Side Story #22: Momoko’s Funeral

<Author’s note: This story takes place before the events of Book 1.>

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Side Story 22: Momoko’s Funeral

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■■ Jijinto ■■

“Please—I swear it! Just one more week is all I ask!”

Momoko pleaded inside the mansion of the Yamagata-gumi, beset with grief, anger and frustration most of all. She was surrounded by glorified thugs covered in tattoos; this particular yakuza family controlled most of Jijinto, including the corner of the Eastside slums where her clinic was. Fish-Eye Hospital was late on its protection payments.

“If I had a ryō for every stupid broad begging for an extension on their payment, I’d retire from puttin’ up with this shit!” Nishi yelled, swinging her iron club around close enough to make Momoko flinch. Dealing with crude types like her was never pleasant, but it was even worse after a second sleepless night of work.

The bald, giant man standing beside her was also unpleasant though for a different reason: he stared at her lustfully without enough manners to wipe away his drool. The yakuza made it clear what manner of work Momoko would take to pay off her debts if this trend continued.

“It won’t come to that,” Momoko assured herself. “I’ll never work for the yakuza—much less sell my body to them!”

A prompt knock on the door interrupted Nishi’s verbal lashing. “Damn, they’re here already? Alright...you’re lucky I’ve got other shit to do, nurse. Just make sure you and that fossil of a doctor pay on time next week—otherwise you’ll be workin’ for us! Let’s go, Daisuke!”

Momoko put on her most grateful smile and kept wearing it until after she was escorted out of the mansion. By the time she had walked the span of Tetsuzan Bridge, her smile had turned into a frown and then a scowl once she was within sight of the clinic. Smiling and greeting patients day-in and day-out, always being charming and pleasant—even when their patients were anything but—taxed the young doctor not just physically but mentally as well.

“Next! Oh, Yua-chan! What a pleasant surprise!”

Momoko let out a giggle, shaking both her head and all those negative thoughts away. That elderly voice belonged to Matsuyo Fujii, the most accomplished doctor in the country and a genuine hero back in the Golden Era. He was well into his seventies, was halfway blind even with his glasses, and forgot everything that wasn’t written down.

“Everything but the names of his patients,” Momoko thought. Though her mentor was several times her age, his bedside manner never faltered and the spring in his step never seemed to fail. He was a true doctor—and an inspiration for Momoko to keep pushing herself and to keep their clinic afloat.

Afternoon rolled into the evening far too quickly as Fish-Eye Hospital was once again overwhelmed with more patients than they could handle. It was early summer yet already one of the hottest Momoko could recall, and dehydration went rampant—especially among the elderly, who sometimes took to drinking seawater.

“...which only compounds the problem,” Momoko said, more than a little irritated. “Akamine-san, you must stop drinking from the ocean. Alcohol, too, only makes the body thirstier...please refrain from drinking saké—at least while you’re in this clinic!”

“I don’t need no lecture from you,” said Akamine, a retired sailor who was midway through a chug from his flask. “If I wanted a sermon I’d—*hiccup*—go up to them there shrines and pray. I’m just here for my medicayshun.”

Momoko clenched her fist, ready to partake in a shouting match until Doctor Fujii arrived and placed a gentle hand atop her shoulder. He had an almost supernatural ability at dissolving conflict before it occurred. Akamine didn’t get his ‘medicayshun’ but somehow left with a smile on his face all the same.

“You take it easy now, won’t you?” Fujii said with a laugh. “And stop laying out in the sun all day, before they tan your hide for leather!”

Momoko all but collapsed once their last patient of the day left. It was close to midnight before the two sat down for dinner amidst their experiments in the lab. Though she was reluctant to burden her old mentor with matters of money and financials—something had to be done. They had to start charging their patients upfront.

“Hm...hm…” Fujii said, nodding and otherwise politely pretending to give the matter some thought. Though the truth was, the aged doctor was terrible with money and far too charitable for his own good. “Oh, that reminds me! Touma-kun came over to pay off his surgery fees. I think you’ll like what he brought in!”

