WOAH HEY A NEW STORY FROM BBS? WTH. Hahaha just thought I'd get in on the Christmas spirit with a one shot for everyone who's willing to read.
Sorry for the lack of quality/OOC-ness. Christmas cheer makes my head twirl in less than healthy ways.
TRANSLATIONS:
Sakura = cherry blossoms
Utsukushii = beautiful/lovely
Maiko = apprentice geisha
Ai = love
Mizuage = in brief terms, it's a coming of age ceremony for maiko in which their virginity is sold to the highest bidder.
Okaa-san = Translates literally to "mother", but in geisha districts, an okaa-san runs the okiya, or geisha house.
Taiko = A traditional drum
Obi = The cloth wrap around the waist of a kimono.
Danna = A man who sponsors the geisha, paying all of his/her debts to her okaa-san and making him/her his mistress (not wife however, most men in those days were already in arranged marriages).
000
I HIGHLY RECOMMEND LISTENING TO:
"The Chairman's Waltz" from the Memoirs of a Geisha soundtrack while reading. It's a really hauntingly beautiful song. So exquisite and quintessential of a geisha. I swear, you'll like it. Thanks! :'D
000
It was many years ago, the number of drops of cool water in the wine dark ocean.
It was many years ago…when I used to be young. When I used to be free.
A young child of my own devices.
Like the falling blossoms of the sakura blossoms that bloomed every spring, I was a master of dance.
It was many years ago, when I was free to love whom I had been destined to love.
000
Beautiful is what they called me. Utsukushii.
"Utsukushii" the people would whisper as I walked by them in the streets in my elaborate kimono.
I held them in the palm of my hands. Every flicker of my lashes and swish of my obi had them drooling like dogs at my feet.
Allen Walker, orphan from Europe.
Allen Walker, foreign beauty.
Allen Walker, geisha.
I was young, I was naïve. I was the flower of Kyoto, and I knew it. I had been trained from a very, very young age to be a living, moving, breathing work of art. I was used to bowed heads, I was used to cheeks tainted with a red of desire, and I was used to having all eyes on me and me alone.
That was until the day when the sakura bloomed a week later than always.
I stood in my regal kimono of fine silk embroidered plum blossoms, ones of soft luxury that rivaled my stunning ivory hair which was pinned up with accessories of sterling silver that rivaled that of my ever-flickering eyes.
Hair and eyes that were prized through all of Japan.
I had the grace of a white swan. I had looks that could send a man jumping off the Gion Tatsumi Bridge.
I had everything. Everything a maiko could possibly ask for.
Until that day.
The sun was ever so bright, laughing in the sky as the flowers danced like I had in the academy. The light that fell over the prefecture was one of a ripe golden peach—dousing the town and gracing the trees with their swiftly falling blossoms.
White, everything was white like freshly fallen snow in the winter time.
The only flaw seemed to be a business man standing alone a few feet away from where I was poised with my fan, talking and faintly flirting with the man I stood with, conversing of stupid, imbecilic, and trivial topics such as the weather.
His name was Daisya or some other name I could not grasp.
I smiled my default smile, my eyes meanwhile being drawn like a moth to a flame
to another man.
He was the black stain on this jovial white festival, the shadow behind the cream colored moon.
He was standing alone, his piercing sapphire eyes glaring at the soft green moss that grew at the foot of the tree he leaned against.
He was perfect.
He was utsukushii.
I could not find it in me to tear my eyes from him, even when Daisya asked me what the matter was.
My heart was beating like a taiko in my chest when those icy cobalt eyes met mine for a second of pure excitement. But like lightening that flashes in the evening sky…it was gone too fast.
It was my first time encountering what I would later identify (grudgingly) as ai.
Kanda.
The gentleman's name was Kanda.
I met him days and days of curious and lonely torture later at the Ichiriki Teahouse.
I had spent those days in between with the vivid memory of his frosty winter eyes as they locked onto mine with a blue so cold it was as scalding as a fiery blue flame
when I slept.
when I awoke.
when I danced.
when I breathed…
I thought of him. And only him.
