Kyuden Shika

"So how are your other endeavors here going? <snip> Raizo gave a species of shrug. "I don't know that they are. Going, I mean. I've seen zero evidence of actual interest from any other quarter, and I'm not exactly adept at putting my best foot forward. I had a brief chat with Kakita Reina-san, but ...

"Enter!"

Inside, Aimi is sitting on her futon, her hair unbound and her clothing in the kind of dishevelled state that says she was halfway through getting undressed when her visitor arrived. She looks up... blinks, then smiles.

"Raizo? Unlike you to look so hesitant," she says with a grin.

Aimi freezes, her face snapping back into careful neutrality. Stupid girl, you get a little rattled and you just talk and talk and... "I wasn't always a ronin, Kitsu-san," she says flatly, "Places like this remind me of... what I had, before. Some of it good, some of it bad. I feel at times if I cou...

"Hiding from their duty? Hardly," Aimi snorts, shaking her head, "They are breaking under the weight of the world, Kitsu-san, but to criticise the world is forbidden. No one, not one single person, is capable of living up to the standards demanded of the ideal samurai. They burn themselves to ash se...

"You'll be a more righteous man than most if you do," Aimi snorts, shaking her head, "The number of samurai who go to such places to escape from their wives and husbands boggles the mind at times."

"Though my conundrum must sound like a bourgeois complaint to you, since that's the kind of issues you likely have to deal with far more frequently than myself. We're always the privileged one of someone else too." "Ah, being a shugenja helps there," Aimi laughs, beginning to really relax at last, ...

"You seem familiar enough with this place, Kitsu-san," Aimi comments after a moment, once they've been left with some privacy in the room and the attendant has gone off to prepare their platter, "Stresses of impending marriage getting to you?"

Almost as though summoned by the conversation, Aimi appears in the common room, once more clad in her normal hard-wearing travel clothes - after all, there is a contest in the dojo today, and she would hate to mess up any of her finer things (she's still getting used to having finer things). Spottin...

"I mostly roamed the north and east of the Empire - the lands of the Lion, Crane and Phoenix," Aimi explains with a nostalgic smile, "The Dragon lands were always too barren to really support a wandering samurai, and though I visited the lands of the Unicorn once or twice, I never had cause to stay ...

"I'm familiar with the concept of a Geisha House, Kitsu-san," Aimi says dryly, "And since I doubt they would have let me through the door alone, and I am thus here as your companion, why do you not choose?" Notably, while most regard Geisha Houses as places to rest and enjoy oneself, Aimi's behaviou...