Tokyo Settlement, Area Eleven, April, a.t.b. 2012
As sub-viceroy of Area Eleven, and come May, viceroy in all but name, Milly liked to run a tight ship. Her hours were easily available through the proper channels, and she held to them without fail, punctual almost to a fault. She was in the door by six-thirty, and at her desk by no later than seven. Her grandfather had left a rather robust stable of secretaries and under-secretaries, and other qualified individuals to run the great engine of bureaucracy that kept the wheels turning on a day-to-day basis in her stead, and she took care that she availed herself of them at most turns: they brought her information, she conferred with an aide or two, and she handed back a list of her final decisions by no later than midday, to allow her people time to carry out her will.
It had taken her two or three purges by this point, of course, which was regrettable, but she'd finally gotten to the point where Sayoko could regularly attest that the information she was given was genuine, so she liked to imagine that the bureaucrats in her employ had gotten the message after the third time that the co-workers who thought they could undermine her and get away with it vanished into thin air one day. She wondered, sometimes, what the reaction had been among the various would-be robber barons when their servants brought them the cases of their creatures' severed heads she'd had sent; it always brought a smile to her face.
Fortunately, the old prejudices did not evaporate in the face of ravenous opportunism, and as she brought in more and more qualified individuals who just so happened to be beneficiaries of the Honorary Britannian system, the amount of reports she got of her own personnel being approached by the scoundrels had dropped rather precipitously; and as her darling Justine had often advised in the past (though it was quite likely that she did not remember having done so, as she hadn't done so directly), she made sure that she repaid loyalty with displays of the same. Her administration was not only made up largely of Honorary Britannians, but the salaries they were paid were probably the most competitive of all the viceroyalties, along with a comprehensive benefits package and government-provided housing for themselves and their households.
Workers whose desire to work for her was genuine made for a more productive workforce, after all.
"Ojō-sama," intoned Sayoko, having all but materialised before her desk as she was somewhat wont to do these days, now that she was working for Milly in an official capacity. "It's time."
Milly lifted her attention from the coursework her tutors had saddled her with (Grandfather insisted, after all, that she continue with her education even while succeeding his total control over the viceroyalty, and Father had been rather vehement in his agreement) and regarded her most useful and favoured servant gratefully. "Thank you, Sayoko. Have her sent in, please. I'll be ready to receive her shortly."
Sayoko bowed from the waist, and when she rose, she left the room to see her lady's will done.
Milly sighed, closing the Statistics textbook she'd been working from, together with her notebook, and slipped them into a drawer in her massive dark wooden desk. Then, she turned in her chair and rose, walking over to the wall of full-length windows on the eastern side of her office, facing the sunrise, and her diamond-blue eyes swept out across her demesne. The Tokyo Settlement had benefited very strongly from the preserved pre-war civilian infrastructure in the early days, and the modern train lines and subways that had supplanted them later were laid out along the same lines, only now rebuilt to Britannian standards. The eyesore that was the slums, where the Numbers had been expected to abide as ghettos, continued to diminish in size as her restoration efforts continued to bear fruit. Beyond that, the silhouette of Mount Fuji lingered in the middle distance, its side covered in equipment and scaffolding for large-scale mining operations, with the sakuradite refineries built at the mountain's base to limit the amount of distance the volatile material would have to travel in its raw form.
She was prepared when her appointment knocked on the door. She did not look away from the view she beheld. "Come in."
The dark wooden doors (locally sourced) yawned open as one of Milly's personal secretary's chief undersecretaries ushered the visitor she'd been expecting all day onto the lush yet understated carpeting of the sub-viceroy's Government Bureau office. Sumeragi Kaguya, from what Sayoko had been able to tell her, had not had a pleasant time of it over the last (almost) two years of Britannian governance; as the five other heads of the practically defunct Six Houses of Kyoto's imprisonment became protracted, with no sign of their release in sight, the ties the girl and her family had had with the other families formerly of Japanese high society had gone from cooled to strained to frayed. Her clan, which had been the lynchpin of the clans which counted themselves as retainers and vassals of the Chrysanthemum Throne, had declined greatly in means and prominence, falling victim to infighting between the main family and the cadet branches; and in the process, the very fabric that had made up that element of the conquered nation's backbone unravelled.
Yet when Milly deigned to take a look at the girl, who was two or three years her junior, she noticed with some degree of regard that the would-be Heavenly Sovereign did not seem much the worse for wear, even in the face of all the stresses that she could easily imagine as having robbed the girl of sleep at night. She was dressed not in what Milly had been given to understand to be traditional garb, derived from Edo period fashions, but instead an outfit derived from Kamakura period court fashions and earlier. The girl eyed her cautiously, clearly more than a little skittish, and Milly had to bite back an impulse to laugh at that. It seems I have my work cut out for me. You really did teach her the meaning of fear, didn't you, my Justine?
I suppose it falls to me to break the ice, doesn't it? she mused ruefully. "A beautiful view, isn't it?"
Silence was her response.
Milly sighed impatiently. "Miss Sumeragi, I can assure you this won't be a very productive meeting if I'm the only one who's willing to speak."
Still only silence.
If you're going to play it like that, then… "Perhaps my bride-to-be would be better suited to dealing with you, then?"
The girl's step faltered, her posture freezing stiff as her eyes shot wide. "N-no, please, we can talk."
"Wonderful," Milly intoned sarcastically, still not turning from the windows. "Now come here, and tell me what you see. Quickly, now—I don't have all day."
Sufficiently chastened, the Eleven girl hastened to her side, and looked out at the same view Milly enjoyed every day. "I see Fujiyama, arguably one of the greatest marks of our culture, raped and gutted, its insides laid bare for all to see. I see a cancerous growth called Britannia, who destroyed our lands and our homes to rebuild it all in its image. I see the ruin of my nation, writhing with…vultures, and carrion, picked clean beneath a clear sky, shameless as can be."
"How very maudlin," Milly remarked. "Do you know what I see, Miss Sumeragi? Where you see us expanding the Settlement, I see vast government housing projects to aid the displaced. Where you see your precious mountain being turned into a mining installation, I see conservation efforts and safety precautions that are unprecedented when it comes to Number labourers. Where you can only see the sundered ruin of what you all once were, I cannot help but look out at this and see how much worse it could have been.
"Did you know that the Second Prince of the Empire, Clovis, was also in the running to gain control of the viceroyalty, Miss Sumeragi? Let me paint you a picture of what that would have looked like," Milly continued, and though she had perhaps naively hoped to get through this meeting without needing to be so heavy-handed about the state of affairs, the situation with this girl had become so dire that this sort of law-giving was necessary. "Half of this city, and indeed all of the ones around it—Saitama, Shinjuku, Yokohama—would have remained nothing more than bombed-out ruins, slums for the Numbers to languish in the squalor of their own destruction. Even the few members of your people who made it through the Honorary Britannian system would have been disdained and held in contempt, forced to bow and scrape to eke out a meagre survival as glorified cannon fodder, expendable to the last. The rest would have been carved into fiefdoms by robber barons and crime lords, who would have ruined what remained with narcotics and human trafficking. And none of it—none of it would ever matter, because you aren't people in the eyes of the Empire. You're Numbers. The million deaths that make a statistic.
"I know this in part because I know Clovis, Miss Sumeragi," Milly sighed. "But for the most part? I know this because I have fought and clawed and worked my ass off, day and night, to ensure that what I described does not come to pass. That you are even allowed to dress yourself as you are is a state of affairs that would not exist, were any other to be granted the position of viceroy. So I would very much appreciate it if you would be willing to cooperate just a bit to improve the lives of your people who yet live, instead of getting angry and seeking vengeance over your nation, which all but signed its own death warrant when it sought to throw its weight around in front of one of the most jingoistic empires in human history—second to your own, that is. I'm sure the residents of the Chinese city of Nanking will have oodles to talk about on that score, come to think of it—to say nothing of those who abide on the Korean Peninsula."
