Prologue: Before I Knew It, I was in a Developing Village on the Frontier

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.

Since there were goblins in this place, it wasn’t a huge leap to assume that this really was another world. So how far along was this world’s technology?

If I really couldn’t do anything for the village, I could easily see them killing me off. Just like the chief said, this place didn’t have the means to accommodate anyone who couldn’t pull their own weight. The only thing that I had to contribute was my body, then, forged through a lifetime of karate and physical labor.

Great. None of that made me less thirsty. Or cold. They could’ve given me my clothes, at least.

I wonder what they’re gonna do with all the other stuff they took from me? Now that I think about it, I don’t even remember what else I had when I first got lost here. Wonder if they’ll give anything back.

The door to the stable opened with a loud creak.

“Time to eat. Come with me.” It was the same goblin who captured me while I was wandering the forest.

He untied the ropes around me, and I finally made my way out of that cramped stable. Waiting outside was the muscle-bound man who had thrown me in the stable in the first place.

It seemed like he was in charge of keeping an eye on me. After a brief exchange of grunts between him and the goblin, the meathead followed after us.

“This way,” said the goblin, and I followed.

Man, it’s bright out here. I used one hand to shield my eyes from the sun, and the other to hide my crotch. The wind was brisk, but at least the sunlight was a bit warm. I’d wager it was spring in this world, or maybe fall.

A smattering of houses with walls built out of mud came into view as I followed—houses with chimneys, which meant that they probably had all the furnishings of real, proper houses.

Just as I thought when they first dragged me here, this village probably had a few hundred people living in it. The village itself was surrounded by forest, with only enough trees cleared out for the settlement proper. Small plots of farmland clustered near the houses, along with tiny stables like the one they tossed me in.

“Hey man, what’s your name? I’m Shuta,” I said to the goblin. He stopped, turning to take a brief glance at my face. I couldn’t tell how old he was, but even though the guy was a good head or two shorter than me, he was absolutely ripped. Imagine a miniaturized junior heavyweight pro-wrestler and you’re on the right track. Deep wrinkles lined his face, but I guessed that was just a goblin thing. It made it a lot harder to figure out how old he was.

The goblin ignored me and kept on walking.

“Aw, c’mon, man! Don’t be like that. You do have a name, right?”

No response.

I decided to hold off on the questions for now. Even if I really wanted to just know where I was and what was happening, I didn’t know what these guys would do to me if I pissed them off by talking too much.

Come to think of it, the talking itself was weird. I was in a different world, but I could still somehow communicate with these people.

We finally arrived at our destination, just behind the village chief’s manor. It was no outdoor café or anything, but it had a wooden porch and an earthen stove, where they must’ve done some cooking.

“Sit.” He was certainly a goblin of few words. I obeyed, sitting myself down on the wooden balcony. A young girl stood near the stove, ladling a thick, stodgy substance into a wooden bowl. She looked wary.

“Hey, thanks a lot,” I said, flashing a smile as she handed me the bowl…at which point she darted away, unfortunately.

Great, she hates me…or maybe outsiders are rare, and she just doesn’t want to be involved with me too much? I peered at what was in my bowl. The sludgy substance seemed to be some kind of porridge. I couldn’t be sure, but from what I could see, it had red peppers (I thought), some beans, potatoes, oatmeal, and bits of what looked like bacon (I hoped).

“Eat. When you’re finished, time for work,” the goblin said as he took his own bowl from the girl. I snuck a glance at what he got. Weirdly, he not only got less than me, but it looked like I got more of those bacon bits as well.

When I finally brought my wooden spoon to my mouth, I found the porridge didn’t have any flavor to it. Fine by me. I didn’t need gourmet cooking on an empty stomach. It only took about ten spoonfuls before my porridge disappeared.

“I’m guessing there aren’t any seconds, right?”

My question was ignored, of course.

After I finished eating, they finally handed me some clothes…kind of. Not my old clothes, but a raggedy old hemp loincloth. This wasn’t even what the other villagers wore—they all had full sets of clothes.

They gave me one more thing besides the loincloth: a small hand axe.

“Chop these logs. When you do, pile them up over there,” the goblin told me as he pointed toward a mound of wood. So that was my job here. Chopping firewood.

“What should I do when I’m finished with that?”

“Do all the ones here, then separate them so they can be used in the village. Then do the ones next to this pile, and the pile next to that one.”

I tried not to wince at the mountains of logs before me. Yeah, this isn’t the kind of job you can finish in one day. It’s gonna take at least a week to get it all done.

I offered up the brightest, most apathetic smile I could muster.

“Heh. Uh. You got it.”

***

Hey, folks. Still Shuta here. You know, that guy who got sent to another world and gets to chop firewood for a living? All I’ve got is a loincloth and a hand axe. I suppose you could call that my work uniform.

It was the middle of spring, and yet another day of me working my way through a pile of logs. The goblin woodcutters gathered lumber, and my job was to chop it up so the villagers could use it as firewood in their homes all through winter. Simple, yeah, but exhausting.

My first day trying it went something like this: First, I set one of the larger pieces of wood on a stump and tried chopping it with my axe. I wasn’t used to this kind of work, so the blade got stuck in the log and wouldn’t come out. I lifted my axe again, log still stuck to it, and brought it down against the stump. That got the thing cut in half.

None of my cuts were even when I started, and my chopping technique was sloppy at best. It only took about five minutes for the palms of my hands to go numb, which was a sign of the calluses to come. Another five minutes, and the friction caused my skin to become hot. Five more minutes, and my arms were starting to give out, then my shoulders. The feeling of exhaustion finally crept down my lower back, and then I was down for the count.

