They say a courtesan forgets her own name, eventually.
Aika had once believed it. When she was thirteen, her mentor, an older girl with tired eyes and painted lips, told her that names were for girls who could still dream. "We are not daughters here," she'd whispered, brushing rouge onto Aika's cheeks. "We are mirrors. Nothing more."
But Renjiro spoke to her as if she had always been real.
"Aika," he said one evening, testing the sound like it was poetry. "It suits you."
No client had asked for her by name before. Most called her by whatever moniker pleased them.
Butterfly
Little Bell
Moonlight
All soft lies. All ephemeral. But Renjiro had asked her, days ago, in that same quiet room:
"May I know your name?"
And she had given it, almost shyly.
Now, each time he returned, and he returned often, he greeted her the same way.
"Good evening, Aika."
His voice was a thread pulled through the dusk. Gentle. Familiar.
It wasn't that he was handsome.
Though Aika had begun to notice the way his hands moved when he poured his own tea, the small creases near his eyes when he smiled.
It was the way he listened.
He remembered things she'd said in passing.
How she missed the smell of persimmons in her mother's garden, or how she used to watch the fireflies at dusk before her father died. Most men only remembered her body. Renjiro remembered her silences.
One night, after the lamps were lit and the other girls had begun to laugh and sing in distant rooms, he asked her:
"Do you ever think about leaving?"
Her hands froze over the lacquered tray.
"Where would I go?" she whispered. "I wouldn't know how to live."
Renjiro didn't answer right away. Instead, he placed his teacup down with care and leaned forward.
Not in hunger.
But in concern.
"Then perhaps you need someone who does."
Aika's throat tightened. She lowered her eyes, heart thudding loud against the delicate stillness of the room.
No one had offered her anything before. Not without a price.
Certainly not freedom.
She began saving again.
Not for escape, but for the simple act of having a choice.
Each coin she hid beneath the floorboard felt like a secret promise. A life not yet written. One Renjiro had made possible simply by seeing her as someone worth saving.
But not all nights were kind.
Some clients grew jealous. Some asked why she smiled so faintly now, or why she no longer drank when they poured. One slapped her when she flinched from his touch, calling her a liar with,
"Another man's scent!"
She bore it in silence, as always.
But Renjiro noticed the bruise the next time he came.
"Who did this?" he asked, voice like a blade dulled by restraint.
Aika shook her head.
"It doesn't matter."
"It does to me."
When he said those words, they undid her more than the slap had.
Later, as the lanterns burned low, Renjiro stood beside the doorway.
"One day," he said softly, "I'd like to see you outside these walls. In daylight."
She didn't answer. But her fingers brushed the edge of his sleeve before he stepped away.
For the first time in years, Aika allowed herself to imagine a tomorrow.