The Suite

"This is your honeymoon suite," said Yae Miko, leading the newlyweds forward, plainly ignoring the fact that neither bride nor groom seemed excited about the prospect.

Kaedehara Kazuha looked about the room with a grim sort of expression on his face. Meanwhile, Kamisato Ayaka (now Kaedehara Ayaka) glanced furtively about, a soft blush on her cheeks.

Nervously, they glanced at one another and looked away immediately. Kazuha blushing for the first time while Ayaka's already present blush deepened in rosy tone. They'd only met a few hours before during the marriage ceremony.

Yae Miko turned and grinned toothily at them. "You will remain here until your marriage is successfully consummated. The servants and maids will provide all you need. You may send messages with the guards outside the front door."

"You're posting guards?" said Kazuha, mildly indignant.

Yae Miko couldn't quite manage an innocent face, but she tried. "I don't want Inazuma's newest lovebirds to be interrupted. So, there will also be guards around the entire grounds, too. Your safety and privacy is of national interest."

"You honor us," said Ayaka, her voice trailing off slightly. She'd flirted briefly with her doubts, even now after the ceremony- marriages could be annulled. But not if she and this Kaedahara Kazuha… joined as husband and wife. Meaning, in bed. Ayaka blushed at her own thoughts. But it sounded like Yae Miko had already anticipated the possibility of Ayaka taking drastic action.

"Let me show you the amenities," said Yae Miko.

They did not have far to go, as the room was rather small. Ayaka was mildly thankful for this since she was still in her wedding dress and its large white hood. It was not clothing made for walking.

The main part of the room was modest sections of tatami floor. There was a charcoal stove in the center of one. Kettle and fuel was tastefully arranged inside the hollow. The other half was obviously intended as the bedroom. Futons were hidden away in walls that were actually shallow closets.

There was a very tiny garden. A little wood porch ran to a tiny wooden bathtub. It looked big enough for one person. Or two very intimate persons. Bamboo blocked most of the tall fence from view.

Ayaka saw Kazuha looking up at something and grimacing. She followed his gaze and saw through the greenery that there was a latticework of bamboo bars over the top of the garden, giving a very real impression of an outdoor cage. The bamboo had the color and look of being freshly cut and placed.

Yae Miko looked up, too, and laughed lightly. "Oh, don't mind that. That's to keep the herons from getting at the koi."

"There isn't a fish pond," said Kazuha.

"Oh, my. You're right. The contractor must have wanted to pad out his bill."

Yae Miko led them back inside. There were two more small rooms. One was the bathroom, with a bath slightly larger than the one in the garden. The other room was a slightly larger open space of polished hardwood flooring. A dozen wooden training swords were arrayed on the far wall.

"When I learned this particular suite had a private dojo, I thought of you two immediately," said Yae Miko, her arms rotating as if to reveal the room to Kazuha and Ayaka. "Both of you are students of the sword, did you know?"

Kazuha and Ayaka looked at each other. Both saw in the other a stranger that they were now obligated to fuck. They blushed, and again looked away from each other.

Yae Miko glared at them and sighed. This might take a while. Well, the tour was over and she realized that she was just in the way. Time to let her recipe for love start cooking.

"Anyway," said Yae Miko, dismissively. "I'll check on your two in the morning. Have a lovely night."

She left.

Bride and Groom stood awkwardly before one another, their small honeymoon suite all but empty except for themselves. They forced themselves to look at one another. Kazuha being the first to take a deep breath, feeling it was his role to initiate.

"Ayaka, it is nice to meet you," said Kazuha, bowing to his wife formally as if she were a total stranger. Which she was. "I am Kaedehara Kazuha."

Ayaka thought marriage vows probably did get them to a first name basis. "Hello, Kazuha. It is nice to meet you."

They stared into each other's eyes, neither sure of what to say. Kazuha felt like his brain was in slow motion. Meanwhile, Ayaka felt generally uneasy.

Both: This is awkward.

"Would you excuse me?" said Ayaka, deciding that she might feel more comfortable if she was more comfortable. "I'm going to change out of this dress."

