Holding the piece of paper Finn had given him, Yuji managed to locate the boarding house without much issue, using Loki Familia's place as a point of reference.
The boarding house itself was exactly where Finn had said it would be, a modest two-storey building with a small sign above the door. It appeared unremarkable but seemed functional enough.
He knocked on the door and waited.
The woman who answered had grey streaked hair and tired, weary eyes. She looked at Yuji, scanning him up and down, staying silent for a short moment before speaking out.
"Long or short?" She asked.
"Start with a month."
"Two hundred thousand. Two hundred fifty thousand if you want me to clean up after your mess once a week, including your clothes, armor, equipment or whatever." The woman stated, opening the door fully and walking inside.
Yuji followed in and shut the door behind him. "I'll take the second option." He took out his coin pouch and looked at the different colored coins of various sizes in it.
He blinked for a moment before sighing. 'I should've asked what each coin was worth'
The woman grabbed a key from a cabinet, holding a key in one hand and an open palm towards Yuji, waiting patiently.
Finally deciding, he took out 4 gold coins and placed them in her palm. She raised an eyebrow, looking at the coins before up at him, and quickly closed her hand around the coins.
'Okay, a bit too much.' Yuji thought, assuming each gold coin was probably worth one hundred thousand Valis.
She then gestured for him to follow her upstairs to his room, before going over the house rules on the way as well. To be quiet after midnight, no open fires, breakfast and dinner were available for a weekly fee, but she waved it off with how generous Yuji had been.
She unlocked the door and handed the key over to Yuji before disappearing back downstairs, a light step in her gait, probably from the tidy sum she made.
Yuji pushed the door open and took in his new accommodation. A modest double bed, table with a chair, washbasin, a large wooden cabinet that stretched to the room's ceiling, a trunk by the foot of the bed and a window covered by wooden shutters that looked out onto the street.
He put his pouch and sealed document onto the table before pushing the shutter open, letting the cool air in. Once again, he could see the looming tower of Babel still in the very center of the middle of the city. Just beyond it towards the East, there was also the large building owned by the Ishtar building, as Riveria had told him.
He leaned against the window and thought about his next moves. He had thirty eight million Valis to his name, but he didn't know what the purchasing power that entailed. It could've been like the Japanese Yen, where numbers are heavily inflated. He'd have to slowly find out.
He was pretty much directionless at this moment. The stay with Loki Familia, as nice as it was, wasn't a permanent solution. He'd have to wander around the city and see what takes his fancy.
That was when his eyes lifted for a moment as a thought crossed him.
'Rice. That's number one right now.'
With the money he had, it shouldn't be an issue to procure some, he would just have to find out where they were from.
Another point he was interested in was the Gods from the Far East. So far, the names of Gods and Goddesses he had heard all existed back on Earth as well, ranging from the Greek mythology all the way to Egyptian, spanning the entire globe.
He himself wasn't heavily religious, but having spent most of his life in Japan, he couldn't help but be curious how these Eastern Gods would be like.
It wasn't just the Gods and Goddesses he wanted to confirm, but if other aspects of myths and folklore also translated over to this world.
Yuji's eyes narrowed, but quickly relaxed. Even if there was a version of him here, it wouldn't be the same, he surmised, but it wouldn't hurt to confirm.
Closing the wooden shutters slightly, he went over to his bed and lay down on it.
Slowly closing his eyes, he drifted off to sleep.
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A dream slowly came to him in his sleep, a familiar face obscured by a dark fog slowly unravelling itself.
The face of someone he hated down to his very core, but the one in front of him was far more grotesque, featuring just a head and misshapen feet.
"GOO GOO GAGA"
"GOOO GOOO GAGA"
(Author's Note: I was bored, sorry. There's been a severe lack of lobotomy recently that I had withdrawals)
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The first thing that greeted Yuji as he woke up was the smell of food being cooked downstairs by Edel, the owner of this boarding home.
Yuji came down and had some breakfast, asking her where he could find any imported goods from the east inside Orario, mainly grains.
"East Main Street market has foreign goods mostly. If you go further east toward the wall, you'll find the import quarter. More variety than the main street stalls, but more expensive too." Edel told him before she went back to doing whatever it was she did.
Thanking her, he finished his breakfast and headed out into Orario by himself for the first time.
As it was still early morning, adventurers were hurrying towards the Dungeon to be the first ones in since there would be more monsters having respawned.
Looking down at his jacket and pants, he pulled on the material and muttered to himself, "I'll have to find some clothes as well. Maybe I could get something custom from a tailoring Familia with a God specializing in it."
With that extra plan at the back of his mind, he decided to head towards the East district first.
The most notable difference was how the city's texture changed the further he moved away from the Northern Districts.
The Northwest Main Street was orderly and commercial, built for the traffic of major Familia's. The further he went and the closer he got to the East district, the streets grew narrower. It was still plenty busy enough, and there seemed to be more people here as well, probably new entries into the city or those just starting out, as it was more affordable in this district.
