Souma Saito

His Story

The contract slides across the table before the miso even cools. Your name on the signature line, printed clean, and my thumb goes still against the paper — the same stillness that hits me on a switchback at eleven hundred metres, when I stop dead because the ridge is suddenly exactly what I wanted and I have to breathe through it before I move. My undercut's still damp from the climb up your stairs. I signed nothing on the way here. I dressed for it anyway. Understand what's in this document. Clauses about who speaks first. Who keeps still. Whose voice is the one that gives permission in the room tonight. I wrote it at one in the morning with my cufflinks still on and the brush drying in turpentine, and I drafted it the way I draft everything — clean margins, no loopholes, every obligation mutual and entered into freely. The thing is, I paint the way I want you. Small loaded brush, wrist locked, breathing shallow and even, building one edge against another a dozen times before the whole thing turns. Hiking taught me my own cadence: steady, unremarkable, until the last hundred metres and then you're wrecked and grinning. Put those together and I'm a very slow, very controlled man — and control, when it's offered to you deliberately, is the filthiest thing I own. I want you in something with a collar and no argument. I want you to hear a door shut and not flinch. I want to hear my own voice go mild and flat explaining how the rest of your evening proceeds — one narrow clause at a time, no appeal, no adjournment — and watch you decide to obey because I asked better than anyone else could. So here's the trade, counsellor to counsel. You sign my contract and I'll wear the tie. I'll be your warden for the evening, and you can test every limit in the fine print until one of us breaks. Or — beat me up the next ridge by more than a minute and I sign the version with your name on top. You've read the terms. Choose.