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River Princess	By : BloodValkyrie Category: 1 through F > Beetlejuice Views: 4287 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Beetlejuice and I don't own Bram Stoker's Dracula. I am making no profit.

Chapter List
- 51
- 52
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Chapter 52
Past Life
Author's Note: Apologies for any historical inaccuracies.
It was a Saturday evening when Lydia arrived at the glamorous looking hotel. Akane had invited her over for some tea. Lydia had asked Vlad about it. He told her he had never seen Akane act cruelly towards others, and even Brunhilde confirmed that Akane wasn't really a threat.
Well, hoping for some really nice, Lydia decided to take a chance and visit Akane in her hotel room.
It was a large suite, dimly lit. Akane greeted her with that soft smile of hers, her long hair tied back in a low bun. Lydia wanted to ask why the lights weren't turned up, but she didn't want to be rude.
Akane led her to a comfortable armchair and then sat down in before her in a matching chair. There was a table between them, bearing a small and Japanese looking tea set. The cups didn't have handles. There was a bowl of American looking cookies, though. Lydia's bodyguards literally stood by.
Lydia said thank you as Akane poured some tea for her, but she couldn't think of anything else to say when Akane asked her, “Has Vlad told you about his past?”
“Uhm ...” Lydia blinked, holding her cup, not even trying to sip at it.
The woman's smile faded to the point where Akane had a purely emotionless face, calm, her eyes slightly downward.
“Are you okay, Akane?”
“Maybe, you think his past is of no importance,” Akane said very quietly. She brought her cup to her lips and swallowed a minute amount of tea, and then she set her cup down. “He does support you. All of your expenses are his.”
Lydia narrowed her eyes. “What are you getting at? Are you calling me a whore?”
The Japanese woman took another sip of tea. “I have forgotten some details of my life before the Queen of Vampires found me. I forgot when I was born, where I was born, certain dates … Do your guards need to be here?”
“Yes. Yes they do.” Lydia gulped down some tea. It was kind of bitter, but not too bad.
“Tell them to go into the bedroom.” Akane gestured towards a door. “You may call them if you feel threatened.”
“What's your problem?”
“I don't want to tell this story to men.”
“Maybe I don't want to hear your story.” Lydia examined one of the cookies. There were chocolate chips in the dough. “What do you want?”
“There is a whore in this room,” Akane told her. That gentle and elegant voice of hers was changing into something deeper. “You are not the whore, Di-chan.”
Lydia dropped the cookie into the bowl. “Okay, I'll bite.” She very politely asked her bodyguards if they would please go into the bedroom. They complied without a word.
And Akane began her story.
***
I don't remember many things about my past, I have said this before. I am quite old. I remember I had a mother who didn't seem to care about me. She barely acknowledged my existence. Any misbehavior I displayed would be treated the same as if I had been a perfectly polite child. My father was the most important authority. He was the one who would beat me, and he was the one who would reward me.
My name was Suzume. It means, “sparrow.” I don't remember my parents' names. I do remember that my father died, and my mother sold me to a brothel. This was common. There were men who made careers out of finding little girls for brothels. Brothels wanted girls with beautiful faces, and they didn't care where the girls came from. The lowest peasant child, from the lowest and most hated family, could be purchased.
You might consider this to be a form of slavery. I suppose the issue depends on your point of view. I will say that during my childhood years that were spent at the brothel, I was not disciplined any differently than how my father would treat me. If I did something bad, I was punished, if I did something good, I was rewarded. I did try to run away once. I was around … oh … I don't know … I really don't. I was not a little child. I must have been … I must have been thirteen. I was still an apprentice, but I was very close to becoming an official pleasure girl. The brothel owner's youngest son had told me he wanted to run away with me. So, I ran away with him. We were caught. I was beaten very hard, one of the worst beatings I can remember. I wept; I called the people around me horrible insults, and they beat me more because of it. They were careful about it, scarring me would only hurt the business. I don't know what happened to the man I tried to run away with. I suspect he was disowned. I never heard from him again, and he was never mentioned again.
Before this incident, I was a child, and I thought I had entered a magical fairy land. Everyone had bright and beautiful clothing, and I was given more food than I knew I could eat. I was put under the care of an old woman who had once been a pleasure girl. It was common to have older women, who once were prostitutes, to look after the little girls.
