Welcome to the playground. It’s been a while since I wrote about one of my interests, historic Japan. In my fictional city of Kaganoi, it’s not all about heroic samurai and wise sages. Here, you'd better carry a 短刀 (short blade) because danger lurks around every corner, and dark plots are in motion. This story is a sort of prequel to the events of another, which is linked below.
Quick Author’s Note:
Western readers may be more familiar with the word geisha. However, this story does not use that term. Geisha were professional entertainers—artists trained in music, dance, conversation, and cultural refinement. While they moved within male-dominated spaces, their role was not defined by sexual availability. The women of this story belong to a different world.
Yūjo 遊女 were women bound to licensed pleasure quarters, often sold into service at a young age. Their lives were defined by debt, obligation, and limited mobility. Low-ranking yūjo, like Sayuki, had little protection, no prestige, and few paths toward release.
Oiran 花魁 occupied the highest tier within these districts. Like geishas, they were courtesans of immense status—educated, adorned, and carefully staged as symbols of beauty and power. Yet even they remained commodities, their autonomy conditional and fragile.
This distinction matters.
The story is not about misunderstood glamour, but about hierarchy, transaction, and the cost of survival within a system that names some women sparrows—and expects them never to fly.
Part 1
Here, the clacking of geta wood spirited Sayuki further from Edobashi-dori. Here, near-empty backstreets threatened to crush as much as the busy main road. But Sayuki didn’t slow, darting left and right to avoid stagnant gutter water. There was no other choice. Not showing by sundown would negate her mistress’s offer.
Her offer of freedom.
So when the apprentice Yujo came upon a drunk sprawled across the ground, her breath faltered. He stank in the fading golden light, a mixing of dirt and stale saké, which pooled about his broken body. Sayuki winced, realizing she couldn’t continue without disturbing the man, who strained weakly for one more bottle. The ceramic was just out of arm’s reach. “My… my saké, please?”
The man asked again after Sayuki made her displeasure known, being forced to keep her kimono hem from staining. “No,” She replied, snatching it out of the man’s reach. Despite the grumble her action generated, more words were spoken. “You’re drunk enough, old man.”
“One more never hurt.” Eyes shifted towards her from the ground up. “Give it back.” He repeated, with scraping stones in his voice. “Give it back…”
Disorganized clamoring followed. Drunken grabs for the saké produced an opening in the alleyway’s blockage, and Sayuki used her distraction well, tiptoeing around the man. She stepped where legs had been and out of the same space, making a way beyond him, waving the ceramic cylinder like something unclean. “What are you doing out here?” He finally croaked. A moment ago, those eyes appeared glassy, detached from the world, but they had sharpened with sudden recognition. They fell upon Sayuki’s obi kimono belt, tightly fastened at her stomach instead of the back, which was customary for the city’s women. It signaled the only place she could be returning to. “A girl your age… dressed like that…” His cracked lips stretched into a grin. “You’re one o’ them Yoshiwara gutter sparrows, ain’t you? Well, I’ve got money, you know—two silvers, and a gold—right here…” He pawed beneath filthy folds, fumbling for some hidden pocket, all the while raising his own ragged kimono, first showing a swollen knee, then showing a clotted inner thigh. “Come on. Help me forget my troubles.”
A gutter sparrow.. The word stuck like bone raw to the touch. The humiliation cut deeper than the stench around them. “You mistake me,” she hissed. Before he could pull her down to his level, Sayuki hurled the bottle against the stone. It shattered, spraying shards of ceramic and the reek of old saké. The man recoiled as if struck himself. “No! No, no—my saké!” he wailed, crawling for the pieces with trembling diseased hands. Sayuki didn’t wait. Heart hammering, she gathered her hem and ran towards Yoshiwara, leaving cries echoing against the narrow backstreet.
Part 2
Red-lacquered gates of Kagano’s pleasure district loomed by the time fireworks lit the sky. Never officially a part of the city, Yoshiwara wasn’t included in the festivities, but that never stopped patrons from coming. Everyone crossed the same bridge connecting the city to its sins. Sayuki stilled for a moment before stepping over the threshold. It was him, the alley man’s words. “A girl your age…Gutter sparrow…” They coursed through her like poison, dredging up memories of crossing the bridge for the first time. Back then, the exchange had been simple. The pleasure house handed over the coin, and her mother handed over Sayuki, never to be seen again.
“No, Sayuki,” She told herself, repeating the thought until she could breathe again.“Keep moving. Tomorrow brings freedom.”
High walls now cast long shadows before the low-ranking Yujo. No painted face, no attendants, no name worth remembering. She slipped through the crowd, past guards who barely glanced her way, toward the House of Kisaragi. Her mistress’s building stood tall, gleaming with fresh paint to impress onlookers into opening their heavy purses. Inside, the air changed instantly. Heat from braziers thickened with perfume and the sweet bite of incense, never quite masking a faint bitterness beneath. A shamisen plucked from unseen rooms, trembling through the wooden floors. Sayuki kept her head down, passing through the narrow corridor and up plain back stairs.
By the time she reached the second floor, she had smoothed her kimono, tucked her hair back into its pins, and forced her heartbeat into something resembling composure.
At the landing, a soft rustle of silk made her stop.
Lady Akitsune sat before a bronze mirror. Two attendants fluttered around her like nervous birds—one adjusting her own triple-tiered obi, the other dusting cheeks with fine white powder. A male bodyguard stood to attention near the high-ranking oiran. Even half-dressed, Akitsune radiated the sort of poise that made men forget themselves for a single night. Her eyes met Sayuki’s in the smooth reflection.
“You.” One elegant brow lifted. “The girl from the lower rooms.”
