The silence holds until Masumi and you enter the stairwell. "The nerve of that woman! What kind of freak doesn't value their place in the institution they've dedicated their life to!?" She jabbers swears, her fists miming strangulation. "Who does she think she is, talking to us--to [i]you[/i]--that way! That sanctimonious--that presumptive--that [i]impertinent[/i]--aaagh!"

Masumi's rant is seemingly endless. How can't that decrepit old monk see that the Vashra are the only able stewards of the city? Damn Vashra Herself and her laxness in fighting the Rivdatka. She goes on like this the whole way down, doing the talking for you both. So much so that it takes you a second to realize that she's stopped talking, because she's waiting on an answer.

You blink once.

Masumi looks at you sideways, her expression scrutinizing. "I said, 'Why aren't you bothered?'"

"I am bothered," you answer. Your held your tongue in large part because your frustrations made sharp your tongue, and all your thoughts sour. You had nothing to say to make Masumi feel better. You still don't. "She insulted you. And Roshi will be... displeased at our results." You scratch where the bruises are under your makeup with one jagged fingernail.

"Not that!" Masumi snaps. Instantly she winces, her expression softening as she draws a steadying breath. "I mean when she asked if we have a mother."

"Ah."

Silence again as you exit the building, a connective thread in the roar of the crowd. You walk a perfect grid of broadstreets to a quiet green, six blocks away. Masumi waits patiently, for she knows words are not always easy for you, like they are for her. Halfway to the green, in a quiet alley shortcut, you speak.

"Your mother died in childbirth, sister. But the woman who birthed me died before my tenth summer. One summer day her husband slaps her for her misbehavior, like he sometimes would, and her head hit the dirt. Leaking liquid thought and blood through chips of bone. Like a cracked egg." You speak in a monotone, pressed so flat it becomes again sharp.

"Oh, Tesaki." Masumi says achingly. "I'm so-"

You look at your sister.

She stops talking.

You continue. "The woman suffered a lethal wound, but she didn't stop moving. She became as a young child, or an animal. She lay on her back in her own filth, eager to play. She crawled on top of her children, clinging to them for scraps of affection. She showered them with love.

This, they did not know how to deal with.

For when she was whole, the woman was not playful. She was not loving. She was cruel and she was hateful, and she hated her children most of all. She beat the children and she beat her husband, and when they defended themselves she beat them more. When the father defended the children, she would beat him so badly he could not walk for a day.

She hated one child in particular. The youngest, the only daughter. She grew up rough and without talents, learning how to fight from her brothers. When she was caught in boy's clothes, she would be thrown out to sleep in the street. And her father would defend her." You hiss humorlessly, eyes fixed on the end of the alley ahead of you.

"One summer day the woman's husband slaps her, because she had beaten her daughter within an inch of her life. She dies that day. A week later, the daughter - who, deep down, knows she is no daughter at all - approaches where the woman sleeps with a rock in her - his - hands. He means to put the woman out of her misery.

But he hesitates. His footsteps wake the father. The father sees the boy with the rock, and he decides that the woman, or what remains of her, is more important. His daughter would never kill the woman. The boy is a stranger and so must go, or the father will kill him."

You stop at the end of the alley, shaking in the long shadows.

"He goes. A year later he returns to corpses, and that same day he finds that he's good for something after all.

"Murder."