A Scandal in Edo

A Scandal in Edo
By Eline

Inspired by the kink-meme. A request for Suzaku as a samurai of the shogunate and Luluko as a geisha. (Someday, I will stop giggling whenever I read that line . . .) First time fic.

It turned out to be a very, very long cheesy historical romance. *head desk*

I don’t usually do fics like this. It might be rather tedious in some parts and the porn comes much later.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

In the spring of Houreki 10 (1761), a small scandal occurred in Edo . . .

* * * * * * * * * * * *

“Are you done with the laundry yet?” The shrewish voice that rent the air was a familiar sound in this neighborhood.

“Almost, Aunt Kaede, almost done . . .” The young woman dragging the tub of linens across the stone tiles to the laundry lines paused to straighten the kerchief covering her hair, which had slipped and was threatening to blind her.

“You’re so slow!” Aunt Kaede came out of the backdoor and scowled at her niece. “If only out of the goodness of my heart and the love I bear for my kinsmen that I put up with this--”

Aunt Kaede was a very distant relative indeed. Luluko only knew her as some cousin of her father’s--many times removed. A harridan of a woman who was the terror of her household and intensely ambitious, she was the only relative available to take in a pair of orphaned girls from an impoverished samurai family after a plague had taken their mother and their father had succumbed from grief not long after.

The relatives were merchants who had interests in the kimono business and ran a house specialising in the newest entertainment from Kyoto, the performing female geisha. The only place for poor female relatives in their household was as menial labour.

“I know my departed cousin was a respected samurai, but times are hard and--”

Over the years, Luluko had learned to tune out the endless carping. The conversation was the same every time. She concentrated on getting the sheets hung up.

If we hadn’t taken you and your sister in--

“If we hadn’t taken you and your sister in, you’d be fending for yourselves on the streets!”

Aunt Kaede was going to start on how hard it was to keep extra mouths fed--

“Oh there you are, Kaede-san.”

Oshiitsu, one of the house’s resident performers, stood behind her aunt, who jumped ever so slightly in surprise.

“A messenger came with a request from Mizuno Kiyoshiro,” Oshiitsu continued, expressionless as a porcelain doll. “I do not usually consider such late invitations, but the messenger also offered a gift for the inconvenience.”

The “gift” was usually a fat purse for the performer and her backer. As her aunt was probably one of the most opportunistic merchants in Shitamachi, she jumped at the chance of extra profit like a starving wolf.

“Well, if it is such an urgent request from such a distinguished patron, then you are right to accept,” Aunt said, restraining herself admirably. Then again, Aunt could not afford to be rude to Oshiitsu, who had come from Gion in Kyoto and made a name for herself as one of the best dancers in Edo. Oshiitsu was one of the few who could walk out and find plenty of houses in Shimbashi willing to take her in. “Luluko--go help Oshiitsu dress! I’ll have Kallen go with you to--”

“Kallen has already gone out with Kaguya,” Oshiitsu said. Luluko could almost hear her aunt’s face sagging. The onna geisha were all the rage these days and many girls had joined up as apprentices. A sign of an experienced and popular performer was having an apprentice carry their instruments for them. For clients like the Mizuno, a show of prosperity and status was practically compulsory. “Oh I know . . . why not have Luluko carry my shamisen and fans?”

“Her?” Aunt Kaede asked doubtfully.

Oshiitsu walked around to Luluko and plucked off her kerchief and her hairpin, releasing her long fall of hair--her one and only vanity. “See? If we put her hair up like this, there’s no need to even use a wig,” the dancer said, lifting the dark mass up in an approximation of an apprentice’s hairdo.

“Well, if you’re sure,” her aunt said, glad that she was not going to need to spend a single brass coin to hire some junior apprentice from one of the other houses in the area to stand in. “Just don’t embarrass us,” she said sternly to Luluko before she swept off to find someone else to harangue.

“We have to hurry now,” Oshiitsu said to Luluko, who was still gaping, open-mouthed with shock. “Oi, you look like a fish.”

