[To say that Kazuma finds Jigoku-cho disorienting would be an understatement. Everyone else at least has the advantage of prior memories for context, enough to know that the place they are in now is not where they are supposed to be; at least they know who they are. Kazuma simply woke up here already adrift in a sea of nonsense and knows nothing else. He has very little option but to take the whole thing in stride. Who is he to say that youkai running the streets is a metaphysical impossibility? He doesn't know shit about fuck.

What he does know is this: there is, for whatever reason, a lot of clean up that needs doing--some sort of disaster that happened here recently--and he has the wherewithal to do his part. Even if he doesn't know the how and why of it all, having a concrete task in front of him helps with his confusion, his helpless restlessness. It's a distraction from the existential dread of not even knowing his own name. And that's how he ends up knee-deep in a bloody bathhouse, fishing for drains, trying not to let his thoughts drift anywhere else but on the job he's doing.

Some lingering stubborn part of his personality has him mostly working by himself, though, which leaves him rather vulnerable to certain wandering ghost hands...]

[By now Kazuma has managed to acquire: a stick. As weapons go, it's not great, but for some reason he just feels better with the weight on his hip. He's sure it's not a stick that's meant to be there, but it's better than nothing. It also gives him some defense against the ghost sharks, because he simply can't get away from being set upon by phantasms with an agenda.

At least he seems to know how to use the stick, or at least he's able to substitute muscle memory of something else, because he's able to smoothly dispatch any sharks that try to ambush him. Unfortunately, this only seems to encourage them to multiply. Just his luck.]

They don't stop coming, do they?

[There's got to be a better way to do this.]

[All the mockery from passersby means very little when Kazuma himself doesn't know what he's looking at.

He keeps finding himself returning to these corners, hoping in desperation that this time they will show him something he recognizes. Even the paralysis is nothing compared to the frustration of confronting these endless phantoms that he knows, or that he knows he should know--people who evoke a sense of familiarity in him and nothing else. People from his past that he simply can't remember. A young man in a black uniform, a girl in a pink kimono, a taller man with his face in shadow, a sickly woman on her deathbed. None of them ever say or do anything; they simply stand there and stare at him, as if expecting something from him. And he doesn't know what. He doesn't know who they are, and he knows he should.

Over and over he comes here, on purpose, hoping that this time seeing them will jar something loose. It never does. It only leaves him with a steadily growing ache, a widening hole in his heart that fills only with anger, as if they're doing this to him on purpose.]

Who are you?!

[As always, they only look solemnly back at him.]

[Throw whatever at me, I'm flexible! Or you can PM me if you want to work out something specific.]