Tokyo Taisho, 1919 (chapter 4) - A stroll in Ueno
Title: Tokyo Taisho, 1919
Author: lalois
Fandom: Kanjani8, Arashi, others
Pairings: RyOhkura, Yasuba, Yasu/Maru + others to come
Rating: from PG to NC17. Chapter is PG
Length: chaptered story
Words: 2569
Genre: historical AU, gender-bender, romance, drama, flirting, ust, angst, smut, introspection, hurt/comfort
Disclaimer: sadly I don’t own anything about Kanjani8, just my worship for my OTP.
Prompt/Summary/Background: Early twenties, Osaka/Tokyo. Ryo gets invited in Tokyo by his longtime childhood friend Jun. There, he'll get to know a whole new world. A fateful encounter in Ueno during the foliage season.
Written on: December 2013 - January 2019. Chpt translated as of April 2019.
Previous chapters: -1- -2- -3-
Also available @ Ao3, LJ, DW
For the background picture credits go to @rave21392
Diva
With the month of October opening up, most mornings do become rather humid, fresh and silent.
It is precisely during this time of the year that one of the most extraordinary changing in Tokyo takes place, and these are among the best days to admire such magic.
Whilst the city still lying dormant, I do frequently take a stroll to the park in Ueno: it is here that the foliage does change colour, and it is here where the trees do cease wearing their brilliant emerald clothes to put on their golden, ochre and crimson features, the most suitable ones for the autumn. They do not lose in beauty; they do rather become more and more fascinating, instead.
I wish I could resemble them. Mutate appearance, without losing in identity. I am devoid of such, though.
There is no-one walking throughout the alleys of the park, this early: after the dances, the music and the lively chattering permeating the Okiyama until late in the night, this silence is providing me great wellness.
And nevertheless, it takes my mind to that person, and there is nothing I can do to prevent this from happening.
I do not understand why his eyes do avoid mine with a frequency I could dare define disrespectful.
I do assume he might be insisting accompanying Matsumoto-san every evening because forced to, despite my persona putting him into such awkwardness.
I do wish he could leave the Okiyame before me having to perform, then. I do wish he could somehow excuse himself from such duty, rather than persisting disrespecting me to that extent.
I cannot manage to understand. With every other man it is way too easy to guess what they do not say. Nishikido-san, on the other hand, does resemble Matsumoto-san also for what this aspect is concerned: someone having a complex personality, whose facets can bring one to mislead and make people falter.
A delicate smile fading into such serious expression on his face, right before his gaze leaves mine. I do not understand. He induces me a discomfort I do not appreciate and that is no suitable at all for the one I should be.
Let your rapidity be that of wind, your gentleness that of the forest; be fierce like fire, be immovable like a mountain.
Immovable like a mountain.
That is how I wish so much to be, to let the Furinkazan precept become solely mine, like nanny kept repeating me day by day; it happened every time my father felt ashamed of me, and yet before he were to ever see me dressed up in my mother's clothes. The mother I have never met. I do wonder whether she might have ever loved me, if only she did not die in childbirth when I was born.
I do wonder if she alone could have ever accepted me.
That is why the Okiyama to me is the only place where I am allowed to live without shame. When creating it, Matsumoto-san donated me a future that did not even exist.
I am aware of the fact I will be never able to do enough to repay him, to prove the gratitude I do have for him.
I do already have him keep all the generous amounts of money my clients offer me for the night, but that is not enough for me. I owe him such money ever since I paid off all the debts I had towards my family, yet it is not enough.
I usually ask him to use it for the education of the girls, and maybe to have them pampered a little bit, provided that he won't ever tell anyone a word about it.
Matsumoto-san saved me. And this the only thing that matters.
Matsumoto-san would honestly not make a bad impression even among these beautiful and proud trees.
When I do turn towards the alley lining beside the Shinobazu pond, I notice someone coming in that moment, right from the opposite direction, and I cannot help but freeze when recognizing him.
"Is that you... here?" Nishikido-san babbles.
