Re: it's edo if you return from another world - Chapter 0
Even though Setsubun had passed, the nights were still as cold as ever. On such a night, a man journeyed down the Kawagoe Highway, with no lantern to light his way, relying solely on the moonlight. The journey between Edo and Kawagoe was not short, and travelers usually made use of one of the many inns scattered along the way. However, this man kept walking in silence, his face illuminated by the pale moonlight, revealing a stern expression on his rather large, middle-aged features. He carried a simple bag on his back, and though he looked like a traveler, his appearance as he hurriedly walked through the night without a lantern suggested otherwise.
“He looks like a thief or a ghost…”
That’s what a stranger might think. After all, it seemed strange to be marching on such a dangerous night.
The man was on his way back to Edo after visiting his family home in Takazawa-cho, Kawagoecastle town. His father, a craftsman, had fallen seriously ill, and he had brought money to visit him. Although he had rushed to his father’s side after receiving a letter from his relatives saying that he was very ill, he found his father already recovered and saying,
“Why did you come here alone? Bring O-Fusa too, you idiot!”
O-Fusa was the man’s only daughter, and since he had planned to travel in a hurry, he couldn’t take his nine-year-old daughter with him, so he left her in Edo with her cousin. The man’s father doted on his little granddaughter as if she were a cat, and every time he saw her, he would delight her with sweets he had made himself. Takazawa-cho was a town with many confectionery shops, and the man’s father was known as a master craftsman. Despite being born to a confectioner, the man didn’t have a sweet tooth, and he left home to run a quiet soba restaurant in Edo…
In any case, his father had no need of his visit, but he had apparently spent all the money the man had brought for medicine. All he received in return were sweets for O-Fusa, and the man, who was already struggling financially, decided to return to Edo without staying at an inn. That was why he was walking at night with a frown on his face. He might have been hungry, or he might have been worried about the poor business of his soba restaurant in Edo. Life just didn’t seem to go his way.
Suddenly, as he walked along the road, he noticed a faint yellow light in the distance ahead. It seemed to be a campfire. As mentioned before, the night roads were dangerous, and there were few who would choose to camp out in the open. There might be a special reason for it, but one thing was for sure, something was amiss.
The man thought about taking a detour to avoid the fire, but he didn’t trust his luck enough to be able to make his way through the darkness and undergrowth without incident. After a moment’s thought, he decided that if there were several people around the campfire, he would run away. Even if they were bandits, they wouldn’t be able to catch him if he ran with all his might, as he was used to the darkness.
He approached the fire quietly. It seemed to be burning in a place like a rocky area, slightly off the road. The man approached to the point where he could see the campfire without being seen, and there he saw a strange boy sitting by the fire. It was strange enough to see a child alone by a fire in the middle of the night, but his clothes were even stranger.
He was too young to be a samurai, and he was wearing a dark blue long-sleeved jacket and loose-fitting half-pants, and his feet were clad in sturdy, well-worn leather boots. This might be normal in modern times, but in the era of the Tokugawa shogunate, it was an extremely strange and out-of-place outfit.
He was singing a cheerful tune in front of the fire.
“How strange.”
He muttered under his breath. The man decided that he was definitely some kind of fox or tanuki, and he decided to leave without getting involved. However, that was when Rokunosuke Sano, the owner of the Edo soba restaurant “Midori no Mujina-tei,” met Kuro.
Rokunosuke had decided to leave the scene as if he had seen nothing, but stopped in his tracks because of the smell. The boy’s humming stopped, and he spoke a few words, not paying any attention to Rokunosuke.
“Is it done?”
The boy muttered in a voice that was deeper and calmer than his appearance suggested, and lifted a mess tin from the fire. He quickly opened the lid and saw slightly burnt rice inside. The boy used a wooden spoon to stir the gruel-like substance inside.
It’s was a kindoor meal made by mashing the bulbs of tiger lilies that grew nearby, mixing them with water, adding finely chopped shiitake mushrooms, ann d seasoning with salt and cooking. cooked over a high flame, the starch had solidified into a kindof mochi, and an excell filled the air along with the steam. he also lifted a small pot from the fire. led in goat’s milk, mugwort leaves picked nearby, and salt for flavoring. itwas more like a side dish tea tea, and he stried it into a teacup.
