Chapter 6

The room darkened and became more quiet. The sun set and the moon rose, and shone dully, like a tarnished silver plate. The crickets were muted, distant, as if they had gotten into some opium. My heart… it had lost all desire to continue beating. It was now no more than a dried-up knotted root ball in my chest.

In a state of near delirium I floated over to the foot of my lady’s bed and pulled her kaiken from its sheath. I touched the blade to test its edge. Blood beaded from my fingertip. I didn’t even feel the cut, it was so sharp.

For perhaps an hour, or however long it had taken for the moon to disappear behind the near forested mountains, I sat with my legs folded beneath me on the floor at the foot of her bed. The oleander powder had been my plan. Oleander would’ve made a mess of things. A great, beautiful, dramatic mess of things and that’s what I wanted. But Evelyn deserved the messy end more than I. I owed it to her, in fact, for the happiness she had given me. Besides, an end by dagger, for a handmaiden is, by any measure that matters, the same as one by a draught of death tea. I did not care what it gave them. I sat up straight. First I put the blade to my throat and let it touch my artery but then I stopped myself, not from fear of doing it, but realising that a throat cut was much too clean and quick a way to go. So, I turned the pointed end of the dagger to my belly in the manner of the samurai, to taunt them for their silly ritual. To taunt my tyrant lord with a courageous, vengeful death. I shut my eyes, squeezed the last of my tears from them, and I held my breath. Just a plunge and a swift slash and it would be done. In the morning, they’d find my spiritless, blood-drained body at the foot of my lady’s bed. Of course, they would say I did it out of a sense of loyalty to the house, but that did not matter. I would know the truth that I did this to follow Evelyn to wherever she would go, and that is what matters.

I straightened my reach, tensed up, and put all the strength that I had into my arms to make the final sharp plunge. But just as I was about to commit to it, I heard the door slide open.

I swivelled around and found her there, standing in the doorway.

“Don’t you do it,” she said, rushing towards me. I stood abruptly. She grabbed the kaiken from me and flung it aside. Then she stung my cheek with a slap. “Don’t you even dare.”

“Madame…” I started. I did not know what to say. Had she a change of heart? Could she not go through with it? Would she rather continue living this hellish life? It made no sense. But then I started to see some sense. She made me see it.

“What have I told you, Niko? Call me Evelyn,” she said. She clutched my head with both hands and brought us together and kissed me and I grew heady as if to pass through a layer of thick clouds. Then she pushed me onto her bed and climbed atop me, and continued kissing me feverishly. Not wasting a moment, as if there was not a single moment to lose, her hands went to her sash and loosened the knot. The sash fell away freely. Her kimono came loose. Her hands then went to her tightly pinned bun, and slid out the pin. Her hair cascaded to her shoulders.

“Why are you here?” I asked, breathless, my heart panging.

“Because you are here. Because you are my will to live.”

She let her kimono fall. Then she loosened her white cotton undergarments, and let those fall too. In the near complete darkness, I could only see the hint of her nakedness – the dark shades of her nipples, the lines of her hips, the soft hair between her thighs, but it was enough of a hint to light the fire of joy in my heart.

She levelled her face to mine so that I could feel her breaths, then gently parted my kimono.

And with those words resounding in my ears, unbelievable as they were, she kissed me. She kissed me once quickly, then again. When she let the second kiss go, I leaned up for a third kiss, and she gave me a third while her hands wasted no time to run down between my legs.

“You are everything to me, Niko. I love you,” she whispered as her lips grazed my ear.

Oh how wonderful the words from her mouth. How they touched my soul much in the way her lips touched my skin. I felt love through them like a long droughted field feeling the patter of a cool heavy rain. More than mere relief. A gift from heaven.

She went down my body with kisses. My neck. My breasts. My abdomen. She went further still. But before she could get too far, I stopped her. I stopped her to say, with tears in my eyes, “Evelyn, you are everything to me. I love you.”

Even as the words left my mouth they sounded preposterous, but they were true, and needed to be said.

