Chapter Text
The first person that Victor Nikiforov immortalises in a drawing of the back streets of Edo is a little girl, approximately of the age of six.
Her round face is right before him – and so is the rest of her, the small body clad in a cotton yukata, her feet in sandals made of straw, but it is her little face that fascinates the artist the most. Large, brown eyes above a lovely button nose, a little cherry mouth that reveals a tooth gap when smiling. A scar, most likely from a nasty cut, spans from the corner of her mouth almost all the way up to her ear. In any other place, in any other time, one would feel tempted to feel pity for the child, for she will not be declared a beauty upon coming of age, but that is not of any importance to Victor. He sees her the way she looks now, rejects the call for seeing flaws in what is to him a perfect child, and draws her, making her the centre of his world for this moment only.
She must certainly share the sentiment, for she looks at him with wide eyes, as he is the first foreigner that she has ever seen. And what a foreigner is he! Hair so bright that it shines silver, and eyes as blue as the azure sea. His nose is long and his cheekbones high, and he is taller than most of the men that walk the streets of the city.
They are very much fascinated with each other, and perhaps this is the reason why she stands so still as he draws her, preserves her image forever, the perfect beauty of a poor man’s child.
Naturally, a foreigner sitting on a stool in the corner of an alley of the Japanese city of Edo attracts some sort of audience. It does not take long for people to stop on their way to blink and look twice, and soon they stand there and watch as the foreigner draws the little girl, watch as she permits him to engage with her. She stands on her toes, trying to catch a glimpse of what he is doing. But Victor laughs and throws a look at her, and she giggles, and bounces up and down on her feet out of sheer excitement. But she waits until he is done, until he has added the finishing touches to his drawing, and then turns it around in his hands to show it to her.
A hum goes through the crowd of bystanders as the drawing is presented to them, unlike anything they know of their own art, which aims to show beauty and not truth. The foreigner’s drawing is nothing but truth, the image of a girl with a scar, a girl that will grow up to be considered less worthy than her peers for it. But it is a good drawing, they agree amongst themselves, although they really cannot tell why anyone would like to see such realism. That is what photographs are for.
“Arigatō,” Victor says to the girl and fishes a coin out of his pocket to place in her palm. After all, she has agreed to be his model, has allowed him to draw her, and she shall not go without a reward. Her hand closes around the coin and, after a moment of hesitation, she runs away to join her friends again.
By the time Victor returns to his lodgings, he has made some money – following his drawing of the little girl, a young man had asked for a portrait of himself, and Victor had gladly obliged. It is not much, of course, what one can earn in such a district of Edo, but it is enough for some fried octopus.
That is what Chris says to it, once Victor has emptied his purse onto the cheap tatami mat of their shared room.
“Enough for some fried octopus, yes,” Victor sighs and sits down beside him. “But I had the most excellent little model. Look.” He shows his friend the drawing of the little girl. “Isn’t she gorgeous?”
Chris raises an eyebrow. “Certainly interesting,” he says. “And she paid you?”
“No, I paid her.”
“That is bad economy, my friend.”
Victor laughs. “Maybe. But it makes me happy.”
Happiness is, of course, not the most helpful explanation of why Victor does what he does, or why he chose to come to Japan in the first place.
But a lot of things in Victor’s life, a lot of his decisions, have to do with the search for happiness.
Some time ago, fortune found Victor in the shape of a letter, wet from the rain and crumpled in the hands of his landlady. Victor had not expected it, and he had stumbled out of bed on this particularly chilly Petersburg morning, right into the poor old woman’s arms, and had taken the letter from her. She had mumbled something about young men not having any sense of shame, but Victor had disregarded his state of dress and had ripped open the letter with shaking hands to study its content, and learning what his heart had so desired and what he had deemed an entirely hopeless endeavour.
You see, Victor Alexandrovich Nikiforov is an artist.
