Greetings everyone. This is officially my first fanfic since I reorganized my profile. The content may be somewhat controversial and the main character is loosely based on me but nonetheless please R&R.
Disclaimer: I do not own World War Z but I do own this story.
NOGLIKI, SAKHALIN AUTONOMUS OKRUG, THE HOLY RUSSIAN EMPIRE
[As I'm guided to his house, which is surprisingly modern compared to the other residents', I can see the locals stare at us. They are mostly Nivkhs-very few ethnic Russians or other Slavic groups remain here or in the whole of Sakhalin Island outside Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk (They were either decimated or made to join the "Holy Expansionism" of the Empire). Aoki Watabe, a former Japanese citizen who has decided to remain amongst the Nivkh people of the village, is my guide and I plan on interviewing him as soon as we reach his home. The Russian government has decided to end ethnic conflicts within its territory in a surprisingly humane and successful policy of religious/cultural/linguistic tolerance similar to pre-war Iran, Czech Republic, Romania, and China. We reach his house and we sit at a table as I start interviewing him]
Firstly, the one thing you should know is that I'm basically the most bizarre person you will meet on this planet. I am Japanese, but I fall in to a very unique group of Japanese. I am a Kikokushijo. Which literally means something like "Returnee Child" in English although the actually meaning is almost identical to a TCK*. As I'm sure you'd expect from a TCK I have very mixed feelings on my identity. I was born in the Saitama Prefecture of Japan but I moved to America when I was 2 and then moved to Hungary when I was 11 and came back to Japan when I was 13. I had very confused feelings about myself and I faced a lot of problems during my life in Japan. My Japanese speaking skills were very limited to begin with and I preferred speaking English or Hungarian. My language skills are now equally balanced and I've added several new languages like Nivkh and Russian to my repertoire. But that's beside the point.
What I want to say is that the pre-war state of Japan was deplorable-a horrible education system that was built against us Kikokushijo as well as ethnic minorities, a society where everyone just follows what's spoon-fed to them by the media, a xenophobic, racist, discriminative populace that even discriminates against certain sects of its own people such as Burakumin**and Kikokushijo, an incompetent government where the head of state constantly changes and never makes any decisive or useful decisions when in power. Those are just the most noticeable flaws at that time. I must admit that many things have changed for the better after the war but alas, I grew up in a constant state of depression that was due to the flaws of pre-war Japan among other factors.
Despite this I managed to excel in certain fields. I mostly kept to myself and I grew obsessed with History, Linguistics, Political Science, and Ethnology. It's due to my knowledge in all of these fields I see myself as completely different from most other Japanese people. They can barely pronounce fundamental English that I learned in Kindergarten and say "We haven't lived outside Japan" as an excuse when I managed to teach myself Latvian, Basque, and Crimean Tatar when I haven't even visited those countries yet. They also panic about the Eiken test*** when it's such a cakewalk that I managed to pass the highest level of it in 6th grade. They also—in general—have a very low understanding of history and politics and blindly deny Japanese war crimes like Nanking**** or hold stereotypes against non-Japanese people. In addition to this, they are just obsessed with stupid trends and fads like the annoying group of whores called AKB 48—I was actually glad the zombies devoured most of them. But, what I hated about Japanese people the most is the fact that they bullied me.
(*Third-Culture Kid, is a person who has lived in—or meaningfully interacted with—two or more cultural environments for a significant period of time during their developmental years. Examples include children of ethnic minorities, children of expatriates, and multiethnic children.)
(**Burakumin（部落民), refers to an outcast group at the bottom of the Japanese social order that has historically been the victim of severe discrimination and ostracism. Although officially emancipated by reforms made by Meiji Japan in 1871, they still face social discrimination.)
(***Jitsuyou eigo ginou kentei (実用英語技能検定) or Eiken (英検), is an English-Language proficiency test for Japanese people.)
(****Before the war, the Japanese government officially denied the Rape of Nanking, where 300,000 Chinese were raped and murdered by Imperial Japanese forces, by covering it up in school history textbooks.)
What do you mean by "they bullied me?"
Ever since I came back to Japan when I was 13, I was always being bullied by other Japanese for my mediocre Japanese skills and my lack of understanding of traditional and modern Japanese culture and customs. My parents and many of the few people that I considered my friends told me that they bullied me out of jealousy due to the fact that I'm a polyglot. Bullshit. I might be a polyglot but my Japanese skills were very low back then. I could've bullied them and said I was jealous of their superior Japanese skills as an excuse yet I didn't. So why did they bully me? Discrimination and xenophobia are the reasons no doubt.
