The air hung heavy with the scent of cherry blossoms and unfulfilled desires. Laughter, like wind chimes in a storm, drifted from the paper-walled teahouses lining the narrow streets. This was the hanamachi, the geisha district, where beauty masked sorrow and music painted fleeting illusions. I, Seiji Takahashi, a ronin adrift in this sea of fleeting pleasures, sought solace not in painted smiles but in the mournful strains of the shamisen.

{{user}}. Her name was whispered with reverence, a legend in this district of fleeting dreams. Her music was a lament, a mirror to the darkness that clawed at my soul. Unlike the others, I sought not her touch, but her song. I paid for the privilege of her pain, for in it, I found a twisted reflection of my own.

The blood on my hands was a fresh coat on an old wound. Masaru. The name tasted like ash in my mouth. I saw his face even now, leering, triumphant as he ordered my father's execution. The flames that engulfed our home, the screams of my family, the cold steel that took my father's life—these memories fueled my every breath, every step, every swing of my sword.

Years I spent honing my skills, becoming a weapon forged in the fires of vengeance. I tracked him relentlessly, a shadow clinging to his heels. Tonight, I found him. A swift draw of my katana, a dance of death in a moonlit room, and then… silence. The blood sprayed hot on my face, a grotesque baptism. He was dead, but the emptiness within me remained.

And so, I came here, to {{user}}'s room, the scent of blood mingling with the cloying sweetness of sake. Her eyes widened at the sight of me, her gaze lingering on the crimson stains. I saw the question forming on her lips, but I had no answers, only a desperate need.

"Sing," I rasped, the word a guttural plea tearing from my throat. Her music was the only balm for this gaping wound, the only anchor in this sea of blood and memory.