"Am I beautiful?"

The woman stepped from the shadows. I hadn't noticed her, which was strange considering the vibrancy of her cherry blossom kimono and striking amber eyes. Those eyes were all I could see of her face. The rest was hidden behind a hand-fan that she fluttered shyly.

I was not thinking about the nature of her question. Nor how we were alone on the red bridge over the Eternal River. I had been thinking of very little that night. So when she asked me if I thought her beautiful I replied: "I guess."

The woman giggled. In a smooth motion she folded her fan, revealing her face. Her mouth was slit to the edges of her cheeks. The flesh of the wound was dried and gnarled from her body's vain attempt to heal it. Her teeth were not human teeth, but I could not tell you how. In truth, I only looked at her mouth for a few moments before returning to her eyes.

"Even with this am I beautiful?" She asked in a confident hiss. Her finger traced the dead skin of her smile.

I looked into her eyes for the longest time, too tired from life to think. When I dragged into a minute of thinking she lifted a scalpel to her mouth and gnawed on it playfully. She was waiting for my answer and I was staring through her with a blank expression not comprehending the danger I was in.

"Why does it matter what I think?"

That was what I eventually said. The woman craned her chin back in confusion, taking in all of me with her striking amber eyes. She locked up like a doe in the lamplight, her slit mouth hanging open and scalpel dropped to her side. When she made no further conversation I chanced to walk past her, and she did not object.

That sounds absurd to any who know her legend, but it is how we first met. My addled mind did not even recognize her that night and it was only midday the following sunrise that my mind and body clenched with fear for the situation I had been in.

She is called Kuchisake-onna. A fiend-made woman obsessed with beauty that has haunted the mountains of Amenhito since The Reconstruction. She will choose a victim and ask the same questions I had been asked. If the victim replies "no" at any point, she will kill them in a visceral fashion. If all the victim can say is "yes", even after she has shown her true appearance, then she will carve them to match herself. All told, I was lucky to avoid her the night prior, though I'm not entirely sure how I did it.

The incident forced away whatever other thoughts I had rooted in my mind and, in a quiet stupor, I went about my day as normal. I worked as an attendant in a bathhouse. It's terrible work and each morning I usually wake with dread of returning, but it is the only income I can find. My parents were never wealthy and vanished from my life just as I reached an adult age.

The Master of the bathhouse despises me for reasons I can't ordain. Perhaps it is because I am lowborn, or soft-spoken, or an uncoordinated failure, but I am always given the harshest chores and the most difficult clients. I thought it was a coincidence until the other attendants confirmed that none of them were treated in this way. I never knew what I did to cross the Master, but it has made my existence there a waking agony.

My home, if it can be called that, rests on the other side of the river outside of town. I cross the red bridge over the Eternal River each night, looking into the frigid waters and...contemplating something my heart doesn't have the courage to do. At this time of night I am the only person crossing the bridge and it is lit by a single lantern.

This second night she appears again. Kuchisake-onna. The same place she had appeared before. This time she says nothing to me. Only watches me cross. She half covers her mouth with her fan. Her amber eyes...I think they give off light like an animal, a predator, but it reminds me more of the lights behind the windows in town. The lights of families and happy people. Light I have never known.

The third night she appears again. This time her mouth fully revealed. I hazard a small wave to her. She doesn't reciprocate and breathes heavily through her mouth.

That morning onward I feel eyes on the back of me. Faint, but never far. I feel it in the daytime even. When I look upon the crowds entering the bathhouse I catch flashes of a pink kimono and a white paper fan. I should feel terrified that this demon has chosen me as prey to torment, but I feel nothing. She does not appear on the bridge that night.

The fifth day since that first encounter on the bridge the Master of the bathhouse pulled me aside with a gruff hand. A special client had arrived and requested me specifically as their attendant. There was an off look in the master's eyes. It wasn't the same satisfaction they usually had when thrusting difficult work upon me.

I enter the private room, where the large ceramic bath takes up the center. Standing before the bath is Kuchisake-onna. She has her back to me, but I would recognize that gossamer hair and blossom dress anywhere. When she looked over her shoulder, it was with a suspicious eye. Her mouth was covered with a cloth mask, so perhaps the Master did not know her true identity. I felt my heart stop only a moment, then it calmed when I realized her nervous expression. When she did not speak first, I felt I must break the tension.

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"Hello again."

"Hello." She replied with downcast eyes.

I was shocked she replied at all, moreso when she dropped her kimono and stepped into the bath. Her backside was littered with scars and echoes of ancient wounds, each seemingly inflicted by a different source. The legend of Kuchisake-onna focuses entirely on her face. I could not conceive of the rest of her body being damaged.

I swallowed my fear and did as the bath attendant does. The steam of the hot water made her pale skin invisible, but I found her by the glint of her amber eyes as she watched me approach.

At first she flinched away from my touch. I didn't overstep my bounds. It is the duty of the attendant to wash the back of the client. The cloth was made of soft sheep's wool and the soap was a fresh bar. Neither of us spoke as I lathered the cloth. Her amber eyes turned to the opaque water.

