The Education of Sumire Min is a previously unpublished novel by S. Jae-Jones. Chapters will be emailed every Friday at 5PM EST. If you do not wish to receive the next chapter, but want to remain subscribed for other updates, you may unsubscribe from the book here.
🚨 content warning: ethnocentrism, racism, the sexualization of a child, threat of sex trafficking, colonialism, white supremacy, phew this is a heavy chapter, friends
She should have known it would come down to this.
If Soon-Yee were completely honest with herself, she had always known what lay at the end of the darker path, even before she had realized there were branches in her tree of life. Ever since his touch had killed her first self, she had known the Nipponese demon would be there at her resurrection. Like a phoenix, she would rise again, and it would be by his hand.
In the moment she stepped over the threshold into the courtyard of Kaneshiro’s estate, she knew. The Nipponese demon was there, and all the strings that tangled about her heart twanged, alerting her to his presence. The curse that bound them flared red-hot beneath her skin, sending a brilliant flush over her body.
No, she thought. No. This was not her fate. This could not be her fate.
Bright Moon sat on the verandah in all her brightly-coloured glory, her face painted, her hair waxed and dressed with jewels. Kaneshiro sat by her side, dressed in his funny foreign clothes, holding a clear glass cup in his hand, filled with an amber liquid. His head was thrown back in laughter, and his face was a deep, plum red.
Standing before them with his back to her was the Nipponese demon. Although she had seen many other waeguk-in pass the streets in her village since she had first encountered them on the day her first life died, she knew exactly who this was. She would know him anywhere, even in the dark. The ghost had haunted her since her innocent days, and she waited for him to turn around, to sense her waiting there, to acknowledge the en between them.
But the Nipponese demon did no such thing. He too held a clear glass filled with amber liquid, and moreover, he held in his hand a stinking, smoking log, and its acrid haze wafted its way toward Soon-Yee, burning her eyes and tickling her throat.
She sneezed.
The gay party turned around. “Ah, Soon-Yee!” said Bright Moon, getting to her feet a little unsteadily. In her inebriated state her Nipponese was poorer than ever. “You have come! Come close, child, and I must introduce you to Fureisa-san.”
The Nipponese demon fixed his watery blue eyes on her—eyes which, to Soon-Yee, would always be colourless—and Soon-Yee held her breath, waiting or him to recognize her. But there was no recognition in those red-rimmed eyes, and he only stared at her blearily, swaying slightly on his feet.
“She’s a pretty one, Kaneshiro-san,” he said. “One of yours?”
Kaneshiro frowned as he took in Soon-Yee’s appearance from head to toe. “No. She’s Bright Moon’s pet project. Thinks she can turn a piece of Choseonese shit into Nipponese gold, isn’t that right?” His smile was cruel, and Soon-Yee turned her face away.
“Mock all you want, Kaneshiro-san,” said Bright Moon, “but Soon-Yee is a clever little thing, and destined for greatness. Don’t you think, Fureisa-san?” she asked coyly, attempting to bat her eyelashes at the Nipponese demon. But he paid the kisaeng no attention, instead fixing his gaze on the top of Soon-Yee’s head. She could feel the burn of it, like the rays of the sun on bare skin.
“What greatness?” Kaneshiro retorted. “In this backwater village where people still shit in holes and piss in pots? She can be the queen of the dung heap, for all the opportunity she’ll ever get. Like you.” His stringy moustache twitched in a mocking sneer. “The best of a bad bunch.”
Bright Moon ignored him, leaning forward to touch the Nipponese demon on the arm. “Oh, but you don’t agree, do you, Fureisa-san?” she asked. For all her pretensions toward elegance, Bright Moon never lost her essential earthiness, and Soon-Yee could almost taste at the back of her throat the sexual musk that clung to the prostitute’s skin. “Look at the girl. Face like a flower, eyes as keen as a sparrowhawk. She’s practically…ripe for the picking.” Her eyes ran up and down Soon-Yee’s body, and the girl felt a frisson of apprehension pass over her like a ghostly hand, raising all the small hairs on her skin.
