The teahouse did not weep when Aika left.
There were no farewell ceremonies, no lingering embraces from the other girls she had trained beside. Only a brief nod from the matron, who stood in the shadows of the inner hall, sleeves folded across her chest like the arms of a shrine statue. Stern, still, and watching.
"Walk straight," the matron had said. "And don't look back."
Aika had obeyed. But even without glancing over her shoulder, she felt the red lanterns dim behind her. Their light, once warm, now flickered like an ember at the edge of memory.
She carried only what belonged to her.
A single wooden box tucked beneath her arm. Filled with her hair comb, a worn letter never sent, a camellia hairpin she would never wear again, and a bundle of dried plum petals tied in silk.
The rest had been Renjiro's doing. Quiet, methodical, just as he had always been. He had come with the necessary papers, made the payment through an old family retainer, and signed her name with a care that made her heart ache.
"From now on," he said, "you are not owned by anyone. Not even me."
Those words stayed with her longer than she expected.
The house they moved into was small.
A village home, tucked on the far side of a misted hill outside Kyoto. There was a view of the distant rice terraces, a winding path lined with stones, and a plum tree.
Young, but blooming in the garden.
Renjiro had built the gate himself.
There was no staff. No servants. No silk-covered floors or whispering attendants. Only fresh tatami mats, simple wood beams, and a hearth that smelled faintly of cedar and miso.
To Aika, it was more opulent than the finest brothel chamber.
The silence here was kind.
It was no longer the silence of empty beds or masked departures. It was the hush of a kettle warming before tea. The pause before Renjiro cleared his throat to read aloud from a book. The soft pat of her own bare feet on floors that needed no pretense.
She learned to sleep without rouge on her cheeks.
She learned to eat before others.
She learned how her own name sounded when called not with lust, but with love.
And when the first spring came, she planted wildflowers along the garden edge, marigold, chrysanthemum, and a few stubborn lotus seeds she'd smuggled from the teahouse yard.
One morning, as she swept the porch, she turned to Renjiro and asked softly,
"Do you ever miss the city?"
He looked up from his writing.
"Sometimes," he said. "But not enough to trade the sound of your voice at dawn."
Aika laughed.
It felt new.
It felt like hers.