Year of the Boar, Fifth Month, Day 28.

Will this... humiliation I feel, ever go away...? I grow increasingly sure with each passing day that what I thought had been kept secret, known only to a few favourites (and Itsuki, of course) has in fact become known to half the Kingdom... Itsuki tells me that I bring shame upon the House with my "continued absences and erratic behaviour" she told me this afternoon that I am not the "first mistress to have been spurned" and that it was high time I returned to my duties and stopped behaving like a spoilt child because if I did not, there would be consequences. Spurned mistress...? Is this what people are saying of me? That I am sulking in my rooms because my married lover rejected me...? That I *asked* for any of this to happen to me...? That I *did* throw myself at him...? If Itsuki thinks to shock me into leaving my rooms, she will be sorely disappointed for I will not. Especially now that the whole world gossips.
His Lordship Broken Rampart paid another visit today - he wished to return the horse Dying Crane had lent him when last he broke his journey and how it is possible, I do not know but this meeting was more of a disaster than the last. I at least started the tea ceremony in a calmer state than I had conducted the last - and managed the small -talk expected of me, but after only a short while, his Lordship began asking questions about Dying Crane and the servants and although I am aware that the ways of Dying Crane are not his ways I was shocked and actually fumbled with the tea whisk, sending it clattering onto the table; an obscene splatter of green droplets of tea marring the pristine bamboo. Horrified I looked up at him as I ruined the Hospitality ceremony. Knowing that I had just given Itsuki the excuse she needed to denounce me at council. It seemed that in that moment, I became undone, I began to shake violently, my body refusing to respond to the signals that my brain sent and when Lord Broken Rampart actually began to clean up the mess, I fairly had an attack of the hysterics. Begging him not to, apologising in babbling rambling torrents that made absolutely no sense at all, even to me. I could see his confusion in his face as he tried to make things right... Seeing my distress, he made towards me in a gesture of placation but I felt frightened, irrational and all of a sudden I was in that room with another; another, who would do me harm as he had before and I couldn't let it happen again, I couldn't.
There followed a period of time for which I cannot account but I found myself in my bed, and the Lord Broken Rampart promising me that he would return the next day. I sensed a pent-up anger within him and I felt shamed again that I had ruined the Hospitality. As soon as he had gone I smoked three pipes successively; inhaling and holding the smoke as long as I could, willing it to soothe me but it did not. And when I had smoked the last of my opium, I vomited violently for a long time. This is becoming a habit. I am frightened. I do not know what to do and I trust no one. Oh... gods... will you not end this. Please.