Sacchan is still lying in her bed. She's lecturing the ceiling. Tsukuyo shuts the door and crosses over to her. "You've got to play easy to get. The easiest. You've got to let them know you'll do it wherever, whenever, however they waaughh! Tsukki!"
Tsukuyo pulls the headlock tighter. "You got ten seconds," she says. "Why are you in Yoshiwara?"
"I can go wherever I want!" yells Sacchan. If she has any other volume setting, Tsukuyo has yet to hear proof of it. "Don't you want me here? Do you feel threatened? Huh? Huh, do you? Do you—?" but she chokes off into a wail again. "Let me go—"
"No," says Tsukuyo. "No to all that stuff." She sits down on the edge of her bed, Sacchan still squirming wildly beneath her arm, and sets about pulling off her boots. "I seen Hinowa downstairs just now," she says, conversational, "and she never mentioned how I was gonna have a madwoman in my bed to deal with. That's the sorta thing Hinowa'd warn me about, if she knew. D'you break in?"
"Obviously," says Sacchan.
Tsukuyo nods. "The Hyakka never caught you at it," she says.
"I'm a ninja," says Sacchan. She says it like she's pulling together the tattered remnants of her dignity, but Tsukuyo's pretty sure Sacchan never had any of that to start with. "Stealth is what I do. You think I couldn't break into a whorehouse? You think I'm that bad at my job? First you leave me here alone all evening just to warm your bed, and now you're accusing me of professional incompetence?"
"I never left you here," Tsukuyo says severely. "I never even knew you were here. You broke into my house and got in my bed all on your own. And I need a smoke, so I'll let you go if you shut up, all right?"
Sacchan mutters something that Tsukuyo chooses not to hear, and once freed she sits up and tosses back her hair, adjusts her sleeves, adjusts her glasses, rearranges Tsukuyo's bedsheets where they're puddled at her waist, and proceeds to make a general exhibition of just how mussed and inconvenienced Tsukuyo's unreasonable behaviour has made her.
Tsukuyo ignores all of it. She tamps down her pipe – lights it – she closes her eyes as she inhales, and lets the smoke out slowly. When she opens her eyes again, Sacchan's given up fidgeting in favour of glowering at her furiously. It would probably be unkind to ignore her any longer, Tsukuyo supposes. "Why are you here, then?"
"I'm sick of you not telling me about all your fancy little sex tricks," Sacchan declares, and Tsukuyo forgets she's already inhaled, starts to inhale again, chokes on smoke, and doubles over coughing until her eyes begin to water, wheezing uncontrollably and helpless to stop Sacchan prying her pipe from her hand.
"You give that back," she manages, but Sacchan blows out the flame instead, and with a careless clatter the pipe is flung aside and rolling across the low painted table beside Tsukuyo's bed.
"I'm sick of you doing it Yoshiwara-style all night long," Sacchan announces, at the top of her voice, "and not even telling me what Yoshiwara-style is. I'm sick of you acting like you're so-o-o much better than me just because you live in a brothel and know seventy-four ways to pleasure a man to the heights of ecstasy using half a persimmon and the edge of an ink pen. It pisses me off! It really pisses me off!"
Tsukuyo reaches for her pipe. Sacchan smacks her arm away. Tsukuyo shoves her down into the mattress, leans all her weight on her, and retrieves the pipe without any further trouble. "Well," she says – and pauses, fishing out her lighter from inside her kimono – striking it, lighting it, her elbow still propped on Sacchan's back, "seeing as how none of that stuff's actually true in the real world outside your weird imagination, I don't think none of it's my fault."
"Oh, the real world!" cries Sacchan, "the real world! You know all about the real world, don't you?" It's a lot less stressful listening to Sacchan while her yelling is being muffled by the mattress. Tsukuyo closes her eyes and breathes smoke, and ignores the ineffectual struggling. "Gangsters and prostitutes and – private militia and fishnet tights and having scars, you think you're so cool, you think smoking makes you sooo cool—"
"I don't think you oughta be pissed at me for that," says Tsukuyo. "I never did any of that stuff you're on about, so I think it's your imagination you oughta be pissed at." She takes her weight off Sacchan, who springs back up just in time for a stream of smoke directly in her face. "You keep it down, all right?" Tsukuyo adds sternly, while Sacchan splutters and curses. "There's women trying to sleep."
And at Tsukuyo's severest look, Sacchan falls into a surly silence. It's a very brief surly silence – it lasts barely a moment – but it's a good moment while it lasts. The kind of moment Tsukuyo doesn't hear too much of nowadays, what with getting her spare time and all her other time monopolised by Sacchan, and she closes her eyes and tunes it out as Sacchan starts revving back up to full volume.
The flood of nonsense washes by: Tsukuyo's too nice, no one's that nice, anyone that nice is only nice because they're covering up for the rotten core within and Sacchan knew it, she knew it, she just knew it! – ever since she first saw Tsukki! – ever since she first realised Tsukki was the kind of insatiable woman who'd stop at nothing to add Gin-san to her probably considerable private collection of personal sexual equipment—
—at which point a smattering of kunai slam into the wall where Sacchan's head had been until just an instant before, but Sacchan jackknifes back upright and the flood of nonsense keeps flowing, with barely an interruption, its direction swerved off to the side like the kunai were just a boulder in the river to reroute the path of this most ridiculous flood.