Momoko’s eyes lit up. Touma’s surgery had been the primary reason she had been up the past two nights without rest or sleep. The middle-aged fisherman had a multitude of puss-filled sacs down his throat that had to be leaked and cleaned, as well as necrotic bone growth in his mostly-rotten teeth. The smell of his breath was a horror Momoko would recall for the rest of her life.

“Here it is: dinner!” Fujii laughed as he pulled over a barrel. Momoko’s heart immediately sank upon the sight and smell of it. “Something the matter? You like sardines, don’t you?”

“No...no I don’t, Fujii-sama!” Momoko yelled, slamming her hands against the table. “We can’t survive off fish forever! We spent a fortune on numbing agents for that surgery! Even if we do manage to make our own in the future...it won’t change the fact that we’re in debt!”

Momoko brought her hands to her face as she broke down into tears. She had never cried in front of her mentor before, which made her cry even more. “We work so hard...yet we’re barely scraping by! I thought doctors were respected—yet we are given no appreciation at all, not even by those who owe us their lives!”

Doctor Fujii went to her side, and though he smelled of sardines, Momoko pressed her face into his stained kimono and sobbed. She was consumed by a multitude of emotions but was above all ashamed, to show such weakness in front of the one and only man she cared for.

“Now, now, Momoko-chan,” he said, patting her head as if she were a kitten. “A doctor is like a samurai, though instead of serving a lord in a castle, we serve each and every patient that comes through our front door. There is much honor in that.”

Momoko listened to each and every word between sniffles as she fought to keep fresh tears at bay. In her fragile state, she asked a question she had held deep within her heart for years:

“What is your secret, Fujii-sama? How can you work so hard, for so long? Don’t you ever get tired?”

The doctor looked down at his doe-eyed apprentice and smiled. “My secret is a very simple one, Momoko-chan: in serving others, I serve myself. The satisfaction of fixing a limp or a cough, of dressing a wound or mending a bone...that feeling has never left me, even after all these years. So I don’t think I’ll ever ret—”

“Fujii-sama!”

The older doctor suffered from an immediate shortness of breath, and motioned to grab for his heart until he noticed Momoko’s fearful gaze. He brought the hand to his lips instead, and was onset by a series of coughs each rougher than the last. When he recovered, he played it off like it was nothing, and Momoko was foolish enough to believe him.

“Please don’t scare me like that! Now then,” Momoko smiled, wiping away her tears, “I’ll boil us up some tea!”

Even with her medical background, you couldn’t blame her for not noticing the signs. Fujii-sama was her personal hero, a man she respected more than any other, who fought death daily at the operating table.

How could she believe that such a man was capable of dying?

■■■■

“Forget you ever saw me, doctor.”

The golden-eyed assassin growled, though otherwise made not a sound as the beast in human flesh escaped the operating room. In its wake was a freshly dismembered corpse and a terrified Momoko.

The doctor, laid up against the wall, sat there in silence as the pool of blood from her patient soaked her legs. In truth, there was no quiet—not beneath the beating of her heart, which pumped hard enough to make her chest go sore. With the rest of her numb, this sensation was all she could feel as moments turned into minutes.

Momoko knew she had to be worried, with the death of the yakuza boss on her operating table, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. Her heart had been taken by no more than a stare. The intensity behind the assassin’s eyes—the passionate sadness she found within them—had awoken something the young doctor didn’t understand.

She just knew her heart couldn’t stop beating.

“Momo—kah!” Doctor Fujii gasped as he entered the room and fell to his knees. The sight of blood was hardly new to the doctor who worked amid the Golden Era’s fiercest battles, but to see Momoko’s face and kimono covered in blood was a sight that made his heart stop.

“Fujii-sama! Fujii-sama!” Momoko rushed over to his side. The doctor leaned against her and only then did she realize just how much weight and strength Doctor Fujii had lost. She held her mentor tightly, knowing there was little else she could do if it was as she feared.

“I’umfhine. No needa’too worry’bout me.”

Slurred speech was exactly what she feared. The look on his face was disturbing: a smile on his left and frown on his right. The paralysis on the latter extended to his right arm and leg. It was as sure a sign as any that Doctor Fujii had just suffered a stroke.

