Journey

It had been several hours since Myōkō had brought Hasegawa aboard. She didn't talk much, claiming that she was busy steering the ship, but he could tell that she was lying. 

From what he could tell, she was both the human woman who was steering the ship, and also the ship itself. There was no one else onboard the vessel, yet it functioned as if it was fully crewed. 

The little bit of information that Myōkō had volunteered was the course of their journey. She had found him nearby a small island that the Yamato Empire had just conquered, but she didn't know the name of, and they were going to Tokyo, the capital of the empire. She said it was a day-and-a-half long journey. 

The sun was starting to set now, and the air was quickly getting colder. Myōkō wouldn't let Hasegawa into the navigation room, so he was standing on one of the observation wings, leaning on the railing of the cramped outcrop. 

"Crap, I don't have anything warm," muttered Hasegawa to himself, wrapping his arms around himself. He was dressed in the same clothes that he had been wearing before had appeared here: dress pants, a white button-down shirt, and a loose blue tie. 

"Hey, let me in, Myōkō," he said, knocking on the door to the navigation room, "It's cold out here."

Myōkō ignored him, but after a few minutes, she let him in. 

"What do you want, Hasegawa-san?" she asked, her voice suggesting she was annoyed by his very existence. 

"It's too cold outside, and it's getting late. You don't expect me to spend the night out there, do you?"

He had meant the sleeping outside part as a joke, but Myōkō looked like she was actually considering it. After a long pause, she responded.

"You're right. I suppose you'll need some sort of sleeping arrangement to be made."

She gestured to the door behind her. "Go down a few floors, and you'll be in the officers' cabins. You can sleep there. We'll be getting to Tokyo about midday tomorrow."

She turned away from Hasegawa, and, understanding that she wanted him to leave, he left the navigation room. The stairs were narrow, steep, and cramped, and there was a seemingly endless supply of things to hit his head on. 

Upon reaching the officers' cabins, Hasegawa sat down on one of the bunks and looked up at the ceiling, thinking about the events of the past day. 

He had been in his office in Yokosuka, on the third floor of a corporate building owned by his employer, the primary contractor of the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force. He had been looking at a mechanical issue in one of their designs, and had, after running out of ideas, decided to take a short break. During that break, he had somehow fallen asleep.

While he was asleep, he was mysteriously transported to another world, which had some incredible similarities with Earth, in addition to a number of glaring differences. There were elements of Earth history here, such as the very existence of Myōkō, but there were also the fact the world seemed to be entirely covered in water, as he had not seen a single landmass since Myōkō had found him.

While contemplating this, Hasegawa drifted off to sleep. 

***

VHOOOOOM! 

A loud sound woke Hasegawa, and for a moment, he thought that it had all been a dream, and that he was still in his office. But then he saw the cramped, decorated interior of the officers' cabins, and remembered the events of the previous day.

He walked out on deck, up to where Myōkō was standing at the prow, and followed her gaze to an island on the horizon.

"That's Tokyo," She said with a grin, happy to be home.