“So, you’re the one who thawed me out? Honestly, I owe you one.”
“Well, I mean, you thawed me out naturally. …… “
The day after crying in front of the frozen cat, a tabby cat-like creature claiming to be an extraterrestrial who spoke human language was sitting in front of me, with my eyes swollen from crying.
He sat on my folded cushion as if sitting cross-legged, claiming to be the frozen tabby cat that had been in the item box. Apparently, he wasn’t just a cat but a Cat-sìth alien from another world. However, he himself claims to be an extraterrestrial named Popte from space…
“I remember being on a ship when a pirate’s dimensional submersion torpedo hit us… I guess they froze me because they couldn’t get ransom from my family,”
the cat-like space alien chuckled as it sipped tea skillfully with hands larger than a cat’s but smaller than a human’s.
“Yeah, it’s fortunate that I was saved by someone who could communicate through universal language imprinting (brain transference). A stroke of luck amidst misfortune,” I replied.
“Oh, by the way, what’s ‘imprinting’?”
“Imprinting is… the burning of general knowledge into the brain. Oral languages have fewer patterns compared to telepathic languages, so sailors usually undergo brain imprinting during their initial medical check-ups, along with vaccinations, to ensure they can engage in everyday conversation wherever they go.”
“Wow.”
Yeah, I envy that. I wish they could imprint me with at least one of the foreign languages I’m taking at university.
“But, I have to say, you also risked helping such suspicious creature. And this planet, it’s not yet a member of the Galactic Trade Organization, right? Was it your first time seeing a Popte?” the alien asked.
“No, I couldn’t tell if you were an alien just by looking at. You looked exactly like the cat I used to have, so I couldn’t just leave you…”
When I thought of thawing him out and burying him in the backyard, I was genuinely surprised when he came back to life, meowing in the bathroom. He looked even more like Mars, the cat, than when I saw him frozen in my item box.
Memories of Mars, the cat I grew up with, the gentle Mars who grew up with me, and the old Mars who disappeared just before I left home flooded back to me since he came into my item box. He didn’t seem like a stranger… no, he didn’t seem like just any cat anymore.
///
scene transition
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“What’s with that cat that keeps coming out?” I asked.
“Cat-sìth, no, we’re called Popte… we’re creatures that resemble cats,”
the creature replied as it shrugged its shoulders and shook its head while looking at a picture of the late Mars, my cat, on the lock screen of my smartphone.
“No way, we’re totally different,”
“No, you’re quite similar,”
“No, there’s no way.”
As if telling me to stop joking around, the creature, narrowed its eyes, shook its shoulders, and laughed. To be honest, it was hard for me to find the differences between Popte and cats, but maybe to the creature, they were worlds apart?
“Hey, you… Oh, do you have a personal identification name or something? In your cultural context, I mean,” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m Tonbo Kawashima,” I replied.
“Ah, Tonbo Kawashima, huh?”
Even after living with this name for twenty years, I’ve gotten used to it, but it’s what people call a “sparkling name.”
“What about your name?”
The creature, stroking its whiskers with its front paw and twitching its nose, answered.
“We don’t have names like Tonbo do. Popte’s individual identification is all tied to scent. There aren’t many of us in the galaxy, so in reality, we’re rarely called anything other than ‘Popte’ by other species.”
“Huh? Then what should I call you?”
“Well, you can call me whatever you like.”
“Oh… then… can I call you Mars?”
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Maybe the creature in front of me is older than the cat I knew… but to me, he already felt like a reincarnation of my cat Mars. However, I felt he might be uneasy about calling him by the name of my dead cat. While hesitating, I cautiously made the suggestion, but he nodded without much thought.
“Naming me after the Popte-like animal Tonbo kept? That’s fine,” he said.
With that, he picked up the smartphone on the desk and looked at the lock screen attentively.
“In Popte legends, there’s a phrase, ‘fur ten times,’ which means the same soul is born ten times with the same fur. Mars, who was once Tonbo pet, might be reborn as Popte next.”
“Wow.”
I thought that would be nice, but at the same time, I felt that it was almost already happening. Of course, it wasn’t something to say to him right now.
