At that moment, you sprang up quickly from your bed, ignoring the pain spreading throughout your body. Your swollen face showed a grotesque expression of shock.
How could it not? The system, which had been silent and cold like a gravestone all this time, suddenly mocked you over your unfortunate fate.
But in an instant, you immediately felt alert. Your brain, though concussed, still worked sharply.
What does it want from me?
One of the most reasonable reasons was that it had a specific intention. It couldn't possibly appear suddenly because it felt sorry for you. It was impossible for this inhuman system to suddenly have empathy. This was crazy! Coincidence? No way! There must be something!
Still squinting your swollen eyes, the blue screen suddenly displayed new text clearly, as if responding to your thoughts in real-time.
"I can read your mind, you know?"
At that moment, you widened the one eye that could still open fully. Your mouth gaped, unable to say anything.
"???"
WHAT...
"Besides, why do you think I can't read your mind? I'm inside your head."
The text kept appearing, scrolling quickly like a waterfall of data. Your brain processed it for quite a while, loading amid the shock.
"Your thoughts are so noisy! Especially the self-pitying parts."
One minute of processing, now your head was a bit calmer. Anger began to replace confusion.
You narrowed your eyes. "Bastard, so you've been able to hear me all this time?" you hissed. "Why have you been silent even though I asked for help? When I was confused? When I needed money?"
No response. The screen just flickered statically.
"YOU! Why aren't you answering?!" you shouted, throwing a pillow at the intangible screen.
This made you frustrated, but you felt powerless because you couldn't do anything to this digital ghost. You were like an ant shouting at a storm.
It took enough time to calm you down completely, but finally, you let out a long sigh, accepting whatever answer it would give. You were already tired of being angry. You didn't care anymore whether it stayed silent or not.
You tried not to care, putting on a flat face.
"So, what's your business?" you asked coldly. "Like I said, you couldn't have come here just to curse at me, right?"
"At least I won't accept that reason. After all, you've been silent all this time even though I kept calling you. But now, you who never appeared in response to my calls, mysteriously, suddenly show yourself to me just to curse at me? It doesn't make sense. Unless you're really that stupid or sadistic."
After waiting a long time, the wind blew strongly from outside, and the window that wasn't fully closed kept opening and closing. Brak. Brak. An annoying rhythm. Until it stopped on its own.
Suddenly, the text appeared again.
"You're quite rude. Do you hate me that much?"
"You're asking something obvious!" you snapped. "You're the one who forced me to complete this absurd quest. You're the one who threatened me with death!"
You stood up, pointing at the screen with a trembling finger.
"If you really intend for me to complete this quest, at least give me something. Something useful to me! Even a clichéd isekai hero who suddenly enters another world to fight the demon king is given blessings, skills, a holy weapon, or at least a rusty sword! Something useful for him to survive!"
"But why didn't you do that for me? I was thrown here without money, without identity, without abilities!" you continued, your voice hoarse.
"Why are you asking something whose answer is already clear?" the text appeared again, its tone feeling arrogant.
Then below the text, the continuation slowly emerged, letter by letter.
"Because it's entertaining."
You instantly got angry, blood rushing to your head.
Crazy system!
Psychopath!
You closed your eyes for a moment, holding back from exploding, and said with a trembling voice, "Look at my face! This is all because of you!"
You pointed at your ruined face. "This is what I got after doing that absurd quest. Why do I have to accept a fate like this just to follow your unclear orders?
"You might think of me as a slave, but I won't accept a fate like that. I'll rebel even if my life is at stake. I'd rather die fighting you than die beaten by market thugs!"
"It's futile. I know you're afraid of death."
That sentence stabbed you right in the solar plexus. True. You were afraid of death. That was the only reason you were still moving.
"Tch, then let's make it easier," you bargained, trying to negotiate. "You want me to entertain you by completing this quest, but at least give me something during the process. Give me anything that's at least useful to me in achieving my goal. Heal me. Or give me money."
The screen was silent for a moment.
"Hmmm....
"If I interfere too much, it sounds very boring.
"But alright... since you've given quite an entertaining show tonight, I'll give you a little convenience."
