After breakfast, Shin explored the house. There was only one bedroom besides his, and it must've belonged to the mother of his body. There was no men's clothing, and very few personal objects.
The house was as bland as its past owners. About whom Shin didn't have to worry about anymore. But he found some money he could use.
First, he had to buy a city map.
'This would've been so easy if I had a map in the first place,' Shin thought, walking out on the empty street.
He looked around for any passersby he could ask for directions, but the only person he saw was an old man. The man scowled back at Shin with so much contempt that he thought better of approaching him at all.
In the end, Shin just picked a direction that didn't lead to a school and walked there, watching out for any dangers.
He was so focused on avoiding his "extra's curse" that when Tetsu shouted, 'Boss, don't move!' Shin froze in the spot with a leg raised in the air. His heart beat fast, ready for a fight.
'You almost stepped on a bug,' Tetsu added, calmer. 'It's so huge! Do they get bigger? What is it called?'
On the asphalt where Shin was about to step, a big iridescent green bug was slowly crawling towards the nearest lawn strip.
Shin lowered his raised leg away from the insect and breathed out.
'Tetsu… Tetsu, don't shout like that unless we are in danger. And I don't know what this bug is, except that it's not a monster.'
'Oh. I've scared you. Sorry! Sorry, I didn't mean to. But can we keep this one?'
Before Shin replied, Tetsu's hand reached out of his elbow. He grabbed it with his other one and pushed back. The armor on it was warm to the touch.
'Not on the street, Tetsu!'
'But I did well for you before, didn't I? You told me that you liked my work…' she grumbled. Much sharper, she added, 'We are partners. I help you, and you won't let me have even this little thing? You know, I don't exactly need to ask you…'
Shin felt it all. He felt Tetsu's fury at the horn-crowned demon and guilt at her weakness turn into anger. And this anger was unleashed on the closest person in sight at the first sign of things not going Tetsu's way.
And just a moment ago, he was almost relieved that she bounced back to her cheerful self.
'Wait, wait. Look, we don't even have anywhere to keep it in right now, Tetsu. It will be better if I buy you a book about insects and animals and whatever you like. Then, sometime later, we can bring jars or boxes with us and catch as many insects as you like.'
'Oh. Yeah, that sounds smart.' Tetsu smiled at Shin—he could see it vividly in his mind's eye. 'Alright!'
And as if this wasn't enough, she planted a phantom sensation of a brief kiss on his cheek.
Blood rose toward it. Shin shook his head rapidly and resumed walking.
He was going to get gray hairs.
Ten minutes later, he saw a sign of a general store. It didn't have animal books, but it had city atlases in the magazines section. From this moment, Shin could finally orient himself in this town.
A book store wasn't far away. The Shinkushio Art Gallery was in the center of the city, which required taking a bus to reach. There were also other spots that, Shin believed, could have summoned people in them.
An abandoned train station, a hospital, a fishing village twenty kilometers away from town—those all were a part of Shin's stories. But he wasn't sure that they were those exact places.
'I should kill more summoned people if I can before they die themselves… If the rest of them are like Murai, they won't live for long, anyway,' Shin thought as he walked back home.
Besides the atlas, he had some snacks, an encyclopedia of small animals and insects endemic to Japan, a lighter and a small torchlight. For the future.
***
Two blocks away from Shin's destination, he was attacked again.
The person who jumped from behind a corner to block Shin's way could've been a mugger, if not for his bloodied clown mask. In his hand was a knife that he waved threateningly at Shin.
"I-I'm gonna g-get-chaaaaa! Kha-ha, kha-ha, ha-ha-ha-ha!" the mad clown said in a jarring, high-pitched voice.
"Tetsu," Shin replied.
As she crawled out of his chest face-first, her backside on Shin's full display, the clown's knife twisted itself and stabbed in the man's neck.
The clown gurgled as a spray of blood poured on him, covering Tetsu. She caught the body before it fell.
Then licked the place where some of the blood fell on her cheek with an unnaturally long tongue.
"I taste another demon on that one. A powerful one… They hollowed him out until this was all that's left," she said in a bored voice. "He's just meat at this point."
Shin looked around the street, but it was empty. He carefully walked around the pool of blood and cringed at the sight of the corpse.
"If you don't want to eat it, then just drop it. If not, then we should carry it somewhere quiet."
In the end, Tetsu just tore out the man's heart and tongue, and Shin left the corpse for someone else to deal with.
He expected more encounters like those in the future. Shin just hoped they all would be as easy to resolve.