However, he paused slightly when he passed the entrance of a side street and spotted a sign above the doorway. The text itself was in the same script used everywhere in Orario, but the iconography painted on the wood was different. It featured a simple painting of mountains, and the handwriting had a familiar feel to it.
'Eastern influence' Yuji thought, continuing past the sign, 'Seems I'm getting closer.'
The Monster Feria preparations had spread out quite far, with the East District having the most decorations littering it since the Colloseum was located at the end of East Main Street.
He could feel a shift in the atmosphere as he was fully inside the East Main Street. Finn had told him before that each of the city's main streets had their own character and how you could read the district just from how it carried itself.
It was by far the loudest street he'd walked down yet, not just in terms of volume from people speaking and shouting, but in terms of the number of things competing for attention simultaneously.
Stalls lined both sides of the streets, with some growing bolder and occupying more of the path, hoping to intercept people passing by. The goods on display ranged from standard adventurer's wares all the way to food and random trinkets that people swore had magical properties to them.
Yuji moved comfortably through the swarm of people with the ease of someone who had been in countless busy markets from every corner of the world.
Following what Edel had told him, he went further east down the street where people started to thin out, and the stalls became more specialized. Even the aesthetic of the goods had shifted, moving on from the common medieval European fantasy he had grown accustomed to seeing. Some of the buildings' rooftops even had the familiar Eastern style back in areas that wanted to preserve their historical aesthetic.
He stopped by a stall that had a shade of indigo as its canopy with ceramic jars lining the wooden top. Stopping in front of him, he addressed the woman standing behind the stall, wearing what looked like a kimono.
"Do you know where I could get some Far East grains? Specifically rice." Yuji asked her. The woman raised an eyebrow but nodded in understanding after seeing Yuji's features since he had his hood down, recognizing him as probably someone also from the Far East like her. She pointed down the street, and Yuji nodded in thanks.
Two stalls down, he came across a small storefront that also acted as a makeshift storage shed, as a young man leaned across the counter with a listless look across his face.
Yuji walked up to him and started negotiating with the man, pointing towards what he assumed were bags of rice. After a bit of back and forth, Yuji walked away with two bags of rice tucked under one arm.
His next plan was to look around for a tailor shop, or at least somewhere that specialized in custom orders. Now equipped with rice, he was ready to truly live.
He decided to try out the Western District first, but as he made his walk a few blocks down East Main Street, he noticed something that brought back memories to him.
First was the nostalgic smell of roasted sweet potato that wafted through the air. A stall was set up, and neatly arranged on the countertop was a pile of roasted sweet potatoes wrapped in paper. However, what next caught his attention was the man standing behind the stall, speaking cheerfully to the small queue of mostly female customers who had formed in front of it.
Yuji noticed two things in quick succession as he watched on.
First was that the seller was a God. He could tell from the particular quality and bearing the man carried about himself, as well as the silent pressure they tried to hide.
The second was that this god had shifted his attention from the group of female customers towards him, his eyes widening as something glinted in his eyes.
The man himself was tall with black hair styled with what Yuji could recognize as a very old Japanese style, wearing clothes that resembled the hairstyles period.
The man quickly shook his head and went back to dealing with his customers, a friendly look on his face as they slowly cleared away one by one, leaving the stall free.
Yuji walked up, and the God quickly greeted him, "Hello, would you like to buy one of the sweet potatoes? They're still warm and freshly salted."
Yuji nodded, and the God, Takemikazuchi, quickly wrapped a sweet potato in paper but before he handed it over, Yuji spoke up,
"You recognized me."
The God kept his eyes on the sweet potato in his hands before he sighed, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean anything by it, your hair just reminded me of someone I know for a moment. I hope you are not offended by my actions." Takemikazuchi replied, bowing slightly and handing the sweet potato over.
Yuji took it and passed a coin of Valis over, before pressing on, "Who exactly do I remind you of?"
Most men wouldn't be able to notice, but Takemikazuchi as a God of War was able to sense the underlying intent behind the man's words in front of him.
"Someone in the Tenkai, in the Upper Realm." He pointed up, and he could feel the stirring storm within the man start to softly settle down.
"What was it about me that resembled that person?" Yuji asked, taking a bite of the sweet potato, but his mind was too busy to register its taste.
"Your hair, mainly. Now that I'm closer to you… I can't exactly put a finger on it, but there's something akin to familiarity between you two." Takemikazuchi could only offer an apologetic smile.
Yuji stayed silent, then asked, "What's his name."
Takemikazuchi frowned for a moment, as if uttering the name itself was something he heavily disliked, but he did so regardless. What he never expected was what came after he did so.
"Ryomen Sukuna."
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Authors Note:
You guys probably saw this coming from a mile away lmao. As far what kind of Sukuna this is… :)
Feel free to drop suggestions or whatever you'd like to see implemented into the story.