Or rather, he would very much like to be one. His uncle, and the only family that he has, would have preferred to see his nephew study something of actual use, such as medicine, or law. Yes, even theology he would have supported, but instead, Victor had chosen—
“Art history!” His uncle Yakov had roared when he had heard of it. “Philosophy! Languages! Do you think you are Alexander von Humboldt?!”
But no matter how much his uncle had yelled and shouted and called him an ungrateful stupid boy, Victor had not enrolled for medicine or law. Instead, he studied the things he loved with great passion, painted and drew day and night, and worked for his lodgings with even greater efforts, because his uncle had refused to pay a single rouble to support his nephew’s antics.
Every now and then, Victor would find money in his pockets without knowing how it had gotten there, so he presumed that his uncle and his landlady had some sort of understanding.
No, his uncle would certainly not let him starve, but his support ended there.
Not that Victor had ever thought badly of his uncle for it. He could understand him in a way, and he could see that medicine or law would have been the wiser choice. But Victor could not help it, and neither medicine nor law would have ever given him what he was looking for, and that was to understand the very nature of the human soul and the beauty of the world.
His life was simple and content, and then, he had read about the government’s plans in the papers. And then, he had spotted the poster at the wall of his institute, calling for the most intelligent, most devoted, most passionate of people to join a unique excursion to a land far away. A place Victor had only ever read about, a place so different from what he knew.
A place with a very different society, with very different values.
The rejection of his application came within two weeks. Yes, the board had studied his application carefully and found his letter of recommendation by his professor satisfactory, but there were simply more qualified candidates, and therefore, they had given the spot to another person – a man whose name Victor did not know, but who certainly was not an artist.
He had sighed and had gone on with his life, moping about this and that, wondering how he could satisfy the hunger and the thirst for adventure and for the unknown that had arisen within him ever since he had applied. But one had to be satisfied with what one got, and so, Victor’s life had continued just as before. He painted, poured his energy into his art, and hoped for better times.
And then, after a long week, he had ended up at a bar, and had played cards against a few fellow students, only to win and suddenly finding himself in possession of a ticket to Edo.
His bags had been packed before he knew it, and his uncle had shouted at him and had called him an ungrateful brat, and had hugged him and had told him to come back in one piece and not father a child somewhere abroad.
For the world as Victor knew it would not be the same in Edo, where he knew that one’s nature, of being a life giver or not, still decided over the fate of one’s life.
It had all happened so suddenly that Victor had not even considered the fact he would have to spend a considerable amount of time on a ship.
His stomach had never agreed with ships.
On said ship, however, he had met Chris – a Swiss merchant, looking for new fabrics in places far away. Unlike Victor’s uncle, Christophe’s mother and father supported their son’s endeavour wholeheartedly, as he was set to take over the family business one day. Victor had a feeling that it was more of a fun trip for Chris than anything else, but there was nothing wrong in that, of course. Over the course of their journey across the sea, Victor had befriended him, and he was grateful for his company in moments of sickness.
They are now sharing cheap lodgings together, a room just big enough for the two of them, above a tea shop run by their landlady. Edo is as mysterious as it is exciting, and although Victor does not understand the woman when she speaks to him, she is kind enough to take care of them to some degree, as if they were not foreign devils.
“Well, happy you look indeed,” Chris says and picks up his small cup of tea from a tray that their landlady must have brought in some time ago. “But that cannot be the only thing you want to do here. As beautiful as I find your drawings, you surely must be looking for more. A proper adventure.”
“I told you what I am looking for,” Victor says and stretches out on their cheap tatami mats. “I am looking for happiness. Happiness is what people create with their actions for one another. So I draw them and preserve them in my art. That is what brings me happiness.”
“Is that not a bit naïve?” Chris asks.
“Of course it is naïve,” Victor agrees, closing his eyes, “but what is naïveté, if not the hope for unconditional happiness?”
Chris merely sighs and shakes his head with a small chuckle.
Well.
Artists.
A usual day for Victor goes like this.