I courteously bow to him. This place belongs to me way more than to him. How is he entitled to consider me unworthy of even strolling freely around Ueno?
I am certainly someone with a dubious identity, hair imbued with perfume and lacquered lips for seduction purpose. And yet, I am a free and independent person.
"You are a continuous surprise," he confesses me smiling, stepping closer to walk beside me. "I would have never dared imagining to be able to walk together with you in such a beautiful place, which is not so crowded right now. It is incredibly magnificent, in here."
The inexplicable annoyance I do feel towards his persona makes me unable to keep going with the conversation as it would be advisable to do. I do not find the words. though.
I owe it to Matsumoto-san, at the very least. Furthermore, several people have by now gathered alongside the bank, in order to admire the autumn colours reflecting upon the surface of the mirror of water. It would be unseemly to have him talk merely on his own.
Then, I do feel something hitting my back, and I instinctively turn; something heavy brushes my cheek, thrown from far away.
"YOU HARLOT!" a stranger man I do not recognize cries out aloud; he picks up some other pebbles to throw at me. I am right about to shelter myself with the sleeve of my kimono, when Nishikido-san puts himself between us.
I had already noticed how he is a lot shorter than me as for what height is concerned, yet this difference does not seem as much obvious right now.
"I do not think it is appropriate of you to talk about her in such way," Nishikido-san tells him, in a voice as hoarse as I had yet to hear.
"She is just a prostitute! She should not stroll around as if it's nothing! She should not appear on all those playbills!"
"Have you ever been at one of the performances run by the Okiyama, Sir?" Nishikido-san goes on.
"Farm hands are no filthy rich like you are, Sir! This does not mean we-"
"Then please have this, please," Nishikido-san insists, offering the man some banknotes. "Please come and see yourself Diva's talent at the Okiyama, to make sure with your very eyes that she is nothing like you reckon she is."
"Nishikido-san, please, do not-"
"Please," he cuts me off.
The man narrows his eyes, looking rather perplexed yet accepting the banknotes.
"You can easily use such money for some other purpose, if you wish so; to buy foodstuff or waste them gambling. Or, again, to come and
see her. It is entirely up to you only, Sir."
The man spits on the ground, quelling indecorous words and then running away.
Nishikido-san immediately turns his attention towards me; his eyes become worried ones, and he lends me a handkerchief.
"Are you by any chance hurt? Did he harm you?"
"It's nothing, please do not worry about me."
"Your cheekbone," he insists, bringing the handkerchief nearer my face, however not daring to brush it.
The cotton fabric gets slightly stained by blood, when I do run it over my cheek. I had not even noticed such thing.
"It's nothing," I repeat.
"Did he already cause you any trouble?"
I shake slightly my head.
"And yet such thing did already happen to you, isn't that so?"
I do look up, meeting his eyes and challenging them.
"Very seldomly."
"Is that why you never reported anything to Jun?"
I cannot reply. I cannot lie, but I do hate that he got to understand such thing about me.
"You were not required to do it," I murmur then, looking away.
"Quite the contrary. I cannot approve of people talking that way about you."
"That is what I am, though. I do seduce our clients, then I do entertain their nights in exchange for a lot of money. That makes me a prostitute, despite non even being a real woman."
"I do reckon instead you should be treated just like an incredibly sophisticated courtesan."
"Is there any difference?" I insist, almost comptemptuous.
His eyes do become sad.
He merely wishes being kind to me, I do understand; there is no reason to, anyway.
He would like to deny this reality, when there's no other one, though.
That is when I do realize where the basis of his discomfort lies, and such revelation irritates me.
At the Okiyama, we are not enough for him.
His education forces him to accompany us, but he is one of those men who like getting hurt; those man like him do not spend their times with people like me, people lying about who they are.
Nishikido-san should surround himself with pretty girls, instead, for he cannot understand.
Matsumoto-san did create for me a future where there was none; that is way more than I could ever imagine for myself in this world. But Nishikido-san, he does not understand.
He keeps staring at my face and he suddenly, tenderly smiles again:
"I had never noticed it so far," he confesses to me.
