A/N: I own nothing. Touhou Project belongs to ZUN and Team Shanghai Alice.
I looked around, and found myself in a quite traditional looking street, along with my home and my shrine, both stuck in the ground next to each other. It looks like something that was done in a hurry, though with great technique. The tiles flowed quite nicely from the street's to the shrine's. My shack still looked quite shabby, in contrast to the other houses in the area. It was still home, though.
I noticed dozens of eyes looked in my direction as I finally stood up on my feet. I introduced myself politely.
"Good day to you all, my name is Shizumu, former Oni. Nice to meet you."
The oni who noticed my sudden arrival turned away in disgust, as if they'd seen something foul. Tradition is hard to change.
'Well, being a hornless Oni has been frowned upon since my time, and I don't think it's changed or going to change at all any time soon. Funny thing is, I started it as a joke, and then it got way out of hand...'
I sighed, grabbed my broom, and started sweeping, when a tall, blonde, one-horned Oni entered the scene.
She came behind me, towering figure overshadowing the former Oni King. She introduced herself. Blurry memories from older times started showing, but not clearly enough to tell me who she was.
"My name is Yuugi. Shizumu-san, I challenge you to a drinking contest."
"Thank you, but I must refuse. I am quite poor and I do not have any alcohol to drink regularily, much less drink in large quantities."
The tall girl, as if she had expected this, took out a massive gourd from under her skirt.
"Not a problem." a smug grin formed on Yuugi's face.
A menacing aura surrounded the colossal gourd, but I was unable to resist the notion of free booze.
"Well, if you insist, I politely accept your challenge."
In a bar...
As the table was set up, and the gigantic gourd was opened, a crowd of youkai gathered around the two oni.
"If I win, I get to take that gourd. If you win, you'll have full ownership over me for a week. Are these terms acceptable?"
"You're such an adorable little bundle of love~ You don't know what I'm going to do to you when I win. And yes, I do accept." the oni laughed as she poked fun at the god's childish and girly appearance in a quite discreet way.
The entire bar starts calling out in unison:
"ooOOOOoooo..."
"I hold my booze like a commonman does water. Do not underestimate me." replied Shizumu, puffing out his cheeks. His behaviour does not help.
The barkeep announces the start.
Shuten pours the sake into his masu, and starts downing it all, pouring in more, and keeping it all going until his limit.
Yuugi takes various bites of salmon maki and pours the dish into her throat.
...
They reached about half of the meter-tall gourd when Shizumu started getting tipsy and Yuugi started turning red.
'I do not know about any of both our limits, as I have not been able to drink too heavily due to poverty. I still consider myself to be able to drink through the entirety of Kyoto's booze, and still have the guts for more.'
...
The gourd is empty. Neither of them has given out yet. Now, it's just a game of not falling asleep while drunk.
Shuten blinks slowly as he sees Yuugi lie down on the table. His guard drops, and he falls asleep, snoring loudly.
Yuugi gets up from the table, not having fallen asleep yet, though tired from forcing herself awake.
She yawns. "I-haah...- won."
After some arguments between the youkai and the barkeep, they declared Yuugi the winner.
-Yuugi's Home, Former Hell.-
I wake up next to my old boss. Nothing happened last night, despite what it may look like. I get up, and put on underwear. A sarashi and bloomers are more than enough, most of the time.
I walk up to the closet, put on my dress, and pick out a bunch of smaller ones, along with skirts and tank-tops. I put the futon into the closet, and wake up Shuten. Oh, how long I've been waiting to do this. A thousand years, was it?
Shuten Shizumu wakes up on his futon, rubbing his shiny, big eyes. He shudders as a trauma which he had long forgotten came back, along with the name that came with it..
"HOSHIGUMA-SAN, NO!" he pleads to deaf ears.
"You reap what you sow, Shi-zu-mu." a look of mischief broke through my eyes.
I restrained the little one to put on him the small miko outfit I prepared. He begged me to stop. I didn't.
"Uu... Please have mercy..." said the weeping crossdresser.
"You should not have been born like that then, you big adorable baby." she said with a smug smile on her face.
