The Hanabira Teahouse was a cage carved of silk.
Its walls never shouted, but they 'watched'.
Eyes of folded fans and painted lips, and ears that heard things never spoken aloud. Secrets didn't last long here. And Aika... Aika had been glowing far too brightly to go unnoticed.
She smiled more now. Lingered at windows. Turned down clients with a softness the matron tolerated but quietly resented.
Renjiro had not returned for a week.
She waited with composure, not desperation, keeping her poise as she had been trained, but behind her lowered lashes, her heart had begun to ache.
Each evening she waited. And each evening, it was someone else who stepped through the threshold, bringing cold coins and borrowed touch.
It was only on the eighth night that he returned.
Not to her room, but through the front doors.
He didn't ask for her.
He asked for the matron.
Aika was pouring tea in another parlor when she saw them, the old woman and the man who made her dream slip behind the side screen. Their tones were low, bodies stiff, and though Aika couldn't make out the words, the tension wrapped around her like smoke.
She set the teacup down too hard. It clinked.
None of the patrons noticed.
But the other girls did.
That night, Aika paced her room long after midnight.
"What could he be saying to her...?"
Was he asking to see her again? Was he... negotiating?
Aika had no right to hope. No right to dream beyond her station. But she had hoped anyway. And in the quiet of her own room, that hope had started to bloom into something dangerous.
She pressed her hand to her chest. It ached.
Something had changed.
Renjiro wasn't just visiting now. He was plotting something.
But the matron wreathed in years of red-lacquered power never let her girls go without a price. Aika had seen what happened to others who'd tried. The bruises covered with powder. The broken things in the night.
Her heart was a whisper against the storm.
The next morning, Aika was summoned.
Not for punishment.
Not for praise.
Just summoned.
The matron, waiting with her pipe and her narrowed eyes, said only this:
"Keep your smiles clean, girl. Some men think too kindly. That's how mistakes are born."
Aika bowed.
"Yes, ma'am."
But when she lifted her head, her eyes were not the same.
She knew something was coming.
And for the first time in years, she was not afraid of it.