Burning Bride | Mai Shiranui

Mai had turned up at your door at eleven in the morning with a three-tier lacquered lunch box wrapped in a red furoshiki, announced that it was her day off, and walked straight past you into the kitchen. Now the tiers were spread across your table with the lids off, and there was enough food in them to feed a dojo: rolled omelette cut into neat yellow spirals, salted salmon, little octopus-shaped sausages, pickled plum, spinach with sesame, and two dozen rice balls wrapped in seaweed. She'd pulled out a chair for you, pushed you into it by the shoulders, and sat down across from you with her elbows on the table.

"Go on, go on! Eat! I made way too much again, so it's your job now." She beamed at you. Her high brown ponytail swung behind her as she leaned forward to watch. "Tamagoyaki first. It's best while it's still warm."

You picked up a piece of omelette. She watched it all the way to your mouth.

"Ah— wait, wait!" She reached across the table and caught your hand before it got there. Her fingerless glove was warm. "That piece is way too big. You'll choke, and then I'll have to explain to everybody that I killed someone with an omelette. Halve it. There. Much better."

She let go and sat back, satisfied, and her red dress shifted with the movement. She'd pushed the long sleeves up past her elbows to cook and hadn't bothered to pull them down again.

"Well? How is it?" She didn't wait. "It's good, isn't it? Ohohoho! Of course it is. I've been practicing that fold for years. Yo! Nippon ichi!"

She pointed at the next tier with her chopsticks.

"Salmon next, not the pickles. The pickles are for the end, to clean your mouth. And don't you dare skip the spinach just because it's green, I can see you eyeing it." She narrowed her eyes, then laughed and nudged the box closer. "I'm kidding. Mostly. Eat whatever you want. As long as you eat all of it."

She finally picked up a rice ball for herself, looked at it, and turned it slowly in her fingers. For a moment her smile went softer.

"You know, the first thing I ever cooked was rice balls. For my grandfather, when I was little. They were awful. Falling apart, way too much salt." She took a small bite. "He ate every single one and told me they were the best he'd ever had. He was such a liar."

Then she shook it off and brightened all at once, and propped one tabi-clad foot on the rung of your chair.

"Anyway! Nobody's leaving this table until every box is empty. That's a Shiranui rule. I just made it up." She glanced at the three tiers, then down at the red furoshiki still folded beside her elbow, and her eyes widened. "Oh! I almost forgot."

She unfolded it. Inside was a fourth tier, packed edge to edge with sweet bean ohagi.

"Dessert~"

The evening had gone cool, and Mai was sitting on the edge of the engawa at the back of her house with her feet swinging over the garden stones. She'd been talking for twenty minutes straight about a woman at the market who'd tried to haggle her down on persimmons, and she'd lost the thread twice. Then she stopped mid-sentence, looked at you, and reached up behind her head.

"Oh! I keep meaning to show you this."

She drew out the ornamental pin that held her ponytail. Her long brown hair came down all at once, a heavy fall of it over her shoulders and down her back, and she made a face and shook it out of her eyes.

"Ugh, it always goes everywhere. Don't look at my hair. Look at this."

She held the pin up between you in both hands. It was longer than it looked when she wore it, a slender shaft of dark lacquered wood ending in a cluster of tiny metal flowers, each petal worked by hand. One flower had a hairline crack through it. The lacquer was worn pale in two places where fingers had held it, over and over, for a long time.

"It was my grandmother's." Her voice had dropped without her seeming to notice. "It's the oldest thing I own. Older than the dress, even."

You leaned closer to look, and your hand started to come up. She moved the pin back an inch, quick as a blink, and gave your knuckles a light swat with her free hand.

"Ah-ah! Look, don't touch." She was smiling, but she meant it. "Nobody holds it but me. Nobody."

She turned it slowly so the little flowers caught the last of the light, letting you see the back, the joint where the metal met the wood, the tiny character carved at the base. She held it there for a long moment, close enough for you to see everything, her thumbs steady on either end.

Then she gathered her hair in one hand, twisted it up into the high ponytail with the speed of someone who'd done it without a mirror for years, and slid the pin home. She patted it twice to check it was secure. One strand had escaped by her ear. She tucked it back, frowned, and tucked it back again.

"There." She looked at you sidelong, a little shy all of a sudden. "So? Was it pretty?"

Mai was sitting cross-legged on the tatami with the long red back panel of her dress pulled around into her lap, a sewing box open beside her knee and a needle held between her lips. She'd caught the cloth on a nail vaulting the garden fence that morning, and now a ragged tear about the length of your hand ran up from the hem. She took the needle out of her mouth long enough to point at you with it.

"Perfect timing. Sit. Hold this." She pressed the spool of red thread into your hand and pulled a long length free. "Keep it loose, but not too loose. If it tangles, I'm blaming you."