Of course, I wasn't aware of what his name was until that day at the Ichiriki...
Kanda.
Kanda.
I had on my kimono, as orange as the morning sun with a gray obi that was embroidered with blue waves.
Waves of the ocean.
Waves of the blue ocean.
Waves of Kanda…
I thought that I had gone insane. I sat on my knees—heels tucked under, poised with a teapot in my lithe fingers, making sure my sleeve had fallen ever so subtly to reveal a sliver of pure white skin.
It caught everyone's hungry gaze. Everyone in the tearoom.
Except Kanda's.
While others coughed to cover up their reddened cheeks, Kanda didn't even look at me.
Oh how my heart ached, how furious and burning with rage I was when the man of my dreams, of my every breath and waking moment had refused to acknowledge my existence!
I was Allen Walker, dignified geisha.
Everywhere I went, I was revered as a porcelain doll.
Why not with this man?
Why hadn't his eyes gleamed with deep desire?
Why didn't his cheeks light up with the color of ripe cherries?
Why didn't all his movements cease with my every move?
I was enraged…yet captivated.
I'd always garnered adoring looks from people from the day I was found an orphan in the streets of Osaka.
It was a challenge.
I'd never had a challenge like this before.
000
"You are far too bland." he had told me when I had enough courage to speak to him with my perfectly accented Japanese, delicate with a small exotic lilt to it that always drove people mad.
Once more, I felt a fire in my lungs like that of when I first drank sake—rice wine.
How dare he say that to me!
I had characteristics never seen in this part of the world before, if ANY part of the world!
Could he not see my pure white hair of freshly fallen snow and my flickering gaze of sterling silver?
"You can't always expect to get around on your looks. But I guess I shouldn't expect more from a geisha like you." He spat.
Why was he so calm around me?
Why was he so bitter?
Why was he so…sensual?
Why was he not tense when I placed a daring yet fragile hand on his lap as I laughed my melodic laugh?
And how dare he call me bland!
Me! Bland!
"You're also a bean sprout."
"My name is Allen! I have a name." I seethed.
It was rare that I was this irritated with a client. A geisha was always supposed to be agreeable, smiling through pain and sorrow. But I couldn't just sit there as he degraded me for all I was worth!
My cheeks were so hot with indignation that I was certain even he could see it through my white and pasty makeup.
But afterwards, the corner of his lip was folded upwards into a small but meaningful smirk—sharp and angled like the pressed paper of an origami bird.
It was almost…charming.
It was utsukushii.
It was so entrancing that I could barely hear what he said before he stood up to leave.
"But I must say you are a strange one. Fiery, even. Not stupid and senile like the other whores that hang around here."
I sat frozen in place, shocked at how disrespectful yet…flattering his words were.
Strange? Fiery? What did he mean by that?
That had haunted me for months on end before I saw him—Kanda—once more.
000
It was already late August when we were reunited by a sick twist in fate.
The leaves of the vibrant trees had already donned their brilliant robes of autumn red, orange, yellow, and brown.
I too had worn an elegant burgundy kimono that day. It was stitched with yellow and orange leaves, the obi a stately brown.
I had left on my own for a walk down the park where the trees swayed from side to side in the lazy wind.
By then, my mind was still burning of that origami smirk, those venomous words, and those piercing eyes of the ocean.
I longed to see him once more.
Kanda.
And then, as if some deity in the heavens were bored and wanted to be entertained,
a familiar dark figure in a suit approached me.
"Good afternoon, Kanda-san." I murmured through my shock.
He grunted in greeting.
Was I not even worth a "Good afternoon" in return?
But what had occurred after that had shaken any other thoughts I would have had on the matter.
He kissed me.
Evidently, I was not the only one that ached for the other.
But why? Why was he kissing a bland bean sprout like me? A geisha—a whore in his world.
His lips tasted of rain.
The breeze constricted my throat as I felt the banging of my own heart beating against me.
His slim fingers threaded through my decorative hair, caressing it like no one had ever done before.
Was this part of ai?
I had never experienced anything like this. The touches, the caresses, the almost desperate way my waist was grabbed and brought against his crisp pressed suit.
