#will the revelations that lie herein be controversial? idk fam

[thekitchensnk]

and the spider lilies bloomed in the fall (chapter 15)

Rating: T Warnings: Sexual themes, violence Pairing: Gin/Ran Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15

“They say that lovers doomed never to see each other again still see the higanbana growing along their path, even to this day.”

A girl collapses on a dusty road one day. A boy takes her home.

The girl lives.

—

(The boy doesn’t.)

As the youngest girls working at the Floating Moon, it was Rangiku, Sayaka and Ayame’s job to wash the dishes after the first meal of the day. They had perfected a routine, with Ayame, ever-meticulous, doing the washing, her arms plunged to the elbow in hot, soapy water, Rangiku drying, and Sayaka dashing around to put away the bowls.

When the second gong sounded, however, they would dart off to the room to get washed, dressed and made-up for the evening’s work, leaving Rangiku to finish washing up. It was one of the few times of the day where she would ever have time to herself, and it felt unnatural. She would stand alone, in the centre of the room, listening to the whir of voices and rushed footsteps around her, and her heart would sink. The brothel was like a heart, with all its segmented valves and chambers, and left to herself, alone, Rangiku felt aimless and lost. She had never done well on her own.

She would quickly finish up whatever washing was left, and trudge up the stairs to the tub where everyone took their baths. She was always the last, and least essential, to get bathed, and so the water was often second or third-hand by the time she got washed, though it was still thick with the jammy, indolic jasmine smell that they used to scent the water, and it could be smelled from several feet away from the tub.

In times to come, when she smelled the scent of jasmine on a noblewoman, she could never help but smile to herself. Jasmine on noblewomen; jasmine on whores. No woman was so different from one another, not deep down.

The tub was small, and she needed to scrunch her knees up almost to her chest to fit in it now, but she could submerge her head entirely, and the water was warm. She dreamed of the day when she could soak there to her heart’s content, knowing that it would never come.

She slipped the ring from her finger. She did not know what metal it was, but she did not want it to rust.

A warm bath had been a revelation after so many years spent bathing in the river. A river-bath had not been so bad in the summer, when the sweat trickled down her back and behind her knees. Their small house had offered little ventilation, and so they had sweltered together in the heat.

His hands had always been cold, but in the night, when the cicadas had sung their night-chorus, they had both roasted. Never one to be shy, he would have no compunctions about stripping off his yukata, letting his bare chest cool in the summer air. She had grown more circumspect, the roaming eyes of men in town teaching her to be shy about her body, and the sight of his bare torso in those months just before he left would have her heart hammering in her chest and her blood pooling in her cheeks, though she had not been able to say why. After that, the cool embrace of the river had been like a balm.

In the present, mind years and miles away, she sank beneath the water, sank until it covered her face. She shut her eyes and felt her heart beat in her chest. With her eyes closed, in the stillness of the warm water, it boomed thickly in her ears.

In winter, they’d had to boil water and leave it outside in the freezing air until it became cool enough to touch. They would wipe themselves down then with whatever rags they had that were still clean. There had been no soap, and certainly no jasmine. The chill of the air on her damp skin had set her hair on end, and she had shivered and breathed heavily with the cruel bite of the cold on her skin. It had seeped into her bones and her teeth had chattered.

They had clung to each other, back then, because there had been no other choice. It had been lie close, or freeze.

(But that was a lie, she knew. It had never been about the cold. Not for her.)

He had always felt the cold worse than she did. Of course he had. He had been so slender, so thin- she could see his jutting collar bones and his sharp shoulders even with his yukata on, and he had always been so pale that he was almost luminous. He had sought her warmth like a snake sought the sun. The cold put him to sleep; it filled him with such a heavy lethargy that he would lie there, half-dozing.

She would always watch him secretly then, bashfully even, and watch his beautiful, drowsing face.

