Chapter 376
After this injection, she didn’t give Yamamoto any more injections for a few days.
Other than that, her life went on as usual.
The only thing that was a little different was that she didn’t receive any more guests.
Yamamoto still had many guests coming in and out of the mansion every day. Normally, she would have been there, pouring wine and dancing, and she was praised by several Japanese soldiers for her fan dance, which she had learned from a Japanese geisha, and which was said to be very authentic.
But for four days in a row, Yamamoto did not let her appear.
Until the fifth day, she went to see Yamamoto again to give him an injection.
This time, after the injection, Yamamoto said to her gently, “Takako, you are a loyal woman, I can trust your loyalty to me, right?”
She nodded quietly and looked at him, her eyes not moving and her expression not much. It was something she’d learned slowly at the hands of various teachers who’d taught her how to be feminine, and the first person she’d learned to test it on was Yamamoto.
You have to make me feel tempted, he said.
She had tried many times and could not please him, and the downfall of his displeasure was that she had to entertain someone else. The reward, on the other hand, was to entertain only him.
He said that women were chaste creatures and that if they were forced to be unchaste, they would be miserable themselves, and that what women wanted most was to belong to a man.
He told her to think of him as her man, that only with him was she physically and mentally secure, and that no other man could make her feel secure.
That training hadn’t stopped until now, and she’d gradually warped herself.
She didn’t know if Yamamoto was safe or not, but she’d gotten used to showing her trust and obedience to him.
So disgusting.
So disgusting.
Yamamoto: “I’ll give you a reward. This week, you can write a little poem and send it to the paper, and I’ll have them bring you reader’s letters, and if you have friends you want to see, you can meet them too.”
She was having a release.
These rewards were discovered by them through one exercise after another.
They discovered that she liked to write English poetry, that she liked to be pen pals with readers who had studied abroad, and that she liked to meet outsiders-specifically, people who were not Japanese.
She had previously been very eager to meet the owner of the steakhouse she used to go to, and then that one time she was rewarded with this, and she got to dress up in a dress and ride in a car to the steakhouse, and order in English and French, and the waiter introduced her to the meal, and described it for a long time, and she listened to it all the time with great interest, and they chatted, and the chef came out and greeted her at dessert time, and it was just a really nice day.
She had only met the outsider four times in the intervening years, and each time it had made her very happy.
So when Yamamoto said that, she couldn’t control herself from becoming happy.
Yamamoto smiled and said, “I knew you’d like it. Go ahead, Takako.”
She went and wrote a little poem, Applesauce in the Afternoon. The cook was making applesauce now, and she snuck into the kitchen four times, once she licked the candy tart, once she stole chunks of the cook’s chopped apples, once she burned her tongue by secretly digging into a spoonful of not-yet-cooked applesauce, and the last time she was caught, the cook poured her a glass of ice-cold milk with a lot of sugar in it, and the milk was so good.
The little poem was soon published, and letters from readers were sent in.
There were not many letters sent, and all of them were opened.
She didn’t mind, as long as it was a way for her to see and talk to people outside, she was much happier.
The letters weren’t all friendly though.
Some of them criticized her, saying that she was pandering to the outside world by writing poems in English when the world was so bad out there.
Others were critical, saying that they didn’t know how old she was and that the poems she wrote were too simple and not beautiful enough, and enclosed a poem he had written for her to correct.
She could only read the letters, not answer them, so she read them and smiled.
Then she read a letter.
Familiar strokes, déjà vu signature, and just a few lines made her read it back and forth several times.
To whom it may concern, the exhibition letter is good:
The little poem is beautiful and reminds me of my childhood in the manor, when even the scolding of adults and the pranks of my peers are now good memories.
Applesauce is very tart and very tasty and will look beautiful when made and kept in a glass jar, I also like very applesauce with nothing added and a spoonful in my mouth.
I hope I can sit down with you sometime and eat applesauce with bread.