The only reason I got that far was because of all the part-time jobs I’d done before—specifically, the one where I pounded mochi with a giant wooden mallet over New Year’s. It took two hands to swing that mallet, and I eventually learned to make it easier on myself by relaxing my body whenever I took a swing.

That said, it was different enough to give me trouble. I was supposed to use one hand to swing the hand axe, and that was rough stuff. Still, that’s how it had to be done, since it was crucial to give the arm I wasn’t using a break before alternating back to it.

I didn’t know that on my first day, though—I used both hands. It made swinging easier, but it wasn’t as efficient.

Day two came, and work got a bit easier as I figured out the one-handed technique. I realized if I kept brute-forcing it, I’d only slow things down in the end—call it the intuition of a manual labor vet.

By the time day three came around, I’d finally gotten the hang of my work, and I was on my way to becoming firewood-chopping pro.

“Well, well, well. Just like you said, it seems you possess some amount of physical strength after all,” the village chief said as she observed me at work.

Why thank you oh so much, Your Majesty.

I’m not trying to brag or anything, but even if I couldn’t be perfect, I still felt like I’d done enough in my life that I could handle just about any work they threw at me.

It’s my “60 Percent Rule.” You get 100 percent in anything, good for you, you’ll be satisfied with that perfection. What keeps you going is aiming for 60 percent. I’d treat that 60 percent as 50 percent for next time, then aim to give another 10 percent more to reach 60 percent again. Rinse and repeat.

“Thank you for your words of praise,” I replied, making myself sound as humble as possible.

“I didn’t want to start you with farm work all of a sudden. Couldn’t have you eating all the crops, after all,” the village chief said with a reserved giggle.

Honestly, the village chief was kind of cute. She had to be only a year or two into her thirties, with long, waist-length blonde hair.

I remembered reading in some book that humans in the past only used to live until around fifty or so. That’s why they’d get married and have kids so young, climbing the stairs to adulthood faster than I could even imagine. Really, it wasn’t so strange to see a thirty-something woman in charge of a village.

Anyway, she seemed satisfied with what she saw of my work. She winked at the meathead guard in charge of keeping an eye on me before returning to her manor, and he bowed his head as he saw her off.

Back to work, then. The worst part of it was that no matter how much I worked through the log piles, they never seemed to diminish. The goblin woodcutters just tossed new wood on the piles, day after day.

The guard watching over me was always around, but he never lifted a finger to help. He would only ever take his sword out of his sheath to swing it around. How efficient of him—intimidate me and get some practice in. What a guy, right?

On the fourth day, I wound up with an injury from the constant rubbing of my loincloth. I noticed a stinging sensation first, and it turned out my skin had actually split open a little. I hadn’t been able to wash my loincloth in the last few days, either, so when I saw the young girl working at the village chief’s manor, I tried talking with her about it.

“Excuse me, do you have a second?”

She didn’t say a word. She was still completely on edge around me, and I couldn’t blame her. I was almost completely naked aside from the scanty loincloth.

“I want to wash this thing I’m wearing, but is it all right for me to use water from this well to do it?” I cranked up the politeness. Friendliness hadn’t gotten me anywhere with the goblin, so this time I tried to be as well mannered as I could manage.

Nope. In fact, over the course of our little conversation, the expression on her face had gone from anxiety to absolute terror. She lost no time fleeing back inside the village chief’s abode.

“Um, so,” I turned to my meathead guard, “about the well water…”

“No.” He continued to sharpen his sword.

“But I haven’t washed it once since I started wearing it. It’s unsanitary. Maybe I could wash myself a little too?”

“No.”

“Then what should I do?”

“Suck it up.”

Ice cold. Dejectedly, I got back to work. The chafing from my loincloth was getting nasty, and it made me itchy, too, so I just stopped wearing it while I worked. Better to chop wood in the buff.

“Wonder what’s on the menu today?” I asked myself aloud.

Lunchtime was when I got my first meal of the day, and it was the thing I most looked forward to since coming to my new world.

Besides the porridge they gave me the first day, I also got to eat baked potatoes, fried fish, broiled snake, and vegetable stew.

Meat was high-value stuff here, meant to be food for only the most hoity-toity, upper-class people. Even though I was on the bottom of the social totem pole, I still got to eat some meat…though it was only a few scraps of bacon. More often I’d get things like snake and fish, but I couldn’t help craving some fatty, delicious cuts of the good stuff. I was out chopping wood from sunrise to sunset, after all, and even though it was simple labor, I worked myself to the bone.

It had been a little over a week since I was forced to become a woodcutter. The first few days my muscles hurt so bad I could barely move, but there’s nothing like mortal terror to get you past the pain. Now, chopping wood was no big deal for me.

There was one sad thing about all this, though. See, wearing the loincloth made me so unbearably itchy that I stopped wearing it altogether. The chafing was a nightmare too. But the real problem started when I left it on a nearby tree branch to dry in the sun. I was wiping the sweat from my brow when an errant gust of wind snatched my loincloth from the branch and sent it dancing through the air.

“Ahh! My loincloth!”

I threw my axe to the side and chased after it, my exposed trouser snake bouncing to and fro.

When my guard saw me running, he drew his sword and brandished it at me.

“Where do you think you’re going?!”

“My only piece of clothing is flying away!”

“Get back to work!”

“But it’s all I have! Sure, it itches like crazy when I wear it, but it gets so cold at night! I’ll freeze without it!”

“I told you to get back to work!”

