The many ways to eat fish

"Uraume, are all the ingredients ready?"

Sukuna appeared on a patch of scorched ground, holding a different cooking utensil in each of his four hands. He discreetly kicked a ceramic shard aside.

"My lord, all the fish eyes you requested have been removed. Shall I start simmering them now?"

Looking at the ground, where all the blood had been cleaned away, Sukuna nodded slowly. Without that overpowering fishy stench, the dining experience would certainly improve several notches.

"Then let me give it a try."

He glanced at the pile of cleaned fish on the ground and casually skewered one on a branch. As he chanted a jujutsu incantation, the fish turned into a charcoal-black lump. Almost immediately, Sukuna's expression changed, and he hurriedly flung it away.

"Can I really not make good food in this backward era? Modern cooking utensils are so much easier to use." All he could do was let out a long sigh, a little disappointed that he had failed to make a delicious dish himself.

"All right, you handle the rest."

"Yes, my lord."

He sat cross-legged on a large, jutting rock nearby, closed all four eyes, and began sorting through the plot.

"I've only just become Heian-kyo's new god, and I've already come to this godforsaken place. Isn't that a little beneath my status?" It was as though a voice were speaking to him inside his head.

He thought about Sukuna's haughty demeanor a thousand years in the future. It was completely different from his current country-bumpkin bearing. The Sukuna of a thousand years later sat upon a lofty throne, while he could make himself comfortable on any random rock. It would be difficult to cultivate that imperious air this way.

"I remember Suguru Geto had a dream. Didn't he want to kill all the monkeys and make jujutsu sorcerers the masters of a new world?" At that thought, a terrifying idea seemed to surface in his mind, and even his expression grew a little sinister.

"Japan, hahahaha! The Japanese, living in an age of backward feudal superstition!"

"Suguru Geto, let me give you a hand!"

A very rough plan soon took shape in his mind. As a god of this era, Sukuna had no need for a detailed plan. His power alone could overturn everything in the Heian Period!

"Since all the jujutsu sorcerers call me the King of Curses, let those ordinary people see just how terrifying the King of Curses can be!"

Before long, wafts of grilled fish roused him from his thoughts. Only when his awareness fully returned to his body did he realize that his grin had stretched wide enough to bare every tooth.

In front of him, Uraume moved so quickly she seemed like a blur, stirring the simmering eyeball soup one moment and turning the grilled fish the next. She had put all the fish on to grill at once.

Even more impressively, she had somehow procured a good supply of fish oil and was frying the little fish one by one until both sides were golden. They looked, smelled, and tasted wonderful. Judging by her practiced movements, her cooking skills would make her just as popular at a food stall a thousand years later.

Looking at Uraume in her samurai outfit, Sukuna found himself wondering whether she would try to stop him if she learned what he was planning, or support him as she always had. But none of that mattered. Even if Uraume wanted to stop him, she could not. Besides, she was a thoroughly loyal subordinate.

In his previous life, he had been a complete shut-in whose only real interest in Japan was its anime. He could hardly claim to like anything else about it. Since he had transmigrated into this parallel world, he would be the one to rewrite the script.

As his thoughts wandered, a bowl of milky-white fish soup suddenly appeared before him. Uraume respectfully placed it in his hands. She had also carved a wooden spoon from some nearby wood, polishing it until it was as smooth as if it had been waxed, leaving no chance of splinters. She had clearly put a great deal of care into it.

"My lord, the fish soup is ready. Please have a taste."

The milky-white soup before him gave off an enticing aroma, but the few eyeballs floating on its surface looked rather unsettling. As they bobbed up and down, they seemed to be blinking at him, giving the whole thing the feel of a horror movie.

"All right, let me taste this soup." He simply stopped looking at the eyeballs, raised the bowl, and poured it straight into his mouth.

Crunch, crunch. With several crisp cracks, the fish eyes burst in his mouth, releasing a faint fishy taste. Fighting back the nausea rising in his stomach, he forced himself to swallow.

"Ugh..." An uncontrollable shudder ran through him. He handed the bowl back to Uraume and said, "Pour out the rest. I'll have some another time."

At that moment, he suddenly decided his four eyes probably needed no special care. After all, if one battery could outperform six, his four eyes ought to do the work of eighteen. Having forcibly fed himself that dose of twisted logic, he instructed Uraume to pour the remaining fish-eye soup into the lake, grandly claiming that he was letting the fish below have a taste of their uncle.

Uraume poured all the remaining fish-eye soup into the lake. Removing the eyes had taken quite some time, but since Sukuna did not like the dish, she had no intention of keeping it. Though she had tried every possible way to enhance its flavor, she simply could not get rid of the fishiness that came from deep within.

She looked around, picked out the two best grilled fish, and handed them to Sukuna. Then she took one for herself and ate it slowly, chewing each bite thoroughly.

"This grilled fish tastes pretty good. Looks like today's all-fish feast was a great success!"

Eating the delicious grilled fish, he could not help giving it a mental thumbs-up. It was indeed much tastier than anything from the grilled-fish stalls in his previous life. Without any additives or food-science tricks, its fresh flavor stood out even more.

While he ate the grilled fish, his other two hands involuntarily reached for the little fried fish. Between bites, he asked, "Uraume, where does the Emperor live?"

Uraume hurriedly swallowed the grilled fish in her mouth and answered, "The Emperor lives in the Imperial Palace."

"Oh."

Now that he knew where the Emperor of Japan lived in this era, Sukuna wiped the grease from his mouth and set his sights on the fish soup beside him, made from the most succulent belly meat. He drank several large bowls in a row before patting his stomach in satisfaction.

"Good food really does soothe the soul. Today was absolutely perfect."

"Uraume, how much longer until this ritual ends? I want to return to Heian-kyo."

"Today is already the second day. The ritual will be completely over tomorrow night, and you can return to Heian-kyo then, my lord."

"Then let's get some proper rest. Once we're back in Heian-kyo, I still have a plan to carry out!"

Having eaten and drunk his fill, he sat cross-legged on the rock and stared into space. There really was nothing to do now, so he might as well get some more rest.