— On The Plane —
Emi looked out of the jet plane window. They were over the Philippine sea and there was a clear blue sky. Soon they would land in Taiwan and then take a propeller plane somewhere between Taiwan and the Philippines. Apparently, it was a privately owned island.
She thought of home. Or at least, what she used to think of as home. She wondered how her brothers and father were getting along without her. She wondered how Evan was fairing. She had liked how he was starting to become a man after having lived with a woman, but now she feared that he might regress back into his old teen ways. She wondered if he was still reading those types of stories, trying to escape from reality and the pain of his loss.
Emi could certainly relate to loss. Her whole world had turned upside-down in the span of just a few short months. Everything had been normal before that. Work had been fun and safe, but then suddenly everything seemed to be about nudity. If she was super-girl, as Sam kept calling her, then nudity was definitely her kryptonite.
It all started with those stupid stories. Deep down Emi wished that she had never read them. She knew that we are a product of our environment and now a tiny piece of her innocence had been lost because of those stories. It wouldn't have been so bad if it was just the stories but she now realized that Doug's topless poster had also not been good for her. It had kept the stories fresh in her mind. The leash often reminded her of them, and just having a nude slave in the office reminded her of mailgirls, of Danica. It didn't help that she was also Japanese. It didn't help that the poster was of an Asian girl that resembled her.
That was all bad enough but then the whole Woo thing had happened. She still needed to block Woo out of her mind. She refused to let that destroy her. She refused to be a victim, even though she was. He was just a pathetic old man who risked his whole life just to see her without clothes. What was it with men and nudity, she thought? What was he doing or planning to do with her pictures? She didn't want to think about that.
She thought of Jeffery, once again. He had been on her mind a lot recently. She tried to keep her thoughts pure and just remember how he had helped her, but she just could not forget how his eyes had looked when he had seen that first topless picture. Then when she opened the next picture he had seen everything. Why had she opened that next picture in front of him? What had she been thinking?
He saw her breasts. He saw her... everything, her pubic area. He saw her completely naked on a big screen. He was a co-worker. A young man. It was so embarrassing. How much did he really see? How many pictures did he look at before he came to tell her? Also, he had that full-frontal picture on his phone. How many times had he looked at it before telling her about it? Did he zoom in and look at it carefully, memorizing every detail?
She shook her head and tried to get a hold of her run-away imagination. Jeffery was just a good person who had been helping her, she told herself, once again. Why did she keep torturing herself with the details?
Her seat was feeling warm, so she shifted a bit. The airplane was too warm. She took a sip of water and tried to stop thinking about exposed her body had been. But it was hard to stop thinking about that. The whole thing with the swimsuits and then the big deal. Mr. Lim and his outrageous comments that they were going to have to work in the nude. Work in the nude! Or expose themselves on a public beach. That was crazy!
Despite all that had happened, she couldn't help but chuckle to herself when she thought of where she was headed right now. After all of that, she was now flying to a nudist resort!
She knew that there was no way she would have gotten on this plane without seeing the strength and sanity of Becca and Su-Ning. Those two women were the one comforting thing in this crazy world. Just thinking about them made her feel better.
Things were definitely turning around. A great new job with excellent pay, new co-worker friends, she had become the lead, then that big deal. Now here they all were flying to some island in Asia.
It was surreal how much change had happened in such a short period of time. Emi hoped that life on the island would be slower and more peaceful so that they could just relax and move forward building great apps.
"Suck my ass!" Sam blurted suddenly into the piece of paper on which she was writing. "Identify yourself. Any wrong answer can be grounds for prosecution. Choose only one. Asian or Caucasian," she read out loud with disgust. "So what am I, Emi?" she asked incredulously.
"Um..." Emi hesitated.
"That's exactly right," Sam blurted. "No matter what I say, there is a chance some idiot will say it's wrong and have grounds to prosecute me, because of this stupid piece of paper," she spat with disgust.
"Quit being a drama queen Sam. You do this every time," Becca said from across the aisle. "It doesn't matter what you mark because both are correct."