“Lean on me, Fujii-sama,” Momoko said, positioning herself on his right side. “Let’s walk back to your room. I’ll clean up this mess and deal with the yakuza. You just have to get some rest, okay?”

The aged doctor was in no position to argue, and complied as his student helped him walk back to his room. Tucking him into the futon and placing his glasses by his window, Momoko once again assured him that all would be well.

“Everything will be fine, Fujii-sama. I will see to it.”

“You’re so diligent, you know that? Ah...” Fujii paused, squinting his magnified eyes as he peered into Momoko’s face. His expression was one of confusion. “What’s...what’s your name again?”

■■■■

Momoko spent the rest of that late night and morning getting brutally interrogated over the death of the yakuza leader. Ultimately, the Yamagata-gumi decided to spare her a gruesome death—if only because they were too ashamed of their own failure to claim her as guilty.

As far as Momoko was concerned, it didn’t matter either way. The doctor had been in a daze ever since meeting the assassin. Nothing felt real anymore: not Fujii-sama’s stroke, his memory loss, or getting battered and beaten by the yakuza. She knew her apathy to the world was likely a mental form of self-preservation, and that it was hardly healthy, but she embraced it all the same to make it through just a few hours more.

“What do you mean you’re closin’?! I’m here to refill my medication!”

“Where’s Fujii? Bring the real doctor out here!”

“Damn it, I’ve been in line fer hours! You can’t send me away!”

“We’re here for that new pain medication on yours! Come on—my back’s killin’ me!”

Momoko ignored the dozen patients yelling at her all at once. She couldn’t bring herself to a fiery anger; she only had energy enough for a cool hatred instead. She remained calm as she repeated that the clinic wasn’t opening today, sliding the door closed as she all but pushed an old grandmother out into the street.

“Why would you ever want to wake up to this?” Momoko repeated the assassin’s words. Part of her wished she would stop thinking about them, but for one reason or another—the golden-eyed assassin was always on her mind. And thoughts of them were far more pleasant than the alternatives.

*whUMP* *shatter*

The sound of beakers breaking came from the back of the lab. Momoko hurried over to find her mentor slumped over his desk.

“Fujii-sama! You’re supposed to be resting!”

The older doctor started struggling for breath as he braced himself against his desk. Pink, foamy mucus came out from his mouth upon a series of coughs. There was nothing else it could be: this was heart failure, and it was fatal.

“Please! You need to lie down!”

“No,” Fujii let out between ragged coughs. He motioned to grab the paper at his desk, but his hand was too numb to hold it. Momoko grabbed it for him and held it close enough for them both to read. She gasped at what she saw. “This is...my will.”

“I don’t—I don’t care about that! You’re in pain, Fujii-sama! Let me get you some opium.”

Momoko motioned to run off, but a gentle squeeze on her shoulder stopped her. Doctor Fujii shook his head and smiled. “Allow me to remain cognizant…in my final moments.”

The tears were already on their way out and streaming down Momoko’s face as she was helpless to do anything but watch her beloved mentor die. She held his hand tightly as he fell back into his chair. It made sense, in a way: a man such as him would never die in bed. It was far more fitting for Matusyo Fujii to spend his final moments here.

“Where is...Momoko?” he asked, his voice raspy and weak. Momoko realized that he was missing his glasses—they were atop his head, as usual—so she slid them back down over his eyes. “Oh, there you are. So diligent...curious, too. My best student...why are you crying?”

Momoko shook away her tears and assured him that she wasn’t. After a series of coughs and chokes and painful breaths, Doctor Fujii inspected the paper once more. “I must apologize. For what little I have to pass—*cough*—on. My savings from the war...please spend it on yourself.”

“I don’t care about the money! I only care about you, Fujii-sama. Your work has saved countless lives. Your research, your knowledge...you have given so much already!”

Momoko squeezed her mentor tighter when he began to convulse. He was struggling to draw breath as foam grew up his windpipe. He peered up into Momoko’s eyes with that meager, wide-eyed look she knew all too well. The look of a dying man.

“What I’ve given...my greatest gift to Hyuga...is you, Momoko.”

■■■■

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance—each and every stage of grief had its turn as Momoko fell into a pit of despair. It was a place that she didn’t have the luxury of staying in for long; within an hour, she had to face reality and with it, a single truth:

“There is much work to be done.”

