When I woke up, I was alone in my bed. The sunlight hit me through a porthole right in my forehead, so eventually I tired of trying to cover my eyes with a pillow and just relented and sat up. The ship was very quiet. No shouts or people running on the deck above. Maybe I expected a more rowdy environment, based on my extensive cinematographic knowledge of pirate movies, but that evidently did not prepare me for an all-female crew of pirates.

I found my boxer shorts eventually in the mess of sheets and pillows, put it on and stood up. I saw something right outside my field of view, and I turned to a sight I had not expected at all. The shock of seeing myself in a mirror for the first time in this new body would wear off eventually, but not at that moment. Maybe your age is what you make of it, or you as old as you feel inside, but damn. I think my rejuvenation probably would do wonders for my mental health too. Feeling decrepit can certainly put a damper on a lot of positive emotions.

I didn’t have any other clothes to wear, since someone had evidently taken my clothes away. And I noticed the door was now unlocked. So either someone came by and was especially carefree, or they were letting me roam free. I questioned whether to leave the cabin in my shorts, but essentially decided I didn’t care. I was on my afterlife, after all.

I opened the door cautiously. There was no one in the hallway. I decided that I might as well go out like that.

i walked on bare feet toward the upper deck. I took my time taking in the sights and sound of the ship. The vessel itself wasn’t what you would have in mind if you thought about a pirate ship. The wood paneling inside was delicate and covered in wallpaper for long stretches. Some of the portholes in the hallway were decorative and looked like church vitreaux. There was in the air a mixture of womanhood and holiness —it would be a specifically feminine type of deity in that case— and the whole thing felt more like a sorority or a cloister than a pirate’s floating den of debauchery. It seemed I had jumped to conclusions upon seeing the Jolly Roger flag and the clothes of the crew. I had to remind myself that I didn’t know anything about this world. I hadn’t even known it existed. There were dozens, maybe hundreds of worlds in the Isekai Corp Metaverse, from what I remembered from the introductory holovid they had sent me along with the pricing scheme and brochure. But I had quickly skimmed and found the one I wanted and focused on that one. I didn’t pay any attention to the rules of the other worlds.

As I climbed up the stairs to the main deck, I decided I was going to learn as much as I could. If I wanted to get back to my farmhouse, I would need to not only survive here, but to thrive so I could find a way to raise my case to the Corp. I vaguely remembered something about every world having an ICM headquarters somewhere, where you could get help the old fashioned way, by walking somewhere and talking to a —let’s say “real” for the sake of my argument— person.

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‘Well, hello, mate. I see you’re raising the white flag already.’

I turned around to see a smiling woman pirate with purple hair and an eyepatch. She had a mismatched set of colorful clothes vaguely in the shape or function of a uniform, mostly a combination of bandanas, belts, pieces of leather and pockets, with some daggers badly hidden in the leather, like a child’s bad drawing of a pirate outfit. Still, she kinda pulled it off.

‘Sorry, what do you mean?’ I asked.

‘Your shorts, man-meat. It seems you’ve raised them to half-mast already. Someone here will definitely help you raise it the rest of the way if you can’t do it on your own.’

I cracked a smile. She was thin but well toned, and I immediately liked her. She seemed like a straight shooter.

‘I’m Hank,’ I said. ‘Pleasure to meet you. I’m sorry you had to see my flag so early. Someone made my pants disappear.

‘You shouldn’t raise a white flag so soon. And don’t apologize. Show a little fight, meatboy!’

‘Hank,’ I repeated. ‘And you are?’

‘Hungry. Come with me.’

‘Ermmm…’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ she said, descending via rope ladder the short distance that separated us. ‘The First Mate asked me to show you around when you woke up. I’ll show you the ropes on the way to the mess hall.’

‘Oh, okay.’

‘Though I may want a banana on the way,’ she said while tapping the front of my shorts and winking.

I jumped back, startled for a second.

‘Oh, you’re different, all right,’ she said, turning serious. ‘That’s very interesting. Let’s go. I promise I’ll find you some pants and I’ll let you decide when to get into mine.’

I relaxed and followed her along the deck as she sidestepped ropes and sails and crewgirls. There were lots of them. They weren’t all young and beautiful, of course. Some were on the ‘stunning’ range and a few were just ‘eye-catching’, while a few here and there looked a bit older, but still very attractive. This had to be a fourteen-year old’s fantasy.

‘I’m Gemma, by the way. I’m the… well, they haven’t gotten around to giving me a title. Any day now, that’s what Larann says. I’m just useful, that would be the closest thing to a role in the ship for me.’

I nodded, still distracted by all the tight-clothed attractive women who were pausing their daily tasks to leer at me and my half-mast, some with amusement, some with a bit more bite in their pupils. I stood straighter and tried to control my body. But my body didn’t pay much attention to an old man’s voice. Young men’s joy-sticks tended to have a mind of their own.

‘I see you’re distracted and also distracting to the crew,’ said Gemma. ‘Here, cover yourself up,’ she said, taking a wide bandana that was covering her chest and wrapping it around my waist and thighs. The only issue was that the bandana was the only thing covering her breasts, and…well...

‘Mmm… this rag won’t be enough to cover up,’ she said, looking at my First Mate with a problem-solver’s eye. ‘Let’s go, I’ll get you some clothes from the Lost-and-Found.’

I slouched after her and inside the ship as a dozen women resumed work behind me.