I could still taste the morning dew on my tongue and I could still feel the string's vibration beneath my fingertips and the pick. Ohashi's voice mused in my ears every stroke of my hand. I had no song of my own, so the melody I played matched what I remembered from hers.

      Ohashi's voice was burned in my ears when I closed my eyes. Naive fantasies were always my problem, even as a child growing up on that seaside village off the coast of Yamawara. I believed, once so long ago, that my mother and I would sink our feet into the water every morning and eat our fill of mochi in the evening.

      It had been a simple dream that felt like a lifetime ago, but I knew that if I tried, I could remember it with vivid detail as if it were yesterday.

      I was afraid that if I gripped onto it I would taint it and stain it with what I knew now. I'll save those fantasies for when I close my eyes. Dreams aren't made for when you were awake anyway.

      And right now, all I wanted was to become better than Ohashi. I wanted to do what she was able to do. I wanted to choose whom I wanted or better yet, maybe just spend the rest of my life playing this song.

      But a whore is still a whore at the end of the day. I knew that when the servants came into my room with their linen yukata rubbing against the silk kimono in their hands.

      I watched as they applied paint to my lips, matching them to the crimson flowers that cascaded against the thinly woven silk of my new kimono. I said nothing as they stripped my yukata from my shoulders. I merely watched as the fabric decorated the ground in a soft pile of linen.

       The silk fell against my shoulders with soft grace and was as smooth as Ohashi's had been the night I first watched her play the koto. "Will he be old?" I asked and the women glanced at me through hooded lashes.

      "He paid a pocket full for your bed," she replied as she inspected my chest. Her hands were rough and cold as one of the girls adjusted the layers of silk over my shoulders. "You just have to pretend that your bed hasn't already been pocketed." I glanced over to the vial of blood next to the brush on the vanity and wondered what poor girl they took it from. 

      "Will he be kind?" I asked, my lips spewing out these foolish questions that didn't matter.

      "He is Chiyohana-sama's regular."

      "Will he be gentle?" I asked instead, my voice shaking with the strumming of my heart. I feared one wrong word would make my fears true.

      Of course it didn't matter and the three women didn't amuse me with answers. But hearing Chiyohana's name made me want to cower in fear. Chiyohana was cold and her heart was that of a fox. Her name was an omen to my ears.

      "Will it hurt?" I asked instead of a curse towards the Oiran who would likely get me killed.

       My last question was not even considered, even as my lips shook and my brows furrowed. As my eyes began to dampen with moisture that burned inside my nostrils, I felt a hand smack against my cheek. The sound of flesh on flesh was enough to make the moisture in my eyes go as dry as a summer's day.

      "Crying won't make it better." Makeup was applied to the red mark on my cheek.

      The walk across the halls was dragged out in length with the amount of time it took for me to force my legs not to crumble from underneath me. The shōji doors blurred with soft moans from passing whores. Everything was becoming blurry and my heart had leapt like a frog in my throat. It was the only thing that helped keep the salt from my eyes.

      I wondered if Ohashi was as scared when she passed these doors.

      We stopped at two shōji doors that remained quietly pressed closed. I stared at the plain white paper that blocked my fate so thinly. It would only take one finger to break it down, and such a weak barrier from my fears didn't soothe me.

      This bottomless pit of debauchery. I can crawl out of the bog, but my feet will track mud no matter where I go.

      The servants opened the shoji doors and when I saw the rōnin, sitting with his legs folded under the table, I crossed the threshold of the room. His eyes were intense and drew me in. I left the servants outside when I entered. I left a part of myself out there with them.

     He watched my every action as I bowed my head so I could stare at the ground and calm my heart.

      I was afraid to be Hana. Hana was weak and she was close to crying. If I were someone else, then it wouldn't matter. Like a snake, I shredded off Hana's skin as I folded my legs and met his gaze.

      "How old are you?" asked the rōnin. He would be old.

      "Old enough," I answered as I poured his cup full. My hands shook because there were parts of Hana that I hadn't shed. If he noticed, he didn't say anything. I briefly wondered if he would take me the same way Ohashi was taken by her very own rōnin.

      "How experienced are you?" he asked. He would not be kind.

      "Experienced enough," I answered swiftly and the burden of Hana began to shed from my shoulders. My second skin was scratched to my bones and shreds of it remained to be yanked by him as well.