He will rise together with the morning sun and head out to one of the many bridges. Breakfast, he knows, will be served by their landlady later, but he is not a fan of rice in the morning, so he will buy himself a steamed bun or something similar from a shop nearby. Then, he will take a seat near the bridge and draw a scene, of how Edo wakes up to a new day, and each time, the scene will look different.
Around midday, he will try to sell some of his drawings. That is usually somewhat successful, depending on where he tries it. Sometimes, people will stop and watch him work, and then, when he is done, he will offer it to them, and they will place some yen in his palm in exchange. Then, he will go home and eat the breakfast that has since grown cold, but it sates him just fine. The afternoons he usually spends in one of the many gardens, drawing again, or just wandering the streets of Edo, practising his poor Japanese with people that already know him. He will watch the craftsmen work, admiring their art, and when he has some money left, he will buy something. Sometimes, he even pays with a drawing.
The evenings he spends with Chris, often at the tea house of their landlady, and they will drink to this unusual life that they lead. The other patrons will stare, and wonder what it is that has brought such foreigners right into one of the many tea houses of Edo.
Of course, Victor’s presence in Edo has been long since noted. No, he truly is not hard to miss with the colour of his hair, his fair complexion and his height that is unusual for this place. People will often stop to look at him twice, fascinated by the foreigner right in their midst. It has been a few years only since this country opened up to foreign travellers, and although this is one of its largest cities, foreigners are still a rare and therefore interesting sight.
To Victor, the people of Edo are just as interesting, and so is the dynamic that they have with each other. Things are different at home, where one does not distinguish so much between people who, as the people of Edo so poetically put it, ‘plant the seed of life’ and ‘those who cultivate it’. Victor does usually not think twice about these things when he meets other people besides the fact that he, personally, likes men instead of women. Whether his object of desire can bear children or not is not of any importance to him. Back at home, it does not matter much.
In this place, however, it seems to matter more than anything else.
He has seen the men and women that ride in palanquins, faces hidden behind fans to hide themselves from curious glances, but they are rare. Chris, who knows more about Edo and its society than Victor, has told him that they are expected to stay home, to tend to the home, to protect them in their fragility. Personally, Victor finds the concept laughable. Anyone who is capable of bearing children is anything but fragile, but he knows better than to criticise a culture that is not his own.
Here, they make a clear distinction between who shall be seen and who shall be hidden.
It is a façade that Victor would like to look behind, for he is sure he would find a world that is fragile instead of the people that live in it. A world forbidden and beautiful, a sphere in which happiness is understood and lived in a way very different from his own understanding.
But Victor is a foreigner, and there are doors that will always remain closed for him.
And some, he thinks to himself, are best not opened. No matter how beautiful and intriguing they may seem.
There is a stain on the tatami mat, slowly soaking through the straw.
The ink is dark and thick, eating its way downwards towards the wooden floors the mats are meant to protect. Yuuri moves the hem of his robe out of the way just in time to protect it from becoming stained, too, and that would really be a shame. He likes this particular kimono.
“Forgive me, okugata-sama!” The servant girl cries and throws herself to his feet in apology, pressing her forehead into the ground. “Please forgive me!”
Another servant comes running, older and more capable, picking up the inkpot before more of its content can pour onto the mat while the girl still apologises, kneeling before him in a perfect dogeza. She is young and inexperienced, probably terrified of him, although there really is no need.
Yuuri sighs, and his head aches.
“It does not matter,” he says and hides his impatience as best as he can. “Take it away before it can stain the floors.”
“Come,” the older servant says to the young girl, and together they take away the stained tatami mat before worse damage can be done. From the corner of his eye, Yuuri sees something small and fluffy come dangerously close.
“Vicchan, no!” He says sharply and grabs the toy poodle before the little dog can stick his nose right into the open inkpot. Vicchan yips in protest, but Yuuri holds him close and moves away from the scene of the accident, scratching the dog behind the ear.
The older servant comes back, bowing deeply.
