Man, ffnet is a ghost town these days.

Chapter Nine

"Alright. First things first," Sougo announced as he sat across from Kagura at a low table.

Upon agreeing to unite in the face of Yoshiwara's unpredictable killer, the unlikely duo of undercover cop and odd jobs employee had put away the futon and rearranged the room to accommodate their planning session. Kagura had removed her heavy kimono and changed back into her day clothes and was now attempting to scrub the paint from her face while she listened to Sougo lay out his plan. "You said that the murderer snuck in while you were asleep, right? That means he's either highly skilled at stealth—a shinobi, possibly—or he's someone non-assuming enough to not raise alarm where he goes—that is to say, someone well-known within Yoshiwara whom nobody would think twice about coming and going from the businesses here."

Kagura lowered the rag to study Sougo skeptically. "Are you saying that the killer might be from Yoshiwara? That can't be."

Sougo raised a brow. "Oh? And why's that? You think there isn't anyone here who stands to gain from popular courtesans getting knocked off? Perhaps, say, a little-leaguer looking to climb the ladder to fame?"

Kagura scrunched up her nose in offense. "The girls here aren't like that. Everyone here wants to find the killer. The women of Yoshiwara respect and rely on each other. They would never kill each other over something dumb like trying to get ahead."

Sougo scoffed and placed an arm on the table to level a 'try-to-keep-up' look at Kagura with apathetic red eyes. "You put too much stock in them. People are ugly, China, and they do terrible things for the sake of their own success. Here, in the Shinsengumi, in the Bakufu…it's the same wherever you go. If we're going to find this killer, we need to start by looking at all the possibilities, even the ones we don't like."

Kagura pouted but said nothing. She couldn't deny the reasonableness of his argument.

"We also need to seriously think about the danger you're putting yourself in by continuing to entertain clients here." He gestured around at the room. "Obviously, if the killer could sneak in and murder someone while you were sleeping, he could just as easily put a knife in you next time. Unfortunately, moving you to another location to sleep is out of the question because we need you in the room to act as bait. This is why, going forward, I'll be taking it upon myself to make sure you don't get skewered in your sleep."

Kagura dropped the towel onto the table and leaned forward on one elbow. "Hah?" she questioned. "How are you going to do that? Are you going to sit outside my door like a guard chihuahua?"

Sougo rolled his eyes. "As if. Just how is the killer supposed to sneak in with me keeping watch at the door? Obviously, I'll need to be in the room."

"In the room," she repeated skeptically. "Like, what, in the closet?"

Kagura had meant it as a joke, but Sougo surprised her when he nodded and said, "That's the only feasible spot, yes."

She stared at him. She couldn't have heard that right. There was no way he was actually suggesting what she thought he was suggesting.

She waited for him to reveal that he was joking.

He looked back, perfectly serious.

"WHAT?!" she shrieked, slamming both hands on the table and rising onto her knees. "You can't be serious!"

Sougo leaned forward over the table to meet her. "Keep it down, idiot. Are you trying to wake all of Yoshiwara?"

Kagura lowered her voice but wasn't any less outraged as she protested, "No way! I'm not letting you watch me sleep! That's creepy!"

Sougo's eyebrow twitched. "Oh, so the idea of me watching you seduce gross old men doesn't bother you, but seeing you sleep does? Your head is as screwed up as ever, China."

Kagura humphed and pulled away to straighten her back and cross her arms. "As usual, you don't understand anything. What I do with men in here is nothing to be ashamed of. I'm awake and in control of my actions, yes? But sleeping is a private thing. Only a weirdo would sit and watch someone sleep all night."

Sougo exhaled and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Well, you're just going to have to deal with it. It's not like I'm reveling in the notion myself. Who would want to stay up all night just to watch some pig-girl snore? You should be grateful I'm willing to do this for you."

Kagura humphed again and tightened her arms. "I can see now why you're always single despite your pretty face. You have no concept of how to talk to a lady."

"First, find me a lady and then you can judge how I talk to her."

Oh! He was infuriating. Kagura ground her teeth together and used all her self-control to stuff her retort back down her throat. They were never going to get anything done if they let this discussion devolve into a childish argument.

For the sake of her mission, she was going to have to be the bigger person. Just this once.

"Fine. I guess I gave no choice." She uncrossed her arms and leaned back over the table to point at his face threateningly. "But you had better do it properly! If you fall asleep and the killer gets me I'm going to haunt you every day for the rest of your life. I'll rearrange all your furniture and mix your whites with your colors and make sure you get food poisoning from every meal!"

Sougo's cool expression changed to one of feigned surprise. His eyes widened and he his voice softened in a mockery of sincerity as he said, "China… could it be that you've finally decided to become my wife?"

