A Wish to Preserve Appearances

You might be wondering "well, why would Shinpei willingly go out to a brothel if he had a gaggle of pretty women waiting for him at home?" If you're not wondering, that's fine too but I encourage you to be a little more inquisitive.
The truth was, Shinpei did have plenty of amiable, nubile, excitable ladies to entertain him at home. There was nothing at all wrong with them: two were placed in Divisions and four were experts in something or other. All of them were at least pretty if not beautiful (otherwise they wouldn't have made it in his house in the first place). And yet, here he was. Why?
Another woman might have supposed that he was tired of women who offered nothing more than their bodies, but no man would guess that. Are women and men so different? If you asked Shinpei, he'd say "yes." If you asked me, I'd say "yes, absolutely." But the things they Wish for are much the same.

The thing that brought Shinpei out to houses of ill-repute like this one was, in the end, simply for a change of flavor. There were plenty of things to like about a prostitute: they knew what they were doing, they knew what men liked, and they could often play the game exquisitely well. For someone like Shinpei--someone for whom the dance, from start to finish, was so much fun--that was really the best part of a prostitute. The higher the skill and the breeding of a consort, the more the game itself became an art form. More than once Shinpei had arrived at a brothel ready to strip some pretty thing's clothes off, only to realize upon leaving hours later--very satisfied--he hadn't done anything of the sort.
Some women were so good they gave you the runaround without you even noticing it.

So, here he was.
Shinpei walked up to the front of the otherwise nondescript estate, his eyes playing over the small bedclothes and banners that hung on the balconies: this was the only emblem of the house, and it was all the place needed. Men knew its location by reputation and their women either pretended not to know or openly sent their husbands there to offset their own burdens. Only a few soft sighs drifted on the wind here and there: perhaps the time of day wasn't quite right, or perhaps the house had shrunk in the time since Shinpei had been away. He shrugged and slid open the front door, but was surprised to see no one behind the counter. A small sign read "busy--come back later," but Shinpei ditched his shoes and swept past it. What was a closed business between friends?

"Takumi," he muttered, trying to remember which of the rooms was the owner's. They'd shared tea there a time or two, after enjoying a girl or two each. Shinpei didn't have many male friends--any male friends, really--but if there were better circumstances to bring two men together, he didn't know them.
Problem was, he just couldn't remember. He'd visited most of these rooms at one point or another but he hadn't bothered to remember them. He frowned and closed his eyes.
A faint scent of perfume grew and grew and grew as he walked onwards. His memories began to return and he practically jogged the final few doors.

"Takumi," he yelled as he came to the final, largest room. "Hope you're not mad about that girl you stole--anyway, you can have her back. Put some clothes on!" Shinpei slammed open the sliding door. "Got any new girls for an... old..."
He stopped.

Takumi clutched at the Tatami mats beneath him, eyes wide as he caught sight of Shinpei. His mouth opened and closed but no words came out: a single drop of blood slowly traced down from the katana held to his neck. To the right and left of the open door sat or lay a dozen or so pretty women in various states of disarray. To a one, they looked horrified. Tear-streaked makeup coated their faces and more than one had smudged lipstick.
"Hazuki," he breathed, finally dragging his eyes to the woman threatening the brothel's owner.

Slowly he relaxed.
"Takumi, you son of a bitch. I didn't know you made enough money to afford this kind of thing from a girl like that."
He picked his way through the horrified mob of women, stepping carefully as he avoided squishing breasts or legs. He grinned at Hazuki and whistled. He really couldn't think of anyone better than Hazuki for a role like this.
"Sorry to interrupt. Can you ease up on the poor guy long enough for him to recommend someone cute? Then you can go back to your play."

He stood there, leaning easily, his arms folded. He had on his new powder-blue robes and yes--they were floral-patterend. He looked just as relaxed as you might expect from someone ready to have his worries soothed by some agreeable woman. His black hair was slightly tousled and his robes were even a little more open in the front than usual, showing off what muscle he did have. Most of it was on his arms anyway.
He was every bit the cocky playboy with that self-satisfied grin and those heated eyes roving up and down Hazuki's lithe form.
And every so often, he was one hundred percent inept at reading the mood.

"Although if you're bored of him, you and I could do something a little less hardcore."

Speak of the devil, and he shall appear.

The last time she had seen Shinpei Minamoto, he had been lying in the dust of Sōkyoku Hill after Hazuki had quite forcefully thrown him there as a result of his ill-advised decision to meddle in her affairs. What was it she had said to him?

‘I thought I told you once already, Minamoto,’ she said, her dull eyes fixated on him. ‘If you ever interrupted me again, I’d kill you. Lo and behold: there you stand, interrupting me.’

