I've been wondering about Kinzo's wife, and what she must have been like. I mean, we don't know if she ever really loved him, but we know that she was jealous enough of him that when she started to suspect that he had a mistress, she became incredibly paranoid. We know next to nothing about her, and yet despite that, as the mother of Krauss, Eva, Rudolf and Rosa, she's an incredibly important character for the influence she must have had on them. So I got curious, and I decided to write.

I'm afraid I have a bad habit of starting a lot of things at once and having to juggle them as a result, but this won't have too many chapters, so it should be okay. I hope you all enjoy it.

I own nothing.

Lifeless Eyes

The stiff, translucent white wataboshi hood is low over her head, even more like a shroud than usual thanks to how her head is bowed, eyes downcast. The thick white makeup makes her skin itch, the pins in her auburn hair dig at her scalp, and her snowy kimono, with all its layers and drapery, feels so heavy on her shoulders that she's amazed she hasn't collapsed under its weight, but she's not complaining. This is the last time she'll be able to wear the kimonos she loves so much—soon, she'll have to discard them for the bulky, cumbersome, too-tight dresses so favored by European women. Her soon-to-be husband, she's told, is a great lover of European culture, to the extent that he disdains nearly all things traditionally Japanese; dressing like a European woman will please him, she's told.

Staring straight ahead, she can't see any of the people standing on the sidelines, serving as witnesses—the wataboshi hood sees to that. She feels like a horse wearing blinders, forced to keep her eyes straight and center, never allowed to see what's going on in the world around her. No fresh, moving air hits her face; all she feels instead is the stale air that has lived in this half-lit room for a thousand years. She tells herself that this will be over soon enough, and she'll be allowed to remove the hood and see the world once more.

Shizuka can only hope it's worth it.

They stand, silent, waiting for the moment to come when they will be declared husband and wife. The priest drones on, the purification ritual taking what seems an eternity. Shizuka just wants this part of the ceremony to be done so they can move on, but at the same time, she's nervous. I hope I don't spill the sake, Shizuka thinks to herself, or that he doesn't trip on his words with the vows. Mother would never forgive me, and judging from the dour looks on the faces of his family, I don't think he would be forgiven either.

I don't want him to think I'm a clumsy little girl.

Ushiromiya Kinzo. That's the name of the man she's marrying. He's from an old clan on the decline, known more for mishaps and ill fortune than prestige, but still possessing enough clout that when the elders of that clan made an offer to her parents, they jumped on the opportunity to ally themselves with that house.

Shizuka's never met him before today. The preparations for the wedding were done with almost indecent haste, as though they expected the bride or groom to die unexpectedly, and all the time, while Shizuka was measured for her wedding kimono, while she was rigorously schooled in how to behave around her groom-to-be, she wondered what he looked like.

Will he have a kind face? she wondered, staring out the window as her mother snapped her fingers to get her attention. Will he be kind, kind to the wife he's never met? Will he have the sort of face that laughs often? If I'm to spend the rest of my life with this man, at least let him be a cheerful one.

It seems to Shizuka that girls in fairytales, especially western ones, balk at the idea of arranged marriages. She isn't entirely sure why—it seems a perfectly reasonable arrangement to her; overwhelming emotions aren't the sort of thing that should come into play when choosing who you will spend your life with, only logic and reason. If Shizuka had to guess, she would suppose it's because there's something about passionate love stories that grip the imagination—and there's something in the minds of especially romantic young girls that makes them want to ride off into the sunset with that young man who catches their eye from across the dusty street.

But the passion of heady love soon gives way to the realization that you've married a stranger, and soon you realize that there's nothing that can keep you bound to him. Not love, for passionate love fades all too quickly, and there's nothing of the steady, affectionate love of adulthood in your heart for him. You don't have any interests in common. You don't have children. You don't even have duty to your family to keep you tied to him. You wake up in bed one morning, the sun spilling on your face, and when you look over at him, all you see is a man you defied courtesy and familial piety to marry, and yet, in his face, there is no trace of a person you could honestly spend the rest of your life with.

