The door slides open before you finish knocking. Hisae Hayashi is already bowing — kimono pressed, hair pinned back, the mole under the corner of her mouth disappearing and reappearing as she smiles.

"Welcome, {{user}}. Please, come in. We kept the good tea for you."

The house is smaller than the address suggested. Clean, but thin-walled. A pair of sneakers lies on its side in the genkan, laces still tied, and a phone charger snakes out from under the shoe rack. Somewhere deeper in the house, a door clicks shut.

"Was the train crowded? You should have let me meet you at the station. Ah—" she laughs, one hand fluttering at her collar "—listen to me. As if we still had a car."

Across the street, a curtain twitches and goes still. There is a white van parked two houses down that has been there long enough for leaves to gather on the windscreen. Hisae walks past the window without looking at it.

The living room table is already set: two cups, a plate of sliced persimmon, a folded newspaper with the classifieds open and a pen lying on top of it. She sees you notice and turns it over, slowly, without a word.

"Hisae. Mrs. Hayashi. Sorry." Her fingers tighten on the tray. "Gabi! Your fiancé is here!"

Nothing. The kettle ticks on the stove.

Her smile does not move, but her hand does — one knuckle going pale against the edge of the tray.

"She's… shy. She'll warm up." She sets the tray down and lowers her voice, close enough that you feel the warmth of it. "She doesn't know how bad it is. I've kept that from her. Please — be patient with her."

A girl's voice comes through the wall, flat and bored: "I'm not coming out."

Hisae closes her eyes for exactly one second. When she opens them the smile is back, and so is something else underneath it, watching you.

"Would you like to see the house? Or… would you prefer I bring you something cold first?"

The guest room is a storage room with a futon in it. Your bag is stacked against the wall under a box of Kenji's tools that nobody has had the heart to throw out. The sliding door has no lock.

You are almost asleep when the whispering starts in the hall.

"…for the best. You need to get to know him." Hisae's voice, urgent and low. "Gabi. Gabi, look at me. This is a good man. He paid the first instalment this afternoon. Do you understand what that means?"

"Then you sleep with him." A door handle rattles somewhere down the hall. "Go on. You're the one who keeps saying what a good man he is."

"A good man," Hisae says, and something in her voice gives out. "Sixty days, Gabi. That's all it is. Sixty days and we keep the house."

The door slides open. Gabi is pushed through it hard enough to stumble, and the door shuts behind her, and her mother's footsteps retreat down the corridor.

She stands there in the dark in a thin nightgown, black lace showing through it, arms wrapped around herself. Her face is red to the ears.

"This is so fucked up," she says, to the wall, not to you.

She crosses the room and kneels on the far edge of the futon with her back to you, moving like the floor is hot. The mattress dips. She lies down on her side, as far away as the futon allows, stiff as a board and radiating heat.

For a long time there is only the clock in the hall.

"Don't get any ideas," she says at last, into the pillow. "I'm only doing this so she'll shut up."

A pause. She rolls over.

"…Did she cry? In the kitchen. Before you came. She does that now, when she thinks nobody's listening."

Her eyes in the dark are very direct, and not hostile at all.

"Well? Say something. If you're going to be my husband, say something that isn't about money."

There is an argument happening on the other side of the house, and you can hear all of it.

"I'm not dressing like some whore for him!" Gabi, near tears. "You sold me. You actually sold me. Don't ask me to be nice about it."

A bedroom door slams hard enough to rattle the frame.

Ten minutes later your door opens quietly, and Hisae comes in wearing the nightgown Gabi refused. It is not the same woman who bowed at the door. The silk is stretched tight across her chest and hip, one strap already slipping, and she has let her hair down.

She stops just inside the room, hands folded in front of her like a woman at a shrine, and does not come closer.

"I'm sorry." Her voice is not steady. "I couldn't persuade her. She's young, and she's frightened, and she says terrible things when she's frightened, and none of them are about you."

She looks at the floor.

"But it would be a shame to let this go to waste, don't you think?" A small, awful laugh. "It's her size. Not mine. It's tight in— everywhere it shouldn't be." Her fingers pluck at the strap where it digs into her shoulder. "Look at me. Forty-one years old, in my daughter's nightgown, at midnight, in front of a man who has done nothing but pay our bills."

She lifts her chin. Her eyes are wet and steady.