At that moment, in the air, right in front of your face, light particles suddenly gathered. A box the size of a palm manifested from nothingness. The box was pitch black, matte, with a large white question mark in the center that rotated slowly.
The box floated in the air and slowly fell gently into your open hand. Its weight was real. Its coldness was real.
"I'll give you that every time you complete your objective or make significant progress. Be grateful for how generous I am!"
After that message, the blue screen flickered once, then vanished.
After waiting one minute, making sure there were no more surprises, you realized that the system no longer appeared.
"Tch, it's gone. Coward."
Now you felt lonely. You walked to the window, observing the beautiful yet cruel night view of Liyue for a moment, before closing the window tightly.
With an uneasy feeling, you sat back on the edge of the bed, staring at the object in your palm.
"What is this thing? A loot box?"
You examined it closely with your right eye that still functioned well, squinting one eye. No seams, no hinges.
"This is clearly suspicious but doesn't seem dangerous. At least it won't explode."
At least for now, you felt relieved.
"Well, it wouldn't make sense for it to hurt me. I'm its pawn. Unless I'm really useless...."
However, at that moment, you suddenly widened your eyes. Paranoid thoughts emerged.
No way, right?
Don't tell me there's someone else replacing me as its pawn? Don't tell me it has other candidates? And me, as a failed and battered pawn, am no longer needed so it decided to eliminate me now through this item? A time bomb? Poison?
Imagining this made your whole body shiver, but in an instant, you shook your head vigorously, dispelling the thought. If it wanted to kill you, it could have let you die in the alley earlier.
You stared at the object for a long time. Then you swallowed and pressed the question mark on the object with your finger.
This should open the item, right?
At that moment, the box suddenly floated slowly and glowed in the air, shattering into pixel light fragments.
You felt blinded, closing your eyes for a moment.
After that, the light faded. In the place where the box floated, a physical object fell into your palm.
A small needle cushion made of worn and dusty black velvet.
You quickly caught it. You tilted your head, staring at it confusedly.
A needle cushion? For what? Sewing my torn clothes?
You couldn't process this. What kind of joke was this?
But then a blue screen suddenly appeared again, displaying the item explanation text:
The Thread of Oblivion (S-TIER)
Description: An ancient silver needle that is slightly bent with a needle eye that is never empty, always filled with a fine red thread that seems made of liquid light. This item can sew and reconnect severed flesh, bones, and nerves in seconds, restoring the user's physical condition to perfect before the injury.
Side Effect: Its side effect is "Memory Consumption". The red thread used to sew the wounds is not created from thin air, but spun from the user's memories. The more severe the wound healed, the more valuable the memory taken. The taken memory is random but always has an emotional weight equivalent to the physical pain erased.
Reading this, your mouth involuntarily opened slightly.
An item!
An S-TIER healing item!
This is too coincidental... that box earlier was nothing but a chest containing random items, in my previous world called a gacha item. And from that item, I got an item that can heal my severe wounds... this is too scary!
Is this what they call my prayer being granted one second after I hoped?
Still with a shocked face, but you tried to calm down. You needed to heal. You couldn't meet Ganyu with a face like a monster.
You started opening the cushion, and found a single needle stored inside.
You pulled the needle and examined it for a moment under the moonlight.
It looked like an old sewing needle that was dull and rusted at the tip. Its red thread looked faded, resembling ordinary fragile cotton thread. And there was no magical aura emanating at all. It seemed very ordinary. Very junky.
If you hadn't seen the item's appearance process directly or read its description, you would have surely mistaken it for trash and thrown it away without intending to use it.
But the description... Memory Consumption...
Knowing that, you immediately took paper and pen from the desk drawer and noted something with trembling hands.
You couldn't wait to use this item!
The pain on your face was getting worse!
But before that, you needed to prepare first, just in case something bad happened to you. You had to leave a trace for your future self.
You wrote something related to the item's side effect.
"If I forget something, then the cause is this needle!"
You paused for quite a while thinking about something. Holding the needle with your cold fingers.
