Even the perfect must stoop to love. Even the perfect must also be denied. Not always, but at some point, and most likely when it matters most of all.

Such is the case with the emperor.

In all the time that I have been in his harem, I have come to understand that for all his outward image of extreme self-love, Hotohori is not the supremely confident soul that his vanity implies. After I revealed myself as one of the Suzaku seishi, I saw more hidden in him. His heart is vulnerable, for all that he exudes an image of a capable, removed emperor; he shows it in his love for his people, his dedication to doing what is right for them, and his love for Miaka.

No one can lie to me and say that they haven't noticed it. From the beginning, it was agonizingly obvious, a slap in the face to one who had been watching and desiring Hotohori's attention from before the beginning. I could no longer watch only Hotohori. I had to keep a careful watch on Miaka, my rival and my priestess. Such a strange combination, those two roles of hers, so contradictory. At first, I could never differentiate between the personal matters and our duties. I was bound to her, yet I resented her with all my heart for taking away what I considered mine. Even now, I feel a pang to think that Hotohori has eyes only for her. When he looks at her, his eyes are smoldering with unspoken vows of love. I have no doubt that he has shared them with her at some point. I have even less doubt that she scorned him, however unknowingly, telling him of her feelings for Tamahome, her inability to love him the way he wants. The way he needs.

Why else would he be so melancholy, despondent and listless despite everyone's vitality, the gravity of our situation? How else could one explain it, that fallen look on his face when he sees her? His eyes still burn, but now, his heart bleeds rather than aching plaintively.

They all believe that I bear only lust, that I have no idea what I'm doing and am insensitive to others, caring only for my needs, but they couldn't be farther from the truth. I make it a point to know about Hotohori...the man who would be mine. Who could be mine, were he to glance my way, see me on the sidelines with my eyes fixed on him. He never has.

He will never know.

His mind is fixated, his heart dedicated to mourning the loss of a wife and lover he never had. I can see so many opportunities, open doors with which to come closer to him. Then, as I approach, thinking mistakenly that I might be useful to him, they slam shut, one by one. I'm trapped outside, and Hotohori couldn't care less. At the noise of those doors slamming, he doesn't dare look up, only continues shedding invisible tears.

When I say that I would do anything to serve my emperor, I mean it in the truest sense. I would willingly offer myself up to be used if I thought that it might be of help to him. So as I watch him today, seemingly like all other days, I have a plan. I must act now, or both of us will suffer endlessly, unknowing of the truth.

I am first and foremost a Suzaku seishi. Second, though, I am a lady of the court, and Hotohori has all rights to me, rights that even the priestess does not have. I would give my life for either of them, whichever needed me to lay it down. I give my love to both of them, but it's an entirely different kind of love that binds me to Miaka. Unlike with Hotohori, that love is peaceful, requited, a familial sense of belonging that I haven't felt for...most of my life, I realize. With Hotohori, my love is starved, frantically seeking an equilibrium, some kind of repayment for all the longing in my soul. It is a love that seems unquenchable; with time, it will only deepen and cause me to break with every second that I am away from him, denied.

This night, I will go to Hotohori, and I will ensure that he knows what he can have from me, should he need it as badly as I sense he does.

That is my plan.

Evening can't come quickly enough. As the hours of the afternoon drag by, casually painting the shadows at different spots with the different angles of the sun, I cannot stay still. My heart leaps to my throat every time someone speaks to me, in sudden terror that I may blurt out my secret idea to all of them. Biting back the words, I smile as if all is normal, all is well. I talk to them when they talk to me. I don't forget to tease Tasuki and Miaka, though the latter makes me uncomfortable. Being near her is too hard. I keep imagining what Hotohori must tell her when he can catch her alone, thinking of all those words he must have said to her in the past, his pleas for her to love him the way he has always loved her. I can't bear it.

I go to my room after eating as little of dinner as I can manage without arousing suspicion. The others are too jovial to care much that I've left them to it. I have more important things to do, anyway. Changing my clothes from the more masculine attire that I have recently taken up, I revert to the garb of a court lady, unbraiding my hair and restyling it myself. I would never risk letting anyone know what I am doing, not even any of the maids.

