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The son of Kaido.
Even the idea of a man like that made Hiyori's stomach turn.
And yet, here she was, about to face him. She could imagine him so clearly– tall, tan, and burly, a deep-set scowl on his face, cruelty etched into every hard edge of his body. His voice harsh, his eyes full of greed and anger, nothing in his mind but taking. She’d seen it before, men like that, too many times to count, sneering while they knocked back sake, their hands always wandering a little too far.
She was in Onigashima, having travelled there to meet with him under Kaido’s demands. Her attendants ushered her towards a room in the pleasure hall, and she took a deep, slow breath, painting her face– Komurasaki’s face– in the gracefulness it always held, a blank, placid expression of calmness. Kaido himself had requested the most beautiful oiran to entertain his son, and she couldn’t decline, nor could she turn away now.
The door slid open, slowly, and she allowed the tension to ease out of her shoulders. She knew exactly what to do; he would be exactly as she expected him to be, just as brutish and vile as every other man she had the misfortune of entertaining, and–
And… he wasn't. She blinked a few times, almost allowing her practiced mask of serenity to slip, but she forced the shock off of her face. He was tall, that part she was right about, but pale and thin, and smiling, bright and genuine. She could see the outline of muscle in his arms betraying his strength, but nothing like Kaido’s. Long white and blue hair swept to his waist, framing his face below red horns–
His face. She couldn't have expected it less. Burnt orange eyes and long, dark eyelashes, delicate features and a soft smile betraying large fangs, his cheeks dusted with a hint of pink that showed on his ears. Her eyes drifted lower, and though she tried to be inconspicuous, only letting them linger for a brief moment, she couldn't help staring at his chest. He was the son of Kaido, wasn't he?
Yamato shifted his weight, seeming to hesitate for a moment. "Hello, Lady Komurasaki," he said with a bow. "I’m Oden."
Oden. Hiyori’s jaw tensed as rage bubbled inside of her, crackling up her spine and setting her skin on fire. How dare he.
The audacity, the arrogance, the greed of taking her father’s name and wearing it proudly, like he deserved it. He was just like Kaido, no matter how different they may look, taking everything from her and spitting on the remnants she was left with.
Still, she had done this before. She entertained Orochi times with a smile on her face, after all; she was nothing if not good at her job. She fixed her eyes on Yamato’s jaw so she didn’t have to meet his eyes and forced herself to step into the room.
She dismissed her attendants with a wave of her hand, and they closed the door behind her. It shut with a thunk, sealing her fate, alone in a room with the son of her enemy. She gestured for him to sit, and they both did, though even sitting down he towered over her. There was sake on a table next to them, and she poured some and passed it to him, noticing the strange shackles on his wrists as she did. Men were easier to deal with when drunk, she’d found, when their inhibitions were lessened and their mouth looser, and nobody would decline a drink when it was her handing it to them.
He took it with a nod of thanks, and she was already pouring a second cup before he had lowered the first from his lips. For all the difficulty she’d have speaking to him, it was at least an opportunity to gather information, and he’d let things slip easier if he was drunk.
He almost looked apologetic when he took it. "It was my– It was Kaido who wanted you here. I said I didn’t need to be entertained like this, but he–"
Hiyori folded her hands in her lap. "I do not mind."
Yamato sipped the second cup of sake, the chains on his cuffs clinking as he did. Hiyori wondered, briefly, why he wore them. "He’s trying to make me care about– well, all of this. I don’t want to be his successor, or the shogun, or anything like that. He has it all wrong, but he hates that I don’t want it. He throws all these–" Yamato gestured bitterly at the sake and the fancy room around them, though he stopped short before he waved at Hiyori– "things at me. It won’t work. Never does."
Hiyori made a noise of acknowledgement, though she couldn’t care less. She had no words of comfort to offer him, to soothe him in his pity party. It was pathetic, the way he complained when he had everything at his fingertips. She tamped down her anger as best as she could. "Anyway," he said, when she didn’t speak, though he seemed at a loss for where to carry the sentence after that.
Hiyori– or rather, Komurasaki– was gifted at conversation, yes; she had to be, but faced with someone like this, the son of Kaido who dared to take her father’s name as his own, she found the words struggling to leave her throat past the disgust coiled there. "You said your name was… Oden, yes?" Better to broach the topic now rather than later, she thought– to get it over with. "That seems like a strange name for the son of Kaido, considering the man who once held it."
Yamato’s– she refused to call him Oden– face brightened with a smile that bared his fangs. She hadn’t looked at them too closely before, and now that she did she realized how large they were, curling onto his lower lip, sharp and white. "My real name is Yamato, but… Kozuki Oden was amazing," he said, his voice breathy with wonder. "He was a great man. I’d do anything to be like him, so I became him."
He seemed proud of the notion, so entitled by his birthright that he could take anything, even a dead man’s identity. Nausea sat like a heavy stone in her stomach. She busied herself with taking his empty sake cup and pouring more into it, which he took without complaint, though he drank it slower than the previous ones.