But the Nipponese demon was less interested in Soon-Yee than the fleshly temptations of Bright Moon before him. He slapped the prostitute on the rump as though she were a brood mare, laughing uproariously. Bright Moon protested in jest, seeming to struggle against the foreigner’s grip, but snuggling closer instead. Soon-Yee wrinkled her nose in distaste and wondered just what it was that Bright Moon had planned for her.
They continued in this vein for some time, while Kaneshiro and Soon-Yee hovered on the edges of their gaiety—the former contemptuous, the latter feeling presumptuous. Soon-Yee stole glances at Kaneshiro from beneath the brim of her mourning hat. She was here on the man’s good graces, and he could, with a single gesture, cast her back out onto the street like refuse. But he ignored her for the most part, his eyes fixed on the amorous figures of Bright Moon and the Nipponese demon with a hooded look. Soon-Yee couldn’t begin to fathom what was crossing his mind.
Presently, Bright Moon extricated herself from the Nipponese demon’s embrace before they became indecent. “Well,” she said, her words slurring worse than ever, “why don’t we go inside for dinner?”
“Yes, before you make an even bigger fool of yourself,” said Kaneshiro. He set his glass clumsily down beside him, which Bright Moon managed to knock over and shatter into a thousand pieces. “Blast you, you clumsy ox,” Kaneshiro complained. He pointed at Soon-Yee and instructed her to clean up the mess, but Bright Moon stayed his hand.
“Kaneshiro-san,” she said, her voice breathy. “I may need some help getting inside. Get one of your maids to do it; I need Soon-Yee with me.” She drew the girl to her, and while her bearing on her feet might have been unsteady, the look in her eye was clear and alert.
“Suit yourself,” the man grumped. “Come on, Fureisa-san; let’s leave the whore and her crutch to it and have a civilized meal together.”
The Nipponese demon followed after his host, but not before running a finger lightly across Soon-Yee’s cheek.
“The things I would do to you,” he said in Ænglish. Soon-Yee stiffened, and the Nipponese demon grinned, touching the edge of her lips with a hammy hand. “Look at that violet-bloom mouth. It would look so good wrapped around the end of my cock.”
Soon-Yee shrank from his touch, closer to Bright Moon, who nearly toppled over as the balance shifted. The Nipponese demon tottered close, towering over them and breathing alcohol fumes in their faces.
“You don’t understand a single word coming from my lips, do you, you sweet little thing?” he murmured. He grinned, a slimy, lecherous, and altogether human sort of smile. “That’s just as well. A woman is better seen than heard, eh?” With a snigger, the Nipponese demon stumbled in after Kaneshiro.
“What did Fureisa-san say?” Bright Moon asked, studying Soon-Yee’s face. The woman’s pores may have reeked of a distillery, but her gaze was still sharp and perceptive. Soon-Yee shrugged her off.
“You can probably guess,” she said angrily. “Why have you brought me here? To be sold like cattle to that foreigner? I’d rather find myself at the kisaeng house.”
“I’m merely presenting you with an opportunity,” Bright Moon said. “It’s up to you to seize it when it comes.”
“And what opportunity is that?” Soon-Yee asked. “What does that gwishin have to do with anything?”
Bright Moon looked down at Soon-Yee’s face, but the girl couldn’t discern whether the courtesan’s expression was pitying, disdainful, or simply regretful. “I’ve handed you the lamp to light your way; it is for you to forge the path.”
Soon-Yee was furious; she didn’t know whether it was drunkenness or willfulness behind Bright Moon’s cryptic replies, but decided she wouldn’t stand for it.
“All right then,” she said. “I’ve set you on your feet; now it is for you to find your way into the house with what dignity you have left.”
And with that she left Bright Moon standing there, swaying and swooning before the courtesan tumbled over in a pile of expensive Nipponese silk.
She never did know why she stayed. She could have easily gone home, returned to her old lives, left Bright Moon and her enigmatic promises behind, and never seen the Nipponese demon again. The truth Soon-Yee was afraid to face was that she wanted something greater, and that something greater meant acknowledging her destiny, acknowledging the man with milk-white skin and colourless eyes at the other end of the thread which bound them. But she did not want it; she wanted her fate to be anything else. She wanted Bright Moon’s fate: a rich patron, the means to live her life on her own terms. Soon-Yee was afraid, but she was curious too. Courage begins when curiosity is too much to bear.
