Senju's Okabasho
If Yoshiwara was the licensed quarter, the okabasho was its unlicensed counterpart.
In plainer terms, it was where the common folk kept their little side trade in vice running quietly under the table.
Truth be told, even today's soaplands and health clubs answer to the police, and you'd better file the proper paperwork before you open your doors.
That particular arrangement, believe it or not, traces straight back to the Edo period.
Mind you, this world has no such thing as an "Edo period," seeing as it's an entirely different world, but the setup was near enough the same.
So what exactly was an okabasho? Think of it as the small-time trade you'd find among station girls, compensated daters, and no-strings hookup services.
Nowadays a phone call sets up the meeting easy enough, but naturally nothing of the sort existed back then.
So how did they manage it? Simple: they dressed the whole operation up as something else entirely.
From the street it looked like nothing more than a teahouse, the sort of old-fashioned café where a body might sit and sip tea, quite genuinely. But climb the stairs to the second floor, and the real business began.
Once upon a time such places stood on every corner, and Senju was one of them.
"Come on in! Come on in! We've got pretty girls to spare!"
So the girls called out, working the crowd for customers.
They'd grab a man's sleeve right there under the eaves and haul him in, though every so often they'd run into a customer like this one.
"Come to my place! I'll give you a good price!"
"That shop's famous for sticking you with an ugly girl once you're upstairs! Ours is the real deal!"
"Quit pulling! You'll tear my sleeve off!"
RRRRIIIIP!
Both sleeves tore clean off the poor man they'd been dragging around.
"The hell'd you do that for?!"
The man was furious, but now they'd started pulling at his kimono besides.
"Oops! Sorry about that! I'll sew it right back up, so come inside as an apology, won't you?"
"Now that's just terrible! Let me sew it, I insist."
GRAB!
And with that, another girl seized hold of what was left of his kimono.
Yasutaka walked right through the middle of all this chaos going on every side of him.
"Same old town as ever..."
Of all the shops lining the street, the one Yasutaka headed for was the Ebiya.
Before long, one of Ebiya's touts spotted him.
"Yasu-san, you came! Thank you-oo!"
"Kana-chan! I missed you so-o much!"
"Hug time!"
"Hug time! Ahahaha!"
Yasutaka pulled the girl called Kana into a tight embrace.
She had long green hair, waved only in front, gathered up with an eggplant-shaped hairpin (kanzashi).
Her ears had become a pair of feathered wings, and going by their shape, she was surely one of the Snipe-folk among the Bird-folk.
She stood a good two meters tall herself, but Yasutaka, at a genuine two hundred twenty-four centimeters, still had her beat, if only by a little.
"You're staying to play today, right?"
"Of course!"
Yasutaka gave his coin purse a jingle to prove it.
Kana broke into a delighted grin.
"Wow, amazing! So what happened?"
"I beat that Dan Lizard you told me about before, Kana-chan!"
"Wow-w! You're incredible, Yasu-chan! I had no idea~!"
Kana giggled, delighted.
Feeling pretty pleased with himself, Yasutaka launched into his tale of glory, gestures and all.
"That bastard came charging right at me... and I just sliced its head clean off, whoosh, just like that! Man, was that thing tough!"
"Oh wow! Way to go, Yasutaka-chan! You've got real talent!"
Kana beamed, clapping her hands together.
Meanwhile...
Riiip...
"The hell'd you do that for?!"
The man whose sleeve had been torn earlier now stood with his kimono ripped clean off, down to nothing but his loincloth.
"It's his fault!"
"You're both to blame!"
The touts and the furious man traded blame back and forth, each insisting the other was at fault.
Setting that aside, Yasutaka pulled Kana close by the shoulder and spoke.
"I told you before... once you could beat a Dan Lizard, I'd let you sleep with me."
"Hmm... now what should I do?"
Kana smiled, mischief dancing in her eyes.
The Snipe-folk numbered among the Three Great Lechers of the Realm, a people famously loose in matters of the flesh.
Tall and striking almost without exception, they talked a smooth game and worked every trick in the book to reel a body in.
Better to call them the Three Great Charmers, really, since men and women alike fell for them in equal measure.
And Kana, being one of the Snipe-folk herself, had been chased after so often that some middling fellow wasn't about to turn her head so easily.
Which left only one thing to do.
"But even so, is that really enough? Just clearing the minimum requirement doesn't quite cut it..."
Kana said, a seductive little smile spreading across her face.