Ice cold. No negotiations. He pointed the blade right at me, heading me off.

He’s going to kill me. You learn things when you take martial arts as long as I have, and one of those things is murderous intent. This guy was brimming with it. He was completely prepared to kill me at any moment.

We glared at one another. Taking a quick look to the side, I saw the wind dragging my loincloth through the dirt, toward—oh no, I couldn’t see it directly, but that was definitely the direction of the open door to the village chief’s manor.

“EEEEEEK!!”

And that sounded like a shriek from the young girl working for the village chief.

“I said to get back to work,” the man commanded.

“A-all right, I got it.”

“Good.”

“Look, I promise I wasn’t gonna run away or anything. I just wanted to get back the only piece of clothing I had, that’s all! If I catch a cold because I lost it, it’s your fault!”

The man just thrust his sword in my direction again. Dejected, I picked up my hand axe and went back to chopping wood.

They didn’t give me lunch that day.

Whenever I finished work for the day, I was given about five baked potatoes as payment. Although lunch was usually decent, dinner was always just cold leftovers. Since I hadn’t been given anything for lunch that day, though, I was more than happy to eat whatever I got.

Oh, did I mention I never got any breakfast? Two meals a day. What a sad way to live. Speaking of food, that day’s dinner came with a bottle of some sort. It was filled with some pretty unpalatable wine, the kind with bits of grape skin floating around in it. Drinking raw water was risky in this sort of world, so I guessed this wine was supposed to be a replacement for that. More wages from the village chief.

“Well, well. It looks like you’re actually doing the bare minimum for work around here.”

“Thank you for your words of praise. I must also extend my deepest and most profound gratitude for your additional gift of wine,” I said, prostrating myself in the nude as I looked up at the village chief.

It wasn’t like I was over the moon because of some crappy wine, but I didn’t get any proper drinking water here. I had to be thankful to get something to drink, even if it was made out of the dregs of leftover grapes.

“Yes, it seems you’re handling things well. Gimul! From now on, give this man a bottle of wine when he finishes his daily work.”

“Are you sure?” asked my guard.

“I just said it was fine, did I not?”

The look on the meathead’s face made it clear he wasn’t happy to hear this. So that guy’s name is Gimul, then.

Every day, I returned to the stable before sundown. Whatever animals used to live there, now it was just me. Home sweet home.

Well, I guess I did share the place with a few roosters. They’d be outside pecking away at their feed during the day, but my rooster roommates were there to greet me when I headed back to the stable. I was still itchy all over and couldn’t really get a good night’s sleep, but what could I do about it?

Just as I was thinking that, the girl who (I assumed) worked at the village chief’s place as a servant came with a bucket of lukewarm water for me. Gimul—you know, the meathead guard—was there as well, of course. They still didn’t trust me not to do anything horrible, then.

Gimul did the talking. “Here’s some water. Clean yourself with this sponge.”

Taking a glance at the girl, I saw she had some kind of tattered rag with her. She held it at arm’s length, pinched between two fingers, like when you would hold something disgusting away from yourself. But the disgusting thing in question was…

“Oh, my loincloth!”

She thrust it toward me, basically begging me to take it away from her already.

“Thanks a lot,” I said. “What’s your name, by the way?” I mustered my friendliest smile again—but the cute girl just pinched her nose and ran away. I hadn’t taken a bath in days, so I must’ve been downright rancid.

I wearily turned to Gimul. “Thank you very much.”

“Get back to the stable. Also, you won’t be chopping firewood anymore.”

“Wait, hold on. Does that mean I’m…I’m fired? Am I going to be executed?”

“Hmph. We’ll see,” the man said. Then he kicked me back into my tiny stable and slid the bar on the door into place, locking me inside for the night.

I picked up the sponge and began to scrub myself in the darkness with the lukewarm water. With the remaining bit of water I washed my loincloth before setting it out to dry. No more working in the buff for me starting tomorrow.

Yoshida Shuta, thirty-two years old—and I finally finished my part-time job as a woodcutter.

My payment: crappy wine made out of bits of leftover grapes.

***

My days always started early in this new world. As in, before the sun even came up. That’s when my rooster roommates would start crowing their heads off.

“Cock-a-doodle-dooooo!”

Morning-to-you-toooooo. With a stretch, I navigated the darkness to put on the only clothes I had—a loincloth. Hey, better that than nothing, even if it still made me itch like crazy around the waist. Still, I definitely wanted to get my hands on some genuinely decent duds soon.

Right then, I heard the sound of the bar on the stable door being removed before Gimul threw it wide open.

“Get up. You’re not coming back here from today onward.”

Before I could think, he was on me, grabbing me and dragging my hide out along the ground like it was nothing. A true gentle giant.

“If I’m not coming back here, does that mean I’m sleeping outside now? I guess that’s fine since it’s been getting warmer, but it gets so lonely at night. I’d want to at least take my rooster pals with me, you know?”

“Shut up.”

And shut up I did.

The roosters in question poured out through the open stable door one after the other, not caring in the slightest as they hopped over me to get out. Could you not just jump over me like I’m a corpse, guys?

It was like all that time we spent together meant nothing. Ah, love. So one-sided, so fickle.

“So, what should I be doing now? You said I wasn’t chopping wood anymore, right?”

“Follow me. Starting today, you’re going to be taking care of the livestock.”

“Wow, taking care of livestock!” I grinned, adjusted my loincloth, and stood myself up. “About time I had some better work to do.”

It was still cold in the morning, but I would warm up by moving around a bit. I wanted to hurry up and get to tending those animals.