The Sumeragi girl looked as though she was about to say something, but at the last moment, she bit her tongue, and sighed, wincing first, and then nodding. "I've already sold my soul once, I suppose… What is it that you need me to do for you?"
"You misunderstand me," Milly replied crisply, finally turning away from the window to regard the girl fully. Sumeragi Kaguya was by most metrics a beautiful girl, she had to admit, in a very cute, soft way, with a chiding face defined by its gentle features, long, straight jet-black hair, a fair-skinned, creamy complexion, and the same jadeite pigment to her almond-shaped eyes as her Justine's best friend, Suzaku. It was a detached sort of analysis that came to these conclusions, however—the Sumeragi girl's beauty was undeniable, certainly, but it was entirely too…human, for lack of a better term, and between that naturalism and her love's otherworldly, forbidding allure, there was truly no comparison. And so when she continued, it was with a double meaning that she spoke: "I need nothing from you."
"Then…why did you summon me?" the Sumeragi girl asked, her brow furrowing in confusion.
"Why, indeed?" Milly rejoined rhetorically, her face wearing a smile that she knew full well did not reach her eyes (and it never really did, not so long as her love was so far away). She stepped away from the windows and stepped over to her desk as she spoke anew. "I've had several experts working night and day to resolve an issue we're having, Miss Sumeragi. The majority of the foodstuffs we've been using to feed the Greater Tokyo Area, you see, is imported from other Areas and from the Homeland. This is an issue for several reasons, not the least of which because it is an untenable state of affairs; and yet the agricultural sector was having issues before the annexation of Area Eleven, not to mention that, to the surprise of hopefully no one, the post-war reconstruction certainly hasn't done it any favours. We're in need of a more efficient means of keeping all of your countrymen adequately fed, and that's a problem I believe is an issue that is sufficiently anodyne for the purpose of beginning our collaborative efforts in earnest."
"I see," the Eleven girl replied pensively. "I don't know how much help I'll be, admittedly. I'm not a farmer, and nor are the finer points of large-scale agriculture a field of study containing what my tutors considered to be relevant information to learn. The Tennō traditionally left that sort of thing to the cabinet officials of the Prime Minister's administration and the Diet."
"Your expertise, or lack thereof as the case may be, isn't why I've had you brought here today," said Milly, slipping another of her many drawers open and retrieving a moderately thick packet of documents. She motioned for the other girl to sit on the other side of the desk, and to her immense relief, the Sumeragi girl complied with the unspoken directive without incident, taking a seat in one of the two chairs that had their backs facing the doors. Once the girl was seated, her hands resting daintily in her lap, Milly tossed the packet onto that lap, as she herself rounded her desk and took a seat perched at the edge of it, facing the girl and subtly looking down onto her. "That is what the experts came up with. A proposal for the construction of vertical hydroponics farms, with the provisional designs included."
The girl's eyes went almost comically wide. "Hydroponics?"
"With the Imperial Japanese Army having entirely disbanded, their base in the Narita Mountains is sitting empty, collecting dust, and doing no one any good," Milly explained, leaning back a bit and placing her hands onto the lacquered wooden surface to better support herself as she continued to speak. "In other words, an ideal place to set up enough of these things to support a population approximately two or three times the size of the pre-war population, according to the Diet census data we've retrieved. Other proposals for the likes of silos, food storage, and surplus management are all in the works, but have been postponed pending the construction of a fully-functional installation. The primary constraint to that end, however, is one of personnel—an operation like this isn't autonomous, after all, and the facilities aren't going to do us any good if they're understaffed.
"That, Miss Sumeragi, is where you come in," Milly finished with a flourish, locking eyes with the girl from her reclined position. "Namely, your connections. With your name signed onto the proposal, it'll act as a sign of good faith, and encourage the Eleven population with agricultural qualifications to flock to the project. Those who distinguish themselves will get Honorary Britannian status, of course, but they'll all get some very generous incentives to join on and stay on with such an important enterprise, and that'll take us one step closer to being self-sufficient. You see, Miss Sumeragi, I need nothing from you. I'm sure we'd be able to implement all of this without any aid from you and yours. But you do have a great deal of assets that would make this, and projects like this one, go a lot more smoothly. Do you understand?"
"I do…" Sumeragi agreed contemplatively. Then she sighed, looking up at Milly and giving her a strained smile. "Well then, it seems we've got quite a bit of work ahead of us, your grace."
It was all Milly could do to bite back the triumphant grin that nearly swallowed her composure; and thankfully, she managed it, if only just. "That we most certainly do, Miss Sumeragi…"
An imperious feminine voice intoned in her mind, and it was jaded and it was bitter, but above all, it was exhausted beyond reckoning: What is a god? Hm? A higher power? A rewarder of good deeds and punisher of the wicked? Something men can turn to in their darkest moments, when their days seem only like bridges from one tragedy to the next? Our gods are all these things.
She beheld a spectacle of ruin. A vision of flame and strife.
The very heavens burned above her, roiling, rumbling thunderheads livid red as hellish flashes flew across the firmament, and crimson droplets rained down from the skies. She wandered marble streets and adamant avenues almost without aim, pulled along by an invisible thread. Spires that once soared, splendid in their grandeur, had been humbled and laid low, many of them resembling the bombed-out shells of the slums and ghettos of her domain as a panther resembled a common house cat. Clamour and conflict rang out around her, and out of the corner of her eye she saw flashes of shades racing past. Banners and pennants once flew high and proud here, she saw, but what remained were only ashes and embers. A rat, brownish-grey and of an unusually prodigious size, scrambled and chittered across the road before her, and it was the very first sign of true life she'd seen since she'd embarked upon this long walk.
It was as if a dam broke with that sight, though, as the air above her screamed and howled, and she looked up to see brilliant avian structures of vibrant gold and vivid green streak past her, billowing smoke in many colours before crashing down just as spectacularly in the distance, with a resonant wave that shook the ground and ought to have left her ears ringing as she scrambled for balance. In its wake, dark shapes shot like bullets on high, equine forms bearing shadowy riders aloft upon chiropteran wings; and as they sped past her, an unearthly sound, great and terrible, equal parts a horrid roar and a harrowing shriek, rang out in the distance. Unexpectedly, it caused her heart to swell as the echoing sound seemed to resonate with some forgotten quality deep within her innermost self; at its resounding, silence fell for a single moment, eerie in its stillness, before the cacophony sounded anew, one half in savage rejoicing, and the other in primal terror.
The clashing of arms continued regardless.
The road she was on opened up ahead of her at last into a rotunda, wherein figures alike to those of mortal men marched in formation, hooded sable cloaks and dull black armour, square shields and polearms resembling the glaive-like weapons of the Elevens (save for the surpassing elegance of their construction), naginata, marked them as warriors, members of a great warhost. The standard that flew above them was of deepest purple, split like a slit throat by a livid scarlet symbol bearing an abstract resemblance to a bird in flight, and they bared their blades against a glittering assemblage of purest gold, whose banner was as a lidless emerald-green eye, marked with concentric rings surrounding a luminous yellow slit of a pupil. And yet, the lustrous host for all their splendour were swiftly losing ground against the grim-faced figures, their eyes set with fierce pride and a rejoicing that could only be felt, and never related, of which fanaticism was but a pale imitation. This was devotion, the conviction of men and women who had followed their leader into the mouth of Hell itself and would do so again without a moment's hesitation.
A surging roar devoured all other sound, then, and Milly could only stand there, dumbfounded, as a cyclone of sickly green fire ripped through the back-line of the golden company, devouring a vortex of swirling silver blades as it crossed the storm of cold flame's path—cold flame which, to her limited senses in this…ensorcelling murk, seemed, impossibly, to suck what little heat she could feel out of the area as it passed. With mighty war-cries, the bat-winged pegasi and their riders descended meteorically from the clouds in a lance formation in the wake of the strange and unnatural maelstrom, then, the long barbed crimson spears they bore bared to their foes like a ravening beast's fangs, and as they tore the surprised host to ribbons, the golden soldiers' spirits shattered, and almost as one, they broke formation and fled for their lives.
