She gritted her teeth, saying nothing, and felt the sinking come again. Stepping back, eyes low, she stood in what she hoped was a respectful posture. He laughed again; Hakaru, the shining prince, he looked so happy and disgusting, like nothing could ever go wrong for him at all.
“Yes,” he said, “you should be proud. A no’in blade of grass, and here, now. Working for the lords of Aizumi.”
The hollow was a place at the bottom of your heart, no’in said, where you went and hid and submerged yourself, when kijin came to play. A place where you did not exist, where you merely sat and nodded and performed your bows. Where you said,yes, sir, yes ame’in, yes, lord,anything you say.Where you found yourself sinking like a devil had pulled you, in the moment where you believed their words ofkusamight be true.
Don’t forget yourself, Old Man Goro said so often: don’t forget you’re human too. No matter how they treat you. We have it better, here, than most. There are many no’in have it worse.
But still, the sinking came.
Still, the hollow pulled you down.
When I grow up,Rui once thought,I’ll see the world.
But now the world seemed to have been locked away, taken by thoseother people, generations of lordships who ruined the earth before she was ever born, and now she could only stand, and fall back, while it smoldered.
Now she could only try to think: survive.
Butsurvivalwas not the same aslife.
Survival was where you went when you were in the hollow place.
Survival was what you did when you had no hope of more.
But I will have more, she thought.I will find something better.
He glanced at her, a sparkle in his eyes she couldn’t read, and she realized he’d been talking, realized he was looking at her with something near to greed. To hunger. To a man who doesn’t need to ask for what he wants. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “Though a stable is too… inelegant for a face such as yours.”
She recoiled; yet, outwardly, she didn’t move. He seemed to sense it. Was that a hesitation? Then, voices, calling from outside. The stern tones of his rigid older brother. Hakaru rolled his eyes. He took his time. He laughed. He played around.
Then, he stopped.
“The fuck is that?”
Rui froze. Hakaru was staring at her chest. The small jade bead on its string. It had come loose from her tunic; it glimmered in the light.
His face hardened. He didn’t seem a shining prince anymore, but something harsher, something more vicious, glaring at her with suspicion in his eyes.
“You fucking thief.”
In an instant, something sharp had changed, and she was thrown to her knees, and he loomed over her, and everything was wrong. It was like the cracking of an egg, a shattered thing. Panic stabbed her chest. “Where’d you get that?” He grabbed at her, the string, the necklace. “No’in don’t wear jade.”
“Brother,” Nihira called from without. “What now?”
“A thief,” spat Hakaru. “A fucking—”
“No,” she pleaded, “I never…”
He ignored her, pulling her to the door. The Betto, knowing what would happen, tried to make himself vanish.
“She’s a blade of grass,” Nihira called. “What matter does it make?”
“Give it here!”
Hakaru shoved her to the wall, fingers grasping for the bead on the string; she stumbled, clutching her rake. “That’s a Gensei jewel,” he shouted, “not for some common –Give it here!”
Panic welling, she pleaded, “No, no, I promise, no…” Breathless,useless words, mumbled promises of fear, a drawn-out, spoken cry of danger.
“Hakaru,” Nihira called, “let it go.”