“So now that I’ve been chased out of the stable, where will I be living?” I asked Gimul, following behind him.

“There’s a barn, bigger than that stable. That’s going to be your new home.”

Yes! Movin’ on up!

The stable was just a little over fifty square feet, and now I suddenly got to move into a huge barn. And with animal pals, too! Like cows! Or, oh! Maybe horses?

Uh. No, actually. Pigs. It was pigs.

There were a few dozen of the little guys, oinking their bacony hearts out, and they stank. The stable may have smelled like ass, but the rankness here was a magnitude of ass that put the stable to shame.

“Pig crap,” said Gimul. “Clean it.” Leaving me with those words, Gimul moved a short distance away to keep an eye on me, just like before.

Does this guy even have a job? Judging by the sword at his waist, I’m guessing he works for the village chief, but I’ve never actually seen him do any work. What a guy.

Just as I was thinking that, a large, older lady made her way over to me (though it was hard to believe she was a lady at first glance.)

“So, you’re the new manure guy, then?”

“Yeah, nice to meet you. My name’s Shuta.”

“Forget the formalities. Just grab that shovel and scoop it into those barrels until they’re full of manure. When you’re done, take the barrel to the mound out that way.”

“Mound? What mound?”

“You’ll know when you see it. Now get to work!” The old lady smacked me on the butt with the wooden stick she was holding. Hard.

“Ye-OUCH!”

“Less yappin’, more pig-crappin’!”

This old lady was as hardass as they came. I scrambled to the shovel and got to work filling the barrels with the pig dung scattered around the barn. All that wood chopping really helped build my strength for this sort of work. Even so, my back started to give out in no time flat.

The barn was even bigger than I expected it to be, with each story around the size of a four-unit apartment. Over thirty pigs lived there, oinking and squealing away. I realized this world had no sense of hygiene—the barn was damn filthy, with flies buzzing all over the place.

It was a crap job (har har) that I wouldn’t want to touch with a forty-foot pole, but if I wanted food, then I had to get scooping.

The lady watched me for a bit. Once she seemed satisfied, she wrung out one of the cloths in her wooden bucket and began wiping down the pigs.

No matter how clean you make them, they’re just going to get dirty again when they lay down in the muck, I thought, piling the last of the pig manure into the barrels. That’s when I got my next job.

“No slacking off, you. Go gather up the dirty hay and toss it outside.”

“Hay?”

“Did I stutter? Hay! Replace it with new, clean hay. Don’t just stand there, move!” the lady snapped. I scrambled to do as she said.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve done all sorts of part-time jobs. You usually got these older ladies from hell in smaller, family-owned workshops. They were as strict as could be and wouldn’t stop nagging. I wouldn’t really know what I was doing at first, but they wouldn’t waste time giving me an earful at the slightest newbie screwup.

One time, I landed a job making school uniforms in a downtown tailor shop. They were looking for people with experience, but since no one else applied, I ended up working alongside a bunch of housewives and other ladies who lived near the workshop. They all had some experience working at that shop, making me the only newbie.

I wasn’t the most skilled person with my hands; nothing I made was sellable, and I got reprimanded for pretty much everything. All this after the old guy running the place had gone out of his way to ask me for help since they were swamped.

After a week, though, the complaints stopped. Turns out that a factory full of mostly older ladies likes having someone like me around to do the heavy lifting.

It seemed like the lady in the barn was treating me about the same, making me do all the physical labor like shoveling the pig dung and cleaning out the dirty hay. The only thing she didn’t make me do was actually take care of the pigs.

I remembered reading somewhere that pigs were actually pretty smart animals. Even smarter than dogs, some people say. Maybe that’s why they gave me the cold shoulder, since I was at the bottom of the village’s social totem pole. Kept under watch by Gimul and constantly chastised by this older lady, I was lower than anyone who took care of them. Hell, the pigs probably had it better than me.

For the record, we’re not talking the soft and smooth pigs back home. I’d describe these guys more as a mix between a pig and a tusky, thick-and-bristly furred boar.

Me? Well, I had a loincloth. Lucky pigs.

Just as the lady told me, when I started hauling out the dung barrels, I found the “mound” right off the bat. It was a mass of mud, dirty hay, and poop fused into one giant hill of compost. I was afraid I’d get another walloping from the lady’s stick if I didn’t hurry, so I dumped out my barrel and diligently went back for the next one.

My back started pleading for mercy after about seven trips, so I stretched out and gave myself a few raps on the back to try and alleviate the pain.

“No slacking off!”

“Sorry about that, ma’am.”

“Who’re you calling ‘ma’am’?! I’ve got a wonderful name, and you better use it! It’s Gintanen!” she shouted, and gave my arms a quick, sharp whack.

“I’m sorry, Gintanen!”

That’s gonna bruise. I knew this kind of pain from all of my years of karate. It felt like the aftermath of blocking a middle-kick to the body.

Lunchtime was still my one shining light. I worked more muscles in the barn, and I was all the hungrier for it. Instead of being taken behind the village chief’s manor to eat like usual, Gintanen appeared with a basket of food.

“You’re allowed to eat eggs from now on, so you better be grateful.”

“Thank you!” Now I got both baked potatoes and boiled eggs for lunch. “Thank you so much!”

I couldn’t even remember the last time I had eggs. I wasn’t big on them back in my old world because, you know, all the cholesterol. I think I remember reading that it actually didn’t really matter how many eggs you ate a day, but who knows with these things? Eh, whatever. These were going to be my first new-world eggs, so I couldn’t give a damn either way.

There were a total of three boiled eggs and three potatoes. I must be in heaven.

