Chapter Text
Naoya Zenin wasn't a man to hold a grudge. Most people simply didn't make the same mistake twice.
No one talked about things like that at the Zenin estate, and perhaps that was exactly why those words came back to you that morning, when the side door of the main house slid open and two men carried a woman out into the courtyard as though she were a piece of furniture that had been damaged while being moved and now needed to be taken somewhere it would no longer offend the family's eyes.
Autumn had worked its way deeper into the estate overnight. Cold rain still clung to the dark roof tiles, gathering along their edges before falling in uneven drops onto the stone below, while red maple leaves stuck to the paths, heavy and dark with water, some of them trampled so thoroughly that their color looked more like clotted blood than the brilliant shades of autumn that probably made people outside these walls stop and admire the season. No one did that here. At the Zenin estate, you didn't stop unless someone explicitly told you to.
You did anyway, because the sight of the woman in front of you chilled your blood more effectively than any autumn morning could have. The basket of freshly washed bedding suddenly pressed uncomfortably against your ribs, and you shifted its weight to your other hip without taking your eyes off her. The woman between the two men wasn't really walking. Her feet touched the ground, yes, but her legs barely supported her anymore, and every other step one of her knees buckled, forcing the men to haul her higher by the arms without slowing down. One of her sandals was missing. Her bare foot dragged across the wet stone, pale with cold, and at one point caught on a soaked maple leaf that remained trapped beneath her heel for several steps before slipping free and lying folded in the middle of the path.
At first, you didn't recognize her, and for one brief, shameful moment, you were almost relieved. Then the wind lifted the strands of hair hanging across her face.
Miyoko.
You had known her from before. You had arrived at the Zenin estate on the same morning, both of you a little too tense, both determined not to make a mistake. You had sat beside each other in the administrative room, hands placed neatly on your thighs while an older housekeeper explained in a flat voice which doors were never to be opened without permission, which titles belonged to which members of the family, and exactly how deep you were expected to bow depending on which Zenin happened to be standing in front of you. Miyoko had nodded attentively whenever the woman looked at you and pulled a face every single time she turned away.
"I'll be out of here by tomorrow at the latest," she'd whispered afterwards, and back then her smile had still been easy enough to make you smile with her.
Three days later, they separated you. You were assigned to the general household staff, while Miyoko was made the personal maid of Naoya Zenin. Among the other women, it had almost sounded like good fortune at first. Serving a member of the main family personally meant better pay, less of the heavy work that otherwise came with running the household, and a proximity to the Zenins that some people considered an advantage. For a while, you had envied her.
At first, you blamed the changes on the new position. Miyoko stopped coming to the kitchen as often, and when you happened to cross paths, she no longer lingered as long. Eventually she developed a habit of looking over your shoulder toward the hallway while you spoke, sometimes stopping in the middle of a sentence because she'd heard footsteps somewhere nearby. Her laughter hadn't disappeared overnight. It became quieter first, then rarer, until one day you realized you couldn't remember the last time you'd heard it at all.
There had been nothing sudden about the way she disappeared. Naoya Zenin hadn't broken her in a single day. He had done it slowly. Maybe that was the most disgusting part of it. You had watched the joy leave her piece by piece, gradually enough that every time something changed, you'd managed to find an explanation for it. She was tired. She hadn't slept well. The work was harder than she'd expected. The dark mark around her wrist really could have come from a fall, even though four separate bruises sat against her skin in a pattern that looked suspiciously like the fingers of a hand.
Eventually, Miyoko began pulling her sleeves over her wrists even on warm days. She flinched when footsteps approached too quickly behind her, and whenever someone said his name in the hallway, her entire body tensed with an instinct that reminded you of an animal that had been hurt often enough for the sound of its cage opening to become a warning all on its own.
You had found her in the storeroom once at night, even though she had no reason to be there. She stood between sacks of rice and low wooden shelves, both hands wrapped around one of her forearms, staring at a fixed point on the wall while tears moved silently down her cheeks. When you'd said her name, she startled so violently that her back struck the shelf behind her. You'd asked what happened. She looked at you, and even now you could still remember how much fear had been in her eyes.