Tsukuyo pushes her aside and begins to pluck her kunai back out of the wall.
"Except," says Sacchan, as though Tsukuyo's been listening to a word she's said, as though they're in the middle of a conversation, "except I do know, Tsukki, as a matter of fact, I've been giving it some thought and do you know, I don't even care." She flattens a hand to her chest. She's attempting one of the more unconvincing, simpering impressions of modesty Tsukuyo's seen in quite some time. "I don't care! I don't care! Do you hear me?"
"No," says Tsukuyo. "Well, yeah. But I wasn't listening. You what?"
"It's not much to be proud of," Sacchan says. She's looking down her nose at Tsukuyo. She has to tip her head back to manage, but she's doing it all the same. "Appealing to the Jump demographic, I mean. I'd be ashamed to show my face in public, if it was me. I appeal to a more mature demographic."
"You don't appeal to any demographic," Tsukuyo says. "What the hell are you going on about, Sarutobi?"
"Oh, like you don't know," Sacchan scoffs. "Get a grip, Tsukki! Just because you think you're the most perfect woman in the world and everyone loves you and you're too busy being kind and beautiful and pure of heart," spitting each word out like she's sickened to her core, "to dirty your innocent hands with the filth of a woman like me—"
"Ain't my fault you got a problem with a bunch of stuff you invented about me," says Tsukuyo pragmatically.
"Ain't my fault you got a problem," Sacchan mimics back at once, voice dropped to a ferocious, gravelly gangster pitch that sounds nothing at all like Tsukuyo, and in fact nothing like any resident of Yoshiwara that Tsukuyo's ever met. "Ain't my fault I pander to the audience with a higher slit in my kimono every time I'm back on screen—"
Tsukuyo's fist clenches of its own accord. "Shut up, that ain't true!"
"—ain't my fault I stink like tobacco—"
"Maybe that's true but it ain't my problem! You shut up right now, Sarutobi!"
"—ain't my fault I play up the hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold act every chance I get, even though that trope's old as the hills and bland as my own personality—"
"Sarutobi!" With a flick of her wrist, kunai bristle between every finger of Tsukuyo's left hand. "You shut up!"
"You shut up!" Sacchan snaps back.
"I ain't shutting up when it's you what's being—"
"Oh, that's right, it's my fault, blame Sacchan for everything because perfect little old Tsukki ain't never the problem—"
Sacchan's reflexes are quick as quicksilver, unfortunately. She dodges, and the kunai slam down in the centre of Tsukuyo's pillow instead: which ruptures open in an airy, feathery cloud of cheap stuffing. Tsukuyo tackles her down after it and there's a muffled thump anyway, and a brief, gratifying wail of pain from the collision of Sacchan's head against the extensive collection of kunai Tsukuyo keeps beneath her pillow. Beneath her thin mattress too, and shoved down the sides of the bed – and very shortly she discovers unexpected hard ridges beneath Sacchan's sash, cold through the fabric: she's wearing a kunai belt of her own. Tsukuyo sits back and starts to remove it. Sacchan flings an arm theatrically across her eyes, calls Tsukuyo a domineering bitch, and permits her to continue.
The belt drops heavily to the floorboards. Sacchan uncovers her eyes and peers after it, then peers at Tsukuyo instead. "Are you going to get on with it, then?" she demands. "Really, Tsukki, I'm an understanding woman, but if I have to hold your hand and talk you through it every time things start heating up—"
"Shut the hell up," Tsukuyo says with feeling, and kisses her, mostly on account of how the only alternative is committing an act of grievous violence and she's not got the time to wash blood from her sheets tonight.
Sacchan kicks her heel down into her back near hard enough to puncture a kidney: it'd be enthusiasm in someone less abnormal. Her glasses clatter to the floor – safer that way – and Tsukuyo's tight-wrapped obi begins to unravel; and very shortly, for unfathomable reasons of her own, Sacchan begins a concerted attempt to yank out what feels like either the kunai pinning Tsukuyo's hair in place or just most of Tsukuyo's hair in general.
Tsukuyo registers her objection. Her objection goes unheeded. Her second objection is louder, more violent, and goes equally unheeded. Her third objection consists of an attempt to dislocate Sacchan's shoulder, or at least to convince Sacchan she's more than ready to dislocate her shoulder if she doesn't stop yanking at her hair – but with Sacchan's start of pain she yanks even harder still, and Tsukuyo cusses into an unexpected, unpleasant mouthful of wriggling ninja sleeve and immediately recoils. "Will you watch yourself!"
"No," says Sacchan, "and do that again, except harder, and more, and don't stop it."
"No," says Tsukuyo, "and you could try showing some manners in my own goddamn bed."
"I could," allows Sacchan, "but I won't. Listen, Tsukki, as I was saying—"
"Don't care," says Tsukuyo. "You ever clean your teeth, or you just eat so much natto it cancels it out?"
"Aren't you supposed to die at birth if you're born without a heart? You're a freak of nature, Tsukki, you never should have made it into the world, let alone to an age as advanced as yours. And I was saying," her voice rising loud enough to keep every other room along the hall informed, "I was saying – are you going to get on with it?"
