The call ended.
I stood there for a moment, staring at my phone. My hands were still shaking. Tears were still running down my face.
Through the door, I could hear a new movie playing. The music and voices sounded muffled as if they'd been shot underwater.
Inside the box, Zo and Satoshi laughed at something, in the sort of way. . .people laughed when they didn’t know grief was standing ten feet away on the other side of a door.
This icy numbness spread through my veins.
My heartbeat pounded in my ears.
Hiroko is dead.
I tried to find the silver lining in all of this. At least everyone else was safe. At least the war was one step closer to being over. At least they were coming home.
Okay. . .
I stood there in the hallway and could not stop staring at my phone.
Hiroko is gone. . .
In the short time I'd known her, she'd been more of a mother to me than my own mother had ever been. She'd shown me what it meant to be strong and soft at the same time.
I'd been planning to write a book about her life. About the women in the pleasure districts. About survival, resilience, and the kind of strength that most people never saw.
I’m. . .still going to write it, Hiroko. I swear. . .
She'd been my fairy dominatrix godmother, and now. . .she was gone.
Fuck. This can’t be real. What am I supposed to do without her?
Then, I thought about Zo. I was going to have to tell him. And Zo wasn't going to handle it well. He'd been friends with Hiroko longer than I had. He loved her. She'd been one of the people who looked out for him when no one else did, during his early years in Tokyo.
I also thought about Hiroko's slave. The one living in the cage in her villa and lovingly waiting for her return.
Fuck. He’s going to be devastated.
I thought about her assistants as well as the women who worked with her in Tokyo. They’d relied on her for protection and guidance.
So many people had just lost someone irreplaceable. And I felt it. A complete and sudden hollowed loss. Like something had been carved out of my chest and I couldn't breathe around the absence of it.
Yoichi studied me. “Nyomi. . .do you need anything?”
“No.”
Kaoru spoke, “Is everyone okay?”
“Yes. Everyone except. . .Hiroko. She was shot.”
He blinked.
Then, my tears came harder now. My whole body shook with them.
Calm down. Get it together. You’re a queen. That's what Hiroko would tell you.
But I couldn't. I pressed my hand over my mouth, trying to hold it in. Trying to stay strong. But I couldn't.
I closed my eyes and sobbed.
