I frowned. “You’re fine.”
“Am I? I’m not so sure.” He clutched his chest and collapsed dramatically into a chair near the corner, muttering something about trauma, dry skin, and needing another manicure.
Ignoring him, I put my gaze back on Hiroko.
Slowly, Hiroko sat down beside me, smoothing her long black kimono over her thighs with a grace that made everything else—Zo’s panic, the smoke on screen, even my own unraveling—feel muted.
She took the phone from my hands. Her touch was featherlight, but I still felt it. Silk over a bruise. Then, she spoke, “What doyouthink, Nyomi?”
“I don’t have any words right now but shock, horror, and fear.”
She nodded and looked straight ahead. “May I tell you a story?”
“Yes.” I blinked, wondering what she would say.
Chapter twenty
Feminine Strategy
Nyomi
“I was born in a small town called Uji. My father was a powerful businessman with several textile factories. He supplied high-end silk to kimono makers across Japan.” Hiroko smoothed her kimono across her lap. “He had a beautiful wife who graced the pages of society magazines. . .and a maid that was his mistress. I was the daughter of that mistress.”
I parted my lips in shock.
“My birth made me an inconvenience.”
I watched her fingers as she spoke. Perfectly shaped, polished with a pale pink gloss. Elegant hands. But there was something in the way she rolled her jade ring slowly, twisting it back and forth.
“He paid for my birth but never came to see me. Not once. He kept me hidden. I was sent away to live with an old aunt in thewestern district. She wasn’t cruel, but she wasn’t loving either. I was. . .tolerated. Fed. Dressed. But never kissed goodnight.”
Her gaze drifted to the floor, lingering on a knot in the tatami mat like it had meaning. “I was not a beautiful child. I was too tall. Too skinny. My teeth were crooked. My eyes drawn downward, which my aunt said made me look ‘sad in the wrong way.’ The girls at school called metengu.”
“What does that mean?”
“Tenguis a creature from folklore. A demon-bird. Sometimes a thief. Sometimes a god. But always something that doesn’t belong.” She slowly lifted her gaze back to me. “It has a long, sharp nose. Angry red face. Wild eyes. They live in the mountains, wearing torn robes and wielding fans that can summon storms. In some stories, they steal children. In others, they protect the forest. Either way, they are always feared.”
She raised one hand and touched the slope of her nose. “Kids can be cruel.”
“They can.” I swallowed.
“But adults can be even crueler. I would hear my family whisper about my. . .ugliness. . .There I learned within the shadows that. . .beauty was power. It was. . .cultural capital and could be used to accumulate social and economic power. And that made me sad. . .”
“Because you felt like you had no beauty?”
“Yes. I was just a little girl thinking she was ugly and already a failure.” She lowered her hand and placed it back on her lap. “However, around thirteen, everything changed. I began to develop breasts, hips. . .My aunt sent me to Kyoto to train with the geisha. Not because I was graceful or pretty. But because she believed that at least my body could be valuable for the family.”
What the fuck?
She turned to me. “So I became amaiko.”
“What is that?”
“An apprentice geisha. I painted my face white. Bit my lips red. Walked withokobothat made me sound like bells in the snow. My body became my art. My silence, a performance.”
I could almost see her as a nervous teen, powdered and obedient, hair pulled into an elaborate style. Lips painted.
“It wasn’t about talent back then, it was about how well you could survive being seen and. . .touched.”
