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She was the most beautiful of all.
Her lips were made of honey, her eyes made of stars. Her hair made of cold moonlight, her skin warm and soft like the first bite out of a peach. Each step she gave came with the ruffle of sakura petals, each breath with the beauty of the first dawn of spring. To see her smile was to be cursed with never ending envy. To touch her was to be blessed with unparalleled pleasure.
And yet all she could feel was anger. Her flesh burned with all-consuming hatred, threaded by the fury of thunder and storm. She looked at herself and disgust seeped into her veins, acidic and rotten. As much as she bathed herself, she couldn’t rid her skin of all the dirt she carried. Even her hair, dyed an oily black, was enough to make her want to retch. She felt dirty and used and worthless, for she knew she was nothing but the warmth of her flesh and the bliss on her lips. That’s all she ever was, and all she’d ever be.
Daki sat at her vanity inside her room, staring at her reflection with unseeing eyes. She had everything she’d ever wanted, otherworldly allure and power — so why did she feel so disgusted at her own image? Even with her beauty eternal and her undying flesh, she could feel herself wither from the inside. Looking back at her was no beauty or perfection, but the scarred face of a little girl, melted eyes sticking to her cheeks like the tears Daki couldn’t shed, for it would ruin the white powder that sat on her face.
To see nothing but a broken doll. What was she if not to be consumed by others? She who was a demon, who could eat and tear the flesh of any of those she desired — still powerless and trapped by the life she had always envisioned for herself. To be oiran, to be the most beautiful and powerful woman in all of Yoshiwara. What was it all for, if her body was not hers, but her patron’s? To have herself touched, used and discarded, again and again. Was it worth it?
She felt like at the smallest of steps she would break, and melt in a pool of her own blood, her body left behind to drown in its own decay, ripe for the feast of the maggots and the flies. If she were to look down at her own legs, she would see the skin of her thighs painted by spots of blue and purple from last night. It didn’t even hurt, really. She could heal them in no time. And yet she let them linger, if only to remind herself of her hatred.
She was tired. So tired. She wanted to scream, but she couldn’t, lest the madam think there was something wrong with her. Daki had been playing too much by her own rules, and her master — her true master — ordered her to be more careful. She was attracting unwanted eyes.
Daki looked at the mirror and was so disgusted at herself. For letting herself be used. For being stupid enough to think that she was but a commodity. A meal, with only the scraped off bones left behind. All that beauty, all the skills for dancing and singing and playing music, and for what? For sex. For someone else’s pleasure but never her own.
She was nothing.
She was no one.
And for all she had always claimed to be, the lies were starting to pull at her silks.
Now tired and powerless, she didn’t know what to do with all the rage that boiled her blood, that gnawed at her bones. She couldn’t bear to look at the mirror and risk the child — who is she? — look back at her. If she were to be seen by her, Daki didn’t think she could survive her stare. The guilt. The nausea. To know herself as an abomination.
So she smashed it. First with a small wooden box thrown against the mirror, then with her bare hands, pushing and pulling at the glass so that it would cut into her palms, slice her fingers, break her nails. She screamed, not from the pain. Out from her chest, over her throat and her teeth, came something much older, darker. A wrath that lay ever dormant but never unfelt, present from the forgotten days when she was a child, bound to her from the moment she was born.
The glass shards glistened in Daki’s hands, painting her skin a silvery crimson. What was the point of all of her suffering? After a thousand lifetimes, endless moonless nights, why was she alive? So much work she had put into herself. Years, decades, centuries. To be the most beautiful, the most coveted, the most expensive. To have her earnings be the lifeline of so many women and girls, to have the most rich and powerful men cowering at her feet — a lie. Still just an object. A piece of merchandise. A woman. Like the melted little girl thrown at the fire, whose blood mixed with her own in her hands.
She couldn’t hear her own screams. Rather, she felt them, deep in her chest, breaking her ribs and puncturing her lungs. She hated herself. What she’d become. What she always was. Who was she if not beautiful? Who was she if not Warabihime? Who was she if not the queen of all prostitutes, bound to a life of luxury and lust, of sex and rape and filth and pain?
Daki touched her own face with bloodied fingertips. Why not destroy it? She could remake it over and over and over again. Pluck her eyes out like berries, peel her skin like fruit. Eat it, just like she did with her prey.
Gyutarou grabbed her wrist before she could.
“What’re you doing?”
It startled her. Daki needed a moment to focus her sight on her brother’s tall figure, eyes by the height of his collarbones. She didn’t look up at his face.
“Go away.”
Gyutarou grunted, still holding her wrist tightly in his hand. Not enough to hurt. Strong enough that she couldn’t free herself from him. Daki had to keep herself from growling.
“I said leave.”
“What’s goin’ on?” He asked again, pulling her hand closer so he could look at the bloodied glass in her palm. She pushed him away and he let go.
“Are you proud of me, big brother?” She asked, she growled, baring her teeth like a dog. “Is this what you wanted? Am I a good enough whore for you?”
Gyutarou squinted his eyes. He heard the threat in her voice, and threaded his words carefully. “I don’t understand.”
“You made me like this!” She cried, frantic, pushing her makeup and her perfumes over from her broken vanity. “It’s so easy for you, brother,” she spat, grabbing the mirror shards again. “You use me as bait while they enjoy my body and you their flesh.” Daki threw the shards at her brother, knowing they wouldn’t hurt him. She didn’t know what she was doing anymore. In her, there was only hatred. For him, for herself. She wanted to burn the world down to the ground. “Why do I get to suffer like this? Why don’t I get to sit back and watch, just like you?”
“You’re not makin’ sense. You love to hunt.”
“It’s not hunting when I am the bait!” She screamed, her master’s orders long forgotten. She toppled the vanity over, throwing it at Gyutarou like it would somehow hurt him. “I hate you! Go away! I hate you!”
“What are you going on about?!” Gyutarou yelled back, deflecting the vanity to crash it into the wall. “We do everything together! I let you call all the shots!”
“You’re useless! You’re worthless!” She wanted to hurt him, to see him bleed and cry. But she knew he couldn’t. Instead, Daki turned to herself, scratching and pulling at her chest, her shoulders, her hair. “You only watch as I have to— To fuck the patrons to maintain cover. You watch as they hate their way with me. You were supposed to protect me!”
“You let them do it!”
“Because I have no other option!” She felt like she could burn and yet the fire would not cleanse her rage. The broken furniture was but soft pillows. If she were to melt, there would be nothing left of her if not a bloody, muddy pool. Only dirt to be discarded.
“Go away!” She pleaded again, this time clawing at the roots of her hair. “Leave me alone! Leave me alone!” But she did not know if her brother was even really there.
The little girl that lost the bet against the others slided the door open with tears in her eyes. They had all heard the screaming. The roaring. Something inhuman, monstrous. She would once have thought a demon to have whisked Warabihime away into the night, like the stories the women told among themselves under whispered breaths and cryptic words, too scared to let themselves know too much, hear too much, see too much. But the little girl was already grown, and she knew too much, she heard too much. And as she entered the destroyed dark room, she saw too much.
Inside, there was only a woman, sat atop her own bloodied ankles, black strands of hair sprawled along her shoulders, her back, her face, all the way to the floor. Fingers curled into claws, frozen midair as though to reach her own face — that which was obscured if not for her eyes, glowing a sickly green with something ancient. Something frenzied.
Inside, there was only an oiran.