We believed, in those days, that if we were swift enough, we could prevent what was to come.
We thought that we could save our people, our world, from this folly.
In this, as in many other things, we were wrong.
She blinked, and she was elsewhere.
In the sundered ruins of a once-great palace, the grand building nothing more than its foundations, a monolith of pure white stone stood, austere and immutable. Before it, a desolate woman in blue-black armour, shrouded in raven-black wings that were at once chiropteran and feathered, sat with her back to the stone as her baleful scarlet eyes with reptilian slits for pupils beheld all that lay before her with lachrymose horror, the harsh and unspeakably beautiful features of her olive-skinned face set into a bitterly numb mask. Her grief was heart-wrenching and unbearable, sorrow tearing at Milly with an intensity she only knew to come upon her under very specific circumstances before this point, filling her with a compelling need to turn to see what the raven-haired woman looked upon.
Only carnage greeted her. None were dying, for all were dead.
The corpses of the golden host, butchered, burned, trampled, pierced—these were easy, simple. The wounds that had taken their lives were, while horrible, clear and visible.
The ebon host had perished where they stood. Their victory had stricken them down, their triumph naught but ash, even as flakes of grey-white fell from above. Their skin… All of it had paled. It flaked, like it was of no more substance than paper, ruined and desiccated—and yet, almost as if in mockery, the image of what they had been in life had suffered not a single distortion, even now.
She turned again, hoping once more to catch sight of the winged woman who had seemed so distant even as her being brushed against the tips of Milly's proverbial fingers, but was greeted only with a great, enveloping bleak void—coming face-to-face with the stone monolith in so doing, its unnatural flawlessness marred by a design drawn in black blood, which steamed and smoked and corroded.
The emblem was the very same abstraction which had marked the banners of the black guard.
And so did the sun set upon the greatest of nations, the grandest of empires.
What our folly did not sunder, I gave to the sea. What remained was swallowed by the winter sky.
My people, who had broken the stars themselves, were no more…
If Milly was honest with herself, as she often tried to be, she had to some degree expected for the process of awakening from a nightmare to be somewhat more dramatic than it ultimately turned out to be. She did not shoot upright in her very comfortable bed, nor was she really out of breath or in much of a cold sweat at all. It was merely that it was very sudden: one moment she was abed, and the next, she was awake, and she was entirely alert. For someone who was long accustomed to some level of drowsiness for at least the first half-hour of her recovered consciousness, it was on the whole a surprisingly unwelcome diversion from the norm.
She rose from her downy pillows and grey linen sheets (her love's sensibilities had begun to rub off on her to some degree, she mused, though she knew the reverse was also true), and Sayoko was beside her as though she had been from the start. It was always comforting to be reminded of the level of skill her maid was capable of, when she wasn't amusing herself with corny theatrics for the sake of their silliness. "What time is it?"
"Half past four, ojō-sama," Sayoko informed her.
"In other words, entirely too early for me to be awake…" Milly grumbled. She huffed with a heavy heave of her chest, and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes.
"Very much so," Sayoko agreed softly. "Is something amiss?"
"Just…a very strange dream," Milly sighed. Then, she amended, "An incredibly strange dream…"
"I see," Sayoko intoned, bobbing her head in a brief bow. "Shall I make some tea?"
"Please," Milly practically begged her indispensable maidservant, dragging a hand down her face. "I don't expect I'll be able to go back to sleep again after that, so I might as well get up and start my day."
"I'll see to it myself, ojō-sama," replied Sayoko, bowing somewhat more deeply; and then she vanished just as suddenly and undetectably as she'd arrived.
She lived in the residential apartments of the Tokyo Settlement Government Bureau. Her name was Carmilla Ashford, and she was fourteen years old.
She believed in taking care of herself, she mused as she rose out of bed, naked as Venus rising from the sea, and she aimed, as always (but over the past two years especially), for a balanced diet and a rigorous exercise routine. In the mornings (today's circumstances, while to some degree odd, were not what she considered 'sufficiently extenuating' to warrant another diversion), she liked to walk out to her parlour, pluck a single well-maintained and well-loved vinyl from a shelf she had filled with their like, and set it into her turnstile, letting the Devil's Trill fill her chambers while she stretched, and began her pull-ups in the next room over. She could do several hundred of them now.
After that, and before she shuffled into the ensuite bathroom for a shower, she saw to one of several parts of her skin-care routine. She had always had flawless skin, but if there was one thing that she agreed with Princess Friederike on, it was in the utility of appearances—and with her current situation as delicate as it truly was, which was rather more so than she presented it to be, any unnecessary risk seemed foolishly reckless—and so such indulgence was something she considered in large part necessary.
In the shower, she was very careful and very particular about her hair, which was prone to tangling, and a great number of other irritating happenings, which unfortunately meant that such an act normally managed to last anywhere from twenty minutes to half an hour, the bloodier showers she took after every summary execution she oversaw (she liked to get involved in her own dirty work, and indeed found it to be rather cathartic) notwithstanding. Heat might damage her hair, and so she didn't blow-dry, her golden locks wrapped in a towel as she saw to the rest of her somewhat exhaustive morning toilet.
As she emerged into her parlour once more, garbed in a dressing-gown with her hair piled atop her head in a towel still, she found Sayoko laying out the tea set in an unspoken offer of her companionship, an offer she never failed to accept whenever it was given—Sayoko was somewhat eerily perceptive of when Milly was in need of such gestures, even when Milly herself was unaware of it, which was just one of the many things for which she appreciated her maidservant and considered her indispensable. She made a note to see that the breakfast she'd normally have shared with her father was rescheduled to a luncheon as she sat blissfully down onto the settee (which was, much like the rest of the chamber, as close to a reproduction of her favourite sitting-room in Belial Palace as could be managed) and accepted the bowl of white rice and tea that Sayoko passed to her, even in this informal setting making certain to serve Milly before the woman served herself.
"I feel I should remind you, ojō-sama, that today is your very first day off since taking on this job," Sayoko mentioned idly, as she served herself in turn, spooning out a generous helping of sticky, slimy light brown beans onto her own rice that had a heady, powerful, pungent odour that caused the Britannian girl to scrunch her nose in reflex. "Coincidentally, your betrothed sent me a message a little earlier this morning to that effect, possessed as she was of a similar concern. Would you like some nattō as well?"
Milly shook her head firmly. "What is that?"
"Nattō? Fermented soybeans," Sayoko replied patiently. "They're a traditional breakfast food. A bit of an acquired taste, admittedly, but they're very healthy, and I'd say a taste worth acquiring. In light of the conversation you had with Sumeragi-san a few days ago, and since this is the first time in a long while that we've broken our fast together, I'd thought it prudent to expose you to the sorts of things that your subjects might feed themselves with on a daily basis. Legend has it that it was invented by one of the Minamoto taishōgun during the Heian period, when he was ambushed while on campaign with his warriors."
"…Maybe a bit later," Milly said uneasily.
"You should," chided Sayoko, in one of her occasional but by no means rare bouts of well-meaning admonition. "The Britannian palate is much more reliant on meat in a meal than a traditional Eleven's—red meat in particular. Fish, eel, soybeans, rice…if you wish to gain some understanding of what and how we eat, these are our staples."
"I…suppose a little wouldn't hurt…" Milly conceded, holding out her rice bowl.
Sayoko smiled kindly. Her approval was a potent thing for all its softness and its silence, and indeed Milly had never quite understood how to deal with it. The woman doled out a much smaller helping into her bowl, and uncovered a small dish filled with dark brown fluid that smelled faintly of brine. "We'll be starting small. There are a few ways to complement nattō, though I prefer my own plain, as I find the taste pleasant even when unaccompanied. Today I brought up some soy sauce just in case."
