Fury drained out of me, replaced by something more intense, more intimate.
Shame, perhaps.
“Hana-san—” I said softly.
Her eyes snapped up at my first use of an honorific with her name.
“I did not mean—”
“I know what you meant.” She drew a long breath, smoothing her expression back into neutrality, but I could see the effort it took. “You think I am one of them, that I chose this, that I enjoy training you to become what I am because I do not resist or shout or attempt to flee.” Her bright eyes met mine. “I was nineteen when I was sold. My father . . .” She stopped, swallowed. “It does not matter. What matters is that I am here. You are here. We both must survive, however we may.”
The silence between us was different now, heavy with shared pain.
“I’m so sorry, Hana-san,” I said.
And I meant it.
She nodded once, as though dismissing the conversation, then slowly her expression softened, not quite shifting back to the gentle patience from before, but into something more real, something more honest.
“You are angry,” she said, her voice still a whisper. “I was angry, too, at first. I refused lessons. I slouched and stumbled and made myself as unappealing as possible, hoping no customer would want such an ungainly beast.” Her voice dropped even lower. “Then the mistress told me I would be given to the guards for practice if I did not improve.”
I stared at her, at this woman who had seemed so serene, so perfectly at ease in this place, and tried to imagine her frightened and resistant and desperate.
“How long ago?” I asked, my voice barely audible over the breeze rattling the paper walls.
“Three years.” She looked back down at her hands—smooth, graceful hands that bore no trace of whatever life she had lived before. “I stopped fighting, and I learned. And now . . .” She gestured around the room. “Now I teach others. I have good food and safety. The mistress would brook none to raise a hand to me. She would sooner slice that hand away than let it fall to my face.”
Her gaze drifted past me, focused somewhere distant, perhaps the past.
“This is not freedom, but it is a life. It is survival. And survival, Kaneko-san, is something.”
“But you . . .” I struggled for words. “You seem almost content, as if you have accepted—”
“What choice do I have?” she snapped, though even the sharpness of her words held the gentleness of blossom’s kiss. “I can rage against the bars of my cage, against what I cannot change. I can make every day a misery. Or I can find what happiness exists in this world and hold on to it.” She met my eyes. “I choose to survive. If that makes me weak in your eyes, then so be it.”
“I could never think you weak,” I said quickly.
“Then do not think I am your enemy either.” She reached out and touched my hand. “I am trying to help you, not because the mistress orders it—though she does—but because I remember what it felt like to be where you are now. I would spare you the worst of what I endured, if I can.”
Her words settled over me like a heavy blanket, suffocating but also strangely comforting. Hana understood. She had beenwhere I was. And she was offering me a lifeline, even if it meant cooperating with my own captivity.
“If I learn,” I said slowly, “I am still a slave.”
“Yes.”
“I am still owned.”
“Yes.”
“But I might . . . I might have some small measure of control over what happens to me?”
“Yes.” Hana’s expression softened further. “Not much, but some. In a place like this, Kaneko-san, ‘some’ is a treasure.”
I drew a deep breath, let it out slowly, then straightened my spine, pulling my shoulders back while placing my hands gently on my thighs. The position felt foreign. Wrong. Like wearing someone else’s skin.
But I held it.
“Better,” Hana said, and there was relief in her voice, as if my compliance mattered to her personally, as if she truly did want to help me, not just complete a task. “Much better.”
