Yuzuki Tachibana tried very hard to be a good girl. She rose early each morning, as a dusty dawn filled the home she shared with her fiancé. After a quick wash, to look fresh and bright for the man she loved, she soon had Tamahiko-sama's favourite fish breakfast ready. He awoke to her brightest smile. After breakfast, she would help him wash and dress.
It wasn't good for Tamahiko-sama to be alone. She was always about the villa; gardening round the edge of the courtyard, drawing and hefting big buckets from the well, or scuttling over the veranda with a cloth. After a year of beautiful days, she felt a little happier to leave Tamahiko-sama with his studies, but only while she went out for fresh wildflowers, to vase in every gleaming room. There was the cooking she loved, and the laundry that needed doing, but the best hours of all her days were spent kneeling at her love's side.
They would contemplate the villa's simple courtyard garden from the pinewood veranda, while Yuzu's dreams adorned their castle with cherry blossoms. They talked pleasantly of his reading, her cooking – anything at all, except the past or the future. Or else she simply rested in Tamahiko-sama's presence, if he wished for quiet and peace. She was learning to hear his heart, without words – a lifetime's learning, foundation of their lifetimes' love.
She gazed and adored, meeting every glance with a dimpled smile, before modesty hid apple-plump cheeks in her kimono sleeves. Only sometimes, she dared to meet his high, dark eyes. Then she glimpsed his feelings for her, pure and holy as terror, that sang to the hammering of her own little heart.
They would remain together, until Tamahiko-sama retired. Yuzu would finish her chores, then stay up to write letters by candlelight. She wrote of the love that filled her wonderful days, to all her friends who had remained at Midorigawa Girls Middle School in Tokyo.
-0-
Just over a year ago, a week before her fourteenth birthday, Yuzu's parents had sat her down for a serious talk. They had brought the family down from Iwate to the Imperial Capital; seeking work and opportunity for their children, carried in on the tremendous tide of Western Ideas. Such a tsunami, it had turned out, always left broken homes in its wake. They'd found no steady work. Borrowed from bad people for Yuzu's school fees. Now, even withdrawing her from school wouldn't be enough – returning shamefully to Iwate wouldn't be possible – but thankfully, there was one way out.
A very kind and wealthy man, Yuzu's parents told her, desired that she should marry his son. In the tenth year of Emperor Taisho, a Japanese girl couldn't legally marry before fifteen. The second son of the Shima family, however, had been tragically crippled in an automobile accident. As his fiancé, Yuzu would have to care for his needs, at his villa in rural Chiba. Leave behind school, friends and family, suddenly as to hear and understand. It was most important that their daughter be a brave girl, and do this brave, beautiful thing for the family she'd always loved.
Their tone rose and their voices failed, at the end, as if they were asking. Immediate as a katana through her body, Yuzu knew they weren't.
She'd seen the debt collectors, loping after her father like wolves in the street. Couldn't have failed to hear them hammering on the door, morning and evening. She'd heard her mother crying, knew her youngest brother was sick - knew what that had meant for the baby who would've been her big sister. She was sure her parents had already taken payment for their only daughter's virginity – enough to not only survive, but prosper. Why should her little brothers grow up for nothing but ignorance and poverty?
"Otou-sama, Okaa-sama…I understand. Of course, I'll go, if it will help. Only, please – forget about me. As if you never had a daughter called Yuzuki. I couldn't bear to think of giving you pain."
Her parents had broken down, howling almost loud enough for the neighbours to hear of their precious, selfless daughter. Yuzu had felt the drops of their relief amidst the storm, just as her own brave smile was not entirely unrooted in hateful satisfaction. It was wrong, but there was some pleasure in the martyrdom borne by Oichi, Nohime, Yodo-dono and practically every woman named in Japanese history. Wasn't it good sense to take what pleasure she could?
As it would have been sense to herself forget the parents she had loved, who had sold her to strangers. Down the freezing, rattling railway to Chiba – all through her fourteenth birthday – she tried and she could not forget. She wept then, but with relief as well as agony. It seemed she really was a good girl.