Taking the bowl back and bringing her own chopsticks to bear, Milly took a careful bite, and almost immediately she felt her face spasm and recoil. She coughed a few times to clear her throat. "That's…very strong, the flavour…"
Sayoko nodded, taking a rather large bite of her own breakfast without any sign that she tasted very much at all. "It does have that reputation, yes. As I said, it's an acquired taste. Why don't you take a drink, and maybe try it again, with a condiment this time. But back to the topic at hand."
Milly nodded, drinking the tea in a manner she wouldn't be caught dead replicating in public, and then took up the dish, adding soy sauce a bit liberally to the bowl before trying again. Now that she was braced for the flavour, her second bite was more bearable than the first, oddly enough. She occupied herself with chewing and swallowing while she traced back the thread of their conversation. "My day off?"
"Indeed," affirmed Sayoko. "Have you given any thought to how you might like to spend it?"
"I…" Milly began, and then stalled, her mind finding nothing to say. In Belial Palace, she would've known exactly how she was going to spend her day off, but with her Justine an ocean away, she was at a bit of a loss, truth be told.
Sayoko sighed. "Yes, I thought as much."
She found herself oddly sheepish in the face of her maid's palpable disappointment, for all that she knew that the emotion wasn't aimed at her, specifically. Wincing, she muttered, "Sorry…"
The truth was that, beyond her fierce love and consuming lust for her bride-to-be, there was an idea of a Carmilla Ashford, some kind of abstraction, but there wasn't really a real her that she could see staring back at her in the mirror. There was only an entity, something illusory, opaque and evasive; and though she had gotten quite good at masking the cold indifference of her gaze, and she could shake someone's hand and know they felt flesh and warmth gripping theirs, and maybe some of the other Britannian nobles could even sense that their lifestyles were probably comparable to her own, she simply was not there—and nor did she particularly wish to be.
And so she found herself sitting here, saddled with the rather awkward situation of not knowing her own likes, dislikes, or interests, if they did not revolve around Justine vi Britannia.
Sayoko regarded her with a sympathetic gaze, and Milly was reminded in that moment that the very woman upon whom she relied so heavily regularly saw, as she had expressed a few times over the years, far too much of herself in her young charge for Milly to really be able to conceal such things from the shinobi. Then she seemed to ponder for a few pregnant moments, before nodding once to herself, rather firmly. "If you'd like, there's a performance of noh theatre that's being held in the community centre to celebrate the anniversary of Neo-Shinjuku's inauguration later this morning. I'd thought we might begin there."
"Begin?" Milly asked, perplexed by the new direction.
"Indeed," said the maid, who'd foregone the maid attire that Cassiopeia had insisted upon in favour of an oddly seamless fusion of civilian clothes and her own shinobi gear. "Our situations are by no means identical, I'll grant you, but I know a thing or two on the subject of belated self-discovery. So I wish to take you on a tour of the Greater Tokyo Area's underworld today. If you don't come out of this having found at least one activity to enjoy during your leisure hours, then we'll try a different method."
"I don't think that's…a very good idea…" Milly remarked, shaking her head as she tried to identify this odd sense of tension in her chest. Anxiety, perhaps?
"You'll be disguised, of course. It's an art with which I have some skill," Sayoko assured her. "And your betrothed asked for me to help you find things that bring you joy—other than her, which was, as you might have guessed, a qualifier that she left notably absent. I'd have wanted to help you with this even if she hadn't explicitly asked me to do it, of course."
Milly bit back a long-suffering yet fond sigh of exasperation at the omission Sayoko herself had noticed, and nodded to show that she was listening.
"It's just…" the shinobi began, and then hesitated. "Your lover and I are united in that we both want only the best for you,Miss Milly. And we agree that you deserve better than you've been given."
Milly wondered why she kept deluding herself into thinking there was the slightest chance that she might refuse. She'd never quite figured out how to fend off Sayoko's displays of almost…maternal care and affection, and now that both her maidservant and her love had joined forces, she couldn't help but feel a slight spark of indignation at the unfairness of being so thoroughly ganged-up on.
"When you say 'disguises', what…exactly…are you proposing?" she caved.
Sayoko rather pointedly did not wear her triumph on her face, and it was enough to make Milly wonder whether she was mistaken to think of this in terms of winning and losing, of victory and defeat. "Nothing too drastic, ojō-sama—please, just leave the preparations to me."
"Well, I'd thought to reschedule breakfast with my father, but I suppose it'd be best for me to cancel entirely…" Milly sighed.
"Actually, Lord Elend said he'd be acting jointly with your grandfather as your proxy today, in the event of any unforeseen happenstance, with the note to not worry about him, and to do your best to have fun," Sayoko remarked mildly, setting down her empty rice bowl and draining her cup of tea.
Milly scowled, though she was faintly aware that it became something more like a pout as it arrived at her face. "You went to him before you knew I'd agree?"
"It was your betrothed who alerted Lord Elend, as a matter of fact," Sayoko replied, feline mischief in the curl of her lip. "Her highness was rather certain you'd consent to this outing."
Milly stabbed her chopsticks into the rice, very pointedly not sulking as she ate, and muttering, "A damned conspiracy in my own house…"
"She's a good woman, your lover," Sayoko remarked once Milly finished swallowing the last of the nattō and rice. "She cares very deeply for you."
Milly had long since accepted how truly difficult it was to stay angry at the girl she loved, and there was therefore no reluctance in the gesture as she nodded sharply. "She's the best."
Sayoko smiled warmly, and reached over the low table between them to pour Milly a second cup of tea. "Well, I suppose I should go gather my tools now. Please, sit tight—I'll be right back."
Milly had to begrudgingly admit that her maidservant's profession of skill in the art of disguise was no idle boast; the changes that had been made to her appearance mostly concerned how she dressed, how she did her hair, and small adjustments to how she presented herself beyond all of that. They were subtle and wouldn't really fool someone who looked at her and expected to see her, but they were impactful in a way that meant that most people they ran into wouldn't think to do so. As Sayoko had explained, "The best disguise is simply not to be there at all."
She'd worn her hair unbound for every day of her life up until that point, so now that she had it up, bound in a high ponytail the way her Justine preferred to wear her own silky raven curtain, she wasn't all that sure she recognised herself in the mirror. She'd gone from the very sharp, stylish sort of outfit she'd become fond of over the years in favour of long denim jeans and a plain white v-neck tee, a leather jacket, and brown leather riding boots worn under the cuff, all of it coming together to form a much more 'punky' image than she usually cultivated.
The change felt…unexpectedly liberating.
Of course, that feeling was soured immediately when she discovered that she wouldn't be getting a call from Middle Pacifica until after her day was over, so that she could 'focus on enjoying herself,' and so her mood could charitably be called 'a mite foul' as she and Sayoko—who could freely move in civilian clothes without any deception, since she was by no means a well-known person outside of certain circles of notoriety—managed to smuggle themselves away and onto the well-funded public transit system that she'd told her grandfather should be the very first priority when it came to the construction of the Settlement. The roads in Tokyo were very seldom used as a direct result, trafficked only by short-distance freight and the odd affluent Britannian commoner wanting to take their new hot rod out for a joy ride, and Milly found in short order that there was a certain level of surreality in riding in the railway system she'd been so prepared to fight for. And though there had been some hubbub and minor controversy about Britannians and Elevens using the same trains, convenience eventually won out over prejudice, and so no-one looked twice at the blonde Britannian and her clearly Eleven companion as they took the eight-fifteen L-line out to the restored Neo-Shinjuku—a somewhat unique feat, she knew, if only for the fact that in that context, 'urban renewal' was not merely a very thinly-veiled euphemism for ethnic cleansing.
