Author’s Preface
I’ve got a decent amount written ahead.
For a while, I’ll be updating once a day.
North Rukon District — District One, “Riosa”
That was the name of the place I, Yukawa Airi, had been sent to.
Soul Society is where the dead end up.
Calling it the afterlife or the underworld is close enough.
At its centre lies the Seireitei, home to Soul Reapers, nobles, and the rest of the privileged classes.
Surrounding it is the Rukon District—the common quarter, where ordinary souls live.
The Rukon District spreads out from the Seireitei in four fan-shaped sections: east, west, north, and south.
Each direction is divided into eighty districts, making three hundred and twenty in total.
So an address might be something like “South Rukon District, District Twenty.”
The lower the district number, the safer it is.
The higher the number, the worse things get.
Apparently the drop in public order becomes especially steep past District Fifty, and from District Fifty-Nine onward, apparently you won’t find anyone wearing sandals at all.
The district I’d been assigned to—District One—looked like something out of the Edo period.
Or maybe the Azuchi–Momoyama period.
Somewhere around there.
The people walking the streets wore proper kimono and sandals, and everyone I saw looked pretty mild-mannered.
Come to think of it, I’d heard that the district you get assigned to depends on the quality of your soul…
So getting sent to the safest district possible—was that some kind of reincarnation bonus?
If so, it wasn’t flashy, but I was extremely grateful for it.
…Or maybe the bonus was this body?
I mean, I am ridiculously beautiful.
By the way, after boldly giving a fake name back there, I suddenly had a horrible thought:
What if using a fake name means there’s nowhere to send me, and I just die right here…!?
I was seriously worried about it, but fortunately, it turned out to be completely unnecessary.
When I checked the sleeve of my kimono, I found a numbered ticket tucked inside.
I can’t tell you how relieved I was.
Just imagining what might have happened if it hadn’t been there…
Ugh.
No, thanks.
Anyway, now that I’d safely made it to the Rukon District, what was I doing with myself?
“Miss!
Another flask of sake!”
“Two orders of soup and rice over here!”
“Three grilled skewers!”
“Coming!
Just a moment, please!”
I was working as a waitress in what you’d basically call an izakaya—a place where people came to eat and drink.
With a triangular headscarf tied over my hair and an apron around my waist, I carried orders out to the customers.
And when I wasn’t doing that, I got sent to wash dishes or help out in the kitchen.
The place had the sort of old-fashioned interior you’d expect from a shop in this town, and it was absolutely packed.
People chatted, ate, drank, and flushed red from the alcohol.
The whole room buzzed with life.
Not that we ever really got new customers.
Everyone here lived in District One.
They were all regulars.
On my first day, the sheer pace of the place nearly overwhelmed me enough to collapse.
But after three days, you get used to just about anything.
I already had a lot more breathing room.
I’d even gotten used to adjusting the way I spoke and acted to fit how I looked.
See?
Doesn’t the way I talk sound properly feminine now?
Once I stopped feeling completely overwhelmed, work actually became pretty fun.
Especially the staff meals.
They were delicious.
The hard part was stopping myself from eating too much…
…What?
People in the Rukon District don’t normally get hungry?
Only souls with the potential for spiritual power feel hunger?
Ordinary souls don’t need to eat, so a restaurant shouldn’t even be able to stay in business??
Yes, yes.
Very good point.
I thought the same thing at first.
But think about it for a moment.
You don’t need to eat, so you’ll never starve.
You don’t need to do anything, and you still won’t die.
Sounds nice, right?
Except the people arriving here spent their lives doing things like, “Work every day, eat every day, then work some more.”
Then suddenly they’re dropped into the Rukon District and told they can live forever without lifting a finger.
Sure, they can survive doing nothing.
But doing nothing leaves you with an awful lot of time on your hands.
And when people have too much time on their hands, sooner or later they start wanting something to do.
Work, in other words.
Or maybe “keeping busy” would be more accurate.
A hobby.
A pastime.
The residents use whatever skills and experience they had in life to grow crops, make clothes, build houses, and so on.
Do enough of that, and economic activity develops naturally.
A lot of these people lived that way before they died, after all.
More importantly, Soul Society has money.
Once you have currency, plenty of habits from life carry over just fine.
The fact that this was District One—and therefore extremely safe—also mattered.
The people living here were the sort who could make a system based on “let’s all get along, help each other, and live peacefully” actually work.
Move closer to District Eighty, though—the absolute bottom of the barrel—and the prevailing attitude becomes more like “steal, kill, rape.”
That makes this sort of cooperative little economy rather difficult.
It’s the same basic idea as people saying vending machines only work the way they do in Japan.
There was one more factor too.
The districts closest to the Seireitei saw plenty of Soul Reapers passing through, so normal businesses like restaurants had no problem finding customers.
Apparently, some merchants from this district even entered the Seireitei and dealt directly with nobles.
People from the Rukon District weren’t allowed to live inside the Seireitei.
That didn’t mean they could never enter it.
So yes, restaurants could survive perfectly well as places for food lovers and drinkers to indulge themselves.
Besides, there were also people in the Rukon District who had spiritual potential but simply didn’t want to become Soul Reapers.
Those people got hungry like anyone else.
For them, restaurants were genuinely useful.
