Suddenly, I feel my face land in a patch of grass. The last thing I knew, I was staring down the headlights of a speeding truck, its horns blaring, and then... I'm here. With great confusion, I struggle to my feet, attempting to take in my surroundings. Even though I was in a city just a moment ago, now I'm surrounded by the greenery of a forest, with very little in the way of civilization. Man, what the hell? Did I black out or something? Even if I did, that doesn't explain any of this, now that I think about it. But as I'm awash in confusion, the sound of a throat clearing behind me startles me and has me turning around to face another person. He looks a bit strange, with a youthful face but with gray hair, and his eyes peer at me curiously over his glasses. "Are you lost?" he merely asks.
At least he seems friendly enough. "Um, yes, yes, I am, very much so. You don't happen to know the way back to Tokyo, by any chance?" I ask him in return.
The mention of Tokyo seems to pique his interest even more, his eyes visibly opening further. "Oh, can it be... from the Outside World?" he mutters to himself with his gaze lowered towards the grass before looking at me again. "Come with me. Gensokyo can be dangerous if you don't know how to handle it, but I have a safe place," he then explains, motioning for me to follow him. With no real other option, I walk along with him, and after a minute or two of walking, we arrive at a path, and on the side of that path, there is a strange building. It's some sort of shop, I think, with all sorts of various junk strewn about. Television and radio sets, a little scooter, a mascot standee, a surf board. "This is my shop, Kourindou. Oh, and my name is Rinnosuke," he tells me. I introduce myself as well, and as we head inside, he goes through some of the basics for this new situation I'm in.
Apparently, I'm in a place called Gensokyo now, and there's magical yokai out here. What I've known as, y'know, the normal world, is what they call the "Outside World" here. Rinnosuke runs this shop here, selling these assorted items from the Outside World, though I can't seem to see prices on them at all. And in addition, he's a yokai as well—well, half-yokai, anyway. And this means he has a power, namely the power to apparently instantly know what objects are and what they are used for—though not how to actually use them—with him asking me to point out any object here. After looking around a bit, my gaze falls on a computer magazine I remember reading, and I pick it up. "What's this for?" I ask, interested in his response.
"Ah, yes, that is a spellbook you use in the Outside World. There are a lot of incantations for those calculating familiars you call 'computers'. I haven't been able to find one of them or figure out what exactly the power is that makes them work, but I can tell that they are capable of following detailed instructions, and if I were to guess, they are probably run by shikigami inside those boxes. See, I was completely accurate, right?" he explains.
That, of course, while vaguely correct in the most generous possible interpretation, is wrong. But man, the look of pride on his face is—and I can't believe I'm saying this—precious. Adorable, even. So you know what? I think I'm going to let him have this. "Yep, that's accurate," I respond, and a bright smile comes across his face.
"Such a bright young man... I could use someone like you, and you need a place to stay, anyway. So how about you become my apprentice? Some things will have to be arranged—I don't have a second bed, so we'll have to share it for the time being—but I think this will be something we both profit from, no?" he asks me. And yeah, he does talk a lot of sense. Whatever this crazy world is, I'm going to need some help, so why not shack up with Rinnosuke?
In response, I give him a nod, and we share a handshake. So now, I am officially the shopkeep's apprentice of Kourindou. Not sure what all that is going to entail, but it seems a lot better than wandering aimlessly.