A muscle in Kagura's cheek twitched. Don't react. He's baiting you. Keep the discussion on track.

She just couldn't do it. "Like hell!" she screeched, grabbing his head and smashing his face down onto the table. "Who would ever want to marry someone like you! I'd sooner eat all my fingers than let you put a ring on one, damn antisocial bastard!"

It was official. They weren't going to make it through this. If they actually caught the killer, it would be a miracle.

oOo

Sougo reclined on the tatami and watched idly while a woman who had introduced herself as Hinowa put fresh flowers in the Yorozuya girl's hair. While she worked, two other girls fussed with her clothes and makeup, one arranging her obi just so while the other drew on her face with crimson paint.

It was all such a production. Sougo didn't understand it at all. In his opinion, their effort was wasted on a girl like China. She was hardly suited for it. Fancy makeup and stiff kimonos were for the sorts of governable, quiet women who hung on the arms of powerful men. Kagura was a girl who lived and shined on the battlefield. When she fought with all her strength, her fists landing devastating blows that made his bones shake, that was when she was radiant.

He liked her much better as a fighter than as a painting, but maybe that was just him. Kondo had always told him he had strange tastes, though his stance seemed perfectly reasonable to him. From an evolutionary standpoint, it made sense to find strong women desirable. As far as he was concerned, it was everyone else that was strange.

"So, you're a friend of Kagura-chan's?" the blue-eyed courtesan addressed him, looking up briefly from her work to give Sougo a friendly smile. "It was nice of you to come all the way here to pay her a visit."

China visibly stiffened at the words 'friend' and 'nice of you' and Sougo inwardly smirked.

While both Hinowa and the blonde death courtesan knew of his real identity, the four of them had agreed to keep it a secret so as not to alarm the girls. It was best that Yoshiwara didn't know there was a cop in their midst. For Sougo, this provided him with a prime opportunity to indulge in a little torment.

"It was really nothing," he answered, perfectly cordial. "I was worried she might be feeling lonely here without her Odd Jobs friends so I came to check on her. The life of a courtesan sure is busy."

Hinowa chuckled and returned to tucking flowers into Kagura's hair. "That's very sweet of you. The two of you must be close."

Kagura issued a croak that sounded like a bullfrog being stepped on.

"Oh, yes. You could even say she's like a little sister to me." He made a show of exhaling and shaking his head. "She's so reckless, I'm always concerned she's going to get herself into trouble."

Kagura threw a look at him that screamed, 'Liar!' He could tell by the way her eyes bored into him that she had a very long and probably inventive list of words in addition to this that she direly wished to call him.

"It must be surprising for you to see her all made up like this," the woman remarked with a fond smile as she wove the stem of a daisy into Kagura's hair beside a cluster of primroses. When she was done, she gave Kagura's shoulder a firm pat. "Don't you think she's grown into a stunning woman?"

"It is surprising," he agreed, still looking right at Kagura's eyes. "You Yoshiwara girls are truly skilled. You could make even a chimpanzee look like a lady."

Kagura jerked forward in outrage. "Why you—!" Unfortunately, her sudden movement caused the brush carefully outlining her left eye to deviate from its intended path and draw a long black streak across her temple to her hair.

"Ah! Kagura-chan!" the girl doing her makeup cried. "Don't move so suddenly!"

Whatever rebuttal Kagura had been intending to make to Sougo's jab died on her tongue when she realized what she'd done. She turned to the girl and her eyebrows pushed together apologetically. "Ah… sorry, Saya-chan."

While the girls were all distracted by Kagura's makeup malfunction, Sougo caught her eye and sniggered.

Kagura glared back at him with teeth clenched and a gleam in her eye that promised violent retribution.

Sougo's smile only broadened. He was looking forward to seeing how Kagura chose to pay him back. Blame it on all the tedious extra jobs he'd had to do lately, but he found himself straight-up itching for a fight with her.

The deliberate clearing of a throat caused his attention to divert from the target of his torment to a newcomer standing at the room's single door. He looked to his side to find the death courtesan positioned in the doorway with her fist covering her mouth. Her violet eyes found his and the hand fell away. "Okita-san," she addressed him in a tone that was amicable but carried a serious undertone, "while the girls fix Kagura's makeup, won't you join me outside for a minute?"

oOo

Sougo had never talked at length with Tsukuyo, but she didn't strike him as the type to mince words. This assumption was proved correct when, upon exiting to a sheltered alleyway, she exhaled and said, "I figured the police would send someone to look into Inoue-dono's death, but for someone like you to show up here… I wonder if I should be concerned about the government's intentions for this place."