I bat my eyelashes, perplexed. What is he saying?
"The stars are showing on your face," he murmurs sounding rather bemused, and goes further on to explain, noticing my bewilderment.
"These small moles on your left cheek... they do look like the Ursa Major constellation. Do you happen to know about it? It's an incredible resemblance..."
One of my hands reaches instinctively up for my cheek, but it is only later that evening, before a mirror in my room at the Okiyama, that I can make sure about what he has said.
I do look at my reflection.
I have borrowed from Matsumoto-san one of those journals he keeps in his bureau; it mentions the sky and the shapes it takes. It seems like admiring the "constellations" is currently a fashionable thing in the Western countries.
I can easily find out the Ursa Major shape, the one that Nishikido-san first noticed on my face.
I do take off the hair clips holding still my wig and I remove it, and then I further proceed with my make-up and the lipstick; I once again take a look at myself in the mirror, finding a face that no-one can recognize nor ever see. It is a face with no identity and nevertheless, even after removing all its artificialities, on such a face the stars are still there. They do belong to it. They are part of it.
Nobody has looked at me with such intensity ever before. As if he could see right through me.
Nishikido-san is nonetheless a mere hypocrite, and my eyes burn with anger. There is no need for those black eyes to remind me about my nature.
There's suddenly a soft knock on my door and I jolt, waking me up from my own thoughts. I put the wig on again and I open, only to find Chibichan on the threshold, apparently too embarrassed to look up at me.
"Chibichan... did something happen?" I do ask her, letting her in. She does seem even more petite, this bent; I have been the one nicknaming her so, besides. I have been the one taking her under my wing, teaching her the principles of the seduction through the dancing, and how to allow her constantly smiling face through a proper make-up.
In exchange, she does often ask me the permission to get my hair done; she is the only one among us finding it pleasurable to enter my room and spend the time chatting with me.
"Maruyama-san... he did... earlier on, after our show, he said he would be delighted to ask me out for a stroll outside this neighborhood, in Ueno."
I instinctively pull her into an embrace.
This is also something that those men like Nishikido-san cannot understand. He does not know that Matsumoto-san saved our lives in a way that not even Matsumoto-san realize all the way.
Some of the people attending our shows at the Okiyama have taken some interest in us for real, despite none of us being women at all.
There was a man that was a regular at the Okiyama; he loved sipping his sake and courteously applauding us. He bore keen black eyes that lingered on Chibichan. She told me that his name was Shibutani-san.
They have spent together nights filled with passion, for several months. And then, Shibutani-san simply disappeared; he has never been spotted at Okiyama anymore, and not even Matsumoto-san managed to know anything more about him. He did not leave a message nor other thing behind.
Chibichan has spent just as many months suffocating the tears in her futon, in her room just beside my own one, despite never letting the grief tearing her smile away from the stage.
During that period I stayed her longer in the evening, before dedicating myself to our clients. Locked up in my room, I did stroke gently her hair, letting her cry on my lap until she would have run out of every other tear.
I remember then when one day on the Okiyama threshold a new client timidly appeared, a merchant recently establishing himself in Tokyo from Kyoto. It's a man bearing a sweet smile, whose cheeks redden everytime Nino does wink at him or whenever Yuuko dances in a way too provoking way before his eyes. Maruyama-san is a good, kind man.
I do believe he must have appealed to his every audacity, the day he had asked Chibichan to have the honour of taking a stroll with her around Tokyo. And yet, she turned him down.
Maruyama-san has not given up. I have been told that he does not live a wealthy life like most of the customers here, but he nonetheless comes to the Okiyama thrice a week and every time his gentle face does gaze at Chibichan, as long as she has accepted to offer him her body, however not her soul.
They have never gone for a walk, though, because she does not wish to go outside and retrace those streets towards Nihonbashi that do still cause her so much pain.
Sometimes she does still burst into tears at the thought of her lost love. That is when Maruyama-san takes her in his arms, caressing patiently her hair and murmuring softly that he will not ever leave. That he has chosen living in Tokyo for work, and in Tokyo he has had the sheer luck of finding the other half of his heart.