“Hey, you,” Gintanen suddenly spoke up. “What’s your name? Even the pigs have names. You must have one too, yeah?”

The pig who was related to most other pigs in the barn was called “Pampi,” in case anyone was wondering. That’s a pretty cute name you came up with there, Miss Gintanen.

I told her my name when I introduced myself, but it seemed like she didn’t remember.

“I’m Shuta.”

“Shooter, huh. Humph! Think you’re all that, do you? Hurry up and finish eating!” Her mood suddenly took a turn for the worse, and she gave me another hard whack on the head with her stick.

Dejected, I wolfed down my last egg, which promptly got stuck in my throat from trying to eat it too fast.

After finishing the pig dung, my new job was to mix the compost.

“Mix it real well, then cover the whole thing with dirt, top to bottom,” Gintanen explained to me—or ordered, rather.

“Then what?”

“Get some water from the river and get the pigs something fresh to drink.”

“All right, got it. And after that?”

“After that, we’re finished. You better get moving, though, or things are gonna get messy.”

“Messy? What’s that supposed to mean?”

Gintanen put her hands on her hips, her bountiful chest bouncing slightly.

“It’s gonna pour soon. So get moving.”

I glanced at the sky. Enormous, ashen dark rain clouds spilled over the northern mountains. So, hell, I grabbed my shovel and got moving on that compost.

While mixing compost wasn’t exactly a cakewalk, it was kind of similar to what I’d done as a civil engineer, so it wasn’t anything I couldn’t manage. I just wished it hadn’t been so long since I’d done it. I don’t know if it was an insurance problem or what, but at some point people just quit hiring freelancers like me to do construction work, civil engineering jobs, any of that junk. They looked down on us part-timers, I think, especially if there were any workplace accidents. If you were wondering why I was so rusty at manual labor like compost production, there’s your answer.

After mixing the compost for a bit, I heaved some dirt over the top of the pile. The stench of fermenting compost was ungodly enough already, and the fresh dung and filthy hay dragged things still lower. I stunk something fierce up until the day before, but this smell turned the air itself rotten and clung to everything. It was the kind of job absolutely nobody would want to do, so hey, why not make some shmuck from another world do it instead?

With the compost mixed, I got to work replacing the water in the barn’s troughs. Seeing as Gintanen was likely to kill me if I poured the reeking old water out in the barn, I hefted every one of those rectangular wooden troughs myself, and let me tell you—they were heavy. They weren’t even filled to the brim with water and they were still too much to take all at once.

So I didn’t. Dumping the water in the barn was out of the question, sure, but I could take a small bucket and scoop it from the troughs bit by bit. Once I removed enough water by bucket, I dragged the troughs outside and poured out the rest.

I kept an eye on the black clouds as I worked, racing against the rain to get all the old water out of the troughs. When I finished, I grabbed a long wooden laundry pole and hung buckets on each side, hoisting the whole thing on my shoulders to get fresh water from the river.

A river, even though there was a perfectly good well nearby. I asked Gimul about going to the well and—

“You can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because.”

“Then where do I get water from?”

“The river.”

There was a river on the outskirts of the village, apparently. Not…very close. But the well seemed like it was reserved only for a special few. Just delightful. With a bleak smile, I shouldered my laundry pole and hurried off to the river.

I was actually quite familiar with these long poles, thanks again to all that karate. Your fists are your main weapon, but you’ve got to learn to use more than that—forks, even poles.

The long poles I was used to were about six feet long, a little taller than your average guy. You could use them to control a confrontation in all sorts of ways: downward swings, thrusts, overhead strikes, and even a quick trip to knock someone still.

Good for immobilizing your opponent, easy to deal more fatal damage. Out of all the weapons I tried in the dojos, it had to be my favorite.

I never thought that a laundry pole like this would become an everyday part of my life, though. After about ten trips to the river and back, the thing was really digging into my shoulders. God, I wanted a handcart or something, but of course I didn’t have one. Maybe nothing like that even existed here.

While on my umpteenth trip to and from the river, I happened to notice Gimul sitting down in the shade of a tree. He was drinking from a bottle—a very familiar bottle.

The bottle of wine from the village chief. My reward for all my hard work.

“Gimul! What do you think you’re doing?!” I tossed my pole to the side.

“I’m wetting my whistle. Obviously.”

“But that’s my wine!”

“Yup.”

“Then you’ll repay me, won’t you? Tell me how. Now!”

“Shut it.”

Gimul left the bottle on the ground and stood, drawing his sword.

Oh. He was serious. Maybe he was buzzed, or maybe he really just didn’t give a damn about me, or hell, maybe both. He readied his sword, gripping it tight with both hands.

He’s really going to do it. Really going to kill me. Again and again the thought raced through my head (really going to kill me, really going to do it, really going to), but I stepped forward. I had to get the right distance between us, roughly the same length as Gimul’s height and length of his sword combined…because I had a weapon perfect for fighting within that range.

With my bare feet, I lifted the long pole off the ground and sent it flying upward. I snatched it out of the air, ready to fight for my life.

***

Hi there—still me, Yoshida Shuta. Third-place champ of my junior high karate tournament back in the day, once the proud owner of a worn and tattered first-degree black belt.

All right, meathead. Bring it.

I fell into a basic stance with my pole, standing opposite Gimul. I kept my grip light, using about the same strength it would take to wring out a rag.

Gimul bulged with muscles. They filled his tunic like an overstuffed sausage sleeve—but I wagered those muscles were just genetics. Tons of people from all over the world look ripped. Looking ripped is the easy bit.

