The next morning came with a comfortable awkwardness- we were four people (Matsu had joined us in the middle of the night, right before I finally managed to get to sleep) in close contact, rousing ourselves from sleep. And sure, that involved a lot of incidental touching, but we didn't get weird with it... well, mostly.

Musubi stretched her arms high up and yawned, her own loaner kimono having lost its valiant battle against her tits at some point after she'd laid down for the night and now hanging wide open. I had the decency to avert my eyes, on account I was reasonably sure Musubi and I weren't quite 'see each other naked' close just yet, but Matsu...

Well, Matsu chose to wolf-whistle instead.

"Alright, alright," I groused, slowly extricating myself from the tangled pile of bodies. "Have a little class, Matsu."

I noticed that Akitsu was blushing too, looking at Musubi... but, then, also looking at Matsu, and then at myself. What exactly she was thinking about there was hard to discern; I wouldn't have been too surprised if she told me that she was simply being gay about the three busty women she'd shared a bed with last night, but I was reasonably confident there was something else going on there, which... I would not be finding out anytime soon, I don't think.

"Ooooh, Rose-tan speaks Japanese now," Matsu said, wiggling excitedly.

I stared blankly at her.

"This is how you speak Japanese?" I asked.

"Mhm!"

"I am now going to ignore everything you say that isn't in English," I said.

Matsu cackled, and I groaned as I finished standing up, adjusting my clothes- I hadn't worn any particular bedclothes to sleep, but I'd live- and heading for the bedroom door.

----------------------------------------

"Ohayo," Miya said as she saw me walk downstairs. "Breakfast will be ready soon," she continued in English.

"I thank you for your patience and accommodation, Asama-san," I said in unaccented Japanese. "However, it is my great pleasure to inform you that I now speak Japanese, and it is no longer strictly necessary for you to restrict yourself to English with me."

"Ara, ara," Miya said, even doing the thing where she brought the back of her hand up to her mouth. "You learned fast, Corcoran-san." It was interesting, listening to her drop momentarily into a bit of an American accent in the process of pronouncing my last name, and then right back into a pure Japanese accent. But, y'know, it's not my fault that my chosen last name is unpronounceable in Japanese. "I'll have to set my expectations accordingly."

"I will, unfortunately, need to spend time attending to things outside myself," I said. "I have no way of speeding those up, unlike my studies. No amount of accelerated learning can cut red tape as efficiently as I'd like."

"That's where Matsu-tan comes in," Matsu said, walking downstairs behind me. "She is very good at hacking, after all."

"See?" Miya said, stirring something in a skillet. "No excuses."

"...Matsu, I know I said I was going to ignore everything you said in that awful third-person baby voice," I began, "but... Miya, you're not going to discourage that at all?"

"How Matsu-san chooses to refer to herself is her own business," Miya said primly.

"No, I meant falsifying my records to defraud employers and also the government," I said.

"That is also Matsu-san's business," Miya said.

"Even with the rule against 'illicit activity?'" I asked.

"I don't see how this counts."

"...You don't actually know what the word 'illicit' means, do you?" I asked.

"You must be very confident in your Japanese," Miya said, her bright smile becoming an intimidating warning. Right, keep forgetting she's an insane person.

"Then again, I've been wrong before," I said. "Anyway, may I ask what you're cooking?"

Sufficiently mollified, Miya dropped the intimidation and continued talking as though nothing had happened. "Egg fried rice."

"Smells great."

"Do you have any plans today?" Miya asked.

"Not plans, necessarily, but... priorities," I said. "I need to spend time with the people who live here, get to know them better... or, really, at all, on a personal level. I also need to continue my learning, because speaking Japanese isn't enough to get a good job to support myself and my friends. And also, I need to get my documentation sorted out..."

My phone rang in my pocket, and I pulled it out to hang up. Unfortunately, hanging up was out of the question now; it had been hijacked to show a video call from an absolutely insane-looking man.

His hair was stark white, as was the extravagant suit he wore, along with the actual goddamn cape with the fucking Dracula collar. You could tell how much you'd hate a man just by how popped his collar was, and this man on my phone had popped the mother of all collars.

"Welcome to Japan!" he declared in English. "And, more importantly, welcome to the Sekirei Plan, hosted by me, Hiroto Minaka! Are you ready for the-"

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

"Perdon," I interrupted. "No hablo ingles. Habla usted espanol?"

Minaka's glasses stopped being at the right angle to be opaque with glare, and I could see him blinking, like I'd hit him between the eyes with a baseball. I'm going to have to bust out this line again, the next time I wanna mess with someone who speaks English.

"Si!" Minaka said, informing me of the dangers of my idea. "Yo hablo muchos idiomas, y espanol es un de esos!"

"...Porque?" I asked.

"Porque lo hace usted?" he replied.

"Soy de un lugar donde ellos hablan espanol."

He shook his head, sighing. "Eso es una razon terrible para aprender un idioma. Yo deberia saber- por eso aprendi japones, y lo lamento todos los dias."

"Alright, well, we'll chalk this one up as a win for you," I said in English. "Seriously, why do you speak Spanish?"