“Please forgive her, okugata-sama,” she says kindly, “the girl is young and inexperienced, and still needs to learn.”
Yuuri looks over at her. “It is of no concern, Mother Matsu,” he says softly. “I am not angry.”
Mother Matsu smiles softly and bows her head again in confirmation.
It is a shame to see good ink spilled and wasted, but there are worse things in life than that. A tatami mat can be replaced, too, especially in a house as rich as this one.
“Besides,” Yuuri says and returns to the table in the centre of the room, sitting down with Vicchan still in his arms, “it was an accident. It is not like she happened to set fire to the doors.”
Vicchan yips, and Yuuri puts him down to let him run off to the piece of fabric he likes to chew on for some reason. Only then, he looks at the table in front of him, at the books he has been reading and trying to translate. It is not a usual task for someone like him, for someone of his station, but his husband lets him be.
One of Lord Kurosawa’s good qualities.
“Would you like to eat something, okugata-sama?” Mother Matsu asks, despite knowing the answer already. “You have not eaten well this morning.”
Yuuri looks up. “Tea would be nice,” he says, “and perhaps some melon pieces, if there are any.”
Mother Matsu bows again and retreats without another word.
Yuuri brings his hand to his temple, rubbing it with a small sigh.
The morning had been long, filled with the duty he despises the most, namely keeping up correspondence in the name of his husband. It is all very formal, none of it honest and merely meant to flatter, but that is how things are done, and always will be. Yuuri represents his husband and the family from within the home, at this desk, chained to it by ink and brush.
His morning had been interrupted, then, by a servant running in and asking for his presence in the outer courtyard, where his husband’s disciples train. An injury, like many others, a cut in the arm of a young boy, barely ten years of age. Yuuri is as trained in healing as many others, although he has been told he has a certain talent for it. He soothes the young boy by telling him it is not as bad as it seems and instructs the servants to bring him water, herbs, and clean strips of cloth. Kurosawa’s disciples had watched him from a distance, not questioning his presence nor his skill. Yuuri knows he has their respect for some reason. Mother Matsu claims it is because Lord Kurosawa is a good example to them, for who treats his husband well will teach others to do the same.
Perhaps this is why Lord Kurosawa’s disciples bow to Yuuri when he leaves again. But perhaps it is because he has gained their respect through his skills.
Either way is fine for Yuuri.
It is past noon now on this grey day of the second month, and Yuuri feels the headache stronger than before.
Mother Matsu comes back with a tray that bears a teapot and two cups, placing both carefully on the table, in safe distance to Yuuri’s books.
“Your husband is on his way,” she says quietly.
Yuuri looks at the older woman with a small frown, just as he hears the familiar footsteps on the patio outside. Mother Matsu rises, just as the sliding doors open once more and Lord Kurosawa steps inside with a small bow.
“Yuuri,” he says in greeting, just as Mother Matsu slips past him. Yuuri briefly follows her with his eyes before he settles his attention on his husband.
“Husband,” he says. “I did not expect you at this time of the day.”
Kurosawa opens his mouth to answer, but then pauses, looking down at the empty square between the tatami mats to his left.
“What happened here?”
“A servant knocked over a pot of ink.”
“Who?”
“The new girl. I did not see a reason for punishment. As Mother Matsu says, she is young and inexperienced.”
Yuuri picks up the teapot, pouring one cup for his husband, one for himself.
“Right,” Kurosawa says with a small, thoughtful nod. Yuuri is glad his husband knows better than to question Mother Matsu, which has saved Yuuri in return from many unnecessary explanations in the past. Kurosawa tears his eyes away from the naked floor, looking at his young husband. “I’m afraid I cannot stay.”
Yuuri returns his gaze, waiting for him to go on.
“Iwakura has asked for my counsel in an important matter,” his husband explains, curtly. Nothing more Yuuri ever learns from him, merely the essence of what he needs to know. Not that Yuuri is interested.
“I see,” he says. “I hope the matter will resolve itself soon, then.”
