Prologue:
Before I Knew It,
I was in a Developing Village on the Frontier
✦ ✦ ✦
“I’LL ASK YOU AGAIN—what can you do for us?”
So there I was, buck naked and hogtied like a guy stuck in some hardcore bondage role-play. Don’t jump to conclusions on me, though. I’m not into that stuff, and it’s not like I’d have the cash for it anyway.
It was dawning on me that I was stuck somewhere a whole lot stranger: another world.
But how? I clocked out from my part-time job and started toward this bar by the station for a quick drink on the way home…but after that I couldn’t remember a thing.
“I’m, uh, in pretty good shape. I’ve done all sorts of odd part-time jobs, so I can handle just about anything you throw at me.” I don’t know how I stammered all that out to the young woman in front of me. She seemed like the leader. I did not want to piss off the leader.
C’mon, think, Shuta, think! But the scratching sensation of sand inside my mouth was really damn distracting.
“Oh? I don’t know what a ‘part-time’ job is, but you’d best not disappoint me.”
“I’ll do all I can.”
“Hmph. This village doesn’t have the means to accommodate anyone who can’t pull their own weight, but we need all the manpower we can get.”
The young woman motioned toward me with her head. On cue, the muscle-bound man beside her stomped over and grabbed me. After meathead dragged me through the dirt, he tossed me unceremoniously inside of a barnyard stable.
✦ ✦ ✦
My name’s Yoshida Shuta. I’m Japanese, and I turned thirty-two this year. Back in my old world, I hopped from one part-time job to another to get by. Did it in high school, and did it in college too.
My life didn’t start going downhill until after I started college.
See, I actually had fun working part-time. Everything I earned I got to keep, and it was always better to have more cash. Even back in high school I knew that was the life for me, but after squeezing my way into a third-rate college and getting all that extra free time, I was convinced. The more I worked, the more money I got, so I thought, why waste time studying? I barely saw the inside of a classroom so, naturally, I flunked every class.
My parents were beyond pissed when they found out, and they eventually made me drop out of school because of it. It only made sense considering they had to get my two little sisters through college too.
After dropping out, I worked all kinds of jobs to get by. The stories I could tell from all the stuff I did (until I got to this world, at least) would be more than enough for good conversation over drinks.
I’d run the gamut of your typical part-time jobs: convenience stores, fast food joints, home improvement centers, liquor stores, restaurants, newspaper delivery, you name it. I was with demolition crews, at thrift shops, a mailman, even a set-builder for theaters, and it didn’t stop there. A little construction work here, some civil engineering there, a smattering of freelance writing (fine, calling it “writing” might be a stretch), and even this one gig putting on performances while pounding mochi.
Since I was a college dropout, though, everything I could get boiled down to either menial or manual labor. Mostly I just heard about temp jobs from other people and got to working for them. Once my part was over, so was the job. That’s why none of the work I got lasted too long.
Despite all that, there was one thing I did stick with for more than twenty years: karate.
At first my parents forced me to take classes when I was a kid, but it slowly became part of my life through elementary school and junior high. I kept it up till I had to start studying for high school entrance exams.
The thing was, I’d quit just in time for the huge martial arts boom. Catching the end-of-year matches on TV made me want to pick it up again, so I ended up joining the karate club while I was in high school.
It was a different style of karate than before, but I didn’t care. Now that nobody was making me do it, I was actually having fun. And while the club I joined in college was pretty casual, I still got the chance to mingle with people who practiced all sorts of martial arts, karate included.
Still, my main focus was definitely on my jobs. Karate was just a way to blow off steam between shifts.
By then my parents had pretty much disowned me and kicked me out, so I got taken in by one of my old karate teachers and became a kind of assistant instructor for him. Good times.
Now here I was, stuck in some barnyard stable that—let’s not mince words—smelled like ass.
The last job I worked was at an upscale restaurant washing dishes. Compared to that job, this place seemed like even more of a pigsty.
Let’s not forget that I was stuck here in my birthday suit. Couldn’t I at least get something to wear? I ran into a little incident after I got to this world, hence the buck-nakedness. I was wandering around in the nearby forest when one of the villagers found me. Or rather, they caught me, and then took everything I had. And I do mean everything.
The person who captured me had tawny, light brown skin, and—well, maybe “person” wasn’t the right word for him. He looked like a demonic monkey. There were other villagers nearby who looked more like me, and they kept calling the guy a “goblin.”
I’d woken up in some kind of fantasy world.
As I gingerly moved my aching body, my eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness. Rays of sunlight still peeked through the plentiful cracks in the walls of the rundown stable.
If I remembered right, I was captured sometime early this morning, and then brought before the village chief just before noon. All that while, I hadn’t been given the tiniest scrap to eat.
Hungry as I was, I still couldn’t quite digest the situation. Anyway, the more pressing issue was my full bladder. But this was a stable for animals, so I decided I might as well piss and try not to feel weird about it.
Man, it’s chilly, I thought as I took another look around. I was lying on a pile of hay; the prickly stuff was strewn all about the stable. I was dying for a drink, but the only thing I could find was some water in what looked like a food trough for animals. Probably not good for humans, so I’d have to think on whether or not to slake my thirst with it.
Not that I’d have much of a choice if they left me here forever…but then, getting a bad case of the runs from foul water could spell death for me in this world. It was a terrifying prospect, to say the least.
On top of all that, I still didn’t have the slightest idea how I’d ended up in this place.
I thought back to what the village chief asked me: “What can you do?”
You could say I could do just about everything, with all the jobs I’d taken…or maybe nothing at all. I could do karate, but I wasn’t really that strong. It wasn’t like I’d ever beaten the crap out of someone. As for all the stuff I made in my old jobs, with those I had the convenience of modern tools and computers. Here, I had nothing.