Under the water, her heart constricted in her chest. She wanted to shout, to smash something, to cry. To see him again and kill him; to see him again and kiss him, as she had done once before, in that moment which she held secretly wrapped around her heart.

Why? Why did you leave me?

She screwed up her small hands into fists. She bit at her lip. She screamed through her nose, and a thousand tiny bubbles rose and broke on the surface. But no one could hear her.

She surfaced when she ran out of air, and felt suddenly dizzy with the steam and the heat and the lack of oxygen. She allowed her head to tilt backwards, and her lungs to breathe. The air was thick with the smell of jasmine.

No more thoughts of him tonight, she vowed to herself calmly.

Somewhere down below her, the third gong was ringing. She would have twenty minutes to get ready, and then it would be show time. There would be no chance to think- just the electric beat of music, the liquid joy of sake, the hope of a fist fight and the thrill of a dance. The thought lifted her spirits, and she rose from her bath, still dizzy, but eager to get to work.

She towelled herself down quickly, and threw on the clothes she had been wearing earlier, though she had already done a full afternoon’s work in them, and she set off for her room with determination.

She took the stairs two at a time, pressingly aware that the sun was beginning to set in the sky, and her shift would be starting soon, whether she was ready for it or not. Stampeding down the corridor, she slammed open the paper doors, and they rattled in their frames for several seconds afterwards as she strode into the room.

Ayame, almost unrecognisable with her face painted white and her hair elaborately pinned up, turned her head to her.

"An elephant would make less noise than you," she sniffed. Customary scathing remarks delivered, she turned back to Sayaka, whose hair she had been in the midst of pinning back with a beautiful, fake jade comb, a frown of concentration between her darkened brows.

There was something magical about this- this time, this small and separate space, where clever-handed women worked mysterious wonders on each other's bodies and faces, painting and tucking and working until they were transformed into the stuff of dreams. It was a small zone of hush amidst the tumult of the brothel, a place where, even if only for an hour, quiet reigned as the women readied themselves.

The work of metamorphosis was a team effort. It could not be done alone. For big names like Rin, who were to be dressed in elaborate, layered kimono, the simple effort of putting on her clothes required a band of assistants. Everyone worked as a well-oiled unit, like clockwork, waxing hair, painting faces, burning charcoal for kohl with which to line their hidden eyebrows. The smell of burning lingered in the air, mixing with the heady jasmine which radiated from their bodies.

Ayame cupped Sayaka's jaw gently in her hand, careful beyond measure not to smudge the painstaking work done on her base. Sayaka, rendered immobile, caught Rangiku's eye and grinned helplessly.

"No, no," Ayame chided softly, a thin, crimson-laden brush in her hand. "Don't let up now. You're almost done."

Sayaka gave Rangiku a weak shrug, and her sharp eyes snapped back to Ayame.

"Come here, you," Yuki beckoned, gesturing to a cushion in front of her with a comb. "Stop pestering Ayame-chan."

Rangiku padded gently across the tatami and knelt obediently in front of her. Yuki sighed a long-suffering sigh and raised her arms to the ceiling.

"Come on, Rangiku-chan!" she groaned. "Your hair is still soaked! Ayame-chan, pass me that towel."

Ayame, her eyes still focused on the painstaking task of painting Sayaka's lips, reached down next to her. Her eyes never once leaving Sayaka, she tossed the towel to Yuki, and it soared straight into her open hand.

"Nice one!" Rangiku called appreciatively, only to be disrupted when Yuki vigorously towel dried her hair. Her head shook with the force. She rubbed at her head, and shot Yuki a scowl.

"That's a bit better," Yuki said warmly, running her comb through the tangled at the bottom of Rangiku's hair. "You'd have caught a cold otherwise, working with wet hair."

Rangiku had slept through winter nights so cold that her hair had almost frozen, but she said nothing. She could not help but lean into her touch. No one had ever brushed her hair for her before Yuki, and she relished the sensation; it was so soothing, so comforting to have someone look after her. The sensation put her half to sleep, and she always became pliant and biddable as Yuki brushed through her hair.

