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SYSTEMS
?
Once the sounds subside and silence falls over the master’s bedroom, Ume – who has been called to his quarters by the steward, although she usually works different areas of the house, to bring the mistress a fresh change of kimono for the morning – looks at Akihisa, who’s in charge of the master’s wardrobe, and waits for the slightly older man to nod. They slide each their door open, then quietly step inside. The room is an unusual mess of clothes strewn everywhere. Ume didn’t think the master was truly capable of that kind of disarray, though she’s heard the stories of how he used to be, before the first mistress and thus, before Ume entered the household.
Quickly, they pick up everything out of place, Akihisa grabs the master’s discarded hakama, exchanging it with a new, full uniform, folded away neatly. Ume tiptoes around the bed where the master and mistress are all bundled up, picking up Satoko’s yukata and, further away, her underwear, too.
They’ve cleaned the room in less than two minutes.
Then, two other servants bring in the large frame on which to display the morning’s kimono and Ume gets to work on arranging it, folding out the sleeves and letting the front hang down flat, so it doesn’t wrinkle. Once all that is done, she affords herself one final glance at the couple, hoping – although it’s not in her place to do so – that the mistress has enjoyed herself as much as it sounded like she did.
Among themselves, the servants had discussed whether it was expected of them to try sneaking Satoko out of the room before the master awoke, as is customary in these affairs, but in the end they’d decided, no one had wanted to lose neither their jobs nor their heads.
So, Satoko stayed. The morning shift could confirm, she stayed all night, long after the master himself had left for work.
*
When the time comes for her change of dress, it isn’t Ume who comes to help her, but rather a servant girl called Himari who Satoko knows only in passing, a face in a crowd. However, she is efficient and very particular about the arrangement of the layers, tying up the obi with a hard tug. They both pretend she didn’t pause when she saw the bruises on Satoko’s buttocks, though Satoko did notice the long stare it drew from the girl.
It will surely be in circulation among the servants once she’s closed the sliding door. Satoko knows how these systems work, Tadeshina taught her back home. And if the servants know, all the house knows, which is as it should be. While Byakuya-sama and she created a room for themselves last night, the doors are not locked and they will eventually have to open to the rest of the family, so they know they’ve carried out their duty, at long last.
Duty…
As Himari fixes her hair, pulling it into a tight arrangement of hair ornaments and a bow in the back, Satoko thinks duty is the wrong word for it. It should be something like fate instead, things happen the way they do for a reason. For Byakuya-sama, for her and for Kiyo-sama.
In Soul Society, everyone lives and dies with a purpose. In this house, where emotions are so restricted, they feel the way they do purposefully, too. Happy, of course, he’d said. More so by the end of the day.
Holding her head high, when Himari shows her to the doorway, leading out of Byakuya-sama’s bedroom, Satoko steps outside with a long look back over her shoulder, then she returns to the existence she leads in her own quarters, removed.
Yet, to be away from something is only an issue as long as you can’t return, isn’t that so? And, she thinks, she trusts, her sandals slapping against the walkway, she’ll have to return.
*
Rina is pouring herself a bowl of the leftover soup, slurping the thick soba noodles right out of the liquid with little to no grace. All the while she is staring over at Himari who had been the one to dress the mistress this morning, now going on about the violet bruises she’d seen on the woman’s buttocks while wrapping her up in her kimono and obi.
“Must be old bruises, maybe some secret lover? She had one before, after all… And after fifty years, you can’t tell me the master would last long enough to bruise much of anything, except his pride,” she comments around a mouthful.
Himari scoffs and raises her chin at the other maid, pouting her lips. “Be careful what you say, Rina-chan. If anyone heard such a thing, you’d be fired.”
