When I came out of the door, I was no longer on the streets of Tokyo.

  It looked like I was in a forest of some sort. The trees were absurdly large with vines as thick as my arms were coiled around them. The ground was uneven and littered with fallen leaves. This wasn’t the kind of clean forest you’d see in a park. It was the kind that you’d find deep in the mountains, untouched by human hands.

  How on earth was I brought here?

  Was that door some sort of portal that transcended space and time?

  Hey! This wasn’t the time to be thinking about such pointless things. I needed to focus on the task I was given. The yokai baby had told me to survive.

  I kicked at the ground, sending a bunch of dried leaves into the air.

  “How the fuck am I supposed to know what to do if all you tell me is, ‘survive’?!”

  I tried to calm myself down. This was no time to be panicking. I quickly organized my thoughts.

  First of all, given that the baby went out of its way to save me and persuade me into accepting the contract, it wouldn’t have made any sense for it to send me on a suicide mission.

  “Survive.”

  Did it mean I had to survive out here in the wild? It could have given me this task to assess my abilities to handle an unforeseen situation. Maybe all I had to do was prove my resourcefulness by securing food and shelter. But then how long would I have to be here? If the task was to test my survival skills, then they would only really show their worth over an extended duration period of time.

  Days? Weeks?

  “That shitty baby.”

  There was also another way to interpret the task. There could be other yokai out here that might try to kill me and my job would be to stay alive.

  I shuddered at the thought.

  If a yokai actually appeared and tried to eat me, then realistically, there was no way I could fight back. The baby hadn’t granted me any weapons or powers to fight them off.

  I suddenly remembered the vial I drank earlier.

  It had said that it would give me temporary regenerative powers. How long was ‘temporary’ supposed to be?

  In order to find out, I bit my thumb.

  “Ugh.”

  It was a nasty sensation and I felt a metallic taste in my mouth as I drew blood.

  I spit the blood out and looked at my thumb.

  Blood slowly kept dripping out. There was no super regeneration or any burning sensation.

  Fuck.

  So right now, I really didn’t have any tools at my disposal. All I had was the clothes I was currently wearing.

  “Okay, given the two scenarios I’ve thought up, the next course of action would be…”

  I picked the largest tree I could find. Even though it looked like any of the trees around here would branches large enough to support my weight, I wanted the thickest one so I could hide on top of it. This was so that if there really were yokai wandering about, they wouldn’t be able to see me.

  Right now, I wasn’t particularly hungry or thirsty so food and water could wait. It was more important to find a safe location in case it was the second scenario.

  Why hide in a tree instead of trying to find a cave?

  Simply put, I didn’t know where I was nor did I know anything about the geography of the area. If I carelessly tried to explore, who knew what dangers I would encounter. Even if there were no yokai around, bumping into a wild bear or wolves in the dark was just as fatal.

  “Oh yeah.”

  Before I climbed the tree, I started digging at the soil with my bare hands. After collecting a sizeable amount of soil, I started rubbing it all over my body. It was important that I covered up my smell. Be it wild animals or yokai, I didn’t want to be discovered just because of the scent I was giving off.

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  It felt disgusting to be covered in dirt and mud but I didn’t have the luxury to be complaining about it.

  Once I was done, I climbed up to a branch that was about two stories high. I didn’t want to climb too high up in case of a situation where I needed to run arose. It would’ve incredibly stupid to die because I couldn’t get down on time.

  At this height, if I properly broke my fall into a roll while landing onto the forest floor, I’d still be able to transition it directly into a run.

  I adjusted myself as comfortably as I could and lied down on the branch, keeping as small of a profile as I could.

  It was time to wait.

  The sun was starting to rise.

  After hours of planking on this stupid branch, I finally allowed myself to move. My body felt stiff all over. To make things worse, I was completely exhausted. Two fears kept me awake the whole night. As a result, I spent the entire night staring at my surroundings while in that position.

  Firstly, I was worried that in my sleep I would roll off the branch.

  Secondly, I was worried that a yokai would sneak up on me while I was asleep.

  Now that was done with, I needed to secure food and water. This didn’t mean I thought it was confirmed there were no other yokai around but it was apparent that I wasn’t in any immediate danger.

  If that was the case, food and water were my priorities right now. I didn’t know how long I had to stay in this forest so I couldn’t risk just waiting everything out. If I did, it could lead to the worst-case scenario. A yokai finding a weak and starving Minami Riku.