Sayuki bowed deeply. “Forgive me, Akitsune-sama. I—I didn’t mean to stare—”
Akitsune drawled, waving a lacquered hand to dismiss excuses before they finished forming. She sat, with layers of intricately woven fabric whispering like river reeds. The attendants stepped back as she turned, appraising Sayuki with the practiced laziness of someone long accustomed to being the center of any room.
“I don’t know you. Are you from the squalor below?” Akitsune said, not as a question. “You climb these stairs often. Are you climbing to my position, too?”
Sayuki’s throat tightened. She kept her posture perfect, not raising her head.
A soft, humorless laugh escaped the oiran. Her comb lifted, pointing at Sayuki’s front-tied obi. “Dreams are charming on little girls. They flutter like sparrows. But sparrows only hop from gutter to gutter.”
Sayuki’s cheeks burned, though she forced her expression into stillness. Not a sparrow. Not forever.
Akitsune watched Sayuki’s reaction closely, the faint scent of plum wine following her. “Pretty. Dutiful. Quick on your feet, I hope—you’ll need to be, if you expect men to remember your name.” Her smile sharpened. “But status? My status?” She clicked her tongue. “You were born too far too low, little lotus..” She held her wooden comb against the mirror, pointing it at Sayuki’s obi, right where it tied at the front. “…only good for vermin.”
Sayuki’s fingers dug into the sleeves of her kimono.
Akitsune, satisfied with her own words, flicked her sleeves gracefully as her attendants returned to her side. “A wealthy merchant waits for me,” she said, already turning away. Her boyguard made sure Sayuki wasn’t blocking her way. She glided down the hall toward the house’s lavish main stairs, attendants trailing like shadows. Sayuki stood alone a moment longer, swallowing the heat in her chest until it steadied into something harder, colder. She turned toward her mistress’s room, faster now.
Part 3
The corridor outside her mistress’s quarters carried the same plum incense and sweet, humid fragrance of the building. Its strength masked any undesirable outside smells. Sayuki hesitated only to draw a steadying breath before sliding the door open. The small envelope of powder felt impossibly light in her sleeve, as if it contained only air. But she knew its weight.
The room was dim except for a single lantern glowing behind another screen. Two silhouettes moved—slow, rhythmic shapes that told Sayuki everything she needed to know. Her mistress’s voice drifted out, low and coaxing, accompanied by the rasp of a man’s breath. Sayuki dropped to her knees beside the threshold and bowed until touching the tatami. She did not look up. She did not speak. This was the role of a Yujo: to arrive when summoned, endure what must be endured, and never acknowledge what she saw.
A long moment passed before the man spoke. His voice was rich, lacquered by sake and power. “Ah. Our little sparrow returns.”
Sayuki kept her eyes on the floorboards. “I have what was requested, Kisaragi-sama.” Her mistress gave a low hum—approval, exhaustion, or simply indulgence.
“Enter.”
Sayuki obeyed, stepping inside with minimal sound. She knelt at the corner of the room, hands folded, gaze trained on the tatami weave. Her mistress and the man remained behind the screen, their shadows shifting in slow undulations. Another minute. Another sigh. A final rustle of silk. The man spoke again, fully satisfied, with lazy confidence. “So, you decided to do what is asked.” His silhouette adjusted—an arm reaching for discarded clothing, perhaps, or simply gesturing idly as he regarded her through the dim light. “We spoke of you before, sparrow. You remember our conversation?”
Sayuki swallowed. “Yes, honored guest. I want to do more than warm rooms and fetch trinkets. I want to be free of this life, more than anything.” Silk rustled. Her mistress stepped out from behind the screen at last, adjusting her robes with practiced ease. Her hairpins glinted like tiny blades. She crossed the room toward Sayuki, each step calculated, graceful, predatory. Sayuki drew the small envelope from her sleeve and placed it on her open palm.
The man chuckled—pleased, impressed, entertained. “Good girl, a sparrow no more.”
Her mistress knelt beside her, smoothing a stray strand of hair behind Sayuki’s ear. Her fingers were warm, smelling faintly of perfume and sweat and something sweeter beneath. “Tomorrow night,” she murmured, “accompany me to Lord Musashi’s castle.. You will have one chance—only one—and you must not falter.”
The man’s tone sharpened, the amusement gone. “Musashi is careless with his pleasures. That powder. A touch on his cup, a brush against his lips… it will kill him before he even realizes what’s happening.”
Her mistress lifted Sayuki’s chin with two fingers, forcing her to meet her gaze. In the lamplight, her face was beautiful as carved ivory—and just as cold. “Do this, and no more gutters. No more sparrow talk, expecting you’ll never fly.”
Sayuki’s heartbeat pressed against the inside of her ribs like a fist. “I will do it,” she whispered, the words tasting unreal. The man finished fastening his robes and stepped into her peripheral vision. She didn’t look up, but she sensed him—his height, his authority, the smug satisfaction radiating from him.
“Are you willing?” he asked quietly, “Do you wish to be more than this?”
Sayuki closed her hand around the envelope. The paper crackled like a tiny flame.
“Yes,” she said. The word surprised even her with its firmness. She closed her fingers around the envelope. It crackled softly, like a wing trapped in a fist.
Her mistress’s smile was slow and satisfied. “Good. Then everything begins tomorrow.” Behind the trio, a lantern flickered. It stirred in the wake of something more than a draft under the door.
Stunning worldbuilding here. The way the obi placement becomes a silent marker of status, instantly readable to everyone but inescapable for Sayuki, shows how embedded these hierarchies are. I've been to similar performancedistricts in modern Japan and that visual shorthand still exists in subtle forms. The ending leaves me genuinley unsure if the lantern flicker is supernatural warning or just draft, which makes Sayuki's choice feel even more isolating.
I like the intrigue this promises.
How do you pronounce 短刀?