[Ginko has long since passed the point of finding anything impossible. When he wakes up in an entirely different forest than the one he was walking in the night before, he takes that more or less in its stride. When he winds up in a town with strange rumors of a creature making people disappear, that's practically old hat. The townspeople recognizing him when he's pretty certain he's never been here is a little unsettling, but certainly within the realm of strange things he's heard or seen in the past.

What really gets under his skin is how empty the whole place feels; Ginko doesn't see a single mushi the entire walk into the town, and when he tries to close his second eyelid? The koumyaku isn't there. There's nothing there but darkness. It's ... terrifyingly lonely, for a man who's spent the majority of his life alone, with only the beings with whom he shared the world as company.

But he's not going to find answers doing any kind of panicking, and the presence of strange rumors about the forest is perhaps an ideal starting place. He's not sure if this goatman will reveal itself to individual travelers, though, so if he spots anyone else who's come to the mouth of the woods alone, he'll approach them.]

If you're going looking for the "goatman" as well, it might be beneficial to come up with a pass phrase in case we're separated, even for a moment. Something only the two of us would know.

[It's a common enough story -- some mushi phenomena or another producing a shade of a loved one, serving either as bait or to drive an individual to distraction. He's seen people taken in by such temptations more times than he can count, which makes it all the more surprising to find himself coming to suddenly feet from the water's edge, having followed after an apparition of Tanyuu hobbling into the river bank, bad leg or otherwise.

He doesn't really need to a compulsion to try to stop others, though, and he's not above just straight up bodily grabbing them to prevent their advance.]

Stop. Whoever you're seeing isn't really there. It's a trick to lure you to the water.

[He knows the way to a place he's never been. This by itself wouldn't be unheard of; there are many mushi that instinctively know where to go in various stages of their life cycle. It wouldn't even be impossible that he's here because one has latched onto him to complete that journey for it.

But it's what he finds when he investigates the house that fills him with a bone-deep discomfort--the pictures. Everywhere, he sees himself and others he doesn't recognize, an arm across their shoulder or perhaps draped over his own, smiling. A few of them include children, sometimes with other adults present and sometimes without.

Ginko has never had a family. He never can, because of what he is. But he understands immediately what those pictures are supposed to represent, and he does not like the implications. Worse still, he can't think of anything unusual he might have encountered that would've led to this. He's fallen under the sway of mushi without realizing it before, but never quite like this. It's too clean to be an illusion, without any seams in the edges or anything out of place, and if it's real -- then he might have unintentionally stolen someone's life, and left them out in the wilderness to fend for themselves.

He avoids his house, after that, strangely drawn to it or not. But the difficulties of being known in a place he doesn't know don't really stop there; he wanders into a shop for tea and is immediately asked if he'd like his usual, which he of course doesn't know. And when he tries to pay -- well, the shopkeeper is none too pleased with the unfamiliar coins he tries to offer her.

What the hell, is this some kind of joke?]

I'm sorry. I don't have anything else. I'm...not actually from around here.

[That's not funny. If you're too broke to buy something, get the hell out.

Ginko sighs, walking away from the counter as he lets out a puff of smoke; the scent is pleasingly herbal, in comparison to ordinary cigarettes.]

...This is becoming troublesome.