"Hey fatty."
It was a male voice that said this to me once I stepped into the classroom.
I froze and looked at the handsome teenager sitting on my desk.
"What are you doing here?" I asked him in a small voice.
My head was lowered and my hands tightened around my school bag.
"Well, I just wanted to have a chat with my worthless brother." He said it with no mockery.
Just plain and unbothered.
That is because we both agree that it is the truth.
I'm useless, worthless, and a waste of space.
"Oh… okay," I said.
"Well, Dad wants you to come home," he said.
I was shocked.
After I entered this school as a student,
they had all but abandoned me with relish.
I wasn't permitted to say I was part of the Ming family.
Neither was I allowed to contact them or associate with my older brother—also known as the heir of Ming Technology.
I was told to keep a low profile and live like the rat I was.
Scurrying around in the dark and getting bullied.
It's not like I wasn't used to being invisible.
I had lived life in that house hidden from the public.
"And pack your stuff because you're no longer part of the family," my brother continued.
"Huh… I thought that I would still be allowed to be part of the registry.
All I had to do was not stand out," I said.
My brother snorted, then broke into laughter at what I just said.
The sound of his voice seemed to tell me the truth.
That was never going to happen, no matter how low-key I was.
No matter how hard I tried.
I was never going to be enough.
"Don't forget to pack your stuff after the semester ends," my brother finally stopped chuckling and said this to me.
He gave a few pats on my shoulder and went out of the classroom.
I just stood there in shock, gradually accepting it.
It wasn't like there weren't any signs of this occurring.
The issue first started with my mother when she gave birth to me.
My father was a survivor of one natural disaster after another, and my mother was a phase.
My father had already been married with a son.
He was a rich businessman coming from a long line of noble blood.
My mother was a stripper who was too beautiful for her own good.
And also too ambitious for her own good.
She tried to climb the ladder and steal my father away from the real wife by using me, her son.
Of course, someone from such a long history wouldn't be seduced by people they viewed as less than human.
But she was pregnant with a son, and that isn't something nobles could ignore.
So my father provided her a house and promised to marry her after she delivered the baby.
Then once I was out of her womb, he killed her and took me in.
I can still remember the disgust he had on his face as he told me this story.
I was ten years old and curious.
He was forty and disgusted by my existence.
Anyway, after I was taken in, I was treated like a servant to my older brother.
In fact, I wasn't allowed to call him brother.
Only "sir," "young master," or "master."
My father treated me like I was the biggest stain in his life—I also think so.
So I wasn't allowed to appear in front of him.
I never got the opportunity to call him "master" like I was told to, because I wasn't allowed to get within his eyesight.
Well, excluding the time he made me aware of my disgraceful origin.
By then the natural disasters were still ravaging the world.
And my father lost a lot of business.
And he was angry.
So I bore this anger with a belt and his enraged voice telling me about my whore of a mother.
That was also the last time we interacted.
So my only memory of my father was him solidifying the thought in me that I'm worthless.
Eventually, the noble bloodline showed itself and my father built his technology company.
The tech company that provided machines perfectly synced with the new ore.
Using all his connections, he became a pillar of the new era.
An era of the government and nobles as parliament.
Where the survivors from different countries gathered together as one nation.
There weren't many survivors left anyway, so it was easy to restructure society as a whole.
People just wanted peace and stability after all the surviving.
Meanwhile, I retreated more and more into myself.
I was always reminded of my illegitimate status by the servants and staff.
My stepmother made sure to remind me of the dog I was.
My brother only saw me as a servant.
I wasn't smart, neither did I look handsome.
I ate a lot to cope with the bullying and grew folds in my stomach.
I was bullied as an ugly, dumb fatty in school.
But fortunately, the servants no longer deliberately beat me up once they realized how worthless I was.
My stepmom realized that I couldn't amount to much, so therefore my brother's position as the heir was secure.
She ignored me but would be incredibly disgusted if I was in her sights.
The only thing I enjoyed in such a meaningless life was manga.
Speaking of, I had a new one that I managed to get from the bookstore.
