Okay.
So.
Either I'm dead, in a coma, or I actually transmigrated to another planet.
Four days. Four days and those are still the only three options and I still can't rule any of them out. How is that possible? How do you live somewhere for four days and not know if you're alive?
He shifted on the couch. Somewhere in the kitchen, the ozone smell was staging its fifth hour of occupation. Smelled like someone had microwaved a battery inside a hair salon. Which, honestly, wasn't that far from what actually happened in there.
Dead. Let's start with dead. Was I dying? I was on my bed. Panic attack. The big one. The one where the ceiling spins and your heart does that thing where it forgets it's a muscle and starts auditioning for a drum solo.
But people don't die from panic attacks. Right?
Right?
Actually I don't know that. I feel like I read that somewhere but it could've been Reddit and half of Reddit is just people diagnosing themselves with diseases they invented. "Oh I had a panic attack once and my left eyelid twitched for three days, turns out it was a brain parasite from sushi." Sure it was, buddy.
Okay, probably not dead. I was twenty-one. Not fit. Definitely not fit. I ate instant noodles for dinner and my idea of exercise was walking to the convenience store and feeling winded on the way back. But that kills you at fifty-five, not twenty-one. There's a grace period. I think.
So not dead.
Coma? Maybe. Hit the floor during the panic attack. Brain swelling. Hemorrhage. Something. And this is what, the world's most detailed hallucination?
Except...
Comas don't work like this. I've been here four days. I've eaten food that has specific tastes. I've felt pain that has specific textures. I swam for four hours and my muscles failed in a specific order. The system has mathematical progressions that follow consistent rules. Skill percentages that scale. An economy with prices. A daily quest that calculates at exactly midnight with different reward categories.
My brain can barely remember what I had for breakfast on Earth. It's not generating a consistent fantasy world with a functional economy and a tier-based power system with nine levels of evolution.
Not coma.
Which leaves transmigration. I didn't die. I didn't collapse into a vegetable. I just... left. One second on Earth, next second here. My body either went with me or it didn't. My room is either empty or there's something in it that looks like me but isn't.
He stared at the ceiling. Clean. White. No cracks. The kind of ceiling you get in a luxury apartment in a city where even the middle class could afford things he'd never seen on Earth.
If I transmigrated, Mom walked into my room and I wasn't there.
Or she walked in and I was there but I wasn't there. Lying on the floor. Breathing but empty. And she called Dad because she always calls Dad first, even when she should call the ambulance first, even when grandma fell that time and cracked her hip she called Dad and Dad had to tell her to hang up and call 120.
She would've screamed. Or gone quiet. I don't know which is worse. Mom screaming means she's processing. Mom going quiet means she's broken.
Dad would stop talking. He does that when things get bad. Three days after grandma died he didn't say a single word. Just cooked food nobody ate. Left plates outside doors. Cut fruit with the skin peeled off because grandma liked it that way even though grandma wasn't there to eat it anymore.
If I'm in a hospital bed right now, he's leaving fruit outside that room. My name on a sticky note on top of the plastic wrap. Even though nobody else is in the room. Even though I can't eat it.
His hands were shaking. He pressed them against the couch cushion and breathed. Breath Control caught his lungs before they could spiral. Steady rhythm. In, out. Automatic.
Great. Even my emotional breakdowns have skill support now. Very efficient. Thank you, system, for optimizing my suffering.
...
Fuck. I actually miss that apartment. The one on Earth. The shitty dorm with the leaking sink and the neighbor who played guitar badly at 1 AM. At least that place didn't smell like I'd electrocuted a chemistry lab.
He almost smiled. Almost.
I can't know what happened to them. Not from here. Not yet. Maybe not for a long time. And sitting on this couch trying to figure out whether Mom is crying or Dad is cutting fruit isn't going to change anything except make it harder to get up tomorrow.
So. It's real. This world is real. I transmigrated. That's what I'm going with because it's the only option that doesn't end with me giving up.
And if it's real, then I need to stop being stupid about it.
I treated the ruins like a game. "I'm the protagonist, it'll work out." Ran straight at a scorpion because protagonists do cool things and cool things work out. Almost died. Did a flying belly-flop off an eight-meter wall because I thought it would be badass. It was. I also almost shattered every bone in my body.
And today. Bought potions and put my hand on a stove like I was testing a hypothesis in a lab instead of setting my own skin on fire. Drank snake venom. Sat in a bathtub and turned it into something from a crime scene. And the entire time I felt nothing. Just... calm. Focused. Like I was optimizing a spreadsheet with my own blood as the data points.
That's not brave. That's not strong. That's just a guy who turned off the part of his brain that says "this is insane" and mistook the silence for courage.