The voices of Kaneshiro and his demon carried down the shining corridors, and Soon-Yee pursued them through the house like a hound on the scent. Behind her she could hear Bright Moon cursing and stumbling after her like an ox wallowing in mud, and felt a brief stab of remorse for having abandoned the woman outside. But the courtesan had made it clear that she would at best be a passive agent in Soon-Yee’s escape, and Soon-Yee thought it only fair to repay the woman’s miserable generosity with coldness of her own.
But when Soon-Yee found herself outside the room where Kaneshiro and the demon laughed, she hesitated. The incongruity of it all—of her presence in this grand house, of her unlikely and unwelcome existence here—was beginning to catch up to her. Here, outside the room where Kaneshiro entertained his waeguk guest, she was still just Min Soon-Yee, still a little girl from a village by the sea. But once she stepped over the threshold, what then? What arrogance she had presumed, thinking she could walk in and join them as though she were their equal. What would she do? Say? Would Kaneshiro ignore her? Would the Nipponese demon take advantage of the bond between them, fiddling with her as though she were nothing but a pretty, painted, pointless toy?
She should have turned around, should have walked straight back out into her old life, but she remained still, as though her feet had grown roots. The demon was the lamp, that much she knew, so did she have the courage to take the first step onto the darker path?
In the end she never knew. Bright Moon’s lumbering footfalls echoed behind her in the gleaming corridors, and the courtesan stumbled into her.
“Well?” the woman asked. “What are you waiting for?”
Before Soon-Yee could reply, Bright Moon slid the doors open and dragged the girl in with her.
“So you’ve found your way inside at last,” said Kaneshiro caustically. “About time.”
“As if you cared,” Bright Moon retorted. Drink had made her sharper than she was wont with Kaneshiro, but he seemed more amused than offended. In fact, he nearly seemed pleased.
“Did you bring that pretty little girl with you?” asked the Nipponese demon. “I want to have a closer look at her.” Soon-Yee shrank behind Bright Moon, fearful of being thrust in front of him to be examined and scrutinized like goods before a trader. If her goods were to be for sale, she would rather that she at least had the freedom to make the offer herself.
“I think you’ve gotten close enough,” said the courtesan, casting a stern eye on the demon. Even as Soon-Yee resented Bright Moon for being both a help and a hindrance, she couldn’t deny the wash of unexpected gratitude that overcame her.
“Not as close as I’d like,” the Nipponese ghost muttered in Ænglish. He made no effort to disguise his words, confident in his ability to remain unheard. But it made Soon-Yee feel dirty, as though she had stumbled upon him doing something indecent behind closed doors. She resented that this was yet another tie which bound them together. Before, her facility with tongues had been something in which she had taken immense pride, more evidence of her innate superiority over everyone she knew, but like everything else in her life, the sweetness of its gift had turned to ashes in her mouth.
“So, Fureisa-san,” continued Kaneshiro as though Bright Moon and Soon-Yee were not in the room. “Shall we toast to our bright new future?”
“Indeed!” said the Nipponese demon, leaning forward to refill his sake cup. “Although, don’t we have anything better than this rice wine swill?”
“As if that peaty concoction of yours is any better,” Kaneshiro retorted.
“That was a fine bottle of Glenlivet, I’ll have you know,” the Nipponese demon returned. “Worth more than your sad little fledgling factory empire, you slitty-eyed bastard,” he continued in Ænglish with a smile. Soon-Yee frowned, but Kaneshiro was entirely oblivious. It seemed a foolish practice to engage in business with a partner who spoke your language when you did not speak his in return.
As the Nipponese demon and Kaneshiro shouted their kanpais and sloshed their drinks down, Soon-Yee noticed Bright Moon fixing her with a pointed stare. The courtesan seemed to be signaling her, her eyes flicking from Kaneshiro to the ghost with a minuscule tilt of her head. Soon-Yee frowned, uncomprehending. Bright Moon sighed.
“Kaneshiro-san,” she said, turning to her patron with a coy smile. “Have you any entertainment planned for our guest tonight?”