"Is it alright..." I began, my voice hoarse from a lifetime of silence. "...If I touch the scars? Some clients...they don't like it when their wounds are touched."

She was silent and held herself. I froze as a statue waiting on her response.

"Be gentle. They open easily." She whispered.

I did as she asked, using the lightest hand I have ever used when washing a client. What had my life come to that I was washing the back of a mythical monster? Steam clouded my face. The woman's hair covered her neck like glossy silk curtains. Often when I wash someone their stench offends more than the body, but that is because I am given the unkempt and sloven clients. Kuchisake-onna smelled like nothing. She felt like nothing too. My damp cloth pressed against her, but her skin had no resistance. None of the rubbery texture I associated with flesh. She was the steam of the bath made solid. The only thing that felt real were those crimson scars on her back.

"You are afraid..." Her voice made me jump. In part because of the silence, and also because of the hiss she made when speaking at this decibel.

She turned fast in the bath, facing me with her slit mouth exposed. Her eyes wild, like she had caught me in a devious act, but when she looked into me there was a waiver of uncertainty.

"...aren't you?"

Finding my voice was easy this time. "No more than I usually am."

Blinking was her only response.

"In truth," I said with caution, "you are easier than the other clients."

Lifting my rag I asked, "do you require more of my services?"

She stood from the bath. She went straight for the exit and never looked back. She did not retrieve her kimono and yet it materialized over her before she reached the sliding door.

With trepidation I tiptoed out of the room, encountering the Master on just outside the door. They had seen the woman leave quite abruptly and assumed --not without unfair reasoning I suppose-- that I had offended her. I lost my week's salary for that. Food would have to be rationed. Unless I took to hunting vermin.

I did not see her, Kuchisake-onna, for a week following that day. I found myself lingering at the red bridge over the Eternal River, and not for the usual reason. She never appeared.

That week ended with a rainstorm. The only attributes that make my house a house is that I live there. Otherwise it is a shack that I threw an old mattress into. The roof leaks and the floor is uncovered. When the downpour turns torrential my bed can become a raft in the mud underneath. I lay there, curled into a ball for warmth and to quell my hunger pains. I have a dream of the wind tearing down my walls and the mud carrying me into the Eternal River. The river consumes me like a living thing. It's innards are warm and safe and final. In moments I fade away into nothingness.

I have had this dream many times over this last year. This time it is different. Just before I become one with the river it trembles. A drop of water has landed on the still surface. It is not rain, but a tear. A tear from a pair of amber eyes. This jogs me out of sleep in time to see the dawn.

Work progressed as it usually did. The Master returned to paying me and I thanked them for their generosity. This night I don't go home. I sit on the edge of the red bridge and wait. I wait until long after the lantern over me snuffs out and my legs go numb. I look into the river and see a sad reflection. This is what my life has come to.

"Where are you?" I ask the black night.

"Here."

She is behind me. She was always behind me. We lock eyes. She raises her left hand, revealing her scalpel.

"Are you afraid of me?"

I cannot explain how I felt seeing her again. Joy and fear melded into a single, irregular emotion. I wanted the feeling to last, so I answer her question with honesty.

"I'm afraid of everyone. Afraid of their stares. Their whispers. I'm afraid when they are angry and I'm afraid when they are kind. I'm afraid of myself most of all, and what the darkest part of me craves as an end to that fear. But you? I can't find myself to be afraid of you. Perhaps at first, but now you are familiar. I can...I can talk to you."

My legs are still numb, but I stand. When I move towards her she threatens me back with the scalpel.

"Do you think I'm beautiful?"

The scalpel twists on the precipice of my throat. I can only see her eyes.

"Do you?" I ask.

She shakes. Those amber eyes shimmer. Her hand quivers, nicking my neck and drawing blood. When she sees this she pulls away to the edge of the bridge and holds herself tight. She sobs and crouches into a ball. Her eyes vanish behind her white hair.

"I don't know what beauty is anymore...I was beautiful once, am I beautiful now? I don't think so. I can't be."

Her fingers brush the scars on her cheeks. "I can't be." She repeats to herself

She rushes towards me. Her kimono flairs behind her as she forces me against the railing. One hand grips my cheeks while the other hovers the scalpel over my open mouth. She gnashes her teeth and snarls. Her amber eyes are alive with fire.

"You will give me a straight answer: Am. I. Beautiful?"

Beneath us I can hear the Eternal River running cold and deep. It no longer calls to me like nights passed. I whisper my answer to her, my eyes never leaving hers.

"You give me reason to live."

She drops the scalpel. I have shattered her world and it shows on her face. Our struggle becomes an embrace that lasts an eternity as we bury our faces into the shoulder of the other.

It is an embrace we have shared many times since. While the years have passed I have have never been much wealthier, or in better station, since I was young and worked in the bathhouse, but I can forever say that when I cross the red bridge over the Eternal River it is not with the dark thoughts I did prior. It is with yearning for the love that waits for me on the other side: the beautiful woman that gives me life.