Rina shrugs and returns to eating, the servants always get whatever is left of lunch for the household and today it’s miso soup. Ume, sitting opposite Rina, bites her lip and holds her tongue, though luckily Aoi seems to be thinking the same thing she is:
“Judging by the mistress’ shrieking last night, I’d say the master’s pride can rightly congratulate itself. Didn’t the sounds just go on forever? I was trying to sleep, you know…”
Finally, Ume – who has finished most of her soup, they’d given her clean-up duties all morning and that always makes her hungry – can’t contain herself and she breaks into the other three girls’ chatting, saying with some sympathy:
“I really hope she enjoyed herself. It must have been her first.”
Silence falls among the others. They look at each other with some nostalgic reminiscing, recalling the time when it was theirs, right? Rina is the one to break the quiet, exclaiming:
“For someone who could have whoever with how beautiful she is, I think the mistress seems to have poor taste, really.”
Himari scolds her to no avail.
*
As she has come to do regularly, this day she sends lunch to the Gotei 13 headquarters as well, a portion of her own family recipe that he has expressed approval of previously, but today along with the bento, she sends a poem, written in miniature calligraphy, her best writing, and packed inside the box. As women would do in ancient times, sending a waka to their lover after a midnight tryst. She hands the small piece of paper over to the servant in the kitchen, instructing them how to include it without the fine paper getting wet or ruined by the food fumes. The servant looks taken aback, but bows and promises to carry it out as instructed.
Satoko leaves the poem with him, knowing that it likewise will spread to the house soon enough. She wants it to.
Feeling my buttocks
Should I call it gentleness
What you have shown me?
To me your gentleness means
You’ve accepted my wildness
Returning to her quarters, she finds that’s how free he’s made her feel.
*
Generally, when the master is returning home, word is sent to the staff, so they can prepare for his arrival. How Satoko manages to pick up on their murmured chatting that day, Ume doesn’t know, maybe she has always been that perceptive, but nonetheless she leaves her quarters, clad in the afternoon’s light yukata and flat sandals, more or less running through the many gardens to the front gates. The hard, fast slap of her sandals resonate through the whole house, servants turn after her as they see her, no one runs in the Kuchiki Mansion, after all.
Yet, the mistress runs and therefore, when the master arrives, she is waiting for him, standing in plain view, not letting herself be overlooked.
Ume watches them walk side by side along the outdoor walkways, they don’t seem to speak, but not out of any unwillingness. Silence simply suits them. Or they know of a place where it doesn’t have to remain that way.
Which one it is, Ume can’t tell. Maybe it isn’t for her to question, in the first place.
Quickly, they pick up everything out of place, Akihisa grabs the master’s discarded hakama, exchanging it with a new, full uniform, folded away neatly. Ume tiptoes around the bed where the master and mistress are all bundled up, picking up Satoko’s yukata and, further away, her underwear, too.
They’ve cleaned the room in less than two minutes.
Then, two other servants bring in the large frame on which to display the morning’s kimono and Ume gets to work on arranging it, folding out the sleeves and letting the front hang down flat, so it doesn’t wrinkle. Once all that is done, she affords herself one final glance at the couple, hoping – although it’s not in her place to do so – that the mistress has enjoyed herself as much as it sounded like she did.
Among themselves, the servants had discussed whether it was expected of them to try sneaking Satoko out of the room before the master awoke, as is customary in these affairs, but in the end they’d decided, no one had wanted to lose neither their jobs nor their heads.
So, Satoko stayed. The morning shift could confirm, she stayed all night, long after the master himself had left for work.
When the time comes for her change of dress, it isn’t Ume who comes to help her, but rather a servant girl called Himari who Satoko knows only in passing, a face in a crowd. However, she is efficient and very particular about the arrangement of the layers, tying up the obi with a hard tug. They both pretend she didn’t pause when she saw the bruises on Satoko’s buttocks, though Satoko did notice the long stare it drew from the girl.
It will surely be in circulation among the servants once she’s closed the sliding door. Satoko knows how these systems work, Tadeshina taught her back home. And if the servants know, all the house knows, which is as it should be. While Byakuya-sama and she created a room for themselves last night, the doors are not locked and they will eventually have to open to the rest of the family, so they know they’ve carried out their duty, at long last.