One of the great perks about Britannia being so authoritarian, she reflected as the train passed into the former ghetto, is that initiatives like these do not necessarily need approval by committee. To be sure, if we'd been less vigilant about infiltration by racketeers and opportunists, this sort of thing would have been dead on arrival, no matter how desperately it might have been needed… After all, the more desperate and miserable the Elevens' circumstances are, the easier it is to push drugs like Refrain…
Which reminds me…
"Sayoko," Milly murmured. "How bad is the Refrain problem among the Elevens?"
"It's reduced now that people are seeing their neighbours getting some solid ground under their feet socioeconomically," Sayoko replied discreetly. "But that doesn't really help the people who are already in the narcotic's grip, now does it?"
"Taking punitive measures is counterproductive. I don't care how by-the-book it is—I need experts, not manual labourers or corpses," Milly considered. "…Why don't we start providing it?"
It occurred to her that she was perhaps wrongfully taking for granted that Sayoko's trust in her was sufficiently assured that the shinobi's reaction wasn't at all visceral, but expectant.
"If people are already strung-out, I don't want them keeling over because some profiteering vulture didn't give a shit enough to check the purity of his product. That's a waste of manpower, and as I've said, qualified personnel is a resource of which we have a rather desperate need," Milly explained. "If we're dispensing pure, safe Refrain doses out of clean needles, for free, not only do we make sure that the addicts aren't killing themselves for a glimpse of their lost glory days, but we also can hopefully drive the vermin out of business and into the light.
"And once they're there, in our clinics, we can work on getting them weaned off of the drug and into medical offices with professionals with degrees in addiction medicine…" Milly bit her lip as the idea began to coalesce into something actionable. She shrugged, leaning back against the window behind her and pressing the back of her head up against the cool plexiglas. "The people who'd feel the most like they need their glory days back would be those who lost a lot in the annexation. If we can salvage even one scientist or competent researcher out of that mess, I'd be willing to consider the 'harm reduction' idea to be a resounding success. Doubly so considering the long-term benefits of the goodwill that would gain us…"
"It's a good idea, Miss Milly," Sayoko agreed, giving a measured nod. "But today is meant to be an occasion for leisure. There'll be plenty of time to pen policy when you're back in the office tomorrow."
Milly scowled in response, and muttered a begrudging, "Very well…"
The community centre in question was only a short walk from its nearest station—its proximity was entirely by design—and so the pair, undercover duchess and shinobi, slid relatively unnoticed into the flood of people crowding in to see the very first performance of noh theatre in a little over two years. They filed onto the floor and took their seats before the stage as various audience members recognised and spoke amongst each other, and though Britannians were rare, as could well be expected, Milly was pleased to note that she was not unique in her attendance in spite of her national allegiance; she spotted maybe five other Britannians amongst the perhaps two to three hundred members of the audience.
In contrast to what she'd come to expect from western theatre, opera especially, the lights stayed on even as the performers entered the stage, swathed in rich, opulent traditional garments and bearing dramatically stylised masks in hand. Sayoko leaned in and whispered the name of the play in question into her ear—Hagoromo—and with the striking of a musical cue from instrumentalists arrayed along the rear of the stage, the audience fell silent, and the performance began.
When they left the community centre an hour and a half after they entered, Milly made sure to write herself a reminder to take her Justine to one of these performances in the future. She didn't know much about the other form of traditional theatre Sayoko mentioned as they left—kabuki—but she couldn't help but imagine that her love would enjoy the flourishing dramatism of the entire affair perhaps better than she herself had managed.
"How did you enjoy the performance?" Sayoko asked as they walked in a direction that she could not help but notice was decidedly not the way to the train station.
"It was…interesting," Milly replied hesitantly.
"Not much to your tastes, I take it?" the maid asserted without judgement.
"Not really, no…" she confessed with a sigh.
"It's alright. I never much cared for it myself," Sayoko admitted easily as they walked. "I'm not one for the theatre, but if I had to choose, I'd have picked kabuki. The hayashi—they're the musicians for traditional theatre, and the name is specific enough that it doesn't really translate—for it notably includes the shamisen, and it's a much livelier form overall."
Milly nodded. "So…where are we going, exactly?"
"Kamurochō," said the maid.
"I'm…afraid I'm not entirely aware of what that is…"
"Before the war, back in the old Shinjuku, it was called Kabuki-chō, the so-called Sleepless Town," explained Sayoko. "A red light district, essentially. But there was a popular video game franchise that came up with the fictional district of Kamurochō that was based upon the real-life Kabuki-chō, and so when your program to rebuild the city came into being, and there was a need for the sort of entertainment only a red light district can provide, well…let's just say that there were many people who felt quite emboldened by the fact that Sega Corporation's no longer around to enforce their old copyrights."
"So you're taking me there because…?" Milly prompted.
Sayoko merely smiled back at her, the familiar curl of feline mischief and knowing smugness taking the expression and turning it halfway into a smirk. "I have a feeling we'll find quite a bit that's much more your speed there. That is, of course, if you trust me."
"Of course I do," replied Milly, without so much as a moment's hesitation.
"Then let's get moving," the shinobi replied with a fond softness in her warm brown eyes.
Walking through the streets of Neo-Shinjuku, Milly took the opportunity to survey what she and her grandfather had managed to accomplish from the ground level—something of a rare privilege for a duchess of Britannia, or indeed any highborn of the empire. The fixed-rate government housing she'd had built and made as earthquake-resistant as she could manage (the initial layering plan to mitigate damage from such events had lasted exactly as long as it took her brilliant fiancée to point out that a single cybersecurity leak could bring the entire thing quite literally crashing down) was a beautiful thing for all its practicality and its lack of decoration, and indeed it seemed the residents had begun to take it upon themselves to cautiously adorn their houses with murals and iconography in line with their heritage, while studiously avoiding any flags or similar symbols that would be taken as signs of sedition and fomenting rebellion. Shops, cafés, and restaurants dotted the roadside, and moderately sized bands of people were out celebrating the day-to-day life that her efforts had made possible.
Consideration Clovis would never have given them as viceroy.
The decorations went from cautious and understated to loud and gaudy very quickly, and from the way the dim signs advertised bars, liquor stores, love hotels, and nightclubs, Milly would have known that they'd moved into Kamurochō even if Sayoko hadn't leaned in and declared to her, "Here we are. I know it's not much to look at now, but come nightfall? This entire district will come to life, and it's like nothing you've ever seen before, Miss Milly."
"Perhaps we'll be here again to see it," Milly remarked.
Sayoko smiled at her again. "Come, I've got an old friend who's expecting us."
It was an unholy amalgamation of a Las Vegas casino, a pirate tavern, and a boardwalk funhouse.
Such was Milly's first impression of the venue before her, which proudly proclaimed itself to be the Cabaret Grand, light-up letters spelling out 'GRAND' above the edifice. Visually, it was almost deafening, even dulled by daylight as it was, and she could barely imagine what it might look like once night fell upon the entire district. Yet Sayoko, unruffled as she was, barely gave this all a second glance before striding up to the front door as though she had every right to be here, and Milly, not at all intending to be left behind in an unfamiliar place, hurried behind her as she opened one of the double doors, waiting for both of them to step through before crossing the threshold herself and letting it close behind them.
The interior certainly followed up on the Las Vegas feel, with Roman columns and sweeping stairs with rich crimson carpets, presided over by a great chandelier that looked like dozens of blades suspended from a ring which was affixed to the ceiling. Beyond that was a round room, much like a lounge with long sofas, and beyond that was a stage shrouded in gilded maroon curtains, which also proclaimed the boast from the exterior, with the word 'GRAND'. A Steinway grand piano sat off to the side, with chequered black-and-white tile decorating the well before the stage proper, and altogether it seemed like an image of indulgence from a bygone age of prosperity and materialism.
Sayoko, in contrast, was drawn to the wooden counter immediately to their left.