“Is this all right, Oshiitsu-san?” Luluko asked as they entered Oshiitsu’s changing room to select a kimono.

“Well, in Gion, you’ll get your hair shaved off for impersonating an apprentice,” Oshiitsu said, watching her in evident amusement. “But for one night in Edo, no-one’s going to notice.”

“Oh.” She was not sure if Oshiitsu was having a joke at her expense, but held her tongue as her hair was sculpted into the regulation style for apprentices. Oshiitsu had “accidentally” saved her from her aunt’s tirades on many an occasion since she had arrived five years ago to practice her art in Edo.

A pioneer of her trade, Oshiitsu had capitalised on the current demand for female geisha in Edo, where certain rules and rituals were not as strictly followed as those in Kyoto. Luluko had got the feeling over time that Oshiitsu liked Edo for its rough edges and sprawling rambunctiousness.

She certainly took some pleasure in dressing Luluko up like a life-sized doll. It was practically unheard of for a geisha to attend to a servant girl.

Powdered, painted and wrapped in a simple plum-coloured kimono with a pattern of white flowers, Luluko looked at the stranger in the mirror and remembered to close her mouth before Oshiitsu called her a fish again.

“I-I should tell Nanari--” she began hesitantly after she had done her proper duties and got Oshiitsu ready in her kimono of black and red.

“All right, but don’t be long.”

Hurrying to the back of the house where she shared a tiny room with her sister, she found Nanari engaged in winding spools of thread--one of the few tasks a blind and crippled girl could perform without assistance. The sickness that had taken their mother had rendered Nanari blind and without the use of her legs.

“Nana-chan, I’ll be back late. Remember to go to sleep early.” Aunt Kaede seldom told Nanari when to stop working. Uncle Odou was usually kind enough to tell her the time--if his wife was not around.

“Is Aunt Kaede making you run errands again, Nee-san?”

“I’m helping Oshiitsu-san carry her instrument.”

“To the Yoshiwara? Please be careful!”

That Nanari knew about the pleasure district was worrying enough. Luluko told her sister not to worry and went to meet Oshiitsu by the entrance of the house.

Her doll-like features even more pronounced under the make-up of her profession, Oshiitsu declared them correctly attired and they left the house to make their way north-east to the Yoshiwara.

In the hurly-burly of the noisy Asakusa district, Oshiitsu wound her way expertly past merchants, street vendors and pedestrians. In her wake, clutching a shamisen wrapped in waterproof coverings, Luluko followed and hoped that she would not drop anything.

“Oshiitsu-san, I really don’t know what to do,” she said, doubts returning in a rush after the initial thrill of dressing up faded away, sweeping her confidence with it.

“You sit quietly and watch, like any good apprentice.” Oshiitsu walked briskly without appearing to be in a hurry. “And if you are approached by any drunkards, slip away politely, they won’t remember your face.”

“What if they’re not drunk?”

“You have to weasel your way out of it--or start a conversation about the latest trend in poetry. The prostitutes will report anyone they think is stealing their custom.”

“But I don’t know any of the la--”

“The classics then. You were educated, weren’t you?” Deftly dodging a vendor carrying cages of chickens on a pole, Oshiitsu turned the corner and the high walls of the Yoshiwara appeared ahead of them.

Samurai women of her clan were literate and Oshiitsu had been kind enough to pass her reading material secretly. “Yes, but--”

“I would have taken you on as my apprentice, but I was afraid I would have had to arm-wrestle your aunt for the privilege,” Oshiitsu said as they crossed the bridge leading to the Yoshiwara pleasure district, their high clogs beating out a steady rhythm on the wooden planks underfoot.

“I thought my aunt would be glad to get rid of me . . .” Her father would have had an apoplectic fit if he was not already dead at the very idea of his daughter becoming an entertainer. It was one very short step up from being a prostitute in his eyes and truthfully speaking, some of the dancers sold other things besides dances and songs on the sly.