Tsukuyo rubs her hand over her mouth, considering. The sourly rotten taste of natto has got in behind her teeth, where experience tells her it's gonna stay for a long goddamn time. "I pretty much thought I was, actually."
"Are you kidding?" Sacchan asks the wall-hanging above the bed.
"Sarutobi," says Tsukuyo, patiently. "Over here."
"Are you kidding?" Sacchan demands again, this time of Tsukuyo – or at least, of a point some five inches to the right of Tsukuyo, which is near enough.
"No," Tsukuyo says. "I mean, I dunno what you're even on about. Get on with what?"
A moment of suspicious silence.
"You expect me to believe this?" Sacchan says, but then she shoves Tsukuyo out the way and dives from the bed, and scrabbles around on the floorboards until she finds her glasses; she slides them on, and peers up at Tsukuyo very closely. "If you're just fishing for popularity points, chaste and inexperienced isn't selling right now," she informs her. "I keep an eye on the market, I know what's popular. It's—" a curious, distant blare of sound coincides with the word, but Sacchan's hand gestures are graphic, "—right now. If you're just scheming for the next readers' poll, you want to look into—" the blare of sound again. Like the horn of a far-off truck, except, of course, no vehicles are allowed in Yoshiwara, "—because that's the big seller right now," Sacchan concludes. Her illustrative demonstration concludes too, a moment later.
After a lifetime in Yoshiwara, there's nothing in the world that could faze Tsukuyo. And she's not fazed – but there's a heat in her cheeks, and it was Sacchan's illustrative demonstration that put it there. "That's the wrong genre," Tsukuyo says. "Sarutobi, I swear you're the only one who cares about those goddamn popularity polls, but Shounen Jump ain't gonna let you do that. That is definitely the wrong genre."
Sacchan scoffs. "You think I care what Jump says? They can't censor me. I'd never let them censor me. I can do what I want. I could even—"
That sound again: far away, but strangely difficult to hear anything else while it blares.
"—if I wanted," Sacchan finishes, and tosses back her hair in satisfaction. "So it doesn't matter, anyway. I want to know every last one of the tricks up your filthy sleeve. Get on with it, then, Tsukki."
A deep, calm breath in. There's still faint traces of natto taste clinging stubbornly inside Tsukuyo's mouth; she'd really rather there weren't. A long, calm breath out. She's got no clue how long Sacchan was here before she got home; she'd better not have been eating natto while she waited, and she'd better not have got it stinking up Tsukuyo's bedsheets if she did. "You ain't telling me what it is, though," Tsukuyo says. "I got no idea what you're on about. Ain't you been listening, Sarutobi? I already told you all this."
"Oh, of course," says Sacchan, in a tone of absolute derision, "of course – of course, Tsukki! Of course I believe you about that! I totally believe you!"
"I dunno why you wouldn't," says Tsukuyo, calm as she can, which at the moment is calm the way a street is calm in the very first instant after a ticking Joui bomb hits the road and bounces and rolls, "on account of how it's true, and I got no reason to lie about it."
"Oh, sure! Sure you don't have a reason!" A bark of laughter, just in case Tsukuyo hasn't got the message yet. Her voice is rising. "Prim little Tsukki doesn't have any idea what I'm talking about, precious perfect little Tsukki hasn't got a clue—"
"I don't!" Tsukuyo's patience snaps; her temper sparks. Sacchan's scarf is twisted in her fist before she knows it, yelling into her face loud enough to shout her down. "Idiot woman, I'm telling you I don't know!"
Sacchan's volume explodes to match her own. "Oh, I'm sorry, Tsukki, are we both pretending you don't have an image to preserve? You should have told me sooner, I'd have played along! Innocent little Tsukki, the most wholesome gangster thug in all of Edo! Perfect pristine little Tsukki, the most family-friendly prostitute this side of the Shogun's private quarters—"
Some distant, rational part of Tsukuyo is impressed it's taken this long for Sacchan to stir her to incandescent rage today – but it's an extremely distant part of Tsukuyo. The rest of Tsukuyo is preoccupied by and alight with that incandescent rage, fierce as a firework, and she jerks her grip to yank the scarf tighter. "Will you shut your mouth? For once in your goddamn life? There's no shame in being a courtesan, not that you'd know the first thing about shame – so you can just shut it, all right, and try showing a bit of respect to the folks that deserve it. And," hotly, as a fresh wind hits her, "you can stop—"
But the room is already silent. Disconcertingly silent; it feels as though it should echo.
"All of it," Tsukuyo concludes, at a slightly more reasonable volume. She takes a deep breath, fighting back the creep of embarrassment already sinking in, and sternly says, "Everything. You just shut your mouth, and stop being such a damn fool the whole time."
"Well," says Sacchan, and then she says it again: "Well," and pushes up her glasses before taking them off instead. She reaches to set them on the bedside table and misses by a mile; they drop with a clatter to the floorboards. "That's more like it," she says. "I told you, Tsukki, didn't I? That's what I'm talking about; but no, always thinking you know better than—"
"Ain't I just told you to shut up?"
Sacchan nearly speaks. She cuts herself off. Then again – but again she stops, and Tsukuyo watches in disbelief as at last Sacchan shuts her mouth, and gives Tsukuyo a nod of grudging approval which would be considerably more effective if it weren't also hopelessly short-sighted, and directed half a metre to Tsukuyo's left.
