Kenji lay on his bed thinking.
He knew that he could not run away forever. It had been two years since that, and it really was time to go back.
"Alexei?" there was a soft knock on his door.
"Come in.," he replied.
It was Sashenka.
He sat up on his bed.
Sashenka walked up to the bed and sat on the corner.
She stayed silent for a while looking around the room as if she had never seen it before.
"I know I may be intruding, and taking advantage of you, but…." She suddenly started.
"It's fine with me, I meant it when I told you you could talk to me. Is there something on your mind?"
"When you asked me 'why you became a courtesan?' I was little angry. I have not told that par of my life to anyone. People always look down on us because of what we do, and the other girls have similar stories to mine, so it would be pointless to tell them about it. I was scared to answer you. You have been so nice, but I didn't think I could trust you, but today…today I realized that if I couldn't trust you, then I couldn't trust anyone. Are you still interested in hearing my story?"
"Of course. It might be painful, but I think you have been waiting for a long time to tell someone. I'll hear you out and I won't judge you. That is a promise."
She gave him a small smile. "You are a really smart kid. It's true; I have been waiting for someone to be willing to hear me talk. Men don't care about words. They don't come here and pay to hear us talk about our lives. They don't care about us any more than they care about the dog out in the street."
Kenji stayed silent. He didn't know what to say.
Sashenka started her narrative.
"I think I was 14, maybe 15 when all my dreams were shattered. We were poor…then my mother died…and I was left alone with my 6 younger siblings and drunken father. I was the oldest, so my father in one of his more sober days arranged for me to marry the baker's son. I was happy, all my life I had fancied the baker's son. I thought that nothing could break that happiness, but I was wrong. One night as I came late from my job at a seamstress house I was attacked by some men. News spread quickly and my marriage was called off. I was no longer worthy of marrying into a decent family…" She stopped. Tears were falling from her eyes, but with a quick wipe of her eyes she resumed again." In an instant my whole life was ruined. Everybody blamed me for what had happened since many women in my town were jealous of me and looked down on me. Even the baker's wife had not been too happy with the marriage arrangement; since she believed in the gossip they spread around about my reputation. After my reputation really was ruined, I could no longer take all the gossip. I took what little I had and ran away, leaving my family. I ended up here and since then I started living this life. I was worthless anyway, no good man would marry me, thus I decided to become what I am now." Her voice was sad, tears falling from her eyes.
"That was hard. Your life has been too hard. You didn't deserve that." Kenji said.
"I have not seen my family since. I don't even know what has been of them."
"Do you want to go see them? I'll go with you." Kenji offered.
"Nobody ever cares what happens to us. We are just merchandise used for their own amusement. It's a sad life isn't it? That is why I try to make the girls' lives easier because I know that they all have stories similar to mine." She said not answering his question.
'That's not true. I don't know why I ended up here, but it is thanks to you people that I have been able to become a better person. Little by little I feel as if I am becoming human. Before I was driven on rage, an uncontrollable rage. I made some very bad mistakes due to that rage."
"Who are we to judge? We all have something in our pasts that we are ashamed of. You are still young and you can make amends for your mistakes." Sashenka assured him.
"I don't think that I can ever amend for my mistakes. They are mistakes that are hard to be forgiven. Things that if they were done to me I don't think I would be able to forgive."
"Trust me, we have all done bad things…things we wish we could to forget…you are too young to be beating yourself over them Life is too short to be living with regrets. Whatever you did, I m sure that you can be forgiven."
"I killed my father. I don't know how something like that can be forgiven."
Sashenka didn't even flinch. She just sat there. "One of the girls here killed her father."
"But my father had no right to die. I killed him on a mistaken idea of life. All my life I thought I hated my father because I knew he did not love my mother, but in the end I figured that my dad had been the most selfless person in the world and I realized that it was my mother I resented for keeping my dad at her side knowing he did not love her."
"Love…that's a funny little thing…" she said absent-mindedly. "But your mother really was selfish if she knew your father did not love her yet kept him at her side. The question is, did she really know?"
"Maybe not." Kenji admitted, " I had a mistaken view of what love was. I thought that my father was hurting my mother by lying to her and pretending to love her, but I was wrong, he was actually protecting her. The one that was being hurt was he. My mother had a naïve way of loving. I always felt oppressed by her love, I felt like she would never let me grow up. I grew angry and frustrated. My mom taught me the way of the sword, but her philosophy never sat well with me, her ideas were too simple and pure. She believed swords were meant to protect people without killing. My mother believed in the good in everyone and could never fathom the idea of evil. It was that idea that never permitted her to see my father's true self. My father had once been an assassin for the revolution, yet when my mother met him he was just a wandering man that had promised never to kill again and for that reason I think she never wanted to assimilate his bloody self that had killed so many. She tried to avoid that, and that is why I think my father could never love her. It was that they could never really look eye-to-eye because if they did my mother would find a void that she would be unable to understand. She would discover that my father was unreachable to her. I think unconsciously she always knew my father married her out of pity, yet in her fear she never told him he knew so that he could fly."
"Your mother sounds like an interesting woman, there are just some people that love too much, too intensely that they forget about the rest. I guess your mother was that kind of woman. She believes love can make everything right with the world, just like I think she thought that she could make your father love her by being with him always. Let's just say your mother didn't understand love. I don't know if she married young, or if your father had been her first love, but she was inexperienced. Love hurts, and she didn't want to suffer because of love. She didn't understand. There are many kinds of love. Your father just didn't love her in the way she wanted him to love her. In her fright, she tricked her mind to believe that the marriage was perfect. Don't say your father didn't love your mother, I'm pretty sure he did, because if he didn't he would have broken up the marriage, but there love was at different levels. If your father had been an assassin, she couldn't turn a blind eye, but there are people like her. People who have never suffered or seen the harsh reality of life and believe that with love everything can be set right. Your mother is the type of people that is hard to find, and it's good that she could be so carefree, yet she has to understand that love can't solve everything. Most times love blinds the mind and reason flies out the window making things more complicated than they really are."
"You are probably right. That sounds just like my mother, but still I think I said very cruel things to her."
"She's your mother and if she her personality is like you described I am sure that she will forgive you." Said Sashenka.
By now they were holding hands as they lay on Kenji's bed looking out the window at the stars.
The night sounds lulled Kenji to sleep. He was emotionally drained.
As soon as the sun hit the window Sashenka got up and left the bed.
She turned to look at Kenji's sleeping form and ruffled his red hair.
"Thank you kid, I hope you can come to terms with your own problems." She told him before leaving.
Ah….so….um romantic?….