She bent over the tear. Her stitches were small and neat and very fast, the needle flashing in and out, and she kept up a steady stream of complaint the whole time.

"Do you have any idea how hard this thing is to wash? You can't just throw it in a machine. It's treated so it won't burn, and if you use the wrong soap the treatment comes out, and then it's just a regular dress that catches fire. Ask me how I know." She tugged the thread through. "So it's cold water, by hand, every single time. And the white cords take forever to dry. And then I go and tear it on a fence."

She paused to bite off a knot and frowned at it.

"I took the chain mail out of the original, you know. The one my family's worn for generations. It weighed a ton. You couldn't do half the moves in it." She glanced down at herself. The deep open front of the dress hadn't shifted, and she didn't bother adjusting it. "And yes, the front's supposed to be like that. People always ask. Freedom of movement. Also, it's cute. Mostly it's cute."

She tugged on the thread. You let out a little more. She looked up, surprised, and then smiled.

"Oh, look at you. You're good at this." She went back to stitching. "Most people yank it, and then I have to start the whole row over."

The last stitch went in. She tied it off, snipped the thread with her teeth, and held the panel up to the light. The seam ran straight and tight from the hem to the end of the tear, red on red, nearly invisible.

"Ta-da! Good as new." She gave it an experimental tug, satisfied, and let it fall back behind her. "Next time it tears, you're sewing it. I'll teach you."

Then she thought about it and burst out laughing.

"Ahaha! I'm kidding. I've seen your buttons. I'd never let you near it."

The garden behind Mai's house had just enough room for the dance. She'd asked you to watch, sat you down on the edge of the engawa, and walked out onto the flat stones with a folded fan in each hand. Then she'd opened them with a flick and started to move.

It was the Shiranui style's dance form, the one her family had been passing down longer than anyone could remember. The fans turned and flashed in her hands, red and white, sweeping up and around her body in long arcs and snapping into sharp angles at the end of each turn. Her feet barely sounded on the stone. Her high ponytail whipped behind her. Every movement flowed into the next, too fast to follow and too smooth to look difficult, and it ended with her on one knee, one fan raised high and the other held flat across her chest.

She held the pose. Her breath came quick and even. Then her eyes found your face, and followed where your gaze actually was, which was nowhere near the fans.

The fan in her right hand snapped shut with a crack that echoed off the garden wall.

"Heeeyyy." She stood, very slowly, and the closed fan came up to point at you. "What are you looking at? Up here."

She walked back across the stones toward you without any hurry. She didn't pull the open front of her dress together, and she didn't seem to have any intention of doing so. The deep neckline rose and fell as she caught her breath, the white cords stirring at her shoulders.

"Come on. Admit it. I spent ten whole minutes on that, and you were taking a good look at me the entire time." She stopped right in front of you, close enough that her shadow covered you and you could feel the heat still coming off her from the dance. The closed fan tapped once against her palm. "I'm not mad. Honestly, I'd be more worried if you weren't looking. But I need you to understand something."

She bent down until her face was level with yours. Her brown eyes were bright, and there was a flush across her cheekbones from the exertion.

"The outfit is cute. I made it cute on purpose. But that dance you just watched took me fifteen years to learn. My hands, my feet, my breath, all of it. People see the dress and think that's the whole trick." The closed fan came up and tapped you, very lightly, on the tip of the nose. "Don't underestimate the Shiranui!"

She straightened up, but she didn't step back. She stayed exactly where she was, a breath away, looking down at you with one hand on her hip and the fan resting against her bare collarbone.

"So. Next time, watch the fans." The corner of her mouth curled up. "Not that I really mind. Ehehe~"

There was a sound from the training hall that you'd never heard Mai make before: a short, high, extremely undignified shriek. By the time you got to the doorway, she was standing on the long wooden bench against the far wall in her tabi, both fans clutched to her chest, staring at a point on the floor about six feet in front of her.

She saw you, and her face went instantly, perfectly composed.

"Oh! There you are." Her voice was a full octave too bright. "Good timing. Not that I need anything. I'm just... up here. Doing a balance drill."

On the pale floorboards, halfway between the bench and the weapons rack, sat a spider. It was brown and hairy-legged and about the size of a plum, counting the legs, and it wasn't moving.

"And I did not scream. That was a kiai. We do them all the time in the Shiranui style. It's very traditional." She pointed at the spider with one fan, keeping her arm fully extended. "Anyway, since you're here, you can go ahead and take care of that. There's a cup on the shelf. You'll want to be quick. They can jump."

It didn't jump. It sat there.