When it is time, as the sun has disappeared and darkness cools the palace, I leave my room on silent, prowling feet and creep like a thief to Hotohori's chambers. They are empty, forsaken in favor of being in her presence a few more minutes, milking as much pleasure as he can from smiles that are not meant for him. I close the door behind me, giving myself privacy, closing me off from the world for a few moments.

Unmoving, I remain in the same place, awaiting the arrival of my emperor, planning what I will say to him, what I will do to him to convince him that at least this once, he needs me to arouse something aside from curious disgust in him. My hands itch to rub together as a chill rushes through me, remembering that he may yet reject me, but I ignore it and clench them quickly into fists. My breath, too, is clenched, breaking from my lungs unevenly in my anxiety. I try to calm down, remind myself that Hotohori has little choice but to take what he can get, accept the comfort that I offer. It works for a while, as long as it takes until I hear footsteps outside the door.

In the lonely darkness of Hotohori's room, I ready myself to explain, prepare for a reaction of the worst sort. When the door opens slowly and a tall figure steps inside, silhouetted against the faint light from outside, I hold in my gasp. Hotohori has arrived at last, and he has yet to notice that I am here. While he closes the door, I take a step back, further into the darkness, relegating my heart to the cold of masking his face with more shadows.

He doesn't once look at me, directing himself to his bed without so much as a glance at his surroundings. His observational skills have been deteriorating throughout his unrequited infatuation with Miaka. No, not infatuation - love. He loves her. I'm positive that he's said as much to her. Yet I am also positive that she's spurned his affections with words and further gestures toward Tamahome.

I dare to move once Hotohori has gracefully sprawled out on his bed, one hand covering his eyes and the tears that I am sure are starting there. He isn't one to cry, and it frightens me. With a swishing whisper of cloth across the floor, I approach him until I am standing directly beside him. To draw his attention, I wrap my fingers around his wrist and pull his hand away from his eyes.

Hotohori's eyes shoot open as he stares at me. Several tense minutes pass till at last he gasps, "Nuriko?"

I smile softly and loosen my grip on his wrist to take his hand in mine, my fingers wrapping protectively over his. My touch is light, as though his smooth skin might burn or somehow repulse me, but I know that it never could. "Yes, Hotohori-sama," I whisper.

His astonishment does not fade, though he tries to cover it up with a soft wrinkling of his brow in a minute frown. "What are you doing here?" Behind his veneer of accusation, I feel curiosity, mingling with confusion at my renewed forwardness with my affections.

"I've come to help you." My reply is soft, a mere breath. Hearing it, his frown deepens as he tries to understand what I must mean. "I know what you're feeling," I continue.

"How could you know?" he murmurs, moving his hand away from mine and holding it jealously to his chest. In the dark, I feel his eyes boring into me, almost daring me to give a response that might offend him. I hesitate, the words forming on the tip of my tongue, remaining there as a frozen procession.

What have I to lose? "I, too, love somebody that I can't ever have," I answer eventually.

Watching the battle of expressions in his eyes, my heart is in my throat again, threatening to leap higher still, into my mouth. I keep my eyes locked on his, and when at last comprehension dominates his gaze, I give him a weak smile. "Yes," I say, "I do." In three words, though not the exact three that I would most like to say, I've confirmed his suspicions, cemented my feelings in a way that none of my previous suggestive teasing ever did.

"I can't," he says. "I love Miaka."

My smile doesn't falter for a moment; I broaden it, if not to hitch it back up along with all my hopes, then to give him the false impression that I can throw my love away. I don't say a word. Images rush to my head, a successive blending of possibilities. Slapping him, running from the palace, even drinking poison... None of them are things that I could ever do. In the face of my love, duty has trampled it as effectively as his words.

Through a dreamlike haze, I nod solemnly. I accept my fate; he doesn't want my help, doesn't need it. The warmth of my body will never satisfy him, not because I am a man, but because I am not Miaka, and he can't pretend that I am. Wordlessly, I am gone. I abandon my hopes and my desire and my love as well as abandoning him to his depression, trying to thrust it all behind me as I walk out of the room. I stop and lean against the closed door.

