Chapter Eleven

It didn't take long at all for the news of the murdered girl to spread through Yoshiwara. As usual, what followed was a storm of panic, confusion, anger, and damage control.

Why Kana?

Hurry and clean it up!

How awful…

Don't let the customers see!

It was this quiet yet energetic chaos that Kagura descended into after her customer left and she'd finished stripping her room. She knew what had happened the moment she caught sight of Tsukuyo's grim face in the crowd.

"Another one…" Hinowa uttered as she gazed upon the scene. At her hip, Seita wore an expression as grave as Tsukuyo's. The boy was no stranger to death and no one even considered sending him away. "But I don't understand. Why Kana-chan?"

Kagura didn't understand either. The whole point of becoming Yoshiwara's top oiran was to be bait for the killer. In all the time since her debut, the only death had been one of her own clients—proof that the killer did indeed have his eyes set on her—so why had he suddenly decided to go after another girl? It didn't make sense.

"Enough already!" a tearful voice exclaimed on Hinowa's other side. Kagura looked past the blue-eyed courtesan and found Saya despondently wiping her face with the palms of her hands. "Let's just call the police! Who cares about the government? At this rate, there won't be a Yoshiwara left to protect!"

At the mention of police, Kagura's gaze traveled to the young man standing quietly to her left. Sougo's eyes were trained on the pool of blood where the girl's body lay and his face was expressionless. He appeared in every way disinterested in the scene before him, but Kagura knew that he was carefully piecing his assembled bits of information together. His dispassionate façade had never stopped her from being able to read him like a book.

On her other side, Tsukuyo sighed. Kagura watched her pinch the bridge of her nose in frustration. "As I've said, we can't afford to bring the police into this. I didn't want to do this, but we do still have an option open to us." Her eyes hardened and she looked straight to the bloodied tatami with an expression of conviction. "I'm assigning a Hyakka to each room in Yoshiwara. Every one of our girls is henceforth to be monitored from evening until dawn without exception." She pulled her pipe from inside her kimono and clenched it in her fist hard enough to turn her knuckles white. "We are going to catch this man."

oOo

Kagura huffed grumpily as she pulled fresh sheets onto the double futon in her room. "That stupid killer! Who does he think he is!" she groused, fluffing one of the pillows by stomping on it. "How are we supposed to catch him when he acts unpredictably like this? He should consider our feelings!" The other pillow wasn't safe from her ire either and found itself speeding through the air from a violent kick.

Its trajectory would have taken it right through the window had a hand not shot out and grabbed it, narrowly saving both it and the window from a grisly end. "Oy. This is exactly what got you into trouble in the first place," the sadist's monotone voice spoke overtop her grumbling. "Think before you go around kicking things, Yato gorilla."

Kagura humphed at the insult but refrained from sending any more objects sailing. Instead, she rounded on her companion. "Hey, Sadist. You excel at being a nuisance, yes? Help me out by offering some insight into the killer's thought process."

Sougo shot her a glower. "The nuisance is you. Seek your own counsel." He tossed the pillow onto the futon and Kagura saw him rub his eyes tiredly as he lowered himself onto one of the cushions by the saké tray. "Anyway, you should be happy. Now nobody can try to peg you as the killer. You have an alibi."

Kagura frowned at him. Something seemed slightly off about his behavior currently. He was acting oddly subdued. "Sadist… are you okay?" she asked hesitantly. She wondered if the question would turn around and bite her. Concern directed at the Shinsengumi's first captain was rarely well received.

He didn't answer right away. His sight had moved to look off at nothing in particular and he crossed his arms over his chest. He looked like he was thinking hard about something. Finally, his eyes refocused back on her and he regarded her with an expression that was strangely sober. "China, I think you should stop this."

Kagura's mouth opened in surprise. Of all the things she didn't expected to hear… "Oy, what are you saying, fool cop? Why would I stop? The killer is still on the loose, yes?"

Sougo closed his eyes. His expression didn't change. "Yes, and attacking everyone but you, apparently." He sighed and lowered a fist to the tatami. "The whole point of this charade was to catch the killer's attention, but I think we can safely say at this point that he's not interested in you. Hell, he was more interested in the old man sleeping with you. Don't you think you should call it quits before you wind up even more embarrassed?"

Kagura's eyebrow twitched. Why, that—! Even after all this, the brat was still trying to make the claim that she didn't have sex appeal. Well, she would show him! She stomped around the futon to squat down in front of him and narrowed her eyes. "You still think you can call me a little girl with no appeal!" She knew he was wrong. She'd seen what she did to men. Her customers wouldn't pay hundreds of thousands of yen to spend a night with her if she wasn't desirable and he knew that. She knew he did. He was just baiting her because he got off on it. Well, she would give him something to get off on.

"I at least have enough appeal to turn on a pervert like you, yes? Or you wouldn't follow me around so much like a lovesick chihuahua." Not waiting for him to formulate another one of his snarky insults, she grabbed his left hand and placed it on her breast. While he was distracted by her bold action, she crawled into his lap and put her face right in his. "Do you like my body, Chihuahua? Were you perhaps hoping I'd let you touch me like this?" She squeezed the hand holding his, causing his fingers to tighten around the globe of delicate flesh. The feeling of his hand on her caused heat to shoot straight to her core but she did her best to ignore it. Rise to the bait, Sadist! Let's see how little sex appeal I have.