"I have told him I will go, this time," Chibichan softly confesses to me, her voice thick with emotion. "Maruyama-san is..."
"A very fortunate man indeed," I do complete for her. She looked up and her smiling eyes do find mine, and I smile as well.
This young man, Shota, is filled with newfound happiness again.
That is no mask.
"He has actually been very patient," she murmurs, slightly hesitant.
"Patience is the virtue of the strong ones, they say." She burst into a delightful chuckle and I do hug her slightly tighter.
I am truly fond of her, and I am extremely happy for her heart. For both of them, of course.
As for me, though, I do not belong to such blessed world.
**
Notes:
1. you might already noticed it, but in translating in English this story there's something I might fail letting readers grasp, and that is the way people from Okiyama address one another.
Each of the girls refer to themselves as women, and so do Jun and Ryo and everyone else. While in Italian we do perceive this right from the suffixes details in writing (i.e. "gone": is 'andata' for a female, 'andato' for a male), there is nothing like that in English, so it's pretty hard to convey this nuance. I hope you manage anyway, somehow, given that little changes in the way the characters refer to the girls do occur in the development of the story and they're nonetheless important for the plot ^^
2. Same goes for the formal speech: while Ryo and the girls do address each other with the formal "Voi" in Italian (that means 'you' in a very formal occasion) and verbs inflected into the plural mode (again, formal one), in English there's basically no difference in the language itself, for 'you' can both be my friend, my boss, my emperor. Once again, the difference is made through dialogues and speeches alone, and I hope this can be understood throughout the story. Same goes for the development of these formalities between the characters as the story evolves ;)
3. Furinkazan: is (from Wikipedia) a popularized version of the battle standard used by the Sengoku period daimyō Takeda Shingen. The banner quoted four phrases from Sun Tzu's The Art of War: "as swift as wind, as gentle as forest, as fierce as fire, as unshakable as mountain." It appears to be a later invention.
Let your rapidity be that of the wind, your gentleness that of the forest.
In raiding and plundering be like fire, be immovable like a mountain.
Author: lalois
Fandom: Kanjani8, Arashi, others
Pairings: RyOhkura, Yasuba, Yasu/Maru + others to come
Rating: from PG to NC17. Chapter is PG
Length: chaptered story
Words: 2569
Genre: historical AU, gender-bender, romance, drama, flirting, ust, angst, smut, introspection, hurt/comfort
Disclaimer: sadly I don’t own anything about Kanjani8, just my worship for my OTP.
Prompt/Summary/Background: Early twenties, Osaka/Tokyo. Ryo gets invited in Tokyo by his longtime childhood friend Jun. There, he'll get to know a whole new world. A fateful encounter in Ueno during the foliage season.
Written on: December 2013 - January 2019. Chpt translated as of April 2019.
Previous chapters: -1- -2- -3-
Also available @ Ao3, LJ, DW
For the background picture credits go to @rave21392
Diva
With the month of October opening up, most mornings do become rather humid, fresh and silent.
It is precisely during this time of the year that one of the most extraordinary changing in Tokyo takes place, and these are among the best days to admire such magic.
Whilst the city still lying dormant, I do frequently take a stroll to the park in Ueno: it is here that the foliage does change colour, and it is here where the trees do cease wearing their brilliant emerald clothes to put on their golden, ochre and crimson features, the most suitable ones for the autumn. They do not lose in beauty; they do rather become more and more fascinating, instead.
I wish I could resemble them. Mutate appearance, without losing in identity. I am devoid of such, though.
There is no-one walking throughout the alleys of the park, this early: after the dances, the music and the lively chattering permeating the Okiyama until late in the night, this silence is providing me great wellness.
And nevertheless, it takes my mind to that person, and there is nothing I can do to prevent this from happening.
I do not understand why his eyes do avoid mine with a frequency I could dare define disrespectful.
I do assume he might be insisting accompanying Matsumoto-san every evening because forced to, despite my persona putting him into such awkwardness.