"Please don't ask me."
So you hadn't. Back then, you told yourself you were helping her by respecting what she wanted. Now you weren't sure whether it had simply been cowardice.
Because the woman being carried out of the main house that cold autumn morning barely resembled the Miyoko you remembered. One side of her face was swollen, her lower lip split and crusted dark with dried blood, while bruising spread from beneath her jaw all the way toward her ear, deep violet around the edges and almost black at the center. Her right hand was bandaged so heavily that none of her fingers were visible, and every time the men adjusted their grip, she gave a small twitch, as though even her body no longer had the strength to properly react to the pain.
But it wasn't the injuries that turned your stomach. You had seen blood since coming to work in this house—on training clothes, on bandages, across the knuckles of the men who lived here and treated violence like a language any respectable Zenin should be able to speak. Miyoko's eyes were worse. They were open, but completely empty, as though she were still somewhere inside her body without truly being part of it anymore. Her gaze passed over the courtyard, over the rain-darkened wood of the veranda, over the servants who had suddenly discovered something extraordinarily interesting on the floor, on their trays, or in the folds of their sleeves, and eventually, it passed over you too.
For the fraction of a second that your eyes met, you waited for something. Anything that told you she'd recognized you. Shame, perhaps. Fear. Relief. Even anger would have been better. Nothing came. She looked at you as though the history between you had been placed behind some thick wall she had retreated so far beyond that nothing from the outside could reach her anymore.
Miyoko used to be afraid of Naoya Zenin. You had watched that fear grow a little more visible every day until it seemed to occupy every part of her body. Now even the fear was gone, and a slow wave of nausea rose from your stomach toward your throat. Whatever Naoya Zenin had done to her, he hadn't stopped when she became afraid. He had stopped only when there was nothing left in her that could still fight back.
Someone moved behind you, fabric rustling softly before the housekeeper stepped up beside you. She didn't look at Miyoko, even though from where you stood, it was still easy to see her bare foot dragging across the stones as the two men carried her toward the rear wing of the estate.
"Miyoko will be unable to continue her duties for the time being due to health reasons."
The housekeeper said it so calmly that the sheer matter-of-factness of it nearly made you sick. Due to health reasons. As though she'd caught a cold. As though a fever had confined her to bed rather than the hands of a man whose family name ensured that even now, no one asked why her lip was split or why her legs could no longer hold her up.
You watched her until the men carried her behind a wall, and even after she disappeared, you had the uncomfortable feeling that those empty eyes had stayed somewhere inside your head.
"You'll take over her duties."
It took several seconds before you realized the housekeeper was speaking to you. Cold went through you, deeper than the damp autumn air already settled in your bones, and the first thing that appeared in your mind wasn't Naoya Zenin. It was your daughter.
Sumire, still half asleep most mornings when she sat at the table and complained whenever you tried to do her hair. Her old shoes, the soles slowly coming loose despite her insistence that they were still perfectly fine. The woman from the neighborhood who looked after her on your longer workdays and the money you placed into that woman's hand every week. Winter was coming. You would need more firewood again. Sumire needed new clothes because she seemed to grow out of the old ones faster than you could replace them, and there were always those small, unexpected expenses that never announced themselves and still somehow appeared exactly when you thought you might finally manage to put something aside that month.
"The personal position pays more," the housekeeper added, with nothing in her voice to suggest whether she understood how cruel those words sounded in that moment.
Your fingers tightened around the edge of the laundry basket until the neatly folded sheets shifted inside it, and you looked once more toward the corner of the courtyard where Miyoko had disappeared. Then you saw the thinning soles of your daughter's shoes again and knew, before you even opened your mouth, that people like you didn't have the same luxuries as people like Naoya Zenin.
He could afford to break someone. You couldn't even afford to run from him.
When you finally asked when you were expected to start, your own voice sounded unfamiliar to you. The housekeeper watched you for a moment before her gaze moved toward the dark entrance of the main house. Beyond it was Naoya Zenin. Of the woman who had once been your friend, only a few wet footprints remained in the courtyard.
