The Legendary Janitor

Chapter 3: Assessing the Situation

Once Di Tou had accepted this wasn't some weird dream, he didn't know what to do.

He sat on the mess of straw trying to figure out the mess of his thoughts. What had happened to him? What lead him to this situation. Would he ever see his parents again? Would the girl he was seeing be worried when he didn't show up to their date tonight? Would he ever get home? And if so what would happen? Would everything go back to normal or was time running at the same pace? If he took too long, would he still have a job? He had automatic payments on for his rental, but how much time would what he had in the bank last? And even if none of that was a problem...

WOULD HE GO BACK AS AN OLD MAN?

Aiya...

Di Tou discovered today that he might have a talent for philosophy. He had never been the type of person to overthink things - that would only lead to unnecessary conflict. But now that he was in a situation that wasn't what he was familiar with. He couldn't focus on anything other than what ifs.

At the end of the day, even if this was still somehow, someway, some twisted dream that he could fall asleep in, feel pain in, feel hunger in...

Wait.

Feel hunger.

Did he have any food?

With a start, Di Tou tried jumping out of the straw pile that was his bed. Only to hear a loud *CRACK* and failed to get up.

Right.

He was an old man now.

Jumping out of bed was not a good idea.

Slowly this time, and rubbing his waist as he did so, Di Tou got up and looked around.

The hut wasn't very big on the inside, and the straw roof had begun to show the wear of time, but overall speaking the hut seemed to be structurally stable.

Looking around, one corner of the hut was the straw bed he had been sitting on - that had taken up almost a fifth of the room on it's own. The door sat on the opposite site of the hut, and the two side walls was adorned with a window each. In the middle of the room sat a wooden table that came up just past his waist, accompanied by two wooden chairs and a wooden stool that took up another good portion of the room. On the right hand wall there was a large dresser, and a smaller table that sat right next to the dresser and under the window.

Next to the bed there was a small metal pot. Di Tou grimaced as he realized what it was - a chamber pot. As well as two large jars that sat snug against the wall right next to each other.

What should he explore first... The jars, the dressers, or the outdoors. Di Tou chuckled to himself that he felt like he was playing a text RPG from his high school years.

Di Tou decided to start from the jars, as it felt unlikely that there would be any food in the dresser.

Peering into the jars he found that one was filled about a quarter of the way up with water, although the water seemed murky and perhaps unsafe to drink from at this point, while the other had a thin layer of rice grains sitting at the bottom. Maybe enough for one or two meals maximum.

A great start.

Di Tou then hobbled out to the door. He had been out here once earlier in the day, but at the time he had still thought he was dreaming and had not paid much attention to what was out there.

Right by the entrance was a clay stove, and a battered and slightly rusted, but unbroken wok, alongside another large jar that once again contained water. Slightly behind the hut sat a small shed with a collection of tools, ranging from buckets to hoes.

But what was unsettling was, there were no nearby huts.

No standing ones at least.

Instead, as far as Di Tou could see were black jagged chars. The remnant walls of huts prior. The distance to which the chars extended told a story of a prosperous village that had once stood here. But now only one hut was left.

Di Tou sighed. Perhaps this was a good thing, at the very least he didn't have to figure out how to interact with people who might know his body.

What a "lucky" reincarnation. He got the body of an old man, no accompanying memories, two meals worth of food, no cheats, and a dead village to start.

But there wasn't much he could do to change that now was there.

Di Tou sighed again, and went back to look at the stove to see if there was any firewood left to start a cooking fire. Fortunately, it looked like whatever had burned down this town hadn't burned the couple of bits of wood sitting in the bottom part of the stove.

But...

How did he start a fire?

Di Tou had lived in the city for the majority of his life, and let's not talk about getting a stick and spinning it to create a fire, he could barely get the 6 RMB lighters to work the way they were supposed to.

Di Tou looked around and found that on top of the stove sat two rocks. As far as he could guess they were probably a flint and steel.

Well... how hard could bashing together two rocks be?

The answer was very hard, when you're used to feeling 20 so, and are actually 60... 70... actually how old was he right now?

But either way, while he managed to get some sparks out, none of them managed to catch and start a fire, and at this point he was already feeling a bit winded.

Sighing, Di Tou put the flint and steel back on top of the counter and walked back inside the hut, looking around he saw the dresser he had ignored earlier.

Opening it up he saw a bunch of raggedy old cloth clothes, and one aged, but still rather beautiful red dress. Reaching first for the cloth clothing, he noticed that they were a bit damp. Luckily for him, the dress had been hung up a bit better, and while it was still damp felt significantly dryer.

Bringing the dress outside, he ripped the thinner parts of the dress into a few strips, and then he tried sparking the flint and steel onto one of the strips and managed to get a small cinder going.

Finally, something was going right.

Taking the cindering shred, he put it on top of the bits of wood sitting under the stove. As soon as the fire had caught, he stood up to take the wok inside to put whatever bits of rice he had into it.

The remaining bit of rice had been less than he had thought, as quite a bit of it had gone bad, and even what remained he wouldn't have eaten if he was still at home. But here he was. And the hunger he felt was not going to let him throw away what little rice he had, especially not in a situation where he didn't know where he was going to get his next meal.

Then he ladled some of the murky water over and hoped it wouldn't end up too bad.

Coming back outside he noticed the fire was smoking quite bad, and figured that whatever wood that was left probably wasn't the best.

One more problem to deal with in the future.

Throwing the wok back into its indent on the stove, now he just had to wait.

He went inside and grabbed the small stool and brought it out and waited.

About 15 minutes later, as Di Tou was beginning to wish he had some pumpkin seeds and the rice was maybe halfway done...

"BASTARD!"