"I used to be a huge King of the Hill fan," Minaka said. "Spent all my spare time learning what I thought would be the sorts of things a Texan could reasonably know on the basis of being Texan. Spanish was the easy part, really; do you have any idea how hard it is to find space to ride horses in Japan?"

"At least you had an easy time learning all about propane accessories," I said.

"Japan uses different 'propane accessories,'" Minaka said, with finger quotes. "It was an unreasonable hassle to figure out how to use Japanese propane tanks with an imported American grill."

"The connectors are a worldwide standard, so all you really need is a pressure regulator," I pointed out. "But, then, you're not really a mechanic, so..."

"I am not," Minaka said. "Now, hrm... ah, damn, forgot where I was- ah! Right! The Sekirei Plan!"

"I must say- despite any personal distaste I may or may not feel, the simple act of fucking with you is way more fun than I anticipated."

"It is nice to finally meet someone willing to talk back to me," Minaka said, nodding. "Now, the Sekirei Plan-"

"Matsu already told me the outline," I said. "Sekirei are released into Tokyo-"

"Shinto Teito," Minaka insisted. "The name was changed."

"Yeah, and they renamed Bombay to Mumbai, but nobody gives a shit about that, either," I said. "Anyway, then they all get winged, and it becomes a battle royale that only ends when one Sekirei is left standing. And then there's an ambiguous prize, which may in fact simply be 'you're the last one standing, congrats, now nobody else can hurt you.'"

"Hmph," Minaka said, folding his arms. "Stupid Matsu, stealing my thunder..."

"There is, actually, still a point to this conversation," I said. "Why are you doing this? What's the point? What's in it for you?"

Minaka hummed quietly. "...Well," he said after a few moments of contemplation. "You think the prize is ambiguous, do you? Need some extra incentive?"

"Oh you cryptic son of a bitch," I said.

"Right now, we're in the First Stage," Minaka said. "Once ninety one of the one hundred and eight Sekirei have been winged, the Second Stage begins, and the city goes into lockdown. Once the remaining Sekirei have been either winged or terminated-" now there was a creepy word. "-we then enter the Third Stage, where I start picking Ashikabi to participate in special, staged matches. Win one of those matches, and I'll answer any question you ask of me with the full, unvarnished truth."

"It's going to take you that long to find an answer that isn't 'because I felt like it,' huh?" I asked.

"You'll see," Minaka said, before hanging up.

I sighed deeply and profoundly.

"You understand why I don't work for him anymore, right?" Matsu asked.

"What I don't get is why anyone started working for him," I said. "Right. Well. We're going to be... seriously derailing things, aren't we?"

"That's the idea," Matsu said, nodding.

"Well. That's another item on the agenda."

"There are other things," Miya added. "You'll need to learn where the important things are in this neighborhood, so you can run errands and buy groceries on your own."

"Right, right," I said, nodding. "I do have a GPS on my phone, but I can still understand the value of having a good mental map of my surroundings."

"After breakfast, Uzume-san will introduce you to Japanese hygiene standards," Miya continued. "After that, you, Musubi-san, and Akitsu-san are accompanying me to the supermarket."

I considered my options carefully. On the one hand, I was a full-grown adult who did not take well to being ordered around.

On the other hand, Miya is a very intimidating woman who does not take 'no' for an answer, and seems to think she is now my Stereotypical Asian Mother- which is simultaneously funny and tragic when I remember that she's not Japanese, and arrived on Earth as an adult; all of her Japanese acculturation was acquired as an adult, after she married a Japanese man by the name of Asama Takehito, who... uh...

...Well, let's just say he only stopped working for Minaka because he stopped being able to do much of anything. His normalcy was very much in question.

"Aye, Captain," I said in Japanese, because I was still a smartass.

"We'll also need to figure out what it is Americans eat," Miya continued. "How well do you understand your own dietary needs?"

"I... I mean, I can eat Japanese food just fine," I said. "Is this something about how most Japanese people are lactose intolerant, and most white people aren't? Because that doesn't mean I have to eat cheese with every meal- in fact, it's probably a good idea to continue not doing that."

"Right, you're Jewish," Matsu said. "Can't have milk and meat at the same time."

"Also can't eat pork," I added. "Or shellfish."

"I see, I see," Miya said, finally un-panning the huge amount of egg fried rice she'd made, and beginning to portion it out. "Well, we eat a mostly vegetarian diet here, so accommodating that should be very easy. Are you able to eat beef, lamb, or chicken?"

"Those are fair game, yeah," I said, nodding. "Now, speaking very strictly, Jewish law forbids the consumption of any meat that was not slaughtered in a kosher manner; the kosher method of slaughter is very humane, and ensures that the animal's heart isn't racing right before death, so it's easier to drain all the blood out. However, my observation of Jewish law is slightly more lenient than is orthodox, so..." I shrugged. "As long as there isn't pork or crab in the food, I'll probably eat whatever's in front of me."

"Good to hear."

"Unless it's unreasonably spicy," I said. "This isn't Kosher, this is just me being a baby. Please don't feed me anything hot enough to melt steel."

Miya's soft smile took on a cruel aspect. "We'll work on that."