The ingredients and seasoning were simple, but the smell of the warm food made Rokunosuke’s stomach rumble.
“Who’s there?”
Rokunosuke scolded himself for his hungry stomach and turned to run.
Because the boy who was illuminated by the campfire definitely looked at him and picked up a great sword that must have been four feet or more long. Certainly, he was not a proper person.
Although they were thieves, the situation was one man versus one foot. Running away first would be better, and unless there were special circumstances, there would be no reason to chase after an opponent who was running away. He didn’t know how much logic would work with an unnatural opponent.
Although he hadn’t done any special training, nature had blessed Rokunosuke with a good physique and although he couldn’t run as fast as messengers but he was confident that he could run faster than a palanquin bearer.
But.
He felt as if he had been seized by the back of his neck, so he uttered “Ah” and was knocked to the ground. Small boy who was two times smaller lightly threw Rokunosuke. A strange paper like a dharani note was stuck in his mouth.
Was he really a goblin or a kind of tengu after all?
A chill ran down his back as he looked at the boy who held an unusually gleaming sword reflecting the moonlight and firelight.
When he recognized Rokunosuke’s appearance, the boy smiled and asked.
“I finally found a human being. And that face, are you a Japanese? Well, it looks like I can go home”
“What?”
“No, it’s good. You are thinking that it is a meaningless question to ask for someone who seems to be sure”
I look at the boy who was nodding satisfactorily with a blank look.
“All of a sudden, I came here── no, it’s different. I got lost and I had a hard time. I don’t know where I am because there are no street lights or roads. Where in the country is this? Gunma?”
“Gunma? That is a little far from here though…”
“Huh? …By the way, who are you…Ah? What is that clothes, from Taiei?”
He looked at Rokunosuke, who was wearing a townsman’s clothes, and asked suspiciously. The strange tone that was not suitable for the age of the boy who was not yet formally an adult was very suspicious.
Rokunosuke groaned as if he was confused by a question he had no idea about.
“Taiei…? I’m not from Kyoto”
“…No, wait a minute, I just had a horrible idea. Let me confirm, what year is it now?”
The boy asked, covering his head and turning his palm towards him.
When he looked at the boy again, his face was still that of a young boy, but somehow he looked tired and there was an air of sadness and I wondered if his actual age was higher than his appearance.
Although various doubts came to his mind about the question he didn’t understand, Rokunosuke answered again.
“Kyoho”
“Kyoho?”
The boy listened to the unfamiliar words for a moment and muttered as if he was hesitating.
“I think that era was… Edo period… Who is the shogun of the bakufu?”
“It is Yoshimune-sama”
“…How could it be?”
The boy muttered with a gloomy face “Isn’t the era different? The witch’s curse.” “I thought I could finally go back from another world” I didn’t remember most of the era names of the Edo period, but I knew about ‘Kyoho’s reform’, and I knew immediately because the eighth shogun, Yoshimune Tokugawa, was later made into a period drama and became famous.
In the end, he grabbed Rokunosuke’s shoulder with a sad face and said.
I finally found someone from this region. I don’t want to rely on you but I have to talk to you.
“Why don’t you just eat some food? You must be hungry”
There was a small shop along the street where a tributary of the Edo main river flows. It was a shop with an old-fashioned style that you couldn’t tell what it was just by looking at it and it didn’t have a signboard.
However, at that time, there were as many unclear shops like this in Edo. In particular, in this era when the shogun’s decree encouraged a simple life, flashy decorations were forbidden.
It was early morning.
In front of that shop, a young girl was sprinkling water on a bucket and looking at people passing by.
She was a child who was about to turn ten years old. She was wearing a light blue silk kimono and a white apron, and her lively appearance was well-known in the neighborhood.
She was the poster girl of the soba restaurant ‘Midori no Mujina-tei’, Sano Fusa. However, the formal name of the shop was not known because there was no signboard, so it was only known as ‘Sano-ya’ or ‘Ofusa-chan’s shop’.
The reason why she was waiting in front of the closed shop early in the morning was because of her father, Rokunosuke Sano. He visited his grandfather who was in a critical condition, but according to the story of the cousin with whom he was entrusted,
“I bet that old man is just exaggerating. He must be completely fine”
He said, and calculated with an abacus and told her the time when Rokunosuke would return. In this Edo period, martial arts and academics were encouraged, and her cousin’s calculation skills were something that Fusa couldn’t understand, but his intelligence was reliable, so she believed his words and had been waiting since morning.