Things started to get better when I graduated from high school however; my Japanese skills were fully developed by the start of 12th grade so the bullying ended, I managed to publish a book about my experiences as a Kikokushijo which became a bestseller and greatly contributed to my survival of World War Z, I managed to get into the university I wanted, established connections with various people I looked up to, started practicing several martial arts, and managed to master several languages, like Russian, in my university.
Unfortunately, right when I was entering what seemed to be the Golden Age of my life, World War Z began. Although I managed to survive and save my entire family along with a few dozen close friends of mine and managed to establish myself as a respected figure in Nogliki, I still have some regrets. I wish I could've saved more people.
Didn't you just go on a lengthy diatribe against Japanese people and society? Why would you want to save them despite your anti-Japanese sentiments?
I did just go on a diatribe, but that doesn't mean that I don't have any sense of pity. I might be proud to be a Kikokushijo but I still have to recognize that my ethnicity is Japanese. I might be appalled and angered by Japanese society and politics but there are some good things I see in them. Also, I'm mainly referring to my friends.
If you have friends that are Japanese, how can you see Japanese people as a group to be bad?
If you ask people I know, some will say I'm pro-Japanese, others will say I'm a Japanophobe. Personally, I prefer to say I have mixed views. This confusion probably comes from my own state of mind and my experiences in the US.
When I lived in the US, I faced a lot of bullying and racial discrimination. However, did I start saying I hate all Americans? No I didn't. Why? Because America is a diverse country. I can see why American schools teach the value of diversity; it reduces hatred against an entire people. When I lived in Michigan, I was bullied by a Polish-American, and I could tell he was Polish-American because his last name ended with the suffix "-ski." Consequently, I didn't have to hate Americans; I could've taken out my hatred against Poles. But I didn't because I also had lots of friends who were Poles and Polish-Americans. The same applied for German-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Mexican-Americans, etc. And even if, say, I was bullied by a French-American and he/she happens to be the only French-American I know, I'm not going to start hating the French or French-Americans since one person isn't enough to just hate an entire nation. That's the beauty of American ethnic diversity: so many groups means it's difficult to hate entire ethnic groups. In the case of Japan however, one can argue that I have several dozen friends who happen to be Japanese, but I have many times that amount of enemies who are Japanese and as I mentioned earlier, I dislike the politics and society of Japan. Also, unlike America, Japan is nearly a completely homogenous nation so almost everyone is the same. Even in supposedly ethnically homogenous* Hungary where 95% of the population is Magyar, you can tell by certain last names what someone's ancestry is. If someone's last name is Török, for example, then it means he/she is of Turkish ancestry. If one's last name is Lengyel, Horváth, or Oláh, then it can be assumed that they have Polish, Croatian, or Wallachian ancestry, respectively. Japan, in contrast barely has any diversity** and the government used to suppress minorities like the Ainu or Zainichi Koreans.
In a sea of conformity like Japan, if you get persecuted by Japanese people, you have no one to hate but Japanese people. If you have some friends, but many times that amount of enemies, you will start hating what they all are. In the beginning, it's possible to only hate the individuals who are actually hurting you, but eventually, you'll begin to see them as a single collective entity. In Japan that entity would be Japanese people.
(*Dubious. It has been historically and scientifically proven that Hungarians and almost all other ethnic groups worldwide have been interbreeding for a millennium and that the concept of a "pure" ethnicity is virtually impossible for any ethnic group. Hence Hungarians, who supposedly possessed some Asian features when they first arrived in Europe, now all have Caucasoid appearances.)
(**This is possibly true to an extent. Although the pre-war Japanese government only counted people by nationality and not ethnicity, Japan was still seen as a nearly completely homogenous nation. Although minorities like Ainu, Ryuukyuan, and Korean do exist, percentage-wise they are negligible. Furthermore, Japan has historically been completely isolated and inhabited exclusively by Yamato people (Except for Hokkaido and the Ryuukyuu Islands) and has never been conquered or heavily influenced by foreign powers until its defeat in World War II therefore there has been virtually no intermarriage with other races until the mid-20th Century.)
Is there any point to just using hate to combat your problems? Why not forgive and accept?
That's something many people have told me to do throughout my life in Japan. I actually tried that approach multiple times. However, it never went well for me and I still suffered at the hands of Japanese people. There may've been over 127 million of them, including my friends, various people I looked up to, and others I liked, but collectively, they were still the entity that was somewhat responsible for my suffering. Although I have to admit that part of it is probably my fault and that my contempt towards this entity only aggravated my woes.
However, I began to feel less spiteful towards this entity when World War Z began. Part of the reason being that I was more prepared than most people.