Actually, you were afraid of forgetting something important. What if you forgot Ganyu? What if you forgot your goal? What if you forgot who you really were, which you had already forgotten a little? So in the end, you die without knowing the cause. Even though it happened because you tried to distance yourself from the quest objective that had been constraining you all this time.
The taken memory is random.
But that's the scariest part.
You closed your eyes for a moment, letting the physical pain remind you why you had to do this.
A ruined face has no future in this world.
You let out a long sigh. Your gaze showed determination.
At that moment, you moved your hand. You brought the needle close to your face.
You inserted the needle into the healthy skin area on your face near the temple, near the gaping torn wound, then pulled it as if starting the first stitch. Cesss.
It felt cold, not painful.
Immediately after that, the needle moved on its own after the first insertion. It released from your hand.
The needle turned into a dazzling shiny silver, its rust falling off. The thread behind it glowed into bright crimson red, shining like a laser. It moved at high speed like a living snake, twisting through your flesh, sewing the tears, pulling your nose bone back into position with a horrifying but painless crack sound.
As this process happened, you felt a strange sensation in your brain. Like a cold hand reaching into your skull and pulling something out.
Your eyes became blank, totally white, for a moment, your body stiff. At this time, the memory extraction process was underway. As if something was sorting through your brain's archives, searching for a memory with emotional weight equivalent to the pain of being beaten by three thugs.
That memory was pulled out, spun into red thread, and used to sew your face.
At this moment, you felt something missing in your mind. Like a book suddenly missing from the library shelf, leaving a dusty empty space. But you didn't know what it was. You couldn't remember what you forgot.
Sret. Sret. Sret.
The needle completed its task in seconds, then returned to being a dull needle in your hand.
After the process finished, you felt your face back to normal. No, it felt better. Your skin was tight, fresh, no longer painful. The swelling in your eye disappeared instantly.
You walked to the mirror with hesitant steps. You stared at your reflection.
You were amazed at your own face. The face wasn't just healed. It was clean, smooth, without any scars at all. Even old acne scars or sun spots were gone. You looked much cleaner and more handsome than before.
"Wow..." you whispered, touching your smooth cheek.
You knew you were quite handsome before, but now the aura on your face was different. Sharper. More perfect. Like the face of a main character who just got an upgrade.
However, at the same time, you suddenly felt a sharp headache. Nying!
You held your head, staggering a bit.
You looked around the messy room. Pillow on the floor. Tilted chair.
You were confused. You felt a gap in your train of thought.
"Why was my face injured?" you asked yourself.
You remembered going to dinner. You remembered Henri. You remembered going home. But... the middle part was blurry. You knew you were beaten, but you forgot how it felt. You forgot who specifically hit you. You forgot the fear and humiliation in that alley. The emotions from that incident had been taken, leaving dry facts without feeling.
A few seconds later, your eyes caught a piece of paper on the table. The note you just wrote.
You took it and read it.
"If I forget something, then the cause is this needle!"
You stared at the needle in your hand, then at your perfect face in the mirror.
You had sold the pain and trauma of tonight for healing.
Was this an equivalent exchange?
Maybe.
But you realized one thing: you had just lost a valuable lesson about pain.
A human who doesn't understand pain will repeat the same mistakes.
...
That night, you didn't sleep until morning. Your eyes refused to close, afraid of nightmares or that memory emptiness coming again. Instead, you read a book until dawn, filling the hole in your memory with dry historical facts.
This morning, you acted as usual. You washed your now flawless perfect face in a basin of cold water. You stared at the mirror, touching your smooth skin, and felt a strange alienation. This face was yours, but the history behind this face was gone.
"Good morning, world," you whispered flatly.
You did your daily work as usual. Heading to Uncle Zhang's stall, arranging the merchandise with military precision, and greeting customers with a smile you had practiced all night.
"Morning, Madam! This windmill spins as fast as your luck today!"
"Sir, this jade bracelet will make your wife love you even more, trust this young merchant's eyes!"
While working, you realized something different. These residents, who usually walked leisurely, somehow had faster steps, more serious faces, looking busy. There was a subtle tension in the air, as if an invisible storm was gathering on the horizon.
During the break, you didn't sit idle eating your lunch.
