1 - 0. Returning Home. And then. Food.
“…In the western part of the prefecture, the weather will clear up, and it will become quite comfortable. However, later in the evening…” On the TV screen, a normal weather forecast from some news channel was showing. The weather lady in charge of that corner was pointing out the movements of the clouds on the weather map using her pointing stick. For most of the viewers, it was the local morning news program, that was no different from one they saw daily. There was a man eating his breakfast while watching it. He was sitting on the wooden floor, in a seiza position in front of a single person folding table. As he ate, he was paying the utmost attention to the news, so as not to let even a single word slip by him. White rice, miso soup, double-sided fried egg, and a supermarket deli bought spinach and bean sprout dish dressed with sesame sauce. It was a normal breakfast, with nothing out of place at all. If you had to point out an abnormal thing, it was that man himself. “Kuoooooooooo~! Right, the weather forecast, it has to be the weather forecast at this time, right!! I’m thankful, thankful…!!” He wailed, and yet, on his face was not sadness, but absolute bliss. His face streaming with tears, the man wiped his runny nose with tissues, and wiping his tears with a thick towel, he continued eating. The time displayed on the TV was showing 5:55, and as even though it was unmistakably early morning, the man frantically shoved the food into his mouth, and when it was full, he washed it down with miso soup. And after finishing 5 people’s worth of breakfast by himself, he fell backwards right there on his back, and started patting his bulging belly, as if to show his appreciation. “Ahh, I think I’ll just be like this for the rest of the day. I kinda don’t wanna move around…” He looked at the ceiling. The fluorescent light’s cover is a bit misaligned…he blamed himself from back when he had put it on. That little misalignment. I wanna fix it. But, having gone beyond just being full, his stomach, screaming in protest, did not want to move at all. The sound of the news program that was unchanged from yesterday was like a BGM track. The music of everyday life. Listening to it, both of his eyes blurred again. Facing upwards, tears from both of his eyes fell and wet the floor. And at the same time, his nose started to run again. He sniffled and rubbed his nose, but the amount was too much to just rub away, so he unwillingly sat up. From the tissue box on the table, he extravagantly grabbed around 3 tissues at once and blew his nose on them in one go. “…Ah, this is the best…” With just a flick of his wrist, he took a shot towards the used trashcan. There was Pon~ sound as the tissues flew towards it. He then stretched widely, and still in a T-pose, dropped back to the floor. Kotsun~ His right hand touched something. As he looked towards it, there was an “armor” there. Not a gorgeous one like the ones used in cosplay that was so popular nowadays, but rather a simple one that was something Town Solider A would wear. Beside it was a pair of leather boots, a mostly wooden shield reinforced with some metal, and a simple helmet with no decorations whatsoever. From his viewpoint, the entrance to this room was also visible. There, two convenience store bought vinyl umbrellas along with a spear with some rust on its tip, out of place in this room, was leaning against the wall. He could also see the semi-transparent garbage bag placed there. Inside it, he could faintly see a coat and a pair of trousers that were quite damaged, and what seemed to be quite a dirty bath towel, all shoved together. “This is the worst…I need to do something about this…” Damn it…he muttered while flicking the armor with his finger. The armor made a light sound, and he sluggishly got up. He was wearing a plain T-shirt and shorts. As he roughly scratched his head, dandruff fell to the floor. “I’ll do it after taking another bath…” The dirt would not come off, no matter how much he washed. I can understand just a little how Mrs. Macbeth[1] felt, I think…thinking that he headed towards the bathing area attached to the room. He threw off his t-shirt and shorts and searched for the most worn-out towel in the dressing room. I’m sure that this towel will also become useless after I’m done with it, no mistake. He entered into the bathing area and saw the full body mirror that was hung up next to the shower. “That is one terrible mug. I need to do something about this, otherwise I’ll be treated like a suspicious person just by going outside.” Nowadays, it was world in which you got reported just for walking around outside with a messy appearance. The figure in the mirror had hair so long that it did not only covered his eyes but also hid his nose, and on top it, his bread had also grown freely. Speaking of his head, it was harder to find a patch of uncovered skin than not. At best, he looked like a bizarre musician, but in reality, people would not look at him like that. “I’m sure I brought back some disposable razors back with from among the hotel amenities…” He could not remember where he put them, and he decided to put off “cleanly taking care of it” until later. However, from the neck down, his body was well balanced, and even though it was on the thin side, his muscles were well developed. He had just a little too much mass to be included in the “slender macho” category, and on top of it had a heigh of 180 cm, and disregarding his head, it could be called a well-trained body. The only thing that jumped out were three distinct scars, running in parallel from his right armpit towards his lower abdomen. Tracing them with his finger, he worried if they would be noticed in something like a public bath. “But yeah. Really, what should I do from now on.” He opened the shower, pouring lukewarm water on his head. As his thick hair became wet and clumped together, he swiped them back all at once from in front if his eyes. His eyes, which had been hidden so far, appeared. A slightly sleepy face, with single-edged eyelids that had no folds; a face that could be found anywhere. The shower continued to run, giving off steam, but he stepped up to the basin next to the bathtub and picked up the “knife” thrown into it. He then casually raised it to his overgrown hair and quickly started cutting through it. In a few moments, the basin was full of his hair. He used the little of what shaving cream was left, and then this time roughly shaved off the overgrown beard. He took about 20 minutes to put his hair and beard into order. “Yep, something like this I guess.” From the suspicious head that was now properly shaved, a man with a mediocre face in his mid-20s appeared. A thin face with the aforementioned fold-less eyes. If anyone was asked what kind of guy he was, the answer was always guaranteed to be “guy with a normal face”. “Will the drain clog? I don’t think this much hair will be able to drain…” Worrying about such normal things, he washed his body and head. As he furiously scrubbed his body clean, the foam which should have been white steadily became black, and the shampoo with which he as cleaning his head was also becoming brown. He noticed that a smell that surpassed the nice smells was wafting about, but this was unavoidable. It was the collective 3 years’ worth of dirt, after all. “This is amazing. I even bathed once before going to sleep after returning…” He was at a complete loss at his own dirtiness. Because of that, the “total wash” from top to bottom that he had been planning to do once, he ended up having to repeat it three times. “Fuuuuuuu…that was refreshing~” Wiping away the water with a bath towel, he wore something different from the T-shirt he had been wearing before and returned to his room. He had realized that it smelled awful when he put it near his nose. It seems like the smell has seeped into it, and even though I feel bad for it, there is no other way except dispose of it along with the clothes I had been wearing “there”. Sighing, he sat back in front of the table, cross-legged. “Now then, I need to really think about what I’m going to do today…” His eyebrows become furrowed. He picked up the leaflets of the newspaper nearby and put it on the table. On the blank backside, he wrote with a pen, in huge letters: Celebration! Return from the other world, day 1! This is a written record of the daily life of a certain man. Not a great Hero, nor a shining Saint, or even a terrifying Demon Lord. The record of the life an “ordinary person” abducted to another world; the events after he returned back to modern Japan. [1] Reference to Macbeth, in which the wife of Macbeth goes crazy and keeps washing her hands, unable to clean “the spot” on them. |