The man in her arm had suddenly gone very silent, perhaps realizing this was a chance to get out of this mess in one piece. Hazuki didn’t mind much; everything that had come out of his mouth had been utter nonsense anyway and she took the opportunity to straighten up, her sword coming off the man’s throat just long enough for him to take half a sigh of relief before Hazuki swung at the side of his head with the hilt. With a sound not unlike a truncheon hitting a slab of meat, the man crumpled into a heap on the floor immediately, eliciting a fair amount of panicked shrieks from the prostitutes.

As with most women in situations such as these, however, their hysterics were simply a cry for attention—silenced, as it so often was, by a single look from whoever was in charge that reminded them that they were not the center of the universe, no matter how hard they tried to convince people otherwise. With their clamoring put to rest, Hazuki turned back to Shinpei.

‘And so here we are: a brothel out in Rukongai, with witnesses nobody would lose any sleep over if they were to suddenly go missing and a shady culprit to take the blame.’

The implicit statement hung in the air between them for a few seconds before Hazuki shrugged lightly.

‘Lucky for you, you weren’t interrupting anything important this time. I’d ask you what you were doing here, but you’re you and this is a brothel, which would make it a pretty stupid question.’

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously as she remembered something Nagisa had said.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen your brother recently, have you?’


°372

"That's true," Shinpei mused. "I suppose you did say something like that, didn't you?" It was awfully hard for him to remember most things to that degree of certainty, and it had been several weeks. Shinpei was much better at remembering the impressions life gave him here and there--like how soft a certain woman's hair was, or whether her laugh made him smile, or if there was a little quirk about her that only he knew about. He didn't mean to be cruel when he said "Doesn't ring a bell:" it was just that people liked to drop women's names around him and he just didn't think that way.
Now, if someone walked up to him and said "hey, you slept with my wife--the one who smelled like lilacs," that would be a whole different story. Probably end the same way though.

This is all to say he didn't quite remember whether Hazuki had said that. Instead, he remembered very well how it had felt when she'd thrown him down. He could describe with utmost certainty how her face had looked. He'd never forget the hand she'd bunched up in his robes, fist trembling as she resisted doing far, far worse.

"Well, there are worse ways to die," he remarked carelessly. "Plenty of people don't perish at the hands of a woman at all. Can you imagine? They must be plagued by regrets. No wonder so many Pluses go Hollow." The playboy sighed and rested his head in one hand, watching as Hazuki knocked his acquaintance out and terrorized the prostitutes. They screamed and they shrieked, but none turned for the door: some instinctual part of them recognized that the Shinigami standing in the center of the room could very easily reach them with a single leap and that, as they say, would be that. Then she gave them a look that conveyed the full weight of her oppressive Reiatsu and even their shrieks were silenced. They sat frozen solid, all painted lips and tear-streaked, white-powdered faces, until Hazuki mentioned the bit about missing witnesses and they started to shiver.

Amidst it all, Shinpei simply stood as relaxed as ever. He understood well enough that he was hardly a match for the feisty Fourth Division Shinigami; after all, she'd taken him to pieces the last time they tussled and it was very likely she'd only got better (and angrier) since then. Several months meant a new technique, a new field of study, a new breakthrough and a few new battles for Hazuki. For Shinpei, it was hard to find anything about him that had changed.
He considered his life carelessly. He could only ever think of a single thing at once: he had a one-track mind.
True to Tsunemoto Yamamoto's style,

A real man doesn't think of victory or defeat. He plunges recklessly towards an irrational death.
By doing this, you will awaken from your dreams.

At what juncture do you suppose fearlessness and carelessness are separated? Maybe Mr. Yamamoto should have said something about that too.

So he simply nodded, devil-may-care grin on his face just like always. What woman could make him change? Maybe not even Hazuki could.
Maybe.
"It's a good thing you didn't ask," he told her, "because I was planning on saying something about how I was here to appraise the drapes. Which are, in my opinion, awful." The whole place had the look of a house of ill-repute, which wasn't so bad--it was familiar, in fact--but the least his acquaintance could have put some effort into decorating. Maybe a few flowers here and there, as long as they weren't changed out too quickly.
There was, after all, beauty in impermanence. Where better to see that than surrounded by the fleeting beauty of pretty girls forced to sell themselves?
"Or maybe I'd hit you with one of the porno intros that are quite popular on Earth: I've been dying to try them. I'm the plumber and I'm here to lay some pipe. Or fix the gas meter. Or I've got extra sausage for the pizza, but the sausage in this case is my penis."
No laughing came from the prostitutes huddled at his feet. Everyone's a critic.

All his jovial airs blew right away when he said his least favorite pair of words: your brother. He frowned at her and crossed his arms, suddenly much less interested in what she had to say. Suddenly he was thinking more along the lines of going skipping back home, throwing himself into bed and being doted upon. At least back there they knew better than to bring up his least favorite member of the Minamoto family.
"Not a chance. If he's gone missing, maybe you should put up some signs? I hear it's a good way to find lost dogs."