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His life was lost while struggling for the slave? (DRAFT PREVIEW)
🕑 Added 2022-11-18 09:50:59 +0000 UTCHere's the full (first draft, to be subject to polishing and editing) of the first chapter of the John Brown Isekai: Total Nekonomic Collapse. Just wanted to have something special for anyone visiting this page.
Hope you'll enjoy it when the full thing gets released!
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“Cats in Nekopara are undoubtedly second-class citizens, if that. They are closer to sub-human, as society treats them as pets and beings who lack autonomy… There still exists a shortage for places where cats can live and their inevitable fate appears to be finding an owner who will put them to work.”
- Chiaki Hiraki, The Worker’s Nekopara: A call to arms against nekonomic exploitation (2020)
Today was a beautiful day like any other in Japan. The sun was rising, the cherry blossoms were gently falling, the catgirls were being oppressed... You know, the usual.
Hidden behind a veil made out of the backstreets of a sprawling metropolis was a young girl going through her daily routine. She only had an oversized dress full of patches, a pair of cheap plastic sandals and a canvas bag full of junk, hanging over her one and only arm, to her name. Someone of her sort, with a short stature and unremarkable dark brown hair that had never chanced upon any luster, easily blended in to the backstreets that set the stage for her day-to-day life. Smelly streets, the oft rude yet scarce inhabitants, a never-ending stream of recyclable waste… She felt as if this routine would never come to an end, and quite frankly, it’d never end until her eventual demise if some miracle wasn’t to happen.
This girl wasn’t looking for a miracle though, she was more concerned looking inside the contents of a garbage can that had been left next to a rusty, abandoned office cabinet. Paper, paper… Wait! No, that’s just even more paper… How much paper do you people need?!
She continued dumpster diving until she reached the bottom of the bin. Her paper-related disappointment was cleared when she found the miracle that she wasn’t looking for: a whole can of tuna. “Finally!” she shouted in excitement at this great find.
Of course, there was no one to hear her celebratory exclamation in the lonely backstreets. She spent a minute of lonely merriment before moving on to her next target. My luck seems to be good today, there’ll probably be something valuable in here as well! Okay, now I gently open the door…
“More tu… nyah?”
Inside the cabinet was an old Westerner supporting a magnificent yet wild bushy white beard. He was quite the monster of a man, around an inch taller than the girl. The leather coat he wore looked vintage, as if it belonged to two centuries prior.
He stared at her. She stared at him.
Silence reigned ‘till its reign finally came to an end thanks to the old man. “Hello, young la-” Kerchunk.
His polite greeting was cut short by the young girl rudely shutting the cabinet. Don’t wanna’ get caught up in your shenanigans, gramps. Best to leave drunk tourists alone. She turned back, intending to forget this queer incident.
Yet, the queer incident didn’t intend to forget her. The cabinet doors flung open again, revealing an old man who looked to be ever so slightly ticked off and in a mood for ticking off. “Ehem.Young lady, it is quite rude not to reciprocate greetings and I believe that it is especially rude if you shut a door in someone else’s face!”
What a bother. I’ll just quickly apologize to get him off my tail. She bowed as much as she could in a show of apology. “I’m so sorry, gra- sir! I was just a bit surprised when I… Uhh… Suddenly found an old man in a cabinet.”
“Right… It is understandable that a young lady such as yourself might be discombobulated when encountering an old man in a cabinet, do conduct yourself better next time young lady.” The old man now had a more relaxed, cordial expression. He was conducting himself surprisingly well for someone who had just come out of a cabinet. “Right, I haven’t finished introducing myself. My name is John Brown, young lady.”
“I’m Maya, nice to meetcha.”
“Maya, is it? Young lady, could you stop bowing? I’m not going to be birching you, do not be worried. It is also quite hard to hear you when your head is so dow…” Brown paused as he slowly noticed the existence of something unusual near the posterior of the bowing Maya. “What is that furry object which is wagging behind you?”
“This? It’s called a tail.” Gramps must have drunk a whole barrel if he can’t recognize a cat’s tail.
Brown’s eyes were wide open in surprise. He pointed at the top of Maya’s head “And if I’m seeing correctly, the young lady has ears of a feline as well…”
“Yeah. You’re seein’ correctly.” Never seen a catgirl before? What’s the big deal?
“By our Heavenly Father above… Am I still of sound mind?” Brown looked around him, only finding towers of concrete and brick that rose up and above along with the various pieces of garbage that populated the backstreet. “And… and the language that you and I currently speak is definitely not English… Where has Providence led me to?”
Huh? Maya was beginning to think that Brown might not be a lost, drunk tourist. Eh, I got a can of tuna. That should be enough food for the day, can’t hurt too much if I humor him for a bit. “Gramps, we’re in Tokyo. In Japan.”
“Japan… That is an Oriental nation, isn’t that correct, young lady?”
“‘Oriental’? Gramps, it’s the 21stcentury already. Get on with the times.”
“We’re in the second millennium?”
This guy ain’t making fun of me, is he… No, he sounds way too serious and grave to be doing that.Maya was actually beginning to feel sorry for the lost old man. “Gramps, you have any relatives or anyone else you know?”
Brown looked somber while answering this question. “21st century… That’s over a hundred years. No, young lady, I don’t believe any one of my acquaintances would have survived that long. Even then, it would be impossible to contact them, in the United States, from so far away.”
Maya didn’t exactly know how long humans could live for. Someone possibly living for over a hundred years sounded impressive to her nonetheless. “Then, you have nowhere you can stay?”