"Immediately."
Naoya Zenin wasn't a man to hold a grudge.
Most people simply didn't make the same mistake twice.
Naoya made very sure of that.
⟡⟡⟡
You had never given this much thought to how long tea was supposed to steep. Until that afternoon, making it had been one of those small tasks you eventually learned to perform without consciously thinking about every individual step. Heat the water, measure the leaves, wait, pour, take the tray wherever it was wanted. None of it seemed particularly complicated, and yet there you stood in the kitchen of the Zenin estate, watching the hot water slowly darken while going over the housekeeper's instructions in your head once again, as though she'd explained something far more difficult to you than one man's preferences regarding afternoon tea.
After that morning, it was difficult to find any of it ridiculous. Miyoko's place had been filled faster than the wet traces of her bare foot could dry on the stones, and over the past few hours, while you'd been shown which cupboards Naoya-sama used, where his clothes were kept, and which rooms needed to be prepared at which times of day, no one had mentioned her name even once.
When tea was eventually requested, the housekeeper inspected your tray, moved the small plate of sweets slightly to the left, and explained that Naoya took his tea stronger than the other members of the family but wouldn't tolerate the bitterness that came from leaving the leaves in the water too long. It was to be served hot enough to be fresh, but not so hot that Naoya would have to wait before drinking it, and you had tried to commit every detail to memory.
"And if he doesn't like it?"
The housekeeper looked at you briefly before returning her attention to the tray. "Then you make another one."
Not long after, you carried the tray through the western part of the main house, where the familiar sounds of the kitchen and the other servants faded with every corridor until almost all that remained was the occasional creak of old wood beneath your steps and the water dripping from the edges of the roof outside. The porcelain stood securely on the lacquered tray, but you held it tighter than usual anyway, careful not to let the saucer so much as tap against the pot.
You had walked these corridors often enough, but that afternoon every meter seemed longer because for the first time, you weren't merely passing Naoya's rooms. That morning, a woman had been carried out of this part of the house. Now you were bringing tea to the man responsible.
You knelt outside his door, placed the tray carefully in front of you, and announced yourself in the calm tone you'd been taught to use for members of the main family. At first, there was no answer. You waited while nothing moved behind the thin wood, and with every passing second it became harder to decide whether you should announce yourself again or whether even that might already be considered irritating. Just as you'd decided to wait a little longer, his voice came from inside.
"Come in."
You slid the door open and found nothing resembling the scene that had been growing inside your imagination since that morning. The room was bright, orderly, almost disappointingly ordinary. The outer doors leading to the veranda stood partially open, letting the dull light of the overcast afternoon spill across the tatami, while a loose corner of the paper on the low table shifted in the draft. Nothing had been knocked over. There was no stain on the floor. Nothing at all to explain why, only a few hours earlier, Miyoko had barely been able to keep her own legs underneath her.
Naoya Zenin sat behind the table reading. Of course you'd seen him before. Anyone who worked for the Zenins long enough eventually crossed paths with every member of the main family, though usually from far enough away that there was still time to step aside and lower your gaze. His unusually pale hair had always been the first thing you noticed, almost blond against the darker roots beneath it, along with the effortless way space seemed to open around him without him ever having to ask for it.
Up close, he was harder to reconcile with the image that had existed in your head since morning. His hair had been brushed back neatly, though a few pale strands had come loose around his temples, and small piercings caught against his ears. The lines of his face were sharp without being rough, and even the hand resting loosely against the paper looked well kept, with long fingers and clean nails that gave no indication of what those hands were presumably capable of. Perhaps some part of you had expected a man like Naoya Zenin to look like one—something coarse in his face, scars, anything that warned you before you got close enough to learn for yourself. Instead, the man sitting in front of you looked every bit as carefully maintained and immaculate as the rest of the house.
Naoya finished the line he was reading before acknowledging your presence at all.
"Your tea, Naoya-sama."