Tsukuyo has told her to shut up a hundred times. A thousand times, Tsukuyo has told her to shut up, and kicked her into the stinking city river to make her shut up and subjected her to slickly glittering hailstorms of kunai before vanishing into the cover of a smokebomb to make her shut up, and attempted to wrestle her from rooftops and pinned her down to sit on her and plain ignored her, for hours on hours on hours, all to make her shut up, and none of it works. Nothing has ever worked.
That worked, though – whatever it was. Sacchan's still silent.
Silence and Sacchan rarely coincide. This might already be the longest Tsukuyo's heard the two of them together – might already be a record. Sacchan's even spent infiltration missions whispering in her ear before now: this is almost certainly a record. Tsukuyo's not entirely sure why it's working now, when it's never worked before, but it's not the kind of gift she's going to pass up.
She gets to her feet. The proper place for her boots is arranged neatly just inside the screen door, not dumped beneath her bed: she remedies this. It's still quiet. Tsukuyo kneels down before her mirror, and pulls each of the kunai from her hair before shaking it loose, and starting to brush it methodically through. Still quiet. One hundred strokes to make it shine, Hinowa says; one hundred strokes, Tsukuyo counts out. The springs of her bed creak behind her. Sacchan's breathing is loud enough to be heard. Her room is almost as quiet as it would be if Tsukuyo was the only one here, and that's not natural.
At last Tsukuyo sets down her brush. She breathes calmly in, and calmly out, and then she looks back at Sacchan. "Now what?" she says.
The look of infuriated, red-faced frustration Sacchan gives her is as eloquent as any ten-minute yelling fit. Probably more so, really. Sacchan generally prioritises volume over eloquence when she gets going.
"You don't have to shut up if I'm talking to you, dummy," Tsukuyo says.
Sacchan's breath leaves her in an exasperated explosion. "Well?" she demands.
"Well what?" says Tsukuyo. She pulls off the single sleeve she wears, and folds it neatly on the cabinet.
"Tsukki! Don't stop there! Get on with it!"
Tsukuyo's always been a patient woman. Ever since she started associating with Sacchan, her patience has become very well-tested. "All right," she says, and fishes out her pipe again – strikes it, lights it – pulls in smoke, and says nothing else until her lungs have filled and emptied. The warmth spreads through her. The world looks better through a smoke-haze, and she gets to her feet.
Across the room, Sacchan's unwinding her scarf, still glowering at her. "All right," Tsukuyo says, again. "How about this, then – you tell me what you'd be doing, if it was you as what's supposed to be getting on with it?"
The glower disappears in an instant. Sacchan's suddenly bizarrely, briskly professional. "Good question, Tsukki! If it was me—" she leans over, a silky sheet of lilac hair swinging forwards – reaches beneath the bed, and drags out a large black suitcase that Tsukuyo's damn sure she never left there herself, and that by rights shouldn't even fit between the extremely narrow gap of floorboards and low-lying bed, "—if it was me," says Sacchan, as the latch clicks open, "then first of all I'd want to consider a simple—"
The glint of light from smooth, curved steel – the glint of light from a serrated edge – feathered leather somethings—
Tsukuyo steps forward and slams her heel down. The suitcase crashes shut. "No," she says, and kicks it back beneath the bed. "No."
Sacchan rolls her eyes. "Fine," she says, long-suffering. She flings aside her scarf before moving on to the buckle of her chest brace. "Fine. Saint Tsukki wants to keep it simple, I get it. Do it your way, then."
"You even listening to me?"
"Bet it feels good to always get what you want," says Sacchan, which is not an answer but which does, nevertheless, answer Tsukuyo's question. She drops her chest brace to the floorboards with a clatter and starts unwinding her sash. "Bet it feels good to always get your way. Well, fine. You can have your way. You can have your way with me. You can do whatever you want, I won't resist. I'll surrender to every one of your perverse desires like the obedient little housewife you wish I was, utterly helplessly defenceless against your urge to ravish me—"
"You ain't defenceless," says Tsukuyo. "You're a ninja assassin. You ain't defenceless even a bit."
She feels it's a reasonable point, but Sacchan doesn't listen. The fact it's a reasonable point is probably why Sacchan doesn't listen.
Tsukuyo breathes smoke, says nothing. Sacchan's peeled off her sash; she throws it carelessly aside and reaches back for the fastening of her tunic. "You're an idiot," Tsukuyo says eventually. "I ain't saying I'm necessarily opposed to – whatever. But I dunno what whatever is. Can you just tell me what you wanna happen here?"
"Whatever you want, obviously." It comes out muffled: she's wriggling out of the tunic, pulling it over her head. "Hit me. Spit on me. There's rope under the bed. Call me names. I shouldn't be deciding."
"But I don't wanna do any of that," says Tsukuyo. Sacchan flings her tunic aside and glares at her, shoving her glasses back into place as though Tsukuyo should be threatened by the gesture. "What if I just wanna get a good night's sleep?" Tsukuyo persists. "Seeing as how I've been on patrol all day, and I gotta be up early to be on patrol all tomorrow, and you just broke into my room and started taking off your clothes all of your own accord."
