Opening an Interstellar Arms Pawnshop (GL)

Short, scheming top (cyborg) x sharp-tongued, proud bottom

The second volume's spacefaring road adventure is about to begin: visiting different interstellar societies, flying spaceships, piloting mechs, and fighting pirates. Foreshadowing payoff progress: 1/6

Unemployed young man Jiang Ting unexpectedly inherits his sister's arms pawnshop.

The pawnshop is on Mushroom Star, a desolate region of the Republic. Its only employee is Nian Gao, an armed cyborg dog who barks at the top of her lungs.

Jiang Ting thinks she can go on living with just her and the dog, but then a cyborg who owes money barges in.

She has a gambling habit and keeps her whereabouts secret. Despite her formidable fighting skills, for some unknown reason she has reduced herself to utter poverty.

She has long relied on cheating at mahjong to stay afloat, borrowing from one place to pay another. When she can't repay her debts, she puts herself up as collateral to Jiang Ting.

The pawnshop serves plenty of food, but this walking calamity still sneaks out to play mahjong from time to time. (Sometimes she wins so much that the mahjong parlors ban her, leaving her with no choice but to fight in illegal boxing matches.)

And so, on rowdy Mushroom Star, a new pawnshop owner who is actually the lowest-ranking person around (and whose words carry less weight than the dog's), a tough dog, and an inscrutable mech-modifying cyborg who seems like a formidable expert end up living together happily (?) (or, rather, by force).

Jiang Ting has to admit that, after living through this chaotic life for a while, it does have its own unique appeal. That is, as long as the gambling god doesn't cause her trouble.

[Reader's Guide]:

[Comprehensive Content Warnings:] [Please show this cold novel some love and add it to your collection. I'm trying to build a readership while keeping the word count down, so feel free to wait until there's more. I've let myself go and mixed in all kinds of vulgar jokes that only I find funny. Expected to be a long novel of four to six volumes.] [A blend of lighthearted daily life, grand adventures, road-trip fiction, chuunibyou antics, and melodramatic plot.] [Mainly from the bottom's perspective, with a third-person main narrative and occasional first-person essays from the bottom. The top-bottom dynamic is roughly 0.7/0.3, not fixed, and there are moments when they switch. Please steer clear if that's not for you!] [All characters are assumed to be women (or female or genderless nonhuman characters). This is a friendly interstellar world.]

1. All place names, factions, and weapon designs are my own inventions. Every single one is fictional, with no harmful influence. You could say it's a labor of love, too. Don't scrutinize the worldbuilding too closely. Everything is set in an entirely fictional fantasy world!

2. Basic interstellar faction setup: The Interstellar Alliance Republic (where the main cast lives, abbreviated as the Republic or Star Alliance. Most of its territory is desolate, and its core region's technology lags far behind the Empire's. Most citizens work in mining or the military-industrial sector); the Sixth Empire (the Empire for short, which inherited most of the advanced technology and territory of the former Fifth Empire and intends to annex the Star Alliance). The Republic and Empire are separated by the "Gray Zone," where multiple small factions have established themselves, and they have been locked in a long standoff.

3. Basic social structure: The Republic and Empire both enforce a strict system of civilizational zones and blockades. The technological level in the core regions is far higher than in the desolate regions, borderlands, and frontier settlements. "Each region will be strictly assessed by the Sacred Jury before being granted upgraded technology or downgraded." From the Interstellar Alliance Republic Technology Allocation Act (Mousey Staff Officer) (meaning: I made it up).

4. For more on the social structure and story background, see the essays Jiang Ting publishes on the forums later in the story as a budding writer! Some of the main story's foreshadowing will also be planted in her essays. Not everything in Jiang Ting's memoir essays is necessarily true, nor is everything necessarily made up. They do express some of her inner feelings and observations of the world around her. She especially loves gazing quietly at women, and she mixes together all the symbols and different people she likes when she writes. [Content warning: The A mentioned in the essays really was her late ex-girlfriend, but the "A" she writes about does not necessarily refer only to that person.]

5. That's all I can think of. Thanks for reading! If anyone's reading, please leave a comment, thank you! Paragraph comments are open... orz

Theme: An unconventional person's journey through the universe