I do wish he could leave the Okiyame before me having to perform, then. I do wish he could somehow excuse himself from such duty, rather than persisting disrespecting me to that extent.
I cannot manage to understand. With every other man it is way too easy to guess what they do not say. Nishikido-san, on the other hand, does resemble Matsumoto-san also for what this aspect is concerned: someone having a complex personality, whose facets can bring one to mislead and make people falter.
A delicate smile fading into such serious expression on his face, right before his gaze leaves mine. I do not understand. He induces me a discomfort I do not appreciate and that is no suitable at all for the one I should be.
Let your rapidity be that of wind, your gentleness that of the forest; be fierce like fire, be immovable like a mountain.
Immovable like a mountain.
That is how I wish so much to be, to let the Furinkazan precept become solely mine, like nanny kept repeating me day by day; it happened every time my father felt ashamed of me, and yet before he were to ever see me dressed up in my mother's clothes. The mother I have never met. I do wonder whether she might have ever loved me, if only she did not die in childbirth when I was born.
I do wonder if she alone could have ever accepted me.
That is why the Okiyama to me is the only place where I am allowed to live without shame. When creating it, Matsumoto-san donated me a future that did not even exist.
I am aware of the fact I will be never able to do enough to repay him, to prove the gratitude I do have for him.
I do already have him keep all the generous amounts of money my clients offer me for the night, but that is not enough for me. I owe him such money ever since I paid off all the debts I had towards my family, yet it is not enough.
I usually ask him to use it for the education of the girls, and maybe to have them pampered a little bit, provided that he won't ever tell anyone a word about it.
Matsumoto-san saved me. And this the only thing that matters.
Matsumoto-san would honestly not make a bad impression even among these beautiful and proud trees.
When I do turn towards the alley lining beside the Shinobazu pond, I notice someone coming in that moment, right from the opposite direction, and I cannot help but freeze when recognizing him.
"Is that you... here?" Nishikido-san babbles.
I courteously bow to him. This place belongs to me way more than to him. How is he entitled to consider me unworthy of even strolling freely around Ueno?
I am certainly someone with a dubious identity, hair imbued with perfume and lacquered lips for seduction purpose. And yet, I am a free and independent person.
"You are a continuous surprise," he confesses me smiling, stepping closer to walk beside me. "I would have never dared imagining to be able to walk together with you in such a beautiful place, which is not so crowded right now. It is incredibly magnificent, in here."
The inexplicable annoyance I do feel towards his persona makes me unable to keep going with the conversation as it would be advisable to do. I do not find the words. though.
I owe it to Matsumoto-san, at the very least. Furthermore, several people have by now gathered alongside the bank, in order to admire the autumn colours reflecting upon the surface of the mirror of water. It would be unseemly to have him talk merely on his own.
Then, I do feel something hitting my back, and I instinctively turn; something heavy brushes my cheek, thrown from far away.
"YOU HARLOT!" a stranger man I do not recognize cries out aloud; he picks up some other pebbles to throw at me. I am right about to shelter myself with the sleeve of my kimono, when Nishikido-san puts himself between us.
I had already noticed how he is a lot shorter than me as for what height is concerned, yet this difference does not seem as much obvious right now.
"I do not think it is appropriate of you to talk about her in such way," Nishikido-san tells him, in a voice as hoarse as I had yet to hear.
"She is just a prostitute! She should not stroll around as if it's nothing! She should not appear on all those playbills!"
"Have you ever been at one of the performances run by the Okiyama, Sir?" Nishikido-san goes on.
"Farm hands are no filthy rich like you are, Sir! This does not mean we-"
"Then please have this, please," Nishikido-san insists, offering the man some banknotes. "Please come and see yourself Diva's talent at the Okiyama, to make sure with your very eyes that she is nothing like you reckon she is."
"Nishikido-san, please, do not-"
"Please," he cuts me off.
The man narrows his eyes, looking rather perplexed yet accepting the banknotes.
"You can easily use such money for some other purpose, if you wish so; to buy foodstuff or waste them gambling. Or, again, to come and
see her. It is entirely up to you only, Sir."
