text: The rhythm of hours at the Ito mansion was relatively unchanging. Midori adapted to it quickly. Cleaning and other duties kept her busy. The other women sniped at her, not the least because she was, for the time at least, the master's favorite. Less enviable was the fact that Haruko too had taken a fancy to her. She was a demanding mistress, making use of Midori's skills or her presence or her body as her whims and moods dictated. Midori bore the beatings and the rough sex cheerfully, knowing they were temporary and secure in the hidden knowledge that she was not what she seemed.
  
  If sex with Haruko was straightforward and demanding, sex with Ito was theatrical and bordered on the ludicrous. He dressed her in fantastic costumes, threatened her with a variety of weapons, most of which were genuine antiques, few of which were serviceable because of their extreme elaboration. He seemed also obviously worried about something, but she never managed to identify the reason. With him there was none of that lazily pleasurable time after sex when questions could be asked and confidences exchanged. He rose from her supine body, sometimes painted a garish red to simulate hideous wounds, with a shamefaced look which barred any intimacies. He would hurry away to his duties, his writing, his endless conferences with Hori his secretary or Uemura, the young man who Midori knew to be Haruko Ito's lover. But he never looked back at her. She tried to snoop, but she was not very good at it, and never came up with any information worth reporting to Matsudaira's agent, who came by in one disguise or another once a day.
  
  Resting on her knees, her exposed ass rising to greet the sun, Midori considered all these things. This afternoon Ito had dressed her in a massive-looking gilt armor patterned after some hauberk of five hundred years before. She feared its weight and was pleased it seemed lighter than it suggested. He armed himself with a great curved sword and declaimed a mumbled set of lines in classical Chinese she could not understand. He thrust deeply into her wet cunt, his balls banging against her clitoris. She wriggled imperceptibly to encourage him, mindful as always of her Elder Sister's exhortations to be in control at all times. Ito's movements approached their climax. She wondered what he saw with his mind's eye. She watched his shadow before her. He rose, massive and threatening, and his curved sword rose higher until it poised before him, ready to slash down just as his flesh sword spewed the contents of his balls into her.
  
  Midori heard a muffled bang. Ito gave a cry and fell over her. She waited passively for his next move, but instead he rolled off her. The body moved with the leadedness that characterized a man after he had spewed his seed. She looked over her shoulder and sniffed. There was a peculiar burning smell. Ito's eyes gazed back at hers, uncaring. She sprang erect, careless of her appearance. Flames rose from his dead body. The giant sword he held was still clutched in his fist, hidden beneath the body from which pungent smoke was emerging. Midori covered her mouth with her hand to suppress a scream. Death was no stranger to her, but this reinvoked the supernatural fears of her earlier training.
  
  She rose convulsively and backed away from the cadaver. Ito seemed to stare at her accusingly. She turned and ran towards the villa, screaming hysterically. Ito's guards were slow to arrive. All the residents of the opulent mansion were used to the sound, and even the sight, of hysterically screaming, naked young women. They knew better than to interrupt their master's pleasures. Midori herself was practically incoherent. She burst finally into Haruko's rooms and collapsed panting onto the tatami. Haruko, still involved in arranging her hairdo, looked at her severely.
  
  "What are you bawling about, girl? Go back to the master right away!"
  
  "B ... but ... but he ... he is dead!" the brown-haired girl wailed. She was trembling and the sound of Haruko's laughter rang strangely in her ears.
  
  "Nonsense," Ito's wife said callously, "He is only playing a game with you. Go on. Go back or he'll have me administer a beating. I'll like that," her eyes gleamed. "Maybe I'll do it anyway. Go on, now."
  
  "But mistress," Midori cried, "he is dead. I heard the shot. I saw the hole in his face ..."
  
  "What?" Haruko was suddenly on her feet. "What shot?"
  
  "He was killed!" Midori practically screamed.
  
  Haruko looked at Midori for a second then rose and dragged the hysterical girl, still dressed in her gilt armor, to the garden.
  
  Haruko looked at Ito's supine body from the porch. "Stay here!" she ordered Midori, then ran to the side of her husband. "He is dead?" she cried after a moment's examination. "Call the guards!"
  
  Heedless of her strange habiliments, Midori rushed to obey.
  
  Ito's retainers stood indecisively at the edges of the garden, peering this way and that for the killers.
  
  "Don't come close!" Haruko screamed at them. "Let the magistrate's men do that. Someone run and call them."