When I woke the next morning, sunlight was already spilling through the blinds, cutting sharp lines across my messy room. My head throbbing
My mothers voice still clung to me. 'why hadn't it been you instead'
I rubbed the bridge of my nose and dragged myself upright. The mirror caught me on the way to the bathroom, crimson hair sticking out like I'd been in a fight with the pillow, brown eyes dull.
"Im tired.."
I was about to collapse back onto the bed when the ding came again. Not from my phone. From inside
[ Luck System Activated ]
Daily Fortune Rating: -87
I stared at the glowing number like it had crawled out of a fever dream.
"…What?"
The voice followed, chipper, mechanical.
[ Negative fortune detected. Higher probability of accidents, betrayals, and failures today. ]
I laughed once. Flat, humorless. "Yeah, no kidding."
The number didn't disappear. I rubbed my eyes until they burned. Still there. I threw my pillow at it. It rippled. Still there. Another prompt appeared.
[ View today's fortune threads? ]
My stomach twisted. This wasn't funny anymore. For a second I thought maybe I'd finally broken, the kind of snap you don't come back from.
I should've ignored it. But my finger moved anyway.
The room darkened. My hands weren't my hands anymore, they were wrapped in strands of smoke, grey and tangled, digging into my skin like barbed wire. I yanked back, breath catching.
Through the window, people glowed faintly. A woman shimmered gold. A kid glowed pale blue until he tripped, then someone caught him, and the glow flared brighter.
My pulse was hammering.
I yanked the blinds shut and pressed my back to the wall.
This wasn't a joke. It wasn't a game.
And I hated it. I stayed against the wall until my breathing evened out. The blinds shut, the number still burned faintly in the corner of my vision, like an afterimage you can't blink away
[ Daily Fortune Rating: -87 ]
I squeezed my eyes shut. Opened them again. Still there.
"Leave me alone," I muttered. To who? To what? Didn't matter.
The system didn't answer. It just… hovered. Patient.
I pushed past it. Grabbed my hoodie from the floor, pulled it on, and stepped outside. The streets were loud already, horns, voices, the usual chaos. I shoved my hands in my pockets and walked fast, like if I moved quick enough, I could outpace the insanity.
But the glow followed.
A man crossing the street shimmered faint green. He dropped his phone. A woman scooped it up before the tires could crush it. The glow brightened.
A cyclist swerved to avoid a car door opening. Blue light sparked around him.
Everywhere I looked, threads tangled people like invisible wires, tightening and loosening with every step they took.
I clenched my teeth. Looked down at my own hands. The smoke around them was darker now, twisted and sharp-edged, like thorns tightening the more I noticed.
"Enough." My voice cracked out louder than I meant. A woman walking past glanced at me, then quickly away.
I shoved my fists deeper into my pockets and stared at the pavement.
If this was real, then I was rotten to the core. Doomed before I even opened my eyes this morning.
A soft chime echoed in my skull.
[ Event Triggered: Critical Misfortune Imminent ]
My blood turned cold.
I froze on the sidewalk. People flowed around me like I wasn't even there.
"What the hell does that mean?" I hissed. The system didn't answer.
But a block ahead, I noticed the glow shift. Bright threads around strangers began to ripple violently, like a warning.
The threads vibrated like a plucked string. I couldn't look away. A kid on a scooter shot out of an alley, cutting across the crosswalk. Too fast. Too reckless.
At the same time, a delivery truck turned the corner.
The threads wrapped around the driver blazed an ugly red, pulling taut, straight toward the kid.
My chest went tight. It was like watching a car crash in slow motion, but I could feel the outcome before it even happened.
The system chimed again, sickeningly bright.
[ Misfortune Convergence: 3… 2… ]
I moved before I thought. My body threw itself forward, shoving the kid hard enough that he toppled onto the sidewalk. The truck screamed past, close enough for the air to burn my skin.
The driver's horn blared. He didn't stop. Didn't even look back. I stood there, heart hammering against my ribs, the number still floating in my vision.
[ Fortune threads shifted. Daily Fortune Rating: -72 ]
A woman's voice tore through the air. The mother came running, heels clattering against the concrete. She dropped to her knees, pulling the boy into her arms, checking his face, his hands.
He stammered, pointing at me. "H-he helped me"
Her gaze snapped up. For a second our eyes met. Relief tangled with something sharper, suspicion, maybe fear.
"…Thank you," she said, breathless. But her arms tightened around her son like a shield.
I looked away, shoved my hands deeper into my pockets. "Watch him closer next time." My voice came out flat, harsher than I meant.
She flinched, lips pressing tight, and hurried off with the boy still clutched to her chest.
I stayed where I was, leaning against the wall. My heart still hadn't slowed. The number still floated in my vision, but it had shifted.
[ Daily Fortune Rating: -72 ]
The system's voice chimed, nauseatingly bright.
[ Intervention registered. Probability of survival increased. ]
"Shut up," I muttered. That wasn't luck. That wasn't coincidence. That was real.
The system chimed again, cheerful, like it hadn't just forced me into playing savior.
[ Intervention registered. Probability of survival increased. ]
I laughed once, low and bitter, rubbing my face with both hands. "Probability of survival, huh? So now I'm your lab rat."
The glow didn't fade. The threads didn't vanish. They clung to everything, and I knew, no matter how hard I pretended, I couldn't unsee it anymore.
And if this was how my luck worked…Then it meant something worse. The next time it wouldn't be a stranger in the street.
It would be me.