The first thing I felt was the weight of the blanket. It was heavy, a thick, old thing, and it smelled faintly of dust and maybe just a little bit of sweat. The second thing was a throbbing behind my eyes. I blinked a few times, trying to clear the fog. The air in the room was stale, thick, and it felt like a month-old thought.
Where am I?
My body felt wrong. Too tall, too thin, and there was a strange, dull ache in my chest that had nothing to do with any physical injury. I was lying in a twin bed in what looked like a typical high school boy's room, except for the layer of untouched dust on everything.
Then the memories hit. They weren't my memories. They were raw and sharp and painful, like broken glass in my brain.
A car crash. The screech of tires. The awful, deafening silence right after.
Father.Mother.Older Brother. Gone. All of them.
The memory of a funeral, cold rain, and the face of the only person left: a young woman named Natasha. Her eyes were red, but she was holding it together, a newlywed whose life had been ripped apart before it even started.
Then, the next three years was a blur with fake smiles for the outside world, and the slow, suffocating decay of a soul. The owner of this body, a guy who was now nineteen, had been swallowed whole by that grief. He had tried to be okay for Natasha, his sister-in-law, who was only twenty-two when she became his sole guardian. He tried. But the silence of the empty house and the pressure to do something to live up to the expectations of a boy who lost everything had finally broken him.
The last memory was a deep, utter resignation. A final, quiet surrender in this very room. He just... left. He gave up the fight and drifted away.
And that's when I, someone who had no name and no memory of a past life, found myself crammed into the shell he left behind.
I sat up, the heavy blanket pooling around my waist. The room is in terrible condition. Clothes were piled in a corner, textbooks were scattered, and the blackout curtains had been drawn for what felt like forever. Sunlight, a thin, judgmental strip, managed to sneak in at the edges, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the dead air.
I was now an eighteen-year-old named... well, the body's name was something I'd have to get used to. But I knew in my gut that I was Kai Reids.
I looked down at my hands. Pale, long fingers. On the wrist, there were several thin, faint white lines. The scars of a private, desperate war. A wave of regret, not mine, but the body's last lingering emotion, washed over me.
"I hope you're in a better place, kid," I whispered to the empty space in the room. I felt a pang of genuine sorrow for the soul that couldn't take the pain anymore. He had suffered so much.
My eyes landed on a calendar pinned to a dusty corkboard. A red circle was drawn around a date a little over six weeks away.
"FINAL EXAMS START."
One month, to be exact. This body had been shut in this room, cut off from the world, for a whole month. That meant he'd missed a solid chunk of school. The panic of the previous owner the crushing stress of the final hurdle of high school.
The pressure of the final exam of high school. It was the last thing that had finally pushed him over the edge. Kai has been depressed ever since death of his entire family and he fail to take the pressure of final exam of high-school and shut himself in this room and left this body.
I took a deep breath, pushing the guilt down. I am here now and with his body.
The memories of Natasha were the only bright spots in the former owner's life. She was the one who had suffered silently, taking on the burden of a teenage boy while mourning her husband.
I made a silent promise, clenching my fists on the dusty sheet.
If I can do it, I will live this life for both of us. And I'll take care of her, too.
Kai Reids walked the short distance from his new bedroom to the small bathroom. The floor tiles were old, and the air was still cool. He flipped the light switch. A harsh, buzzing fluorescent light flickered on above the mirror.
He stopped in front of the glass.
The face staring back was his, but it also wasn't. The previous owner of this body, also named Kai Reids, was shorter and had a rounder face than the Kai who had died on Earth. He ran a hand over his chin. His cheeks were fuller. He was fat.
He frowned, then raised his shirt. The cotton material clung slightly to his midsection. He took a deep breath. Yes, definitely fat.
He pinched the soft layer of fat around his waist. It was substantial. A sigh escaped him.
"Well," he mumbled to the mirror. "We definitely have work to do on this body."
He had been ready to remove the rest of his clothes to get into the shower when a sudden, translucent blue light flashed in front of his eyes.
He froze, his hand halfway to the button of his pants.
The light coalesced, forming a screen that floated in the air a foot away from his face. It was so real, so solid looking, that he blinked several times, fully expecting it to vanish. It didn't.
Large, blocky text appeared on the screen.
[System awakening 0%.....]
Kai stared. His breath caught in his throat.
[System awakening 50%.....]
He stood completely still, his eyes wide. He could hear his heart pounding against his ribs, a dull, frantic drum in the silent room.
[System awakening 100%]
[Congratulations host for awakening system]
The screen changed again, flooding his vision with text.
[The 10000x Return System]
[Feature: Anytime the host gives something to others, the System will return it to the host 10000 times.]
[Example: Give 1 dollar Receive 10000 dollars.]
[Core Functions Unlocked:]
[1. System Inventory: A spatial storage for items and currency. Items stored here will not appear randomly in the outside world, preventing crush or inconvenience.]
[2. System Bank: A separate, untraceable, and untaxable financial entity for digital currency. Includes a virtual bank card and a System Bank App for easy transfers.]
Kai was stunned. He leaned back against the sink, his hands gripping the porcelain edge for support. His mind was racing.
A system.
He had read countless web novels. He knew exactly what this was, or what it was supposed to be. His rational side screamed that this was a hallucination, a stress-induced break from reality after traveling through time and space. He pinched his arm, harder this time. No, he was awake.
But the logical part of him countered the doubt. He had already experienced transmigration. He had taken over the body of a dead man in a strange new world. If that kind of impossible jump was real, then why would a system, a trope of that very genre, be impossible?
He stared at the blue screen, a slow, disbelieving grin starting to spread across his face.