Not that I could talk. I packed on a few pounds as I reached my thirties. Still, I had enough muscle for a fight thanks to my classes. It was time to put them to good use.

(While I’m on the subject, the karate tournament I got third place in? There wasn’t…actual…fighting. It was more about executing your forms, so I was pretty much petrified.)

However, after seeing Gimul take all those practice swings with his sword, I could tell he was a total amateur. See, I once played an extra on a movie set—nobody important, some guy who got slashed with a sword—but I’d actually gotten proper swordsmanship training for the part. Gimul’s posture certainly looked badass, but I suspected that he sucked at all the actual murdery parts.

“You know what you’ll get for opposing me, right?” Gimul snarled, swiping the air menacingly.

“Doesn’t matter what I did then or what I’m doing now, does it? You were going to kill me either way.” I had no doubt in my mind—this man intended to cut me down where I stood.

He drew closer. I caught on and jumped backward. No way was I going to let him get into a range he preferred. No way was I was going to die here. Though it wasn’t like I wanted to start some little rebellion either.

Okay, what to do, what to do in order to Not Die. Disarm meathead. Then what? Get him on the ground, subdue him, and…and…keep hitting him till he stopped moving? Yell for help? If someone came by after I got him under control, it would look like I was the one attacking him.

Gimul was by no means a good man, but the fact he had a sword likely meant he was part of the village’s top brass. Which meant I might be screwed. Maybe I could just steal his clothes and sword and make a run for it?

As that flurry of thoughts slashed and tore at me, Gimul shouldered his sword and made his move.

I’m no scholar of Western sword fighting, but it was easy enough to see that he had put everything into this one slash. I dodged to the side, brought myself closer to him. You don’t fight from a distance with poles.

Fierce as Gimul was, his blade missed. It cut nothing but air, whooshing softly, swinging at a bad angle. He really was an amateur. I brought my pole down hard on that big, muscley swordhand of his.

“You bastard!” Gimul roared; his right hand dropped from the hilt. He was using both hands to wield his sword, though, so he was still ready to take another swing at me.

This one was broad, horizontal. Amateur! The sword grazed my loincloth, but the momentum from his attack spun him around so his big dumb back was perfectly exposed.

I hooked my pole through Gimul’s legs and sent him tumbling to the ground with a pathetic yelp. Then I flung his sword aside with my pole and followed that up with a few strikes to his elbows. No matter how much muscle your opponent has, going for their joints always works.

I wasn’t trying to break any bones. Just his fighting spirit. I took another swing at his right elbow, since that seemed to be his dominant arm.

Gimul cried out, cradling his elbow as he lay face up and helpless. I pressed my pole to his throat.

“Don’t move. If you do, I’m shoving this thing straight into your Adam’s apple.”

“Don’t you dare think you’ll get away with this.”

“You’re the one who tried to take my stuff. You’re the one who tried to kill me.”

“You have no proof. You’re nothing but an outsider, and now you’re going to die,” Gimul growled as he fought through the pain and glared up at me.

A pole to his throat and he still hadn’t lost the will to fight. That’s why I hate people from the sticks. I’m a country kid myself, and I still have a lot of that in me, so I know better than anyone how much we’re capable of enduring. Even when I started karate after moving to the city for college, the other guys from the sticks would push through nearly any agony while the guys from the city gave in at the first twinge.

Not saying that the country kids have it right, either—just that harsh farm life makes it easier to deal with pain. Basically, we’re a pack of total masochists.

“Then I can take you down with me,” I said. “Maybe I’ll even get away with that sword of yours.”

I pushed my pole still harder against Gimul’s throat, and—

“What the hell is this?! Murder!”

And there she was—old lady Gintanen, screaming her throat sore at me. Like she always did, I suppose. “The outsider is trying to kill Gimul! We feed you, we give you work, and this is how you repay us?!” Gintanen shouted, jabbing her finger at me. “Ungrateful swine! Drop your pole this instant!”

As she spewed venom, a throng of goblins and older men gathered around me, armed with everything from wooden hoes to shovels to swords to whatever other farming tools you could use to beat an uppity stranger to death.

If I played my cards right, if I kept my eye on them and timed my dodges, I could take them. Maybe. They all looked just as amateur as meathead. Well, there was one person with a small machete-looking thing with some good moves, but he stood at the farthest edge of the crowd. Perhaps the guy was a hunter.

Now. If I won, I’d have to make a beeline to…where? All I knew was this village, and nothing more. And, again, that was if the crowd didn’t farm-implement me to death there and then. There was no guarantee that my training would translate to actual battle experience, so I threw my pole aside and raised my hands in the air. Nothing to do but surrender.

At which point Gimul launched off the ground, smashed his fist into my face, and knocked me out cold.

Welcome to my crib, folks. Up until this morning, I was living it up in a barn, but now I get a whole cell to myself. Pretty nice digs, eh?

My loincloth was a casualty of my fight with Gimul. I thought I dodged him, but nope. Just a hair off, and that was enough. So it goes…

Instead of a loincloth for those chilly nights, I made due with the fresh hay spread across the cell floor.

Makes you want to just count your blessings, doesn’t it? Hooray.

So there I was in the village jail cell—as in, the only village jail cell, because of course it was. Just my luck.

It did, however, come with a toilet, and after everywhere else, that felt a bit like special treatment. The only other difference between the cell and my other brief homes was that this place was underground.

My new home: dark, damp, and reeking of—well, there was a toilet, so you can imagine. Even calling it a toilet was generous. It was a bucket. A wooden bucket in the corner of my dank cell.