It was tangled after a long afternoon of scrubbing, even though she’d remembered to tie it back. It was fortunate for her that Yuki’s hands were so quick and so skilled, obviously well-practiced at the job, and long since used to doing it.

"You're so good at this, Yuki-san," Rangiku mumbled. "You should give up the game and become a hairdresser."

Yuki hummed tunelessly under her breath as she worked, but she let out a soft, warm laugh at Rangiku's words. "It's one of the few ways of getting you to be quiet, you." She paused, eying up a tangle. "I used to do this for Kanae back in the day, and I’ve done it for most girls here since. I'm an old hand at it." She took the comb to the tangle, but held the hair so that it wouldn't tug on Rangiku's scalp as she fought with it. That was part of Yuki's skill- it never hurt when she brushed hair. "She had the most beautiful hair," Yuki said pensively. "So long and sleek and silver. Like starlight. Or the moon." She looked out, unseeing, seemingly spirited away by some memory. "It's a shame what happened to her."

Rangiku laughed sleepily, scarcely able to think of Kanae, the whore whom she had known back when she’d lived with Gin. "That's silly, Yuki-san," she informed her. "Kanae-san has black hair. She's going gray, but her hair's not silver."

Yuki tapped her gently on the nose with the comb. "That shows what you know. Kanae has silver hair and always has done. She dyes it. Started doing it when she was here, because she got tired of all the unpleasant attention she got from it. People were scared of her. They used to shout at her." Yuki paused, and a wistful note entered her voice. "She used to shout right back."

Rangiku fell quiet. She had promised herself not to think of him, but-

"My friend had hair like that," she confessed to Yuki bravely. "I don't think anyone shouted at him though-" She paused, remembering how many times he had infuriated shop keepers, strangers, passers-by, and pretty much everyone else whom he had ever met in town, as if it was a personal challenge he had set himself to piss everyone off as quickly and thoroughly as possible. “Well,” she amended with a small smile, “at least if they did, it wasn’t because of his hair.”

They were both quiet for a moment, Yuki’s hands brushing through her hair rhythmically. Inwardly, Rangiku burned with curiosity, always insatiable for gossip. “What happened to Kanae-san, Yuki-san?” she asked tentatively, biting at her lower lip.

Yuki’s hands slowed.

Rangiku could not see her face, but when she spoke, there was a tight quality to her voice which spoke of years of pain and regret and decisions not taken.

“She was thrown out,” Yuki said simply.

Rangiku tried to turn her neck to see her expression, but it was futile. “Why would Chiyo-san do that?” she asked in confusion.

“Kanae-“ Yuki started, but had to pause. She swallowed, and Rangiku could hear the tremble in her voice.

“Kanae was never easy to live with, you know? She was a spitfire and she spat venom like a snake. Didn’t matter whether you were her best friend or her worst enemy. Even when she first came here, she was all fire and poison. She was only fifteen.” Yuki’s voice was weighty and melancholic. She paused again, and her voice took on an urgent tone. She spoke quickly. “I’m not sure how much of this it is right for me to say. I don’t want to infringe on what little privacy she has left.”

Rangiku was discomfited, and she nodded uncertainly.

“She had already had a child by then. I don’t know whether she gave birth here, or whether it died with her in her first life, and I never asked about it, not once, but that’s why she came here, I think. I never asked. To make enough money to send back to the people who watched after the child she left behind.”

Rangiku felt her breath grow shallow, and she hung on Yuki’s every word. A realisation hung in the air, but she refused to dwell on it even for a moment. It was important, she suddenly felt in her bones, to hear this sorry tale to its conclusion.

“How did you find out about it?” Rangiku asked, sickening dread coiling in her belly.

Yuki’s voice grew distant, and Rangiku was suddenly glad that she couldn’t see the woman’s face.