“Yes,” Kurosawa says and clears his throat, just as Mother Matsu comes in with yet another tray. He steps aside for the older woman, despite him being the master and her being the servant. For a moment, Kurosawa lingers, as if there were something else he wished to say but lacking the words to express them. It is a sight Yuuri has become quite familiar with over the years of their marriage. No, his husband is not good with words, and never has been.
It is a circumstance one can find quite frustrating.
Kurosawa eventually clears his throat. “I shall see you later,” he says with another nod before he walks out.
Yuuri inclines his head as his husband takes his leave, and sighs only as he can be sure Kurosawa is far away enough.
“Another cup of tea wasted,” he murmurs as Mother Matsu places a bowl with fresh pieces of melon before him. “Please drink it with me, Mother Matsu. Anything else would be bad luck.”
The older woman smiles and bows her head before she takes a seat on the other side of the table, picking up the cup. Yuuri takes his own and takes a sip, hoping that it will lessen the headache and loosen the knot sitting in his stomach for some reason.
“You do not look as well as I would like you to, okugata-sama,” Mother Matsu says softly.
Yuuri’s gaze softens just a bit, just for her.
Mother Matsu has never been an ordinary servant and never would be, neither to him nor to his husband. After all, she had been the one to welcome Yuuri to this place when he had come here at the age of twelve to live with the late Lady Kurosawa, to be educated under her wing until he would be old enough to marry the man his distant relatives had chosen for him as a husband.
Such is the fate of an orphan.
And then, Lady Kurosawa had died in a particularly cold winter, and Mother Matsu, despite being a servant, had taken over the role of the mother and carer for Yuuri. He had been a mere child back then, and alone in the world.
Mother Matsu had taken care of him, had raised him.
And then, at the age of sixteen, he had officially become Kurosawa’s husband, a man he had only ever seen in passing until then, for anything else would not have been proper. But Mother Matsu had assured him that he would have a good life, and that Lord Kurosawa had a good and just character, and she had been right.
Good and just were excellent words to describe his husband, Yuuri had found, and he still thinks so to this day.
But that is it.
There are worse things, Yuuri knows, than a husband that is monosyllabic at times and that does not know how to read him.
There have been worse matches.
But many better ones, too.
“I do not understand the use of all this,” Yuuri says and gestures at the letters he has written. “I am writing to people I hardly ever know, hardly ever see. All for the sake of propriety.”
“Such is the duty of okugata-sama,” Mother Matsu says with the never-ending patience only a woman of her age could possibly possess. “To represent Kurosawa-dono from within the home.”
“Is it all that there is?” Yuuri exclaims with an exasperated sigh. It is not fair, he knows, to burden Mother Matsu with his moods, but today, he cannot help it. Why it is today that he feels particularly unsatisfied, he cannot tell. The less educated would claim a certain time of the month. Not that anyone would dare to make such a statement in Yuuri’s presence. “I yearn for a breath of fresh air, but this is all that there is for me. Is that all that I am good for? Correspondence with people I don’t know, sitting around all day, waiting for my husband to show me some sort of attention? Ah, I am restless!”
He rises from the cushion and walks away from the table, towards the shoji door leading out into the private garden that is all his. A beautiful place, carefully tended to by gardeners, meant to be Yuuri’s very own sanctuary.
These days, it feels more and more like a cage.
Restlessness is in Yuuri’s nature, and it agitated him to pain sometimes. People claimed other things to be based in his nature – fragility, irrationality, irritability, and other attributes that are commonly regarded as characteristics of his kind. As if, as Mother Matsu put it many years ago, ‘those who cultivate the seed of life’ were some sort of slaves to their very own nature.
Yuuri has always found the concept laughable, and he knows that his husband, fortunately, does not agree with such outdated views to a larger extent.
And yet, these views are the very things that have shaped not only his life, but the lives of all those that are like him, men and women alike. He has heard of places where things are different, has read about them in the foreign books his husband had so graciously gifted to him. In places far away, there is no distinction between his kind and the other.
