The Weight of Womanhood

Part 1

"I am a laureate of the Nishina Memorial Prize, honored with the strict Japan Academy Prize, the holder of the international and almost mythical Japan Prize, once in my youth also an honorary recipient of the Young Scientist Award from the Physical Society of Japan, and several times listed for the Nobel Prize in Physics. I am Saito Masanori, and I will never be some kind of girl who—"

— Harumi, tell me honestly, — the voice of Hisamori Tatsunori, the head of the clan, her father, cut off the girl’s thought as she sat in seiza opposite the heavy shadow of his massive figure, which loomed over her with knitted brows. He spoke calmly, like an executioner who is merely clarifying something with a criminal before the execution, — is all of this meant to disgrace me?

Harumi, who in truth was Saito Masanori, a 62-year-old Japanese man who, after an experiment with the fabric of time, ended up in the past and in her body, slowly drew in a breath, feeling how the tight red collar of the kimono pressed under her throat. Her breasts, already quite heavy, felt as if they had been filled with lead, expanding with that breath and becoming exactly the kind of center of attention she did not want to think about right now.

"He accuses me of disgrace? Me? I have done more for this world in a year than the entire Japanese civilization would do in the next hundred years."

She raised her gaze. The glasses, her own invention, slid along the bridge of her nose. The tall, elaborate hairstyle pulled at the skin on her temples, forcing her to keep her back straight so she would not accidentally tilt her head back and appear weak.

— With all due respect… — quietly, almost in a whisper, — my achievements—

— YOUR achievements?! — Tatsunori roared so loudly that the sliding doors trembled, and a cold shock ran down Harumi’s spine, making her shoulders involuntarily draw in under the weight of the kimono sleeves. — You call this achievements, Harumi? A girl is supposed to be silence and serve the house with modesty!

He took a step forward, and a heavy shadow fell onto her knees, as if pressing down from above, pinning her to the tatami together with this entire ancient system into which Saito had fallen a year ago.

Harumi sharply lowered her gaze, trying to hide the rage boiling inside. Her breasts obediently swayed from the sudden movement, and that alone became an insult to her current existence.

"Stupid military idiot!" — Harumi thought, clenching her teeth and taking a deep breath to calm the trembling in her body, which seemed to openly enjoy the chance to expose her as weak.

Tatsunori remained silent for too long. This silence was worse than a shout. It pressed down, like his shadow on her knees.

Part 2

A soft rustle came from behind the door, and she understood that it was her “mother.” She stood there, not daring to come in while her husband was speaking. And that was the maximum she dared at that moment to support her daughter. But Harumi only snorted when she heard those faint sounds.

"I know how much I’ve done. She hears everything right now. And she still stays silent. A cowardly woman. And he wants me to become like that? Never."

— Answer me, — Tatsunori said, no louder than a whisper, but there was katana steel in that whisper. He slowly lowered himself to his knees opposite her, resting his fists on his thighs, meeting her gaze. — Did you deliberately decide to disgrace our family name?

Harumi jerked her chin angrily, feeling how the tight obi painfully bit into her waist, not even letting her breathe properly. Something heavy shifted in her breasts — as if her own body was reminding her of who she was considered to be now. She clenched her hands on her knees, her nails digging into the fabric of the kimono.

— I, — she said quietly but evenly, — I solved problems that—

— THAT men are supposed to solve! — he raised his voice again, but he was not shouting, no, it was the growl of a beast that had returned from war and saw something wrong at home.

— You questioned the order. You forced the council to say your name out loud. You forced men whose wives and daughters stay silent behind screens to hear that a woman of the Hisamori family is smarter than them.

Tatsunori leaned closer. His shadow became shorter but heavier, as if pressing locally — straight onto her breasts, forcing her breathing to become shallow.

Harumi — or Masanori, inside shaking with rage — slowly exhaled, feeling how her soft, heavy breasts under the kimono unpleasantly swayed and rubbed against her ribs.

"Yes, smarter. Much smarter. I am smarter than everyone here."

Making an effort, she adjusted her glasses, trying not to look away from her “father’s” gaze.

— The council… — she tried to keep her voice even, — the council is waiting for my answer. Scientists from the capital want—

He cut her off with a simple, not even sharp, movement of his hand, and that made it worse. And in the next moment his palm came down, grabbed her glasses, tore them off her face, and immediately threw them aside. The world before her eyes instantly became slightly blurred, soft, irritatingly unclear.

— You don’t need these, they only make you uglier, — he said, as if placing the final seal on a sentence. — And I don’t give a shit about the council and the scientists. What matters is that everyone already knows. This is shame. And if I allow you to continue… thinking like men, — he spat to the side, — the Hisamori house will lose its face.

The silence thickened, and then he said the words that made everything inside her collapse, like poorly secured scrolls falling from a shelf.

Part 3

— In a month, you will be betrothed.

Harumi slowly raised her head. She felt something shudder in her breasts. No equation, no time paradox ever struck her nerves the way those two words did.

— What? — she breathed out.

The words rang in her head like after a bell strike. Something twisted inside her.

"Married? To a man? Me? I’d rather…" — the thought broke off, crashing into the reality of her current body: heavy breasts, a tight obi, long feminine arms resting on her knees.

— A groom is already being considered, — he reported calmly, as if he were talking about moving barrels of rice, not about her life. — But before I allow anyone to take you into their house, you must cleanse our name.

He leaned forward so that she caught the smell of ash from his armor.

— Starting tomorrow, you will begin service at the Hiruyama temple. Sweeping the courtyard, ritual ablutions, assisting the shrine maidens. You will show humility.

Harumi’s breath caught. She imagined it: the cold stone floor, water that made the skin tighten, endless bows… and her own body, which over the past year had already forced her through many things she would rather not even think about.

