Chapter 4: Forty Yen

"Then I'll make it a good year," Fumika said.

He turned his head and looked at her properly.

"That's all? No weeping? No running back down the mountain?"

"I've seen the road. It's very dark."

He laughed, and it set him coughing again, and he waved her off with one hand.

"Go to bed, Fumika."

It sounded like an order from a man too tired to give one.

She went.

In the morning a maid with little white horns led her to breakfast in a room full of sunlight.

Ibuki was already there, cross-legged at a low table, his hair tied back, no blood on him anywhere.

Suzuna sat at the end of the table with three bean cakes and a newspaper.

"Your wages," Ibuki said.

He put a white envelope on the table and pushed it across.

"It's the first day," Fumika said. "I haven't done anything."

"The term says forty yen a month into your own hand. It doesn't say at the end of the month."

He nodded at the envelope. "Count it. I've been told I can't add."

"He can't," said Suzuna, not looking up.

Fumika opened it.

Four ten-yen notes, new and stiff.

She had never held so much money in her life.

She counted them twice, slowly, because her fingers didn't feel like hers.

"It's right," she said.

"Good." He picked up his chopsticks. "I have one term of my own. You can refuse it."

She put the envelope inside her kimono, against her ribs.

"Go on."

"Have supper with me. Every night. That's all."

"Why?"

"Because I've eaten alone in this house since I was nine," he said.

"And because you said the kitchen had better company, and I'd like to beat the kitchen."

Suzuna made a noise into her tea.

"Every night," Fumika said. "Unless you're rude."

"I'm never rude. Ask anyone."

"He's often rude," Suzuna said.

"Then I want work," Fumika said. "I won't take forty yen to sit in a room."

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