Birdcage

Welcome, please come inside.

Original AO3 Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/3445862/chapters/7555763

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There is probably a word for the electric shock that goes past her veins when his eyes lock with hers, but it's not exactly a word fit for the place they're in. It would be too trite. Too simple. Too - honest.

And of all the things that Yuu Kashima could be, should be right now, 'honest' is most definitely not one of them. Not when she's sitting here, wearing one of her male cousin's finest garments from his youth, her chest bound to an inch of her life (as if there was something she needed to hide around there, seriously), looking every bit like the nobleman's son she's supposed to be.

So whatever that weird thing may be, whatever that odd feeling creeping up her veins and bubbling in her stomach may mean, she decides it best to pay it no heed. After all, this is Yoshiwara - nothing more but an extravagant play with everyone shuffled into neat, orderly places, and she knows exactly what part she chose to take as her own.

Just as the princess - no, wait, this is West Yoshiwara, the man - in front of her knows his own, as well. He walks to her in slow, measured steps, meant to be every bit the instrument of seduction that a courtesan should be, just like Sasagiku, and Miyako, and Akane, and Masako (and Ryouko, and Kasane, and Tsukiko, and...okay, so Yuu might just have gotten acquainted with every other pretty lady from here to East Yoshiwara, is that such a big deal)

But there's something different about this, something different about him - other than the bubbling feeling that still emerges whenever she'd match his liquid golden eyes look for look, there's a way about how he walks that reminds her more of her father's own soldiers, for some reason. It's something trampled down and carefully covered over with nigh-flawless grace, but it's still there, it's still there, and Yuu can't stop noticing it.

"Your face doesn't seem to be one I've seen before, Young Master," he says, offering her a graceful bow as he approaches, the young man holding his parasol left forgotten a few steps back. "Is this your first time here?"

Well, at least that's a question she can answer, easily enough. "Yes, it is."

Actually she was supposed to be here sooner - if the gender division had been helpful for anything at all, it would've been that it narrowed down the scope of where Yuu should find where she was looking for - but the girls of East Yoshiwara were just so lovely, and she couldn't just not have tea with each and every one of them, could she?

See here, one of the annoying things about being born female was that it meant that, every time Yuu would make some lovely female friend or acquaintance swoon with naught but the lovely words she seems to have been born to say, one of their family's elderly servants would give her a good talking-to for being 'too outspoken' and 'not lady-like enough'.

At least that provided her the perfect cover-up - for her to go to the city, to 'learn to be more ladylike, by conversing with the noblewomen of her own stature'. If her parents found out she'd actually been spending the bulk of this time cavorting with pretty ladies in an honest to goodness pleasure district - even if they knew she was dressed as a man - especially if they knew she was dressed as a man! - she'd never hear the end of it!

Oh, well, I'm not really here to find a lover anyway, Yuu remembers, considering her situation right now, considering the man in front of her, who's most probably wondering why she'd spent the past few minutes just looking at him, before he'd walked up to her in the first place. I've got business I've got to deal with here. And, for some odd reason, she can't help but think - hey, maybe this guy could help me.