"He wants me — one of the smartest people of the 21st century, a person the most influential people in Japan listened to, and certainly, even in this ridiculous body, the smartest person of this era, the one who solved equations that made their entire council nearly faint — he wants me to… wash steps?"

She swallowed very slowly the lump that rose to her throat, understanding that in this time openly opposing men, especially her father, was akin to death. And yet—

— Scientists are waiting for a meeting, — she said, trying to keep her voice even. — My developments—

— NO ONE is waiting for women, — he cut her off sharply. — Men are enough for them.

He tilted his head slightly, examining her like a failed sword: too flexible, too shiny, too noticeable.

— After the temple — courses in women’s arts.

He said it so casually that Harumi did not even understand at first.

— You will learn embroidery, quiet walking, manners before guests. Everything girls are taught. — he took a breath, — And before men you will become an example of modesty. You will serve tea. Bow. Speak little. Not a single hint of your… intellect.

He pronounced the word “intellect” as if it were something dirty.

He narrowed his eyes for a moment:

— You will sit next to those who cannot read. And you will learn from them. Understood?

Part 4

Harumi felt the air in the room grow thicker. She swallowed, even though her throat barely obeyed her.

— …learn? From them? — the words slipped from her lips on their own, and she cursed herself for how alive it sounded, almost like a frightened girl, and that, it seemed, was already the last straw, she added, boiling over — they’re just stupid bitches!

She couldn’t hold it in. The phrase burst out on its own, though it should have stayed only in her head.

Tatsunori froze, watching how his daughter’s hands jerked toward her lips. But it was already too late.

It felt as if a soundless shockwave rolled through the room with such force that everything inside Harumi clenched. His eyelids twitched almost imperceptibly. He did not blink. He did not breathe. He only slowly, very slowly straightened his back, as if that short remark were a blade she had thrown straight into his face.

— Stupid… bitches? — he said so quietly that the silence around them seemed to fade.

The shadow of his figure grew wider. It crawled across the tatami, blocking the light, blocking the air, blocking everything.

Harumi felt the blood drain from her face, and her breasts swayed again as she tried to inhale. The long, tightly pulled knot at the back of her head began to ache, as if reminding her: you are in ancient Japan now. You are a woman now, a daughter. You said that — as a daughter.

— Father… — she began, but he raised his palm like a judge who had already decided everything.

— I will pretend I did not hear that. No one heard it! — he said louder, looking toward the door.

But in the next moment his face twisted with something like personal humiliation. The kind that burns beneath the armor of a man who returned from war, only to receive a wound at home far deeper than any saber cut.

— NO ONE HEARD IT! — he repeated, as if trying to drown out the very fact of her words.

Behind the sliding partition came a hurried, sobbing sound:

— Yes, husband…

Harumi felt a heavy shiver of helplessness run down her spine. She understood her position too well — the one she had tried to escape with her mind all through the past year, while her “father” was at war.

Tatsunori slowly turned back to her. And what had once been anger had now become something far more dangerous.

Cold resolve.

— You have disgraced my house, — he said quietly, but in a way that made the air in the room turn hard. — And worse than that… you have shown that the rotten root in you runs deeper than I thought.

He rose to his feet, and Harumi had to lift her head to see him.

— The temple, — he said. — A year. Marriage can wait. The insolence must be torn out of you completely.

— A YEAR?! — it tore out of her, too sharp, too loud, almost with the same desperation as a drowning person clawing at air.

She heard her own cry as if it had not come from her breasts at all, but from somewhere outside — too thin, too high. Her breasts jerked painfully with the sharp inhale, shifting heavily under the dense fabric of the kimono, and the belt bit into her body so deeply it was as if it were trying to choke her protest by force.

Part 5

Tatsunori turned back to her in a single step, and she felt the wave of his cold fury wash over her completely. His gaze narrowed as if throwing blades were about to be launched from it.

— Two.

A pause. A pause that made the fingers resting on her knees go cold.

She swallowed, clenching her teeth and her fists.

— …two? — the breath slipped out on its own, weak, almost torn.

Tatsunori straightened up like a man to whom everything had finally become clear. And when he spoke again, his words were measured with heavy, cruel precision, as if he were chopping into stone.

— The term will only grow with every objection you make to me.

Inside Harumi, everything collapsed into some empty well of her consciousness. It was worse than any sentence. It was a noose tightening not by rules, but by the whim of one man whose power here was absolute.

Tatsunori no longer looked at her as someone to talk to. Only as a problem that had to be crushed until it disappeared completely.

— Do you want to say anything else? — he said slowly. — Maybe another objection? Or something about the council?

Her lips trembled.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to laugh — hysterically, viciously, the way people laugh when reality suddenly becomes so absurd that the mind refuses to accept it. But she stayed silent.

Her father nodded approvingly — briefly, dryly, as if stamping a document, finally sealing her fate. Harumi lowered her gaze, feeling hot shame spread across her skin beneath the layers of silk, feeling how her breasts, heavy and so large, shuddered in rhythm with her desperate breathing.

Tatsunori no longer thought it necessary to speak to her. He turned sharply and took a step toward the exit. The long shadow of his figure slid across Harumi’s knees, and for a moment she let out a barely noticeable exhale, not yet fully understanding why, and closed her eyes. When he slid the door open, “mother” slipped past — small and bent — and her gaze lingered on her daughter for only a second, and there was no compassion in it, only some kind of resigned horror.

Tatsunori, without turning around, said coldly, "Prepare yourself. Morning will come early," — and his footsteps, heavy and confident, vanished down the corridor, leaving Harumi in the half-dark room alone with such a silent humiliation that it felt as if it pressed on her harder than the heavy hairstyle on her head.