"I can take yours off too, if you want," Sacchan says. "Or you can stay dressed, if you don't think I deserve to see you. Or you can take them off yourself, if you don't think I deserve to touch them. Or—"
"What's deserving got to do with it?" Tsukuyo flattens a hand across the front of her obi; the silk is expensive, slick to her touch. A courtesan has to look her best, Hinowa says; a courtesan has to look like she's worth her price. "This is a nice kimono I got on, it's gotta be looked after. I ain't about to let anyone take it off."
Sacchan's mouthing along silently, mocking. She's not even looking at Tsukuyo; she's peeling off her gloves.
"Specially not you," Tsukuyo says. She says it on an impulse, and while the impulse is curious it's not entirely kind. "You with your natto breath. Not when I'll be damned if I know where your hands've been."
A beat. Sacchan tosses one glove aside, and then the other. "The only place my hands have been," she says loftily, "is serving clean and tasty dishes in the Kunoichi Café all afternoon."
"Ain't you the only real kunoichi there?" asks Tsukuyo. "Bet that's the only reason you got the job. Bet that's the only reason they ain't sacked you yet. They need at least one real kunoichi or they'd have to admit they ain't running nothing but a fetish bar."
"Undermining my professional competence is very insulting, Tsukki."
It doesn't sound wholly like a complaint. Tsukuyo extinguishes her pipe and doesn't mention it. Acknowledging the presence of a now wholly naked woman in her bed would only encourage the naked woman, and the last thing in the world that Sacchan needs is encouragement; so Tsukuyo doesn't mention that, either. "Well, they oughta just be honest about it, if you ask me. Everyone's honest about this stuff in Yoshiwara and it never hurts our business."
"That's because fetish bars are your business, Tsukki."
"Not all of it," says Tsukuyo, reasonably. "Ten percent at most, I reckon. I'm just thinking out loud, anyway. No one'd let their customers deal with a waitress as abnormal as you if they didn't have some other reason for it."
She unties her obi; she braces one hand against her unvarnished chest-of-drawers and starts peeling off her stockings. It's not particularly graceful, but when the only other person in the room is Sacchan, even a drunkard puking his guts into the gutters of Yoshiwara would have twice as much grace.
Sacchan's taking more than a moment to reply. When she does, her voice is oddly faraway. "I hope you're aware that implying I hold down a job through anything other than my own professional merit is extremely insulting, Tsukki."
Tsukuyo nods, and continues unwrapping her kimono – but the silence stretches on, a full second of it and then another, unbroken by anything but the endless raucous party of the streets outside, and Tsukuyo's curiosity is rising up too strongly to ignore. She glances back across her shoulder. Sacchan's red in the face, clutching at her sheets in an ecstasy of something Tsukuyo both doubts she wants to know too much about and suspects she's going to hear all about anyway.
"This is pretty weird," says Tsukuyo. "I mean – no offence, or whatever. But it is."
Sacchan starts to speak, then stops. Her eyes are very bright behind her glasses. After a moment, she says – or rather declaims, far louder and more dramatically than necessary, even by her usual unnecessary standards: "If you think you can humiliate me for my desires then the joke's on you, Tsukki! Because that's one of my desires!"
"Like anyone in Edo don't know about your desires, Sarutobi."
"Is that supposed to shame me, Tsukki? Is the contempt of an entire city supposed to shame me, Tsukki? Because I'll tell you now, Tsukki, if that's supposed to do anything but thrill me to the core—"
"I hope you're leaving your brain to science," Tsukuyo says blandly. "Be a real shame if what you got ever happened to anyone else."
"Your scorn is nothing to me but nutritious manure that allows the beautiful flower of my sexuality to grow strong and tall and unfurl its scented blossoms, Tsukki."
"Better if you die sooner rather than later, I reckon – let them get started on the cure soon as possible." The yukata she sleeps in has got crumpled in its drawer, which she's glad for; anything else would risk giving Sacchan the not-exactly-false impression that she's interested in making an effort for her. She pulls it on and wraps it closed, and checks by habit for the back-up lighter tucked inside its sleeve: reassuringly, present and correct.
"Tell me more," orders Sacchan, "every last detail. Every last scathing judgement. Does it... disgust you, Tsukki? Do you find yourself repulsed by the heat of my unnatural desires? Is your heart secure in the ice-cold certainty that if you sink to indulge me now then you won't respect me in the morning?"
"I don't respect you right now," says Tsukuyo, without thinking – and Sacchan's blushing like a schoolkid when she turns back to her, hands clapped to her cheeks in a fit of overwhelming sentiment. "Oh, you gotta be kidding me—That's what does it for you?" Tsukuyo demands, before she can stop herself.
"A lot of things do it for me," declares Sacchan, collapsing theatrically backwards to sprawl, equally theatrically, across the bed, "including your mocking incredulity, Tsukki, so feel free to keep that up."
"But I never even meant it! Of course I respect you, you know I respect you, I just said it without—"
"Don't ruin it, Tsukki!"
Tsukuyo would be burning up with mortification if she wasn't always so busy burning up with far worse second-hand mortification for Sacchan; so it's not so bad, really. "You're the kind of weirdo Hinowa tells the women to charge extra for," she informs her. "And they always pay it, Hinowa says. She says sometimes they even kinda like that, too. Like – making sure they know they oughta be embarrassed about it."
