Realizing she had no hope of changing Amamiya Rin's mind, Mamiya Yuka stopped trying to dissuade him.
"I made a special trip to the hospital to retrieve these. The wooden sword has taken quite a bit of wear, but the cane is fine."
She brought the cane and the sheathed wooden sword from the corner of the entryway, supported Amamiya Rin, and walked him all the way out of the apartment building.
She flagged down a taxi for him along the way, and paid the fare herself.
The taxi pulled slowly away from the base of the apartment building. Through the window, Amamiya Rin watched Mamiya Yuka's silhouette disappear into the entrance before he finally looked away and leaned back against the rear seat.
The car threaded through the nighttime streets, neon lights streaming past the window like ribbons of liquid color, leaving trails of vivid light in their wake.
Amamiya Rin closed his eyes. Drawing on his deep mastery of Dhyana, he entered the void — suspending all thought and movement, reducing the drain on both his body and mind to the barest minimum.
Easy as he'd made it sound talking to Mamiya Yuka, the truth was that his situation was worse than it had ever been.
The exhaustion that had already killed him once hadn't dissipated like morning fog after a full day and night of rest. Instead, it had compounded — layering on top of the twenty years of accumulated strain the Long Dream had pressed into his body.
Doing the math, the shape of it was clear: if he didn't find a way to normalize his sleep, he had at most another day and a night before his body would simply give out again.
"My lifespan... barely two months left," Amamiya Rin murmured to himself.
An extinction-level Apology Demon lurked just beyond his sight, watching and waiting. Kayako — a being with the potential to end the world — could come for him at any moment. And Kawakami Tomie's mind was growing stronger by the day.
But the greatest threat to his life right now — was the Long Dream.
He had lost count of how many times he'd entered the dream today alone. All he knew was that barely a month had passed since his transmigration to this world — and yet the time accumulated inside the Dream World had already stretched to twenty years.
Within two months, his body would crumble to ash.
There was only one solution: find the Sandman's curse within those two months, and use his dream-self to reset his condition.
A little over half an hour later, the taxi arrived safely in the city center.
He stepped out. The evening breeze hit him immediately — laden with the enticing smell of food and the particular noise and energy of the city at night.
Not far off stood a brightly lit business hotel. On the other side stretched a long street packed with restaurants.
A budget hotel near somewhere to eat.
That had been the only condition Amamiya Rin had given when he'd gotten into the cab — no specific destination, just the parameters. The driver had delivered.
Having gone a full day and night without food, his stomach had begun voicing its grievances. Amamiya Rin gripped his cane, shouldered his bag and sword case, and headed briskly toward the restaurant street.
The long strip was alive with noise — neon signs blinking in cascades of color, steam billowing from ramen shop doorways, the raucous energy of izakayas spilling out onto the pavement, the rich, fatty char of yakiniku grills threading through it all. Every smell conspired to sharpen his hunger.
Amamiya Rin quickened his pace and settled on an izakaya that looked reasonably clean, with a comfortable number of customers — not too packed, not too desolate.
The shop was small. Warm amber light leaked through the gaps in the curtained doorway, carrying with it the comfortable, lived-in warmth of an ordinary human place.
He pushed through the curtain. The warm air and the smell of food enveloped him at once. Amamiya Rin took a seat near the corner and carefully set his cane and sword case against the wall beside him.
"Welcome!" called the aproned owner — who was also evidently the chef — from behind the open kitchen counter, warm and unhurried.
"What can I get you?"
"Tonkotsu ramen, pan-fried gyoza, cocktail sausages, and tempura."
Amaiya Rin had glanced over the menu and ordered generously.
"Just you?" the owner asked, blinking in mild surprise.
"I have a big appetite," Amamiya Rin replied with a slight smile. After a full day and night without eating, he could have put away anything — if he'd spotted an all-you-can-eat buffet nearby, he might well have gone purely to get his money's worth.
The owner nodded and asked, "Anything to drink?"
Amamiya Rin was about to shake his head when a nearby customer spoke up first.
"Hey, friend — try the Tomie Brew."
The voice came from a flushed, visibly tipsy middle-aged man leaning one arm on the table, holding a ceramic bottle between two fingers of his right hand, giving it a lazy waggle in Amamiya Rin's direction.
"It only just went on sale recently. The taste is something else — I've never had sake this good in my life. One sip and I guarantee you won't regret it."
"Tomie... Brew?"
Amaiya Rin's eye twitched as he stared at the ceramic bottle.
"Yeah, must be from some place called Tomie, or something." The drunk man gave a cheerful laugh.
"In a manner of speaking... yes. That's not entirely wrong," Amamiya Rin said.
He turned his head away, unable to look directly at the bottle — and noticed that several of the other customers had already purchased the so-called Tomie Brew.
Sake brewed from Tomie's own flesh. Already being sold on a large scale.
Amamiya Rin didn't even know what expression to make.
In Junji Ito's manga, someone really had taken Tomie's dismembered remains and brewed them into sake — and by the end of the story, had expressed clear intentions to sell it. But still...
"If you don't believe me, I'll pour you a cup." The drunk middle-aged man was still enthusiastically pushing the Tomie Brew his way.
"Thank you, but no. My health isn't great — I can't drink alcohol." Amamiya Rin's gaze drifted evasively as he offered a polite decline.
"Ah? What a shame..."
The middle-aged man clicked his tongue, but didn't press further. He poured himself another cup of the clear liquid, raised it to his nose and inhaled slowly with an expression of pure, unguarded bliss — then tipped it back in one long swallow.
Amamiya Rin made no move to stop him. There was no point. Who knew how many people had already drunk it.
All he could do now was pray that those ceramic bottles had been fully purged of Tomie's cells.
"If only I had some meat from Daruma Yakiniku to go with this," another customer said wistfully. "That place is honestly the only restaurant worthy of sake this good."
"I can hear you, you know," the owner called out dryly from behind the counter, not looking up from the ramen he was preparing for Amamiya Rin.
"Ha! You're not a proper yakiniku restaurant — why would you even care?" The customer burst out laughing and poured himself a cup of the sake as well.
"Daruma Yakiniku?" said a middle-aged man in sunglasses and a suit seated nearby, his tone calm and measured. "Could you tell me more about it?"
"It's a yakiniku place in Shizuoka Prefecture. The shop itself is absolutely filthy — grease literally everywhere — but the taste is unbelievable. If you ever find yourself in Shizuoka, you have to go at least once," the first customer enthused.
"I'll make sure of it," the sunglasses man said, with a brief, composed nod. The words were few, but the anticipation behind them was unmistakable.
Amamiya Rin listened in silence, something twisting unpleasantly in his stomach.
Shizuoka Prefecture? Mount Fuji is in Shizuoka. Which means... that's the human-flesh yakiniku restaurant.
Add a serving of tree honey — the kind that would get you beaten to death just for touching it — and you'd have the complete set: Junji Ito's three signature dishes. Entrée. Drink. Dessert.
If a single person somehow managed to consume all three in one lifetime — what a spectacular and thoroughly deserved misfortune that would be.
____
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