With a flick of her wrist, a shuriken darted from her sleeve and sank deep into the wall behind it.
Milly immediately flinched in instinctive surprise, but then raised a quizzical eyebrow in her maid's direction—she'd known Sayoko had been armed, after all, since the shinobi at all times took Milly's safety very seriously—but she didn't have long to question before a head popped out from under the counter. It was a man's head, she knew immediately, with inky black hair pulled back very precisely from his lupine face, characterised by its strong features and its well-defined jawline, some faint yet persistent moustache stubble, and a brow that she struggled to describe as anything beyond 'dramatic.' That brow hung furrowed above a single hard black eye, and a black leather eyepatch which covered the other, which lent the man a very severe appearance indeed.
"The Spider Lily of Ikebukuro," the man intoned in a calmly intense tenor.
"The Mad Dog of Shimano," Sayoko replied. Then she tilted her head with another feline smirk. "Or is it 'Lord of the Night' these days, hmm?"
The man drew himself up to his full height, revealing his lean build, clad in a well-tailored black suit and a white button-down, its collar open to reveal a golden chain that hung down to his clavicle, and a hint of ink that suggested the presence of a tattoo. He considered Sayoko for a few minutes, and then the severe expression he wore broke into a broad, toothy grin that was utterly incongruous with the rest of how he presented himself, as well as more than a little unhinged. He threw his arms out wide, looking like he was making to embrace her with an affectionate declaration of, "Hisashiburi da ze, Sacchin!"
"Gorō-kun," she greeted equally fondly, stepping in and returning his embrace. It really should have been very awkward, what with the countertop between them, but surprisingly, it didn't seem like either of them really minded it all that much. "It's been entirely too long indeed."
Milly had the faint impression that she should be annoyed at being all but ignored in the face of the two of them reuniting after what had to have been years apart, but for one, it seemed like a very weird thing indeed to be bothered about—she'd be very much ready to murder anyone who interrupted a reunion with her fiancée, after all, so beyond that, taking offence also seemed a mite hypocritical of her—and for two, it wasn't as though she was anywhere near naive enough regarding either Sayoko's capabilities, or indeed the capabilities of those the shinobi might count as friends, to labour under the misapprehension that either had at any point truly lost track of her presence.
Sure enough, as soon as they released each other from the embrace, Sayoko waved her over. Milly, vindicated in the course of her own internal conflict—social expectations on that score could go burn as far as she was concerned—gladly walked over to her maidservant, as the shinobi began to introduce her to her bosom companion. "Gorō-kun, I'd like you to meet Miss Milly. She's been my…charge, for several years now. Milly, this is Majima Gorō. In his youth, he was known as the Mad Dog of Shimano, and head of the Majima Family of the Tōjō Clan. He's the old friend I was talking about earlier."
"On behalf of all the members of Majima Construction, and indeed all those who would have lived in squalor if not for your restoration efforts, I thank you, Duchess Ashford," the tall man interjected, giving her a bow from the waist.
"You know who I am?" Milly asked, unsure of whether Sayoko had told him to expect her to bring specifically Milly herself in tow.
"The yakuza of old may be a dyin' breed, but when the heir of the Shinozaki attached herself to a family of Britannian nobles, we knew of it—especially those of us whose relationship with the Spider Lily of Ikebukuro was less abstract and more personal," the strange man, Majima, explained. "And for those of us who called her 'friend,' and as such have seen and been fooled by her skill with disguisin' herself and others, when that same noble house takes charge of your conquered homeland, any effort of hers to conceal your identity would be doomed to failure."
"The Spider Lily of Ikebukuro?"
Sayoko flushed at that, while Majima grinned, seeming again more than half-mad. "Oh yes indeed; our Sacchin is quite notorious amongst those of us who were in that world years ago. Cut a bloody swath through the Omi and Tōjō both—a few mid-sized clans were exterminated entirely! Ten years ago, two out of every three dead yakuza would be found with a certain poison in their veins. Became a bit of a callin' card, it did…"
He tapped the side of his nose like he was sharing some kind of lurid secret, and Sayoko put an admirable amount of effort into not cringing into herself entirely.
"How did you two meet, then?" Milly asked, taking a bit of schadenfreude in exposing her maid's apparently embarrassing past.
"Well, one night, she dragged herself, beat up real bad and half-dead, into the izakaya I was runnin' for Old Man Shimano at the time, in the wee hours of the mornin'. And I didn't know who she was way back when, of course—none of us did, really—so I patched her up and gave her a place to stay. Turns out, some psycho punk called Orihara hired her to take out this bartender bastard, real hard piece of work, went by the name 'Heiwajima.' Now, Heiwajima wasn't real high up or anything, did small-time loan sharkin' and money launderin', but we all knew he was a tough one to take down. It was the one and only time, as it turned out, that the Spider Lily missed her mark," Majima explained, his one eye sparkling with a similar glee to what she felt in her chest at seeing the normally unflappable Sayoko on her back-foot. "I gave her a job at the izakaya once she woke up, so that she could recuperate and lay low for a while. I found out who she was a bit later, but by then, we were close enough friends that I ended up bein' the one who hooked her up with the guy who got her to Britannia."
"I see," Milly nodded, considering. "Then I have you to thank for her presence in my life…"
The grin softened, regaining sanity almost immediately in the process. "If ya wanna think of it that way, well, don't be a stranger 'round these parts. Any friend of Sacchin's is a friend of mine."
Almost in spite of herself, Milly smiled, shocked to find herself growing to like this man already. "That sounds like a wonderful arrangement."
Majima nodded at her, and then turned his attention back to Sayoko. "Speakin' of which, what's it that brings you out to the humble establishment of a legitimate businessman such as myself?"
"Miss Milly here's in dire need of a pastime or three," Sayoko explained, recovering her composure with a valiant effort. "And I was hoping you'd know of something she might be interested in."
"Is that so?" he asked rhetorically, turning his single-eyed gaze upon her appraisingly. "Hmm. Say, Milly-san, how hard can ya throw a punch?"
"Personal best is around 740 psi," Milly boasted, crossing her arms beneath her chest.
Majima let out a low whistle. "And you're what, fifteen?"
"Fourteen, actually," Milly preened, smirking.
"Fourteen," he muttered, astonished. "And you've got some fillin' out to do, too… How d'ya say I take ya on as a student, then?"
"Student? In what?" she asked, perplexed.
"Well, in how to deal with my kinda folks, for one," Majima began, giving some casual gestures as he seemed to grow more impassioned. "Shinobi are great an' all, real skilled, but they can't do everythin', ya see, and the stuffy geezers from Kyoto were never as strong as they liked to think they were. I can get ya connections with other legitimate businessmen, and help ya make inroads with other individuals of a more entrepreneurial persuasion, if ya catch my drift. You've done a pretty bang-up job of gettin' shit done, sure, but people like me? We're real good at greasin' those wheels, if ya keep helpin' our people the way you've been doin' so far."
"That does sound quite attractive," Milly mused. "I don't suppose you'd be able to help me figure out who was who amongst the people who lived here before the annexation? We've got a bit of a shortage of people with the know-how to help us expand our operations, you see, and while my grandfather and I want to establish a school to help produce the sorts of expertise we desperately need, even that would require qualified personnel to get going, too."
"Oh, sure," Majima crowed. "Especially these days. We yakuza might've been criminals, sure, but these are our communities we're talkin' about, our people. We take care of 'em now as we did with any disaster way back when, and let me tell ya, we had a whole lot more people to keep tabs on after the war. Your relief efforts were a pleasant surprise, and you've actually got a fair bit of gratitude amongst my sort of people for how much easier ya managed to make our jobs back then."
"Well, that's a relief," Milly sighed gratefully.
"In terms of why ya both came here today, though…well…" he trailed off, leaning forward across the counter in her direction now. "Tell me, ojō-chan, how much do ya know about bare-knuckle boxin'?"