“Looks like you don’t have the best luck either, huh,” I called out to my cellmate. She had to be under twenty, and her hemp tunic put my ratty old loincloth to shame. “Getting dragged down here away from the sunlight…nothing but misfortune.”

She said nothing.

“My name’s Shuta. What’s yours?”

No response. She wouldn’t even look me in the eyes.

“That village chief sure is a nasty piece of work, locking a girl like you in here,” I said, chuckling.

Looking closer at the girl, she was just as cute as everyone else seemed to be. Was that just how girls looked in this world—drop-dead gorgeous? Then again, old Gintanen flew in the face of that. Pretty, sure…pretty terrifying. More pro-wrestler than runway model, which is…still an aesthetic, I suppose.

The girl working at the village chief’s place wasn’t exactly a supermodel either, but she looked sweet. Not that she ever acted with any genuine sweetness.

Meanwhile, my cellmate sat on the floor with her hands around her knees, staring in my direction. Nah, that undersells it—she was keeping an eye on me. She was completely free to move around, though I wasn’t given the same luxury. Thick, foot-long chains clamped around my hands and feet. Life here was going to be a real hassle. I didn’t even want to think about what I’d have to do when I needed to crap; peeing was nightmarish enough, thanks. The girl seemed not to care too much about it, though—she did her business, and the only thing she seemed to mind was if I looked anywhere near her.

I sat cross-legged on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. Stone architecture—a tower, probably. When I was going back and forth between the old rooster stable and the village chief’s manor, I remembered seeing a three-or-four story tower. This had to be the place, and it was a jail. A spiral staircase stretched upward in front of me. The clacking sound of footsteps echoed down several flights of stairs.

Footsteps that were getting steadily closer. I focused my attention on the spiral staircase, and soon enough the village chief made her grand appearance.

“Seems like you really went wild this time, didn’t you?”

I swallowed. Gimul was at her side, his face completely smashed in. But I hadn’t beaten him that badly, had I?

“You quarreled with Gimul while taking care of the livestock. Do I have that correct?” she asked me.

“Yes, that’s right,” I said quietly.

Making excuses would get me nowhere now, and there was no point in denying the truth.

“That’s when Gintanen happened across you two and had you captured, yes?”

“Right. Then Gimul punched me out.”

“You look just as bad as him, you know. Take a look in the mirror,” she added, giggling.

Har har. Get it? Because there’s no way you’d find something as luxurious as a mirror here. Still curious, I tried touching my face…and regretted it. My nose hurt like hell. Smashed in, probably, or maybe even broken. I jerked my hand away just to stop the pain.

“What happened to Gimul’s face wasn’t me.” I said quickly. “All I did was trip him. I didn’t do anything else.”

“I’m the one who punched my son,” said the village chief calmly.

Gimul slumped his shoulders. The girl in the cell shrank against the wall. They were all terrified of her.

“Your…son?” I asked.

“Yes, my son. Stepson, to be precise. My late husband was the chief of this village. I was his second wife. Gimul was his son—something for me to remember him by, if you will.”

“I see.” That was the only reply I could give.

“A violent boy, though, and I wouldn’t be surprised if drink drove him farther this time. I’ve already punished him on your behalf.”

“So his face…”

“How shall I put it? The rules of this village go something like this: If you steal, we take your fingers. If you kill, we take your life.”

And if you smash someone’s face in, the village chief might smash your face right back, which is what happened to Gimul. Truly this was a woman to be feared.

“I’ve said my piece. You’re cleared of all charges and free to leave.”

Finally. One of the woodcutter goblins was with the village chief. He fumbled with the lock for a second before getting the door open.

“Thank you for helping me,” I said to the village chief.

“There’s no need to thank me, but I won’t apologize for anything, either. We’re even now.”

Her son-in-law and me, both smashed to hell and back. Balance in all things, I guess.

“I’ve been meaning to ask, were you once a warrior?” the village chief said. “My son had a sword. Yet you took him down with only a stick.”

“I wouldn’t say a warrior, per se, but I guess I’ve been through some of the training.”

“I see, I see. Looks like we have ourselves quite the find after all.” Her dry laugh echoed throughout the stone tower.

“So,” I glanced at my cellmate, “who’s she, anyway?”

“Oh, her? I brought her here to take care of you. But never mind that. Come, follow me.”

At the village chief’s prompting, I stood up and left the cell. Which was nice, but it felt like they were forgetting something.

“Ah, I almost forgot. N’aniwa, take those chains off for him,” the village chief ordered the goblin.

How was I supposed to pronounce that? Nan…nani what?

Freed from my chains, I pushed past a dejected Gimul. Oh, he hated that, you could just see it in his eyes…but he couldn’t do a damn thing. Served that douche right.

The bright light of the outside world greeted us outside the tower.

“I’ll go ahead and show you where you were supposed to live starting today,” the village chief said.

“You mean the barn with the pigs?”

She turned around for a moment. “No, of course not. Who in the world told you that?”

I glared back at Gimul, following just behind us. He averted his eyes. The girl from the jail cell walked beside him; she looked pretty shocked when I looked her way. She frantically shook her head, as if to say she had nothing to do with this.

“Gimul, then,” the village chief sighed.

“Yeah.”

“Well, you have nothing to worry about. I was thinking of welcoming you as an official member of the village soon enough, after all.”

“For real?! Thank you! Thank you so much!”

“And if you’re going to be a member of the village, someone your age is going to need a wife,” she said. “I’ve selected this girl. Marry her.”