She was told that he would return at tatsu (if nothing happened, but the sun controed to rise high and higher. tle worried.
Then, she felt a kind of commotion and attention of people walking in the street ahead.
Fusa also looked there, but at first she couldn’t tell what it was.
Gradually, it was determined that it was a person.
“Hey, get out of the way, this is not a show”
The one who was saying that and waving his hands in annoyance was a strange short man. As mentioned earlier, he was wearing clothes that were out of time, carrying a magnificent great sword on his back, and dragging an adult who was bigger than him in one hand as if he was exhausted.
He frowned with a childish face.
“It’s all your fault, Rokunosuke! An adult shouldn’t faint because his stomach is upset, just because he drank some three-day-old goat’s milk.”
The man kept grumbling to the ghost-like man with a pale face.
Rokunosuke had already been addressed four times by detectives and gang members because of this strange man’s behavior, and he was quite tired of it.
Although he was carrying the white-faced man, who was frothing at the mouth, under the pretense that he was feeling unwell, he had difficulty explaining the reason for carrying his great sword, the ‘Akasuric Murakumo Caliburn III’ made by the witch Irichia of the Aurora characters.
If he told them that he got it from another world, they might think that he was crazy.
He also felt uncomfortable lying that he was just a follower of some random bannerman, but he couldn’t think of any other excuse because no one else on the streets of Edo carried a sword.
Dragging an adult was also quite troublesome for Rokunosuke.
Although his strength had been enhanced by the magic symbol ‘Phase Power’, it was still quite difficult to carry him.
Frowning, he asked the little girl who was looking at him with an absent look.
“Excuse me, miss.”
“…”
“Hey, are you listening?”
“Eh, oh yes.”
Ofusa hurriedly answered.
She felt a strange feeling, as if a statue of Jizo had just spoken to her.
“Do you know of a soba restaurant called Midori no Tanuki or Midori no Mujina? It seems to be the shop owned by this bubble-blowing geezer.”
“Oh, if it’s Midori no Mujina-tei, it’s here… Oh, it’s you, Father!”
Shocked, Ofusa rushed to the side of Rokunosuke, who was gasping for breath.
“F… Fu… sa…”
“What happened? How could you come back close to death when I’ve just been to see you?”
“Uhhh… sorry, water.”
As he groaned, he grabbed the ladle that Ofusa was holding and drank all the water in one gulp.
Perhaps he had suffered from dehydration, as his beard was dripping with water while he drank.
He then straightened his knees and stood up with difficulty, then glared at his shop with a face covered in sweat.
“Father!?”
“Toilet…!”
“Father!?”
Watching this scene, the boy shook a large metal can that he had put in an easy-to-reach position on his backpack and muttered indifferently while listening to the sound of the liquid inside.
“There’s still a little left, but should I throw it away? Goat’s milk.”
Although he thought it was okay because it had been cooked, but in fact, he was fine.
It seemed that Rokunosuke’s inexperienced stomach couldn’t handle it.
The white turbid liquid suddenly mixed with the flowing water of the main river and melted away.
The interior of the Midori no Mujina-tei was quite ordinary, with four tables and two seatings, and a narrow corridor connected to a small one-mat space behind the kitchen.
Beyond the wall, in the dark corner of the building, were day laborers and homeless people.
Sitting at one of the tables in the shop, the boy felt a subtle air of unsold items.
He couldn’t explain what it was, but the chairs and tatami mats seemed to be in good condition.
It could be because the shop had just opened, but he guessed that the dilapidated shop hadn’t been doing well for a long time.
As it turned out, he was right.
The thin and pale-faced Rokunosuke, who came back from the toilet, sat down in front of the boy with trembling legs.
“Thank you for your help.”
“… Don’t worry about it. We help each other in times of need.”
When he was thanked so sincerely, he felt a strange sense of guilt, as if he had fed him something terrible.
His daughter, who was about the same height as his father, asked him while giving him hot water.
“Father, who is this man?”
“Well…”
He hesitated for a while.
Last night, they met and the boy told him about his life after eating, but Rokunosuke could not understand a single word of the
“Strange world”
he was talking about.
