Kyuden Shika

Did I break her?

...

No. Must be a trick.

"And you, Moshi-san? What happiness do you find when left to your own devices?"

"Quite a bit, Shiba-san." Shizuka says, continuing with her rather disconcertingly frank method of speech. So different from how she was, well, days or even just moments ago.

"I smoke tabako, I enjoy the company of geisha, I compose new songs." She numbers each activity off as if they were the most expected, most basic things one would expect a priestess of the Moshi to get up in doing.

At the conclusion of which, she looked over to her Shiba interlocutor. "Amongst... other things." She huskily says, voice heavy with innuendo.

Ah.

"Sounds like you keep busy, then."

"There's always someone with a need to be satisfied, Shiba-san."

Shizuka looked at some distant point across the room wistfully.

"And so someone keeps busy making sure they get their satisfaction. Do you understand?"

"I might. But if I do, it makes me a bit... angry."

"Oh? Angry? Why?"

Shizuka traced a fingertip lightly about the rim of her tea cup.

"If all of your... leisure activities are about satisfying the needs of others, then you have fewer hobbies than I do. And that... speaks ill of whoever put you in that position."

Sip.

"I at least have the luxury of not having to pretend I enjoy the things I do to satisfy another if I happen to feel that way."

"We are born into the roles in life that we play, Shiba-san. That is the order of all things on earth, as in the Heavens. The alternative would be...unthinkable."

Shizuka conceded such things with all the conviction one would expect of a priestess. After all, her raison d'etre was predicated on such things.

"To be angry at something like that is...well, I'm honored you would feel that way, but it's like getting mad at a river for running downhill."

"Having a role to play is one thing. Being told you need to look like you enjoy it is another."

"Again, this is true. But acknowledging it as true and getting angry about it changes little, if anything, neh?"

Shizuka finished her tea and exhaled slowly.

"The river still runs down the mountain. The waves crash upon the shore. Lady Sun still rises to the east. Daijobu des, Shiba-san. I'm fine."