She replied with kisses to the inside of my thighs followed by the most amazing thing I have ever felt — her warm tongue against my aching bud. I let out a horribly loud gasp and squirmed uncontrollably as lightning spidered through my core. She held me in place so I wouldn’t squirm right off her bed, and kept touching me with her gentle tongue. Swirling it around, eliciting small barks out of me. It was pleasure so overwhelming, it could feasibly constitute torture, but because it came from her I loved it.

I opened my legs for her. She put her fingers inside me. She was gentle, but, all the same, intense, moving them in and out while she kept at my bud with her tongue. I could have let her have her way with me like this, but then it would have ended all too soon. So, I stopped her and beckoned her to lie on her back. She understood my intent, and we switched places. I slid atop her and felt her heart beating, bare, fervent, as her body pressed wholly against mine. Her eyes trembled, wet with excitement. I opened my mouth permissively, and she planted her mouth to mine. Lips against lips. Tongue against tongue. My pleasure heightened, and so did hers, which I could tell by the vibration and the furnace heat she gave off. We were both sweating, and the sweat made our motions slick and comfortable.

She moved her legs apart. I knew what it was she wanted me to do. As if instinct guided me, I put my wet slit against hers so that we could roll rhythmically against each other to lap like waves of opposing tides. Her face contorted into many different shapes. Shapes she had never before allowed of herself. They were expressions of true satisfaction. Of life. I had donned the same, I imagine, and it was a wrenching effort. She caressed my cheeks as we rubbed our slits against each other, and I fashioned a smile for her but shortly, the smile went away on account of a tremendous pleasure that rose out of my depths, seizing me with such force that I could do only two things — cry out and quake. And it was the same for her. Her smile had gone and she let out a deep moan. Her body bowed with beautiful convulsions.

When it was over, I crawled into her arms, and she held me, and caressed me breasts pressed against breasts, and I wept. I wept tears of burning joy and she too wept, and I knew that her tears too burned with joy. I could feel the warmth of her tears on my neck. Shortly after, quiet settled between us. And stillness except for the soft caressing and soft kisses. We floated freely among the stars in heaven.

I was well on my way to a beautiful sleep in Evelyn’s tight arms when a terribly chaotic din roused me. I sat up, disoriented and alarmed and soon made out the fearful noise of feet pattering this way and that, and frantic shouting between men.

“The lord! The lord is dying!” shouted a voice.

“He was poisoned! An assassin! Find the bastard! ” shouted another. It was Keinosuke.

A panic pinged my heart upon hearing that. I turned my eyes down to Evelyn. She opened her eyes. She made no expression and said nothing, but she didn’t need to. Her eyes gleamed. And that told me all I needed to know — that she had used the oleander powder after all. She watched me and waited for me to do or say something. If I were loyal to my lord, I mean truly loyal, I would have turned her over to them. I would have shouted out, “Here I have her! The murderer! And I know the poison she had used! I can prove it!”

But I didn’t do that. I am not my lord’s obedient servant. No instinct inside me compelled me to speak out. My instinct instead compelled me to smile. So, with no effort to resist, I smiled. When she saw my smile, she smiled too.

“I will leave this place, Niko,” she said.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. Somewhere across the sea. Keinosuke arranged my passage.”

“You’ll be a fugitive,” I said.

“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

“I do not obligate you to. You are free to do as you please, Niko.”

“I want nothing more than to go where you go. As long as you’ll allow me.”

She paused, the smile fading from her face. Her eyes darted across my face, searching apprehensively, showing a fear for a future in which I am a part of. I held my breath, and when she did not respond, I prodded, “you will, won’t you?”

The smile returned, and though there were plenty of reasons for the smile, the only reason that I could now think of was that she had finally decided that she could freely allow herself to be happy, and that was all the answer I needed.

my place in the world:

why should it bring me grief?

blossom in my sight,

Thanks for reading my story! Let me know what you thought with a rating or a comment below or by sending me a message. I strive to be a better writer so feedback is invaluable to me.

Anyways here are some songs I like:

Exquisite Tension – You’ll Never Get to Heaven

Us Against the World – Coldplay

Cry – Cigarettes After Sex

Today is the Day – Yo La Tengo

Circles – Greta Svabo Bech, Ludovico Einaudi

Song beneath the song – Maria Taylor

Asleep Among Endives – Ichiko Aoba