Good things, she already suspected, didn't always happen to good girls - but bad girls always came off worse. It was good, and good sense, to do what had to be done for her family. Do it happily as if she were free; that was the only choice she had.
As the rushing rails buffeted her around the carriage, no one stopped her tears but herself. Big girls didn't cry, even at the pain of becoming a woman - the wise, serene and selfless Yamato Nadeshiko she had to be. In the roaring, rotten boil of terror beneath her pristine heart, she knew things would only be better for her if her fiancé were pleased with his father's purchase. She would be good to him, and if he were a good man...Yuzu prayed to Kannon he would be. If he wasn't, then blubbing about it wouldn't make matters any better, or easier to survive.
Yuzu was a mature, sensible girl, for her age. Her schoolfriends had always said a girl who cooked and sewed so well would make a wonderful mother. When she'd gone to say goodbye, they'd soaked her neckerchief in tears. Hugged breath from her body and sworn never to forget her. Talked of running away to America, like plucky schoolgirls in a novel. She'd told them, real heroines didn't run – this was what she wanted, for her family – so, they'd dried their tears and said goodbye. Midori, her best friend, had told her again she'd be wonderful mother and wife, or tried to before she'd broken down.
Yuzu felt worse for her friends than herself; there was nothing they could do about the situation, after all. She would miss school – knowing more felt good and would have helped her support her husband's business. She prayed that staying in school would help Midori and the rest to find good husbands; she could've broken in pieces with missing them, if she'd let herself. It was like plunging your hand into hot washing-up water, and sending your mind somewhere else as you scalded.
Noe, the cleverest girl in school and a believer in knowing the worst, had told Yuzu about the Shima family. They were all known for being big, physically – Yuzu was notably petite – and for amassing a huge fortune through wicked, ruthless dealing. Poor Noe could only offer Yuzu hope in that the rumours might be exaggerated, and an invalid, however evil, perhaps unable to really harm her. The accident might have even left him impotent; Noe had to explain that word to Yuzu, along with several others, until the worst was more than she could bear to tell.
As soon as she'd heard of her crippled fiancé, Yuzu had pitied him. Whoever he was, he had to be suffering. To care for him in his need could only be good. He might be less willing than she was to marry...might be unable or unwilling to give her children, the single ambition of her heart. She was mature enough to understand, however, that even that much personal desire would have to be burnt out and sacrificed if necessary. She told herself that the Shima owned her body, not her mind or heart - those would be untouched, so long as her thoughts and desires were just what they wished.
It was a girls' school, and she'd otherwise stayed home to look after her little brothers. So, there was no fresh-faced, broad-shouldered fourteen-year old peasant boy to be break his heart over her, or swear vengeance against the Shima family. It would only have complicated things. She'd practised kissing and stuff with her schoolchums, which was much safer, but she hadn't really got into it, like Kyouko-chan and Tomoe-sempai – probably because they were such good friends. She went to Chiba as a pure maiden, knowing nothing of love and trembling with fear; exactly the product her buyer had ordered.
There were certainly no complaints from the two silent men who had marched her from her house to the station and put her on the train. With a small bag of clothes instead of a suitcase, and a scrawled address. They hadn't needed to say what would happen to her family if she ran, or even to go on the train with her. There had been nowhere she could run to. Many far worse fates for a runaway girl, in the era of Taisho or in any other.
-0-
The head of the Shima family, at least, deserved his reputation. After the accident that had deprived his second son of both a mother and the use of his dominant hand, he had banished Tamahiko from the Shima mansion in Tokyo to a country villa. Then the father had put it about that the son was dead (Greatly eliciting the sympathy of his social circle). The large allowance he'd arranged, along with a fourteen-year old peasant girl to serve the boy's physical and sexual needs, were only to ensure that he need never again concern himself with an unprofitable son. Not that he'd ever given his son's desires in any matter, including the purchase of Yuzu, a moment's thought.
Tamahiko Shima himself was exceptionally tall, like all the Shimas, but pale and thin as string. The accident had only ruined his right hand, but Yuzu saw older wounds in his eyes. Festering black, all the way down to a shattered heart.
