The jolt of the landing gear hitting the tarmac at Fiumicino was what finally cut through the alcoholic haze. The flight had been a necessary blur of small bottles and a cramped seat, an evil required to cross the globe. I just hope Shukaku kept the travel clean.
I stepped out of the plane into the bright, sharp light of an Italian morning. The air was the first shock. It wasn't the humid, orderly scent of Japan, heavy with the sea. This air was different—drier, thinner, and layered with the smells of diesel, strong tobacco, and something ancient, like dry dust and sun-baked stone.
At a newsstand, Jin bought a bottle of water and a detailed paper map of the city. La mappa di Roma. This would be my guide. Jin bypassed the line of taxis and took the Leonardo Express. The train was loud, its sides a vibrant canvas of graffiti, and packed with people. Perfect. I was just another face in the crowd, heading for the central artery: Termini Station.
Termini was a sprawling concrete hub, nuns in dark habits, hurried-looking businessmen, and tourists clutching their bags. I stepped outside, and the city hit me.
It was alive. Not with the polite, orderly chimes of Tokyo, but with a vibrant symphony of tiny Fiat engines, the hiss of bus brakes, and the constant, musical torrent of Italian. People argued, laughed, and gesticulated wildly, their hands telling as much of a story as their words. In Japan, public space is quiet. Here, it was an energetic public performance.
I started walking. No fixed destination, but a clear goal: exploration. I needed to get the feel of this place, this new battlefield, before moving on to Romania.
My first stop, unavoidable, was the Colosseum. It wasn't tall, not like a Shinjuku skyscraper something i should visit , but it was heavy. The sheer scale of it, the weight of the stone, felt oppressive. In Japan, castles are elegant, built of wood and clever angles. This... this was a monument to public slaughter, a tool designed to awe and terrify a population by showing them how easily they could be broken. I watched the Carabinieri patrolling its perimeter, their blue uniforms and slung submachine guns a modern touch on the ancient stone. They were alert, but this was a tourist post, not a warzone.
I moved on, letting the map guide me through streets of massive, ochre-colored buildings until I found the Pantheon. The piazza outside was buzzing, but the moment I stepped through the colossal bronze doors, the city's symphony vanished. It was replaced by a cool, cavernous silence. I looked up. The ceiling was a perfect, coffered dome of ancient concrete, so vast it seemed to hold its own sky. A single, perfect circle of light—the oculus—poured down like a spotlight, moving slowly across the worn marble floor as the earth turned. Whispers echoed, magnified by the perfect geometry. A masterpiece of engineering.
I found the Trevi Fountain next. The crowd was a dense, suffocating mass of tourists tossing coins over their shoulders. Too many people. Too open. I left in less than a minute.
I was more interested in the churches. Not to pray. I stepped into a smaller, older basilica, the kind tourists usually walk past. The air inside was cool and thick with the scent of old incense and wax. I felt it instantly—that low-level hum, the static charge of holy ground. I'd expected it to burn, to feel like an ache in my teeth. Instead… it was soothing. A profound, heavy silence that pressed all the noise and chaos from my mind. The art was what I came for. It wasn't the serene landscapes of Japanese scrolls. This was all agony and ecstasy. Suffering saints, vengeful angels. The chiaroscuro—the violent, dramatic contrast of light and dark—felt appropriate.
My senses, eventually pulled me off the map. A small, unassuming church, San Nicola in Carcere. The tourists ignored it. I could feel why. The ground it was built on felt wrong, layered. My phone's browser confirmed it was built directly on top of three separate, ancient temples. The public saw a church. I felt a messy, chaotic echo of old gods and a new one, all trapped under the same stone. A thin place. I'd remember this.
I walked for hours, moving from the grand avenues to the back-alleys. In a neighborhood like Trastevere, an alley was a winding, cobblestone maze. The ancient buildings leaned on each other, strings of laundry connecting them like spiderwebs overhead. It smelled of damp stone, the yeast from a panetteria . The layout was a perfect trap, but a terrible place to be cornered if you didn't know the way out.
The contrast between the city's high and low quarters was stark. I walked through Parioli, a high-class district. It was silent. The wealth was hidden behind massive stone walls, spike-topped iron gates, and watchful security cameras. The only people on the street were dog walkers and private guards. It was a fortress, a modern echo of the feudal society I'd just left behind.
Then I walked through Testaccio. The energy was back, but it was different. It was grimy, raw. People lived in massive apartment blocks, their windows open, shouting to each other across the courtyards. The graffiti here wasn't just a tag; it was angry, political. This place felt real. This is where I'll stay, I decided. A fortress like Parioli draws attention. A place like this... you can just disappear.
By the time the sun began to set, painting the ancient stone in hues of orange and purple, I felt I had a grasp of the city. It wasn't one place. It was a thousand cities layered on top of each other, a living museum of power, faith, and blood. A city of walls and secrets.
As night fell, a new quiet settled over the city, the once-lively streets finally falling silent.