"I'm not embarrassed," announces Sacchan.
"You should be," says Tsukuyo, with feeling. "I still think this is weird. Don't think I don't. But – what do you want, then – you want me to just—"
Sacchan's theatrical sprawling becomes, impossibly, more theatrical still. "Keep going," she commands. "Follow your instincts, Tsukki. I follow my instincts every day of my life, and they've always led me right."
"That's maybe the most wrong I ever heard you be," says Tsukuyo, "but fine." She pushes Sacchan's sprawled legs aside and sits down on the end of her bed. "Fine, I got it. You talk too much. That's the main thing. One of the main things. I'll tell you straight off: there's a lot of main things. And—"
"You've got the sadistic talent of a diamond in the rough," announces Sacchan, as though she's only continuing where she left off, as though she needs to talk the way other people need to breathe, "I'm sure of it, Tsukki – though a diamond in the extreme rough. A diamond that hasn't yet formed. A diamond that's still a lump of carbon in a coal mine somewhere, waiting for millennia of compression to turn it into something even slightly worthwhile – that's you, Tsukki, and if you just follow your instincts then I'll be your millennia of compression, except more erotic and better at traditional ninjutsu—"
"And," repeats Tsukuyo, voice growing louder and more heartfelt, "and all the stuff you talk about is weird. It's really weird. And I dunno if you got raised by wild animals or something, but the way you behave yourself ain't how a human being oughta behave herself. It ain't how a wild animal oughta behave itself. And—"
Sacchan scoffs. "Like you know anything about wild animals, Tsukki."
"I know plenty about wild animals," objects Tsukuyo. "I know wild animals got much more tasteful mating displays than you do."
"But have you ever seen a wild animal, Tsukki?"
"I—"
Sacchan cuts her off with a derisive flap of her hand. "Wild animals don't live in the city, Tsukki. And have you ever actually left the city, Tsukki? And—"
"I seen them—"
"—what about Yoshiwara, Tsukki? How many times have you even left Yoshiwara, Tsukki? And how—"
All Tsukuyo's charitable urges have burned to ash in the sudden blaze of her temper. "I seen them on TV," she says, "and this is exactly what I'm on about! You know damn well why I never left the district much! You know what this place used to be like! You don't bring that kinda stuff up like that – it's rude and it ain't right, you ain't right! That ain't the way to behave yourself!"
Sacchan claps both hands across her mouth. A sound of passionately incoherent something-or-other still escapes: which is nothing worth caring about, since most of Sacchan's sounds are always passionately incoherent, including the ones she makes whenever she's talking.
"Good," Tsukuyo says hotly, "and you just keep quiet, because I ain't anywhere near done yet. And this is what I'm saying, ain't it? Acting like a weirdo all the time – I dunno why you're not embarrassed about yourself, I'm embarrassed about you... And you got a stupid temper on you, half the time you act like Seita before he gets his afternoon nap – and the way you always gotta make a fuss about every last little thing, even the stupid stuff, especially the stupid stuff—"
"Oh, you think you're so great!" Sacchan bursts out, sudden as a bomb and about as loud. "You think you're sooo amazing, you think you're so cool—"
"What? What?"
She drops her hands. Her look of red-faced agitation is fury rather than anything else. "Get some manners, Tsukki! I'm sick of you being so rude to me, show some respect!"
"I'm – what? You told me to! And you're ruder than I ever been in my life! And you told me to!"
"Yeah, but it's pissing me off! You piss me off! You're just insulting me!"
"Sarutobi! You told me you was into it, you told me to!"
"I didn't mean it like that," Sacchan says, belligerent as though it should be obvious. "I meant sexily."
Tsukuyo thinks hard. "What, like – you're crap at giving head?"
"That's just an insult!"
"An insult about sex," Tsukuyo says, aggrieved.
"That's not the same as a sexy insult," Sacchan says, even more aggrieved. "Listen, you're not better than me, you know."
"At giving—"
"At anything," she snaps.
"I never said I was! Will you listen to yourself? You're the only one what keeps saying it!"
"Oh, and that makes it my fault, does it? It's my fault you're an insufferable egomaniac? It's my fault you're even more in love with yourself than everyone else is? It's my fault you think I'm no more than the dirt beneath your—"
"Yes! None of that stuff's true and you're the only one saying it!"
"True!" says Sacchan scornfully, "true! Listen, Tsukki, just give it up – we both know something doesn't have to be true to be true."
For a long blank moment, bewilderment overrides Tsukuyo's temper. "No, we don't," she says. "We definitely don't. That don't make no sense, Sarutobi, what the hell are you—"
Sacchan waves that away as impatiently, as irritably, as though any trace of plain ordinary sense is no more relevant than if Tsukuyo had started reciting next Wednesday's timetable of departures from the shuttle station. "The fact of the matter, Tsukki, is you've done nothing but insult me on a vicious and personal level for the last ten minutes, and if you think that's my fault—"
"It's all your fault! It's completely your fault! I only said any of it cos you told me to!"
"What, and you do everything you're told?" Sacchan snaps back at once. "Excuses, Tsukki! All I'm hearing is excuses!"