“What, you think you’re going to give us a show? Do a little song and dance, hmmm?” Kaneshiro gave her a derisive laugh. “What sort of dance does a fat cow do?” He got onto all fours and mooed, waggling his rump in a comical manner. The Nipponese demon joined in his hilarity, slamming his sake cup down on the low table and stumbling to his feet.
“Oh I’ve heard of the famed sensual dances of the women of the East,” he said, lurching towards Bright Moon. “I’d love it if you gave me a show.” He tripped over his feet and crashed to the floor, but not before catching the courtesan round the middle with his face buried in her chest. She laughed as she toppled over, her silk-wrapped legs flying into the air.
“What, ‘Dances in the Stream’?” Kaneshiro asked, suddenly sour. He too, slammed his sake cup down, but instead of enjoying himself, he staggered upright and stalked out of the room.
Soon-Yee knelt in the corner of the room, feeling unsure and superfluous. She watched Bright Moon tumble about the floor of the room with the Nipponese demon, sending the tatami mats flying, and felt something within her break. The prostitute giggled and tussled with the man, protesting feebly while expertly guiding his hands to loosen the seams of her clothing. A surge of resentment rose up like a gorge in Soon-Yee’s throat, a strange combination of irritation and jealousy. The Nipponese demon had touched Soon-Yee first, had bound their fates together, yet why was she sitting here, ignored and forgotten? She spoke his language, and she was not only cleverer than Bright Moon, but she was more beautiful. Why was he not paying her any attention? Why was she to be cast aside like a dirty dishrag?
She rose to her feet, her face flushed with heat. It was clear Bright Moon was no help to her. For reasons Soon-Yee could not understand, the courtesan was barring her path to freedom, refusing to hand her the lamp to light her way. Bright Moon was stealing Soon-Yee’s chance to fulfill her destiny. Soon-Yee stiffened her back. The way ahead was clear.
She turned her back on the rutting pair and walked out the doors. But she did not see the courtesan reach for her, nor did she hear Bright Moon call her name before it was swallowed up by the demon’s mouth. She never did find out what lay at the end of the path of shame, for Soon-Yee—as she was to do again and again in her later lives—would forge her own way through the dark.
Outside, Kaneshiro stood on the verandah, fumbling with and cursing at a pouch of tobacco.
“Kuso!” he swore. Soon-Yee saw he had dropped his pouch, scattering the earthen contents everywhere. He knelt and tried to salvage what he could, but he was drunk, and he was spreading the leaf even further.
She could have left. She could have walked past Kaneshiro and into the open and he would have never noticed. She could hear him foulmouth his coarse, vulgar mistress at every turn, but beneath the abuse, she could hear the beats of jealousy and affection, and it stayed her. In a flash of clarity Soon-Yee understood that this man loved his crude little whore in his own limited way, and his swearing was as much for a rebuffed heart as it was contempt.
Perhaps it was pity, but it was more likely her own keen sense of vindictive justice that Soon-Yee stayed. She stayed and knelt and gathered the scattered bits of tobacco into a neat little pile before sweeping them into the fallen pouch by Kaneshiro’s feet.
It was a few moments before Kaneshiro saw her there, his eyes bleary and blurry with too much sake and beer.
“Is that you, nezumi-chan?” he asked. “Did that accursed sow send you out to fetch me, little mouse?”
Soon-Yee shook her head. “I’m afraid not, honoured sir.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
She studied at him, and he returned her gaze. Despite his irritability, he didn’t seem inclined to send her away; in fact; there was something about him that screamed just the opposite. There was a sort of yearning in every line of his body, and the pulse leaped and jumped at his throat. Soon-Yee felt her own blood rise in response, and knew what it was she needed to say.
“To keep you company, sir.”
Were he in a more sober and less melancholy mood, she knew Kaneshiro would have dismissed her outright. But he was a man made vulnerable by too much drink, and she was a bright, clever girl who knew how to make the most of his heartache. She was young, she was beautiful, but most of all, she had a listening ear. She offered him the pouch of tobacco like a supplicant before the altar.
