Chapter 2: Blood in the Wash Water
The note from Jay was a splinter under her skin. Emily tried to forget it, to bury it under the sheer physical labor of her days, but it was there, a constant, unsettling presence. Every time she adjusted her obi, she thought of his words. Every time she passed a mirror, she checked to see if the lavender really was the color of wisteria at dusk. It was. He was right. The precision of his observation was what chilled her most.
Sarah, meanwhile, floated through her chores with a dreamy smile, humming tunelessly. Gloria’s grim story seemed to have evaporated from her mind, replaced by another lingering compliment from Ren about the way she arranged flowers. Emily watched her, a knot of dread tightening in her stomach. Sarah’s naivete wasn’t just foolish; it was a liability.
Three nights after the banquet, Emily found Sarah in the linen closet, folding sheets with a faraway look. “You’re still thinking about him, aren’t you?”
Sarah jumped, then smiled, a little guilty. “He said my hands looked graceful polishing the silver. That it was a waste.”
“A waste of what?” Emily’s voice was sharper than she intended.
“Of… of my grace,” Sarah sighed, as if it were obvious. “He sees more than just a maid, Emily. He sees a person.”
Emily grabbed a pillowcase and snapped it open with a sharp crack. “He sees a target. Gloria was right.”
“Gloria’s old and bitter,” Sarah scoffed, but her defiance was thin. “You’re just jealous because it’s me he’s noticing and not you.”
The words landed like a slap. Emily stopped folding. The cream-colored note in her small wooden box felt like it was screaming. She looked at Sarah’s soft, hopeful face and made a decision. “Come with me.”
“Where?”
“To see my mother.”
Mao Kitsuhara worked late, always had. Her domain was the laundry and the care of the family’s finer, more stubborn belongings. The laundry courtyard was a place of steam and solitude after dark, lit by flickering lanterns that fought a losing battle against the clinging damp.
They found her standing over a deep stone washtub, her sleeves rolled past her elbows, her forearms plunged into water the color of rust. The sharp, coppery smell of blood hit them before they saw the source: a heap of men’s hunting shirts, heavy linen stained with dark, spreading blooms.
Sarah gagged, covering her nose. “Mao-san, what…”
“Jay-sama’s,” Mao said without looking up. Her voice was flat, worn smooth by years of quiet labor. She scrubbed a shirt against the washboard with a rhythmic, brutal scraping. “He went out with the party this morning. Boar. Successful hunt.” She said it like stating the weather.
Emily stepped closer. The water in the tub was pink, with darker threads swirling like whispers. “Mother.”
Mao finally glanced up, her eyes taking in her daughter’s tense posture and Sarah’s pale, confused face. Her expression didn’t change. “You shouldn’t be here. The smell gets in your clothes.”
“We need to talk to you,” Emily said, her voice low.
“I’m working.”
“It’s about Ren-sama,” Sarah blurted out, finding her voice. “And… and things Gloria said.”
Mao’s scrubbing stopped. The only sounds were the drip of water from a leaky tap and the distant, mournful chime of the clock tower marking the hour. She slowly pulled a shirt from the bloody water, examined it, and submerged it again. “Gloria talks too much. But she’s not often wrong.”
“She told a story,” Emily pressed. “About a gardener’s daughter. Sent away.”
Mao was silent for a long moment, wringing the shirt with a twist so forceful the tendons in her wrists stood out like cords. The water ran red, then pink, then clear. “It wasn’t a gardener’s daughter.”
Sarah frowned. “But she said—”
“I know what she said.” Mao draped the clean, wet shirt over a waiting line. It hung, limp and heavy, dripping onto the dark flagstones. She turned, wiping her hands on her stained apron, leaving smears of pale pink. Her gaze settled on Sarah, and it was merciless. “You want proof? Not stories. Proof.”
Sarah shrank back slightly. “I… I don’t know what you mean.”
In one fluid, startling motion, Mao reached out and seized Sarah’s wrist. The girl gasped as Mao yanked her arm forward, over the washtub. Mao pushed Sarah’s sleeve up past her elbow, exposing her smooth, unmarked forearm to the lantern light.
“See these?” Mao said, her own voice a dry rasp. She turned her own forearm, still wet from the bloody water. Thin, silvery lines crosshatched the skin near her elbow, old and faded. Scars.
Emily’s breath caught. She’d seen them a thousand times, never asking.