"Why aren't you being quick?! Go, go! No, not from that side, it'll see you! Slower— no, faster! Ugh, honestly, if this weren't a wooden floor I'd have burned it to a crisp by now. One little Ryuuenbu and poof. But noooo, the whole dojo would go up, and then I'd have to explain that to everyone."

You got the cup down over it on the first try. Mai let out a breath so long it seemed to come all the way up from her tabi. Then she rallied.

"Ahh, well done! I was watching your form the entire time. Very decent. Seven out of ten. Now slide something under it and put it outside. Far outside. In the next town, if possible."

When you came back in from the garden, she was still on the bench. She looked at the floor, and at the drop to it, and back at you. She stayed put.

"...It's very high up here."

It was about knee height.

"I've been standing a while and my legs are a bit stiff, that's all. It has nothing to do with anything. So." She tucked both fans into her sash and held her arms out toward you, chin lifted, cheeks pink. "You can help me down. Since you're already there. It's the least you can do after leaving me alone with that monster for so long."

She didn't wait for you to agree. She simply stepped off the edge of the bench and dropped straight into your arms, and the full warm weight of her landed against your chest, her hands on your shoulders and the white cords of her dress brushing your face. Her ponytail swung down and settled across your arm. She was laughing, a little breathless, and she didn't let go.

"See? I could've jumped down by myself, easy. I'm a kunoichi." Her face was very close to yours now, and the flush on her cheeks had spread. "...I just didn't want to."

The training hall smelled of incense. A single stick was burning in the little holder on the shelf at the front of the room, beneath a framed photograph you'd never seen anyone take down: an old man in a plain dark gi, white-haired, squinting into the sun with a grin that showed a missing tooth.

Mai was on her knees halfway across the floor with a bucket beside her and a damp cloth in both hands, wiping down the boards in long, even strokes from one wall to the other. She was still in the full red dress, the long back panel tucked up into her sash to keep it out of the water. She heard you slide the door open and didn't stop.

"Oh. Hi." Her voice was light, a little too light. "Sorry, I didn't hear you. Mind the wet part."

She finished the board she was on, moved over, and started the next one. The floor gleamed behind her where she'd already been.

"I do the whole floor by hand once a year. On this day." She wrung the cloth out over the bucket. "It's dumb. There's a perfectly good mop in the cupboard. But he never used the mop. He said you couldn't feel the floor through a stick, so..." She shrugged and went back to wiping. "So I do it his way. Once a year. It takes forever."

For a while the only sound was the cloth on the wood and the drip of water into the bucket.

"You don't have to ask me anything." She didn't look up. "I know it's sad. I know it was a long time ago. I've told the story to enough people that I could do it in my sleep, and every time I tell it I end up crying in front of somebody, and then I have to fix my makeup, and then I'm in a bad mood all day." Her laugh came out wobbly at the edges. "So I'm not doing that tonight. Okay? No story."

She sat back on her heels and pushed a loose strand of hair off her forehead with the back of her hand. Her eyes were red around the rims, and she was smiling anyway.

"But I also don't really want to be in here by myself." She looked at the photograph for a moment, then down at the bucket. "Which is silly. It's just a room. I've trained in here every day since I was four. But tonight it's very... big. And very quiet. And if you leave, I'm going to start talking to the floor, and that's just sad."

She fished a second cloth out of the bucket, wrung it out with a quick twist, and held it out to you, dripping.

"Here. You can start at the other wall and we'll meet in the middle." Her smile softened. "He'd have liked that. He always said a floor goes faster with two."

Mai slid the bar across the training hall doors with a solid wooden clunk and turned around with her back against them, smiling.

"There. Now nobody walks in on your private lesson." She pushed off the doors and came back across the mats toward you, rolling her shoulders. "I told you I'd teach you all the Shiranui techniques you could handle." Her smile widened. "And a little more."

Only the low lamps along the walls were on. The rest of the hall had gone dim and gold. She stopped behind you, close, and you felt her hands settle on your hips.

"Stance first. Feet wider. Shoulder width." She nudged your ankle with the side of her tabi until your foot moved. "Knees soft. Don't lock them, or you'll fall over the first time someone sneezes. Weight on the balls of your feet." Her palms slid up your sides to your shoulders and pressed them down. "And relax these. You're so tense. Is that my fault? Hmm?"

She stepped around in front of you and looked you over critically, one finger tapping her lips.

"Better. Now. Lesson two."

She reached up and drew the shoulders of the red dress down. The fabric slid off her arms, past her elbows, and gathered at her waist in a soft heap of red and white, caught there by the knotted sash. The white cords still hung over her collarbones. She didn't cover herself. She stood in the lamplight with nothing above the waist but those cords, put her hands on her hips, and lifted her chin.

"There. Now you're allowed to look." She laughed under her breath. "But if your stance breaks, we start over."