The boy, whose given name was Kuro, was born in modern Japan.
After a series of strange events, he was lost in another world where sword and magic were common, and he lived there for decades.
Then, when he was old, he was transported back to a place that seemed to be Japan, but was actually 250 years in the past.
However, even if he explained that he was a mercenary, a handyman, or a witch’s familiar in another world, people of this era would not even understand the meaning of these words.
So the boy gave up trying to make himself understood and made up a suitable background.
“His name is Kuro. He says he is a disciple of an immortal. He was traveling back from his retirement when he found me. He doesn’t seem to be familiar with the ways of the world.”
“You’re being fooled.”
“But he has some strange symbols that give him power, and some strange tools. And his strange clothes make him look like an immortal.”
“Don’t believe it.”
“He’s going to stay with us for a while.”
“Why!?”
His daughter shouted angrily and hit his father on the back.
She was quite emotional for her age, which surprised Kuro.
“Hmm… Your name is Fusako, right, little girl?”
“No, it’s not!”
“I’m not saying I’ll let you live here for free. Let me give this to Fusako.”
Rummaging through his knapsack, he searched for something the girl might like. He was certain the witch had given him something along those lines. Inside the bag, nestled between the witch’s rifle and a pocket-sized edition of Kinseihen, was a small case containing the object in question.
It was a small, spherical gem that resembled a pearl. It had a shiny luster, yet surprisingly had a certain soft quality to it—a truly enigmatic treasure.
Girls anywhere in the world are easily swayed by shiny objects, sugary snacks, and anything that promises improved health.
Ofusa placed it in the palm of her hand, her eyes wide with surprise. If it really was a pearl, she had no idea how much it would be worth. In those days, before the advent of pearl cultivation, even mighty feudal lords or foreign kings were unable to acquire perfectly round pearls.
“Pretty… What is it?”
“A parasite egg. It will make your insides healthy when you eat it. And it’s sweet.”
“Eeeewww!”
Ofusa dropped it on the floor and began stomping on it relentlessly.
Rokunosuke looked on with disgust as the egg’s juices seeped into the floorboards.
Kyuurou panic
“W-what a waste! To think the witch actually went through the trouble of magically modifying and creating that pearl… I didn’t want to use it because it was so gross, but…”
“You know why it had to be thrown away, right!?”
Even if it was sweet and good for you, some things are just too gross to accept. Of course, even the creator, the witch from another world, had never used it. She had originally planned to release them into the market under the guise of “health candies” before later revealing they were actually insect eggs just for the mischief of it. The effects themselves were genuine and remarkable.
In any case, Kyuurou ended up staying overnight at the Sano residence that ran the soba shop. Of course, the night before, a promise had been made: in exchange for providing advice to make Midori no Mujina-tei more prosperous through the knowledge gained from his so-called “immortal”, Kyuurou would be allowed to stay. To Ofusa, however,
“It’s like a dream come true…”
was how she felt about it.
Most strangers wouldn’t go out of their way to help an unprofitable soba shop, and Rokunosuke’s belief in Kyuurou may have been a desperate attempt to cling to anything that resembled hope.
After teasing Ofusa for a while, Kyuurou gradually began to notice that Rokunosuke’s health was worsening once more, so father and daughter retreated to their living quarters in the back.
Without anything to do, Kyuurou drank away the night. He had helped himself to something from what seemed to be a kitchen, but it wasn’t very appetizing. It had been a long time since he had sake—or at least that’s what he wanted to say, but he couldn’t remember anything about the liquid he had drunk several decades ago.
Even still, he continued to sip at it, perhaps out of a strange sense of nostalgia.
“If only I had been born in a different time.”
He muttered and looked up at the moon obscured by the clouds through the open window. A chilly wind blew through the streets of Edo and into the building.
He took a sip of cold sake and let out a sigh.
When, exactly, was he supposed to have been born? He wasn’t even sure what year it was, whether it was when he had first wandered into another world around the year 2000, or perhaps a few decades later when the world he had been transported to had reached a time equivalent to his own.
After living in another world for several decades, even the desire to return to his original world had waned. He could only vaguely recall the faces of his family. He suspected his parents would have passed away, and his friends and acquaintances would be elderly by now, given that he had aged at the same rate as everyone else.