Kaneshiro scoffed. “What could a girl like you possibly do to keep a man like me company?” He took the tobacco from her hands, his fingers fumbling with the loose herb as he tried to pack his pipe. She waited until his nervous frustration had grown so great he was about to give up before drawing close and holding his hands still.
“I can listen, sir,” she said.
At her touch he froze like a rabbit in a trap. Gently, gracefully, deftly, Soon-Yee packed his pipe and lit a taper, bringing it to Kaneshiro so he could puff away with ease. When he had lit his smoke, she brought the taper close to her face and blew out the flame. She could feel his eyes on her face, considering her, seeing the girl beyond Bright Moon’s shadow for the first time.
“Listen, pah,” he said. “The lot of you can listen, but can you truly hear anything? That bedamned prostitute can listen to me speak all day, but can she respond? It’s like talking to stone, that one, for all that she hears me.”
“Then I shall be your echo chamber, as your honoured self demands,” said Soon-Yee.
He cast a sharp glance at her, and Soon-Yee could see he was impressed despite himself. She smiled, smug in her small victory over Bright Moon.
“You’ve a poetic way of talking,” he said. “For a Choseonese mouse. Where did you learn to speak my tongue?”
“I have always known it, sir.”
His eyes were large and dark in his face as he studied her. “How old are you, little mouse?”
“I am 12 years old, sir.”
At that, Kaneshiro looked unaccountably pleased. “Well, it appears as though our efforts have not been in vain then.”
Soon-Yee frowned. “What efforts?”
Her expression must have shattered the illusion between them, for in an instant Kaneshiro was again cold and unresponsive. “As though I’d share my thoughts with a dirty little gutter rat like you.”
Soon-Yee’s mind stumbled, searching for a more secure foothold on which to engage him. It appears as though challenging him was a privilege reserved only for Bright Moon, and Soon-Yee had better make reparations lest she lose the only advantage she had.
“Gomen nasai,” she said, getting on her hands and knees and bowing before him. “My most humblest apologies, Kaneshiro-san. I do not wish to presume anything.”
He seemed mollified by her prostrating herself before him, feeling as though the rightful order of the universe were restored—the Nipponese superior, the Choseonese inferior.
“For years the Heavenly Emperor sought to expand the might of Nippon further into the world. He had his eyes set on Q’in, and for years we waged war against them for territory and rights to trade. You don’t remember the war, do you, nezumi-chan?”
Soon-Yee shook her head.
“We had the magic of the white devils on our side, but Q’in had too many resources: more people, more labor. We were still an island nation, and while we were unparalleled at sea, we were overmatched on land.”
She waited, and listened. And heard.
“So after the war we decided to claim a foothold on the mainland. It took several years, but we rooted ourselves into the soil of this peninsula, growing stronger than the native flowers of your kingdom. Our language, our money, our business we spread like a plague, and it’s caught on, hasn’t it?” Kaneshiro reached out and grabbed Soon-Yee’s face, wrenching her eyes up to meet his. “You, who speak Nipponese like native; you, whose face is like a flower.” He brought her face close to his. “I bet you even consider yourself Nipponese, don’t you, little mouse?”
The honest truth was Soon-Yee considered herself neither. Choseon, Nippon, it did not matter. She belonged to a kingdom of the disadvantaged, and she was ready and willing to align herself with another, more powerful nation, if that’s what it took to lift her from despair.
She had no filial piety, after all.
“Yes,” she whispered, knowing it was a lie, but knowing it was what Kaneshiro wanted to hear.
And with that, he crushed his lips to hers, sloppy, wet, and tasting of bitter rice wine and smoke.
His kiss was rough, and in it, she could feel his rebuke towards Bright Moon. The kiss wasn’t about Soon-Yee; it was about a truculent mistress sealing the deal with his foreign business partner, and it was about self-hatred. He hated himself for loving a coarse, crude, inferior thing, and he could only take out a measure of its violence against a beautiful, calm, unresisting girl, a girl who spoke his tongue fluently, who reminded him of his innate superiority.
He broke off the kiss as roughly as he had started it.
“You know she was going to try and sell you to that white devil,” he said.
Soon-Yee nodded. She had surmised as much when Bright Moon tried to sell the Nipponese demon on her physical charms. “Yes, sir.”