Hannah stuck her head out from the seat beside Becca. "I say neither, she's an alien, not from this world. What's the word again? Oh right, she's a HAPA," said Hannah with a smile.
Sam stuck her tongue out at Hannah.
"Hapa?" Emi asked.
"It means 'half' in Hawaiian," Becca explained. "Commonly used to describe runty little half-breeds," she smiled.
Sam gave her the finger.
They landed in Taiwan and looked around the exotic airport for a while before they boarded a smaller propeller aircraft to fly out towards the small island.
After they had again been flying for a while, Emi grabbed a hand-full of brochures from the seat pocket in front of her. One had a small map of the island. There was one city, three towns and lots of beachfront with resorts scattered all around the perimeter of the island.
"What is the name of our resort?" Emi asked Becca, over the roaring noise of the propeller plane.
"You won't find it on the map. I'm not sure they have a name for it yet. It's still under construction or at least not yet open," Becca said loudly.
Emi noticed that one of the small towns on the far side of the map was called Hapa. She pointed it out to Becca with a smile.
Becca snatched the map from Emi. "Hey half-breed! Emi found your long lost people," and tossed the map to a bewildered Sam.
Sam looked at it for a moment. "My people!" she yelled, her eyes almost popping out of her head. But then after a moment of consideration, she said. "Probably just some foreign name that doesn't mean the same thing."
Becca passed Sam another info pamphlet.
"Holy-shit, my people!" she yelled again, smiling like an idiot. "Thanks, carrot-top!"
Hannah was fixing her bun. "Let me see!" she said as she leaned over with her hands still on her bun.
"Back-off, cream-puff!" Sam warned angrily, hugging the pamphlet to her chest.
Everyone laughed.
Emi felt a brief moment of jealousy. They all have cute nicknames, she thought. Well, on second thought, they are not so cute, she chuckled.
"Oh look," Sam said excitedly, "I CAN specify HAPA for my identity." She smiled in astonishment.
Emi looked at the declaration forms. It was true. However, she found it odd that 'Asian' and 'Japanese' were both there separately.
"That's probably just an old form that they have never bothered to update," Becca said, noting Emi's confusion and where her finger was. "Back during World War II, this place was occupied by the Japanese briefly," Becca informed her while passing Emi a historical pamphlet.
Wonderful, Emi thought. I'm the enemy here.
"It was a long time ago. I'm sure it's nothing," Becca assured Emi, over the roaring of the plane.
"English is the official language here," Hannah announced. "They have so many languages. The second most common language is Filipino, followed by Mandarin. Spanish is a distant fourth that the more elderly tend to know. They also have a mixed lingo that some of the youth like to use, Hokaglish. It's a fun mix of English, Filipino, and Mandarin," she read from the brochure.
The plane's seatbelt warnings came on. They were about to land. Everyone put away the brochures and pamphlets.
— The Resort —
The airport security personnel were scary looking. They had machine guns and assault rifles. The passport checks were all going fairly quick until they looked at Emi's passport. Emi remained calm as they spent extra time looking back and forth at her and the passport, but finally, they waved her through. Finally, everyone's bags were all scanned again as if they were going to board another airplane, but it went fairly smoothly.
After they picked up their luggage Su-Ning came to greet them all. She was very well dressed in classy but light clothes, ideal for the hot and humid climate.
"Becca!" Su-Ning ran up and excitedly shook her hand. "You must all be tired, I have a limo waiting to take you all to the resort," she said excitedly as she led everyone to the airport exit doors.
Once outside a blast of hot and humid air hit Emi. She felt overdressed as Su-Ning and the driver helped everyone load their luggage into the trunk. Then they all got in and the limo pulled away from the small airport.
"There sure was a lot of scary-looking security," Sam said as she looked back at the airport.
Su-Ning smiled. "No, they are not scary. Scary is NOT having them. These islands, as you might know, were once a hub of Mafia control. Over thirty years ago a bunch of Chinese-Filipino merchants banded together and cleaned up this one island in the middle," she explained.
"Mafia?" Sam said incredulously.