      "How scared are you?" he asked, leaning over the table. He would not be gentle.

      I tilted my head to the side before lifting his cup for him to take. He drowned it and poured me a cup as well. Hana had never tasted alcohol on her tongue, but luckily Hana was weak and I wasn't Hana. Her skin was decaying on the ground outside this wretched room.

      The taste burned through my tongue. It was uncomfortable and I could feel each droplet as it swirled in my stomach. My eyes ran over his marble-like face, carved with wrinkles on the corners of his eyes and near his lips. His black hair was thin and forced in a bun on the top of his head. His katana was loose and sheathed on the ground next to his form.

      I wonder now what expression he would make if I had reached over to stroke his cheek and simultaneously slit his throat.

      "Are you scared?" he asked again as he saw the alcohol disappear in the cup that rested in my palms. It would hurt.

      Hana was terrified.

     But she was a slumped and disgusting mush of skin outside.

      I was her skeleton and I was a puppet. He lost his patience and gripped the back of my neck so tight that I thought my brittle bones would crack.

                                                           Ƹ̵ӜƷ

      How odd. It swallowed me up whole and I never realized just how easily I fall into a waiting man's grasp. It doesn't seem to matter because like an over-ripe peach, I seem to fall to the ground. I didn't know where the peach would roll. I didn't know if it would get stepped on and smashed. I didn't know if someone would pick it up and let it fulfill its function.

      No. I was worse than overripe peach. Even then, birds would pick me apart and ants would eat what's left. The peel would be put to use and fertilize the earth.

      Parts of me were beginning to chip away and soon enough there would be nothing left and my insides would cave in and I'd disappear.

      Long ago, I dreamt of disappearing. When I was eleven I would imagine that I was free and born in some far away distant land, in love with a lord. These fantasies were worthless and when I awoke, my lord was an old merchant who loved to be dressed in diapers and covered head to toe with oil and spanked.

      I awoke to a council elder who grew aroused when women cried. Ironically, he would specifically ask for the only girl in the house unable to cry at will. I remembered asking Chiyohana to choke me so I could force out those wet droplets as hands gripped onto my hips. She liked hurting me so it was no issue for her.

      I remembered Ohashi's words, so long ago when I was still just a child from the cages of my last brothel. I remembered the frightful and harrowing fear.

      "I will destroy you."

      Ohashi's voice was an echo as well. A high Tayū of this district. Her voice was as high and mighty as her breasts.

      This world was filled with perverts. Men who wanted me to pretend to be dead while they had their way with my body. Men who wanted me to bleed so they could get it up.

      The fact of the matter is, maybe I wasn't a peach at all. Perhaps I was an egg. An egg that had all its filling sucked away, leaving behind nothing but useless shell just waiting to break.

      And maybe that's okay. It was odd to be okay with this troubled and listless life.

      Ohashi wasn't the demon I thought her to be, and maybe one day I can surpass her. Or maybe one day I could take that blade and slide it right through that rōnin's throat and watch the blood seep out like the juices in a rotten fruit. Maybe he would beat me to it and stab that same blade through my gut instead.

      Maybe that rōnin was only a man and maybe Ohashi wasn't a demon.

      Maybe she was just a woman whose talent rested in playing a song and loving her daughter. "I fear I don't know how to give anything but my body," I had once admitted as she poured my cup full of sake. I could see the ripples in the middle slowly die away. Only when the ripples were gone could I see the bottom of the cup more closely.

      She only chuckled, "Your heart is yours to give and take. Your illusion of this place may have been broken." She tapped her pointer finger against the surface of my drink and I watched the ripples appear once more. "You can never see what's beneath the surface of water when ripples distort the top." Ohashi's voice grew cold and like a candle, the twinkle in her eyes blew out.

      Ohashi had always been just another ripple.

      "Anomie...it is an absence of morals...that's what I will have you named because that is what you must strive for. Forget about your time as Hana. She doesn't matter and you will become stronger than her. Luckily, it's only flesh. You still own your heart. They can fuck you bloody, but your heart is yours. It's only flesh."

      I suppose that's what I remember whenever a man kisses me and owns me for the night. The master owns my kimono and my room and my body and my voice, but as Ohashi had said.

      My heart is mine.

Lullabies of an Oiran