John sighed, looking out the window overlooking the hot springs out back. The rain had begun to pick up, and he could still catch the echoes of the crowd, Yuki's speech distinct, but unintelligible over the low roar. Yet, he didn't need to hear the words to know what she was doing.

The kitsune was making it clear this was an emergency, and gathering immense political capital without having to declare herself the leader. After all, who would say no to the kitsune who had just rid them of tax collectors, especially when she said there was a lurking threat? The priests probably had some sort of sway over the population, and if what he heard about this "Grand Bargain" was true, they'd have objections to her seizing power over mortals. Yet, it'd be borderline suicidal to make any open moves.

They had powers, sure, but they weren't as far above the average person as an Unbound seemed to be, if Rin was any indication, and there didn't seem to be that many of them. If they did try something, they'd likely get no support from the greater populace, so it'd be just them.

Of course, he'd prefer things not to come to that, but he was realistic. There was a chance they'd have to dissuade them somehow, although he was hopeful he could do it softly.

The most dangerous thing they could do was escape and alert someone with actual power of the situation, but it'd be deadly for them, too, even if Kiku let them go. After all, if it got out that they were assisting the Nameless after the ensuing crackdown, he didn't doubt that there would be consequences that would make whatever he could do look like a light lecture in comparison.

After all, this is a world where you can tear somebody's soul out of their body. He could only imagine the horrors one could inflict when sufficiently motivated.

A gentle knock on the door's frame drew his attention.

Yuki was still giving a speech. Rin would likely verbally announce herself or just barrel in. That only left one person who might be there.

"Come in," John said after twisting away from the window and ensuring he had a proper offensive focus in his gauntlet.

Segawa Yosuke walked through the door. He still bore an uncomfortable scent of decay, but he looked… different. Yosuke's previously threadbare and torn clothes had been replaced with a simple, fresh working outfit. Indeed, the smell wasn't as strong as it once was, either, now far more tolerable. Although he still looked a bit like a mottled, melted candle with an array of swords stuck through his obscured skull, it was clear that a layer of grime John hadn't previously noticed was gone, with how much brighter his flesh was coloured.

In one of his hands was a wax tablet, held out for him to read, and in the other a small wooden rod to act as a pen for the soft surface.

"Lord Hall, thank you for your kindness. I will not be quick to forget it," read the text, the characters perhaps a bit rough, but precise and extremely legible.

"It's no problem, Yosuke. I might have done something earlier if I were aware of your situation. I wouldn't wish the existence of some trinket that can control one's actions on anyone," John commented, second-guessing his thoughts only a moment later. That was probably too informal, wasn't it? Shit, maybe he should have been more cautious, and that was perhaps too sore of a spot, too.

Although if there was anyone new that he could be a bit more relaxed around, wouldn't it be this guy? As screwed as the situation was, Yuki had control of him to a disturbing degree, even if it felt a bit too much like having a slave to him.

The man tilted his head, his lack of expression making him impossible to read as he wrote another message in a strange inversion of John's situation not too long ago. In a way, they were kindred spirits; two people torn from society and put in a place where they had no voice, even if John was on the mend now.

Perhaps he could rig up some sort of device to let him speak in the long run, if he sticks around after John finds a way to break whatever damned curse makes him need orders to live.

"Indeed?" he wrote. "My compliments to your parents, then. Here, all it took was one heavens-damned war for everyone's brains to turn to wet slop and start dripping out their noses."

He chuckled a bit before he could stop himself. Abashed, he muttered, "Sorry, sorry. That was just a bit… unexpected. In private, you can call me John, at the very least. I'm not big on formality."

Yosuke nodded sharply, writing once more. "They took the other two favourite pastimes of soldiers from me—drinking and whoring—so humour is all I have left. Well, and haikus. I fucking hate haikus."

It took a moment for John to center himself and not to laugh at the absurdity of it, and his thoughts momentarily went to some of his disastrous attempts at haikus back in high school during a brief but potent phase that he insisted, as all teenagers do, wasn't one.

A sun going down / beautiful scintillating / mist upon new dusk.

Never again.

To be honest, he felt like he should be freaking out about the whole absurdity of the candle man under his kinda employ casually writing about going out for booze and prostitutes, but the sheer absurdity of the situation made it feel less tangible.

"You know what? Fair," he replied, sighing. "No gambling?"

"I mean, if you wanted to get flogged, sure," he wrote with a grunt that sounded awfully wet. "The officers always hated that shit. Dice out on deployment would get you digging latrines for months. On leave maybe, but most of the underground dens just used rigged bullshit to rob you anyway, so I saved my money for when I knew I'd get something out of it."