How so?
[He gets up and goes to a bookshelf and takes out a book and sets it on the table]
I'm pretty sure you've seen this book before. It is The Zombie Survival Guide. I purchased this book when I still lived in the US. I only read it because I'm interested in these kinds of guides. [He turns to the shelf] I have The Alien Invasion Survival Handbook too.
Anyways, when the Israelis made a public announcement of the Warmbrunn-Knight Report, I got myself an abridged copy of it and saw a lot of similarities to what was written in it to The Zombie Survival Guide. I couldn't believe what I was reading at first. I knew that I was paranoid throughout most of my life due to all of the bullying I faced and due to my extreme obsession with history and politics but when I read the report; it seemed that my paranoia materialized into reality.
I immediately began thinking about what to do when the outbreak reached Japan. I could tell from the report that this was already a Class 2 Outbreak and that it may become a Class 3 or even a Class 4 Outbreak within days.
I must admit that I had to resort to some….unconventional methods to save my family and close friends.
Can you elaborate?
Well, I had to deal with some shady characters. I'll explain in more detail if you promise not to have me arrested for cooperating with criminals when I had no other paths to choose.
Don't worry. Many people worldwide had to cooperate with criminals to survive.
Very well, where should I begin?
I had a lot of money to spare because I published a bestseller and therefore I decided to try looking for ways to use that money to save myself and my family. I considered appealing to various governments to take me in but I eventually realized after researching various governments' histories that that was an unwise idea.
The Japanese government wasn't really aware of the gravity of the zombie threat at the time. When the Israelis went public with their report, the only countries that took it seriously before the Great Panic were the Israelis themselves, Belarus, Russia, Mongolia, Switzerland, Cuba, and possibly North Korea. Most of the other governments were either skeptical, defiant, didn't see the how serious the threat was, or were already at war with the zombies in the case of China and Kyrgyzstan. Consequently, my choices on where to escape and which government to pay were limited.
Israel and North Korea were off my list immediately. I'm not a Jew or a Palestinian so going to Israel means running the risk of being denied entrance at the border. As for North Korea, I knew they were the most prepared for this war since they had lots of weapons, strong mental discipline, and easily defendable borders. However, I knew whoever I take with me would never agree to going to North Korea to hide. Even if it was a zombie apocalypse, people just didn't trust North Korea. In retrospect, I'm glad I didn't choose North Korea; currently the entire country is an isolated wasteland that no one has an explanation for. The five remaining choices were very tempting.
Switzerland was my first choice since the Swiss always fared well in World Wars and protected themselves along with many rich people, people against the war, Bolsheviks, and Jews* from the other belligerents by taking advantage of their mountainous position, well-trained professional army, wealth, and small area. I considered going to Switzerland but I decided not too since I knew many people would also be considering Switzerland and the influx of refugees into such a small country would overwhelm the Swiss authorities and their resources and would leave them vulnerable to zombies and infected refugees. I was quite surprised that this didn't happen and that the Swiss simply denied entrance when the Great Panic begun. A Swiss official saying"Our little lifeboat is full!"**
Belarus and Cuba were my next choices but the logistics of moving my family and close friends to those totalitarian fortresses would be huge and on top of that, Belarus went into a civil war shortly before the Great Panic when Lukashenko decided to declare martial law in order to stop the zombies—it seems he took the Israeli report a bit too seriously. How ironic that one of the few countries who listened to the Israelis was quickly overrun by the undead and now no longer exists except as an administrative region of the Holy Russian Empire. Cuba on the other hand, would've been a relatively safe haven, but foreign nationals weren't allowed to settle there until the Zombie War began and by then the only way there was by boat.
That left me with the choice of Mongolia or Russia. Both of them were close to Japan, cold, and were sparsely populated. I ultimately decided to escape to Mongolia as being in Russia would risk conscription or persecution by the Russian authorities and because the vast Gobi Desert would provide perfect protection and serve as a wall from the zombies hordes in neighboring China.
Once I found an ideal village to send my family to, I decided to contact the "boss of bosses" of mafias. I'm sure you've heard of him before; he's a Russian Jew who was born in Ukraine and married a Hungarian. Consequently, he has Russian, Israeli, Ukrainian, and Hungarian citizenship and he's the de facto head of most Russian, Hungarian, and Jewish Mafia branches worldwide. I knew that if there was someone who could smuggle my family into Mongolia, then it would be him.
(*Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin sought refuge in Switzerland when World War I began. During World War II, Switzerland sheltered the most Jews out of all the European countries.)