It wasn't until night was just beginning to fall that they returned at last to the government bureau.
Milly winced, flexing her shoulder joint: she was beat up quite profusely, as Majima hadn't exactly been gentle in his crusade to assess her current skill level, and she was sure she'd be sore for the next few days at the very least. And yet, in that same moment, she knew she'd be going back—because for as much as it might have sucked right at that moment, nursing aches and pains from taking probing blows landed by a full-grown man (and more than that, a professional criminal from a society that had once boasted some of the most robust and stringent regulations against private ownership of firearms the world over), thinking on it made her recall the experience as deeply and profoundly cathartic.
It had taken a little while for Sayoko to find her a proper night-gown, as she didn't much fancy the idea of sleeping in her usual nudity with her skin in the battered state that it was; but find one she had, and not for the first time—and certainly not the last—she thanked whatever cosmic gamble had gifted her with such a resourceful confidante. Once she was done with the rest of her preparations for bed, which, among other things, constituted another exhaustively thorough hair-brushing, the vanity became her venue as ever it was, a laptop sitting open upon its wooden surface as Sayoko quietly took her leave.
Milly knew Sayoko wouldn't have left her alone enough that the shinobi couldn't return to her side almost immediately if the need arose, of course, but she appreciated the gesture nonetheless.
As she waited for the call signal to come through, some of the displeasure from the morning began to creep into her mind once again. Of all the moronic 'considerations' her fiancée could have given her, this one certainly ranked amongst the most vexing, and while it was normally heart-stoppingly adorable to see her fumble her way through half-understood motions of romance with an unmistakable purity of intent, the cancellation in the morning was decidedly inconvenient.
She'd just have to make it clear, in no uncertain terms, that under no circumstances was such a thing to happen again. A simple solution, she supposed, but her Justine was a good girl, and she did what she was told whenever Milly considered it important that she do so. A heavier hand would be entirely unnecessary, and perhaps even counterproductive; the omission in the message her paramour had sent to Sayoko stuck in Milly's mind even now, as only the latest example of a distressing pattern of her Justine not recognising just how much value the princess had in her life. The near-incident at the opera still rankled her now, more than a month after the fact—that she could think that Milly's attendance was an indulgence, as though the duchess didn't live her life just to see her face come alive in a way that it so very rarely did…
Not for the first time, Milly bit back the urge to curse the memory of a dead woman.
Whatever Hell you ended up in, Marianne vi Britannia, she seethed, it is entirely too good for you…
A rhythmic chiming cut through Milly's dark thoughts and sudden impotent bloodlust, and without a moment's hesitation, she hit the key to accept the call.
And even though the largest ocean in the world parted them, Milly swore that the image of her love that popped up on the screen a moment later made her world just that much brighter.
Adoration was too small an idea to encompass what she felt for the girl she would one day marry. From the very first moment they'd met, she'd known that the princess was to be hers and hers alone. Yet she had not known how to make that knowledge into something that she could touch, that she could hold, until that night in Princess Friederike's private townhouse, in the room with the records…
If anything, the fantasies she'd entertained as a young girl had ended up paling in comparison to the reality she'd lived ever since.
But she said none of this to her lover—and really, how could she ever even think to do so, when any word sounded so anaemic as to profane the potency of what she felt?—and instead smiled, the displeasure that had seemed so important only moments prior (which, in fairness, was absolutely important) melting away in the face of the almost narcotic effect of laying eyes upon her again. "And I suppose I have you to thank for today's diversions?"
Milly noticed something suddenly, an odd stiffness about the set of her Justine's shoulders, and it sent a twinge of worry through her—but then she flushed, giving Milly a weak smile that created an image that was really quite bizarre. "I'm sorry about the morning call. I'd thought I was being clever, but Suzaku made sure to divest me of that misapprehension—in between rendering herself half-asphyxiated from her own laughter…"
"I won't lie and say I wasn't a little miffed about it," Milly replied, finally identifying the image as one of her lover being genuinely apologetic, like she'd done something actually wrong, instead of her usual mistakes that were little more than casualties of her particular sort of awkwardness. She found that she did not much care for this look on her Justine's face, as though she was awaiting some sort of punishment or a passing of judgement for her misreading of the circumstances. "A morning where I don't get to see your face or hear your voice isn't likely to be a very good one, I'm afraid. Just…don't do it again, okay?"
Her Justine nodded in response, and Milly could only imagine how many times her intended had already put her foot in her mouth since the morning the duchess had had, that silence was her first recourse and not something she needed to be reminded was an option, that she truthfully owed an explanation to no one. And not for the first time, Milly thought once more on the subject of Kururugi Suzaku, and on how the realisation that she had perhaps judged the girl a bit hastily (and certainly much too harshly) upon their first meeting was no longer as begrudging or indeed as unwelcome as it might have been only a year past.
Speaking of whom…
"Suzaku's been a very good friend to you, hasn't she?" Milly mused, threading her fingers together and leaning forward onto them. With every moment that ticked past, she felt oddly soothed, as though the bleak pit of ennui that had threatened to swallow her whole more than once in the past was being driven further and further off. She was enchanted by the quirk at the corner of her love's lips, the obvious fondness in her long-suffering sigh, the way her amethyst eyes lost their shame and sparkled without reservation like the gems they were. The cocking of her dark, arched brow—so striking, so dramatic—in bemusement was at once alluring and mesmerising, and though the distance, that she could not merely reach out to touch and to hold those high cheekbones in her hands, could not run her fingers over and across that smooth porcelain skin, immaculate as fine marble, but soft and giving and warm and so full of precious life, was agony, it was a sweet pain; and as a sign of the love she bore this girl, she treasured it dearly.
"She's insufferable," her Justine complained, but the quirk at the corner of those full, kissable lips persisted, giving the lie to her vexation. "She's an absolute wench and a half, and I don't know what I'd do without her, to be quite honest. More than once I've been in some situation or other where she gives cover for my interpersonal blunders, or points out when I've made a rather obvious error. Like with what I tried to do today, for example…"
No, no, this just wouldn't do. She raised her hand. "And that's enough of that. My love, I've said what I wanted to say on the subject once already. Please, don't make me repeat myself. I know you meant well, so it's not something I want you flagellating yourself over. Okay?"
Milly's bride halted, her mouth ajar in the initial motions of forming words for speech, and her jaw clicked shut as she took a deep breath that revealed the trembling nerves in the uneasy movement of her shoulders, forcing the blonde to bury the surging antipathy that flashed through her. Marianne vi Britannia is dead, and my Justine will misinterpret any show of displeasure on my part. She's expecting my ire to be directed at her. It's up to me to soothe that away…
At last, her Justine nodded once, quite sharply, and Milly grinned at the dual surge of affection and warmth that radiated across her chest from her core. The furrow in the raven-haired girl's brow began to ease, and though Milly ached to reach through the screen and smooth it away with her own fingers, to feel that supple flesh against her own once more, to remind herself that perfection truly could exist in the world, she could convince herself that she was satisfied with comforting her raison d'être from across a distance of about eight thousand three hundred kilometres, at least for a little while.
She'd expected this separation to be a great torment, but nothing could have prepared her for this two year long reality, this…purgatorial half-measure.
"You're still wearing the collar I gave you," she remarked, half because she suddenly found herself in desperate need of reassurance, that this hadn't been a colossal misjudgement on both of their parts, and in large part because the subject needed changing anyways.