She expected him to insult her. Or to push her away. Or even to turn her teasing back on her. She didn't expect him to grab her upper arm tightly with his free hand and in a tone that was more frigid than the darkest depths of space say, "Stop."

At once, Kagura's grip loosened and she pulled back. She blinked in confusion. Sougo's red eyes were completely devoid of humor as he said, "This is exactly why I want you to quit this ridiculous farce. Do you even realize what you're doing?" He pried his hand out from under hers and forcibly grabbed her wrist in a vice grip. "You've gone from having meager amounts of dignity to none at all. I don't want to be touched by a girl with no self-respect."

Kagura recoiled as if he'd slapped her. Her eyes narrowed in outrage. "Hah? What do you mean by that, shitty brat? Do you think you are in a position to judge me? I have plenty of self-respect. At least more than a bakufu chihuahua whose only skill is killing people for the government, yes?"

It was a low blow, she knew, but there was no way she was going to let him get away with saying such a thing to her. What was even his problem? By what metric exactly had he decided she had no self-respect? His anger made no sense to her. She was doing something that made people happy, unlike him who only stole tax money and stuck holes in people with his sword.

Her words clearly struck a nerve, because Sougo's lips pulled back to bare his teeth and his eyes flashed like the steel blade of a sword. A part of Kagura was proud that she'd actually gotten him to break his façade of apathy. "I'd rather be the bakufu's dog than its fucking bicycle." He used the hand on her wrist to forcibly push her off his lap and stood.

The floor met Kagura's butt with a painful jolt and it took a moment for her to right herself. When she did, she scowled up at the young man who had cast aspersions on her work. "What's your problem, doggy? You're acting even more like a big jerk than is usual for you."

She didn't understand where this sudden antagonism was coming from. What right did he have to tell her that she had no dignity? And why was he even so upset? It's not like he was affected by her choice. If he didn't like the way she'd decided to search for the killer, he was welcomed to find his own way. She was only working together with him because he'd suggested it. She reminded him of this fact by irately saying, "You wanted to work together but all you've done is insult me and get in my way. Go find the killer yourself if working with me is so unpalatable. It should be easy for you since you are the same breed, yes?"

Following this jab was a silence that caught Kagura off guard. For a smattering of seconds, Sougo simply stared down at her wordlessly, his large, red eyes empty of even apathy. His mouth was a straight line, conveying nothing of his thoughts. It was because of this that Kagura knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he was livid.

The two's charged standoff broke when Sougo turned around and gently pulled the room's sliding door open. He paused in the portal and Kagura watched the straight line of his back as he stood for a few beats, motionless. Without glancing back, he finally spoke. "Do as you please."

With that, he departed to the hallway and Kagura was left feeling oddly hollow despite her victory.

oOo

Sougo shut the sliding door behind him with a crisp snap. All the muscles in his face were tight with tension and his thoughts were clouded with hot anger. The fingers of his right hand twitched, wanting to curl into a fist and punch the wall. Normally his self-control would be enough to stop him, but today what saved the wall—and his knuckles—was the surprised face of one of Kagura's courtesan friends which greeted him promptly upon exiting.

Sougo took a deep, self-centering breath and schooled his features back to normal so as not to frighten the girl. Her feelings were of no concern to him, but he didn't feel like stirring up a commotion in the brothel when all he wanted to do was swiftly find a place to think through his jumbled up feelings.

He'd gone and done it. He'd acted just as Tsukuyo had warned him not to. That gorilla-faced, idiot girl had a way of getting under his skin like nobody else could, and like an absolute moron, he'd let his frustration boil over.

It was dumb, even he could admit that. He should have been long desensitized to scenes of carnage, but just for a moment, standing outside that room on the first floor, he'd seen Kagura with a knife in her stomach and it had shaken him. For all their monstrous strength, Yato weren't immune to blades. If something went wrong… if he fell asleep and the killer showed up, she could end up just like that corpse.

That fool girl didn't understand anything. She was light and life and he counted on her to always know the correct path to take. Time and again, she'd straightened him out when he'd let himself go crooked and now she was the one in need of straightening and he couldn't do a thing.

All he could do was lash out like a damn confused dog. It was shameful. God, what a mess. If only he could not be a goddamn coward for once in his life and be honest with her.

But he couldn't. He'd never been any good at being honest. Not to himself, and certainly not to her. What would an honest Sougo even say? Sorry, I just don't want to see you get hurt.

I want to protect you because I care about you.

I don't want you to fuck other men.

Sougo groaned and buried his face in his hands. He wanted to escape this. This rawness. This wasn't him at all. Okita Sougo didn't waste time worrying about mortality or connections with other people. So what if China got herself killed? People died all the time. If the killer got her, that just meant she wasn't strong enough to keep her promise. It would be disappointing, but that was life. Fragile, temporary, not-heavy-at-all life.

Not heavy at all.

He collected his composure and gave the courtesan a curt nod before striding past her down the narrow hallway. He needed time alone to think—to figure out a plan now that he'd fucked up his working one. One way or another, the Yoshiwara killer was going to get what was coming to him, if for no other reason than punishing him was Sougo's job.

oO0Oo

Boof. This wasn't a long chapter, but it was heavy. Just what's going to happen from here? Stay tuned!