(**This was also said by a Swiss government official during World War II in regards to why Switzerland refused entry to more than 10,000 Jews.)
How did you find him?
I didn't, I just went looking for the Russian Mafia, and I can't say how, when, or where I found them, I eventually did and I explained my predicament and they were surprising agreeable; they offered to transport dozens of my friends and my entire family to Mongolia in for a surprisingly low price. I was at first suspicious since the Russian Mafia – or any mafia for that matter – has been known for offering to smuggle entire families for low prices only to use them for labor or sexual slavery. I later learned that this was not the case this time and that I was really wise and lucky to enlist the services of the Russian Mafia.
Why is that?
Have you ever heard of the views American diplomats had towards Russia before the Holy Revolution? In their eyes, Russia was an authoritarian, corrupt, debauched, mafia state. There was some truth to that viewpoint as the Russian mafia was always connected to the government in some way and the mafia kingpins learned about the seriousness of the zombie threat almost as quickly as Castro did. The widespread range of the Russian mafia also helped as they encountered some reanimated Chinese refugees and saw what the threat was.
This may be quite hard to believe, but the Russian Mafia was actually acting humane. They probably had some sort of honor code or perhaps they thought that if the entire population is consumed by the zombies then their money would become useless and their organization would eventually crumble. In my opinion, I think they were just saving people to raise their image to dispel public contempt for them. The Yakuza* had done this before in the past so I wasn't really surprised.
Anyways, I paid the Russian mafia kingpin and told him where my family members and close friends were located. I was expecting him to bring out a contract since these people usually do but he didn't and instead he just said "Good luck" and then vanished. The next thing I did was contact all of the people I intended to evacuate. Getting my family to agree to my proposition of sending them to a remote outpost in Mongolia was surprisingly easy but getting some of my close friends to agree was a bit difficult; they feared that they were going to be enslaved. I couldn't blame them since I also had my doubts. I just hope that the Russians found them and they managed to survive. At the very least I know my entire family survived –they were really lucky that when Mongolia implemented the Temüjin Order** they made the village they were sent to one of their safe zones. And they didn't have a lot of problems since the village was in the middle of the Gobi and because members of the Mongolian Army were also there.
I intended to join them but then things began to go out of control.
(*During the Kobe Earthquake, the local Yakuza group known as the Yamaguchi group provided disaster relief services and other forms of humanitarian aid)
(**Temüjin Order—Mongolia's version of the Redeker Plan.)
Is that how you ultimately ended up here?
Precisely. I didn't come here on my own. I actually have the Japanese government to thank.
By the time the zombies reached Japan, I'd managed to evacuate most of the people I intended to save. I was only waiting for a few stragglers to pack their belongings. However, I knew that I also had to escape. The outbreak had already overwhelmed parts of Tokyo and the JSDF was desperately trying to contain the zombie hordes but they still managed to spread in all directions. Eventually I heard an announcement on the news that declared the complete evacuation of Japan and that while the JSDF tries to contain the zombies; everyone is to report to certain evacuation ports.
My reaction to this was mixed. I was still looking for one more person when this announcement was made and I intended to go to Mongolia on my own but if the Japanese government managed to find her than it would allow me to escape and avoid risking attacks by zombies….. [Sighs] Unfortunately, it seemed my luck ran out.
[I'm about to ask him to explain what happened next when I hear the sound of children and hear someone come downstairs. An adolescent girl who is clearly not Japanese or Nivkh comes and asks Aoki a few questions in what seems to be a Turkic language. He answers in the same language and she runs back upstairs]
Sorry about that. That's one of the orphans I adopted after the war. She's a Crimean. I adopted over a dozen orphans from Japan, Hungary, Crimea, China, Russia and other places after the war. I make sure they learn English and master their native language. I'm giving them a good life so that these TCKs will eventually succeed and hopefully live a life without hate and do what I wasn't able to do.
What weren't you able to do?
[He pauses] Many things. Such as graduating from my university, becoming rich, achieving fame, becoming respected…
You're already rich by global and especially local standards, already respected by the people of Nogliki, have enough education to teach your adopted children, famous for your book and in Russia for your activities on Sakhalin and in Mongolia from what I've heard from their media. What is it that you're referring to?
[Another pause] I was only in my early twenties when the zombie war began. My mental health was deplorable ever since my adolescent years. Consequently, even at that age I never had a girlfriend. This last person I was intending to save was the girl of my dreams. I actually had a crush on her for a long time.
