Yuto kept thinking and thinking about what he could do in the future, but he kept coming up with unrealistic jobs to work at, or jobs he outright wanted to reject.
"Ahhh, I can't be an astronaut. Even though my quirk fulfills the part about improving my survival abilities, it increases the cost of keeping me up there. They could probably feed an entire crew with what I eat," he mentioned, slightly exasperated to himself, while his hands covered his face out of frustration that, in his opinion, he hadn't come up with a single good idea.
So Yuto decided to do the wisest thing he could: search on the internet. He took his phone out of his pocket and proceeded to type his question into the default search engine, one with a drawing of several circles both in the center and on the edges, connected by small lines, looking like a network.
—"Ideas for what job might be suitable for my quirk."
He stayed waiting while a spinning loader appeared, signaling that it was loading. Yuto konpyuuta remained there, waiting about 5 minutes for the connection to load until he remembered that, in public places like parks, there was only connection for calls and messages, to avoid distractions or ruining the more family-friendly and open-air atmosphere.
So, after realizing his bad luck, he resigned himself to his fate and decided that the best thing he could do now was to stroll through the park to clear his mind and see if something came to him afterwards.
So, he did just that: he got up and followed the paths around the park without any real plan, just observing his surroundings—looking at the lush willows and pines around him, with the park's cleaning staff arriving, wearing suits that looked like camouflage of red and yellow leaves along with rakes to gather them, some even using their quirks to do their work.
Like a guy who had a vacuum cleaner tail that sucked up the leaves and then spat them out into his leaf bags, or another who had hands made of glue, letting the leaves stick to him until another coworker helped peel them off.
As he continued his walk, the cleaning crew faded into the background of the scenery. As he went deeper into the park, he came across some ponds with koi fish of many colors, though only in shades ranging from red to black.
He continued across a red bridge that went over the ponds, reaching a small stone temple. Though somewhat neglected, it was clear that people still visited from time to time, just like him.
Seeing that old temple brought back some old memories. He remembered that his mother and father liked to take walks and leave some offerings there when he was younger. He also remembered an old woman with red skin and a small horn sticking out of her forehead, pointing downward.
He remembered how much he liked calling her "the oni," even though she clearly wasn't. Yuto chuckled slightly to himself.
As he continued looking at the temple and searching for the old woman to greet her, his thoughts kept running. If he wasn't mistaken, the quirk of the old woman at the temple was that her blood was overloaded with iron, which made her blood extra red, and thus also her skin. As for the horn, from what he recalled from a conversation between his mother and the old woman, it apparently came from an old operation on her head caused by a villain who loved to blow things up.
Yuto decided to look inside the small shrine at the center, since it didn't look like the old woman was around.
As he slightly poked his head through the temple's main door, he heard a slightly shrill voice behind him.
"Hey, are you here to leave an offering at the temple or to steal?" spoke a young girl with a curious tone.
Startled, Yuto spun around immediately, like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, only to sigh afterwards when he saw it was a girl and not a ghost that had suddenly appeared to him.
There stood a girl who didn't look older than fifteen, wearing a shrine maiden's outfit of white and red, with some bells hanging at her side, holding a wooden staff adorned with charms and a couple of intertwined ropes running up and down in a crisscross pattern.
She had tiger-like features, with hair reaching down to her waist, white with black stripes, these stripes showing both in her hair and on her skin.
Some animal characteristics were also visible—claws, sharp teeth, and a tail coming out from behind her robes, along with another pair of furry ears twitching on top of her head.
"Well, so what are you doing here then?" the tiger girl asked again, with a slightly impatient tone.
Yuto realized he had frozen, staring at the girl. Slightly embarrassed, he muttered, "Yes, excuse me, I just came to greet the shrine maiden, but I didn't find her, so I went to look inside the temple. Do you know where she might be?"
"You're looking at her," she replied, slightly raising her head with a small sense of pride as she pointed to herself.
"Sorry, I mean the old red-skinned woman who used to be around here, do you know where she is?" Yuto replied, almost ready to roll his eyes at the scene before him.
The girl's pride quickly deflated, and she grew slightly depressed, leaning forward as if dark clouds had appeared over her head, muttering in a low voice, "Someday they'll come looking for me…"
While the girl seemed to have her own personal raincloud, Yuto had no choice but to insist.
"Well then, where would the old woman be? I came to greet her," he asked the girl again.
Thanks to Yuto's words, she snapped out of her daze and straightened herself back up as if nothing had happened. "As I mentioned, I am the current shrine maiden. The red-skinned old woman you mention is my grandmother, but because of her age, she decided to retire, and she asked me to take care of the shrine in her place."
"Ohhh," Yuto said, in a slightly disappointed tone.
Seeing Yuto's disappointed face, the girl said with a somewhat trembling voice, waving her hands, "But don't worry, even if my grandmother isn't here, I am, and I can help you with anything—offerings, a purification, or a good luck talisman." She said this while rummaging through the folds of her shrine maiden's outfit, pulling out a full pack of omamori of all colors, some even with tiger themes.
"These," pointing to the tiger omamori, "…I made them myself. Aren't they nice?"
Yuto couldn't take it anymore and rolled his eyes at the sight of talismans with tigers that, instead of being striped, looked like the poor tiger had gone through five different surgeries and the wounds hadn't been properly closed.
Forcing a strained smile, Yuto only commented, "Yes, very nice tigers, but no thank you. Since the old woman isn't here, I'll just leave an offering for my visit. Do you have incense for sale?"
"Of course!" the tiger girl replied. "…But it's in the storage out back. You'll have to wait a bit while I go look for it. It'll be about 3000 yen, is that okay?"
A little caught off guard by the high price, Yuto could only nod. While watching the tiger girl walk away, occasionally glancing back at him, he decided to sit on the temple step to wait for her. …Tiger girl? Yeah, I should ask her name when she comes back, Yuto thought to himself.
As he observed the temple, the forest, and the small ponds, he noticed the sun had already risen above him, realizing how quickly time, go.
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