Chapter 3

Three days after the dinner that neither of them mentioned again, Hikari appeared at the door of Meimi’s rooms with a bolt of pale blue silk draped over one arm and an expression that suggested she would not be taking no for an answer.

“You cannot wear geiko robes forever,” Hikari announced, before Meimi had even risen from the writing desk where she had been failing, for the third morning running, to compose a letter to no one in particular. “You dress like a woman still waiting to be summoned onto a stage. Come. We are going into town.”

“I was not aware that was a request.”

“It wasn’t.” Hikari’s mouth curved, not quite a smile but close enough that Meimi found herself, against her better judgment, rising from the desk anyway.

The district Hikari led her to was nothing like the streets around the okiya — no lantern-lit teahouse fronts, no geiko hurrying between engagements with painted faces held carefully still against the wind. Here the shops sold silk and cotton by the bolt, ribbons and combs displayed under awnings, ordinary women haggling over prices with a bluntness Meimi had never been permitted to practice in her old life. She had spent ten years being looked at. She found, walking beside Hikari through the crowded street, that she did not entirely know how to walk through a world that was not looking at her at all.

“This one,” Hikari said, holding a bolt of deep plum silk up against Meimi’s shoulder, squinting at the effect with real concentration. “For evenings when my brother entertains. You will want something that says you belong in that room without shouting it.”

“I don’t know that I want anything that says I belong anywhere in this house.”

Hikari did not look up from the fabric. “You will. Perhaps not yet. But you will, and I would rather you have the silk ready than scramble for it later out of spite because you refused to plan ahead.” She held up a second bolt, this one plain undyed cotton, sturdy and unremarkable. “And this, for mornings. For whatever you like to do when no one is watching you do it.”

Meimi took the plain cotton between her fingers, surprised by how much more at ease it made her than the plum silk had. “You choose both extremes at once.”

“I choose what a person actually needs, not merely what looks well in a doorway.” Hikari set the silk aside and turned to face her fully, the same directness she had used on the walk through the estate garden days before. “You spent ten years being dressed for other people’s eyes. I am not interested in continuing that habit under my brother’s roof. Buy what suits the woman you are when no one has told you what to be.”

They spent the better part of the morning that way, moving from shop to shop, Hikari offering opinions freely and withdrawing them just as freely whenever Meimi pushed back, which happened more than either of them likely expected going in. At the third shop, a proprietor recognized Meimi’s face from a festival performance the previous autumn and began fussing over her with an eagerness that made Meimi’s shoulders climb toward her ears out of long habit — the automatic brightening, the automatic smile arranged for a stranger’s benefit. Hikari watched this happen, said nothing while it lasted, and only once they were back on the street did she speak.

“You do that without thinking,” Hikari said. “The smile. The voice that goes soft and pleased no matter what you actually feel.”