Though it was against Matusyo Fujii’s last wishes, Momoko was determined to spend what savings her mentor had on a large and proper funeral befitting a man of his accomplishments. A celebration of his life with his relatives, friends and colleagues—he deserved no less.

This goal brought with it a burning determination that lit a path guiding Momoko away from otherwise dark places. She quickly gathered the necessary names and addresses from his records. She would also invite many of their patients, too, who so depended on the selfless doctor for their care. 

Matsuyo Fujii was a Bhuddist, and though he wasn’t particularly religious, Momoko was determined to do everything properly and so she made arrangements with Asakusa Shrine—the largest of its type in Jijinto for the ceremony. Reserving it and making the proper donations to the presiding priests had taken all of the doctor’s savings.

It was a price Momoko was willing to pay. The food and accommodations were enough for two hundred people, which was half as many as those she had invited for the funeral. Her hands had gone raw and her fingers blackened with ink stains from all the letters she had sent, across Jijinto but to Yamato and Tonogasha as well.

To those in the city who were illiterate, she visited in person to request their attendance.

After the reservations and invitations were finished, she proceeded to prepare and practice her speech to highlight Fujii’s medical achievements: the dissection and study of organs in the human body, the application of turpentine over cauterization for amputations, and the effect of cleanliness during surgeries to avoid infections. Of course, those were only three areas of the many dozens he had contributed to significantly. Limiting herself would be difficult, but Momoko would try her best.

“I can do this,” she reassured herself as she looked at the woman staring back at her inside a pool of water backstage at Asakusa Shrine. The woman wore an all-black kimono, and while the deep shadows beneath her eyes were hidden by makeup, she looked exhausted all the same. Momoko’s reflection showed her just how frantic and draining the past six days had been.

Even still, Momoko forced them both to smile. To do her beloved mentor justice—a man known for his charming and kind bedside manner—there was no other way she could be. She steeled her resolve as she marched out from behind the curtains and into the open-air hall of Asakusa Shrine, where hundreds awaited to hear her speak.

Or so she thought. The venue was empty.

Momoko couldn’t believe her eyes. She called for a monk and asked for the time—it was noon. The guests should’ve already arrived and been seated. Countless questions assaulted her at once: “Is something holding them up? Did I give them the wrong date, or a different address? What’s going on here?!”

The truth was like an ever-growing shadow of dread that grew as Momoko gazed upon the many rows of empty seats. Everything had been prepared. She had done everything right: the invitations, the arrangements, the catering—everything was as it was supposed to be.

“...so why isn’t anyone here?!” she screamed and it echoed. A motion from the side of her vision caught her attention: a man, a young one, squirming in his chair on one of the back rows. Momoko marched towards him with footsteps that echoed in their wake. The young man was practically petrified by the time she got to him.

“Who are you?” she asked, though not as a question.

“Er, my name is, Kiyoshi. I’m a priest-in-training for a shrine up North. I wanted to observe the ceremony to gain more experience...I was not given a formal invitation, however, so if you would like me to leave I—”

“Stay.”

Momoko’s face had lost all color beneath her white makeup. She began to tremble and her teeth clattered as she clenched them tightly together. The only guest who had bothered to come...of the hundreds she had invited...was just here for some apprenticeship?!

“My apologies for being so late!” said a voice from behind one of Asakusa’s many red columns. It belonged to a middle-aged man, a samurai with greying temples and a generous stomach. For both a gambler and a swordsman, he was exceptional: for he made not a single sign of surprise after seeing the empty shrine hall. Instead, he focused on the hostess.

“You must be Momoko-san! You look tired...please, take a seat with me and Kiyo-kun.”

If it were anyone else, and this any other time, she’d had politely refused his offer. But the samurai’s kind voice was all that kept the anger and despair at bay. Her legs gave out from beneath her as the three sat together in silence.

For the sake of her sanity, it wasn’t quiet for long.

“Kiyo-kun, please accompany the head priest in his chant. Do so loudly, for all those unfortunate spirits who could not attend.”