The man spits on the ground, quelling indecorous words and then running away.
Nishikido-san immediately turns his attention towards me; his eyes become worried ones, and he lends me a handkerchief.
"Are you by any chance hurt? Did he harm you?"
"It's nothing, please do not worry about me."
"Your cheekbone," he insists, bringing the handkerchief nearer my face, however not daring to brush it.
The cotton fabric gets slightly stained by blood, when I do run it over my cheek. I had not even noticed such thing.
"It's nothing," I repeat.
"Did he already cause you any trouble?"
I shake slightly my head.
"And yet such thing did already happen to you, isn't that so?"
I do look up, meeting his eyes and challenging them.
"Very seldomly."
"Is that why you never reported anything to Jun?"
I cannot reply. I cannot lie, but I do hate that he got to understand such thing about me.
"You were not required to do it," I murmur then, looking away.
"Quite the contrary. I cannot approve of people talking that way about you."
"That is what I am, though. I do seduce our clients, then I do entertain their nights in exchange for a lot of money. That makes me a prostitute, despite non even being a real woman."
"I do reckon instead you should be treated just like an incredibly sophisticated courtesan."
"Is there any difference?" I insist, almost comptemptuous.
His eyes do become sad.
He merely wishes being kind to me, I do understand; there is no reason to, anyway.
He would like to deny this reality, when there's no other one, though.
That is when I do realize where the basis of his discomfort lies, and such revelation irritates me.
At the Okiyama, we are not enough for him.
His education forces him to accompany us, but he is one of those men who like getting hurt; those man like him do not spend their times with people like me, people lying about who they are.
Nishikido-san should surround himself with pretty girls, instead, for he cannot understand.
Matsumoto-san did create for me a future where there was none; that is way more than I could ever imagine for myself in this world. But Nishikido-san, he does not understand.
He keeps staring at my face and he suddenly, tenderly smiles again:
"I had never noticed it so far," he confesses to me.
I bat my eyelashes, perplexed. What is he saying?
"The stars are showing on your face," he murmurs sounding rather bemused, and goes further on to explain, noticing my bewilderment.
"These small moles on your left cheek... they do look like the Ursa Major constellation. Do you happen to know about it? It's an incredible resemblance..."
One of my hands reaches instinctively up for my cheek, but it is only later that evening, before a mirror in my room at the Okiyama, that I can make sure about what he has said.
I do look at my reflection.
I have borrowed from Matsumoto-san one of those journals he keeps in his bureau; it mentions the sky and the shapes it takes. It seems like admiring the "constellations" is currently a fashionable thing in the Western countries.
I can easily find out the Ursa Major shape, the one that Nishikido-san first noticed on my face.
I do take off the hair clips holding still my wig and I remove it, and then I further proceed with my make-up and the lipstick; I once again take a look at myself in the mirror, finding a face that no-one can recognize nor ever see. It is a face with no identity and nevertheless, even after removing all its artificialities, on such a face the stars are still there. They do belong to it. They are part of it.
Nobody has looked at me with such intensity ever before. As if he could see right through me.
Nishikido-san is nonetheless a mere hypocrite, and my eyes burn with anger. There is no need for those black eyes to remind me about my nature.
There's suddenly a soft knock on my door and I jolt, waking me up from my own thoughts. I put the wig on again and I open, only to find Chibichan on the threshold, apparently too embarrassed to look up at me.
"Chibichan... did something happen?" I do ask her, letting her in. She does seem even more petite, this bent; I have been the one nicknaming her so, besides. I have been the one taking her under my wing, teaching her the principles of the seduction through the dancing, and how to allow her constantly smiling face through a proper make-up.
In exchange, she does often ask me the permission to get my hair done; she is the only one among us finding it pleasurable to enter my room and spend the time chatting with me.
"Maruyama-san... he did... earlier on, after our show, he said he would be delighted to ask me out for a stroll outside this neighborhood, in Ueno."
I instinctively pull her into an embrace.