“My cousin,” Mao said, the words dropping into the steamy air like stones. “She was a maid here too. Pretty. Had a laugh that sounded like bells. One of the young masters—not the father now, the one before—he liked that laugh. He liked more than that.” Mao’s grip on Sarah’s wrist tightened, not cruelly, but with an urgency that was worse. “She told him no. At first. Then she didn’t.”
Sarah was trembling, her eyes wide and fixed on the scars.
“She started to show,” Mao continued, her eyes glazing over, seeing a different courtyard, a different night. “They were kind. So kind. Said she’d be cared for at a distant estate, have the child in peace, away from gossip. They sent her away in a nice carriage.” She paused, and the drip of water was the only sound. “They returned her in a box. A small, polished wooden box. Too small for the child she carried.”
A small, choked sound escaped Sarah’s throat.
Mao released her wrist as if it had burned her. “The official story was a fever. A tragedy. My family was given a ‘gift of condolence.’ And told to be grateful for their discretion.” She picked up another bloodied shirt, plunged it into the tub, and began to scrub again, the wet slap of linen on stone punctuating her words. “The young master was married to a noble girl within the year. No scandal. No stain on the bloodline.”
The steam in the courtyard felt suffocating, thick with the smell of lavender soap and iron-rich blood. Emily stared at her mother’s hands, at the scars, at the horrible, ordinary efficiency with which she cleaned the evidence of a violent hunt. It was all connected—the hidden violence, the polished silence, the boxes too small for the truth.
Sarah was crying now, silent tears cutting through the dust on her cheeks. The dreamy look was gone, shattered.
Mao didn’t look at her again. “Ren-sama is handsome. He says pretty things. He has a way of looking at you that makes you feel like the only girl in the world.” She wrung out the shirt, the water swirling with a final, faint rosy hue. “By winter, he won’t even remember your name. But you will remember his. You’ll remember it every day of the life you barely get to keep if you’re lucky.” She finally looked at Sarah, her eyes old and deep and utterly without comfort. “Or you won’t remember anything at all.”
Sarah turned and fled, her footsteps echoing wetly until they were swallowed by the dark.
Emily stood rooted, the horror a cold weight in her stomach. “Mother… your cousin…”
Mao went back to her work, the subject closed. “Take Sarah’s shift in the east wing tomorrow. She’ll be unwell. And, Emily?” She didn’t pause her scrubbing. “The color of your obi. It is pretty. But pretty things get noticed. Be sure you want the eyes that are doing the noticing.”
Emily walked back to the main house alone, the clock tower chiming once more in the distance. The note in her box no longer felt like a secret thrill. It felt like an indictment. Jay had noticed her. Not as a person, as Sarah wanted to believe Ren saw her. He had noticed her as an object of study, a detail in his landscape to be cataloged and analyzed. ‘A secret rebellion? Or a hope unnoticed?’
It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of fact. He saw her rebellion—the tiny splash of unauthorized color—and he saw her hope, the fragile, stupid hope that maybe she was more than the walls that contained her. He saw it, and he held that knowledge in his hand like a stone, ready to drop it into the still water of her life and watch the consequences ripple out, knowing the waves could drown her.
Up in the main house, a window was lit. Jay’s study. She could see his silhouette, tall and straight, moving behind the glass. Reading, perhaps. Planning. Observing.
She looked down at her own plain, gray dress. Then she touched the lavender obi at her waist. A secret rebellion.
For the first time, she understood the true cost of rebellion here. It wasn’t a scolding or a docked wage. It was a small, polished box. And the eyes watching from the lit window above held the power to choose which it would be.
The silhouette in the window turned away, extinguishing the light and leaving only the moon to judge her trembling hands. The next morning, Emily chose the plainest, grayest obi from her small collection, a length of unadorned fabric that matched her dress perfectly. She tied it with sharp, efficient tugs, erasing the lavender.
She avoided the main corridors, taking the servants’ passages as she delivered fresh towels to the guest suites. Her body ached with a new awareness, every sound of a floorboard or distant voice feeling like a potential trigger. The polished floors reflected only shadowy, obedient shapes—no rebellious color, no hint of wisteria at dusk. She thought the absence would feel like safety. It felt like a surrender.
Jay found her anyway.
He was simply there, suddenly, around a corner in a quiet hallway reserved for family. She was carrying a stack of folded table linens, her vision partially obscured. She nearly walked into him. “Oh!” The word was a startled puff of air as she stumbled back.