His gaze left the paper and moved over the tray first before slowly lifting to your face. He didn't say anything, but his eyes lingered long enough that you suddenly became conscious of your posture, your tied-back hair, even the placement of your hands. Then he looked you over. It wasn't openly suggestive, nor was it the sort of interest anyone could have mistaken for a compliment. His gaze moved over the plain uniform of the household staff and back to your face, calm and entirely unconcerned with the fact that you could obviously tell what he was doing.
It felt less like a man looking at a woman and more like someone briefly inspecting a new object that had been placed in his household.
"The new one."
You assumed an answer was expected. "Yes, Naoya-sama."
His eyes remained on you for another moment before he turned back toward the table. "Put it down, Maid."
Apparently, that was all Naoya needed to know about you. He didn't ask your name, nor did he ask how long you'd worked for his family, even though the two of you had probably passed each other in these halls more than once over the past few months. Your clothes told him what you were there for, and that seemed to be enough.
You knelt beside the table and placed the cup in front of him, carefully enough that the porcelain barely made a sound against the saucer. Only when Naoya reached for it did you realize how tightly your fingers were pressed together. He lifted the cup and took a sip, and you raised your eyes just enough to watch his reaction, but his face revealed almost nothing. His tongue moved once slowly against the inside of his cheek before he set the cup back down and returned his attention to the paper in front of him.
"Again."
Your eyes moved involuntarily to the almost full cup. "Forgive me, Naoya-sama. Is it too—"
His gaze lifted to yours. There was no obvious anger in it, no flash of temper, but the question died before you could finish it. Naoya took his time answering, watching you as though he first had to decide whether what you'd just asked genuinely required an explanation.
"If it were right, I wouldn't be asking for another one, would I?"
His voice remained calm enough that the sheer self-evidence of the statement bothered you more than the words themselves. As far as Naoya was concerned, the problem wasn't that you couldn't possibly know his preferences yet. The problem was that you'd made him explain them at all.
You lowered your head. "Of course, Naoya-sama."
Before you'd even finished returning the cup to the tray, his attention was already back on his document. You withdrew without asking anything else and had nearly reached the door when his voice stopped you again.
"Maid."
You turned. Naoya didn't even look up.
"Steep it longer."
Then he turned the page.
When you returned a few minutes later with the second cup of tea, you'd left the leaves in the water longer, exactly as Naoya had instructed, and still caught yourself watching the darkening liquid several times because you'd suddenly become uncertain about the precise point at which strong became bitter and how much room for error a man like him allowed someone who had known his preferences for all of a few minutes. In the end, you'd poured the tea, tasted a small sip yourself, and decided that there was no way for you to know any better unless Naoya actually told you what he considered right. The thought was less comforting than it should have been.
This time, permission to enter came immediately after you announced yourself, and when you stepped into the room, he was still sitting behind the same low table, though another document had replaced the first and he had leaned back slightly. One shoulder rested loosely against the frame behind him while the pale afternoon light from the veranda fell across his clothes, and for a moment it seemed almost absurd how little had changed for him while you'd stood in the kitchen counting every second.
Naoya didn't look up until you knelt beside the table. You placed the fresh cup in exactly the same spot as before and moved the old one back onto the tray, your eyes catching briefly on the nearly untouched tea. In a few minutes, someone would pour it away without giving a thought to the water that had been heated, the leaves measured, or the maid who had walked the same route through the estate twice to bring it here.
Naoya picked up the fresh cup and drank. This time, he didn't stop after the first sip. He took another, held the porcelain between his fingers afterwards, and glanced briefly at the surface of the tea while you remained seated on your heels, trying to read something from his expression. You couldn't. The longer he remained silent, the less certain you became whether silence meant approval or simply that he hadn't decided to bother with you again yet.
Finally, he set the cup down.
"Too bitter."
You lowered your head. "Forgive me, Naoya-sama."
The question of how long you should have left it to steep remained exactly where it belonged. Unspoken.