“Y-yes, Father!” the priest-in-training replied, jumping to his feet. Once he was gone, the samurai introduced himself and pulled out a tea set from his pack.

“My name is Ichiro Takeda. I intercepted your invitation while in Tonogasha for business. Matsuo Fujii-sama...I can safely say that I would not be here today were it not for him. You have my sincerest condolences.”

Momoko struggled to say ‘thank you’ but opted to only nod instead, as opening her mouth only risked releasing sobs. She was well and truly defeated, and held her head low in shame. She wanted to close her eyes and keep them closed for the rest of her life. That was until the steam from a hot cup of tea forced them open.

“I know it’s a bit unorthodox, to drink tea during a funeral, but I find it easier to speak one’s mind between a fresh brew. Please, try some.”

The doctor couldn’t refuse his offer. Not when it was given so kindly and warmly, as if she were a child given a sweet from her grandfather. She took a sip and—for the first time in ages—put on a genuine smile. “It’s sweet…”

“A little honey goes a long way to brightening one’s spirits. And you certainly seem in need of that, my dear. I can tell by your face alone how much Fujii-sama meant to you. I can also tell that this isn’t the reception you were expecting,” Ichiro said, gesturing to the rows of empty seats.

“So many said they would come...I don’t understand—he’s saved hundreds of lives over the years! He was always so selfless, putting others ahead of himself. Why wouldn’t they come?”

“Such men are rare in Hyuga, though that is not by accident,” Ichiro said before taking a sip of tea. “My father often told me that the path of the perfect swordsman is one that can only be walked alone. I often wondered what he meant by that. But as I grew older, I realized perfection separates a man from others, as do virtues. In the presence of one so virtuous, men are faced with their own shortcomings. It is why so few monks have friends outside their number.”

Momoko took a sip of tea and then another until she realized she had finished the cup. Ichiro was quick to offer a refill. He was a wise man, beyond even his years, she decided. “I think I understand, Ichiro-san. But even still…” Momoko shook her head, trying to shake the anger and resentment building inside her. When she couldn’t, she decided to change the subject entirely. “You said you wouldn’t be here were it not for Fujii-sama?”

“Indeed! It was back in the Golden Era of Samurai, during one of the many battles against the central clans. My father, Lord Takeda, was a swordmaster without equal. He slayed countless warriors amidst a warlike trance, embracing a beastial state for days on end. Though he single handedly routed entire battalions of samurai, he fell into a deep sleep afterwards. One his retainers feared he would never wake from.”

“A coma?” Momoko asked.

“Indeed. No monk, priest nor shugenja could do anything for him. Even his own clan members began to give up hope as the days went on and his condition deteriorated further. Only Doctor Fujii-sama was able to bring him out of it. My clan...my family owe him a debt I fear we can never repay.”

Doctor Fujii rarely spoke of the Golden Era, at least to Momoko, so every story about him amid that time period was new to her. She and Ichiro continued to talk and reminisce as the ceremony went on, until the body was ready to be burned and cremated. At this time, the gifts and donations would normally be given, but considering that no one had come…

“Excuse me, Momoko-san,” said one of the monks of Asakusa Shrine, “this figurine was left at the offering table. I did not see who placed it there. My apologies.”

Momoko had expected piles of gifts, if not envelopes filled with coins, then at least something she could resell to try and pay off the clinic’s lingering debts. This crude, wooden sculpture was hardly that. She was about to toss it into the pyre out of frustration until Ichiro stopped her.

“Whoever made this item is quite clever,” he remarked. “I am certain you know what the written character for ‘doctor’ is, but allow me to explain.”

Ichiro dabbed his finger with soot from around the fire and wrote across the floor.

医

“To the illiterate eye,” he explained, “the symbol for ‘doctor’ appears to be a man inside a box. In contrast, this sculpture depicts a man sitting above an open box, to show that he has escaped. No...that he has transcended to a place above.”

“I...I see,” Momoko gasped, holding the figurine close to her chest. It was a crude momento by an anonymous sculptor, but it made her feel better all the same. She kept it close as they watched Doctor Fujii’s body burn, until he was nothing but cinders and smoke.