“She was my best friend. I loved her. I loved her more than I’ve ever loved anything in my life, and I regret to this day that I didn’t run through those doors after her when she left. Of course she told me.” Yuki paused, and Rangiku heard her sigh quietly. “She would have told me anything.”

“Why did she leave?” Rangiku asked gently.

Yuki’s breath hitched. “She got pregnant.”

Rangiku did turn this time. Yuki wasn’t even looking at her anymore; her eyes were dim and distant, as if staring out into the past.

“Yuki-san?” Rangiku asked tremulously.

Yuki looked down at her then, and she smiled a smile as thin and fragile as an egg shell. She cupped her cheek softly, her fingers brushing against Rangiku’s golden hair.

“Rangiku-chan,” she sighed. “The party, the red lanterns, the sake, the music- it’s all beautiful, eh? It’s easy to forget when you’ve got the beat of the music in your bones and you’re making easy money and you’re dressing up in beautiful silks and you get a fine meal every day and everything’s going perfect, perfect, perfect,. But it doesn’t always go perfect. We’re here to work, Rangiku-chan. That’s all. We can stay while we can work, and when we can’t? Out on the streets we go, cold and hungry, nowhere to go. Chiyo is better than almost all of them, but in the end, that’s not saying much, is it? This is a brothel, not a nursery. That’s what happened to Kanae. Pregnant, kicked out, and forced to work on the streets.”

Rangiku’s eyes were wide.

Down below, the final gong rang out, and its vibrations shuddered through the old timber building, sending dust flying from the ceiling. It was time to get to work, but all of a sudden, Rangiku’s heart was not in it.

Yuki pressed her to her chest quickly, and stroked her hair. “I’m sorry,” she said gently. “That was a very serious conversation.” She paused. “I’m grateful to you, you know? Because you came here, I know she’s out there. I know she’s alive.” Yuki smiled suddenly. “I know that she still spits fire and that she still dyes her hair, that Kanae is out there, cursing god’s name and who knows who else’s. Love involves so much unhappiness, Rangiku-chan, but I’m not unhappy right now.”

Suddenly, Rangiku got the sense that Yuki hadn’t been entirely truthful when she had said that her policy on love was to wait and see.

Huh, she thought.

Yuki rose. Across the room, Sayaka and Ayame were arm in arm, looking resplendent in emerald green and hibiscus purple cottons. They waved absent-mindedly as they left, their heads together in conversation. Echoing down the corridor, Rangiku could hear Ayame shriek “Sayaka!” in shock, and Sayaka give one of her patented belly laughs.

For the first time in a long time, Rangiku’s chest constricted with worry, with a sudden fear of the ever-shifting and uncertain future. Nothing here was stable; nothing here was safe.

It was inevitable, she realised. Change would come, whether she liked it or not, and it always would, sweeping over her and turning her world on its head again and again and again. There could be no security anywhere, just this- the constant, unending effort of building her life up, like a sandcastle on the seashore. She clenched her fists fiercely.

“Rangiku-chan?” Yuki asked, her voice tender. “I’ll see you down there, alright?”

Rangiku looked up at her quickly, but there was no sign of the pain that had marred Yuki’s face before. It was smooth, still, gentle- her expression as blank as the makeup she had painted on to it.

"Yeah," she said, her voice thin and distracted. "I'll be down in a moment."

It was not until Yuki had slipped down the corridor that she allowed herself to think, to dwell on the ramifications of what she had learned.

Her chest tightened with anxiety at her newly-gained knowledge, and the shock made her dizzy. She had to take several deep breaths to calm herself.

Kanae, the whore who had lived in the town she and Gin had walked to so many times, had silver hair. Hair like moonlight. Hair as beautiful as his.

Silver hair and an abandoned baby.

It had to be.

It made too much sense not to be.