Sougo didn't allow his surprise to show on his face. So, she knew of his reputation. Well, she was the head of intelligence in Yoshiwara, he reasoned. He supposed she at least ought to know that much. It was lucky for her, then, that he could put her mind at ease. His reason for being here was primarily personal, after all. He crossed his arms and leaned back against the side of the shop—a pose of indifference to show that he wasn't a threat. "You can relax. Inoue's death was a big hit to the Bakufu, no doubt about that, but those guys aren't going to come tearing down their playground over one murdered official. They'll be satisfied so long as the killer is caught and due justice is served. My only role here is to be the purveyor of that justice."

Tsukuyo grunted and lifted her pipe to her lips for another drag. Her violet eyes remained on him and Sougo could tell she had more she wished to say. He waited while she blew smoke into the sky and when she opened her mouth again, he wasn't disappointed. "Well, that is certainly a great relief to hear. But if that's true, then it begs a new question. If the Bakufu doesn't care about punishing Yoshiwara, then there's no reason to send their most vicious wolf." She lowered her pipe and elegantly cocked her head to the side. "Wouldn't you agree?"

Sougo lifted a single, slender eyebrow. "What are you implying?" It was less a question and more a prompt for her to spit out what they both knew she was going to say. It didn't take the head of Yoshiwara's intelligence to ascertain the true reason for his being here. She just wanted to make him say it.

"You're really here for Kagura, correct?" There is was.

Sougo didn't particularly feel like giving her the satisfaction she was fishing for so he said nothing.

His silence didn't deter her in the slightest.

"You wouldn't be the first young man to come to this place chasing a friend," she spoke again without his prompting. "It's only natural that the outside world looks down on us for what we do here, and men are resistant to seeing the women in their lives take up this kind of work. It's understandable." She took another puff of her pipe and her face turned from him to look at the slowly coloring sky visible through the shipyard's open roof. "Allow me to impart to you a warning," she said, not looking back at him. "Kagura is good at what she does. It's admirable that you've chosen to work together with her to find our killer, and I appreciate the extra measures you're taking to keep her safe, but the job she's doing is not a pretty one. It's not clean and it's not virtuous and I can tell you right now you're not going to like what you see."

Sougo continued to watch her unfalteringly. "I know all that," he told her in a tone that beseeched her to get to her point.

"So, what I'm saying is that if you have a certain image of Kagura in your heart that you wish to hold on to, you might consider rethinking your plan. Kagura isn't going to hold back just because someone is watching. She has the conviction to see this through. The question you need to ask yourself is do you? I don't want her to get hurt because you reacted badly to what you saw in there. It would be unfortunate if she were to lose an important friendship because of this."

Sougo closed his eyes and sighed. So, this was the woman's true reason for calling him out for a 'talk'. As much as this was a conversation he honestly really didn't want to be having, he respected Tsukuyo for going to such lengths to protect Kagura. "You're right that I don't like this one bit," he said at last. "This isn't the kind of place a young girl should be learning about physical intimacy. That girl could get hurt in the worst way a man can hurt a woman." His eyes drifted to the door behind which the girl in question was still in the process of being readied for the evening. Thinking about what the night's activities would entail caused a surge of unpleasant feelings inside him so he tried to put it from his mind. "But I also recognize that she's doing this for a noble cause, and I know better than anyone that sometimes justice requires doing things that are ugly and unclean. How can I criticize her when I'm no better?"

Tsukuyo made a noise of approval and returned her gaze to him. Her eyes had softened just a little. "I see. I'm glad you understand."

Sougo watched her leave the wall to stand freely and inferred from the motion that their conversation was now over. She'd heard what she wanted to hear.

As she re-entered the establishment, Sougo hung back. He would join the girls again presently, but first he needed a moment on his own to think.

Just as he'd told Tsukuyo, he would never allow something like this to change the way he thought about Kagura. He always knew she was a free spirit who wouldn't be bound by anyone's doctrine and he accepted that. It was a quality of hers that he found annoying and attractive in equal measures. But at the same time, he couldn't stop himself from feeling uncomfortable with what she was doing. Maybe it was because he himself harbored so many insecurities centered around sex and intimacy—it had always been hard for him to connect to others emotionally and this caused him to steer clear of situations that made him feel emotionally vulnerable—but he didn't like the idea of Kagura getting swept up in the miasmic perfume of false love and honey-sweet deceit that enveloped Yoshiwara like a cloud of rot.

For all her faults, Kagura was pure and honest and she didn't belong in a place like this. He needed to find the killer quickly and send her home to her Odd Jobs family.

With this conviction at the forefront of his thoughts, Sougo exhaled into the cool evening and headed back to the door, mentally steeling himself to face the evening, whatever it brought.