Meet Yuiko
#1 of Yuiko's Story
Yuiko was never quite sure how to respond when people asked her about her job. "Miss Eliza's," she'd say, unsure how they would take it. Some people's eyes would grow wide in disbelief, either condemning her for being unwholesome or looking her up and down to determine for themselves whether she fit the body type to work there. She did, but that wasn't part of her job.
There were a few, however, who would cock their heads and ask, "What's that?" Here's where things would get tricky.
Yuiko never could answer right away, pausing long enough to give it some good thought. Miss Eliza's was a lot of things. It was a restaurant, a bar, a strip club, and, bluntly put, a sort of prostitution ring, just not as low-lifey and dirty.
"Think Hooters meets Polekatz and Chippendales meets sex-garden," she'd often reply and leave them with that, or with a, "Come down and see for yourself."
She was not employed the way most people were, though. She worked behind the counter, checking people in and making reservations, sometimes making small talk with the regulars if it was busy as they waited for Sascha to seat them. She was also a recruiter like her brother, Roscoe. This job was close to her heart because she was saved this way.
Yuiko used to be a prostitute back before she met her boyfriend, Dimitri, and long before she kicked her heroin habit. She was only sixteen-years-old when she started working corners. Her brother had begun selling drugs two years prior when he was sixteen himself. Their parents had run off on them; they only had each other.
When Yuiko was nineteen she was approached by a beautiful spotted hyena with big eyelashes who pulled up in a big, green convertible. "Now aren't you way too pretty to be selling yourself out here?" This was Yuiko's first meeting with Eliza.
Eliza had taken a shine to her, offering her a desk job if she really hated the line of work she was used to. Yuiko agreed, wishing for nothing more than to stop sleeping with strangers, but with one condition. "Do you have a job for my brother, too?"
Eliza smiled warmly. "Bring your brother along. I'm sure we can use him for something."
The following night Yuiko went to Miss Eliza's and was given a desk job during the week and was expected to recruit on Saturdays. Roscoe was made a full-time recruiter, at which he positively shined. Eliza couldn't believe the number of hopefuls he brought it on a weekly basis.
Yuiko enjoyed that part of work even if she wasn't as successful as her brother. They were taking these guys and girls off the streets and bringing them into the safety of Miss Eliza's. Not just anyone could sleep with them here.
It was one year later that Roscoe recruited Sascha, a beautiful male skunk with a body girls envied and a heart too big for two skunks, who would become one of the most important people in the world for Yuiko; he was her first best friend.
Six years later and things were very much the same except that Yuiko was clean, she worked behind the register much more often than out in the streets recruiting--that had more or less become Roscoe's territory--and she was in the midst of a two-year relationship with a fox who had too many piercings for his slender face.
His name was Dimitri, and he was the last stop, she decided, on a long journey of boyfriends. Before him there had been a cat, and before that a wolf. She'd dated a few panthers and even a squirrel or two, all of whom she met when she was selling herself and all of said relationships ended, resulting in the males more or less hating her in the end. But she couldn't settle; there was just something about all of them that had gotten to her somehow, but none of them were as bad as other bats.
Yuiko was notorious for hating her own kind, except her brother, but even he tried her patience. She'd given up on the bat population long ago having been cut open and violated, leaving her hollow and jaded.
Understandably two years was a long time for a relationship with Yuiko. It was certainly the longest she'd ever endured. But she wanted to believe that Dimitri was different. She felt a strength in him that she'd been craving. One would think that being a fox would make Dimitri small and flaky, able to outrun his adversaries rather than fight. On the contrary, Dimitri was a Corsac fox, built more like a wolf than a fox, with small, squinted eyes that gave him an intimidating edge even without all his piercings.
Yuiko wanted things to work with him, forcing herself to stay no matter what and attributing any troubles they had to the notion that no relationship was perfect, every down had to have an up at some point. She made herself focus on all the good things about him, ignoring his flaws, and held tight to the idea that his strength made her feel safe. Though every so often she'd let slip the thought that maybe he wasn't as strong as she would have liked...