Yosuke paused, scratching where his chin might be. "You'd think that those idiots would catch on, but there seems to be nothing more appealing for soldiers with fresh pay than getting scammed out of their money and getting so mad that the hired muscle throws them into the streets."

John clicked his tongue. "Yeah, that makes sense. I think back home, they gave up and just let them do it as long as they aren't on duty or on base. There's always some place to blow their money stupidly nearby, though. I think I read something that said problem gambling is about three times more common amongst soldiers? Maybe it comes with being willing to risk your life for your country to begin with. A lot of folks are in there for the benefits and see the risk of dying as worth it, after all."

The following snort was a bit ugly, due to the whole… no nose thing Yosuke had going on. John honestly wasn't even sure how he made that noise, but he was just rolling with the situation at this point.

"How about Shogi? You any good at that?" John asked.

"Awful," Yosuke replied on the slate.

"Good," John replied, pulling the same hastily carved board and pieces Yuki made earlier from his bag, "because I just started earlier this week. How about a game?"

There was a moment of silence as the man wrote his reply. "Sure. You brought a board with you to a fight?"

John looked away, but only for a moment. "The bag was mostly prepacked," he stated. "I just forgot it was in there before now."

There was no more conversation between them as they arranged the pieces. The pawn toss went to Yosuuke, and John internally sighed in relief. He definitely had a much easier time responding to a move than dealing with a choice paralysis inducing opening, so it was a small mercy.

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The game went… not very well, but that was more or less what he expected. At some point, the roar of the crowd faded, but Yuki had yet to find him, although he had no doubt she somehow knew where he was thanks to her incredibly sharp sense. For now, he was in no hurry.

Even if he was getting absolutely demolished like a small hut in a hurricane by someone who stated they were "awful" at shogi.

John stared at the positively abysmal board state that even he could tell was a wholesale slaughter, trying to figure out how the hell it even got to that point. Maybe he could still pull it back?

Hesitantly, he made his next move, sliding his lance two spaces forward, blocking Yosuke's angle mover from taking his gold general.

The sound of tapping drew his attention, and he glanced up to see another message written on the wax slate.

"You weren't lying when you said you sucked," it read.

John grunted coarsely. "Well, excuse me for sucking at a game I'm just learning. You're awfully confident, beating one of your bosses this badly on your first day."

Yosuke shrugged. "I died once already, so it's a lot harder to get properly scared of something. Besides, I want to help my country in some small way, and if you killed me again for something that minor, odds are you weren't going to do anything with me to begin with."

"Damn," John said. "I can't argue with that logic." Internally, he cursed as Yosuke made another move that put him even further in the corner. "In any case, I can't promise you we'll be going out to fight evil or the… invaders or anything." Not that he knew anything about them, and to be honest, he was kind of worried about asking. They came from the south, and if he remembered correctly, and this world's layout was anything like his home's, that would put them by coming from either… Taiwan, the Philippines, the Indonesian Archipelago, or maybe China, depending on the angle of approach and how it was divided up in this era.

To be honest, given how messy things were with the new world crops kicking around, he wouldn't be surprised if it was somehow crusaders down there causing a ruckus.

"That's fine," Yosuke replied. "Purging an infestation of monsters and killing some dipshit corrupt officials is plenty to keep me happy for quite a while. I've not lived a life where I'll be one of the few to rise to the heavens above on moral merit, and I wasn't an Unbound, so I can't go there from strength alone, but this might earn me a comfortable spot in the underworld."

And there was another bombshell for him to deal with. He wasn't sure how much of that was myth and how much was fact. He did not doubt the matter of Unbound being able to ascend to the heavens in some manner, but it was his understanding that there were no great and powerful deities around like there once were. That meant if the afterlife was sorting people somehow, it either could automatically do it, or it was being run by a third party somehow.

Does that mean that the afterlife is subject to bureaucracy and politics? What the hell would happen to him after he died? Yuki seemed to think he had some sort of Presence, which was an extension of the soul, so presumably he had some kind of soul as the locals understood it, at least to a degree. Oh fuck, he hoped he wasn't so different that he would get stuck in some grand celestial machine and have to be unstuck like a grease clog in a pipe.

Well, he'd just have to try his best not to die, then—just the same as usual.

Shaking off that bit of newly discovered existential dread, he made another move, refocusing on the game.

"Fair enough, I guess," he muttered, sliding his silver general to the side.

For a few minutes, they played in silence.

And then the door slid open enthusiastically, the slide squeaking like a surprised mouse.

"Sensei!" boomed Rin as she entered the room, bouncing on her heels as she came to a stop. "Yuki has finished up with the villagers and has started interrogating the captives, and she sent me to you to see if you needed anything!"