"Yes," said Kazuha, feeling a fool.

Ayaka bowed slightly, despite it not really being appropriate in this context, but her mind was still in formal mode. And her husband was a stranger. She took a deep breath as she walked away from him. For some reason, this moment seemed the most daunting of the entire day.

Kazuha stared after Ayaka. She really was beautiful, he couldn't stop thinking about it. Her blue eyes were like the sea during a light summer rain. Her face was curved and soft, her nose just somehow… utterly perfectly placed. He had a year to make this… this astonishing woman come to love him?

He might very well be a dead man.

Meanwhile, Ayaka found that there was no door or sliding screen for the bedroom. This suite had not been designed for couples who desired privacy from one another. In fact, it seemed that every single part of the suite was visible to every other part at all times. The sole exception appeared to be the commode, which was a tiny closet that was far too small to be of practical use for anything other than what it was designed for.

Likely, all of this was by the specific design of Yae Miko. Was that woman a shrine maiden? She seemed more and more like a devious witch. And maiden? Doubtful.

"There's no door. But I will need to undress…" said Ayaka, looking back at Kazuha. She found him looking at her, his amber eyes showing… what? Anxiousness? Worry? Whatever it was, it vanished from his face as she looked at him. She was sure Kazuha's face had been neutral when she'd last looked at him.

Ah, thought Ayaka, He knows to control and hide his emotions.

Now she knew one thing about her husband…

"I understand," said Kazuha. "I will look the other way."

And Ayaka blinked as he stiffly turned to look away from her and at the opposite wall, which happened to be the far wall of the dojo. She stifled a laugh, careful not to let out an audible giggle.

Oh, he was nervous around her.

She watched him while she carefully took off her clothes, all the way down to her undergarments, and took out from their provided supplies a modest yukata. True to his word, Kazuha faultlessly looked the other way. Ayaka noted that, at least in this minor first test, her husband was a man of his word. Quite a bit too early to be sure, but it was a promising start.

The yukata was a vast improvement over the stiff and tight wedding dress. Ayaka finished tying her sash. "All right. I'm finished, thank you."

Ayaka knelt down to begin folding the wedding dress. She felt Kazuha's nearer presence and looked up to find him watching her. His eyes seemed thoughtful.

"Might I help?" said Kazuha, watching as Ayaka employed some folding maneuvers he had never seen before. How did she knew how to do that? Maybe she had assisted with someone else's wedding before?

"No, I can handle this," said Ayaka, and she thought Kazuha looked rather dashing in his formal black kimono. But it was almost as heavy with extra cloth as her wedding dress was. "Perhaps you might change behind me? It feels good to get out of the costume."

Kazuha grinned at her. "All right."

"I will look the other way," said Ayaka.

He paused, seemed to see the small joke in it, and smiled at her with less reservation, revealing his teeth. Ayaka thought he looked even more handsome in that moment, but she thought his face looked like one that didn't smile very often. He had no dimples.

True to her word, Ayaka did not look behind her as Kazuha disrobed down to his small clothes and donned his own yukata. And she was right. Everything about their situation felt a little bit better now that he had more comfortable clothing.

"How did you learn how to do that?" said Kazuha.

Ayaka froze in surprise at the question. Unsure if she could turn around to look at him or not.

Kazuha recognized her difficulty. "Oh, I'm finished, don't worry." And he came around into her field of view and kneeled down to watch her work closehand.

Ayaka was mostly finished. The dress in a neat square of folded fabric. She was simply rolling up the sashes now. "Hmm, you mean folding?"

"Well, I mean folding a wedding dress. There are a lot of pieces."

"Oh!" said Ayaka. "Well, I suppose the answer is the same either way. My maids, Taki and Sakura taught me. I asked them to."

Kazuha looked at her with interest. "What made you want to do that?"

"I'm supposed to manage the household and staff. It didn't seem right to do that if I didn't even understand their work."

Kazuha watched Ayaka finish the last sash and set it gently aside. He found that to be an admirable concept. He felt a small gain of respect for his new wife.

"That's admirable, Ayaka," said Kazuha, entirely seriously. "I suppose you know all sorts of useful things, then."

