The Flying Cat

By now, she was even receiving cosmic admonitions. Some of it might well have been the product of her exuberant imagination. Yet something had undeniably changed in her understanding of existence ever since Aslan had become more than merely her instructor. At times she experienced sheer bliss. Virgil was, without question, the guarantor of her happiness. But Aslan was something else entirely—perhaps even a messenger of the universe. Her liaison to the cosmos. An omnipotent force, generously endowed, hypertrophied with muscle, exactly the way she liked it.

By now, she was even receiving cosmic admonitions. Some of it might well have been the product of her exuberant imagination. Yet something had undeniably changed in her understanding of existence ever since Aslan had become more than merely her instructor. At times she experienced sheer bliss. Virgil was, without question, the guarantor of her happiness. But Aslan was something else entirely—perhaps even a messenger of the universe. Her liaison to the cosmos. An omnipotent force, generously endowed, hypertrophied with muscle, exactly the way she liked it.

Never once had she confessed to one of her lanky admirers how profoundly unattractive she found unathletic men. Alisa's courtesy would not allow her to wound a man who sought admission to the office of lover. Even in the clumsy and the coarse she discovered redeeming qualities. It had become almost a quirk of hers never to be discouraged, to discover a gleaming side to the ordinary appearances of everyday life.

So she moved among people, always prepared to contribute her share to the success of the moment.

Aslan's presence aroused her. His voice alone possessed the power to deepen the dew of her desire. He charged her like a living current. Something compelled her to speak aloud what she would otherwise have kept forever to herself.

"I love being guided by you. It makes me free."

He leaned over her, his lips brushing her ear. A shiver ran through her.

"You're so sweet. I love seeing you like this—so hot, so full of anticipation."

She opened her mouth and showed him her tongue.

"Lick my neck," he whispered.

She buried her face in the hollow of his shoulder.

"My dearest," she murmured, "you honor me with your desire."

Alisa's words of love were addressed to the wrong man. The illicit couple betrayed the affection and trust of both Aiko and Virgil.

Secretly, Alisa surveyed the terrain of her friend. It revealed much that a woman of scholarly bearing and seemingly limitless self-possession should prefer an intellectually varnished bruiser like Aslan. She still knew few particulars, but already she had learned that Aslan claimed descent from an Oriental clan wrapped in legendary traditions and traced his ancestry back to princely blood.

Aslan savored Alisa's uninhibited willingness beneath the brilliance of the morning sun. Afterwards he returned to his customary role, and Alisa—if only briefly released from the tyranny of her longing—resumed her own education with appropriate seriousness. She wanted at last to master in waking life what she had long since perfected in dreams.

She practiced Hane Neko—the Winged Cat.

Aslan interrupted her constantly, correcting her posture with light touches, criticizing every imbalance.

"The power doesn't come from your arms," he said. "It comes from your point of balance. Your stance is what gives the strike meaning."

Everything he said testified to the elegance and suppleness with which he revered the form itself. Oh, Alisa still had so much to learn—and above all she needed to restrain her impulsiveness.

"The cat doesn't hunt. It waits until the trembling in the grass tells it everything."

"I want so badly to be the cat."

"Learn to see through her eyes, and you'll fly as she does."

Alisa loved the image of the flying cat. In a leap of association, the anatomical contradiction reminded her of Aiko. Wasn't she herself a flying cat walking upright? An autonomous, opaque creature unlike anyone else?

Aiko knew every intimate detail.

But why did Aiko allow it to happen?

Aslan lectured from an inexhaustible reservoir. Whenever the global entanglements of martial arts were concerned, he became academically monotonous to the point of monomania. The Winged Cat, he explained, was a Japanese form of kobudō whose archaic roots reached back to a Shaolin discipline. Hardly anyone knew that. He could be effortlessly casual when he wished, but in matters of martial history he leaned toward pedantry. The original martial designation was 飞猫 (fēi māo), with the variant 飞影猫 (fēi yǐng māo).

