Year of the Boar, Third Month, Day 18.

The daily ritual of Court dinner is looming, I wish above all else that I did not have to attend, I really cannot stand it. The Nobles of the House all vying for my attention, making demands, wanting this or that or bringing grievances about each other. As if I care about any of it... The endless falling over each other to gain my favour when all it would really take is for them to leave me alone... They think me aloof, haughty and I.. do not care... I never asked to be put in this position and however much I relished it when I was a girl, I have come to loathe it and everything it stands for... This evening, Dying Crane entertains the Lord and Lady Fallen Sakura again... the middle of a week of diplomatic talks between allies... No doubt Lord Shigeru will find his way to my bedchambers in the dead of night... wanting to paw me and worse... I often wonder if his wife knows... and if she does, what must she think of me...? Can she actually imagine that I enjoy her husband's attentions...? That I have been enjoying them since I was a child who knew no better..? That I *want* him...? The thought of him touching me again makes me nauseous... I shall have to smoke twice my usual dose of opium just to get through the night...
I often ask myself why I still allow him to even set foot in Dying Crane, let alone bed me... and the answer I am forced to give is that it gets me what I want... I pleasure Lord Shigeru and Lord Shigeru protects Dying Crane... Oh, but he makes me sick... and now I shall have to go down to the banquet hall and make eyes at him when he suffocates me with appalling poetry about my legendary beauty ... through the court bard of course, he would never do it openly... the time for that stopped when he married the widowed Lady Ryouka of Crying Orchid for her money... I wonder if she knows that... I really should keep up with the court gossip better... then I would know these things... I do remember that I spent that wedding in the haze of the weed... and that two days before the wedding, Lord Shigeru made his position quite clear... which is *why* I spent the wedding stoned... He hurt me quite badly when I told him I would no longer accept his advances and told me that I *would* or he would see to it that Dying Crane became Dead Crane...
The dinner gong clangs... I must dress... and go...