GOING BOSTAL
2. Out on the Town (part b)
"Ahh... hmmm... Uhhh...! Oukami-sama! Ohhh, Oukami-sama! You... you're filling me up... Hah...! You're making me— Uhh! Oh... Oukaaaaami-sama! Uh! Ahhh...!"
Pursing his lips slightly as Anna's high-pitched voice pierced through the thin wall between their adjoining rooms, Darkling just sighed and raised his eyes to Kana, who was sitting on the stool across from the bed.
"Kana?" he prompted.
"Um... oniichan?" Kana asked, blinking.
"It's your turn," he reminded her, cringing slightly at the rhythmic thumping sound of the bedhead slamming against the wall in the next room.
"Oh," Kana said, lowering her eyes in embarrassment. She was also more than a bit distracted, it seemed. Tucking her left braid back behind her ear, she turned her attention back to her cards. "Um... do you have any tens?"
"I put down the tens just a few minutes ago," Darkling pointed out, exasperated. He gestured at the row of cards on the little table between them. "Aren't you paying attention?"
Kana just cringed slightly, drawing back from him and pulling the cards to her chest. "I'm... I'm sorry, oniichan. I'm not as good at this game as Oukami-sama is."
"You're not even trying!" Darkling snapped. "First you ask me for cards you don't even have, then you ask me for cards I've already put down... Anyone would think you actually want to lose!"
"I'm... sorry," Kana repeated, helplessly, biting her lip. "It's just... I'm not very good at games. And when Anna-chan and I were with Master Sardul, it wasn't... advisable to win at anything."
"Why not?"
"Well, Master Sardul wasn't a very good loser," Kana said, reluctantly, "so Anna-chan and I would usually lose on purpose, so he didn't have reason to get angry with us."
"Humpf," Darkling said, amused. "I can't see Anna holding back with anyone, not even her master."
"Master Sardul... wasn't like you and Oukami-sama," Kana said, quietly. "It would be unheard of for me to be in his room unless... unless we were doing what Anna-chan and Oukami-sama are doing," she finished, blushing deeply. "And... and we wouldn't enjoy it. One time, Master Sardul even gave us to his henchmen to... 'share', for a night. I... I didn't enjoy that eith— I... I'm sorry... I—"
"Kana..." Darkling said, slightly alarmed, as tears began to well from beneath Kana's half-closed eyelids. "Kana, please, don't... don't cry. You're not with Sardul anymore. He's dead, and so are his men. They... they won't do anything to you anymore. I swear. Now, come on. Imouto-chan..."
But Kana was inconsolable. Her shoulders shook and heaved with the shaky rhythm of her sobs. And all Darkling could do was sit there on the bed, staring at her, with his right hand slightly outstretched as if to...
As if to what? Darkling demanded of himself, bitterly. As if to comfort her? She's not your lover; she's your slave! And you can't even get that relationship right! Do you order her to do things? Do you tell her what you want from her? Do you even think of mentioning what you might want from her? No!
Kana's cards had fallen to the floorboards. One of her hands was fisted up and rubbing rhythmically at her right eye, while the other tugged unconsciously at her leather collar. Underneath, the white skin of her neck was chafed and reddened from friction. Darkling winced instinctively at the sight.
"Come on, Kana," he ordered, brusquely, getting to his feet. Uncoiling the slender leather leash from his belt, he attached it to Kana's collar and stood there, leaving it slack.
Hiccupping, looking up at him with tear-streaked eyes, Kana looked utterly confused. "O... oniichan?" she asked, softly.
"We're going out," he told her, then cringed as another one of Anna's high-pitched squeals of pleasure went right through his head. "Somewhere quieter."
Kana's violet eyes creased, just a bit, giving her a slightly crestfallen demeanour. She sighed, wiping away her tears resignedly. "I see," she mumbled. "Whatever you want, oniichan."
"Come on, then," Darkling said, heading for the door.
Kurai-sama was upset. He was upset with her. He had to be.
It was mid-afternoon now. After a brief conference in the common room over the morning's takings, Oukami-sama and Kurai-sama had decided that they could afford to take the afternoon off, and Anna, still somewhat prickly about Oukami-sama's numerous admirers, had promptly dragged him off to their room.
Another couple of days' busking, and the travellers would have enough money to see them comfortably to the town of Feldingford. Anna-chan had once attended some sort of school there and, upon hearing of its sizeable library, Kurai-sama and Oukami-sama had decided it would be worth checking it out for information on Kurai-sama's amulet.
They couldn't leave this city soon enough for Kana. The whole place just kept reinforcing the sordid realities of her existence to her. The slave gangs in the streets. The openly suggestive leers of passersby. The awful atmosphere of the Slave Plaza – a place where human lives were bought and sold.
Just as hers had been...
Kana sighed, letting her head sink forward as Kurai-sama led her through the streets. She'd only been a small child when the slavers had caught her unaware and alone. Fortunately, she'd also been a rather comely child, so her abductors had sold her to a bishoujo game company, rather than consigning her to a more menial or degrading fate.
She'd made friends there. She still remembered Taka and Miki with lingering fondness. They'd been so nice to her. But then there'd been Yumi. Buxom, self-absorbed, ambitious Yumi – the bane of Kana's mid-teens. And Yuta, whose interest in her had been somewhat more than just professional. She hadn't needed to act uncomfortable in her scenes with him. It had come all too naturally.
