Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 161615 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 808(@200wpm)___ 646(@250wpm)___ 539(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 161615 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 808(@200wpm)___ 646(@250wpm)___ 539(@300wpm)
This wasn't just a collection.
This was a writer's dream made real.
Sighing, I went to a large stack of notebooks and grabbed a thick, leather-bound one—also new, also perfect.
Wow. I guess my head is going to be blown away all day. I feel like it’s my birthday.
Sitting down at my desk, I opened the notebook to the first page, grabbed one of the expensive pens on my desk, uncapped it, and wrote:
HIROKO'S STORY - Timeline and Structure
My hand moved across the page, and the words began to flow:
Part One: The Ugly Duckling Childhood
Born in rural prefecture (which one again? Ask Hiroko). Physical appearance—how she was treated as "ugly." The shame and confusion she carried.
I leaned forward, elbows on the desk, my whole body curved around the notebook like I was protecting it.
Part Two: The Geisha House
How she ended up there. Training as maiko. The beauty rituals. The discipline. The older geishas—mentors or tormentors? Learning to weaponize beauty she never thought she had. The clients—their power, their hands, their assumptions.
The pen moved faster.
My handwriting got messier, less careful, but I didn't care.
I was chasing the story now, following it wherever it wanted to go.
Outside the window, the ocean crashed and roared against the rocks, but I barely heard it. The sound faded into background noise, something my brain registered but didn't process. All that existed was the page, the pen, the story taking shape beneath my hand.
Time disappeared.
I had no idea if I'd been writing for five minutes or fifty.
My shoulders were tight, hunched forward, but I didn't straighten.
My neck ached from looking down, but I didn't stop.
This was the work.
The real work.
The kind that swallowed you whole and didn't spit you back out until the words ran dry.
KEY SCENE—The night everything changed.
Part Three: The Escape.
The fear of being found. Living on the streets vs. survival work.
I flipped to a new page.
Adrenaline surged through me.
I put pen to page and it began to move on its own. I was in it now, that flow state where the questions and statements wrote themselves because I could almost hear Hiroko's voice speaking to me.
Part Four: The Rise.
First steps into Tokyo's underworld. Discovery of her power as a dominatrix. Building her reputation. The femdom house, how she created it. Her philosophy: control vs. submission, pain vs. healing. The clients who pay to be broken by her.
I paused from writing and considered the central question.
How did the girl who was told she was worthless become the woman who makes powerful men beg?
My throat tightened.
Because wasn't that my story too, in some way?
The girl who'd been told to stay small, now sitting in a crime lord's mansion, writing whatever truth she wanted?
Hmmm.
I tapped the pen against my lips and considered that. Next, I jotted down themes to explore. My hand moved faster now. Ideas were connecting like dominoes falling.
Transformation of shame into power. Beauty as a weapon and armor. Control as survival mechanism.
I paused, thinking about the women I'd interviewed in other soapland establishments, the careful way they'd talked about choice versus necessity.
My pen hovered.
What is the real question underneath all of this? What does freedom actually look like when you've never been free? Yes. That is it.
I flipped to another fresh page. The questions for Hiroko came rapid-fire.
When did you first realize you were beautiful? What did the geisha house teach you about men that your childhood didn't?
Even more questions came.
My hand cramped slightly, but I didn't stop.
What does submission mean to the men who come to you?
I sat back, flexed my cramped fingers, and stared at the pages I'd filled. I had at least thirty questions. And each one could branch into ten more depending on her answers.
This was a story about survival, transformation, and taking back power from a world that tried to destroy women.
This was a story that deserved to be told right because in the end I believed that it wasn’t just about her.
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 like myself again.
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.