Some part of her had noticed it even the very first time they had met. She had looked at Kanae's high cheekbones and narrow eyes and thought, there's a word for good looks like those- and there had been. Kitsune-gao; fox-featured, for the strange, beautiful face she shared with her son.

"I'll do you one favour," the whore had said, and even after Gin had left, Kanae had refused to tell her why. Rangiku had been too frightened to ask about it the first time round, and too distraught and distracted the second.

Was it because she had been Gin's friend?

But the woman had warned her about him, warned her that he was dangerous- had warned her about her son.

The world was spinning around her head. If she didn't sit for a moment, she would fall. She stumbled. Her mind was filled with a cacophony of questions.

Why would she abandon him? She had been there the whole time, in plain sight. Why? If she was his mother-

Had he even known?

He had never said anything about it, but then- would he have? His secrecy was pathological. He’d never once told her where it was that he went. He was a natural-born liar. Why would he have told her anything?

Deep down, her heart sinking, Rangiku suspected miserably that he had not known.

He had treated Kanae with the same idle curiosity and mocking cruelty with which he’d treated everyone, and she thought (she had to, to think him a full human being) he would not treat his own family like that. Even if it had been hatred, he would have to have felt something for her if he'd known.

(Wouldn’t he?)

The notion that she might have uncovered something about him, that some elusive and fragmentary part of his past belonged to her now, unbeknownst to him, sat like a lead weight in her stomach.

It was simultaneously thrilling and deeply, deeply shameful. She revelled quietly in the fact that something of his was hers now, and he didn't even know it. It was a kind of power, to know someone else's secrets, and she had never known any kind of power over him. It filled her with a kind of giddy thrill. She wanted to gather his secret up and wrap it around her heart where she kept all the secrets of her own, to keep it safe, to keep it warm, to keep it for him. But she felt incredibly guilty too, that it had come into her possession without his consent, and that he could be going about his life unaware that the knowledge even existed. Her throat tightened with anxiety.

He had always been so private. She could not predict how he would feel.

If she were to find him, and if she were to tell him- if she were to say “I’ve discovered something about you, something which you don’t even know yourself” and if she were to divulge the truth, would he be grateful? Would he look at her with appreciation? With thanks? Would his eyes shine with gratitude; would they soften to look at her? Would he care about her again?

Her heart was full and aching with the fantasy. Please, she whispered childishly to herself. Please.

Or-

Would he just hate her more?

She felt suddenly dispirited, and she exhaled shakily.

What did it matter anyway?

He was gone.

He had abandoned her.

He would never see her again.

She was a fool to think otherwise, and a fool twice over to dwell like this on the past of the boy who had left her behind. Her heart trembled.

She was aware that she was sat on the ground.

She picked herself up, her limbs leaden, and she neatened up her yukata numbly, dusting dirt from its skirt.

Down below, music was beginning to play. She could hear the intricate and winding patterns of the shamisen. The sounds of voices in rapt conversation were beginning to murmur through the brothel.

She picked herself up because if she had learnt anything in her small life, it was that no one else was going to do it for it her. She was on her own.

She gave herself a fierce glare.

“Come on, you,” she said aggressively, and she slapped her own cheeks to bring herself back from the edge.

She was late for work, mysteries and secrets be damned, and so she went, arms swinging by her sides in determination.

An uncharitable person might have said that she was just running from her problems.

But another bright night of music was just about to begin, the stirrings and the promise of its abandon hanging tantalisingly ahead of her. Who cared if it was shallow? Who cared if it was an empty, futile attempt to beat back the dark? Who cared if those who gave themselves to the music most fervently were the runaways and fugitives who had decided that reality was too much, too frightening, too lonely? Down below, there would be joy and dancing and sake and fun- blessed, distracting fun.

Fun enough maybe to chase away the image of a teenaged girl cast out onto the streets, like so much rubbish, alone.

Fun enough to chase away the memory of a boy with hair like moonlight, who haunted Rangiku every time she was alone.