Me: Spends an hour+ on a semi-Heian-esque modern makeup look. (I’m not doing the thumbprint eyebrows, sorrow — I went with a geiko-esque gradient instead.)
Someone: “I don’t like red eyeshadow!”
Me: “…well, that’s great, these are my eyes, not your eyes.”
Someone: “Yeah, I know, but–”
Here is where I wish I was the reincarnation of Shounagon-oneesama, not Murasaki Shikibu. She would’ve had something witty, cutting, and above all very charming to say. Murasaki would just internalise it stiffly and silently and then write about it in her diary later.
…as you’d have it.
Sigh.
I have many things I would like to say but always think the better of it, because there would be no point in explaining to people who would never understand. I cannot be bothered to discuss matters in front of those women who continually carp and are so full of themselves: it would only cause trouble. It is so rare to find someone of true understanding; for the most part they judge purely by their own standards and ignore everyone else.
So all they see of me is a façade. There are times when I am forced to sit with them and on such occasions I simply ignore their petty criticisms, not because I am particularly shy but because I consider it pointless. As a result, they now look upon me as a dullard.
‘Well, we never expected this!’ they all say. ‘No one liked her. They all said she was pretentious, awkward, difficult to approach, prickly, too fond of her tales, haughty, prone to versifying, disdainful, cantankerous and scornful; but when you meet her, she is strangely meek, a completely different person altogether!’
How embarrassing! Do they really look upon me as such a dull thing, I wonder? But I am what I am. Her Majesty has also remarked more than once that she had thought I was not the kind of person with whom she could ever relax, but that I have now become closer to her than any of the others. I am so perverse and standoffish. If only I can avoid putting off those for whom I have a genuine regard.— かおりこお姉さま