It was time for the ceremony to end. But before Ichiro left, a thought came to Momoko that she couldn’t help but voice. “Ichiro-san, if I may ask…”

“Of course you may!” Ichiro said with a warm grin and friendly chuckle. “You needn’t hesitate around me, Momoko-san.”

“The trance, the one you said your father was in during the Golden Era...you described it as a beastial state. Do you recall hearing anything about golden eyes?”

Ichiro’s own eyes flashed as if struck by lightning. His kind demeanor dropped like heavy armor with its clasps undone. This was only for a second, however, after which he recomposed himself back into a jolly, tea-drinking samurai.

“Tell me, dear,” Ichiro ordered, “all that it is you know about golden eyes.”

Momoko was hardly a swordsman, so she didn’t notice the change in Ichiro’s feet nor the hand that now rested upon his sword hilt. Whatever this matter meant to him—he was deathly serious. Still, Momoko explained every detail she could recall about the assassin that had come into her life just one week before.

The assassin she couldn’t keep out of her mind, much less her heart.

Ichiro asked her to repeat herself twice and then a third time before Kiyoshi, the young priest-in-training, interrupted them. The samurai seemed reluctant to go, but proceeded to bow and apologize before giving his farewell.

He was far more curt and less kind than before, Momoko noted, as if something she said had turned his mood foul. Still, Ichiro Takeda had been the only invited guest to show up and pay his respects to Doctor Fujii. For that she was grateful—his presence had been enough to keep her from breaking down altogether.

And also, he made her believe that this funeral hadn’t all been for nothing.

“I’ll need to find a good spot for you back home,” she said to the figurine of the man outside the box. “I hope you’ll keep me company...I can’t run the clinic alone, you know?”

Momoko’s spirits were high, for the first time in a long while, as she made the trek back to her personal corner in the Eastside Slums. Throughout all her ordeals and suffering, the doctor managed to believe that there was still hope to be had. She walked away from her mentor’s ashes with both dreams and a renewed faith in a better, brighter future.

But this was Hyuga. She should’ve known better.

■■■■

Momoko thought she had turned the wrong corner when she came upon the clinic—that was how different and disorderly it looked. Though ‘disorderly’ didn’t do the broken windows and bashed-in door any justice.

Fish-Eye Hospital had been ransacked, picked and looted during the funeral. The realization didn’t hit Momoko all at once but step-by-step as she walked through the reception hall—which no longer had chairs for patients—to the operating room now absent of medical tools and devices, to the stockroom that was emptied of everything save for week-old sardines.

Supplies, medication, cleaning materials...all of it was gone. Momoko fell to her knees and brought her hands to her face, smudging her makeup as she let out a single gasp. No tears would come, nor would there be a lengthy cry. When the shock receded, it was anger—not sadness—that consumed her.

There was a single scalpel that had yet to be taken. Momoko secured it in her black kimono sleeve and stood straight and tall, and marched like a woman possessed across Tetsuzan Bridge over to the yakuza mansion. They had stolen everything from her: her mentor, her future, her happiness.

“I will KILL the ones responsible for this. Forgive me, Fujii-sama, but I hope you aren’t looking down upon your student now.”

She knew attacking the yakuza would get her killed, and that she was helplessly alone—but that didn’t matter any longer. Revenge was all she could think of, and it pushed her through the front door of the mansion, past the guards and into the throne room where above a large set of stairs the lone figure of a woman sat atop a large silk pillow. She looked rather plain beneath her gaudy kimono and jewels.

“My, my, who isss thisss?” she asked with amusement. It was all Momoko could hear before half a dozen yakuza jumped her, grabbing her and slamming her head against the carpeted floor. The doctor squirmed as best she could but was powerless beneath their weight. A feeling she was all too accustomed to as of late.

“Our apologies, Shiroyama-sama! She shouldn’t have gotten’ in this far!” said one of the tattooed men restraining her. “The guards at the front will be severely punished for their failure!”

“You needn’t tell me how poor security isss around here, asss my late husband, my dear Yama-kun, can attest! But thisss one doesn’t bear the look of any assassin I’ve seen,” Shiroyama said, fanning herself as she approached down the stairs. “Yes...more akin to a doe, I believe. A frightened one at that. Release her.”