Ugh, thought Kazuha. I must sound the fool.

Ayaka searched Kazuha's eyes for sincerity and she found it. She looked away and took in a small satisfied breath. He seemed to find value in a thing that she did. And this particular one Ayaka knew to be rather unconventional. From what she gathered, no other clan leader did as she did. They saw such things as being beneath them.

"Just household things, mainly," said Ayaka. "What about you, Kazuha?"

Kazuha frowned slightly. "I honestly haven't spent all that much time indoors, so…"

He felt a desire to impress Ayaka with something that he could do. He could reef a sail on a sailing vessel. He could climb a cliff without a rope. He could make a fishing pole with a stick and a vine, and a mock fly with a pinecone and some dandelion fluff. But none of these things were displayable at this moment.

The fishing pole idea gave him an idea. "Are you hungry?"

Ayaka nodded.

"Then we can test Yae Miko's hospitality and I can show you something at the same time. Do you like fish?"

"Yes, of course," said Ayaka. It would be an uncommon Inazuman who did not like fish.

"Good."

Kazuha headed for the door. The first opened to a small enclosed landing. The next door was the true door. He tried to open it and found it locked. But his attempts to get it open did not pass unnoticed.

"How may I be of service, my Lord? My Lady?" called a voice.

The person on the other side of the door obviously could not see him.

"Uh-" said Kazuha, somewhat surprised by how literal Yae Miko's words were turning out to be. They were locked in here, all right. Well, he would worry about that later. He might as well enjoy it for now.

"Might we have some fresh fish? Ideally, freshly caught. And some bamboo skewers. And salt."

There was a brief silence. "Of course, sir. We will deliver them to the opening on your right."

Kazuha looked to his right and there indeed was a tiny door in the wall, too small for a person to get through- but perfectly level with it was a long table that deliveries could be slid down upon.

He frowned at that delivery table. What..? What kind of clientele was this hotel for? Political officials and their mistresses? Surely all of this extravagant no-contact business was not in place just for him and Ayaka.

He turned to see Ayaka kneeling on the other side of the room, watching him. Her beauty struck him again, and her eyes seemed particularly large and bright. But well, there wasn't much to do in the suite but look at one another. That seemed somewhat the entire point. Zero distractions. Zero escape. Just… what was Yae Miko's poem? Proximity, privacy, and boredom.

Well, one thing he could work on was getting the fire going. He glanced up to see a chimney-like opening in the roof. Again, too small and barred to allow passage of anything but smoke, in this case. Whether the bars were new additions or not, someone had certainly thought of everything. Kazuha kneeled before the hearth, gathered the tinder and charcoal, set them up quickly, and struck the flint and tinder. A flame caught and soon began crackling, working on the charcoal steadily.

"You managed that very quickly," said Ayaka, who had moved forward and now was settling down to kneel near him around the hearth.

Kazuha smiled at her. "I've made quite a few fires. I sleep outside a lot."

Ayaka thought all of that to be an exotic type of practical knowledge. To live outside? To sleep under an open sky? It seemed an almost alien concept. But lots of common folk did it from time to time. She wanted to try that, too. What else could Kazuha do in that area?

"Can you hunt?" asked Ayaka, eagerly.

"Somewhat," said Kazuha, feeding the flames a little more fuel and adjusting the charcoal pile. "I can sometimes get a bird, but other animals have too much meat on them. A lot of it would go to waste if I killed one by myself."

"So you cut them open yourself?" Ayaka thought that concept to be somewhat disturbing. She knew that the household chefs did that to chickens, but red meat usually arrived at the Kamisato Estate already butchered. How one went from a pig to a pork rib, Ayaka was ignorant.

"If I must," said Kazuha. "Once you know the tricks of it, it's not too bad. I can show you sometime, if you like."

Ayaka felt a surge of interest in her new husband. He could be a source of all new experiences and skills she had never thought to learn. This might not be so bad of a situation, after all.

