I was sitting up on the driver’s bench reading the instruction manual on how to play the shamisen as we rode into Sunjin. The instrument was a lot harder to learn than I had expected, even though I used to play the guitar. I guess I was never that good with the guitar either though, so eh, maybe it was just me that sucked. I had to figure out exactly what notes the strings were tuned to. Was there some kind of medieval electronic tuner?
There were some loud gurgling noises coming from the river that made me pause my playing and look over to the left. Past the road were some woods, and I knew there was a river that traveled through and made its way to the ocean. The gurgling and splashing noises seemed to be loud and pressing and I narrowed my gaze, wondering if we were going to be getting attacked. I set the instrument behind my bench once more and readied myself in case anything came out of the woods towards us.
Betsy seemed to have a little pep in her step since we were returning to the place where we first entered this world. To be honest, so was I, probably not for the same reasons that Betsy was. At the moment, I was thankful for her fast pace because of the noises from the river and also because, frankly; I wanted to get back to Sunjin as well. It’d be nice to see Nakayasu and Niku again. I frowned. The problem with that, though he was that I’d also have to deal with Moritoshi.
The thoughts of the sounds drifted away from my mind as I thought. I didn’t realize I was grinning a little until we got towards the village square and there were some people milling about. I raised an eyebrow and looked at the three random people that were standing around the town’s shrine. I squinted at the people who seemed to wear skin tight white clothing and then looked up to the moon.
“Is this some kind of religious thing?” I asked quietly up to Betsy and got a confused ‘mrr’ and a shrug in response mentally.
Without prompting, Betsy stopped maybe a hundred yards away from the figures and the shrine to the wind kami this village paid homage to. I climbed down from my bench and moved over to the figures.
“Nakayasu, that isn’t you, is it?” I called out.
I then called out the other names of the few people I knew, wondering if it might be them. I even asked after Niku. There wasn’t a response from the figures, and I grew apprehensive. My eyebrows came together and for the first time in my life, I kinda wished I had some kind of weapon. I had gotten along for years on the road with nothing, so that I wanted something right then was kinda telling.
When I was only about ten feet away, the three figures turned towards me. My eyes went wide, and I stumbled backwards when I realized these people weren’t people at all. They just had the forms of people. There were no facial features, and they weren’t wearing skin white clothing, their skin was just a pure white color.
“What the fuck?” I yelled, probably a little too loudly as I backed up.
Betsy gave a bellow and started to advance, reacting to my surprise and fright at the people. The ox thought, and rightly so, that I was in trouble. She was a good girl and wanted to protect me from trouble.
The faceless person just kind of tilted its head at me, and I stopped backing away from it. It didn’t move towards me and it didn’t seem like it was going to attack or anything. In fact, I think it was just as curious about me that I was about it.
That’s when things got weird, though. The, I don’t know, person? Decided to turn away from me back towards the shrine and I cocked my eyebrow.
“Hey, wait, don’t leave,” I said.
I kind of wanted to see what this being was doing and what it was up to around the shrine. It didn’t seem like it was causing a problem or anything, but the fact that it didn’t have a face was really driving my curiosity. Before I could take a step towards it and do anything else, it bent forward, and I watched it grab at its ass and spread its cheeks apart.
“What the fuck?!” I shouted once more in surprise and horror as I stumbled backwards. The creature exposed a large blue eyeball in the place of its anus that I couldn’t help but stare into.
Betsy now seemed to take this as a challenge and once more, she moved forward. Her heavy hooves stomped on the ground and she lowered her head, readying to charge. She snorted loudly and her front left hoof pawed at the ground, digging in as she readied herself.
“Wait! Don’t attack it!” A female’s voice from the left. She came running from between some buildings where she must have been hiding in the shadows.
I looked over and wondered how long she had been standing there. She was carrying a notebook and was wearing a black kimono with designs of a cherry blossom tree with some leaves falling. Being a cultivator was awesome. I probably would have never been able to tell that in the dark if I wasn’t. Even though we were in what amounted to the downtown area of the village, they didn’t have any lanterns or anything lit up due to it being so late.
“It’s not going to hurt you, it’s just a little mischievous,” she said as she got closer to me and Betsy.
Betsy seemed utterly dismayed at not being able to charge at something again. I then had a memory or a daydream or something of her trying to gore a chicken, and it all went horribly wrong. I shook my head and watched the girl run towards us. The rest of the creatures had scattered away in her commotion and the only one left was still bent over and looking around with the eye in its butt.
“It’s a shirime, a yokai,” she explained when she got closer.
I blinked. I knew that word, sort of. Well, I knew the word yokai, but I didn’t know what a shirime was. “A what now?”
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She stood next to me and Betsy and I could tell she also had a pencil and was sketching the creatures. I blinked and looked her over. Now that she was standing next to me, I could see she was about my height and maybe even about as old as I was, though that could be hard to tell. If she was a cultivator, she could have been in the triple digits age wise.
She smirked. “In Japanese, it translates to Butteye, I believe, but that’s what they called it. I could only imagine that’s what they call it here too,” she said plainly.
“Japa-” my eyes went wide, and I looked at her.
I watched her eyes go wide and her hand cover her mouth and she stumbled over her words.. “Wait, no, it’s just a place where I come from. I’m from far away, uh…”
I blinked and looked at her. “Earth?”