He, too, had dropped out of school, though he had never had friends or loving family. A child who had only known scorn and ice, year on year, until the ultimate ruin of his seventeenth. The Shimas had needed nothing from him, and expected nothing, except that he never visibly shamed them, with the incapability that his useless hand had made manifest. Hidden in the country villa that was his burial mound, he had mourned on his futon for hours and weeks, for life he would never live. An old man without joy, awaiting death. A hungry ghost, thoroughly crippled in spirit.
Then, one New Year's Eve, he had opened his front door on a tiny, shivering fourteen-year-old, with fluffy hair she could barely force into proper pigtails. Yuzu had walked miles from the station, in the snow – not that she would have cried, if she could've cried, over shallow cold that only numbed her flesh.
Then Tamahiko-sama had draped his hanten jacket over her little shoulders. Turned away – but Yuzu had known on the instant that she had been sold to a good man. To her fiancé, surely a man of kindness and integrity – surely, he was! She had hidden her tears in the hanten's dark fabric, filling her lungs with its sharp boy's scent of sweat and sobs, and followed her fiancé into her new home.
A year had rushed by, like a spring storm driving out sadness. Yuzu had worked hard; the old villa that been dusty and haunted now stood peaceful and warm as a happy heart. A stray cat had even taken up semi-residence, waddling after Yuzu for treats and basking in the sun. Yuzu had christened her Haru, and lavished affection on her. She was good girl; kindness had always come to her naturally.
Tamahiko-sama still had bad days, or weeks, when nothing moved him or brought him joy; as if his frozen hand had taken hold of his heart. Yuzu still rolled him out of bed each morning, or fed him with a spoon if he wouldn't be moved. Got him washed and dressed, firm as she'd been with her little brothers – his dear blushes and wriggles, as she scrubbed his bare, hunched back, pleasingly showed that he was a boy. Every day, Yuzu had a big smile for her fiancé, with every meal she made for him and every minute by his side. It wasn't hard when she was so marvellously happy.
Tamahiko-sama needed her. Like her dear little brothers, when they had been sick, and it had been goodness and joy to nurse them. Tamahiko-sama would always need her. Not only as his right hand, but for the lively voice and the gentle care that had drawn him out into sunlight. Drawn smiles, sometimes, from his heart – Yuzu had seen them and burst with delight, for what they'd achieved together. Joy where there had never been joy, like a green plant springing up from wasteground. Caring for such a frail shoot in its need had always felt more comfortable and secure to her than being protected. She was a good girl; this was what she'd been born for. Good and lucky.
Once his will to live had somewhat recovered, Tamahiko-sama had spent his days with books; the only childhood friends of an unnoticed little boy in the Shimas' chilly mansion. Something she couldn't share made Yuzu almost wish she could've stayed in school, but it might have been just as well. Most of Tamahiko-sama's favourite books seemed to have been written by suicidal libertines who'd filled their pages with crime, twisted desire and helpless descents into hell. It wasn't her place to even disapprove, however. She didn't need to understand everything to support every course her fiancé took.
When she'd made him a pressed-flower bookmark, for a birthday present – he'd never had one from the family who'd given him so much – Tamahiko-sama had held her so long and hard that she got a bit frightened. Sobbing into her homemade kimono, as he clung. Afterwards, he had blushed and stammered like a young criminal, and taken her into Tokyo to buy a gorgeous new kimono. Her fiancé truly was a good boy, a man of kindness and integrity. More than worthy of her life's devotion.
The thought occurred, sometimes, that all Tamahiko-sama's precious efforts to be active and happy were for her. A thought that squirmed in her fourteen-year old chest like an animal made of lightning, until she couldn't breath or think. When she recovered, it was to be with Takahiko-sama, and think of nothing but him through the parted hours of night. His kindness, his integrity, his very male body - different from her female body, where understanding of what that meant was beginning to stir.
Every hidden scar and hard line of bone, she already knew intimately from bathing him. Arms no thicker than a girl's, but made for an embrace that called heart-fire to her skin. He had let her touch his body, without a word of protest, again and again. Mightn't that mean that he felt the same madness, even a little?
