I woke up the next morning with a splitting headache. Light was pouring in through a window. Vera was still fast asleep, snoring like the sound of a saw cutting wood. Akari was awake, sitting next to me and sipping tea.

“What time is it?” I asked.

She glanced out the window at the sun. “Roughly 8AM,” she answered.

Ugh, far too early for a man with a hangover.

“I'm going back to sleep. Wake me at noon, OK?”

“No, please don't go back to sleep. I'm actually very glad you woke up. I need you for something.”

What now. I really didn't feel good. Not only did I have a terrible hangover that made my brain feel like it was trying to explode out of my skull, I was also starting to remember the events of the night before. I couldn't believe what an idiot Id been! Thinking of all the money I'd thrown away on that geisha THOT, I smacked myself in the forehead, which only made my headache worse.

"Would you care for some breakfast? Our hostess was kind enough to bring us some just before you woke up."

I struggled to sit up, and was hit by a wave of nausea.

"No... No thanks. I don't think I can eat anything right now."

Akari shook her head. "I think you should try this. Seaweed soup with herbs. It's very good for hangovers."

I shrugged, and tried a sip of the soup bowl she was offering. It had a mild, salty taste-- not very tasty but at least it didn't make me vomit. I finished the bowl and was surprised to find my hangover disappearing.

"Wow, thanks Akari! That was great!"

With my hangover gone, I started devouring the rest of the food on the table. Dried fish, natto, sticky rice, and some various pickled vegetables.

While I ate, Akari started to speak.

"I'm glad you woke up. Actually, I was thinking of waking you if you didn't wake up soon naturally."

"Oh? Do we need to leave?"

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"No, it's fine. We can stay here until around noon. or even later. They will not be busy again until the be evening.

"Oh that's good. Still, I better wake up Vera. Knowing her, she'll be mad at me if she misses breakfast, and I don't want to have to deal with that for the whole ride home."

But Akari shook her head. "No, don't wake her yet. I want to do something with just the two of us."

"Oh! Uh, yeah, sorry about my stupidity last night. I changed my mind—I’d like to do that stuff with you after all." I was hopeful. I turned her down last night because I was pining after the hostess, but now I could appreciate Akari's charms. She had a very slim, almost boyish figure that didn't normally appeal to me, but now I could appreciate her charms.

But Akari dashed my hopes. "Baka. No. Please forget everything that I said last night. That will be a black history for me, one that will never be repeated."

"Ok, then what the hell do you want to do?" I said. I was now a bit peeved by her mixed messages.

"Before we left, Sydney gave me a secondary mission to investigate the airship designs here. Those designs are a closely guarded secret, so we will have to sneak in. I do not believe Vera is capable of keeping her mouth shut for such a mission, so I did not tell her. But I you might be able to help me."

Now that sounded interesting! A secret spy mission! Hell yeah! Except...

"You know I'm not exactly a ninja, right? I can't even speak the language here. I don't know how I'm going to help you with this."

"I know. Do not worry, I have a plan. I will explain on the way."

And so we left the hostess club. Vera was still snoring away in our room, but we left her a note saying to meet us at our airship when she woke up.

We walked through a fascinating labyrinth of small streets on our way to the docks. Each street was jam-packed with people, most of them wearing strange robes and carrying a bizarre assortment of items. The sides of the streets were lined with buildings of brick walls and curvy ceramic-tile roofs, with paper-covered doors leading into small shops and homes. Each one was labeled with kanji signs that I couldn’t read. I couldn’t make any sense of the organization here, it looked like absolute chaos to me, but everyone else seemed to know exactly where they were going.

Meanwhile Akari was walking along next to me, explaining her plan. I tried to listen—really I did—but it was very complicated and boring. Meanwhile I kept getting distracted by the sights around me. A glass tank full of fish, for example. A table full of fine silk robes. A dark, seedy looking room with sinister green smoke coming out the windows. A large shirtless man cutting up a live octopus. Even an honest-to-god sword-smith working on a katana. It was all like I had imagined from Samurai Champloo or Ronin Warriors.

“So that’s the plan. Got it!?” said Akari. That’s when I realized that we had reached our destination. The airship hangers near the bay were at the other end of the street, guarded by a man and a woman, both very serious soldier-types carrying katanas.

A smarter man would have been paying attention to what she said, and a humbler man would have asked her to repeat everything. But that was them, and I was me, Eddie Ezler. I didn’t want her to call me stupid again.

“Yep! Got it! Let’s do this!” I replied cheerfully.

They say the most important thing in life is confidence. It was time to test that theory. I marched straight towards the guards with as much confidence as I could muster.