Duty…
As Himari fixes her hair, pulling it into a tight arrangement of hair ornaments and a bow in the back, Satoko thinks duty is the wrong word for it. It should be something like fate instead, things happen the way they do for a reason. For Byakuya-sama, for her and for Kiyo-sama.
In Soul Society, everyone lives and dies with a purpose. In this house, where emotions are so restricted, they feel the way they do purposefully, too. Happy, of course, he’d said. More so by the end of the day.
Holding her head high, when Himari shows her to the doorway, leading out of Byakuya-sama’s bedroom, Satoko steps outside with a long look back over her shoulder, then she returns to the existence she leads in her own quarters, removed.
Yet, to be away from something is only an issue as long as you can’t return, isn’t that so? And, she thinks, she trusts, her sandals slapping against the walkway, she’ll have to return.
Rina is pouring herself a bowl of the leftover soup, slurping the thick soba noodles right out of the liquid with little to no grace. All the while she is staring over at Himari who had been the one to dress the mistress this morning, now going on about the violet bruises she’d seen on the woman’s buttocks while wrapping her up in her kimono and obi.
“Must be old bruises, maybe some secret lover? She had one before, after all… And after fifty years, you can’t tell me the master would last long enough to bruise much of anything, except his pride,” she comments around a mouthful.
Himari scoffs and raises her chin at the other maid, pouting her lips. “Be careful what you say, Rina-chan. If anyone heard such a thing, you’d be fired.”
Rina shrugs and returns to eating, the servants always get whatever is left of lunch for the household and today it’s miso soup. Ume, sitting opposite Rina, bites her lip and holds her tongue, though luckily Aoi seems to be thinking the same thing she is:
“Judging by the mistress’ shrieking last night, I’d say the master’s pride can rightly congratulate itself. Didn’t the sounds just go on forever? I was trying to sleep, you know…”
Finally, Ume – who has finished most of her soup, they’d given her clean-up duties all morning and that always makes her hungry – can’t contain herself and she breaks into the other three girls’ chatting, saying with some sympathy:
“I really hope she enjoyed herself. It must have been her first.”
Silence falls among the others. They look at each other with some nostalgic reminiscing, recalling the time when it was theirs, right? Rina is the one to break the quiet, exclaiming:
“For someone who could have whoever with how beautiful she is, I think the mistress seems to have poor taste, really.”
Himari scolds her to no avail.
As she has come to do regularly, this day she sends lunch to the Gotei 13 headquarters as well, a portion of her own family recipe that he has expressed approval of previously, but today along with the bento, she sends a poem, written in miniature calligraphy, her best writing, and packed inside the box. As women would do in ancient times, sending a waka to their lover after a midnight tryst. She hands the small piece of paper over to the servant in the kitchen, instructing them how to include it without the fine paper getting wet or ruined by the food fumes. The servant looks taken aback, but bows and promises to carry it out as instructed.
Satoko leaves the poem with him, knowing that it likewise will spread to the house soon enough. She wants it to.
Should I call it gentleness
What you have shown me?
To me your gentleness means
You’ve accepted my wildness
Returning to her quarters, she finds that’s how free he’s made her feel.
Generally, when the master is returning home, word is sent to the staff, so they can prepare for his arrival. How Satoko manages to pick up on their murmured chatting that day, Ume doesn’t know, maybe she has always been that perceptive, but nonetheless she leaves her quarters, clad in the afternoon’s light yukata and flat sandals, more or less running through the many gardens to the front gates. The hard, fast slap of her sandals resonate through the whole house, servants turn after her as they see her, no one runs in the Kuchiki Mansion, after all.
Yet, the mistress runs and therefore, when the master arrives, she is waiting for him, standing in plain view, not letting herself be overlooked.
Ume watches them walk side by side along the outdoor walkways, they don’t seem to speak, but not out of any unwillingness. Silence simply suits them. Or they know of a place where it doesn’t have to remain that way.
Which one it is, Ume can’t tell. Maybe it isn’t for her to question, in the first place.