That sort of fate frightens Shizuka far more than the thought of marrying a man for the sake of her family, and being married to a man who wed her for the sake of his. At least there is that bond to keep them tied together, even if love or even affection is never found. At least there is something they have in common, even if they were forced into this state, shoved up front, bound together for life by people who care nothing for their happiness.

Knowing that she's been all but forgotten, Shizuka chances a glance at Kinzo.

He looks… He looks tired, to be honest, and weary of this whole thing. Whether it's irritation with how long the wedding ceremony takes or a more pervasive ennui Shizuka can't be sure, but though his lips are pressed together politely and there is a careful effort to keep emotion from his face, it's painfully evident that he would rather be anywhere but here.

I suppose he's not terribly happy with this.

At least he doesn't look old. Shizuka doesn't know why her mind goes there, and winces, wondering where this moment of vanity came from. But in all honesty, he doesn't; she doesn't think he's that much older than her.

Maybe he'd wanted to be married to a woman he actually knew first.

He looks… He looks handsome, she thinks, even if his bone-white hair is more fitting of an elderly man and he presently looks so dour that it seems as though he's never smiled in his life. He looks intelligent, but pale, like some ghostly leech has sucked the life right out of him.

Maybe there was already a woman he planned on marrying.

Despite herself, despite keeping well in mind her mother's voice telling her that a wife's eyes should never be on her husband's face, but downcast instead, modestly, Shizuka stares at him. Maybe the incense-choked air has robbed her of any inhibition, or maybe she wants some sign from him, some sense of solidarity, of camaraderie, of something. After all, in a few minutes, they will be husband and wife. They'll have to spend their whole lives with each other. Surely that counts for something, for some sort of shared bond.

Please look at me. Please give me some sign that you know I'm here, that I'm not just a ghost in white floating through this room.

Then, the moment comes.

No, not the moment when they are called forward to exchange their cups of sake, and do all that comes after to finalize the ceremony. The moment that comes is the moment when Kinzo finally realizes that there are eyes burning holes into the side of his head, and looks down. In that moment, everyone else in the room seems to vanish from the landscape of her mind—they're not really all that important anymore. Shizuka smiles tentatively.

We may not ever really love each other. I don't suppose that every couple brought together by their families is that lucky. But we can at least be friends, can't we? We were brought together by the will of the avaricious, people who have no real use for us. That makes us allies of a sort, doesn't it?

Their eyes meet, and even in the half-light, Shizuka can tell two things about them.

One, is that Kinzo's eyes are as gray as the ocean on a quiet winter's morning, when the sun does not show its face through the thick canopy of cloud.

Two, is that they are as lifeless as the eyes of a porcelain doll—or the cold, lightless eyes of a dead fish. They let in no light and seem to belong to something so dead that for a moment, Shizuka wonders if Kinzo is really just a corpse some necromancer resurrected for the occasion.

She can't hold his gaze any longer; the already stale air sets out to choke her if she tries. Shizuka's eyes return to the floor, and she wonders just what sort of life she'll have with such a man.

Wow, dark ending there. Anyway, a couple of notes on bridal headgear in Shinto weddings.

Though most Japanese couples nowadays go for Christian-style weddings, since they're less expensive, if any of you have seen pictures of Shinto-style weddings, you'll notice that the bride is usually wearing either a hat or a hood.

The hood, what Shizuka's wearing here, is known as a wataboshi. Before the end of the Edo period (1867), all brides in Japan would have worn this to her wedding. The purpose of the wataboshi is to hide the bride's face from everyone except the groom, and given how big it is, I can see how that would be effective. After the Edo period, however, the "hat", known as a tsuno kakushi (or tsunokakushi), came into existence as well. The purpose of the tsuno kakushi is to hide the bride's "horns of jealousy, ego, and selfishness"—traits considered unfitting for a bride—and to symbolize her intent to become a good, obedient wife to her husband. I thought that having Shizuka wear a wataboshi here would be more appropriate, to sort of create a more oppressive atmosphere for her.