When you reached for the cup, Naoya placed two fingers against the edge of the saucer and slid it away from you, just far enough that your hand closed around empty air. Only then did he look up. His eyes rested calmly on your face, and although there was no recognizable anger in them, you got the distinct impression that he was less interested in the mistake than in how you reacted to it.
"The last one at least figured out how to make tea eventually."
Your hand retreated, and the image of Miyoko returned before you could stop it: her split lip, the thick bandage around her hand, her bare foot against the wet stones, those eyes that, by the end, hadn't even seemed to hold enough fear to recognize you.
Naoya spoke about her as though she had been nothing more than an inconvenient member of staff who had eventually stopped performing her duties properly. Perhaps something showed on your face, because his eyes narrowed slightly.
"What?"
"Nothing, Naoya-sama."
A quiet scoff left him before he raised the cup again and took another sip despite his verdict.
"Did that bitch think she could just disappear without explaining the job to you first?"
The insult came so casually that it lingered longer than open anger might have. He wasn't saying it to provoke you, and Miyoko hadn't done anything in that moment to anger him. To Naoya, the word seemed to be nothing more than an adequate description of a woman who had been carried out of his rooms only a few hours earlier.
You kept your eyes on the tray. "No, Naoya-sama."
Naoya's mouth shifted faintly as he set the cup down and almost returned to his document.
"She was useless by the end anyway."
Your fingers tightened around the edge of the tray before you made yourself loosen them again. That was the only reaction you allowed yourself, and perhaps the conversation would have ended there if the door behind you hadn't opened.
It slid aside only far enough for a young male servant to lean into the room, his head already bowed deeply and both hands held neatly in front of him.
"Forgive the interruption, Naoya-sama. Naobito-sama asked me to inform you that you're expected in the western meeting room."
Naoya's hand, which had been reaching for his cup again, stopped above the table. It was barely more than the absence of a movement, but the atmosphere in the room changed so distinctly that even the servant noticed. His bow deepened as Naoya slowly turned his head toward him.
"Did I call you in?"
The young man froze. "No, Naoya-sama. I was only told to—"
"That wasn't a difficult question."
Naoya didn't have to raise his voice to cut him off. He spoke at exactly the same quiet volume as before, and somehow that calm made the servant's hurried apology sound even thinner.
"No, Naoya-sama."
Naoya watched him long enough for the servant to lower his head further. Then came the soft sound of porcelain as Naoya placed his cup back onto the saucer.
He stood, and the servant instinctively stepped back. It was no more than half a step, probably a movement he'd made without thinking, but Naoya noticed immediately. His gaze dropped briefly to the man's feet before travelling back up, one corner of his mouth lifting almost imperceptibly.
"Are you scared?"
The man opened his mouth, but Naoya didn't give him the chance to answer. His hand moved so quickly that at first you registered only the dull sound of the back of it striking the servant's face. The man's head snapped sideways and hit the wooden doorframe, his body losing its balance as one hand came down hard against the floor.
You flinched. Before you'd fully understood what happened, the servant forced himself back onto his knees, his gaze fixed firmly on the wood as blood ran from his nose over his upper lip.
"Forgive me, Naoya-sama."
Naoya stood over him and looked down without anything in his posture suggesting that he had just hit someone. His shoulders remained loose, his breathing hadn't changed, and the hand he'd used hung relaxed at his side as though it had done nothing more than swat away an irritating fly.
"My father can wait."
The servant nodded quickly. "Yes, Naoya-sama."
Naoya took a step toward him, and this time the servant reacted before anything happened. His shoulders drew inward and his head ducked lower, as though he could make the next blow smaller simply by making himself take up less space. Naoya stopped. For a moment, his gaze remained on that movement, and something in his expression told you the man's fear hadn't escaped him. Perhaps he even enjoyed how little effort it took to cause it.
A dark drop of blood fell from the servant's chin onto the wood. Naoya looked down.
"You're bleeding on my floor."
"Forgive me, Naoya-sama."
"And the next time you see a closed door, maybe try to understand why it's closed before you open it."