The girl behind us? “Wait, what?! I just met her! We haven’t lived together, we haven’t really talked, I—what about her? What about what she wants?”

“What are you making such a fuss for? You’re of age. She’s a woman. Starting a family now is only natural.”

I didn’t know if I really needed a wife, though. I’d never had a steady job, and my old house was a rundown apartment. I never cared where I lived, to be honest, and I could take care of my, uh, “needs” by myself. Then again, I wasn’t about to turn her down. If relationships and free will didn’t exist in this world, maybe I needed to get with the program.

“Thank you for your consideration. My wife and I will do our best to contribute to the village.”

My new wife froze up. It hit me then that I didn’t even know her name. I wondered if she’d warm up to me.

“About this house…”

“It’s over there, on the outskirts of the village. It used to belong to one of our hunters.”

“What happened to them?”

“Oh, he died. He went into the forest last winter, and it seems a wyvern got him.”

“A, um…wyvern?” Why Vern? And would Vern strike again?

All right, yeah, stupid joke. I knew what a wyvern was well enough—one of those flying lizards you find in any generic fantasy setting. Huge, deadly, famous, and basically public domain.

“So a wyvern killed him?” I continued.

“They killed each other, actually. They call you Shooter, don’t they?”

“Shuta, yes.”

“A good name for an archer. Starting tomorrow, you’ll receive your own bow and become a hunter.”

“Huh?”

“Surely a Shooter has hunted before, correct?”

No, it was Shuta, Shuta. Though “Shooter” did sound pretty rad, right? But no, I was over thirty, and that was some goofy junior high gamer-name stuff.

“Yeah, I’ve hunted,” I said, responding to her question. It was with one of my uncles. The guy hunted ducks. In elementary school, I was absolutely terrified of all his hunting dogs.

When I stayed at my aunt and uncle’s place over summer and winter break, I was always at the bottom of the pecking order. My uncle was top dog there, my aunt was second-to-top-dog, then the literal dogs, and finally me. Hunting dogs are only friendly with their owners, I’m sad to report. They’re pretty smart.

The problem was that when we shot ducks, we used guns—not a bow and arrow.

However, I also used to work in an apparel shop where my manager was a former Self-Defense Force paratrooper, and he took all the employees to airsoft places on our days off. Once when we were in the mountains, he’d run us up and down the cliffs there as a kind of “rappelling” crash course, so I was also familiar with mountainous terrain.

I even caught and ate some snakes when I was out there, so I bet I could at least do that here in the new world. (If you’re curious about the taste: tiger keelbacks were delicious, striped snakes were mediocre, and rat snakes…don’t bother with rat snakes.)

“Good. I’ll have all the proper equipment sent to you by tomorrow morning, so I’m expecting you to work hard for us.”

“Thank you again for your kind consideration.”

The village chief laughed heartily. “You have a home and a wife now, so I’m expecting you to man up and protect your family.” She paused for a moment. “By the way, this girl just so happens to be the daughter of the hunter who died. Make sure you take care of her!”

“Oh, uh! Right! Got it!”

From a tiny stable to a literal pigsty, and now, a real house with proper walls and everything—finally, I had a decent place to sleep in this world. It even had its own thatch roof, meaning I wouldn’t have to worry about the wind or rain anymore.

And a wife. I just…had a wife now. That was normal in this world, I suppose, but it felt weird. I mean, what about her? How did she feel? You weren’t just given wives back home. Marriage was mutual. You turned in a registration and everything.

“So, what’s your name?” I tried.

Still no response from the girl. No, she didn’t seem happy with this at all.

The village chief had declared us husband and wife, though, so I at least wanted to try getting to know one another. We’d be miserable otherwise; I couldn’t imagine not even knowing her name. “I already said it before, but I’m Shuta.”

“You’re…Shooter?”

“Hey, you can talk after all! Yeah, I’m Shooter.”

No matter how many times I introduced myself as “Shuta,” the people in this world kept calling me “Shooter,” so I decided to just roll with it. What, was somebody going to charge me with having a false ID? And you know what? It did sound pretty cool the more I heard it, just like a badass wandering stranger.

“I don’t want to just call you ‘you’ all the time,” I said. “Are you sure you don’t want to tell me your name?”

“I…I’m Cassandra.”

“Cassandra, huh? That’s a pretty name.”

We stood facing each other in the late hunter’s house—her father’s old home. I supposed Cassandra must’ve grown up there. It was much more spacious than the old rooster stable, probably just over 140 square feet. There were two long, narrow beds inside, and an earthen stove sat near a wall. All said, it reminded me more of a studio apartment than a house. Not that I was complaining. It even came with a bucket to take care of your “business” in the corner and a large tub beside it.

And to think at one point I had to go in the stable and scrub myself down with only the meager amounts of water they rationed me! One week later, here I was with a house and a wife. For the first time since arriving, I felt a sense of relief.

“Cassandra,” I said, “I know you must be pretty shaken up about being married off to me all of a sudden.” Who wouldn’t? I mean, I felt weird about it too. I came back from work into another world, got hogtied by a goblin, pressed into chopping wood every day, and now at the end of it all I had a new house, a new life, a new wife.

“I know we can’t just act like husband and wife right off the bat or anything, so let’s try and get to know each other better a bit. Maybe someday we’ll be the real deal.”

Cassandra was just overflowing with enthusiasm…that is, if looking hangdog miserable was how you showed enthusiasm in this world. Probably not, eh? Great start to a joyous marriage.

“Let me get you my father’s old clothes.”

Oh. Um. House or no house, I was still buck naked right now. I gratefully accepted the clothes of my late father-in-law.