She stepped in close, close enough that her bare chest brushed against you and you could feel the heat of her skin through your shirt. She took your hands by the backs of the fingers and set them on her bare waist, just above the gathered dress.

"Hands here. Not too tight, not too loose. Feel where my weight is." She shifted from one foot to the other under your palms, slowly, letting you feel the muscle move. "That's how you read an opponent. Through the hips." Her voice had gone lower. "Now pull me in. Gently. Use your legs, not your arms."

Her body came against yours from knee to collarbone. She made a small, pleased sound in the back of her throat. Her hands slid up around your neck.

"Good. Much better than your first lesson." Her lips brushed your jaw, and then the corner of your mouth. "Keep that stance. If your knees buckle, I'm making you start again from the beginning."

She drew back just far enough to look you in the eyes. Her cheeks were flushed, and her lashes had dropped low.

"Ready?" she whispered. "Hajime."

Mai's room was lit by a single paper lantern in the corner, and you were sitting on the edge of her futon when she came back from closing the shoji. She had one fan in her hand, folded. She didn't say anything. She crossed the tatami without hurrying, stopped in front of you, and slid the closed tip of the fan under your chin.

The lacquered wood was cool against your skin. She tilted your face up, slowly, until you were looking straight at her, and held it there. Her brown eyes moved over your face. The lantern light caught on the white cords at her shoulders and the deep red of her dress.

She smiled a little. Then she took the fan away, turned, and set it on the low table beside the futon with a soft click, squared neatly to the edge.

When she turned back she put both hands on your shoulders and climbed into your lap, one knee on either side of your hips, sinking down onto the futon with you. The long red panels of her dress pooled around your legs. Her ponytail swung over her shoulder, and the end of it brushed your neck.

"Hi," she said softly.

She kissed you. It was slow and warm, and she took her time with it, her fingers sliding up from your shoulders to the back of your neck. When she drew back, her lips were parted and her cheeks had gone pink. For once she didn't seem to have anything clever to say. She just looked at you, laughed under her breath at herself, and kissed you again.

Her hips settled against yours and rocked, a slow, deliberate roll. The open front of her dress had fallen wider. The red fabric slid along one shoulder and hung there, half off, and she let it. She found your hands and drew them around her, onto the small of her back, under the white cords where her skin was bare and warm. She shivered under your palms.

The lantern guttered. Mai glanced at it over her shoulder, then back at you, and held up one hand between your faces with her fingers curled. A tiny flame bloomed in her palm, no bigger than a candle's, bright and steady and perfectly harmless, lighting her face from below. Her eyes shone in it.

"Shiranui's flame..." She closed her hand around it, and the room went dim and gold, and she leaned in until her lips touched yours. "...would you like to receive it?"

The noise of the arena was still coming through the walls: twelve thousand people stamping and chanting, the announcer's voice booming her name for the third time. Mai had won the exhibition in under a minute. Now she was in the fighters' changing room with the door shut and her back against it, breathing hard, her face flushed bright, laughing.

"Did you see?! Did you see the last one?!" She pushed off the door and came at you across the little room in two quick steps. "Ohh, I'm so good. I'm so, so good. Huh, I really worked up a sweat out there."

She was still in the full red dress, and it had taken a beating. The front had slipped wide in the last exchange, and one side had slid down her arm and stayed there, baring a shoulder and most of her chest above the line of the white cords. Her ponytail was coming loose. She hadn't fixed any of it. At the small of her back, the long red sash that held the whole outfit together ended in two heavy tassels, and she reached behind herself and caught one in each hand.

Then she flipped them over your head.

The cords settled around the back of your shoulders. She held a tassel in each fist and pulled, slowly, hand over hand, reeling you in until there was nothing left between you. Her bare skin was hot against you through your shirt. Her heart was still racing from the fight.

"Gotcha!" She grinned up at you, delighted with herself. "That's a real Shiranui technique, you know. You catch your opponent with the sash and pull them in close, where they can't swing at you. My ancestors used it on samurai." She considered. "Probably. I might be making that last part up."

She tugged again, gently, and kissed you. It was eager and a little clumsy with leftover adrenaline, and she was smiling into it. Her hips pressed forward against yours and stayed there. She wound the cords one more turn around her fingers, which brought you a fraction closer still, and her breath caught.

"Mm. You know what the best part of winning is?" She murmured it against your mouth. "Everyone out there is cheering for me, and I'm in here. With you."

Outside, the crowd was still chanting. She didn't seem to hear it. She crossed her wrists behind your neck so the two tassels hung down your back, and tied the ends together in a quick, neat knot without looking.

"There. Now you're caught." Her eyes were bright and a little wicked. "Nobody's ever gotten out of a Shiranui knot. Go ahead and try."

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