The servant bowed so deeply that his forehead nearly touched the floor before retreating backwards out of the room and closing the door carefully behind him. Naoya didn't watch him leave. He returned to the table, sat in the same place as before, and reached for his tea as though the interruption had cost him nothing more than a few seconds of his afternoon.
You hadn't moved. Only when you looked down at the tray in front of you did you notice the thin line of tea that had spilled over the edge of the old cup and collected in the saucer. Your hand must have moved when the blow landed.
Slowly, you placed both hands in your lap while Naoya continued drinking. Until then, you had always associated violence with anger: raised voices, quick movements, that brief loss of control after which people sometimes looked almost surprised by what they'd done. There had been no such moment with Naoya. He hadn't hit the servant because he'd lost control.
He'd hit him because he could, and because there was no one in this house who would stop him.
Naoya took another sip before his gaze fell to the small stain of tea on the saucer and then slowly moved toward your hands. He didn't comment on it. His eyes lingered there long enough for you to know that he'd noticed the trembling, even if it had lasted only a moment.
Then he placed the cup back on the table.
"Again."
This time, you took it without asking why.
By the third time you poured hot water over the tea leaves that afternoon, the kitchen had grown noticeably emptier, and you were grateful for it. At that moment, nothing seemed less appealing than another person watching you work and perhaps noticing how much attention you were giving a task you would have completed almost absentmindedly that morning.
The sound of the blow was still stuck in your head, that short, dull impact of skin against skin immediately followed by the servant's head striking the wooden doorframe. Perhaps it was precisely because Naoya hadn't shouted or visibly lost his temper that the scene refused to leave you alone. There was no point you could identify where his anger had boiled over, because no such moment had existed. He had looked at the man, stood up, and hit him with the same casual certainty with which he'd lifted his teacup only minutes before.
You watched the color of the tea and removed the leaves before the liquid became as dark as it had on the second attempt. A small taste from the spoon told you that the bitterness had softened while the flavor remained stronger than the first cup, and after two contradictory attempts, there was little more you could reasonably do.
When you set the porcelain onto the tray, the edge of the cup touched the saucer with a quiet clink. You paused and adjusted it again. An older woman chopping vegetables at the other end of the kitchen glanced up at the sound and let her eyes pass over you for a moment. She didn't ask why you were making tea for the third time, and neither did she ask why a young servant had walked through the back corridor only minutes earlier with blood running from his nose.
The Zenin estate had its own way of passing information around. Hardly anyone said anything, and somehow everyone knew. A bandage the next morning, a position suddenly left empty, a servant who began avoiding a particular hallway—sometimes the way someone lowered their eyes when a certain name was spoken was enough.
You picked up the tray and started back. By the third journey, the path to Naoya's rooms no longer seemed any longer than usual, but your attention had changed. You noticed the places where the floorboards gave slightly beneath your feet, the cold slipping in through the open passages between the wings of the house, the weight of the tray against your fingers, rather than constantly wondering what was waiting behind the next door.
Just before you reached Naoya's room, your eyes still went to the frame. The blood was there. The servant obviously hadn't had an opportunity to deal with it, and several small drops remained on the dark wood, one where his head had struck, others lower down along the frame and on the floor. The red had darkened and was beginning to dry around the edges.
You announced yourself without looking at it any longer, and Naoya allowed you inside. He was sitting behind his table again and had already replaced the document in front of him, as though his afternoon had continued entirely according to plan despite the interruption. One hand rested loosely against the paper while the other turned a page, and nothing about him resembled the man who had stood only minutes earlier and struck a servant against the same doorframe where that servant's blood was now drying.
You knelt in front of the table and set down the third cup. This time, you said nothing, and neither did Naoya. His gaze moved briefly to the tea, then to you, before his fingers closed around the cup. You kept your hands still in your lap and looked at the table in front of you, even as you registered every small movement he made while taking the first sip and holding the liquid in his mouth for a moment.
He didn't put the cup down. Instead, he drank again.