I worked there to get money for snacks and junk food.
There's no point in thinking about this any longer.
I can't change who I am or my father's decision.
It's better to just eat and read my manga.
I walked to my seat at the back row and brought out my manga.
I read stories about people like me who were born in horrible situations, triumph.
I read stories about someone surviving a new world after transmigration.
I read about someone who was despised by their entire family due to his illegitimate status and rose to be the most powerful noble.
Or about someone who was betrayed and went seeking revenge.
Or about a normal student who was bullied like me but went on to save humanity.
Or about a worthless cultivator who defied the heavens solely with his ability and no cheats.
Or a student with a cheat who got all the girls.
Or someone going on an adventure.
Or a loser in a world where they hunt monsters in gates who married a beautiful woman and became the strongest necromancer.
In all these stories that I read, those who were deemed worthless or useless would be reborn into greatness.
They would get a cheat key and dominate the world.
Or they would get courage and display intellect that conquered the sky.
Or they would relentlessly pursue their ambition without morality holding them back.
But that didn't make me feel any better.
To watch someone in my position rise to greatness with their own effort…
That just made me feel worse.
Because I know that no matter what—not even if I get a system—
I would still be worthless.
To put it in a simple way: if you throw the most expensive jewelry into the trash by mistake or on purpose,
it doesn't make the trash expensive.
No. It makes the jewelry dirty.
I am that trash that would make the system dirty.
I would probably die on the first mission or task.
Not even if I regress back in time would I be able to have worth.
Going back in time doesn't change my father's disgust toward me.
He hated me then and always would hate my existence till I die.
Or maybe if I transmigrated into another world of magic and monsters.
I honestly believe that I would never be able to do magic.
I'm barely passing my grades—not to talk of learning complex magical formulas.
Even if the magic in that world didn't require a formula,
I would probably not be able to use skills.
At the end of it all,
I look at these main characters with no jealousy, envy, or admiration.
Just inconceivable sadness, despair, and loss.
I do not yearn to have what they have because I know I would never come close, or even dream of following their path.
Garbage will always be garbage.
Trash with gold inside is still trash to the person who threw it away.
And I feel like I was thrown away by the world.
So there I sat in my seat, reading about people like me attaining greatness.
But in the course of this, I realized what I had forgotten due to meeting my brother—soon to be a stranger.
The students today looked funny.
There were a lot of collapsing students in the hall going to the clinic.
And even in class right now, that I hadn't paid any attention to while I read manga.
Which was my usual routine.
It's not like listening would elevate my low scores.
Anyway, all of this felt fishy.
My senses, developed from reading so much manga, were tingling.
Suddenly the quiet classroom was interrupted by the sound of someone falling from their chair.
A student had slumped to the ground, then with an unnatural posture, rose from the floor.
The student had black spots on their exposed body and a growl escaped from their mouth.
I stared, frozen, at the student a few seats away to my left.
All the signs were pointing to one thing.
Zombie.
There's a zombie in front of me.
This is my chance.
I've read hundreds of manga about the zombie apocalypse and their harem male leads.
Out of everyone in here, I should be the one that is able to survive.
If only I could move.
My brain was telling my body to move but I just sat there staring at the zombie looking around the classroom.
The students seemed to have realized something was wrong, and the whole class was agitated.
I was still trying to get my body to move, but it wasn't working.
Soon the zombie turned to me.
And I knew it was over unless I moved.
I started to think while my eyes widened.
Move, damnit.
This is your chance to become a main character.
This is the first chapter of your story to greatness.
This is your prologue.
Move, move, move.
The zombie lunged at me and my back landed on the ground as the zombie tore into my flesh.
The classroom erupted in screams as the students rushed out.
While I lay on the ground feeling my life slip through my fingers.
I couldn't do anything, even when life gave me an opportunity to be better.
To have some worth.
But I just sat there and watched myself get bitten.
And now I'm going to die.
I think it's better this way.
This must be the world giving me an opportunity and passing judgment on me.
I'm worthless trash.
And trash that isn't worth anything is thrown away.
Now my worthless life has come to an end.