It was mid winter when I met Ohashi. The leaves had shriveled up like rotten plums, caving into themselves with no reprieve. The grass was unyielding, honed, and cold beneath my feet. The walk alone was enough to numb my legs and my skin was likely to never heal from the way they tugged me over the rocks and pebbles and thorns that wetly tore me apart.

      Looking back on it, now that I'm older, I wonder if perhaps it would have been better to have never met her.

      I would never forget the way I felt when I saw hair with her hair intricately curled in loops, cupping her cheeks. The clips and pins were embodied in her hair like shards of sparkling gold. I had learned to pray to indifferent gods at their wooden temples since before I could walk, but I had never seen one until I met Ohashi.

      In seeing her, I tried to palm my hands over my dress in order to straighten out the wrinkles. However, there was nothing I could do about the stains of dirt and mud that soaked the hem of my dress. They were visible memories of the way I was shoved onto the slimy ground. If I closed my eyes I could still remember the taste of the dirt on my tongue. It was like eating burnt rice, charred and crispy when you bit down. It had made my lips dry like the feeling of sand sticking in between your toes.

      I brushed my fingers across my lips, finding that they were cracked and dry. It did not bother me as much as my tongue, which was parched in attempts to find moisture that did not exist.

      In contrast, hers were shaded in a red so bright and full and perfect.

      Perhaps it had always been a frown.

      It took me a moment to get away from the pure awe that had overcome, to realize that my fist-sized heart had enlarged with jealousy. It was such an odd emotion, bitter like poison on my tongue. During the years since I had been sold, I had experienced a wide variety of emotions—despair, anger, sorrow, acceptance—but never jealousy. Who was there to be jealous of when surrounded by girls just as shamed and sinful and lustful as the highest buyer had desired.

      So I pressed my palms hard against the material that covered my waist. Undoubtedly, she must have seen me like some kind of savage. To her, I must be some slut from Nichijou's district, whose milky complexion was absent from the art of makeup. I must have looked like a mess of filth from beneath the caked mud that covered my thighs.

      "She's a beautiful specimen underneath it all," Yoshiwara Ichiyaki commented as his fingers stroked through my knotted hair.

      The beautiful woman, in the glamour of gold and silk, looked like a porcelain doll while I knew I looked like a rotten plum that was caked in dirt and tears.

      "Did you dig her from some bog?" Those were Ohashi's first words to me and briefly made me feel like a scolded child.

      "She tried to run away," Yoshiwara stated with his head bowed. Seeing his head tilted down to the ground fueled me in rage to discern a man capable of bowing his head to a woman like a servant and holding my arm in a tight lock like a slaver.

      "The only filthy bog that I see is the one I am standing in right now," I realized the words had spewed from my mouth only after I had allowed them to pass.

      My cheek burned red and blue hours later as I soaked into the steaming hot water and watched as the blood and dirt transformed the clear liquid and turned it into a murky lake. Upon watching my hands turn this clear liquid brown, I wondered if it was to be my fate to add filth to whatever it is I touch.

      I dipped my chin and mouth into the water, curious if it would be possible to drown myself in this very same bog. It was only fitting if I were to disappear into the midnight corruption of something so pure. If only I had what it took to kill myself.

     The truth is I could never do it.

      My decrepit thoughts were interrupted by the sound of soft footsteps. I glanced up to see pale feet a couple steps from the large barrel that held my filth. My eyes trailed up the woman's legs, barely visible through the thin kimono that hardly covered her form. It was a silk so fine that it looked as thin as a cherry blossom petal, swaying in the wind from its decent from the tree branches.

      It did not resemble the garments that I had even been able to touch in the walls of my previous home.

      "You stare as if you've never seen me before." Ohashi's voice was a melody as she untied her obi from around her waist. Without the tie, the kimono fell to the ground, revealing every nook of her neck, including her bare chest. Around her waist still had her skirt tied securely. She stepped onto the stool and dipped inside the water. I watched carefully as the material floated up until she tossed it against the wooden bath.