In places far away, the world is meant for all, it seems.
“Forgive my outburst,” Yuuri murmurs and closes his eyes for a moment. “I know that I am supposed to be very calm generally, but I cannot help it.”
“Anyone would suffer from too rigid a restraint,” Mother Matsu says softly, “too absolute a stagnation. Of course, you are not exempt from this.”
Yuuri has often marvelled over Mother Matsu’s ability to read him, of understanding what he feels and wishes to say when he feels as if he lacks the words to express what must be said.
In this house, in this life, she is the one who has been with him the longest.
No one knows him better.
“I wish the life of my kind were just as exciting and full of possibilities as the one of my husband’s kind,” Yuuri says, bitterness in his heart. “I cannot understand why there is a whole world out there that we are deliberately excluded from. All on the basis of alleged fragility.” He spits out the last word, full of disdain of the notion.
Behind him, Mother Matsu rises from the cushion and comes closer, her steps almost inaudible on the tatami mats.
“You are young,” Mother Matsu says with endless patience. “Only one and twenty. Life has been only kind to you, and more kindness there will be.”
“I don’t want kindness,” Yuuri says quietly. “I want happiness.”
There are days in Yuuri’s life on which he believes that happiness has been stolen from him. He can think of the very days, of the very moments in which happiness had slipped through his fingers, each of them terrible and the memory painful. No amount of prayer can heal these wounds.
Of course, Mother Matsu knows all of this, has been with him in moments of greatest pain.
“If you were one of the girls,” she says softly, “I would send you out to the market now to get some fresh air. I have always found that a brisk walk helps to clear one’s mind.”
“But I am not one of the girls,” Yuuri says simply and turns around to her. “I am the host of this house, and it is my sphere, whether I like it or not. Right?”
Mother Matsu says nothing.
It is not fair, Yuuri knows, to burden her with all of this.
His life is not much different from many others that are in similar positions, although Yuuri knows he is more privileged than others. Kurosawa is a man of high rank, has even been given a title of nobility, and therefore is in close contact with the shogun. Yuuri, as his husband, is being treated accordingly, and he is not lacking a single thing that money could possibly buy.
But one’s days can be long when one feels lonely.
Yuuri sends Mother Matsu away and returns to his desk, picking up one of his books. Foreign books, gifted to him by his husband in an attempt to show some sort of affection. Yuuri had been genuinely surprised at this most generous gift, as foreign books were very hard to find and therefore expensive. But his husband had gifted him not only a dictionary of the English language, but also some books bound in fine leather. Some novels, a stage play, and a collection of poetry. Yuuri cherished them all.
What his husband could not express with words, such as his genuine interest in Yuuri’s wellbeing, he expressed in gifts such as these. They functioned as physical proof that he knew a thing or two about Yuuri, and wanted to see him happy and content, even if he would never express such sentiments out loud.
Yuuri had learned to understand the ways of his husband quickly and returned the favours in the ways expected of him.
Such is the life of a nobleman’s husband.
Today, Yuuri focuses on the small book of English poetry; a collection of various writers that most people in Edo have probably never heard of. He has roughly translated them all with the help of his dictionary, only in order to understand them, but now, he is attempting to bring them into an artistic form. His English, according to the one ambassador he has been fortunate to meet thanks to his husband, is well enough for someone who has studied the language without a proper teacher and with a dictionary only, although the grammar section is heavily limited. Everything else, Yuuri had taken from the novels, plays, and poems he has at hand, and the ambassador had sung praise to Yuuri’s unusual skill.
The mere fact he spends his time reading, learning, and translating is unusual in itself, but much to Yuuri’s surprise, Kurosawa has always let him be.
Mother Matsu had once called it his husband’s way of showing his approval.
Yuuri wishes his husband were more vocal about it.