The yakuza were reluctant yet followed the order all the same. Momoko knew she should’ve bowed and thanked the hostess for her mercy, begging and apologizing for her interruption, but she couldn’t find it in her to grovel. She was too damn tired of being pathetic.

“Well, what is it?” Shiroyama asked, her patience waning. “Or does the cat have your tongue, asss the ssssaying goes?”

Momoko still had her tongue though it had gone numb at the sight of Shiroyama’s. The doctor could’ve sworn she saw it lengthen and twist in ways no human tongue could. It was more frightening than fascinating, as every instinct within her warned of danger, yet she ignored it all and spoke what she had come here to say.

As she went over her dire situation, including the assassination, the funeral, and the looting of Fish-Eye Hospital, Shiroyama kept her face hidden behind her fan. She did so out of politeness, for across her face was a wide, beaming smile. The yakuza heiress took a wicked sort of delight in the suffering of others, especially those who were younger and more beautiful than she was.

After the story was told and the grievances aired, Shiroyama was ready to toss Momoko out into the streets as personal amusement waned. That was until another civilian was brought in for her attention, this one with the misfortune of being manhandled by Nishi—one of her ex-husband’s favorites.

“Shiroyama...san,” Nishi added with reluctance, “caught this old geezer sellin’ poppies by the docks.”

“And why does thisss concern me?” Shiroyama asked.

“Because it’s the highest quality opium we’ve ever seen. Whoever he got this shit from could put us out of business! Damn bastard won’t tell us who he got it from, either!”

Nishi proceeded to kick the old man down to the floor and then once more for good measure. When he dared to lift his head, he came face-to-face with a woman possessed by a demon.

“Akamine...you…”

It wasn’t Shiroyama, but Momoko who stood over him, looking down upon him with eyes twitching with rage. The streaks of makeup across her ghostly face paired with her black kimono made her look like death personified; the sight made the ex-sailor scream in terror.

“Please! It wasn’t just me! The others grabbed more than I did! Just took what I deserved, is all!”

“What you deserve...what you deserve…” Momoko repeated his words like a mantra, rage swelling within her. Doctor Fujii, a man who had dedicated his life to the well-being of his patients, was betrayed during his own funeral by those who owed him their lives!

It was beyond unforgivable.

“I’ll give you what you deserve! DIE, DIE, DIE!”

The scalpel was a tool sharper than any katana, used for precision cuts and delicate incisions during surgery. Momoko found that it worked just as well outside the operating table as she plunged it over and over into Akamine’s stomach. She plunged it in and out a dozen times and then a dozen more, coating herself with blood spray until her grip was too loose to hold it any longer.

“This is how you must have felt, Assassin! It feels good...it feels so good!”

A foreign ecstacy came over the doctor as she was finally pulled away from the bloody carcass. Her audience—though well-exposed to violence—stood uneasily at the sight of what was once a man. Only Shiroyama seemed completely unaffected. If anything, she was pleasantly surprised.

“Fufufufu, it appears thisss doe has teeth! Just so you understand, dearest doctor, we have every right to turn you over to the authorities. Thisss carpet will not be cheap to replace...oh, and that cretin’s life too, I suppose,” Shiroyama said as an afterthought. “Your career as a doctor is all but over.”

“I don’t care. I’m done taking care of filth. I’m done living a thankless life!”

Momoko had made peace with death, or at least, she was so exhausted that she didn’t care to live anymore. She expected to be executed, or imprisoned, or to suffer any and every sort of punishment for what she had done. What she got instead...was a job offer.

“I recognize a fellow woman of talent and ambition,” Shiroyama said, placing a hand atop Momoko’s blood-soaked shoulder. Though she was standing behind the doctor, her neck stretched out and over until the two were face-to-face. “That rabble out there will never appreciate you. But I will. Make opium for me, and you will receive wealth and treasures beyond your wildest dreamsss.”

“My...dreams?” Momoko asked as a daze came over her. She could feel her mind numbing and her senses failing. The thoughts running within her head slowed and dwindled, becoming fewer and farther in between until just one remained.

“I’m sorry, Fujii-sama. Your gift to Hyuga...has become a curse.”