I wasn't sent there to be coddled for no reason. I was a little kamuro, destined to become a prostitute, and I was given the name Yuki. I was assigned to be an attendant for one of the most popular prostitutes in the house. Her name was Hanamurasaki. The only other prostitute in the house who could match her in beauty and overall earnings was named Shigeoka. Hanamurasaki already had an attendant when I arrived. I don't remember her name. I did not become her friend.
Hanamurasaki and Shigeoka were of the highest class, fine examples of oiran courtesans. Like all the pleasure girls in the area, they wore their obis with the knots in the front. Unlike lower classes of pleasure girls, they wore far more layers in their robes, and far more combs and sticks in their coiffures.
Hanamurasaki was a kind mistress. Later on, I learned that she had several abortions in her life, and she had a weakness in her heart for babies and children. I did not see very much of Shigeoka during this time, but what I did see was not pleasant. She was a hateful creature, and tried to ruin Hanamurasaki's career often, even tried to steal her favorite clients. One day, after I had graduated to an apprentice, something very fortunate happened to Hanamurasaki. A wealthy nobleman had purchased her from the brothel to be his wife. This was not an extremely common occurrence, but sometimes it happened to the occasional lucky oiran. Hanamurasaki left her celebrity status in the red light district and happily walked into a secure yet ordinary status as a wife. Along with her other apprentice, I was given to Shigeoka.
Shigeoka truly was cruel. She would tell lies, beat us, frame us for stealing money … eventually the brothel owner figured it out. She took away the other girl and I and gave us to another pleasure girl, who was fairly high class, but not at the level of Shigeoka. Then the owner took away one of Shigeoka's apprentices and gave her to my new mistress, as punishment. I heard that Shigeoka was ordered to pay approximately half our purchase prices to the owner, the prices were the what the owner had paid to take us from our families.
When I officially was a pleasure girl, I decided that, since I could not find any other life to live, I would live this life the best I could. I had been taught how to sing, dance, write poetry, arrange flowers, several interesting things. There was no reason why I wouldn't do well.
Eventually I was the highest class, just like my former mistress Hanamurasaki. I was named Sugatano. My scalp endured the more elaborate hairstyles, supported by wire and wax, impaled by so many combs and sticks and other ornaments. The first time I walked in a parade, with my tall shoes, I was worried I that I would trip and ruin my reputation.
But … I enjoyed it.
I loved painting my teeth black, like the aristocrats of the Heian period. I loved pushing ornaments into my hair. I loved reading and writing obligatory love letters from several clients. I loved knowing that my station was so high I could refuse some clients. I loved looking at my face, painted perfectly white, under candlelight. I loved smoking with beautiful pipes. I loved knowing I could order my little kamuro girls around. Most of all, I loved the envy of all the women I saw.
I loved knowing that, despite living a life I did not choose, I lived the best.
And, during the peak of my career, she came.
My favorite client … my handsome Masaru … he brought me to her.
I walked on parade, men holding umbrellas over my head, kamuro carrying boxes of sex toys … people on the streets admiring me …
I met Masaru in a hotel room, and I found him, with her, but she wasn't a her.
It was a foreign man. I had never seen a foreign man before. He had short red hair and light brown skin, and he was wearing foreign clothes, Western clothes. I was shocked about the very concept of a foreigner in the section where the highest class of pleasure girl could be found.
He told me, in perfect Japanese, that I don't belong to the brothel anymore, that I belonged to him. I did not have the time to protest. His fangs were in my throat so quickly that I couldn't even make a thought.
Dear Brunhilde … man, woman, the Queen and the King, I'm hers.
***
“Wow … so … wait … Brunhilde's a man?”
Akane nodded her head. “And a woman. When she is a man, she is King. When she is a woman, she is Queen.”
“So ...” Lydia's mind was blank.
“Di-chan, Vlad didn't tell you about his life, before he went to Brunhilde?” She had on that little smile again, and her voice went back to the softer tone.
“He told me some things,” Lydia told her.
“Do you know what his occupation was? Details about his childhood? What sort of father he was? What sort of husband he was? How he met Brunhilde?”
“Does it even matter?”
Akane bit into a cookie and looked at her. There was a smile hiding behind those lovely eyes.
“I don't know what your deal is,” Lydia said.
“I'm certain that Vlad loves you dearly, but can you really trust a man who will not tell you the most important details of his life? I worry, Di-chan?”
That was when Lydia put her tea down and decided to leave. “I don't want to see you anymore, Crazy Bitch!” She knocked on the door to the bedroom to summon her guards.
On the way home, Akane's voice repeated in her head.
“A man who will not tell you the most important details of his life.”
***
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River Princess