Her Justine, treasure that she was, blinked at her owlishly, somehow surprised that that was a detail worthy of note—for there that latticework choker of pristine pale silver and flawless burnished ruby sat at the hollow of her pale, fluted throat, in just as excellent of a condition as it'd been when she'd gone to pick it up from the master jeweller she had discreetly commissioned for the piece. There was an impulse to worry the soft flesh around it black and blue that flashed suddenly into being, but she filed that away for the next time she'd be able to act upon such ideas; intrusive thoughts of lurid fantasies had become increasingly more common over the past year and a half as she'd grown into her libido, rowdy thing that it was, and in the wake of the night they'd shared, they'd only grown more sharply vivid for having the visceral, carnal reality to draw upon. "Well, of course I am. I'd said I would, didn't I? Why would I leave any gift you've given me unattended to gather dust? That sounds…rather nonsensically wasteful."
Milly chuckled fondly, and the warmth that seared itself into her heart in that very moment was one of the sweetest agonies that she'd ever known. "How does it feel?"
"Comfortable…secure," she replied thoughtfully, laying slender, nimble, elegant fingers against the metal lightly. "It's not heavy, per se, but I can never quite manage to put its presence out of my mind. It…it feels like you, really. I'm quite fond of it—it was a very thoughtful gift indeed…"
From the warming of her face, Milly could only guess at how flushed her cheeks were.
"But how was your day off?" her Justine continued, seeming to return to what she'd initially wanted to discuss. "Was the outing successful? Did you find something you enjoyed?"
"I did indeed," said Milly, a delightful idea causing her own lips to curve into a half-smile.
"Truly?!" her Justine asked, and she seemed so overjoyed and invigorated that it made Milly feel almost a bit cruel for what she was about to do.
"But of course," she replied. Then she gave her fiancée a teasing wink, and continued, "You could say that I'm speaking to her right this very moment, as a matter of fact."
There was a wicked joy in seeing how quickly her love grew flustered. "Be serious, please…"
"Oh, I'm afraid I'm rather deathly serious," Milly said, letting a small taste of the desire she felt slip into her voice, and savouring the slightly sadistic glee that came from reducing her betrothed to incoherent, rambling speechlessness. "I fear I'm only growing to enjoy you more and more as our time goes on, as it so happens. But Sayoko took me to see an old friend of hers today, and while neither he nor what he offers as it relates to leisure activities could possibly hold a candle to you, my love, both are something I could quite easily see myself growing more thoroughly acquainted with in the coming days. So don't worry your pretty little head about how I'm enjoying myself, okay? This was sweet, but it was also entirely unnecessary."
"I just sometimes feel like it's a little lopsided, how you indulge—"
"Justine."
The girl flinched slightly at the sharpness of Milly's tone just there, but to her credit, she knew what her mistake was, and rallied. That line of thinking is a habit I'll have to break her from… "Anyway, I met someone new myself yesterday, coincidentally enough."
"Oh?" Milly prompted, intrigued. "And who are they?"
"Well, it's two someones, actually—a Lloyd, Earl of Asplund, PhD., together with his friend and, honestly, minder, a doctoral student by the name of Cécile Croomy," her Justine elaborated, the features of her face smoothing as she settled into her element, and while Milly personally found a great delight in how her love seemed to struggle adorably with intimacy, and with the idea that someone could—and did—put no one else above her, she was equally as enraptured watching her brilliant bride's wondrous mind at work, recalling small details to a level of precision that was, quite frankly, baffling. "He was a guest lecturer during my Mechanical and Applied Sciences class yesterday morning, and Suzaku and I ran into him at that café I told you about a few weeks ago."
Thankfully, Milly took great pains to ensure that her recollection of her bride's interests and more mundane joys was nothing short of encyclopaedic; else, she didn't know that she'd be able to pull the name of the venue from memory. "Café Flamel?"
"The very same," she confirmed, her amethyst eyes sparkling with the same amazed joy she always expressed whenever Milly recalled something she'd mentioned. Conceptually, it was perhaps a bit vexing, as if the girl had expected the information to go in one ear and out the other, but the look of practically childlike wonder made Milly's head go fuzzy and made it quite hard indeed to keep hold of any irritation she might otherwise have been able to muster on the subject. "Anyways, the three of us spoke, Suzaku joined us part of the way through and smoothed out a mistake I might have otherwise made—I swear, she's a veritable social lubricant sometimes—and as it turns out, the man's a bona fide visionary. What I saw him proposing… And then he showed me some of his concept designs, his projections and such, and I am in no way exaggerating when I say that I was floored. I took the liberty of offering him a job, since you were talking about being in dire need of qualified personnel—if that's alright, of course."
"Why wouldn't it be alright?" Milly sighed, but she was smiling all the same even still. She could be annoyed later. "Would you trust him to head a project?"
"Admittedly, no, not on his own," her Justine confessed. "But I think that Lloyd and Miss Croomy were a bit of a package deal anyways, so that's not too much of a hindrance in the grand scheme of things. She seems like she'd excel in the areas of project management that would find him wanting—and some of the comments from her professors at the Imperial Colchester Institute seem to corroborate that impression."
"I see," said Milly, considering and mulling it over. She was going to say yes, of course: her Justine had not once given her reason to doubt her assessments of people's capabilities, and even if she had, if this Earl Asplund was even half the find that the princess was making him out to be, him and his friend both… She'd have to be a fool to turn her nose up at it, in that case. "You gave them a means to contact us?"
"They have the information. I'd expect them to reach out by no later than…approximately ten in the morning, Tokyo-time. And given the trial that finding funding for their work has apparently been thus far, I have every reason to believe their formal response to be an emphatic 'yes.'"
"Well, that resolves the issue on one front at the very least, which is beneficial," Milly considered, leaning forward again and threading her fingers anew. "Incidentally, the friend of Sayoko's I mentioned? He proposed that he use his connections to help us get ahold of other experts. One mad genius can only do so much if everyone we have working with him is an absolute neanderthal. He needs to be able to delegate if we're going to make any headway…"
"Connections?" her Justine inquired, pursing her lips quizzically.
Milly bit back the impulse to ravish her mouth once again, to bite down on her lip until it bled, leaving the fullness of her pout swollen and bruised, and instead supplied, "Yakuza."
"Ah," the younger girl noted, nodding in sudden comprehension. "Yes, that would make a good deal of sense… Well, that would make Miss Sumeragi's value to your endeavours largely ceremonial in nature, given the resources the yakuza will probably still have at its fingertips even now, domestic organised crime being what it is. It certainly has its uses, I'll give the entire class of criminal that much…"
"What's this about yakuza?" asked a new voice, brash and brazen—Suzaku's, specifically.
"Apparently Milly's met one, and he's offered to help her find people," her Justine explained.
"That so? What group?"
"I…don't believe that's come up yet…" She returned her attention to Milly, but the duchess was in a good enough mood that she didn't bother letting her bride ask the question.
"Tōjō Clan, apparently," Milly supplied. "Would the name 'Majima Gorō' mean anything to you?"
"The Mad Dog of Shimano?" Suzaku asked, her voice muted with faint astonishment as she came into view, wild and free as ever she was. "I mean, sure, the Tōjō-kai were totally some of the heaviest hitters in the business way back in the day, but that guy's a goddamn legend. Fuckin' A. Talk about fishing bream with shrimp as bait…"
Milly blinked for a moment. "…Come again?"
"Ah… That must be a Japanese saying, then…" Suzaku muttered. "Don't worry about it! I just said that you landed a big-time find with very little effort. Oh, and Justine, you'd better hit the showers."
"Everything alright?" asked Milly.
Her Justine flashed her a somewhat uneasy smile. "Oh, yes, we're just a little bit behind schedule. The first round of mock battle rankings are being posted today, so we've got a somewhat heavier itinerary than usual, that's all."
"Ah. Well, don't let me keep you."
"That implies I'd have any reason to deny you keeping me," the raven-haired girl replied, giving her a fiendish smirk. "But we really need to be moving. Night, love—we'll speak again after you've slept."
The image winked out on her bride waving at her, beating a swift and not at all subtle retreat from the situation in the process. But Milly blinked once again, briefly and yet absolutely stunned for the second time in as many minutes. Wait, was that… Did she just tease me?