Konnichiwa~ssu.
Didn’t feel right without an TLN so here I am~
Uhh… Running out of synopsis to TL so suggest me sumthin :3
Tryn’ to schedule a little somethin’ everyday with a regular chapter (whichever series I feel like releasing) every Monday or so if you haven’t noticed. But need more short stuff. For now I’m just scouring Amazon JP for any covers that catch my eye lol 😂
If not then well… I guess you’ll have to wait until I post new chapters lol
K bai
Beginning 2The old man who picked me up brought me to the brothel facing my back.
Surprisingly, it seems the place where I had been at was one wall right under the old man's room. There usually wasn't any noise, but he heard the unusual sound of a stranger stopping underneath and there I was.
Entering the brothel by the back door, I was brought to a room deep in the back while being pulled by the hand.
In the middle the old man was called out to by the pretty and stylish men of the brothel asking『a new guy?』and『ohh, another one with good features』, but the person himself ignored them outright and steadily progressed walking through the corridor.
Our destination was a cozy Japanese styled room around 10 tatami in size. However, maybe because this room was usually lived in, the low tea table in the middle of the room had half drunken tea, and smoke rose like a chimney from the tip of the Japanese smoking pipe 1 that was left behind atop the pottery.
He took out a zabuton 2 and urged me to sit.
The old man took a seat across me and took the still smoking smoking pipe, then turned his sights towards me.
「Your age is?」
Even if he asked my age… Although I know I'm a small child I don't know my age. Plus looking at my appearance, I only saw it for a moment when I sought to check it reflected against the river's surface, so it was ambiguous.
「Ahh, you understand words right?」
「Then that's fine.」
It seems like he imagined my life to have some sort of harsh background, while making a bitter face he ignored that I didn't answer the questions.
「From what I can see it looks like you're around 5 years old… and a young girl.」
My estimated age seems to be 5 years old.
I'm smaller than I expected. Or rather it's hard to move my mouth so I can't speak very well. Were 5 year olds such inarticulate beings?
「Whether you comprehend or not it doesn't matter right now. For the time being, for your first job at this Amazuki brothel, well, I'll have you work from a kamuro position. 」
「Kamuro?」3
I tilted my head towards the unfamiliar vocabulary.
「It's like being a little helper for the upper nii-sans 4 . It's also referred to as a yuudan 5 apprentice. In fact there are swarms of guys here where you can't tell if they're a man or a woman.」
「Your looks are good too.」
Saying that he roughly tousled my head.
As opposed to his appearance, this old man is a pretty good person.
But no matter how much I knew this old man was a good person, I still wasn't clear on exactly what kind of place this was. The root problem is a mystery.
By nii-sans, did he mean those men behind the lattices?
Although childish, I took a proper posture and inquired.
「Um」
「What kind of place is dith?」
Ah, I bit my tongue.
To my question, he took a puff of his smoking pipe『aah, starting from there…』and glanced upwards.
He clanged his pipe on top of the pottery to empty the ashes and began his explanation.
「This place is… 」
The explanation I received was that this place was a pseudo Yoshiwara 6 like place where men served as courtesans (yuudan). That was the natural course in this world.
When I asked, "there's no place for men to buy women?" he replied there was a place but only one, so it was nothing major.
Truly a bizarre world.
In this male brothel world, there were no women working in the first place. It wasn't as if it were forbidden, but the system would become disordered and disturbed, so the old man explained with a serious expression.
Then why did he decide to employ me, I wonder?
Seeing my mystified face,
「Won’t it be amusing for a little girl to disguise herself as a boy?」
He laughed evilly and grinned like the smile he showed me at the back of the brothel.
「And, I won't sell you for pleasuring so don't worry. Even if I don't, so that you'll bring in a good income, I'll raise you into splendid geisha.」
Like this, I took a step into the world of male brothels.
but will choose just to leave it as a Japanese smoking pipe because most people won’t know what it is. I mean, I didn’t lol ↩ is a floor cushion you sit on pretty much. I coulda just used floor cushion, but a lot of people know what a zabuton is already right? ↩ are like, little assistants for the upper courtesans. From what I understand they were taken in when little and raised to be courtesans by being attached to an experienced courtesan and helping her out with getting dressed, keeping track of their customers, running errands etc. Also served as a sorta status symbol, and the highest ranking courtesans (Oirans) could have two while middle ranked had one, and lower ranked had none. The website I linked has a better explanation tho. ↩ If you don’t know what nii-san means you haven’t watched enough anime. ↩ 遊男 Yuudan – written with the kanjis [遊] which means “play” and [男] “man.” So literally a playboy? Lol. This is a term coined for this world (probably) since it’s usually a “play woman” (harlot/prostitute) 遊女 yuujo. ↩ Yoshiwara was the pleasure district located in old Tokyo back when it was called Edo. Uhh… Y’know what, wiki is a better explainer than me. Wiki ↩