“That is unfortunately the case, young lady.” replied Brown. “Though, I have found this cabinet to be decently insulating and comfortable; it should be suitable for accommodation in a pinch such as this.”
Maya shook her head. “Gramps, you’re not going to be thinking that for long. Believe me, I’ve tried sleeping in a cabinet or two. It ain’t fun.” He looks to be trustworthy enough. “Follow me, there’re better places for a catnap.”
Brown had no idea of the layout of the city. He concluded that the best course of action was to follow someone who didhave an idea. “If that isn’t going to cause any trouble for you, young lady, lead the way.”
And so, Brown and Maya navigated through the backstreets of Tokyo. She avoided crowded areas; the authorities weren’t too keen on strays being in the public eye. Brown, as if a curious child navigating through a candy shop, kept a close watch on everything he encountered. The limited cityscape of a 21st century seemed as alien to him as the Moon’s surface. He kept bombarding Maya with questions as he encountered the products of two centuries of scientific advancement. Maya asked various questions about Brown’s life in the US in turn.
“Young lady, what is that queer little metal box that has a yellow triangle on it?”
“It’s… A box for electricity, I’d guess.”
“Electricity? Electricity is now used inside cities?”
“Yeah. I think. They light the streets and power machines ‘n stuff.”
“Interesting…”
“You don’t have electricity back in America?”
“No, we used gas for the lamps and steam for the machines, young lady.”
“Poor Americans…”
The backstreets eased into suburbs of neatly lined residences along the Tama River. Brown stuck out like a sore thumb. Residents watched this foreign man with mild confusion as the duo continued on their merry way.
“Young lady, why is that gentleman holding that bar of metal towards our general direction?”
“That’s a phone. Think he’s tryna take a photo of you.”
“How does a camera fit inside that tiny space? The picture that gets developed from that is most certainly going to be too tiny to be of much use.”
“Beats me.”
Suburban development began to make itself scarce as the river flowed on and on. Scattered among these parts were makeshift tents of plastic, housing those who had no other option. Maya led Brown along a path that deviated from the river, eventually ending at their destination: a run-down two-story concrete building that seemed to have been abandoned long ago. It lacked windows, doors, or anything that one would expect from a building. There was a huge discarded sign next to the building, with “Tamaside Patisserie” written on it; one didn’t need to rack their brain to figure out why a patisserie in the middle of nowhere would be abandoned.
Maya approached the front of the building. She knocked on the intact doorframe. “We’re home!”
The inside of this former patisserie wasn’t much better compared to the inside. Its walls were being conquered by mold. Under this mold laid an earthen charcoal grill and various bits of food that had been strewn alongside it. The room wasn’t big enough to contain much else, other than miscellaneous junk that weren’t even mentioning.
First to reply to the arrival of the Brown-catgirl duo was the only other person in the room, that being another catgirl warming her hands near the charcoal grill. “Sis!” She wore a tattered suit that was a few sizes too big for her, fastened to her with a belt made out of salvaged fabric of some description. Other than the outfit and her white hair, she looked exactly the same as Maya in terms of appearance.
“Misha, I’ve got something special for you!” Maya handed her currently most valuable possession, that being the can of tuna, over to her sister.
Misha spoke slowly and her speech lacked consistent intonation in her speech. “Uhm… Tu… Tuna, er… Tasty. Thank you… Very.” The sisters warmly embraced each other, before Misha took notice of Brown. “Er… Geezer. Geezer… Who?”
“This geezer’s John Brown. Geezer, this is Misha.” Brown was slightly dissatisfied at being called a geezer, but he kept cool for now “He has nowhere to go so he’ll be staying here.” Maya proceeded to summarize everything she knew about Brown to Misha.
After the end of introductions came time for food. The can of tuna was all that was available, which amounted to little food for the three of them. Brown didn’t even have time to thank the Lord for the meal before the sisters finished the entire can, leaving nothing for him. He didn’t mind it; food was more important for the young’uns who were still growing up.
It had gotten quite late by the time they arrived. The sisters went to bed, bed being a mattress laid on the cold concrete floor, after having finished their meal.
Brown was kept awake by his own thoughts. He had not died after being killed after all; his situation was an odd one. He thought that such a miracle could only be described as a divine act. There must have been a reason why Providence had led him to the new millennium, surely. Yet, as he had learned from Maya, there were no slaves in this country. What was Brown, or more accurately, what was God’s divine instrument for the deliverance of the slaves meant to do?
His deep thoughts were interrupted by Maya. “Ugh. Can’t sleep.” My back’s hurting like hell from the concrete floor. She was surprised when this complaint got a reply from Brown, in the form of singing.
“Blow ye the trumpet, blow
The gladly solemn sound;
Let all the nations know,
To earth’s remotest bound.
The year of jubilee is come;
The year of jubilee is come;
Return ye ransomed sinners, home.”
She didn’t understand the lyrics at all, but the voice of Brown was a surprisingly comforting one. It was a warm, reassuring voice that only an experienced father or grandfather could conjure, and Brown had been both of those. Brown watched Maya fall asleep, sleeping soundly as if she was not resting on concrete.
That night, old Brown came to realize his purpose. Sure, he couldn’t continue his fight against the horrible injustices of slavery. Yet, he believed that every day that he was alive was by divine mandate, a mandate which ordered him to fight in the belief, nay, the in the truththat all men were created equal.
If he couldn’t fight against slavery then old John Brown would fight for the catgirls.