“That woman would rather have you as free labour than another apprentice cluttering up the house.” Her tone did not hide her true feelings about Aunt Kaede. Neither a performer or apprenticed in the traditional arts, the mistress of the house would be nothing more than “Kaede-san” to Oshiitsu. Luluko wondered why anyone like Oshiitsu would choose her Aunt as a manager and sponsor as they got in line with the other performers at the gate.

As a high-ranking performer, Oshiitsu had special status and could live outside the Yoshiwara. The guards at the gate knew her well enough and waved them through after a cursory look at her passage token and invitation card. Being women, they were not required to turn over any weapons. Luluko knew, however that Oshiitsu had very long and sharp hairpins that were as good as any dagger. As for herself, she had her mother’s kaiken for self-defense. It was one of the few possessions that she had inherited and kept secret from her aunt.

She was not like Kallen, who could punch a very sensitive part of a man’s anatomy and have her hands demurely tucked back in her sleeves in a split-second. Her mother, a traditional samurai woman through and through, had not had the time to train her formally in the use of arms before the end. She would have to trust Oshiitsu to get them out of any trouble.

A rowdy party of young nobles and their samurai bodyguards arrived at the gate and she shrank behind Oshiitsu instinctively.

“Ignore them--stand up straight,” Oshiitsu said, sotto voce, as they joined the line of entertainers and performers on their way to various appointments.

She tried to do so, keeping close to Oshiitsu without bumping into her. The pleasure district was where no well-brought-up young woman should go and few knew about the world behind the walls.

It . . . was a horrible place. As they passed down the street, she was aware of the dead, hopeless eyes that watched them from behind the wooden bars of the staging windows belonging to brothels and whorehouses. Becoming an indentured prostitute of the Yoshiwara was the worst fate any woman could suffer in Edo.

Once, when she was fourteen, Aunt Kaede had threatened to sell her there. Nanari had been within earshot and Luluko’s response had been so terrifying that Aunt Kaede did not scold her for almost a week after. She never mentioned it again.

In the midst of the thronging crowd, Luluko tried to emulate Oshiitsu, who did not even appear to be trying to avoid the other pedestrians. She was acutely aware of the scrutiny of the men who swaggered past them on the street. Oshiitsu was regally ignoring everything around her as she led the way to the banquet hall where she had been engaged to perform.

The sign at the brightly-lit banquet hall read “Heaven’s Gate”. The sound of revelry--rather tipsy revelry--could be heard even from the street. Oshiitsu’s invitation card gained them entry easily.

On the way in, they passed a troop of male dancers bearing drums and still garbed in their costumes and paint. One of the men waved to Oshiitsu.

“Naruse-san, are you finished with your piece already?”

"Oh yes--got to run to the Frangrant Bower next . . . This is your third appearance this week at Heaven's Gate, isn’t it? You'll put us out of business, Oshiitsu-san," the man said cheerfully. He was of average height and fairly good looking behind the paint.

"The shogunate might outlaw us before then," Oshiitsu replied. "Make hay while the sun shines, Naruse-san."

"That's true, that's true--they've already banned combined male and female performances," said the man Oshiitsu had so familiarly called Naruse. "And who wants to see a bunch of men with hairy legs when they have nice girls like yourself, eh? Unless they were into boys, eh?"

"Oh, you would know, wouldn't you?"

The two performers exchanged more pleasantries and made promises to meet up again if possible before they separated, each to different appointments.

"Naruse's a dancer, a singer and a drummer--it's a shame they banned both sexes from sharing one stage," Oshiitsu said to Luluko, who was still goggle-eyed at her casual conversation with a male performer. "They're a nice lot--Naruse, in case you're wondering, has a very good relationship with his male patrons."

"Er, oh." Such things were usually not mentioned at all in polite company. Oshiitsu's world seemed to be the inverse of everything Luluko had been taught.

* * * * * * * * * * * *