"I-I'm more than a thousand years old, Hoshiguma-san! I'm not a baby!"
...
As uncomfortable silence was interrupted only by the chewing of rice, Yuugi spoke up.
"So... where have you been?"
"My own shrine. Isn't it amazing I'm being worshipped even though I murdered and stole? Ahh... humans are so forgiving..."
"Better than the opposite, is it not?"
"You can say that. What's this place, anyways?"
"This is Former Hell, in the land of Gensokyo."
"Interesting names."
"You have a point."
After finishing up the miso soup, he ran to the door, the much taller oni following behind.
Shuten headed outside to go sweep the shrine, accompanied by Hoshiguma, who was acting as his guide through the streets of Former Hell.
"So, can you tell me where I live so I can take care of my own home?"
Shuten was now in a much more normal outfit than the miko dress, wearing an old kimono of his. How his clothes got through a thousand years of age without becoming a tsukumogami is a complete mystery to him, though. He calls shenanigans.
"I can drop you off here. Your home is about a couple jou (1 jou = ~3 m) from here. Take a left turn at the end of the road, and you'll be good to go."
"Thanks, Hoshiguma-san."
The god sprinted forwards, while the Oni shouted:
"I STILL OWN YOU, REMEMBER THAT!"
A horn sprouted from his head, mimicking Yuugi's own.
"I got that!"
Shuten came into the shrine to find more than a couple empty bottles of sake thrown about the place. He was NOT happy.
Still, he kept his cool, and brought them into his home. He didn't spend all those years dumpster diving just for him to ignore such a good opportunity to make something out of it.
He picked up a quite unsafe-looking saw, and started cutting into the glass. By the end of the process, he had a perfectly acceptable bunch of plant pots which he could place on his windowsill.
He returned to the shrine, and swept the ashes that covered the tiles. His broom got quite dirty from it, the fibers turning all black. It was still fine to use, though.
He sat down, and waited on the torii. Over the years, he got really good at falling asleep while sitting on it. 'Perks of being almost unknown as a god, I guess'. He felt his neck's scar. Getting cut down was probably the best way to drive his ego down, whether he liked it or not.
A fairy skipped into the shrine grounds. It was the first time he saw one, ignoring the huge swarm of youkai that came around him and Yuugi in their drinking contest. They are quite undoubtedly, cute, even if their mischievous nature makes most people loathe the entire existence of their species.
The little girl looked up to see an oni boy sitting on the new shrine's gate recklessly dozing off.
He wore ancient-fashioned clothes, and only had one horn, like Auntie Hoshikuma's.
She looked as the boy swayed, expecting to see him fall, so she could start laughing.
The oni boy fell, much to her expectations, but landed on both his feet. She looked up.
"Hello, my little fairy mistress. What do you plan on doing here?" the child spoke, in a mockingly polite tone.
Startled, due to her delayed reaction, she fell back, and let some surprise come out of her mouth. The boy offered her a hand.
"(monotone) Please donate to my shrine, if you will. Thank you very much."
She took his hand, got up, obediently took out a little coin purse from a skirt pocket, and handed a small 100 yen coin to him. The ankwardness in his actions was quite charming, for some reason.
The boy's eyes shined like the sun was inside them.
'I did not think a single hundred yen coin was worth so much.' the fairy thought.
It wasn't. He was only a bit less broke than the grumpy miko who lived near the border, after all.
Faith flowed into the young god's body.
Shuten shoved the 100 yen coin into his sleeve, and carried on with his day. He swept the shrine grounds, prepared some blessings which he put into blue-yellow colored talismans using his recently gathered faith, and checked his savings: about 2000 yen. It would have been enough to live on for a while if it was not for the fact the bamboo forest was gone. He still had a physical form to feed, even if he had ascended. Faith has not been a good nor reliable source of nutrition for quite a long while now, and whatever he could get was spent mostly on blessings. He also had a small stockpile, as feeding his body with faith had not been necessary during the days he lived in his Outside World shrine.
'Let's drop into Yuugi's place, and ask her where I can go scavenge for food.'