I was looking for her when I encountered the undead for the first time. I was residing in Toda, Saitama Prefecture but by now zombies started invading en masse from neighboring Tokyo. The only weapons I possessed were my Jou* and my own martial arts skills. I therefore decided to escape from Japan by going to the closest evacuation port which was in Mito, Ibaraki. I left my house with three days worth of food, my Jou, my phone, and some survival tools and headed to Ibaraki. I encountered the zombies right when I was about to get past the limits of Saitama City. There were three of them, in an empty road, feasting on what seemed to be a freshly killed corpse. Even though I read the survival guide thoroughly, I couldn't believe what I was seeing and for some reason I was paralyzed when they turned in my direction and started to moan. It was unlike anything I heard before and if it wasn't for the sound of an empty can of juice I crushed with my foot as I backed up, I would've been overwhelmed quickly. I immediately brought out my Jou and dispatched two of them using a move specifically designed to knock off heads. The remaining one I dispatched by knocking it to the ground and repeatedly whacking its head as it tried to get up until I heard the skull crack.
I didn't have any time to celebrate my victory as I could hear moans in the distance. Although I saw a lot of people in Saitama City, it was obvious that the zombies were beginning to devour them. I ran out of Saitama City and kept running. I didn't sleep, I ate very little to conserve my food, and I had to drink from polluted lakes and sometimes even sewer water to quench my thirst–albeit with a purification straw.
As I continued my journey towards Ibaraki, I didn't have any more close encounters until I reached Mito. The evacuation port was still functioning but I could tell that something was happening when I saw a lot of JSDF soldiers in the city. They were carrying sniffer dogs and shooting civilians on the spot if their dogs snarled at them. I realized that there were infected refugees amongst the masses trying to evacuate from Japan. As I tried looking for the evacuation port itself, I was stopped at gunpoint by a JSDF soldier who was on patrol with his sniffer dog. I tried to get out my papers but he suddenly lowered his gun and told me where the nearest ship was and warned me not to get bitten. As I ran towards the port and was within sight of the ship, I encountered her.
(* A Jou (杖) is a four-foot long wooden staff used in various martial arts such as Aikido.)
Was she reanimated?
She wasn't reanimated and she didn't seem to be infected either but I saw that she was being chased by two zombies. I immediately ran to help when the zombies suddenly fell down and I saw a JSDF soldier walking up to her. However, his sniffer dog began to hiss and bark at her and the soldier grabbed her wrist and then pointed a gun at her head. I reached them and yelled at the soldier to stop.
He immediately pointed the gun at me and then lowered it when he saw that his dog was calm. He then questioned what I was doing and I told him that I know this woman. He said that she was infected and therefore must die. I turned to her and asked her if this was true. To my great surprise, she recognized my face even though we didn't see each other in a long time. Her eyes were filled with tears as she said that she was bitten by one of the zombies she was trying to escape from earlier. I couldn't believe that I had finally managed to get a moment with her but that she had to die. I turned to the soldier and asked if I can kill her. He gave me the gun and said I must do so in his presence and be quick. I then turned to her and embraced her. I told her that I loved her, and that I'm doing this because I don't want her to suffer a painful death from the infection and then become a ravenous zombie. As I looked at her tearstained face, she only nodded in understanding. I was now beginning to cry too. I told her that I loved her for a long time and that I was too cowardly too tell her. I then said that I'm sorry before I shot her in the forehead. I fell forward and everything around me went blurry. The last thing I remembered being the soldier dragging me on to the ship before everything went black.
[He has a very grim expression on his face] When I came to, I was in a refugee camp here, in Nogliki –Kamchatka wasn't the only place Japanese people were being evacuated to. I managed to get myself a residence outside of the camps by acting as a translator between the Japanese refugees and soldiers and the local Nivkh and Russian population. It was during this time that I learned how to speak Nivkh. The JSDF paid me for my work and I managed to purchase my own house here.
After the liberation of Japan, the Holy Russian Empire retook Sakhalin and conscripted all of the ethnic Russians but allowed most of the Nivkhs to remain as they announced their policy of preventing ethnic conflicts. Almost all of the Japanese refugees returned to Japan but a few, like me, decided to stay. We were too damaged by the war and didn't want to go to a place that would remind us. When I decided to stay, the local Nivkhs welcomed me into their community and allowed me to occupy what was once the mayor's residence; hence my house is the biggest in this city.
I learned from the zombie war that it doesn't matter what kind of person you are, but we're all just prey in the eyes of a zombie and that we should stop hating and fighting each other. My own hatred, prejudice, and stubbornness ruined my childhood and my inability to accept Japan was one of the main roots, if not the main root of most of my problems. At least World War Z forced everyone to work together for survival and forget about their hate. If only I was able to do this without this kind of catastrophe being necessary to persuade me….