But her bittersweet days with the company had ended abruptly when the game was completed. She was cast out, rejected. Sold to a travelling restaurant, of all things, as a glorified scullery maid. And then to the Shadow Reaver gang, and their leader. Sardul One-Eye.
She shuddered as she recalled the stink of his breath and the thick odour of his unwashed body. His crushing weight pressing down on her in the darkness as he clutched her roughly, thrusting inside her and reaching his pleasure quickly, before banishing her from his presence. After gathering her clothing and shuffling away, she'd curled up in the straw feeling tainted and used. Anna-chan had held her, then, as Kana sobbed into the younger girl's hair.
"He'll get his in the end," Anna had whispered, confidently. "I just know he will. Ugly stinky men like him always get what's coming to them. And who knows? It might even be tomorrow."
And then, sooner than either of them might have expected, tomorrow came. It brought salvation to both of them. It brought Oukami-sama to Anna.
And it brought Kurai-sama to Kana.
He touched her gently. He was shy, and gentle, but still surprisingly aggressive when the situation warranted it. She'd seen him in the thick of battle, apparently hopelessly outnumbered. But his wiry frame could move unexpectedly quickly; and the katana sheathed at his side could glitter and flash like lightning in summer. Much like Sardul and his cronies, Kurai-sama was no stranger to bloodshed. If anything, his expertise with the blade bespoke extensive experience with killing.
And yet...
"Kana!" The tugging of the collar around her neck snapped Kana out of her momentary reverie. Biting back her instinctive wince as the collar dug painfully into her skin, she paused, turning around to find Kurai-sama standing at one of the market stalls.
"I'm sorry, Kurai-sa—" she started, only to pause when she saw just what sort of stall it was. Whips, chains, shackles: it was either a slavers' supply stall or a sadomasochist's wet dream come true. Either way, Kana reflected nervously, it didn't bode well for her.
Did I... did I displease you somehow, Kurai-sama? she wondered, anxiously. Was it... was it my singing with Oukami-sama? The way I acted with him? Are you going to... punish me? Maybe you're going to put one of those heavy chains on me again. After all, this leather leash you bought for me would almost snap if I pulled at it too hard...
"You what?" The bald-headed stall proprietor was looking at Kurai-sama as if he'd suddenly sprouted purple wings from his nose.
"I want to know if you have a leather collar with some sort of cloth lining to minimise chafing," Kurai-sama repeated, patiently. "It's not that hard a concept. I'd prefer silk, but linen or cotton will do."
"I don' know what boat you just got tossed off," the stall proprietor sneered, "but let me tell ya somethin'. That there leather dealy you've got Missy Brownhair wearing ain't gonna do nothin' to keep her from runnin' off on ya, or bein' stolen, when some less sissified citizen figures you ain't man enough to hang onto her. Collars are put on slaves, ya know? Collars're a mark o' ownership. They ain't decorations!"
"A simple 'no, I don't' would have done," Kurai-sama said, evenly. "I hate to have made you strain your vocabulary for two– and three-syllable words for nothing."
"I'll 'silly bull' ya!" the bald-headed man snarled, obviously understanding the fact that he was being insulted, if not exactly how. Reaching behind him, he grabbed a heavy wooden yoke in one meaty paw.
"Kurai-sama, watch ou—!" Kana squeaked, but the sibilant hiss of steel sliding from a sheath announced that Kurai-sama was a couple of steps ahead of her. His katana flickered from beneath his long cloak, darting out blindingly quickly to sever the thick wooden yoke into two stump-like pieces, one of which went clattering to the ground.
"You don't have what I'm after," Kurai-sama said, evenly, the razor-sharp edge of his blade poised against the bald man's thick neck. "So just say it, and I'll be on my way."
"I... I ain't got what ya want," the proprietor gasped, as the blade scraped lightly against his sweaty skin. "And I din't mean no offence, ya gets me? You and yer Missy Brownhair... she should be proud to have ya as her master! I... uh..."
"Now you're just babbling," Kurai-sama said, tiredly. "Do you know where I could find somewhere that sells imported fabrics? And a tailor?"
Mutely, the stall owner lifted his arm and pointed down the street in the direction they'd been heading.
"Thank you," Kurai-sama said. The katana seemed to collapse in on itself; it took Kana a few seconds to realise that Kurai-sama had reversed and sheathed it almost too quickly for her eye to follow. "Come on, Kana," he said, heading down the street. "Let's go."
Kana just looked back momentarily at the stall owner, who was slumped back against a wall of chains, rubbing gingerly at the clean-shaven patch on his throat. Then, blinking as the leather leash started to pull taut, she scurried after her master.
"Oni— Ku–Kurai-sama?" she asked, catching herself just in time.
"What is it, Kana?" he asked, without turning around.
"Would you..." She flushed, edging closer to him. "Would you really have killed him just because he said you weren't really a man?"
"What?" Kurai-sama looked back over his shoulder, his expression grimly amused. "Nah, his comments about me had nothing to do with it."
"Then... um...?"
He laughed. "I just thought he needed a shave, that's all."
"I... I see." Kana fell silent as Kurai-sama led her further into the Merchants' Quarter. It wasn't like Kurai-sama to be so reactionary, pulling his blade at the slightest provocation. Something had to be bothering him.
But what? Kana wondered, despairingly. And even if I knew what it was, what could I possibly do about it?
Next: Hawker and wolf