The hours pass, and Yuuri feels his headache increase instead of lesson, and he decides to put his translation work aside for now. Instead, he tells a servant to bring him more parchment and better ink, and spends the rest of his afternoon painting, trying to copy what he sees on the pages of his foreign books. Their art style is unknown to the people here, grotesque in a way and sometimes far too realistic, but it is the pictures’ very realism that fascinates Yuuri.
“They say there is an artist roaming the streets of Edo that draws like this,” the maid tells him as she brings him dinner, “a foreigner, with hair as bright as the moon.”
Yuuri raises an eyebrow at the truly overly dramatic description.
He eats his dinner and then continues his work before he is helped into his sleeping robes by a servant. Then, he goes to the room next to his own, and kneels down before the shrine to pray.
It is important to pay respects to one’s ancestors, and to those one has lost too soon.
The futon has been prepared by the time Yuuri returns to his room, and he sees that there are two instead of just the one. His husband must have returned already, must have told the servants that he would be sleeping in Yuuri’s chambers tonight.
Yuuri pinches the bridge of his nose and slips under the covers.
Kurosawa arrives soon enough, carefully sliding the doors open and shut again as he enters the room. Yuuri sits up a bit, watching his husband remove the outer layers of his clothing on the other side of the partition that somewhat shields their futons from view.
“Did it go well?” Yuuri asks, out of politeness.
“The issue was resolved, yes,” Kurosawa replies and sets his folded robe aside before heading to the table to get something to drink before bed.
“A new drawing?” Kurosawa asks, pausing to look at the parchment Yuuri has left on the table. “They say there is an artist in Edo that draws like this.”
Yuuri raises an eyebrow. “You have heard of him, too?”
“He seems hard to not hear about,” Kurosawa says and steps behind the partition, into Yuuri’s view, and sits down on his futon. “You know of him?”
“One of the girls spoke of him,” Yuuri replies. “I thought she was making him up.”
“Perhaps she is,” Kurosawa says. “I have not seen him yet.”
He pauses, similar to earlier on this day, just before he had headed out. Yuuri tries not to show his confusion over his husband’s sudden attempts to speak more than is necessary, to speak beyond the sphere that Yuuri knows his husband finds the most comfortable for himself.
There usually is only one reason why his husband comes to his rooms at night, and that is not to talk.
Whatever it is he wants to say remains unspoken yet again as Kurosawa seems to decide against it, instead reaching out to touch Yuuri’s face with a tenderness his disciples surely would never expect of their master.
“May I?” Kurosawa asks quietly, and Yuuri gives a brief nod in return before they lie down together.
Yuuri has long since learnt to endure things patiently, and to leave everything to his husband.
At least, Yuuri has to admit as he closes his eyes and gives himself to Kurosawa, there hardly ever is any pain. It has never been like the late Lady Kurosawa had told him it would be, and Yuuri had fared much better with Mother Matsu’s advice in that regard. That means to tell Kurosawa about any kind of discomfort, and to regard the whole affair as perhaps exhausting but necessary.
Sometimes, he will be fortunate enough that his husband will brush a certain spot, make a certain move, to cause a pleasant, pulling sensation deep in his lower regions. The few times that he has been able to chase said sensation, and to find unspeakable pleasure at the end of it, Yuuri had been so embarrassed that he had not been able to look his absolutely delighted husband in the eye for days.
But since Yuuri seems to have the stamina that Kurosawa is lacking, their union usually ends with him not finding any sort of satisfaction.
Tonight is no different, and Yuuri feels his husband’s hips stutter rather soon, followed by a sigh as he spends himself inside him.
Even in this aspect, his husband is sadly predictable.
Kurosawa rolls off him, onto the second futon, breathing heavily. He will be asleep in no time, Yuuri knows, and it takes only a few minutes until he hears his husband’s breath become more even, and Yuuri has the night to himself again.
He gets up, past the partition and cleans himself off before he returns to bed and rolls onto his side, his back to Kurosawa, and closes his eyes.
There has to be more to life than this.