Aimi wrote: ↑Wed Aug 25, 2021 2:40 pm
"...love, huh."
It's... actually kind of strange. She'd known, on some level, what it was she was feeling, what it was that was drawing Raizo to her. She was hardly a novice in the field, far from it, she'd loved and lost before, but somehow if she'd just pretended that it was something else, if she'd veiled it in words like 'affection' and phrases such as 'developing feelings' it would be easier to handle, easier to deny. And yet it wasn't. She'd been a fool, but there was still time.
He loved her. She loved him. And that meant... that meant she had to tell him, didn't it? Before he committed, before any chance to walk this back left them, before he got hurt because of her secrets. She had to.
"I... I have to tell you something," Aimi says in a hoarse voice, enjoying the feeling of her love's hands on her shoulders, of the kind of closeness that only this privacy allows. "I... I wasn't born a samurai."
She swallows, trembles, does not look back at him. She just keeps staring at the far wall.
"When the kami started speaking to me, I was terrified. It didn't make sense. The kami didn't speak to... to people like me, they spoke to lords and ladies, to samurai and monks," she says softly, "So I thought... I must be one, mustn't I? Someone important. Someone more than I thought I was. So I ran, and I changed my name, and I started calling myself a ronin."
She laughs, briefly, at her own foolishness. "I thought it would be that easy. For most people, it was. But if I'm to leave this miai a married woman, if I'm to become part of a clan, I... I can't start that life with a lie. I can't."
"I can't do that to you."