Or weep.
I wasn’t sure which.
Hana helped me into the layers, her hands gentle and efficient. She arranged my hair, applied subtle color to my lips, and adjusted the collar of the coat until it sat just so.
“There,” she said, stepping back to look at me. “Perfect.”
I looked at my reflection in the small mirror. A stranger stared back.
He was beautiful and exotic.
And empty.
“It is time,” Hana said quietly, turning and guiding me toward the door.
The common room was already filled when we arrived. Men lounged at tables, drinking sake and wine, some playing dice games, their voices a low rumble of conversation and laughter. More stood near the back wall, arms crossed, watching and waiting.
I counted perhaps thirty more than I had expected. Far more.
And they were an odd mix.
Military men with wide frames and stern bearings, their uniforms crisp, medals gleaming. Elegant nobles in expensive robes, their painted faces bored and jaded. Fat merchants whose wealth showed in their rings and the quality of their silk but whose bodies spoke only of excess and indulgence.
None appeared particularly pleasant.
A few looked downright disgusting—with leering eyes, wet lips, and sausage-fingered hands that already reached as if anticipating touch. One man was so obese he had to be supported by servants. Another had a scar that twisted his mouth into a permanent sneer.
My stomach turned.
But I smiled. Flirtatiously. The way I had been taught.
I let my eyes travel across the crowd with practiced interest, let my posture suggest availability and desire.
Inside, I was screaming.
At one end of the common room, a small stage, not unlike the one in the slave market where I had been sold months ago, had been erected. I was merchandise once more. Property to be auctioned. Nothing had changed except the setting and the price.
Momoko appeared at my elbow, resplendent in crimson silk embroidered with golden cranes. She scanned me from head to toe and then nodded once, the strongest approval possible from the house’s mistress.
“Come,” she said, and guided me toward the stage.
I climbed the steps on trembling legs and stood at the stage’s center. The room’s attention shifted, focused, and pinned me in place. Momoko rang a small gong, and musicians who’d been playing from chairs in the corner ceased their melodies. The mistress’sclangnote cut through conversations, and silence fell.
Anticipation flooded the room like a physical presence, thick and hungry.
“Gentlemen,” Momoko said, her voice carrying effortlessly. “Today, the House of Petals is pleased to offer something rare, something precious.” She gestured to me. “A new courtesan has completed his training and is ready to begin serving our honored guests.”
Murmurs rippled through the crowd.
Ravenous gazes roamed my body. I could feel their eyes, their hands, their mouths and tongues. Some were gentle, others rough. Some loving, others vile. There were so many men, gaping and pawing and—
“This young man’sfirstexperience,” Momoko continued, “is a once-in-a-lifetime pleasure, an opportunity to be the first to taste what has been cultivated with care and expertise, to claim something untouched, unblemished, and pure.”
After all the nights with Sakurai, I wasn’t sure “pure” was a description I deserved. Familiar bile rose in my throat. I swallowed it down and maintained my smile.
“Allow me to introduce Kaneko,” Momoko said. “Formerly of the northern isles, a fisherman who braved the dangerous seas, who knows the strength of winds and waves, who has been transformed into something refined but retains the wild spirit of those wild places . . . and the delicious, sun-kissed muscles that go with them.”
The collective rumble of the crowd reminded me of dinnertime in a massive hall, when the cooks brought forth a roasted beef, and soldiers began to drool. Momoko’s tale was all fiction—a beautiful, seductive fiction. I had never braved dangerous seas, had never been anything but a boy hauling nets and mending lines, but truth did not matter here, only the story, only the fantasy men could purchase.