His room is silent, not granting me even the racking sounds of sobbing. He refuses to cry if anyone could be present, and I can tell that he knows I'm lingering. I press my palms against his door, the coolness shooting through my arms and up my back. "I love you," I tell him, loudly enough that he can hear it, but so lightly that he may dismiss it as a jibe of the wind.

My purpose, the lesser one of confession, is served. I walk back toward my room. I keep my eyes on the ground, not wanting to look up for fear that gravity might draw unwanted tears from them. For a brief eternity, I am walking, and when I look up, I'm not outside my room at all, but back outside Hotohori's room.

I have to give in. Again, I lean against the door and slide down, sitting in a mess of skirts and loosened hair and overwhelming sorrow, my cheeks flushed with the effort of trying not to cry. I'm such an embarrassment, unable to seduce the mourning emperor despite my attempts. A failure to Miaka for daring to be hurt that it's her Hotohori loves. A failure to the others for concentrating on my need for fulfillment rather than on my duty as a seishi. Greatest of all, I am a failure to Kourin, for ever imagining that I could be half the woman she would have grown to be. If she were here, what would she think of me, her useless and degraded older brother? She'd never think me worthy of continued admiration. She, like everyone else, would look down on me for all my stupidity, all my meaningless dreams that fell long before they came to fruition.

Hotohori loves Miaka. I will never, as long as I live, forget that I am a castoff, my help turned away in favor of continued misery. It adds to my misery, and with my face buried in my hands, I hold back the tears until my throat chokes and aches with the effort.

Behind me, the door opens. Shocked, unable to catch myself, I fall back. When I am sprawled flat on my back, my eyes meet Hotohori's, an explicable fear darting into my veins like fast-acting poison. "Are you coming in?" he asks. I stare, unblinking, unsure, and totally afraid. What's his game? Perhaps he realized that I was here, on the verge of tears, but that's absurd, the wishful thinking of a fool in love. More likely, he wants to give me just enough to get me to leave him alone and grant him his peace again.

I rise and, hesitant with surprise, follow him into his room. He has to be the one to close the door, to guide me to sit down next to him on the edge of his bed. "Nuriko," he says. I close my eyes. I want to imagine that he says my name with love rather than with reproach or solemn formality. I defy my need to cry yet again, hearing my name on his lips. No matter how he says it, it's a beautiful blessing to me. "Did you mean it?"

My breath catches. "Yes," I say, a sigh. "Of course I did. I love you."

"No, I didn't mean that."

A dark fist slams its clawed grip around my heart and squeezes. The fragments that do not break into dust are punctured and bleed my tears of blood, leaving my chest empty, nothing to beat nervously in my throat anymore. My vision is dark, too, glazed over as I look at his beautiful face, so removed, the hint of an unintentionally mocking chuckle on his lips. Falling into an abyss of hellish refusal, my body has become heavy, sore, as if he's thrown me out with the garbage.

"Will you help me, Nuriko?" Hotohori asks.

Broken from my stupor, torn from my rush of self-loathing and pathetic tearfulness, I'm too surprised to reply at first. Finally, I grate out a, "What?", devoid of emotion. I have to mask my disappointment - my crushing defeat, my ruination - from Hotohori. In his perfection, he must despise weakness.

Like he thinks I'm an illiterate, invalid child, Hotohori explains, "You said that you would help me." He smiles at me, which I know isn't meant to be teasing, but to me, it is: a demonstration of his power over me, proof that even the coldest smile would make me melt against him. "Will you?"

"I said that I would," I reply dully, "so yes."

"I thought so." Hotohori curls a long index finger under my chin and tilts my face up to the right angle to kiss me. It's everything I hoped a kiss with him would be, and at the same time, it's a terrible lie, a carved likeness of a kiss. For all the passion he exudes as he deepens the kiss, it means nothing. He took me up on an offer made out of love, is taking advantage of the shattered remnants of my heart to get what he needs. He needs Miaka; what he has is me, a substitute. A last resort.

Finally, I see what I mean to him. I'm here for his convenience. As a lady of his harem, I was here to sate his needs if I was chosen, and as a seishi, I remain here so that I may help in saving his country. Now, he kisses me to relieve his pain and to deepen mine. His tongue spearing into my mouth is a knife in my gut; as it twines around mine, he twists the knife, jerking it mercilessly with every soft caress of his hand against my cheek.