“Easy.” His hand came up, not touching her this time, but a barrier in the air between them. He lowered it slowly. He was dressed for riding, boots polished to a mirror shine, the scent of leather and crisp morning air clinging to him. His eyes took her in, a swift, comprehensive scan that felt more intimate than a touch.
His gaze paused at her waist. It lingered there for a second too long. Then it traveled back up to her face, and his expression shifted, the cool assessment warming into something like puzzled recognition. “Emily-chan,” he said. His voice was softer than she’d ever heard it, lacking the formal heir’s edge.
“Jay-sama.” She bowed her head, the linens in her arms a crinkling shield. “My apologies, I didn’t see you.”
“You’ve been removing yourself from my path since I returned.” It wasn’t an accusation. It was an observation, delivered with a curious tilt of his head. “Hiding, I think.”
Her throat tightened. “No, sir. My duties have kept me in other wings.” The lie was thin, transparent. She knew he knew.
A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips. It wasn’t the cold social curve from the foyer. This was different, reaching his eyes, which held a glimmer of the boy he’d been a decade ago—the one who’d sometimes sneak pastries from the kitchen, who’d shared a secret, conspiratorial glance with her when his father wasn’t looking. “I noticed the obi,” he said quietly, ignoring her excuse. “The purple one. It was… distinctive. Today it’s gone.”
The directness stunned her. She had no rehearsed response, no maid’s script for this. The stack of linens felt impossibly heavy. “It… it didn’t match the others,” she managed, her voice barely above a whisper.
“It matched you,” he said, and the words hung in the quiet hall, simple and devastating. “You’re hiding from me.” He stated it as a confirmed fact, taking a single, casual step closer. The space between them, once a vast gulf of rank and marble, shrank to just a few feet.
For a fleeting second, looking into those eyes now lit with a familiar, almost playful curiosity, she saw him. Not the heir, but Jay. The memory was a physical ache—a sun-dappled afternoon, shared laughter over a dropped tray of cakes, a moment of unguarded humanity before the world narrowed into master and servant. The boy was still in there, looking out at her.
Then the clock tower chimed the hour, a deep, resonant sound that vibrated through the floorboards. It was the same sound that had marked her mother’s story in the bloody laundry yard. She remembered the small, polished box. She remembered the cold calculation in his eyes when he’d first re-entered the foyer, inventorying his world.
They weren’t children anymore.
The warmth that had begun to thaw her fear iced over again, sharp and sudden. She lowered her eyes, fixing them on the perfect, polished toe of his boot. “I have my duties, Jay-sama. I should not be in your way.” Her tone was perfectly respectful, a wall of polished stone rebuilt between them. She took a careful step back, creating distance he had just erased. “If you’ll excuse me.” She didn't wait for a dismissal. She just turned, a crisp, correct pivot, and walked away, the echo of her sensible, gray-clad footsteps the only answer she left behind.
The echo of her own retreating footsteps mocked her all the way to the linen closet. She shut the door softly behind her, leaning her forehead against the cool wood, the stack of linens still clutched to her chest like a shield. Her heart was a frantic bird in a cage of ribs. He’d seen the change. He’d called her on it. The intimacy of his observation was more violating than Ren’s physical trickery.
“There you are! I’ve been looking everywhere.” Sarah’s voice was a hoarse whisper from behind a tower of towels. Her eyes were red-rimmed but clear, the dreamy film scrubbed away by terror. “I’ve been thinking about what your mother said. All morning.”
Emily placed the linens on a shelf, her movements deliberate. “Good.”
“It’s not good. It’s awful.” Sarah crept closer, her fingers plucking at the edge of a sheet. “Do you really think… could that happen? Today?”
“My mother doesn’t lie,” Emily said flatly. She turned, facing her friend. “And she doesn’t waste breath on fairy tales. She was giving you a vaccine.”
“A what?”
“Something to hurt a little now, so you don’t die later.” The metaphor felt harsh, but it fit. The scar tissue on her mother’s arm was a map of survival. “So, what are you going to do?”
Sarah hugged herself. “Avoid him. Be invisible. Like you.” Her gaze flicked to Emily’s plain gray obi. “You changed it.”
“It was never really a choice.” Emily’s voice was quiet, final.
The rest of the day passed in a blur of scent and shadow. She polished silver until her reflection swam in the curves of a teapot, a distorted, weary girl. She beat dust from carpets in a sunlit parlor, each thump a punctuation to her churning thoughts. Jay’s words replayed in her mind. It matched you. You’re hiding from me. He had articulated her own strategy back to her, stripping it bare.
