He didn’t need to be ashamed of it here. Misao stretched his neck out and looked straight back at the owner, hiding nothing.
“I did it,” Masaomi confessed crisply.
Misao had vowed to stand firm no matter what was said to him, but that threatened to bring tears to his eyes. He felt a dull ache in his neck.
Enraged, the owner’s mouth hung half open, shaking with anger.
“How dare you... how dare you! I raised that child as my very own, and you’ve ruined him!”
“Well, sir,” Masaomi responded, drawing himself up beautifully in his flocked coat, “I want to take responsibility for my actions. Would you please listen to what we have to say calmly?”
“How can I be calm about a thing like this?” he shouted angrily, leaping up from his seat with the force of his anger.
“Disgraceful.”
Gikuyo had sat silently watching the proceedings until then, but now she snorted and berated the owner. She glared at him fiercely.
“Sit back down at once.”
Her voice was threatening, and he huddled back down in his seat fearfully.
Seeing their bizarre power relationship, Masaomi glanced meaningfully over at Misao. Misao turned to look back at him incredulously.
The owner had settled down physically, but he was still grumbling to himself. Gikuyo slipped the bowl of her pipe into a bag of tobacco and, without once looking at him, spit out a harsh insult. “Just shut up, you horrible little man!”
Despite the affront, the owner obediently shut his mouth on his abuse. As if she expected nothing different, Gikuyo knocked the ash out of her pipe and into the heater.
“You paid back enough to cover your room and board each month. Saying that that’s all just money lost is far too patronizing and greedy.”
Misao’s shoulders trembled. Also sensing what she meant, Masaomi stared at Gikuyo.
“Will you feed him enough to keep him off the streets?”
Masaomi nodded once, firmly. “Of course.”
Misao felt strange.
He didn’t know if it was because he had Masaomi there beside him or because he never thought Masaomi would be with him. No matter how he stared at the woman smoking a pipe across from him, his heart remained still and he could think of nothing to complain about.
“I mean for the rest of his life.”
Masaomi smiled faintly at Gikuyo’s qualification. “Of course.”
Seeing the discussion wrapping up between the two of them, the owner could no longer restrain himself and he cut in frantically.
“Absolutely not! I will never give up Misao!”
A heavyclangrang out through the room, and ashes tumbled to the floor.
“Would you shut up!”
Gikuyo had slammed her pipe down on the heater and snapped at the owner, staring piercingly at him with a dangerous glint in her eye.
“If you want me to continue working here, you will be silent!”
The owner choked.
“Tamaki” Misao whispered, and Gikuyo glared at him. Then she turned to Masaomi.
“Take him wherever you like. The owner himself has said this isn’t a question of money. We couldn’t accept anything from you. And we’ve done so much to offend you already.”
Gikuyo wrapped it all up indifferently, but Masaomi bowed deeply to her for what seemed at least a hundred times.
“Thank you for entrusting your boy to me.”
Gikuyo glanced down at Masaomi without the tiniest flicker of emotion as he thanked her, and arched an eyebrow disapprovingly at Misao.
“How strange. You haven’t said a word all this time.”
Misao stared straight at Gikuyo in silence, then bowed his head to the same angle as Masaomi’s. “Thank you.”
Misao spoke quietly, his face to the floor.
“For giving birth to me.”
Misao sat back up after this final goodbye. Gikuyo was gazing up at the purple smoke as it rose to the ceiling, as if she found it utterly fascinating.
“By the way, Master Towa.”
Masaomi finally raised his head as Gikuyo called his name dully.
She very slowly turned her eyes from the ceiling to Masaomi’s face, bringing her pipe to her lips.
“Ukigumo has no lingering emotions where you’re concerned, does she?”
Gikuyo narrowed her eyes and savorously exhaled a cloud of smoke.
“There may be some small concern,” Masaomi answered solemnly, then turned to look earnestly at Misao. “But he is the only one I want.”
Misao smiled, gazing back at Masaomi.
It’s true.
Misao knew that with those words alone, he could follow the man anywhere.
Conclusion
The seabirds swam through the air.
When Misao looked up, their wings looked black against the light. Or maybe the birds really were black. They spread their wings wide and slipped easily through the blue sky.
Masaomi stood beside him, looking up at the sky as well. His eyes were squinted against the brilliant light. The flaps of his black flocked coat fluttered in the wind, like another seabird joining the flock.
Misao smiled to himself, and Masaomi looked over at him. There was a question in his eyes, so Misao nodded.
His long hair frolicked with the gusting wind, but he pushed it behind his ears.
He inhaled deeply, filling his nostrils with the scent of salt water.
His eyes twinkling, he gazed out over the pure nature that spread out before him.
Peacefully.
Majestically.
The glittering reflections of light.
“It’s blue,” Misao whispered, and above him a seabird dove to skim low over the waves, then a moment later, soared high into the sky.
Postscript
Cherry blossom season has arrived. At this time of year, you just want to stop what you’re doing and gaze up at them for hours. How have you all been spending this glorious spring? This is Venio Tachibana, who just fantastically destroyed the laptop she’d been using since the middle of this book.
This book is, obviously, about a brothel. My editor suggested that I write something set in the pleasure quarters, and I actually found it very interesting to write something so Japanese. At the same time, while I was writing, the descriptions of bright cities made me so wistful... We always want what we can’t have, I suppose.
And pleasure quarters mean kimonos. And in the Meiji era, Western clothes. Tooko Miyagi gave us some gorgeous illustrations showing the contrast between East and West. I always thought of these places as very visually beautiful, and the illustrations only cemented that for me. I forced a lot of immoral demands on Ms. Miyagi, but despite it all she delivered a gorgeous level of detail in her drawings for the book. So I’ll take this opportunity to thank her copiously, and to apologize. And also to everyone who helped out in so many ways, most of all my editor, thank you!
And to all of you who are reading my postscript: we’ve reached the end, but thank you so much for choosing this book.
I may be getting a little ahead of myself, but we have loose plans next year to publish another story linked to this one, so perhaps we’ll meet again sometime. I hope so. Goodbye for now.
Venio Tachibana
Love Water (Yaoi Novel) Page 13