No more need to think on family, or school, or pass one more night in silent, howling grief for lost friendship. Surely, this was love, of which women wrote and parents told their children – a woman's happiness, all she needed, her path to life's every unimaginable joy. Wasn't it love, goodness and sense for girls to devote their hearts as well as their labours to the beloved? She knew nothing else of what love was, but she wanted it all; marriage to rest secure in, children to be cared for and cherished. A man to treasure her and guide her to yet further joys, walking at her side through life, in this bold and modern age – and there was no one but Takahiko-sama she could love. What they had was wonderful, but – almost like a bad girl – she wanted more.
Yuzu's birthday was on New Year's Eve – as if her coming to Takahiko-sama's house had begun her new birth into womanhood. There was no sense in dropping hints. As they stargazed from their spot on the veranda, waiting for midnight, she told Takahiko-sama that she was now fifteen. Willing and ready to get married at any time he wished. Of her own will; it was important that she say so. From her heart; a young girl devoted to the love of her perfect, gentle man.
"Yuzu…I'm sorry." His pale face turned away, his shoulders collapsed, "I can't, not the way I am now. I can't say how grateful I am, how I care for you … I'm pathetic. I'm not ready. Not yet."
She told him, the way he was would satisfy her. Truthfully; she loved his sadness, his weakness and his need. He had suddenly kissed her, on the forehead, and both of them had got too embarrassed to do anything else.
He wasn't ready. At least Tamahiko-sama hadn't questioned whether she was ready; he'd respected the choice she didn't have. She had to be ready, and she was. She could cook, clean and sew; she'd already been menstruating for three years, and knew that meant she could bear children. She could endure the most terrible loss, and then devote herself to the needs of others until she broke down. She really had collapsed from overwork, once, during the summer. Takahiko had needed to nurse her himself and pay for a doctor. What else could she have done but love him, what else was there for her to do, when she had every qualification to be a perfect wife and mother?
Probably, Takahiko-sama wished to wait until she was sixteen, even seventeen. He truly was gentle and kind. She still couldn't help but feel rejected, and recall that he had also had no choice in their engagement. A chilling, lonely bond, as passionate need burnt up her little body. Even if Takahiko-sama would never cast her out, or marry another – she could wait for years, on the hope he'd given her, but she wanted womanhood now. She'd let go of everything she'd loved, except for him. The only desire left to call her own, that she could not give up.
-0-
Even before the New Year, a great deal had changed around the villa. Tamahiko-sama had wonderfully grown in strength. He had announced his intention of returning to school and graduating; he couldn't proudly support anybody without some sort of profession. Bursting with joy and hope, Yuzu had promised to make him bentos packed with love. See him off to school with a smile, every day.
More miraculous still, since mid-September, Tamahiko-sama had been tutoring village boys and girls at the villa. In conjunction with his own studies for the re-entrance exam, it was a means of reapplying his mind to academics – and a wonderful expression of his kind heart, even more than his brilliant brain.
It was so amazing, Yuzu couldn't even exactly think how it had come about. Whenever they had both gone down to the village, to buy books, the good folk who'd billed and cooed over her cute face had regarded the Shima boy, her wicked captor, with open disgust. It was obvious to every adult in the village that she was a bought bride, and their tearful admiration for her courage was just as plain. They might have done more than slip some extra things into her shopping, if the Shima family hadn't been so rich and feared.
The children knew nothing, however, and they were hungry for the learning that might open a wider world to them, in this new era of Taisho. First the three Atsumi boys, then their friends, and then friends' friends, filled the villa with inkblots and wastepaper, Shouting voices and rushing feet. The children called Tamahiko 'sensei', and he said he didn't deserve it, but their shining grins of triumph brought a flicker of pride to his heart. Yuzu saw his heart, and saw that her beloved was an excellent teacher – patiently and humbly unfolding English grammar, calligraphy and elementary maths. The village children must have presently told their parents, since fewer hostile glares followed Tamahiko-sama on their next shopping trip.