And, well…
I probably shouldn’t say this too loudly, but apparently there were businesses around here that catered to appetites other than food too.
All sorts of…
appetites.
Anyway.
After being brought to Riosa, I wandered around with absolutely no idea where I was going.
That was when I happened to meet the owner of this place.
And, wonderfully enough, while I was wandering through Riosa…
I got hungry.
Which meant I had potential.
Which meant I might actually be able to become a Soul Reaper.
Yes!
I told the owner all of that, and he offered to let me work here in exchange for room and board.
The shop was run by him and his wife, and even after I explained that I only planned to stay until I could become a Soul Reaper, they happily took me in.
They were genuinely good people.
Though if I had to guess, pure kindness probably wasn’t the only reason they hired me.
I suspect they were also hoping I might serve as the shop’s pretty face.
I had no idea how long becoming a Soul Reaper would take, but while I was here, I intended to do the job properly.
Kindness deserved kindness in return.
“Could I get the bill over here?”
“Coming.”
Whoops.
Back to work.
I’d just finished carrying out an order when someone called me over.
“One, two, three…
That comes to twelve hundred kan.”
Kan was the currency used in this world.
At this shop, the price was calculated by the plates.
It was basically like conveyor-belt sushi, where different kinds of plates cost different amounts.
Count the types and number of plates, and you could work out the total immediately.
Much simpler than a modern restaurant where every single dish has a different price and someone has to write the whole order down on a bill.
“Here you go.”
“Let me see…
Yes, that’s right.
Thank you very much.”
I took the money, checked that the amount was correct, and bowed.
Customers really were gods…
At the exact moment they paid.
…The rest of the time, they were more like minor villains.
“Man, Airi-chan’s got a great arse again today.”
“And that chest.
Her kimono’s stretched tight enough to burst.
Damn.”
“She’d be perfect if she wasn’t so ridiculously tall.”
“Idiot!
The height is part of what makes her good!”
“Think she’d let me have a go just once if I got down on my knees and begged?”
I can hear you, you know…
The men saying all that were customers who were still hanging around drinking.
They were whispering among themselves, apparently convinced they were being quiet enough that I couldn’t hear.
And you!
The last one!
You could prostrate yourself a thousand times and the answer would still be no, so give it up!
I am not that easy!!
I’d only been working here for three days, and there hadn’t been a single day when I hadn’t overheard this kind of conversation.
The male customers’ eyes were basically glued to my chest.
The clothes I was wearing had been lent to me by the shop, but they didn’t fit me properly in either direction—height or width.
They’d been altered in a hurry, but the whole thing was still being pushed well past its limits.
One wrong movement and I felt like something might rip.
Since I was forcing a too-small outfit onto this body, my figure was completely obvious.
Even the hem and sleeves were barely long enough.
Of course people looked.
…Still.
So you really can tell when someone is staring at you like that.
I’d heard women talk about it back when I was a man, but experiencing it myself made the whole thing painfully easy to understand.
And unfortunately, it didn’t always stop at staring.
Once alcohol got involved and people got bolder, I’d had my arse or breasts grabbed a few times too.
But I couldn’t bring myself to get truly angry.
Because if I reversed the positions…
I understood them a little too well.
At the very least, the old me would absolutely have looked.
That made me too lenient.
Even when I warned someone, it came out gentle.
They would stop the moment I said something…
Then not long after, someone would try again.
“Haaah…”
“Airi-chan, if you don’t like it, you need to say so properly.
Want me to give them a real talking-to?”
“Ma’am…
No, no.
It’s just drunken fooling around.
I’m all right.
If anything genuinely dangerous happens, I’ll get angry properly.”
“You sure?
By the time something genuinely dangerous happens, it might be too late…
Just be careful, all right?”
The proprietress must have heard me sigh.
She came over to check on me, while her husband looked my way with the same worried expression.
Feeling genuinely grateful that I’d stumbled across such kind people, I started clearing the table that had just opened up.
“Mmm…
I’m tired…”
The last customer eventually left, and once the cleaning was done, the owner told me I could finish for the night.
The couple still had preparations to make for tomorrow, but they weren’t about to dump that much work on someone who’d only just started.
I headed to the room they’d lent me.
Calling it a room was generous.
It was tiny.
I had almost no belongings at all—just one futon and two kimono.
Still, I wasn’t in any position to complain.
For now, this was home.
After laying out the futon, I made one last token effort and did some stretches and strength training as best I could, copying what I’d seen others do.
I was trying to become a Soul Reaper, after all.
Doing something had to be better than doing nothing.
Whether I was doing any of it correctly was another question.
Ideally, I would have trained my spiritual power instead.
Unfortunately, I didn’t even know how to begin, which made training it rather difficult.
There was some good news, though.
On the day I first came here, the owner had told me, “If you’re serious about becoming a Soul Reaper, I know a good place to take you.”
Tomorrow was the day he’d promised to do it.
Now then…
Where exactly was he planning to take me?
After about an hour of what could very generously be called training, sleepiness finally won.
Good…
night…
Author’s Note
In short: “I secured food, clothing, and shelter.”
● North Rukon District, District One — “Riosa” (original name)
Zaraki → ZARAKI → ZAORIKU → RIOKU → “Riosa”
(I borrowed the idea from Zao-riku, the opposite of Zaraki.
Not exactly the most “OSARE” name in the world.)