Tsukuyo flicks her wrist in reflexive fury, but her hand stays empty: no kunai up the sleeve of her yukata. She yanks a handful out from beneath the mattress and stashes them away. "Ain't I the one who's supposed to be telling people what to do round here?" she demands.
"Well, obviously," Sacchan says impatiently, "but only if I tell you to tell me, and now I'm telling you not to tell me, so do what I'm telling you and don't!"
"But that makes you the one telling me, and ain't that back to front? Ain't there something kinda weird if the one doing the telling is the one being told?"
"What, what what what? You think you're better at this than me, is that it? You think you can just waltz in here with that cool attitude and indecent body and tell me how to live my life?"
"Yes," says Tsukuyo, with a level of ferocity not even she'd been expecting. "And I didn't waltz in nowhere, for your information, seeing as this is my room, in my house, in my own goddamn district, and you're the one what can't keep herself out my bed for twenty-four hours at a time. Shut up and stop being ridiculous. And put your clothes on, while you're at it," she adds, after a moment, and jabs her thumb at the pile of fabric dumped beside the bed.
Sacchan sits back with an expression of surprise that shifts, transparently, through disbelief and then to calculation, and settles on a look of sly approval that Tsukuyo's not sure she likes at all. "Because you don't want your clean sheets contaminated by the filthy presence of my naked body and unclean desires."
"Exactly," Tsukuyo says, without a moment's hesitation. "Got it in one. Just what I was thinking."
Sacchan nods in understanding. For no sensible reason, she pulls her gloves back on first. "And I suppose a naked woman's nothing to write home about, anyway – since your home's always full of naked women."
"You got it, Sarutobi."
"And I expect you're jealous that though we each use our bodies as a tool in our respective professions, my profession is clearly far better and more honourable than yours, and the respect society affords us as a consequence puts me into a much higher social sphere than you'll ever even know about, meaning you're always painfully aware of how far I'm lowering myself by deigning to consort with you."
"You're a waitress, Sarutobi."
"I'm a ninja, Tsukki."
"If you think being a ninja's an honourable profession then you got even less of a brain than I thought you did," says Tsukuyo. There's a time and a place for wasting time on tact, and talking to Sacchan's not it; she follows up on her suspicion and asks, "You got an assignment tomorrow, then?"
"Out in the hills," Sacchan says vaguely. "Zenzou dropped it off after I finished my shift. I'll do it early and come back for lunch. Your treat."
"Nope."
"I don't know why anyone likes you, Tsukki. Do my zip for me," she adds, and Tsukuyo obliges. No more details of the assignment are forthcoming, but they rarely are; whatever miniscule amount of common sense Sacchan possesses generally seems to get used up on her work, and Tsukuyo can respect that. Some jobs aren't the kind of job a woman much wants to talk about.
And some jobs are the kind of job a woman likes to be distracted from, every now and then. "Overall, that was a terrible first attempt," Sacchan concludes, pulling her hair out from beneath her collar, "but at least you showed willing. That's a start, I suppose, although not much of one. You're really going to have to plan this better next time, Tsukki; you can't just expect to go with the flow, especially not when you've got a personality as dull and unimaginative as yours."
Tsukuyo attempts to maintain her air of understanding calm. It takes some effort. "I didn't plan nothing," she says, and remembers belatedly to uncurl her fists, "except for getting a bit of sleep, and obviously that ain't happening—"
"Well, there's your first problem! No plan – listen, if you want a plan to work, you need to have a plan. Really, Tsukki, you're not a particularly stupid woman, so I don't see why this should be so difficult for you to understand."
Tsukuyo's air of understanding calm is already long gone. "Really, Sarutobi, you are a particularly stupid woman, but that still don't explain everything wrong inside your head—"
"Oh, the moment's passed, Tsukki," says Sacchan, and waves her words fretfully away. "Don't try now, you're just embarrassing yourself. Save it for later."
"I wasn't trying! I wasn't trying nothing! I swear, if you don't sort your brain out I'm gonna—"
"—and there you go again!" says Sacchan, and throws her hands up in a show of indulgent mock-despair that does nothing but spill half a can of flame accelerant right into the bonfire of Tsukuyo's temper. She clenches her fists and tries to stop her teeth from grinding. "It's great that you're enthusiastic, but your attempts are still very clumsy, if I'm honest – very amateurish, though that's nothing we can't work on together, and with natural talent like yours I'm sure that before long—"
"Sarutobi! There ain't nothing going on here except I'm pissed with you!"
Sacchan gives her an infuriatingly knowing look above her glasses. "If you say so, Tsukki."
"I do," says Tsukuyo, heartfelt.
"If you really think that explains all the other times this exact same thing has happened," Sacchan continues. "If you really think that explains all the other times your cruellest instincts have reared up and carelessly forced themselves onto me. If you really—"
"I was pissed at you all those times, too! I'm pissed at you most of the time!"
"But why?" demands Sacchan. She rears forward and seizes Tsukuyo's thigh, and glares at her with an expression that's possibly meaningful and certainly passionate. "Why are you pissed at me most of the time? Have you ever stopped to wonder that? Have you ever really dug down inside yourself and wondered exactly what it is, inside your heart and soul, that turns you into such a thoroughly disagreeable woman with such an unattractive personality around me?"