I'm not an NPC. The people around me aren't NPCs. This isn't a game where I respawn and nothing matters. The system heals me at midnight but the system won't always be there between me and something that kills faster than body recovery arrives.
So new rule. Stop treating this body like it's disposable. It's the only one I've got.
He rolled onto his side. Stared at the back of the couch. Breathed.
But also... don't stop. Don't go back to being the guy on Earth who couldn't pick a direction because every direction had a cost. The method was insane. The results were real. Sixteen skills. Four resistances. A healing ability. More progress in one afternoon than most Awakeners make in a year.
I just need to be less stupid about how I get there.
...
I'm weak. In this world I'm nothing. A T0 with good test scores and a system nobody can see. Every Awakener walking around outside this window could break me in half. The vice-director told me the gap between me and the Wen family is a canyon and he was being generous.
Alone, too. No family here. No connections. No—
Well. Not completely.
He thought about Jiayi and the thought came with the specific image of her laughing in the shopping center. Not the polished, teacher-appropriate smile she used in class. The real one. The one where her eyes crinkled and she covered her mouth with her hand and her shoulders shook. Wei Hao had practically sprinted away and she'd laughed so hard she grabbed his arm to stay upright.
Do I like her?
Like, actually? Or is this just me being grateful that someone was nice to me in a world where I woke up alone in a dead kid's body surrounded by garbage?
Both, probably. And something else I don't have a word for.
On Earth I would've analyzed this until the feeling died. Spent months building a case for why I shouldn't do anything. Listed every reason it wouldn't work. And by the time I finished being careful, the opportunity would've walked away and I'd still be on my couch saying "yeah but what if she meant it platonically."
I'm not doing that here. I don't know what I feel. I know I feel something. That's enough to move on.
But I can't move on if I'm this weak.
"The world respects power, Yan Ye. Not potential."
Yeah. I heard you, Vice-Director. And you're not wrong. Right now I have nothing real to stand on. Right now the gap between me and her world is exactly as big as you said it was.
But you measured that gap assuming I play by the same rules as everyone else. I don't. I haven't since Thursday.
My system isn't the GAS. I don't need to Awaken to start climbing. I don't need skill books. I don't need decades. I need time and effort and the willingness to keep going even when the method involves drinking poison and calling it training.
Second year final exams. Three weeks. Last time I was bottom ten in combat. Out of thousands. Embarrassing doesn't cover it. I was a joke with good handwriting.
This time...
Top 100. At least. If I use the training grounds, study the seniors fighting, keep the daily quest at double minimum...
Top 50?
He let that sit for a moment.
Knowledge exam is mine. Five years straight. That doesn't change.
But combat. Top 50 in combat. In three weeks. For a guy who couldn't do a push-up five days ago.
The notification appeared without sound. A line of text, patient, at the edge of his vision. Like it had been waiting.
[Skill Acquired: Strong Mind | Lv.1]
...A skill. For thinking. For lying on a couch and having an argument with myself.
Sure. Why not. Everything else in this world is insane. Might as well get rewarded for existential crises.
He didn't read the description.
"Big Sis."
Silence. Long.
[Yes.]
No sarcasm. Just the word.
"Is this world real?"
[Yes.]
"Does Earth exist?"
[Yes.]
He swallowed.
"Can I go back?"
[The universe you came from exists. Earth exists within it. Other versions of Earth exist in other universes. If you become strong enough, travel between them is possible.]
More words than she'd ever given him at once. No jokes. No deflection.
"How strong?"
[Much more than you are now.]
"That's not helpful."
[It's the only answer that won't mislead you.]
The apartment was quiet. Through the window, city lights turned the sky amber.
"Your system. It's not like the GAS."
[No.]
"It's better."
[It's different.]
"You always do that. Answer with something that's technically true and completely useless."
[You're welcome.]
There she is.
"Last question. If I keep going. Everything. Skills, training, all of it. Is there an end? A ceiling?"
Silence. Longer than any pause she'd given before.
[Not for you.]
Three words. He didn't know what they meant. Not fully. But they landed heavy.
"Okay." He lay back. "Thanks, Big Sis."
[Go to sleep.]
"I'm trying."
[Try harder.]
"Goodnight."
Silence.
Then, just before the interface dimmed:
[Don't get attached to other people. You have me. That's enough.]
His eyes opened.
...What the fuck?
The interface was already dark.
"Goodnight to you too, psycho," he muttered.
He stared at the ceiling. The amber light from the window made soft shapes on the white surface.
Three weeks.
Top 50 in combat. Top 1 in knowledge. That's the first real goal. That's how I'll know if any of this is actually working or if I'm just a lunatic who drinks snake venom and calls it a training plan.
If I work hard enough... top 50 shouldn't be impossible.
Right?