"How interesting" was all she said, forcing indifference into her voice. Her eyes wandered upwards and caught his, shining with excitement and passion, crinkled with his smile. She forced them back down and they landed on the sake cup cradled in his palms, tiny against his huge hands. She wondered about the manacles on his wrists, thick metal and covered in scuffs and scratches. Just underneath their edges she could see the skin of his wrists below, rubbed red and raw. Part of her wanted to know their origin, but she wouldn’t dare ask.
He saw her looking at them and shifted uncomfortably, lowering his hands into his lap. She turned her eyes away and gestured for his cup– maybe he’d tell her, once he was drunk enough. Men always talked more when they were drunk; often more than they should. He seemed happy enough to take drink after drink that she handed him (was that four, now? She knew he wasn’t counting), and the blush on his cheeks seemed to be darkening.
Her eyes found a shamisen against the wall behind Yamato, prepared for her to entertain him with. "Would you like me to play something?" she asked, nodding to it.
He seemed to startle just a little, blinking a few times, and turned to see what she meant. "Yeah. I’d love to hear it." She stood to retrieve the shamisen and Yamato’s eyes followed her across the room as she did, with a strange kind of guilt in them, like he didn’t entirely want to be looking at her the way he was.
That was new. It was rare– nearly impossible– for any man to look at her without eyes full of shameless desire and a mouthful of vulgarity waiting to be spoken. His face seemed softer, though, his gaze falling on her face, not straying lower.
The neck of the shamisen nestled into her palm, rigid and familiar, her other hand curling around the bachi. "What would you have me play?"
"Anything you’d like."
Hiyori’s fingers found the strings with practiced ease, the movements drilled into her so deeply they may as well be carved into her bones. She settled on a familiar tune, one she knew well enough that her hands moved on their own. The moment the first note rang, the tense line of Yamato’s shoulders relaxed, just slightly, his body seeming to melt into the floor. The music she played got men drunker than even the strongest sake could.
It was a light, beautiful song, lilting and mesmerizing, rising and falling as her fingers danced across the strings. A dreamy smile spread across Yamato’s face, his eyes fixed on her hands yet seeming to be far away.
Hiyori let herself fall into the music as she played. It was the one thing about her job she could truly enjoy; while the notes rang out they seemed to envelope her, and if she closed her eyes she could almost pretend she was somewhere else, someone else, that the song had taken her far away and stripped away everything she had forced herself to be, peeling Komurasaki away from her like shedding skin.
All too soon, the song ended. Her fingers stilled and the room fell into silence. She opened her eyes and stared at the wall across from her, reality sinking into her once again.
A long moment passed, and neither she nor Yamato spoke, until he finally broke the quiet. "That was beautiful," he said softly.
She'd heard that a thousand times from a thousand men. It meant nothing to her anymore. "How kind," she said with faux shyness, her words dripping with artificial sweetness, until her gaze caught his and she saw his eyes glistening with barely unshed tears. His smile was smaller, now, and sadder.
It's not as if she'd never made a man cry before. Still, she paused, her fingers falling away from her shamisen. "Thank you," she said, the words not faked or calculated this time, a hint of a smile creeping on her own red-painted lips.
Yamato reached absentmindedly for the sake and poured himself more– she noticed as he did that his hands trembled, just a little.
"Let me get that for you," she purred, setting the shamisen aside and moving towards him. He drank what was in his cup and she filled it again, her fingers brushing against his, deliberate but briefly enough to seem accidental. He raised it to his lips and sipped, a small trickle winding down his chin past his fangs. It couldn’t be easy to drink with those, large as they were.
"So, you live here in Onigashima, don’t you?" she said, a seductive edge to the lilt of her voice. It was only small talk, she knew he lived here, but the silence had to be filled somehow, and men loved to talk about themselves.
"I can’t leave," Yamato spat with unexpected vitriol, his smile disappearing from his face in an instant. "I’m stuck here. It’s a prison, not a home."
"Really, now? Why is that?"
She handed him more sake– what was it, the seventh cup now? The eighth?– with just enough practiced nonchalance that he didn’t think twice about how much he was drinking. His eyelids were growing just a touch heavier, it seemed, his speech coming slower.
"I hate him," he murmured as he drank.
"Who?"
"Kaido. My– my dad. He put me here, he–" Yamato's words were jumbled and slightly slurred, catching on his teeth as they stumbled over each other out of his mouth. "He trapped me here."
Hiyori feigned pity. As if he's the one trapped, instead of all of the citizens– as if this is his prison and not theirs. "Couldn't you just run away, if you dislike this place so much?"
Yamato knocked back the rest of his sake. Hiyori refilled his cup immediately after it was emptied and he continued drinking, oblivious to how much he was ingesting. "I can't," he said, the words coming out almost as a sob. His eyes were glistening brighter, now, a tear beading on his eyelashes. "These– these cuffs," he gestured to his wrists as he spoke, spilling drops of sake down across his fingers. "They'll kill me if I leave."