“Oh, right, this board is an info terminal, right? Can it display a star chart?”
“A star chart?”
“Yeah, a map of the galaxy. Even in remote areas outside the Galaxy Trade Organization, they should have something like that, right?”
When I searched for a star chart of the galaxy on my phone and showed it to Mars, he deftly manipulated the screen with his paw and made an impressed face.
“Is this… the typical star chart for this planet?”
“I’ve only seen things like this.”
“…Can I ask one thing? Whether it’s for work or travel, have you ever been to space, Tonbo?”
“Nope. I’ve heard they used to go to the moon in the past… But recently, space development has slowed down, so the day when individuals can go to space is still far away.”
“Don’t they have spaceports in orbit? What about short-range teleporters from the ground?”
“That’s still just stuff in stories.”
“Huh… Seriously…”
Mars visibly deflated and flopped onto the floor, belly up. As I gently stroked his back fur, which rose and fell with his breath, he batted my hand with his paw.
“Hey, so this planet, not only is it not part of the Galaxy Trade Organization, but has it not even encountered extraterrestrial beings?”
“Huh? Um, probably, but…”
If Mars was truly an alien, this moment would be considered a first contact.
“Really!?”
With a cry, Mars’s tail shot up towards the sky, then drooped down onto the desk.
“…Tonbo, why aren’t you more surprised to have met an alien?”
“Huh? I am surprised.”
“You don’t seem surprised at all!”
Well, it’s partly because I’m skeptical… but considering that some items are coming out of my item box that clearly aren’t from Earth, I figured he might be from some dungeon or another.
“Sailors used to say that if they were caught by people from the frontier just before space exploration, they’d be dissected and made into specimens… Tonbo, you wouldn’t do that, right?”
“Of course not.”
That perception might have held true twenty or thirty years ago, but in today’s world filled with beings from different worlds and races, would they really do something like that?
“Because Popte is a race that looks just like cats or Cat-sìth. Since dungeons appeared, people from different races have been coming to Earth a lot, so honestly, wouldn’t anyone not really care if Mars is an alien? Stranger thing happened even on TV often.”
As I turned on the TV, a commentator, a werewolf, appeared on the daytime talk show. Mars rolled onto his side and faced the TV.
“What species is he?”
“He’s an interdimensional being from beyond the dungeon. Fugaji Yoneyama, a naturalized werewolf.”
“Is it because of people like them that you’re not surprised? Oh! Do they have spaceships in their world…?”
“Our world is said to be the most advanced in science and technology…”
Mars’s tail, which had started to rise, drooped back down onto the floor.
“Come to think of it, how did I come to this planet?”
“Well, it was in my item box…”
“Item box?”
As I began to explain in detail how Mars ended up here from the beginning, he got off the desk and sat back down on the cushion, listening quietly. And as I recounted everything from the manifestation of the item box skill to various experiments, the accidental gun discharge, and Mars’s thawing, he didn’t ask me any questions.
After I finished telling everything, Mars closed his eyes with a troubled expression and pressed his forehead with his paw.
“…Tonbo, I don’t think that thing of yours is just an item box skill.”
“Huh?”
I thought it might be, but I guess it’s not.
“Perhaps it’s a special ability that the big shots of the Galactic Commerce Organization or the founding families of the Galactic Integrated Trading Company have… to put it in our terms, it’s like a rare skill, right? I think it’s the same thing.”
“That’s…?”
“I don’t know the details, but supposedly, those with that skill have access to a market that only they can access…”
“But mine just changes the items I put in…”
“Then maybe Tonbo’s skill is like a restricted version of those. Only able to list items… like a flea market… no, more like a junkyard where dead Poptes are disposed of.”
A junkyard, huh? It would’ve been nice if it were a convenient skill where I could freely buy what I wanted.
“What other items were exchanged with mine?”
“Uh, this gun and this pointy stick.”
“A gun… and a pointy stick…? Huh? Seriously?”
Mars held the pointy stick to his paw and looked at it with a disgusted expression.
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Thanks for the new series (sorry if I double posted)
A typo’s spotted
> Stranger /thingd/ even on TV often.
/thing happened/
fixed, thank you very much!