You saw a mother struggling to carry her groceries. Approaching her, you immediately lifted them. "Let me help, Ma'am."
You saw an old man whose cane fell. You picked it up and cleaned it. "Be careful, Grandpa. The roads are slippery."
You also helped other Liyue residents. Directing lost tourists, helping other merchants lift tents. And you could feel the happy gazes they emitted. Grateful gazes. Acknowledging gazes.
"Such a diligent young man," they whispered. "He's very helpful, isn't he." "His face is also very handsome, like porcelain."
Some passing girls, with blushing cheeks, showed admiring gazes toward you. They whispered while covering their mouths with fans, stealing glances at you who were busy arranging goods.
But you didn't notice it. Or perhaps, you chose not to notice it.
As afternoon approached, the sky turned golden orange.
After delivering the cart to old man Zhang's house and receiving your daily wage, you didn't go home. Your feet automatically took you to that place again.
You went to Yuehai Pavilion.
The evening wind blew strongly on the upper terrace, blowing the falling ginkgo leaves. You stood behind a pillar, your eyes searching for that figure. The figure with blue hair and qilin horns.
But Ganyu wasn't there.
Was she sick? Did she go somewhere? Those questions arose, but you didn't dare ask.
Instead, your eyes caught another figure.
The bespectacled woman who scolded you yesterday was there. She stood near the main pavilion entrance, holding a clipboard, talking to a Millelith.
She turned, and her eyes caught your presence.
Your heart pounded hard, preparing to be chased away again. Preparing to hear her sharp words.
But she only narrowed her eyes at you briefly. That gaze was probing, cold, but there was no explosive hostility like yesterday. Maybe because your face was now clean and neat? Or perhaps because she heard rumors about the "kind-hearted young man" in the market?
Then, she turned back to her conversation partner without taking further action. No expulsion. No shouting.
At least this made you sigh in relief, but at the same time, you felt disappointed. Disappointed because Ganyu wasn't there. Disappointed because your effort to climb these stairs felt wasted.
Instead, you didn't leave immediately. You saw some low-level employees struggling to carry a heavy stack of archive books up the stairs. They seemed not to be high officials, just ordinary staff often ignored.
"Let me help," you offered, immediately taking half the stack from a thin young man's hands.
"Eh? Th-thank you, Sir!" he said in surprise.
You helped many employees you didn't know there. Lifting things, picking up fallen papers, holding doors so they wouldn't close.
"Thank you so much!"
He bowed, thanking you.
Then shyly, he said, "You're very kind."
"It's rare for civilians to help us like this," said another employee.
As time passed, you turned and realized that the woman who scolded you yesterday started walking toward the crowd of employees you helped, your danger alarm immediately rang!
"You're welcome. I have to go now," you said politely to those employees.
You hurriedly kept a safe distance, bowing slightly in respect to the bespectacled woman from afar—which was returned with a flat gaze—and left there.
You descended the stone stairs of Yujing Terrace with mixed feelings.
Ganyu wasn't there. That was a disappointing fact. However, you managed to enter her work environment without being chased away. That was progress. You managed to make some of her employees smile at you.
Long-term investment....You nodded proudly.
Your steps echoed on the empty stairs. Tap. Tap. Tap.
You touched your smooth face. The memory of yesterday's pain was truly gone, leaving a strange hole in your stomach every time you tried to recall the details of the thug's face. You knew you were beaten, but you didn't feel like you were beaten. It was like reading a story about someone else.
"Maybe this is better," you muttered. "Without pain, I can move faster."
You stared at the harbor starting to light its lamps down there. This city was large, complex, and full of intrigue.
...
A/N: Alright, for this chapter, maybe that's all. I don't know what else to add because really no ideas crossed my mind right now. At least I've conveyed what I wanted to say in this chapter, so this is enough. For the system, as you know from this chapter, it won't help the protagonist fully, but at least it will help a little in the process through sending random items. So, the protagonist won't depend fully but will still get a little help! Hehe, see you on Monday if I'm not lazy to write. As promised, I'll update 3 chapters on Patreon for next week. You can read it on my patreon whose link is below:
https://www.pâtreon.com/Junxt
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