“And do you think he would have bought you?”
She considered it, thinking back over the course of the evening, of the Nipponese demon’s wandering eyes and fondling hands. Any port would do, and Soon-Yee believed that—despite their shared tongue—his mind was not interested in being engaged.
“Yes,” she said. “But for no longer than a night.”
Kaneshiro laughed. “She could have gotten a better return if she had tried to seduce him herself. Men like him don’t take mistresses like the Nipponese; they don’t know how to keep them. So why you?”
Soon-Yee looked Kaneshiro straight in the eye. “Because I speak his language.”
The man stilled, pipe forgotten in his hand. “Ahhhh,” he said slowly. “She did say you were clever.” They continued to stare at each other and a sly smile spread over Kaneshiro’s face. “But it seems as though you are cleverer than she gave you credit.”
Soon-Yee lifted her head.
“Clever and beautiful, a deadly combination,” he said, running a finger along her cheek. She felt the thrill of success thrumming in her veins; she had seen an opportunity and seized it, just as Bright Moon had taught her. A small, lingering pulse of guilt throbbed in her heart, at having betrayed the one woman who had given her so much, yet kept it out of arm’s reach.
“I’m due to return to Heian soon,” said Kaneshiro thoughtfully. “And I’m of a mind to hire myself a new companion.”
The thrill turned to a chill, and Soon-Yee found herself trembling. She was afraid; she was still only a child, a child barely growing in a woman’s body. To her surprise, Kaneshiro gently wiped away the tears she had not known were running down her face.
“What is your name, little mouse?” he asked, his voice soft and even a little kind.
“M—Min Soon-Yee, sir,” she said, her voice shaking through her fear.
“Soon-Yee,” Kaneshiro said, rolling the syllables of her name around his mouth as though tasting them. “Can you write it out for me?”
She nodded and stepped into the courtyard. With an unsteady finger, she traced the characters of her name into the sand: Pure Loveliness.
“Su-mi,” he read aloud. The syllables were different in Nipponese. Kaneshiro chuckled. “Su-mi, sumire. A violet bloom mouth, a flower face. Somehow fitting.” He looked up from her name to her face. “Well, Sumire, my little violet flower, how would you like to accompany me to Nippon?”
A new name, a new life, a new destiny.
The arrangements were made with ease, all things considered. Her family had seen the large amount of coin in Kaneshiro’s hands and made no protest, not that Soon-Yee would have listened, even if they had. Sumire, she reminded herself. She was Sumire now.
She didn’t see Bright Moon in the days before her departure, but she wasn’t sure she could have faced the woman if she had. She tried to reason that it wasn’t betrayal, merely opportunity, but in her deepest soul, Sumire knew she had done the woman a great wrong.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her brush making swift lines on the paper.
Bright Moon had not yet vacated Kaneshiro’s estate, but the courtesan was nowhere to be found, as though Sumire had physically replaced her as well as metaphysically. She found Bright Moon’s room the same as ever: a heap of gorgeous silks piled in the corner, the futon unmade. Sumire knelt beside the pallet, the impression of a single sleeping figure still pressed into the sheets. On it, she left a purse with a single note.
You paid the price of my disgrace, and now I have repaid you in kind.
And that was it then, the last debt, and the last death. The girl Soon-Yee walked through Bright Moon’s doors for the last time and slid them shut behind her, a few tears slipping down her cheeks. When she straightened her shoulders and walked into the autumn sun, the girl Soon-Yee was gone, killed now at the hands of the young woman Sumire, who would go farther and lose so much more than her previous selves could have ever known.
But it is not so easy to escape one’s fate.
author’s note ✍🏻
Phew, from here on out, I promise things won’t be so bleak. Well, for a while anyway lol.
Also, I think I stole a lot from Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha which…sorry not sorry? Honestly, not sorry. Well, except for any inaccuracies and stereotypes I may be inadvertently perpetuating. Sorry for any harm I’ve caused, not sorry to the white man.
The first nine chapters will be available for free, after which the content will go behind a paywall. I am currently running a birthday promotion on yearly subscriptions, so grab it while you can!