Harboring

Takeshi Furuya is an alien who has adopted contemporary Kobe, Japan as his new home. While fully assimilating, he defends the nation against other more dangerous extraterrestrial visitors—often with lethal force. When he meets a Japanese man who unsettles him even more than these hostile outsiders, he begins to question the simple morality of his mission. Could he ever truly belong to a place so far removed from his birth? And to secure his place there, what must he sacrifice? Harboring explores the Japanese giant hero archetype through the lens of an outsider. As Takeshi Furuya passes for Japanese, starts a family, and uses violence to guard the borders of his new life, the novelette reflects on morality, on what it means to belong, and on the dangerous truths our surfaces protect.