That didn’t mean, however, that he wanted to return to the continent that was another world. The Demon Lord who had been his comrade, his handmaiden, and the witch had most likely been defeated by the subjugation force. Comrade was perhaps an odd way to describe their relationship, but ultimately, he wished that every last one of them had been reduced to dust and swept away by a river. Even if the witch had been the one who sent him to this world at the very end. In fact, the witch was to blame for it all. Damn her.
His parting with the witch, whom he had known for twenty years or so, had been a chaotic mess from beginning to end. She had shoved a travel backpack packed with all sorts of strange, unknown things into his hands and sent him alone from the Demon Lord’s castle, where defeat seemed imminent, to a different world—the Japan of the Edo era. Due to issues with the stability of the dimensions or something like that, he had been the only outsider capable of escaping to another world.
He shook his head. It didn’t matter now.
Was it possible to return to his original world—or at least modern-day Japan—from here? He came to the easy conclusion that it was impossible. The world he had been in before had magic, witches, and a Demon Lord who could summon beings from other worlds. There were likely other mysterious and unusual devices that he didn’t know about, but it was different here.
This was undeniably the Edo era in Japan.
There was no way to travel to the future. Even if Kiteisai, the creator of the Time Machine, existed, he wouldn’t be born for another hundred years or so. And now that he was separated from the witch, the immortality spell she had cast on him should have lost its effect.
“I guess there’s no other choice…”
He had become accustomed to giving up. He was young in body, but his heart was worn and weary from the experiences of several decades of life.
A life filled with battles, labor, and being hounded by the witch. Perhaps his life from then on would be better suited to indulging himself in moderation as he lived out his years as a recluse in the town of Edo. Or rather, that was the only path left open to him. He was too tired to make a living by fighting or doing other kinds of manual labor, and these weren’t the times for such things anyway.
Thinking about it that way, he could even say that being taken in by the kind townspeople of Edo was a stroke of good fortune. He had almost completely forgotten the history he had learned in middle and high school, but at least he should be considered a step above the peasantry.
“I suppose I should make the best of this floating world.”
“What’re you mumbling about to yourself?”
When he turned his gaze toward the voice, Ofusa glared at him with half-closed eyes.
Kyuurou replied, holding up the small sake bottle in his hand lightly.
“Fusako, by the way, where do you keep your liquor? This seems to be mirin. It’s not undrinkable, but—”
“That is liquor—what are you talking about!? You’re just randomly digging through the kitchen and drinking liquor that we sell!?”
“What… This was sake? Not only is it unpalatable, but it even seems watered down… You intend to serve this to customers…”
“None of your business!”
Ofusa shouted and approached, slamming the low table with the sake and teacups on it.
“besides, you’s way too suspicious! o be a hermit, but i know what you real age. ”
“oh really──well, i’m certainly not
“you just waltz into our home and do whatever you want-─ there’s yokai caled a ‘nuurihyon’ that i heard about from my teacher! that’s what’s what is! “”
“you think i’m a youkai?”
Kyuurou recalled that is a yokai that took the form ofld man, and made a face.
“Don’t worry, I have no intention of freeloading. The cost of my current lodging was crushed by Fusako.”
“That was a bug egg and no mistake… So, what can you do?”
“…”
Kyuurou thought for a moment and answered.
“……We’ll talk about that later. It’s time for a child to go to bed.”
“You dodged the question!?”
“Or rather, I myself am sleepy. I haven’t slept in two days, counting from when I was in another world. If I sleep, something good will happen… fuh, I’ll think of something…”
“Is this guy really going to be useful or not…”
She was sleepy too, but even if he was asked to explain, Kyuurou couldn’t immediately think of anything useful that he could do for himself in this era and situation. He had some skill with a sword and the guts to fight hand-to-hand from his experiences throughout his former life in the previous world──although that strength was due in part to the witch’s support──but a soba shop had no use for bodyguards or anything like that.
Well, he vaguely thought that he would be of some use, but if he was asked to explain it, he would be troubled. The reason being that he was sleepy and it was a hassle. Hassles lead to death.
He could think about tomorrow’s problems tomorrow.
Ignoring Ofusa’s childish clamor, Kyuurou flopped down on his side, and soon lost consciousness to the darkness.
And so, the Edo life of Kyuurou, a modern-day returnee from another world, began.