Yan Yan
February 16th
While she was in the hospital room before being admitted to Yamamoto’s, she had several very precious letters from a friend she had made by chance.
She warmly encouraged her and deeply sympathized with her; they had been in similar situations, both had suffered from the injustice of fate, but they had taken completely different paths.
She had thought countless times, if her mother had a trace of compassion for her, if her father had a bit of affection for her, if …… any of the assumptions came true, she might not have ended up in this situation.
She had longed countless times for someone to help her, but every time she had been disappointed.
By now she no longer holds such hope.
Just a little bit of wanting to believe that there were still people in this world who cared about her.
So this letter, could it be from that person.
She had seen Yamamoto once when she was attending a party beside her.
She looked much changed, thinner and more mature, having lost her childishness. Beside her, her husband stood close to her, and they leaned on each other in a way that made her very envious.
Could it be her?
Was it written in this letter that she could go on deluding herself that this was what she meant when she remembered her?
Perhaps it was all her fancy, this letter was from another person, not her, not the person she thought it was.
Had she told her that she lived at the Duchess’s estate? She could not remember whether she had said so or not.
But even if she had said it, she had probably forgotten it long ago. It was only a casual conversation that someone as insignificant as she had had with her; would she remember her?
She had read her letters a thousand times, but in her eyes, she was just an ordinary person passing by, right?
She wasn’t that important.
And she wouldn’t still remember her after two years.
Still, when the maid asked her if there was a friend she wanted to see, she spoke with courage.
She said, “I want to meet an old friend I used to know. Her name is Yang Yuyan.”
Zhu Yuyan soon received an invitation from Mr. Yamamoto.
This flattered her.
It also gave Mr. Su a big scare.
This included the members of the Intelligence Department around Mr. Su, who urgently analyzed why Yamamoto would suddenly want to see her, only her, and still invite her to his home.
Su Chunjun asked if he, his husband, could accompany her there and pay a visit to Mr. Yamamoto together.
It was refused.
Yamamoto’s side was not too strict in his wording, and even thought that she might miss this appointment due to her busy schedule, giving her a lot of free space.
Zhu Yuyan: “He means I can refuse?”
Su Chunjun: “That seems to be the meaning.”
Zhu Yuyan was greatly puzzled, “Why? Since I was invited to go, and then refused because he thought I might be too busy, it doesn’t seem like he’s very serious about letting me go.”
Su Chunjun sighed, and his hair went a few dozen shades of white, “The Intelligence Department couldn’t analyze it ……”
Zhu Yuyan didn’t think long before deciding to go.
She said, “How can I get a tiger’s son without entering the tiger’s den?”
Su Chunjun was definitely not in favor of it, but it was hard for him to force her.
Zhu Yuyan: “And, maybe it’s Ms. Jin? I’ve written five or six letters to her, so maybe she saw my letter and wants to see me.”
Su Chunjun shook his head, “According to our speculation, Jin Juli by no means has so much autonomy in the Yamamoto family.”
Zhu Yuyan: “You will never know until you go and take a look. Unless Yamamoto intends to tear his face off from you and take me as a hostage to force you to open up the city for the Japanese army to drive in now.”
Su Chunjun shook his head, “We’ve analyzed it, the Japanese are in no hurry right now, they already have the absolute advantage and would be happy to come back in at a moment when the populace is even more turned against them.”
This is like a tug-of-war, Su Chunjun’s side is certain to lose, the Japanese are certain to win, so the Japanese are not in a hurry, the food will come with the Japanese along with the “peace”, they have enough certainty to be able to tame the people, so that they can choose between starvation and food, as well as social peace and social unrest, which is not difficult at all, and now has been Japanese flags are flying in every home, and it won’t be a problem for every family to speak Japanese in the future.
Zhu Yuyan: “Then what reason do I have not to go? It can’t get any worse anyway.”
It was supposed to be a tightrope walk now, and it didn’t make any difference whether you were in a car or at home or on Yamamoto’s side, because bullets could come from nowhere at any time.