      My eyes studied every inch of her face and to her hair that stayed in a bun at the base of her skull. The moisture dripped down her bare and supple neck in smooth droplets like rain from the sky. Her chest was relatively small for the most part, and she had little to no body fat. Outside of her robes, she looked more thin and brittle than a twig and I briefly wondered how many had paid to see her look so vulnerable.

      "The water is dirty," I commented, and she ran her hands over the murky surface with a sly smirk.

      "As if blood and dirt could scare me," she replied. Her fingers were on my cheek so quickly that I barely had time to recoil. "Do you know why I hit you?" For the first time I could see the hue of her eyes as she forced me to meet her stare. Her face, now that I had a good look, was a stunning dewy mold from underneath the makeup I had seen her wear like a noh mask. Even her smile was like that sculpted and practiced mask that many wore on their face as a festive joke. From one angle I saw a smile, but from the next was a demon waiting to swallow me up whole.

      I noticed next, that she was hardly vulnerable. There was ice that lingered from her touch and blades in her eyes. I hadn't noticed it before because only when she was close and you were up in her face could you see through that translucent and practiced lie.

      "No respect," I replied simply, feeling my skin burn where she touched it.

      She didn't smile or so much bat an eyelash when she brushed her fingers once more against my cheek. Every touch burned, and judging by the cold nothing in her eyes, I didn't doubt that she knew as much. "I struck you because you're weak."

      Her words stabbed into me like that of a blade, piercing into my skin over and over.

      "You wonder why?" Ohashi slightly scratched her nails over the bruising on my face. "Hardly ever do we hit the face...and you have a beautiful face. Blemishes are hard to sell. Who knows what would become of you if you became so loathsomely repugnant?"

      Her words tore away the indignation before I had time to reach out my fingers to clutch back onto it, and instead I watched it flicker away into the nothingness of her smile. A fright overtook me instead.

      Her lips finally quirked into a smile, "you get it now? You lack fear. You lack confidence. You lack the ability to know your place. It's about time I enlighten you that death is not the worst thing I can do to you," her breasts grazed across the surface of the water as her lips neared my ear. Her breath was as cold as her eyes and I briefly wondered if this goddess was actually a demon. "I will destroy you. I tell you this because I want it all to hurt."

      That night I had a dream about my mother. It was an amiable and warm memory that liquefied the frost from around my tatami mat. It made me curious if the world had ever been so bright. I could see her smile more clearly than I could ever see my own reflection that remained distorted in every shard of glass around my bare and naked feet.

      When I closed my eyes, it felt like I was given a glimpse of heaven, only to awaken and descend right back onto earth.

      I stood in front of the Mother like a fish ready to be gutted. She stripped me down to the bone with her dirt brown eyes. I could feel her crooked frown in every breath I took to every move I made. Since I couldn't stop breathing, I decided the best thing I could do was stand still.

       I wanted her to disappear. Or maybe I wished I were the fish. At least that way my suffering would be over after I choked and drowned on my own blood. Instead, my suffering was prolonged like the worm at the end of a hook. Perhaps the water would drown me instead, but knowing my luck, my body would become the water that surrounded me.

      The truth remain that there was no end.

      The Mother held my chin and turned my cheek to the side so roughly that I nearly felt my neck snap. Her eyes scrutinized every aspect of me down to my pores and hair follicles before she finally frowned. In moments following the intense brush of emotion that she tore into me, she finally let go of my chin, likely leaving a red mark against my skin.

      "Get undressed," she ordered in a grumpy hiss. I was sure that if I hadn't already been prodded and picked at on the night I was first sold, it might have made me jump.

      I slowly began to strip my clothes, and the slowness of my movements made the Mother slap my wrist. I sped up, allowing my cotton kimono to fall at my feet.