Seemingly actually beholding the scene for the first time, she froze, staring at the board. Her eyes hurriedly scanned over John, the board, and Yosuke, although he noted a hint of something dark when her gaze passed over the undead.

"Hey there, Rin, I'm fine. Yosuke and I were just passing the time. There's not much I can do until I'm back at the fort," John commented. He really hoped she didn't have some problem with the guy; he could only imagine how much trouble the scale-bearing Unbound could get up to if she decided she wanted to cause some issues. The thought of how dramatic she could be mixed with the pouting of a teenager going on forty-plus and the ability to bench press a small car was positively horrifying and something he'd only wish on phone scammers that call you at six in the morning and maybe people who don't return their shopping carts.

"Would you mind if I joined you two?" Rin asked, although her eyes were pointedly locked onto him rather than Yosuke.

Whatever that was, he was going to avoid engaging with it the same way one would avoid a field of landmines.

He looked across to Yosuke, but the undead offered no answer of his own, placidly sitting in place, although John couldn't tell whether he was looking at him, Rin, or the board, given the lack of eyes.

Say, how did Yosuke see?

It wasn't as if he was smelling things, as he had no context for how these tiles would smell, nor was he navigating by hearing. He was able to set up his half of the board easily, and John didn't see the man rubbing his fingers over the tiles to try to feel what the characters were. Yet, he clearly could perceive them.

He was shaken from his thoughts by Rin settling next to him, surprisingly. She wasn't too close to his side, but she certainly made herself present, kneeling next to him as she was. She said nothing, but kept her eyes on the board like a hawk as she settled. The game resumed, with Rin staying suspiciously silent.

It went on for a few more moves, and he went to move his jewelled general before he suddenly jolted, a bit of static against his ankle shaking him from his thoughts.

Hmm.

Looking at what he was going to do again, that would have opened him up to an angle mover putting him in check. Instead, he slid his flying chariot to the side.

The game went on, although there was something about the mats that kept on zapping him! He swore it hadn't happened before, but…

He turned his gaze to Rin, who was looking straight at the board, almost too focused, like she was pointedly trying not to look at him.

Hmm.

Testingly, he reached for his lance, going to make a move which was obviously self-destructive.

Sure enough, a little bit of static electricity zapped him again, Rin's tail twitching against the mat they were sitting on.

John wasn't sure whether he should be annoyed or bemused. On one hand, Rin seemed to think he was beyond help, and he was a bit miffed at her helping him cheat without consent via electric shocks, like some insane chess scandal that you found a video essay on several decades later.

On the other hand, her gloomy attitude now made a lot more sense: she was salty about her sensei getting his ass kicked by some random person who she didn't know in shogi, and that was positively hilarious.

"Oh!" John exclaimed, suddenly standing up while keeping a straight face. "I'll be back in a second, Yosuke. I need to take care of something. Rin, mind accompanying me?"

"Of course, sensei!" she replied, sunnily springing to he feet to follow him.

Yosuke nodded and didn't rise as the duo left the room.

"What do you need, sensei?" Rin asked after he slid the door shut, but he said nothing, leading her down stairs, out toward the back door.

"Oh, I was just thinking about what has to get done around here. Do you know anything about warehousing work?" John asked, sliding the door to the back lot open.

Hesitantly, Rin shook her head. "No, sensei," she answered, glancing at the various half-deconstructed tents, boxes piled under and outside them. Some were packed with supplies, others with clothes, and some with trade goods.

"Eh, you count your supplies before a journey, it's close enough," he commented, pulling some writing supplies from a pocket and shoving them into her arms, which she hurriedly caught. "I'd like an inventory of what's back here so we can redistribute it to the villagers later. Good luck!" At that, he patted her on the shoulder twice and turned to leave.

"Sensei?!" she called after him.

He glanced over his shoulder at the woman. "Rin. Come on now," he drawled, sighing. "Is loss not the first step to skill? Would you deny me my learning experience? Oh, and I'll take a one-page essay on what hydrogen and oxygen mean to you when you're done."

As she blushed and sputtered, he slid the door shut with an audible thunk behind him, strutting away, making sure to make some distance before cackling privately to himself. From there, it was an easy trip back to their impromptu gaming room, and before he settled back down, he made sure to check on Rin through the open window, making sure all was going well.

"Kids, right?" Yosuke wrote on his slate. "She has a lot of growing to do."

John chuckled, the manner of Rin's age coming to mind. "A bit," he responded, "You almost have to admire it, though. It's impressive she's managed to stay like that, despite the world. Not as if she's that sheltered, either."

Ultimately, John lost that match and the next one, too, but it was a fun experience, made all the better by watching Rin trying to figure out how to sort fishing poles out back.

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