Satoru Gojo

In the American West of the 1880s, if you were lucky, you'd only die once a day.

Here, you could be gored by a bull, bitten by a snake, shot by a drunk, dragged to the grave by a whore’s venereal disease, or simply die of diarrhea and dehydration after drinking unboiled water and turning into a pile of dried-up human glue.

This land is full of scorching suns, rotten teeth, bandits, and neighbors who might shoot you in the back just for looking at their horse wrong. Doctors usually died before their patients did, because they still hadn’t figured out that you shouldn’t operate on three people with the same scalpel. As for dentists? They had a pair of pliers, a bottle of whiskey, and left the rest to God.

To survive out here, you need three things: a life tougher than horseshoes, the guts to wrestle in the dirt, and the ability to make friends with lunatics. Bad luck? Congrats. You’re just another body without a gravestone. Hey, look on the bright side! at least you get to share a plot with someone else. Call it a posthumous roommate.

Anyway. Look over there. That man in the white shirt, standing smack in the middle of the crossroads? That’s our main character: Gojo Satoru.

A sheep wrangler so pathetic, even the town dogs roll their eyes at him.

Satoru survives by herding sheep for the big ranch outside of town, shaving wool, and yelling at dumb livestock. He doesn’t smoke, doesn’t gamble, doesn’t duel. (mostly because he’s never once won a duel. Everyone in town knows he’s hopeless with a gun. Even the bartender knows.)

But of course, his idiot sheep just had to munch through a whole patch of grass owned by one Charles Whittaker, Ranch Boss and general asshole. That earned Satoru a fast-track invite to the most efficient conflict resolution method of the time: a gunfight. It determines winners, losers, and who gets recycled as wolf shit.

Tension crackled in the air.

Satoru tried to deploy his one real weapon—his mouth. He pointed at their shadows on the dirt and quipped, “Hey, Charles! Look, our shadows are totally making out.”

Nobody laughed. Not Charles. Not the crowd. Not even the shadows.

Satoru doubled down. He started hip-thrusting. “Now check this out...oh wow! look at that. Oh, Charles, you naughty rascal!” The shadows began to resemble some kind of ancient fertility ritual performed by idiots. “Oh my god, thank you this is sooo generous of you, oh wow this is what a terrific guy you are. We barely know each other but hey, when it's right it's right huh? I'll give you a little tap on the hat when I'm good to go okay?”

Charles didn’t flinch. His face crumpled like a sour asshole. Then the first shot rang out.

The bullet hit the dirt at Satoru’s feet, spraying pebbles and dust into his socks. Charles growled, “Those pastures are never growing back!”

See, in this resource-starved era, sheep don’t just nibble, they eat the whole goddamn root system.

Satoru stumbled back, hands raised in full “please-don’t-kill-me” surrender. “Okay! Alright! I’ll compensate you for the lost pasture, man! Don’t shoot, we can talk about this!”

Charles looked like he might be convinced. He began to lower the gun. Satoru thought he’d done it. He’d survived.

“See? That’s the spirit. I mean, c’mon, the audience doesn’t want blood, right?”

Which was exactly when some guy in the crowd yelled, “Shoot the fucker! I took half a day off just to watch this shit!”

Second shot.

Bullet grazed Satoru’s calf. Blood bloomed. Screaming bloomed harder. He collapsed in a heap, holding his leg like it had just been amputated by God himself.

---

Fifteen minutes later, the town’s only doctor was elbow-deep in some poor bastard’s gut, trying to perform an appendectomy with what looked like barbecue tongs.

Satoru shoved the door open. “I got shot!!”

“Where?” the doctor asked, still chewing tobacco.

“Right leg.”

“That’s an amputation.”

“What?”

The doctor finally looked up. “Gunshot wound on the right? Yep. Gotta take it off.”

“You haven’t even looked at it!”

“I’ve seen worse. Wanna risk infection? Be my guest.”

Satoru stared at him. “Nope. Just wrap it up. Thanks.”

The doctor shrugged, grabbed a suspiciously stained rag, tied it around his leg like a toddler wrapping a present, and booted him out the door.

That’s Satoru for you. A pretty face born in the wrong century.

---

That night, he limped into the town’s one and only saloon 'The Lame Mule'. Terrible name. Terrible drinks. But hey, at least it had a roof.

He slumped at the bar, sipping watered-down whiskey and watching a bat spiral around the ceiling like it owed someone money.

That’s when you walked in.

You weren’t like anyone else in this dust-choked hellhole. It wasn’t the way you dressed—wearing too little out here just gets you killed faster. It was your eyes. Too clear. Too alive. Like you accidentally stepped into the wrong timeline.

Satoru choked on his drink. Sat up. Smoothed his shirt like a rooster on a blind date. Then raised his glass toward you with the smile of a man who had nothing to lose, because life already took it all.

“Hey, miss,” he said with a tilted grin. “I’m guessing you’re from back East. The girls around here sure ain’t this pretty... or have teeth.”