There was the ring of a tiny bell, and both turned their heads towards the door. A bucket and a platter had appeared on the door-side table. Kazuha headed over and found, much to his surprise, that the fish in the bucket were so fresh they were swimming around. Four trout, it seemed. Meanwhile, the platter had sturdy bamboo skewers and some salt. The hotel staff seemed to have divined his intent perfectly.

"Have you ever," said Kazuha, bringing over the bucket and platter to where Ayaka kneeled waiting for him. "Roasted a fish over an open fire?"

"No," said Ayaka.

"Want to learn how?"

"Yes!"

Kazuha found Ayaka to be a quick study. Even when they went to the tiny cage of a garden to execute the fish with the wooden training swords. Ayaka watched him seize a fish by the gills, put it against the wooden deck, and thwack it hard on the head. She imitated him with only a minor struggle at catching the fish in her hands, but her sword blow was as precise as Kazuha's.

"Do you practice the sword often?" asked Kazuha.

"Of course," said Ayaka.

Then Kazuha realized they had no real blade. "Ah, I forgot to ask for a knife."

Ayaka reached up and took out one of the sticks that held up her hair braids. A portion of her hair fell about her shoulders as she handed the stick to Kazuha. He looked at it questionably, then seemed to get the idea. He took the stick and pulled it experimentally, a thin dagger blade revealing itself. He looked at her in wonder.

"It belonged to my mother," said Ayaka.

"O- of course," said Kazuha, not finding that statement as much of an explanation.

But he proceeded to show Ayaka how to gut and clean the fish, and she hesitated a bit more with this task. She grimaced as she reached into the fish guts and tore them out, obviously not enjoying their texture on her hands. Yet once they had the cleaned fish on their bamboo skewers and placed them strategically around the hearth- Ayaka felt a strangely satisfied feeling in her breast. Like she was somehow linked to her ancestors in a way that she had never been before.

She watched Kazuha add a few more sprinkles of salt on the fish. He'd been patient and direct with his instructions, and if he felt any amusement at her ineptitude with the fish guts, he had not revealed them. They were just a few hours into their marriage, but Ayaka was starting to think that maybe this was not a total disaster to her life.

"Wait! I'm a fool," said Kazuha. He abruptly stood up and jogged over to the door. "Hey, you out there! Sake! Cold sake! Just a small bottle is fine. Oh! And clams? Oysters? You have any shellfish?"

Ayaka heard the murmur of some sort of reply, but she was too far away to hear it exactly. But Kazuha's body language seemed favorable.

Ayaka watched Kazuha wait near the door with his hands on his hips. He looked back at her with a grin. He stood idly for a moment, then sprang into motion and looked at the roasting fish. They seemed as of yet unaffected by the fire.

"Have you," said Kazuha with enthusiasm, "ever had sake from a clam shell?"

Ayaka had eaten both clams and had a few sips of sake, but: "No, I have not tried that."

Kazuha clapped his hands together and smiled. "Ah, then we shall rectify that immediately."

And he loped back towards the door as it opened, much quicker this time.

Ayaka smiled in a way to hold back a laugh. Kazuha looked entirely excited. He was cute. Ayaka didn't much favor alcohol, but Kazuha was so enthusiastic, she didn't want to turn it down, either. There was a bit of momentum to their interactions that she didn't want to interrupt. All the same, she was relieved when Kazuha returned quickly with only a small little bottle of alcohol.

"Oh! The fish! We need to spin them!"

The fish were spun. The clams were already shucked, and so they went next to the fire as is. And they leaned back to let the little fire do it work, both gazing up as the minor amount of smoke drifted up to the smoke hole.

"Kazuha," said Ayaka, gaining herself the attention of his amber eyes. "When do you find out about this?"

"Our marriage?" said Kazuha. "This morning. What about you?"

"Yesterday evening."

"Huh," said Kazuha. "Yae Miko only hinted at something to me yesterday, but she didn't say. Maybe it was because this plot of hers only just hatched in her mind."

"Why were you around Yae Miko, yesterday?" asked Ayaka, curious about the shrine maiden's movements in general.