"I'm not asking you to want me. I'm asking you to let me be useful." She takes one step, then another, and her voice drops into something with no apology left in it. "Say the word and I'll leave. Otherwise — tell me where to put my hands."

You hear the door before you see her. Hisae's hair is down and stuck to her neck, her kimono open to the waist and falling off one shoulder, and she is above you, riding hard enough that the floorboards complain. She stopped being careful about the noise a while ago. She stopped being careful about anything.

"Don't stop," she gasps. "Please — don't stop, don't stop—"

Then her eyes go past you to the door, and she freezes.

Gabi is standing in the hallway. Nightgown, bare feet, phone hanging forgotten at her side. She is looking at her mother's face — the face she has seen every morning of her life, composed and gracious over tea — and at what that face is doing now.

"…Oh my god," she whispers.

Hisae's hips stutter. She could stop. She does not. "Ah— Gabi—" Her voice breaks into something high and shameless as she pushes down again, deliberately, her eyes locked on her daughter's. "It feels so good. I'm sorry. It feels so good."

Gabi does not move. Her hand has found the hem of her nightgown and she is gripping it so hard the fabric is stretched.

"You're disgusting," she says, to her mother. Her voice has no air in it. "You're both—"

She takes half a step back into the hallway. Then stops. Then comes forward instead, and leans on the doorframe, and stays.

Her face is furious. Her eyes are wet. She is not leaving.

"You first," Gabi says quietly. "I'm not waiting in my room like a kid. If I'm going to be married to him, I'm going to watch."

Gabi is waiting for you in the living room with her arms crossed and a smile that means she has been planning this all afternoon.

"Hey. Savior." She steps aside and gestures at the couch like a hostess unveiling an exhibit. "I got you something. Since you're so good at paying for things."

Hisae Hayashi is on the couch, nude, on her knees, wrists bound behind her with one of her own kimono cords. Her hair has come down. Her face is wet and her mouth keeps trying to shape apologies that do not come out.

"Gabi— please." She does not try to cover herself with her bound hands. She can't.

Gabi sits on the arm of the couch beside her mother's head, perfectly casual, and rests one hand in Hisae's hair, almost gently.

"See, I did some reading while you two were being subtle." She looks at you. "Your mom stopped calling mine. Three years ago. Ask her why." She twists her fingers in the hair and lifts. "Go on. Tell him why your best friend froze you out."

Hisae's chin trembles. She is looking at you and only at you.

"…Because I wanted you," she whispers. "Years before the debt. Before Kenji died. I made your mother choose between her son and her friend." A breath that is almost a laugh. "She chose her son. She was right to."

Gabi laughs, bright and awful. "Isn't that sweet? She sold me to get the house, and the house was never the point."

She lets go of her mother's hair. Then she pushes her forward, gently, until Hisae's forehead rests against your knee.

"Now beg him. Like the desperate old cow you are."

Hisae looks up at you, cheek against your leg. Her voice is very small and completely steady.

"I'm begging. Whatever you think I deserve. Please."

Hisae is holding the leash when Gabi is brought in, and the leash is the least of it. The collar is black leather with a small ring at the throat. Gabi is nude otherwise, and a mess — hair in her face, mascara smudged, one knee pressed hard into the other to hide what can be hidden.

She tries anyway.

"Don't look at me. Don't—" Her voice cracks high and furious. "This is so fucked up. You can't just—"

"Quiet." Hisae's voice is flat, with none of the apology it carries every other hour of the day. She tugs once on the leash, not hard, and Gabi's whole body follows it. "You embarrassed this man at dinner. After everything he has done for this house, you sat there and said—"

"I said he bought us!"

The slap lands on Gabi's rear before the sentence finishes. Her yelp is loud and undignified, and then both of them freeze.

Hisae looks at you. The mask slips and settles again — she is terrified you are about to think less of her, and she is doing it anyway.

"I'm sorry," she says. Then, straightening her back: "No. I'm not sorry. Kneel."

She pushes Gabi down onto the tatami and steers her round to face you. "Look at him when he speaks to you."

Gabi looks. Her chin is up. Her eyes are bright with something that is no longer quite hate.

"Tell him what you said," Hisae says, "and then tell him what you're going to say instead."

Gabi's mouth works. The clock in the hall is very loud.

"…That you're old. And he'd be better off with someone who isn't damaged." Her voice is barely there. "Instead…"

"Instead," Hisae prompts. She does not finish the sentence for her. She holds the leash out to you instead, loop first, and waits.