"One week."
Normally, I would have ignored his words and teleported myself out of there, but now what I wanted to do was just look up what was publicly known about the other side of things.
If I was going to be stuck here for a week, I might as well figure out exactly where here was.
I already knew what was supposed to exist in the Marvel universe. Mutants, superheroes, secret organizations, aliens, gods, billionaires in metal suits, and enough world-ending threats to make living a normal life sound like a competitive sport. The problem wasn't knowing about them.
The problem was figuring out which universe I was actually in.
Marvel had more universes, timelines, continuities, adaptations, and alternate versions of characters than any sane person should have to keep track of. Knowing that someone existed didn't necessarily tell me where I was. What mattered were the combinations. Which characters were active, which organizations existed, which companies were around, and which versions of certain people were running around this particular world.
Mutants were confirmed. The Fantastic Four too. Daredevil, sure. And the Hellfire Club was a thing here too. Emma Frost too, although I had no idea if she was a part of the club or simply had her own thing going on. Frost International was making waves here, although not as much as Stark Industries.
That last one was especially interesting.
Stark Industries was practically impossible to ignore, especially after meeting Tony a few days ago. That encounter had already given me a pretty big clue about the kind of world I was dealing with.
"What am I saying?"
Meeting Tony a few days ago pretty much made the thought that the Avengers were probably going to be a part of this universe inevitable.
I wasn't sure whether that was good or bad.
Actually, who was I kidding?
I sure as hell wasn't getting myself involved in that.
At least, that was what I told myself.
Day 1
I woke up quite early…
Sadly.
There was nothing particularly impressive about waking up early. No great revelation accompanied it, no sudden burst of productivity, and certainly no reason for me to be happy about it. I simply opened my eyes earlier than I wanted to and found myself staring at the ceiling with absolutely nothing demanding my attention.
I had nothing to do except watch the current Template tick up.
When I had first discovered it, I'd been pretty excited about the whole thing. A Template that could potentially give me something useful should have been a massive advantage. But after it failed me at the exact moment I needed it, my excitement had mellowed down considerably.
I still kept an eye on it, though.
I wasn't stupid enough to completely ignore something that might eventually become useful.
Getting up from my bed and heading to the washroom, I was about to enter when I heard Gojo's voice.
"Hey, Jin-kun. You're not about to make two grown men watch you take a dump."
I jumped at the sudden comment.
For a second, I had completely forgotten about the two people currently occupying my mind space.
Jumping up from the toilet seat I had been about to take a seat on, I turned around twice before remembering that they weren't physical.
"The heck, no!"
I looked around the washroom anyway, mostly out of instinct.
Nothing.
Of course there was nothing.
Gojo and Sukuna weren't actually standing somewhere inside the room. They were in my mind space, which somehow made the entire situation even more ridiculous. I had somehow ended up with two of the most troublesome people imaginable living inside my head, and apparently they could still perceive what was happening around me through my senses.
"I thought you guys were asleep because you weren't yapping all the way."
"Ahh fuck."
The silence had apparently been temporary.
"System, is there a way to turn them off? Ugh."
Gojo sounded offended as he spoke.
"I am not a machine that you turn off."
"Then turn yourself off. I can't do that. I don't have a body."
"Sukuna, tell this kid."
"Don't bring me into your childish talk."
I sighed.
The morning had barely started and I was already arguing with people who technically didn't exist outside my own head.
Then Gojo's attention shifted toward Sukuna.
"Wait, Sukuna, where'd you get that book?"
I paused.
A book?
Apparently, Sukuna was reading a book.
That raised an entirely different question.
How the hell was he reading?
He didn't have a physical body sitting somewhere in the room. Whatever he was doing was happening inside the mind space, which meant the System had apparently decided that giving Sukuna recreational material was a perfectly reasonable use of its abilities.
"Wait, how was he reading?"
I didn't actually need to ask that aloud before my curiosity got the better of me.
"Hey, Sukuna."
"Don't hound me."
"Your system is very accommodating."
That caught my attention.
"Hey System, you never mentioned that you could do that."
"And what kind of book did you give him?"
[You never asked.]
[Such service is only available to your two companions.]
[I presented him a mild genre.]
[Dark romance.]
"The hell?"
Gojo and I yelled out at the same time.
For a moment, I simply sat there trying to process what I had just heard.
The System had apparently given Sukuna, the King of Curses, a dark romance novel.
There were some things I simply wasn't prepared to hear first thing in the morning.
"Hey System, what did you mean you gave the King of Curses a romance novel?"
I walked out of the bathroom and sat on the bed, whatever urge for the toilet gone with the new information coming in.
[I gave him a dark romance novel.]
[As an entity from the Heian era, he has tastes.]
"He has tastes alright."
"Tastes for feeding on human flesh."
I said it a tad bit too loudly.
The moment I heard voices outside my bedroom and feet shuffling across the corridor, I stopped speaking.
I remained silent until the footsteps eventually faded.
Only then did I relax.
That little incident made me think about something else.
"Hey System, can I not speak to you and those guys with my thoughts?"
I mean, you're all inside my mind, right?
[You certainly can.]
I blinked.
"Then why the hell didn't you tell me that before?"
[You never asked.]
"So you remember to ask for my input when it fits you, but didn't need it when I told you not to dump two men into my brain."
[Technically they are in your mind space.]
"Of course. Of course they are."
I trailed off, exhausted.
At this point, I wasn't even sure why I was still arguing with the System. It had somehow mastered the art of giving technically correct answers that were also incredibly irritating.
"Jin-kun, you lost an argument with a machine didn't you."
Gojo chimed in.
"Zip it pretty boy."
I shot back.
"But you look exactly like me."
That's the point.
I didn't bother saying that part aloud.
Having Gojo's face attached to his personality was already enough of a problem without giving him more ammunition. The fact that Sukuna was also in there somewhere made the entire arrangement even worse.
"Lord help me that when I can I don't send both of your asses to the Pure Land."
"Oh you didn't notice you've been speaking with your thoughts until this moment."
"Huh really?"
I paused.
Apparently, I had.
"Guess that System does listen sometimes."
It was almost reassuring.
Almost.
"But it still didn't help with the bathroom matter."
"Oh didn't we mention."
"We sense the outside world through your senses."
That explained why Gojo had been able to comment on what I was doing in the bathroom despite not actually being there.
"So you mean I just have to close my eyes and rupture my eardrums to shut out your connections."
"Well yes but I didn't say that second part."
"You could have just said so before…nevermind."
At least now I knew I had some control over what they could perceive.
That would probably be useful.
"We won't see anything unless you are the type to take a bath with a mirror right in front of you."
"Hell no of course not."
Disgust crept onto my face at the thought.
"Why would I do that?"
"Well you're narcissistic enough to do so…..so you know."
"Ah fuck forget it."
I rushed into the bathroom with my eyes closed and did my stuff, not without bumping into the bathtub seven times.
Seven.
I wasn't even sure how I managed it.
The bathroom wasn't exactly a maze, yet somehow I had managed to repeatedly find the same bathtub with my legs. By the time I was finished, I was beginning to wonder if the bathtub had developed some kind of personal grudge against me.
Coming out of the bathroom with a towel around my waist and another over my hair, I walked toward the mirror and looked at my face in it.
For a moment, I simply stared at my reflection.
My hair had always been unusually white, but under the bathroom lighting it looked even brighter than usual.
"Darn, my hair looks whiter than the towel."
"Narcissist."
"No I'm not."
"You literally just said your hair is whiter than the towel."
"How does that mean I'm a narcissist?"
"Don't ask me."
"I'm just saying."