"Oh, well-" Kazuha shared a brief version of events yesterday. He followed Yae Miko's advice and left out the situation with Raiden Shogun's abilities and Kazuha need to have Ayaka legitimately fall in love with him to save his life. Kazuha agreed that would somewhat prejudice the situation, if Ayaka knew.

"... and when I woke up this morning, Yae Miko was waiting to talk to me. Oh! The clams are done."

He carefully picked up two of the shells, deposited them upon a small plate, and handed them to Ayaka. Meanwhile, he took up a clam in one hand directly and raised it towards her. "Best eaten as soon as possible!"

Ayaka watched Kazuha slurp the lightly bubbling flesh of the clam out of the shell with a sort of eager gusto. It was a rather crude display, but the satisfaction on Kazuha's face made her drop a tiny bit of her inhibitions and imitate him in a much more graceful fashion.

"Delicious," said Ayaka.

"Right? Now hold out that shell."

Ayaka did so and he snatched up the small bottle of sake and poured a small amount into the shell like it was a tiny glass. In a break with the usual tradition, he quickly did the same for his own shell. And then he held up his sake shell like he wanted to touch glasses with her.

"To our marriage," said Kazuha, sheepishly. "I guess."

"Yes," said Ayaka with a smile and she lightly clinked her sake-filled clam shell against his. She again followed in his wake and sipped daintily from the clam shell. The salty, sweet ocean taste on the shell mixed with the sake and the strangely delicious flavor profile swirled around in Ayaka's mouth. Her eyes widened in surprise.

Kazuha was watching her closely and smiled. "It's strangely good, isn't it?"

"Yes!"

"Another?"

".. all right."

Another became four, which set a pleasant warmth in Ayaka's cheeks. She might not drink much, but four tiny clam-shell dollops of sake were not much of a threat to her sobriety- nor to Kazuha's. But it was a lovely distraction until the fish were ready, and then they busied themselves with carefully eating fish off their skewers.

"With just the salt," said Ayaka after one of her many tiny bites. "You really taste the flavor of the fish."

'Yes," said Kazua with satisfaction. "Simple and great. There are a lot of great fish dishes in the world, but I honestly think this style is the best of them all."

Ayaka wouldn't go that far, but she agreed that it tasted very good. It was also an active sort of eating that had them nibbling and trading questions about siblings, childhood pets, beach activities, mochi flavors, and best color of firework- (Kazuha favored silver and Ayaka liked red). And that turned to summer evenings and eating around fires, of which Kazuha professed ample experience.

"How come you've spent so much time outdoors?" said Ayaka. "Do you just prefer it?"

Kazuha laughed lightly. "It has its charms, but I enjoy a bed as much as anyone else. Its mainly because I don't really have a place I live. I've been on the move since my clan dissolved."

"Dissolved? Wasn't it absorbed? Were you forced out?" asked Ayaka.

She'd heard of a few clan mergeings, but they'd all happened before she'd been forced into power in the Kamisato Clan administration. When she and Kazuha were released from this silly honeymoon room, she wanted to visit her family's library and see if there were records of the Kaedehara absorption.. Maybe she could piece together what happened to Kazuha's clan.

Well, her clan now, Ayaka reminded herself.

Kazuha gave her a glance that Ayaka was unsure how to interpret. But he looked away and his face went back to smiling. He was quiet for a moment.

"No, I wasn't forced out exactly," said Kazuha. "But- it didn't feel like home anymore. So I left."

"What did your relatives do?" said Ayaka.

Kazuha was quiet for another slightly long moment. "I didn't have any more relatives."

Ayaka was shocked in two ways. One, that a clan could get so low on members that Kazuha could literally be the last one. And two:

"You were the only family member alive and you just left?!"

Kazuha flashed her that strange expression again. Shame? Annoyance? Both? But Ayaka's mind was still trying to grapple with the sheer irresponsibility of Kazuha's decision to simply leave. It was dereliction of duty. Of tradition. So entirely incompatible with Inazuman society that Ayaka could not quite wrap her head around how anyone could have made such a choice.

"Yes," said Kazuha softly. "I left. And no one missed me when I was gone."