"No," says Tsukuyo, "because I don't need to. Because it's all your fault."
"Exactly," declares Sacchan, "it's all my fault, because like calls to like and your heart can sense that its perfect matching pair beats inside my chest."
"No," says Tsukuyo, "what I meant is it's all your fault because you're awful."
"Well, you can tell yourself that," says Sacchan, generously condescending, "but the fact of the matter is that it's just your true dominant colours shining through. You can't hide your ruthlessly sadistic nature, Tsukki, any more than I could ever hide my own inherent taste for yielding, womanly submission."
"No, I think you could definitely hide that. You'd be doing the entire city a favour if you bothered hiding that. You'd be causing way less trauma in the general population if you bothered hiding that."
"Oh, Tsukki... You just can't help yourself, can you?" She says it fondly, sorrowfully, as though Tsukuyo's caught some virulent but deeply endearing disease. The hand on Tsukuyo's thigh is sliding higher. "There's no need to fight it, though I know it can feel a little overwhelming at first – it's like there's something inside you... and it's calling you... and all you can do is surrender to its call, to its urges, to its wild, brutish urges—"
"Get out my house," says Tsukuyo.
"It's not your house," says Sacchan, "it's a brothel, and if I want to stay the night then I can."
"It's a brothel and it's my house," says Tsukuyo, "so unless you got a couple million yen to spare or unless I say so, then you can't."
"You're not worth that much," says Sacchan. She shoves up her glasses and stares hard at Tsukuyo. "You're not. Are you? You're not. You can't be. Tsukki, are you really?"
"Go pay and find out," Tsukuyo says blandly.
"No," says Sacchan, "no, Tsukki, listen – how many million? How many million is a couple of million? Be more specific, Tsukki, I need you to – but you're not worth that, though. Are you? Are you? Listen, just tell me how it's—"
On one hand, there'd be a lot of violent satisfaction to be gained by once again attempting to skewer Sacchan through the throat. On the other hand, there'd be a lot of endless smug bragging to endure in the aftermath. Tsukuyo closes her eyes, and takes a breath as calming as she can; then she lets it out and says, "Stay if you want. But if I wake up and you're doing something weird, you're getting kicked out."
Sacchan casts her a shrewd look. "Would that involve... literal kicking, or—"
Not the throat, because she flings herself aside in time, but one of Tsukuyo's sudden storm of kunai still skewers the end of Sacchan's scarf to the wall.
She surveys Tsukuyo's handiwork with professional approval. "No point trying to hide your sadistic light, Tsukki," she announces, and yanks the kunai back out. "I told you so, didn't I? I've always told you so. I told you so all the way back when—"
"Go to sleep now," says Tsukuyo, "or go to sleep forever. You got a choice."
For once in her life, Sacchan makes the right choice.
.-.-.-.
.-.-.-.
The lights are out and the room is quiet, except for the sounds of the waning Yoshiwara night outside and the echoes through the halls of distant footsteps, distant voices, distant music. Now that Sacchan's using her mouth for nothing more obnoxious than breathing, there's nothing to distract her, and an uncomfortable sort of regret is stealing over Tsukuyo that she hadn't taken her up on the offer of – something – while the offer was there.
But like hell if she's gonna do anything about it – like hell if she's giving Sacchan the satisfaction. And, dammit, like hell if she's ever telling Sacchan she's not giving her the satisfaction, because Tsukuyo's pretty sure that withholding satisfaction from Sacchan counts as satisfaction for Sacchan anyway – so like hell if she's giving Sacchan the satisfaction of knowing she's receiving no satisfaction – which is Sacchan's preferred kind of satisfaction – which Tsukuyo suspects means that either she gives Sacchan what she wants, in which case Sacchan gets what she wants, or she doesn't give Sacchan what she wants, which is also what Sacchan wants—
Tsukuyo rests her arm across her eyes and attempts, effortfully, to sleep. The night's too late for this much nonsense. It's been too late for this much nonsense since the moment Sacchan showed up in her room. There's never a time of day when it's not too late for Sacchan's nonsense.
A minute of silence. Maybe a little more, but not by much – and then Sacchan rolls over, nearly dislodging Tsukuyo from the bed, and in a whisper begins, "Tsukki, listen – try this, why don't you? Just as an experiment. A thought experiment. Why don't you try thinking of your sadism as a bud in springtime? A bud in springtime that's full and swollen with potential, and all it needs is a little time, a little attention, a little patch of worthless dirt in which to sink its roots, before it can reach its moment of ripe blossoming and unfurl its petals, Tsukki, and open its body, Tsukki – to at last show its true self to the world? Okay, Tsukki? Why don't you try that?"
Tsukuyo opens her eyes: Sacchan's squinting fiercely into her face. "Because it's disgusting and weird," says Tsukuyo. "Move over, we're switching places. I'm sleeping by the wall. At least you'll enjoy it if you get kicked out of bed."
"That's the spirit," says Sacchan, and contentedly complies.
.-.-.-.
.-.-.-.
[A.N.: It's total coincidence I'm posting this on Valentine's, but since Tsukuyo/Sacchan is my #1 most beloved ship of all, it's a wonderful coincidence and I love it, and I'm fully embracing it. Thanks for reading, and any comments would be appreciated!]