"Yamato…" she said, and remembered too late that she was supposed to call him Oden. He didn’t seem to mind, though, or even notice, his gaze fixed on his sake, its surface wavering as his hands shook.
"Why don't I help you take your mind off of it?" she murmured, laying a hand gently on his arm. He didn't look at her and just set his cup down on the table, then reached for the flask of sake and drank straight from it.
Well, if he wanted to get himself drunk that fast, she wasn't going to stop him. He could drink himself to death, for all she cared, with his self-pity and pathetic complaints. As if he's Kaido's victim, as if…
Her thoughts paused as he lowered the flask and she saw a scar across his forehead, just above his eyebrow. She shifted closer to him, their knees touching, and she saw the pink on his ears darken– from her proximity or from the drinking, she didn't know, maybe from both. She reached out and he stilled, allowing her to brush her fingertips across his cheek and bring them up to his brow, feeling the pale white outline of the scar.
"What's this from?" she whispered, her voice honeyed, with just enough breathiness to make his blush darker. His eyes flitted away from her, and his throat bobbed as he swallowed. She could see small scars there, too, littered across the pale skin of his Adam's apple and trailing down under his collar, light enough to blend into his skin unless you were close. They must be old.
"Kaido," he said, his hand clenching around the neck of the flask. "When I was little." The words came out strangled; half-choked.
Her fingers trailed to his neck and he shivered under her touch. She wasn't so sure, anymore, of how much she hated him. Part of her resisted that, reiterating her anger and relighting the fire licking up her ribs– she couldn't dare let herself forget what he'd done… but he hadn't, had he? What had he done but be born to a man who hurt her? What had he done but look at her with kindness and tell her that her music was beautiful?
Yamato tilted his head back and drank deeply from the flask of sake, setting it down on the table when he'd finished. It was nearly empty, and he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, his teeth glistening where they protruded from his lips. For a moment, Hiyori almost wanted to touch them, and see if they felt as sharp as they looked.
No, she snapped her attention back down to his chest, her fingertips creeping under his collar. With a movement smooth enough to seem accidental, she shrugged her kimono down slightly, exposing the pale skin of her collarbones. She was here to entertain him, after all. By Kaido's demand.
But he shrugged her hand away when it reached his shoulder, his eyes fixed on the wall behind her.
"Yamato," she purred, soft and light, reaching for him again, but he leaned away and rested his arm on the table.
"I'm tired," he said, rubbing the heel of his hand across his eyes. "All the sake."
He certainly was drunk; with the subtle slurring of his words, she could tell. Drunk men only wanted her more, she couldn't fathom why he was refusing to pick up her hints. Or maybe he knew, and was ignoring them. Pretending like he was better than that.
She parted her lips to speak; she'd be forward, if that's what he wanted, but his gaze cut over to her, and she paused.
"I don't want–" he said, biting down on his lip. "Kaido forced you here, it's not–"
"Don't worry about it," she tried to soothe, but he shook his head.
"I'm tired," he said again, his chin dipping to his chest.
Hiyori frowned, just the slightest twitch of her eyebrows. "Oh. Well, lay down."
Yamato nodded and leaned back, lowering himself flat to the ground, the chains of his cuffs clanking. His hair splayed out behind him, and his head lolled to the side to face her, half-lidded sienna eyes and a slight dreamy smile touching his lips, pale skin flushed deep pink. He let out a soft giggle. "Can I nap?"
"You can do whatever you want," Hiyori said, struggling to keep the edge of frustration out of her voice. It wasn't supposed to go this way. There was a script to follow, a routine to stick to, and yet here he was, laying on the floor in a pleasure hall, fully clothed.
"Will you play something?" he asked shyly. "Anything you want. Please."
Hiyori sighed, almost inaudibly, and reached for the shamisen. She'd never had a client so difficult or stubborn, or somehow so kind.
The bachi settled into her palm and her fingertips rested on the strings. The first note echoed around them, and Yamato's eyes fell shut.
"Beautiful," he said, his hands that rested beside his waist now entirely still, the trembling gone. They, too, now that she was looking for it, were smattered with pale scars. The cuffs on his wrists shifted and she could see the scar tissue underneath that the constant rubbing had created, leaving patches of new skin beside scabbed-over raw spots.
She tried, desperately, to stoke the pyre of anger inside her. Anger was the one thing she had left, the one thing Kaido and Orochi couldn't take from her, but she felt it dim as she looked at Yamato, who suddenly seemed smaller than he was. She should be angrier at him than anybody, a man with the audacity to adopt her father's name as his, who Kaido would throw sake and women and all the riches he could desire at and yet who still refused the power his birth entitled him too; who still wouldn't accept the advances of a woman just because she didn't choose to be there.
She hated him. Him and his father and everything he represented.
She told herself that, at least, but when her fingers jumped across the shamisen's strings and the melody rose like a cresting wave, she saw a tear slip down his temple. With his eyes closed, she let the tears fall silently from her own, unseen, and by the time the song was over, his breathing was deep and even, and he was still.
Hiyori brushed a lock of hair away from his brow on her way out.