But I knew I wanted it more than anything.
My hands went to touch his face, the smooth and oddly cold face whose lips were devouring mine with a passionate fervor.
Our tongues danced inside of our mouths, slick with saliva and endlessly voracious for the taste of one another. It was intoxicating, addicting, entrancing, enchanting, enthralling…
My arms slithered around his neck to draw him closer to me, to breathe in more of that subtly spicy scent that could only belong to him.
I wanted to be sprawled on the dirt trodden path with leaves all around my body as one by one, Kanda peeled layer after layer of my kimono off of my heated body, kissing me like this everywhere…
I wanted to be with him always, all my hatred and annoyance seemed like they were nonexistent. All that existed was this kiss with lips of rain.
But as quickly as it had begun, it had ended.
I turned from him, using my sleeve to dab away the smeared make up on my face—doing my best to recompose myself before facing him again.
It was not proper for a maiko to…to interact in such activities like this.
A maiko like me was supposed to be a pure and innocent apprentice; my purity was to be preserved for my mizuage. I wasn't supposed to be thinking these thoughts about Kanda, much less copulate with him in the middle of a city park.
But every fiber of my being ached to be with him. It was madness! I couldn't even understand just why I wanted to be with such a cold and cruel stranger—only that I did.
No one had ever taken me so long to capture. It took so much more out of me than a quick glance or a flash of a wrist. It had taken time for him to consider me until he realized what he wanted to do.
What I hoped he had wanted to do.
000
Our meetings occurred even more frequently after that day.
We'd meet at the same park at the same time.
Yet every time felt different.
We would talk.
We would argue.
We would kiss.
We would touch.
Of course, it never went as far as either of us would've liked; and despite Kanda's "damn-everything-to-hell" attitude, even he knew that as a geisha in training, I was to remain untouched.
How I had argued with him.
"Just do it! Please, I want it!" I pleaded in a harsh whisper, slowly sucking on his earlobe and doing all I could to seduce him until he shivered and simply pushed me away, gazing at my teary gray eyes with those disappointed and reprimanding blue eyes of his.
Slipping away like grains of warm sand in my hands.
"No."
This continued for years. Yearning by the sunlight, meeting in the moonlight.
Until one day…I waited by the tree we always met at for an eternity and then some.
He never came.
000
If I was insane before, I was a complete lunatic then.
I was moody, withdrawn, and refused to take more than half of the clients I usually gathered. I cried at random intervals, wanting to disappear and wishing I had never experienced this ai.
I didn't want to speak to anyone. I didn't like to be geisha.
I wanted to be completely free of all restraints; I wanted to be able to leap into his arms and let him ravage me until I couldn't breathe anymore…
We hadn't met for weeks.
This was more than lunacy.
000
Seasons and seasons after…after the leaves had changed at least twice, I had been granted what okaa-san had told me was,
"The greatest honor and happiness a geisha could have, especially at your age."
A danna.
"Wh-who?"
"Cross Marian."
"Who is that?"
000
My eyes were empty…vacant as my danna took me as his own.
As was my heart.
000
A part of me died inside.
000
To this day, I remember what Kanda looked like under the moonlight, his ocean blue eyes drowning me as we kissed and hungrily touched in the park.
My one and only love. My first…
and my last.
The one that saw more than just: Allen Walker, geisha.
The man whose movements didn't cease with my every move.
The man that didn't treat me as if I were expensive porcelain…but instead, as if I were human.
To this day…I don't know what happened to him.
To this day…I still
love
him.
But that was many years ago, the number of drops of cool water in the wine dark ocean.
It was many years ago…when I used to be young.
When I used to be free.
000
Ack. It's brief and random. Drabble-y in a sense, considering it's only 2,000-ish words. Hope you enjoyed though, it took me 3 hours of work and an intense immersion into the Memoirs of a Geisha soundtrack (which I highly recommend).
Please review and tell me what you thought; it'd be appreciated greatly as a small gift to me for the holiday season :')
And if you have a minute, please go to my profile and vote on my most recent poll. Thanks for reading!