Her hand lowered, and now she just stared at me. “...you’re from…”
I nodded. Betsy bellowed in agreement and nodded her head.
She looked at the ox. “You’re from Earth too?” The girl looked questioningly between me and the ox.
I nodded my head and smirked. “Yeah, Betsy was my truck.”
“Your truck?”
I grinned and nodded. Then I went ahead and explained what happened to me in the truck on the pike. “When I woke up, I didn’t have a truck, but I had Betsy.”
We had noticed the last remaining shirime had run off, but the girl groaned and gave a curse when she looked over. She sighed and shook her head and I just looked at her curiously.
“I was drawing them. I wanted to draw something with them showing their eye,” she said with a sigh as she closed her notebook and put it in a messenger bag around her shoulder.
I nodded and looked off in the direction the others had run off in. “Well, maybe they’ll come back?”
She sighed again and shook her head. “Probably not, not tonight anyway. It’s fine. Anyway, my name is Amber or Kohaku, as they’ve been calling me here.”
I looked back over at her with a smirk. “Yeah, what’s with that? I tell them my name is Michael and they keep calling Maikeru.”
A nod of her head and she put her hand on Betsy’s massive head. “I think it’s because that’s probably the closest thing our names are to Japanese and this place is obviously heavily inspired or takes after ancient Japan.”
“Yeah, there’s even sumo wrestling here!” I said, probably a little too excited by it. “I had tea with the yokozuna the other day.”
She stared at me and ignored what I had said. “And this is Betsy, huh?”
I nod. “Yeah.” I furrowed my brow and wondered aloud. “I wonder why she hasn’t gotten a Japanese name?”
She furrowed her brow and looked at me. “Well, first I have to know…. Why do you call your ox Betsy?”
I blinked. “Uh… Cause that’s her name?”
“But it’s a boy.”
Betsy bellowed angrily and pawed at the ground once more. Then she shook her massive head.
“Yeah, what do you mean? It’s a girl ox, obviously. After all, her name is Betsy,” I said, as if that was proof the ox was a girl.
She stared at me and said, “But the ox has horns?”
I blinked and looked between Amber and the ox. “So?”
“So, bulls have horns,” she said flatly.
“But Betsy isn’t a bull, she’s an ox.”
She just stared at me in response.
“There’s boy oxes and girl oxes,” I said plainly.
She just kept staring at me.
I shrugged and gave her a weird look. She looked at me like I was an idiot and I just reached out and patted Betsy’s head before I turned to her.
“You’re a good girl, aren’t you,” I said to help calm her down.
Betsy preened and bellowed and gave a nod of her head.
Amber cleared her throat and changed the subject. “Anyway, what’re you doing here?”
“This is where I first showed up when I got isekai’d. I met some decent people here, and they gave me work to do. Think they’re giving me more work,” I said. “What about you?”
She grinned. “I’m going with you. You’re taking clay down to the southwestern part of the empire, right? I’m going along as a helper and I want to see as much of this world and the different animals and yokai there are while we go. I’m hoping we find a lot of the different things along the way!” she said excitedly.
“Wait, huh?” I blinked. I didn’t really want anyone riding in my wagon with me. There was more than enough team driving that I had to deal with while I was still in training. There was no way I wanted to do it again. The wagon would be even more cramped than a semi-truck.
Just then, some light came from a building a little off the main square and a voice yelled at us.
“What are you guys doing out there? Come inside so we can figure everything out and we’ll find you both a bed for the night.”
I grinned. It was Matsuda. I’d know that stiff, proper sounding voice anywhere. I looked over at Betsy and gave her another pat on the head.
“I’ll be back. Let me go work out the details and then I’ll figure out where you’re going to rest. I have a feeling this job will be longer than the ones we’ve done so far, and that’s including back home,” I said to her and patted her once more between the horns. She always seemed to love when I did this and gave off the feelings of warmth and contentment.
Since we stuck to the northeast back home, we didn’t really have trips that were super long compared to most truck drivers, so the statement was probably true.
I walked off towards where the man had called to us from. Amber had already left in the direction. One last look to Betsy, who stood placidly waiting before I stepped inside the building after Amber.
The smells instantly hit my nose when I walked in. Soy and miso and roast pork and garlic and everything I loved in the world. I looked in and the room was basically like every other nice house I had seen before. Simple, thin polished wood walls with some paintings. This room had a small tree in the corner and in the middle was a table where Nakayasu was sitting eating noodles from a bowl. Next to him was an older, thin man I hadn’t seen before.
After Nakayasu slurped up a noodle, he looked at me and Amber and pointed to the other two seats at the table. “Sit, sit, we have much to discuss. Glad to see you two have already met. Saves us some time. We should hurry and get to sleep.”
I sat in the spot across from the grandfatherly tea farmer and looked down at the bowl that was already there. It was full of noodles that were still steaming hot, and as soon as I sat, Matsuda poured a dark broth over the noodles. He did the same for Amber before pouring each clear liquid that I assumed was sake in cups next to our bowls.
We thanked the servant, and I took a drink, still wanting to wipe away the memory of the man bending over and looking at me with his butteye. The sake was slightly acidic and had a good body to it with a robust flavor. I found it helped cut through the fat of the ramen broth when I ate.
“So, Maikeru and Kohaku, this is Norimoro, an old friend of mine,” Nakayasu said.
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