Blue curls of cigarette smoke reach ceilingward endlessly in the Quarter Beneath, hazing the patrons at the edges of the room into indistinction. It's there on the darkened edge that the girl does her rounds, all shiny black vinyl and businesslike demeanour, contributing to the haze with every breath through her blue-painted lips.
She approaches a man in a suit, older, newly left by another male companion. His hair is greying and his face set into the impartiality of a well-bred Japanese. For just a second they could be mirrors, father and daughter, past and future, but the ethnicity is the only similarity and her manner soon breaks the moment. She exudes a blatant sexuality as she tilts her hips and thrusts her chest forward, displaying the goods. He returns faint, unobtrusive disapproval by his look. Her hands go to her hips, and after a short period of brief, hostile body language money crosses the table. She palms it and slips into the opposite side of the booth somewhat sullenly.
After a discussion, calm on his side and heated on hers, more money crosses the table and the two rise, disappearing into a shadowed doorway. Harp music and conversation emerge from within. Half an hour later, the man is on his way back to Sivad. As for the girl, she remains.
The room is tiny and dark, lit by the cold reflected spill of industrial lighting that seeps around the ill-fitting door. Intermittently the red spark of a cigarette glows bright.
In this kind of darkness the eyes begin to adjust fairly quickly, light pollution gliding ghostly lines along the metallic edges of the walls, along the double bed which half-fills the room, and along the contents of the bed: a suitcase, a pile of neatly folded clothing, a harp, a battered old stuffed unicorn, and a young oriental girl with hard eyes.
The girl is packing, neatly refolding pieces of clothing and settling them into the overfull suitcase, occasionally juggling her work to flick cigarette ash over the edge of the bed. Her movements are methodical, repetitive, almost ritualistic. The orange point of light close to her lips flares in time. Around it, through an opaque face, she murmurs a stream of clear colloquial French. It seems to be directed at the stuffed unicorn, as every so often she will stop folding and turn her head, addressing the battered animal in more insistent tones.
Abruptly the girl's packing slows, her hands lifting to her face. The nails are gleaming, dark against her dark skin, and they quiver slightly as she watches them shake. Momentarily her motions are deft again as she flicks her cigarette to one side, leaving it to burn out against the metal floor. It's soon forgotten in the whimper that hunches her over, putting her face in her hands and drawing her smaller and suddenly very much younger into herself. One groping blind hand leaves her vulnerable for a minute as she searches blindly for the unicorn, then pulls it against herself.
Several moments later her whimper begins to form words, thin and high-pitched on the long release of her breath.
"Fuck, Cherie," the girl whines, clutching at the unicorn, "I just can't. I just don't know... he's not going to do it. I know he's not going to do it. He always stayed far away. There's no way I could trust a guy like that. I wanna go, though. I wanna live on Sivad and be in the sun and not have to work so many guys anymore and maybe finally get away from the rest of the stims... It's not fair, Cherie. They've all got it, why can't I have it too? I just wanna go away..."
The whine drones away into silence, and then there is a sudden energy; she straightens, overturning the suitcase purposefully on the bed. She begins refolding the clothing, not with her earlier ritualistic pace but quickly and professionally into piles beside her. The unicorn watches the wall through button eyes from its place beside her lap, fallen carelessly.
New purpose enters her voice, and this time she speaks in Terran, not looking down at the unicorn.
"Cherie," she says, her voice rougher, "I ain't gonna do it. Cherie, Cherie, I gotta make it on my own. I can't trust some guy, especially not some guy like that. He got a business, whatever, he can't even stay home with his own daughter. I can't trust some guy like that. It'd be fucking stupid."
She jumps at a knock on the door, a quick startle of movement, and then quickly shoves the clothing off the bed and onto the floor. The suitcase follows, and with bare dark feet she kicks the whole mass under the bed before arranging herself, legs crossed, a smile plastered over her face, with her harp on her lap.
"Who is it?" the girl calls in Terran. Cherie watches from the floor, where she somehow managed to avoid the girl's foot.
The impeccably correct, Japanese-accented Terran that comes through the door makes the girl wince visibly. She reaches under the mattress, coming up with a cigarette and a lighter. Soon a small orange spark relights the interior of the room, and the lighter vanishes. A conversation ensues through the door, perfectly correct Terran standard against street jargon, completely controlled middle-aged tones against the raised anger of the girl.
"It is Tokugawa. I have a gift for you."
"So, what, you changed your mind?"
"It is the same gift that I offered last night."
"Fuck off. I don't need no one walking around thinking they own me and can fix my life." A pillow thuds against the door, thrown with surprising force by the girl. "And you're not my father."
"When you grow tired of your childish posturing, ask for Tanaka-san at the Hinode Holdings building on Sivad."
"I told you to /get lost/. It's my fucking life, and I don't do assholes like you anyhow."
The girl only takes five minutes of silence before she glances down at the stuffed unicorn and slips off the bed. Lying on the floor, she places her cheek to the ground and peers under the half-inch strip between it and the door.
Silently she wriggles back with a muffled curse, onto the bed, tucking her feet back up.
"I know you're still out there," she yells, "I'm not gonna fall for it. I ain't stupid."
After another ten minutes she gives in, standing and padding noiselessly across the tiny strip of floor. Once she lifts her foot up sharply, muttering in French again, and glances at the warm burn-mark left by a discarded cigarette butt. Then she thrusts back several locks with heavy clunks, leaving a chain as she glances out into the hallway.
Her movements are very quick, then. She draws in a sharp breath, slams the door shut, and rips off the chain. Eagerly she snatches an elegantly spare floor harp inside the room, levering the thing inwards into the small space behind the door. As a second thought, she picks up the creamy white envelope that had sat atop it, and closes the door again. The locks slam home, but not for long.
After a long perusal of the harp - detailed, close, and including the tag which says:
To Hiroka-Yin, I am incurring your obligation to be of useful service. Do not prove yourself a liar and dishonourable by scorning the chance you say you desire
The girl frowns fiercely, and pulls clothes and suitcase from under the bed. This time as she packs it's less methodical, and a shred of hope finds its way onto her face.
"Fuck, Cherie," she says in French again, "I can't let him treat me like some kid. Like I'm some baby or something, to tell me the way I live is wrong. Besides, Cherie, I can always leave, right? Maybe I'll get something out of it first, some cash or maybe get to meet someone, or at least a real tan again..." Her voice trails off in wistfulness.
The stuffed unicorn doesn't answer from its place on the floor, and its approval goes unnoticed by Hiroka-Yin.