      Having never reached the peak of womanhood, I didn't have much in the area of a chest, but the Mother's hands inspected for defects regardless. Her hands were rough and cold. I noticed that despite the beauty in her hair and her silk kimono, her face was rather plain. Her face was pudgy and her arms were thick like that of a man. Her teeth were much too big and crooked, disproportionate to her lips that were thin and weary.

      Compared to Ohashi, this woman had nothing to offer in the way of a woman. I suppose some men could be desperate enough to stick it in any willing hole, but to me, I had thought the person who ran this place would be a person fit for owning a beauty like Ohashi. And now she owned me. She looked at me like I was a grain in a bowl of rice or a trout in an ocean of sharks.

      I only hoped that I was a puffer fish that would slowly break down her body from the inside.

      "Lay down on your back," she ordered next. I didn't fight it. I lay on my back and stared into the ceiling, counting the stars that I couldn't see. I wondered, while her hands spread open my legs and her fingers inspected every area of my body, that if the gods who lived in the stars ever looked down to see what injustice had been brought upon in this city.

      I had no doubt in my mind that any god had little care for me, if they even existed. Perhaps, with my wicked mind, it was for the best.

      If I had been born as ugly as the Mother, then maybe my own mother wouldn't have been left choking on her own blood in the middle of the road back in Nichijou.

      Perhaps my sheets would have never been stained red morning after morning until I lost the ability to bleed upon those sheets.

      Perhaps none of it ever mattered and the gods don't care.

      I don't care either.

      All I knew now was that the Mother's fingers were inside me, probing for any defect that could render me on the streets. Despite a part of me that hated them, I prayed that she didn't find anything.

                                                             Ƹ̵Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ

     "She's clean, but there is some dirt in her personality. As your kamuro, I figured if anyone could boil out that dirt, it's you," the Mother had told Ohashi the night later. My eyes were lowered to the ground; my hands curved towards my head as by back remained straight and nearly parallel to my folded knees. My head was bowed so close to the ground that I could see in between the cracks and nearly count the individual specs of dust. Kamuro was just another term for slave to me. I was now Ohashi's personal slave to be treated however she wished.

     I could vaguely remember the indignation of the other girls, gossiping about a child who came from nothing, trained under a Tayū who came from everything. Likely, my new status would not bode well for my popularity amongst the other Oiran.

      Ohashi stared down at me, and although I couldn't see her, I could feel her gaze linger against my neck. The Mother had me dressed in the most expensive silk of which I had never even dreamed of touching. A sliver of it was likely more expensive than me.

      "What did they call you, young kamuro from Nichijou," the way Ohashi said it made my heart burn with shame. But what was I to say to such a question that held such an ambiguous answer?

      "They once called me Kiyomi," I replied in a polite monotone.

      Ohashi let out a laugh. "Is that your name?"

      The truth was that I wasn't quite sure. I had gone through more names than I have sheets, and they all seemed to run together. The last name someone had called me was 'Kiyomi' but I suppose I don't much care for names.

      Kiyomi quite literally means beautiful and pure. I had my doubts, increasing day by day, that pure was fit to describe me.

      "For now, my little flower, I will call you Hana," Ohashi stated and nearly caused me to look up at her. I forced my head down low, knowing that meeting her eyes incorrectly would only get me a beating with the loving hand of a bamboo stick.

      "Yes," I said simply, making sure to sink lower into the ground.

      "Now, my little flower, what is your name?" Ohashi asked and I wanted to scream Kiyomi at her in spite, for I could hear the sadistic amusement in her voice.

      "It's Hana."

      "Do you think naming her 'flower' would suit such a child?" the Mother asked with a frown, and I grew annoyed that the two nearly talked as equals. Despite being beautiful, I didn't see why Ohashi had such respect.

      If beauty was supposed to bring such power, then why do I feel so weak?

      "Flowers bloom but die just as quickly. I'd say it suits her," Ohashi stated.

      Perhaps it does.