Relief loosened some of the tension in your back before you'd given yourself permission to feel it, and the fact that two sips of tea were enough to cause it made you uncomfortable. An hour ago, Naoya's opinion of a cup of tea would have meant no more to you than that of any other member of his family. Now you caught yourself waiting for some sign of his approval after seeing what could happen when something else earned his displeasure.
Finally, he placed the cup back down.
"That's it."
It wasn't praise or approval. It simply meant the tea now met his expectations and you had finally completed a task the way he'd expected you to from the beginning. You were relieved anyway.
Naoya's attention had already returned to the paper when he reached for the cup again a few moments later, this time drinking without visibly judging the taste. You waited briefly before moving to collect the tray and withdraw.
"Maid."
He wasn't looking at you. His gaze went past you toward the door, and you followed it automatically, understanding what he meant before he spoke.
"That."
From this distance, the dark drops on the frame looked almost black.
"Clean it up."
"Yes, Naoya-sama."
You took the tray outside, found a small bowl of water and a clean cloth in one of the adjoining rooms, and returned to find Naoya exactly where you'd left him. He didn't look up when you knelt beside the door, and after a while, the only sounds behind you were the quiet rustle of paper and the occasional touch of porcelain against the saucer.
The first mark came away easily, but the blood on the doorframe had dried enough that you needed to scrub the damp cloth over it several times before it began to lift. Every time you rinsed the fabric, the clear water in the bowl changed a little more, first pale pink and eventually red enough that there was no need to think about what exactly you were washing out of the wood.
Behind you, Naoya drank his tea. You didn't know whether he was even watching you, and eventually, you suspected he wasn't. Somehow, that made it worse. To him, there was apparently nothing here worth paying attention to. Someone had interrupted him, so he'd struck him. The man had left blood behind, so Naoya had it cleaned. The connection between those two things probably mattered no more to him than the connection between a spilled cup and the cloth used to wipe the floor afterwards.
You pressed harder against the wood. The red slowly came free from the fine grooves and soaked into the cloth, and for an instant, the doorframe disappeared beneath the image of Miyoko's split lip.
How many times had she cleaned up something like this?
You dipped the cloth back into the water and wrung it out until your knuckles stood pale beneath your skin. By the time the last visible stain had disappeared, only a slightly darker patch remained, one that would probably fade once the wood had fully dried. You passed the cloth over it one final time and were reaching for the bowl when you heard fabric shift behind you.
Naoya had stood up. His steps moved across the tatami toward you, slow enough for you to register every one of them, and your back tensed before you consciously decided to be afraid. The hand holding the damp cloth remained against your thigh while you kept your eyes on the cleaned doorframe and waited to see whether he intended to inspect your work.
He stopped beside you. You could see the lower edge of his clothes in the corner of your vision and became more aware of his proximity than you had been at the table, not because he touched you, but because there was suddenly very little space left between you. The warmth of his body met the cool air from the hallway.
At first, all you noticed was a slight movement beside you, a barely perceptible tilt of his head before his gaze travelled from your hands to your shoulder and then to your tied-back hair. It didn't last long enough to look openly curious, but longer than it needed to if he was only checking the doorframe.
Your fingers tightened slightly around the cloth.
"Naoya-sama?"
His eyes met yours. For a brief moment, you thought you saw something almost like irritation there, as though some small detail had pulled him out of a thought he hadn't expected to have. Perhaps you imagined it. By the next second, the same bored composure you had already begun to associate with him had returned.
He said nothing, then walked past you.
You let the breath leave your lungs slowly, without knowing when you'd started holding it, and reached for the bowl, the water inside now distinctly red. Naoya had already reached the open door when he stopped.
"Maid."
You looked up. He didn't turn fully toward you, only glanced back over his shoulder, first at the cleaned wood and then at you, still kneeling beside the small bowl with the dirty cloth in your hand.
"Learn faster."
His voice remained calm, the same voice he'd used that afternoon to ask for tea, call Miyoko useless, and send a bleeding servant out of his room as though none of it had been worth raising his voice over. Naoya slid the door farther open.
"And don't get used to my patience."