It was about every woman who was told she wasn't enough and then became MORE.
It was about reclaiming the feminine narrative.
It was about the power in saying—this is what happened to me, and this is what I made of it.
Therefore, I wasn’t going to sanitize the story so that men could swallow it.
This wouldn’t be palatable for the male ego.
I wanted to tell the truth.
The ugly.
The beautiful.
The complicated.
Yes!
My heart raced with the kind of excitement that only came when a story started to take shape.
This is going to be good. No. This is going to be important.
My hand moved across the page, ideas flowing, questions forming.
For the first time in days—maybe weeks—I felt likemyselfagain.
Not just the woman in the Dragon's bed.
Not just the human lie detector.
But Nyomi.
Writer.
Storyteller.
The woman who'd come to Japan to chase truth and expose darkness.
I had work to do, and now I had everything I needed to do it. After jotting down more notes for several minutes, I closed the notebook and scanned my desk.
Aww.
My old recorder sat there, exactly where Kenji said it would be, surrounded by my new recorder and everything else a writer could need.
Intrigued, I grabbed the old recorder and pressed play to hear the last message.
My own voice filled the office, slightly tinny through the old speaker."March tenth. I'm in Castle in the Sky, the third brothel that I've visited. However, unlike the others this one is elegant and—"
Zo's voice cut in."Soapland."
A smile broke across my face before I could stop it.
On the recorder, my voice held annoyance."Come again?"
Zo cleared his throat."It's not technically a brothel. It's a soapland. Big cultural difference."
I leaned back in my chair, listening to myself fumble through the correction, and then, noise disrupts and Zo jumps on.