"Well, of course not," said Ayaka. "There was no one left to miss you and the absorbing clan was probably glad to be rid of you! Oh, Kazuha! Your family's heirlooms. The house. I'm sure many other things. You lost them all by doing that!"

"I know," said Kazuha quietly. He was staring at Ayaka now. Almost glaring. But Ayaka still did not notice.

"You could have-" said Ayaka.

"I was seventeen. Ayaka." said Kazuha suddenly. "I didn't know what was happening. I didn't know what to do. And no one was listening to me anyway."

"Being young is not an excuse," said Ayaka, who took up administrative work four years ago when she turned sixteen. "I know its difficult when you seem too young to be heard but-"

"Ayaka, No, you don't," said Kazuha with vehemence.

Ayaka realized Kazuha was glaring at her, quite visibly angry. Ayaka, just now noticing the change in Kazuha, suddenly felt like she was under attack. This was the first negative tone she'd heard out of her husband's mouth in all the hours she'd known him.

Well, if he was mad, then so be it. Sometimes leadership was making people mad. She felt the need to finish her point.

"I do know what it's like to struggle to be heard! It takes effort and pain and you feel like it's pulling teeth. But if you persist and work at it, it will get better. Just so long as you don't run away like a coward!"

Kazuaha blinked at her. He'd fought god in a duel two days ago and since then, it seemed everyone in the world accused him of cowardice. He'd spent half his life as a mercenary and here was this Tri-Commission mini-queen who had likely never seen real combat- telling him that he was a coward for fleeing his dead clan when he was a silly teenager.

Kazuha almost never got angry. Not really. He had emotional maturity and a generally mellow disposition. But after the stresses of the last few days, the strangeness of his current surroundings, and the obnoxiously know-it-all tone he interpreted from Ayaka's voice… Kazuha's anger slipped his grasp and he bared his teeth at his new wife.

"You don't know. You're just saying you do," said Kazuha, slowly and angrily. "You don't know what it's like to have everything fall apart around you. To not understand why it's happening. To not know what to do about it. To not be able to do anything about it. Because you're just some third son who was never supposed to inherit anything anyway. You're the princess of Kamisato Clan, and everyone in the universe cared what you had to say since your first scream outside your mother's cunt."

Ayaka shot to her feet and slapped Kazuha across the face with everything she had in her arm. Kazuha's head turned and he staggered slightly, but he just turned an angry face back towards her, his hands rigidly still at his waist. His breath steamed out of his mouth, the entire room suddenly as cold as a mid-winter morning. Ayaka's beauty had taken on an icy cast, her blue eyes gleaming brighter in cold fury.

"You. Do not. Say anything about my mother. Or my family. In fact, don't say anything to me ever again," said Ayaka, barely able to keep her voice even. That he would suddenly use such language with her!

She'd never hit someone in anger before, and her heart was thumping in her chest from adrenaline and anger and a tiny bit of shame that this all had degraded this far this suddenly. How could she have missed the signs that Kazuha was getting angry like that? She was a practiced diplomat! But even in the middle of her anger, Ayaka was impressed that Kazuha had taken her slap like that. She'd put everything into that, and it barely phased him.

"Glady," said Kazuha, wanting to be away from this ice queen who was like everyone else in Inazuma. Chained by duty. Enslaved by authority. Likely an architect of her own internal prison and she couldn't even see the fucking walls.

He also wanted to see if he was bleeding. One of his teeth was probably loose. And… he probably deserved it, a little. Had he really needed to use that word at the end there? It was like taking a nosedive off the moral high ground and into a gutter.

They turned and walked to opposite sides of the room, the fire dying embers between them. Kazuha, as to his preference, went into the garden. Ayaka went to the dojo. Neither wanted to be the one to look back at the other, so without knowing it, both paced back and forth in their place of chosen isolation and examined their own behaviors. Each of them slowly decided that they themselves had a share in the blame.

After a long, silent time, it grew late. They fetched their own futons in silence, avoiding looking at one another except with short anxious glares. They both went to bed on their wedding night alone, drowsily angry and a little guilty.

Both fell asleep while contemplating the reality that it wasn't too late to try and get out of this.