No life but the one you make, no rights but the ones you take!

In the near future, human rights aren’t guaranteed, but they are for sale. Without your rights, you’re just a mujina, with no place to call your own and no laws to protect you. But if the laws don’t apply to you, you can do anything you want. You just need the skills to back it up. And if you’re really good, you can really make a killing.

Ubume used to be one of the best assassins in Tokyo, but now that she’s 30, life is starting to catch up with her. After getting gravely wounded by an upstart influencer in what should have been a standard battle, she’s prepared for the worst. But instead of getting an undignified death, Ubume somehow ends up in possession of a teenage girl, a really nice place to crash, and a major grump of a roommate with a secret weakness for found family. Her reputation as a mujina might be in tatters, but she knows how to fix that—at swordpoint.

Inio Asano, a bona fide earthling, was born in Ibaraki, Japan, in 1980. In 2001, his short story “Uchu kara Konnichiwa” (Hello from Outer Space) won the first Sunday GX Rookie Prize. Later, GX published his series Subarashii Sekai, available in English from VIZ Media as What a Wonderful World! His other works include Hikari no Machi (City of Light), Nijigahara Holograph, and Umibe no Onna no Ko (A Girl on the Shore), as well as solanin and Goodnight Punpun, available from VIZ Media. Dead Dead Demon's Dedede Destruction, also available from VIZ Media, was adapted into an animated film.