That evening, as she delivered a forgotten shaving kit to the guest wing for a visiting diplomat, a familiar, citrusy cologne announced him before he spoke.
“Lost, little mouse?”
Ren leaned against a corridor wall, smiling his easy, reckless smile. He blocked her path to the guest room door. She froze, the leather kit heavy in her hands. “No, Ren-sama. Just delivering this.”
“To old Minister Ikeda? He’s likely deaf to the world by now, tucked up in bed.” He pushed off the wall, taking a single, languid step closer. “You’ve been scarce. And you’ve been whispering with that pretty friend of yours, Sarah. Telling tales about me?”
The casual menace in his tone was a cold trickle down her spine. She kept her eyes lowered. “We only speak of our work, sir.”
“I doubt that.” He reached out, not to touch her, but to adjust the fold of a towel on her armrest. His fingers lingered near her wrist. “You have a way of making the mundane look interesting, Emily. It’s in the… dedication. The focus.” He breathed in, a slow, deliberate intake. “Even your fear has a certain flavor.”
She stopped breathing. His proximity was a trap, his words snakes coiling around her ankles.
“Ren.” The voice came from behind her, cool and smooth as poured oil.
Ren’s hand dropped instantly. His smile widened, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Brother. Skulking in hallways now?”
Haru Tanaka walked past Emily as if she were a piece of furniture. He positioned himself between her and Ren, his back to her, a deliberate shield. “Minister Ikeda was asking for you. Something about a misplaced briefing paper. He seemed… agitated.”
Ren’s playful smirk faltered for a microsecond. A political misstep was a language he understood. “Tch. The man loses his own head if it weren’t attached.” He cast one last, lingering look at Emily over Haru’s shoulder. “Later, mouse.”
He sauntered away, the scent of his cologne lingering like a threat.
Haru didn’t turn immediately. He waited until Ren’s footsteps faded. Then he glanced back at her, his expression one of mild, polished concern. “Are you alright? My brother’s humor can be… overwhelming.”
“I’m fine, Haru-sama. Thank you.” Her voice was steadier than she felt.
“He’s bored,” Haru said, as if diagnosing a common cold. “He seeks stimulation in whatever form is closest. It’s not personal.” He offered her a sympathetic smile, perfect and empty. “Unlike Jay. My eldest brother’s attention is always very, very personal. And much heavier to carry.”
The observation was so precise, so unexpected, that it stole her breath. He said it lightly, but his eyes held a glint of something sharp and assessing. He wasn’t comforting her. He was warning her about a different brother, while posing as her savior from the first.
“I… I should deliver this,” she mumbled, holding up the shaving kit.
“Of course. Don’t let me keep you from your duties.” He stepped aside, the perfect gentleman. As she passed, he added softly, “That gray is a safety, Emily. But one can hide in plain sight with the right shade of blue, you know.”
He walked away, leaving her more unsettled than Ren had. Ren was a visible predator. Haru was the still water where the true danger might be lurking, unseen.
That night, as she prepared for bed in her small room, she found it. Not under the door. Inside her folded spare apron, tucked into the pocket she never used.
Another note. The paper was the same thick cream, the seal plain.
Gray is a surrendering color. It does not suit you. The library, after the second night bell. If you wish to discuss the weather. Or the color of things.
- J.
The second night bell was the one that signaled the house was to be quiet, the family retired. It was the hour of shadows and whispers. Her hands trembled, making the paper rustle. This was not an observation. It was an invitation. A summons.
If you wish.
The illusion of choice was the thinnest veneer. Saying no to the heir was not a choice she could meaningfully make. But saying yes… that was a door opening onto a dark room. She thought of the small, polished box. She thought of her mother’s scars.
The first night bell chimed, a single, clear note reverberating through the silent halls. She had an hour. She sat on the edge of her narrow bed, the note in her lap, watching the moon cast a sliver of light across the floor. She thought of Jay’s hand stopping her fall, his grip both rescue and claim. She thought of his eyes, seeing the wisteria, seeing the hope, seeing her.
Her mother’s words were a drumbeat in her skull: Be sure you want the eyes that are doing the noticing.
The second bell tolled, its sound deeper, final. It was time. Emily stood. She did not change her obi. She walked to the small mirror and looked at the girl there, pale in the moonlight. Then she turned and moved silently into the darkened corridor, her gray dress melting into the shadows, towards the library and the eyes waiting in the dark.