Hotohori breaks the kiss for a few seconds, then delves back in to stab me with kisses to my jaw, my neck, my collarbone when he pulls my dress away to reveal it. He pushes me back against his bed and starts to undress me, never separating from me unless he is forced to do so to ease the removal of my cumbersome dress. In my dreams, every time he looked me over, he smiled and said something sweet. "You're beautiful," maybe, or, "I love you." This is reality, so he says nothing like that. He studies me with hungry eyes and doesn't say a single word. I suppose it's better that way; if he doesn't speak, he can't lie to me, can't make this more painful than it already is.

His movements aren't perfunctory, to be sure. In fact, he's very gentle, his fingers brushing hotly against my skin as he takes off the last of of my clothes. When he undoes my hair, he strokes a hand through it. But I know he isn't seeing violet, isn't feeling the waves. He's picturing auburn, searching for Miaka's eyes in mine. Then he's moving again, never lingering. That would mean realizing that he's acting out a fantasy with the wrong person, the wrong body beneath him.

I'm not allowed the insignificant pleasure of undressing him as he has me. He takes off his own clothes in rushed movements, placing them on the floor in a heap with mine, where we'll have to sort them out later. It hardly matters. Everything I've known has been forced down to nothingness these last few minutes, as if his earlier rejection hadn't done that already. Hotohori's kisses, while not unwelcome, are alien against my skin. I flinch when he bypasses my flat chest, returning from my belly to my neck in a fluid, pointed movement. Subconsciously, he is showing me that I can never be the woman she is. I already know it so well that he needn't prove it further, but I refuse to ruin this moment for him. I let him bite down gently on my neck, leaving a mark where it will be easily visible tomorrow. I let him suck on the bite mark, deepening it and deepening it, making it all the more obvious. If I had less confidence in his goodness, I would suspect Hotohori of wanting to shame me in front of everyone else. Because I know that he isn't a bad person - he has a kind heart, although he wants the world to see a self-absorbed, beautiful ruler instead of his less extroverted inner self - I forgive him.

I could never hold anything against Hotohori. For all the sadness, all the rejection I have suffered, I have deserved what I got. I told him I wanted to help; I left it open to interpretation. Why should he care what one of the seishi, a man who used to pose as a lady in his harem, feels about him? I'm here for convenience. I always have been. Once we summon Suzaku, I will be nothing again, a speck of dust to be flicked away.

I reach up to touch him, hoping to kiss him or stroke his cheek, but he turns his head away. I drop my hand listlessly. From then on, I keep silent with my hands limp at my sides. My protests are unheard, my hands unused. Somewhere in my chest, I feel the dull throb that is the beat of my heart. My body is reacting to him as it should.

Then, all of a sudden, I realize how wrong I am to let him play upon me like an instrument for his pleasure. My body shouldn't be reacting in the first place. His passion, his love, isn't for me. This isn't making love. This isn't my dreams. This isn't what I wanted.

Crying out, I push Hotohori off me and lean over the edge of the bed to snatch my clothes, hoping to get dressed fast and escape him.

It all comes in a rush. Hotohori grabs me around the middle, his fist digging into my stomach as he drags me back onto the bed. He shoves me down onto my back and holds me there. Somewhere in me, a voice is demanding that I fight. It urges me to push him off again, using my superior strength, and run while I have the chance. I ignore it. Squashing it down as I have so many other things, I feel tears prick in my eyes. Hotohori looms over me, grabbing me by the hair. "You said you would help me," he says. His voice is a growl, daring me to defy him. I don't take the dare.

Satisfied with my submission, he resumes things as if he had never stopped. His pressing hands release me and he pulls me to him for another soft kiss, his lips plundering mine, his fingers on my cheeks ignoring the wetness there, his tongue in my mouth returning to its twining stabs. One hand moves down my back to rest right above my buttocks, where he digs his nails in slightly, showing me who holds the reins here.

Not that I would defy him again. He is my emperor, my love, and I came here to make him happy in the first place. If this pleases him, let it be.