  I climbed down the tree, making sure I didn’t stumble in the process. Even if I could simply jump off the branch, I didn’t want to risk even the slightest chance of injury.

  When I reached the bottom, I bent down to kiss the ground.

  “I’ve fucking missed you.”

  I stretched my stiff muscles and set off in a random direction.

  Right now, the most important thing to do was to search for a body of water. Whether it was a river or a lake, it didn’t really matter. I needed fresh water to drink and then I could simply go fishing for food. I could craft a simple spear and go spearfishing.

  I kept a lookout for several things.

  Animal tracks were one of them. If they belonged to a herbivore like a deer or boar, I could track them in case it led me to a source of water. If it belonged to a bear, wolf or other unidentified creature they could be a threat, I could avoid them.

  I only thought of hunting for a split second before dismissing it. I wouldn’t be able to take down larger animals without a proper weapon and I didn’t have any traps to get more elusive prey like rabbits or birds. On top of that, I didn’t have any tools like a skinning knife.

  There were other, more easily obtained sources of food.

  Back when I was a little kid, my mom used to bring us to stay at my grandparents’ house because we couldn’t afford to travel overseas. They stayed in a rural village so me and my sister would often head into the mountains and play with the other kids.

  As a result, I learned how to forage along with other useful skills.

  There were various wild plants you could eat like burdock or yams. There was also always wild fruit. I didn’t know if I was still in Japan but it didn’t hurt to keep an eye out for them.

  After an hour of walking, I had managed to find nothing.

  No plants that I recognized as edible nor any animal tracks.

  I was down on my luck.

  “Damn it.”

  Suddenly, I heard it.

  It was faint but I could hear the sounds of running water. A river!

  I ran towards the source of the sound and found it soon after.

  The river wasn’t particularly large. It was about nine meters wide and the current wasn’t that fast. It didn’t look very deep. The water wasn’t murky and I could make out fish swimming about. It was perfect.

  I made a cup with my hands and started gulping down the water. The cooling water against my parched throat felt amazing.

  After I was done drinking, I caught my reflection in the water.

  Filthy.

  I looked absolutely filthy. The blood on my shirt mixed with the mud had dried up, making it look like my shirt was covered in red clay. Likewise, the rest of my body was caked in dried dirt.

  Should I wash up?

  Surely any remaining scents of civilization were gone by now. If I washed myself and my clothes with the river water, I’d still smell like nature, right?

  The argument sounded logical in my head.

  I just wanted to be clean for the sake of my sanity.

  I waded into shallow water and started scrubbing off the dirt. It just felt more efficient than taking off my clothes and cleaning them and my body separately.

  “I should make a spear to fish with as well.”

  Once I was done, I could make a fire to dry them and myself. I could then use it to cook whatever fish I caught.

  “Yeah, that sounds good.”

  Even though I was busy planning what I should do next, I still kept a lookout of my surroundings. It was extremely fortunate that I hadn’t let my guard down.

  I saw movement in the river by something too big to have been a fish.

  I had no idea what it was but it was coming from downstream. Even against the current, it was moving incredibly fast.

  Less than a fraction of a second after I made it to shore, I felt it swipe at my feet, barely missing. I ran a couple of meters forward before turning to check what it was.

  Despite the fact I was only about two meters from the shore, this thing had caught up to me in the short time it took for me to wade back to solid ground.

  I saw it emerge from the water and come to shore.

  It was humanoid.

  Roughly one meter tall, it had green scaly skin and webbed hands and feet. There was a turtle shell on its back and it had a beak for its mouth. At the top of its head was a cavity filled with river water.

  A kappa.

  It was definitely a kappa.

  “You’re a human! What is a human doing in a place like this?”

  “I’m obviously in disguise. There’s no way a human would be in a place like this.”

  “Oh. The scent of a human suddenly appeared in the water so I thought… never mind, I’ll be on my way then.”

  Looks like I had been wrong, washing the mud off had caused me to give off a human smell. Even if my clothes didn’t smell like detergent anymore, I couldn’t get rid of my natural smell.

  Anyway, it looks like it bought my bluff so… safe?

  It turned back to the water and looked like it was about go in but then it stopped and turned back.

  “Like hell I’ll believe that! You smell too much like a human for it to be a disguise.”

  Not safe.

  “Well, it was worth a try.”

  Shit.