A few times, Tamahiko-sama had gone down to the village by himself, to look for used books. Yuzu hadn't been at all comfortable, but he'd come so far; she couldn't keep him tied to her apron. It was probably safe, and boys needed their own space. She had glimpsed unspoken worries, gathered at the corner of his averted gaze – only sometimes, but she knew they never left him. With such kindness and integrity, he still couldn't see that he was her perfect man, more than enough for her. She would just have to show him what couldn't be laid out in words.
Her own bathtimes were strictly private – she was a good girl, and her love would marry a virgin – but she had moved her futon into Tamahiko-sama's room. Lying feet away from a pure maiden's willing love, and wakeful eyes, Takahiko-sama had restrained himself like a gentleman, of course. Still, she could feel that he was very much aware of her. One day he would have to be ready.
Tamahiko-sama had suggested that she play with some of the village girls, during their little school's mid-morning break. For her love's sake, Yuzu had tried, but the girls were very much younger than her. Little darlings, every one, and she treated them kindly. They called her 'Yuzu-neesan' and all adored her. She could hardly join in their games of House and Dolls, though, when she had a real house and fiancé of her own.
She was much happier in the kitchen, cooking up vegetable curry for the children's lunch break. With the help of Ryou, the Atsumi brothers' big sister, who had turned out to be a surprisingly good cook.
Ryou Atsumi was a very pretty girl, the same age as Tamahiko-sama, with a mouth full of laughter and a beauty spot beneath the edge of her generous lips. A plait that hung over her rather large breast like a willow frond. Her breasts honestly weren't much bigger than Yuzu's own disgracefully generous chest for her height, which she'd stopped binding like a good, modest girl once she'd realised that love pardoned anything.
In fact, Ryou had turned up at the villa even before her brothers. Yuzu had walked in on her reading one of Tamahiko-sama's precious books; stroking the cat next to an open window, as if she were the lady of the house. She'd claimed to be only seeking shelter, although the evening sky had been quite clear.
Tamahiko-sama had painfully explained to Yuzu that Ryou's father was violent when he drank. Ryou, he said, had made a hide-out of the empty villa on the hill for years past. The story had touched Yuzu's heart, and dazzled her again with Tamahiko-sama's god-like kindness. Even if Ryou didn't talk like a good girl, it had become clear that she deeply cared for her little brothers.
She'd said she was Takahiko-sama's friend, but that was clearly a lie. He hadn't been exiled to the villa much more than a month before Yuzu had found him, friendless in despair. No time at all to form any connections, let alone with such a frivolous girl. Ryou had slyly hinted at some adventures that would have made her a very bad girl indeed, if true. At least she'd stayed out of sight, out of their way, for most of a year. Yuzu felt sorry for her, honestly, when she had such a horrible abusive father and no mother at all.
Haru the cat waddled into the kitchen and rubbed up against the stove. As Yuzu kept stirring the pot of curry, Ryou smoothed her dull-green kimono and knelt. As she teased the cat's tummy, Yuzu caught a whiff of scent from her bared nape. Shouldn't she have bought food for her brothers instead, if her family was so poor?
"Yoshi, yoshi, yoshi…" Ryou cooed, as Haru yowled with pleasure, "You're just like Tamahiko-san, aren't you? Lying round the house all day, with two beautiful girls to spoil you…"
"Tamahiko-sama isn't like that! He's working hard, so he can go to school...and support a wife!"
"Oh? I was only fooling. You're already supporting him though. Working hard, for your Tamahiko-sama."
"Yes, because I love him! He's my fiancé. He's so smart and good, a man of such integrity and kindness, and...!"
"Dear Yuzu-chan," Ryou smiled like a cat, shining with vicious pride, "I can't even tell you how kind Takahiko-sama has been to me."
The ideal of Japanese womanhood, the Yamato Nadeshiko, was a warrior woman, Yuzu knew. Ready in her heart to fight, even kill, to protect the home and family that meant more than her life. Ryou was still kneeling, her laughing eyes beneath Yuzu's own – there was a knife on the worktop, for chopping vegetables. If one of Ryou's brothers hadn't run into the kitchen – the youngest brother had tripped and hurt his knee – then Yuzuki Tachibana would have driven that knife with all her strength through a thieving alley-cat's breast. Smiling as she did it.