Another Man's Treasure

WARNING: ALL-OUT SPOILERS AND CRAZY CANON DEVIATION UP AHEAD!

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By the traditional standards of his time, Yu Narukami was a good child. He had no ties to shady people, he made his elders happy with his obedience, and most of all, he had the sexual drive of a disciplined monk. Somehow, that last one made his lockers more and more stuffed with love letters, among many other signs through the years, but he had grown to take those times as opportunities for better discipline until he saw Miss Right with his own two eyes or the ultimate joys of celibacy in exchange for never reaching the former.

Yu had no plans to become a monk, though. The urban life beyond that called him, and the fact that people tended to laugh at his usual seriousness made him consider a career in comedy. Entertainment in general seemed like a good option to him, especially with how quite social the work was. He could do work in more mundane settings, like day care centers and hospitals, but the challenge of the limelight seemed bigger, especially in terms of people. Therefore, it was more interesting.

Still, Yu imagined that he would still have to be lonely even as an entertainer, judging from the stuff he found in the media everyday and how reputation and public opinion were strictly regarded in his country's society. Not like it was limited to showbiz alone, but gossip being a sore thumb of a staple in showbiz still had him stuck in discernment about going for a career in entertainment. But gossip about himself wasn't what he would expect to be the worst thing about being a talented entertainer, which he could see himself as.

The worst thing he expected from being a talented entertainer, then, was to have no close friends to go through thick and thin with everyday and not just for a year or some short period of time, and he wouldn't count the elders as qualified for those positions, even as he liked to respect them. Actually, having no permanent close friends was what he considered the worst thing in his life in general, and he considered it so badly that he often ended up thinking about how a job can lead to such an outcome, causing him no small amount of doubt. The only child named Yu Narukami loved his family very much, even as they were often out at work for long periods of time, and he held gratitude to them for pushing him to learn how to be self-reliant, but he sometimes wished that he could convince them to have a truly permanent address with him already and not have him transfer schools so much.

But still, Yu would rather be more of an obedient son. It had him becoming very honored, and he often felt pleased by it, even as most of that honoring came from old people. After all, he believed and hoped that the elders would know and grant his deepest wish in life eventually after enough fulfilled challenges for their sake.

"So, you really are a serious kid, huh?" suddenly said a man named Ryotaro Dojima, Yu's uncle on his mother's side. "I guess I got my work cut out for me! This would probably sound arrogant, but I probably won't even need to tell you what to do!"

Yu's uncle laughed as he drived to Yu's new home for the year. Meanwhile, Yu saw his cousin Nanako curling into herself with a frown. His mother had been talking about how she was proud of her brother and how he cared for Nanako despite him being a widower, but even in silence, Yu had grown a habit of not taking claims, especially proud ones, at face value. Nothing he couldn't manage, though.

And even as it was likely that his relatives here in Inaba would only be close with him for a year, Yu still knew that he had to make some decent bonds with these relatives of his. One small step there was to not make them worry about his visible sudden dizziness from a while ago, which had him noting the gas station as a place to avoid for now. He liked to think that he was a bit attuned to the supernatural, and while it could've been his imagination or the usual fatigue, he had a feeling that something was different about this discomfort.