Voice-Over

Aslan's obsession with the Lost Tribes of the Northern Kingdom is more than spiritual fascination; it is his ticket to a professorship in the near future. Officially, he is working on a brilliant ethnohistorical monograph. Alisa will soon discover that Aiko carries the overwhelming burden of the research. Aiko is the one steering Aslan. Alisa imagines herself a powerful player, only to realize she has become another piece in a manipulative game played within the ivory tower of Ederthal.

More about Aiko

People on the autism spectrum—or those with extreme otaku tendencies—often retreat from the emotional chaos of ordinary life into private systems they can completely control. Aiko cannot make sense of the unpredictable, imperfect emotions of an ordinary romantic relationship. So she constructs a system instead. She turns Aslan into her project. By writing his habilitation thesis and recording his affairs in a meticulously maintained "court protocol," she deprives reality of its power to wound her. She becomes untouchable.

It is not uncommon for highly intellectual women to find themselves attracted to men whose masculinity borders on the cartoonish. She nourishes Aslan's monomania—his fēi māo obsession—as one might feed and domesticate a great predator.

Alisa continued to explore the landscape of her friend. It revealed much that a woman of aristocratic bearing and effortless sovereignty should favor a swaggering block of a man. What Alisa had first dismissed as a delicate anime-inspired delusion gradually revealed itself as concept art.

Aiko was staging Aslan.

She transformed the love quadrangle into a feudal pageant. She elevated Aslan into a shōgun, serving him with ritual devotion. His affairs? A man like that required secondary wives. Alisa was merely another lady-in-waiting.

The Ōoku as a Female Apparatus of Power

The Ōoku (大奥) was the women's residence within Edo Castle, housing at times several hundred, even more than a thousand women. It functioned simultaneously as court, bureaucracy, and political network.

Ordinary men were forbidden to enter. Exceptions were made only for the shōgun himself, very young princes, and a handful of specially authorized physicians and craftsmen. Administration rested entirely in female hands.

The Midaidokoro, the shōgun's official wife, occupied the highest rank. Yet in everyday affairs of the Ōoku, the Ōtoshiyori—the senior ladies—often wielded greater practical authority. They organized every aspect of court life and controlled access to the shōgun himself. Rank and real power did not always coincide. These senior attendants supervised the selection, education, and surveillance of suitable women.

Regulating the Nights

Detailed records were kept of the shōgun's visits, pregnancies, and births. Their purpose was to establish legitimate succession beyond doubt while maintaining rigid court etiquette. The elaborate regulations prevented individual women and their families from exploiting privileged access to the ruler for political advantage.

In many respects, the shōgun himself became a prisoner of this female administrative machinery.

Though formally the supreme authority, even he submitted within the Ōoku to an intricate system of female governance. His access to women, his nightly visits, and much of his private life were organized and regulated by the senior ladies of the court.

This was precisely the courtly principle Aiko recreated for her own amusement in the provincial lowlands of northern Hesse.

She was an otaku.

Originally derived from the hyper-polite Japanese form of address meaning "your house" or "your family," the word came to describe an obsessive devotion—often associated with autistic modes of cognition—that eclipses the ordinary world. Aiko did not merely collect. She dissected, classified, catalogued, and archived every minute facet of Aslan's existence. To her, this Jewish-Kurdish devotee of Japan became an accelerator of escape: a passage from an imperfect reality into a perfectly controllable system of data, rituals, and fetishized objects.

She curated him.

Hovering above everything was Aiko's melancholy sensibility: mono no aware—the poignant awareness of impermanence, the aching beauty of things precisely because they cannot last.

Aiko understood that beauty presupposes transience. She observed Aslan's academic imposture and Alisa's clandestine passion with precisely that melancholy which celebrates decay at the very instant of flowering.

To Aiko, the love quadrangle itself had become a work of art.