This is also something that those men like Nishikido-san cannot understand. He does not know that Matsumoto-san saved our lives in a way that not even Matsumoto-san realize all the way.
Some of the people attending our shows at the Okiyama have taken some interest in us for real, despite none of us being women at all.
There was a man that was a regular at the Okiyama; he loved sipping his sake and courteously applauding us. He bore keen black eyes that lingered on Chibichan. She told me that his name was Shibutani-san.
They have spent together nights filled with passion, for several months. And then, Shibutani-san simply disappeared; he has never been spotted at Okiyama anymore, and not even Matsumoto-san managed to know anything more about him. He did not leave a message nor other thing behind.
Chibichan has spent just as many months suffocating the tears in her futon, in her room just beside my own one, despite never letting the grief tearing her smile away from the stage.
During that period I stayed her longer in the evening, before dedicating myself to our clients. Locked up in my room, I did stroke gently her hair, letting her cry on my lap until she would have run out of every other tear.
I remember then when one day on the Okiyama threshold a new client timidly appeared, a merchant recently establishing himself in Tokyo from Kyoto. It's a man bearing a sweet smile, whose cheeks redden everytime Nino does wink at him or whenever Yuuko dances in a way too provoking way before his eyes. Maruyama-san is a good, kind man.
I do believe he must have appealed to his every audacity, the day he had asked Chibichan to have the honour of taking a stroll with her around Tokyo. And yet, she turned him down.
Maruyama-san has not given up. I have been told that he does not live a wealthy life like most of the customers here, but he nonetheless comes to the Okiyama thrice a week and every time his gentle face does gaze at Chibichan, as long as she has accepted to offer him her body, however not her soul.
They have never gone for a walk, though, because she does not wish to go outside and retrace those streets towards Nihonbashi that do still cause her so much pain.
Sometimes she does still burst into tears at the thought of her lost love. That is when Maruyama-san takes her in his arms, caressing patiently her hair and murmuring softly that he will not ever leave. That he has chosen living in Tokyo for work, and in Tokyo he has had the sheer luck of finding the other half of his heart.
"I have told him I will go, this time," Chibichan softly confesses to me, her voice thick with emotion. "Maruyama-san is..."
"A very fortunate man indeed," I do complete for her. She looked up and her smiling eyes do find mine, and I smile as well.
This young man, Shota, is filled with newfound happiness again.
That is no mask.
"He has actually been very patient," she murmurs, slightly hesitant.
"Patience is the virtue of the strong ones, they say." She burst into a delightful chuckle and I do hug her slightly tighter.
I am truly fond of her, and I am extremely happy for her heart. For both of them, of course.
As for me, though, I do not belong to such blessed world.
**
Notes:
1. you might already noticed it, but in translating in English this story there's something I might fail letting readers grasp, and that is the way people from Okiyama address one another.
Each of the girls refer to themselves as women, and so do Jun and Ryo and everyone else. While in Italian we do perceive this right from the suffixes details in writing (i.e. "gone": is 'andata' for a female, 'andato' for a male), there is nothing like that in English, so it's pretty hard to convey this nuance. I hope you manage anyway, somehow, given that little changes in the way the characters refer to the girls do occur in the development of the story and they're nonetheless important for the plot ^^
2. Same goes for the formal speech: while Ryo and the girls do address each other with the formal "Voi" in Italian (that means 'you' in a very formal occasion) and verbs inflected into the plural mode (again, formal one), in English there's basically no difference in the language itself, for 'you' can both be my friend, my boss, my emperor. Once again, the difference is made through dialogues and speeches alone, and I hope this can be understood throughout the story. Same goes for the development of these formalities between the characters as the story evolves ;)
3. Furinkazan: is (from Wikipedia) a popularized version of the battle standard used by the Sengoku period daimyō Takeda Shingen. The banner quoted four phrases from Sun Tzu's The Art of War: "as swift as wind, as gentle as forest, as fierce as fire, as unshakable as mountain." It appears to be a later invention.
Let your rapidity be that of the wind, your gentleness that of the forest.
In raiding and plundering be like fire, be immovable like a mountain.