Resigned, once again, to my fate, I start to kiss him back. For a minute, he seems glad of it. Then he pushes me away for the second time. He slaps me so hard that my head is forced to one side. I feel the sting of his slap mixing with the increased flow of my stupid tears. So this is what loving Hotohori is like. Pain, a one-sided sham of passion, and humiliation. How could I be deaf to the warnings?

Like an apology come too late, he kisses me again. This time, it is my turn to pull away, a sob rising in my throat, never to escape. I shouldn't give him the pleasure of knowing that he hurts me. Or maybe, somehow, he doesn't know what he does to me. Maybe he mistakes my escape attempts for coquettishness... All these maybes; I don't know what I ought to believe. I want to believe that Hotohori would never hurt me. I want to trust in him, believe that his mouth against mine is loving - for me, not for Miaka.

He makes another sudden move, frightening me when he hitches my legs up over his shoulders. He gives me a look that orders me not to stir, and I obey it, deciding that regardless of how he treats me, I should be glad. Shouldn't I want this? I have loved Hotohori for so long, always watching after him with care, with lust. I owe this to him. As I said, I will help him. Even if it means destroying myself.

What am I doing? What have I become? Some scraping and groveling fool, my leash wrapped around his hand like a dog, so that it may be jerked back when needed? When he turned me away, told me that he loved Miaka right to my face, he ended an age for me. That is the best explanation, I think. Otherwise, I wouldn't have agreed to something like this, something that wrenches me apart.

Quite literally, he begins to wrench me apart, pressing his fingers - wetted with his saliva - inside me, holding me down with his other hand. The first two are almost too much for me to bear; tears well up in my eyes, beginning to flow down my cheeks anew. I can no longer feel this justified. He is scissoring his fingers in me, searching for something unknown to me. He may mean to give me pleasure from this. I can't see what about it is pleasurable. He only wants a convenient receptacle for his lust, his love. I am not Miaka. I wonder, as he presses a third finger into me and I wince, if he realizes that, or if he's too caught up in his fantasy world to care.

"Hotohori," I say.

His eyes lock onto mine, spelling venom if I try to say his name one more time. I fall silent, my words dropped as my hand was earlier. For an insane moment, I consider saying it again, just to get the resounding slap, just to have him throw me out and release me from the trap that my love has gotten me into. Closing my eyes, blocking out the sight of what he is doing to me, I push the thought away. Push it away like my broken dreams, like I pushed him away.

Hotohori's arousal is pressed against the ring of muscle that guides my entrance, and when I feel him start to thrust into me, I let out a cry of pain, both physical and emotional. My eyes shoot open, searching for his face in a last-ditch attempt to communicate my fear to him.

By a miracle, the grace of Suzaku, Hotohori pulls away from me of his own volition. As I am sitting up, crying more than ever, I see that he, too, has tears streaming down his cheeks. I move toward him, hoping to wrap him in a daring embrace, he shakes his head and covers his eyes with his hand, the one that he used to hold me down.

"Nuriko...go. Just leave me."

Terrified of what he might do if I am slow to obey, I rise from his bed and redress. I don my clothes in a rush of fumbling movements. Finished, I look inexcusably sloppy, and I hope that no one will be out to see me in my disgrace. "Hotohori-sama," I murmur as I reach the door, "if you ever need me, I'll be here."

I hear no response, so I leave, my footsteps slow and deliberately quiet. Should anyone hear me and come to investigate, I can't trust myself to hold together.

"Nuriko?"

The door is open. Hotohori is standing there, watching me as I make my silent escape. There is an expression on his face that speaks of confusion, of agony, and it is so familiar to me that it takes a moment till I notice that is one akin to my own. Both of us turn tear-streaked faces to one another, eyes meeting across those few feet of space that I've managed to travel.

"Yes, Hotohori-sama?"

His eyes flicker. A long pause falls, its silence a screen between us. Weighted, it prevents either of us from saying a word, though I wouldn't want to speak anyway. Whatever I say, it could never be adequate. I could never communicate all the love, all the fear and pain and depression I feel whirling about me, a heavy mist in my confused mind.

Another tear makes its way down his face. Hotohori makes no effort to brush it away, letting it track down his face and drip off his chin as a child might when looking at a parent after a horrible scolding. Then another falls, this time hovering on his cheek.