A scorching summer day in Hamburg, Germany. The sky, which had been cloudless, was suddenly filled with thunder and lightning. In an instant, dark clouds covered the sky, and heavy rain mixed with lightning poured down.
In a small, independent two-story building in a working-class neighborhood, a slightly overweight figure was cursing and hurriedly collecting clothes he had hung on the second-floor corridor.
"Damn weather, won't even let a person have a moment of peace on a hard-earned day off!"
Adrian Kaiser, a single man in his early thirties, born in the 80s, had never gone to university. He dropped out of high school due to family reasons—or rather, with his grades, even a third-tier university would have been difficult.
He entered society at the age of seventeen without any real skills. He had worked as a security guard, a kitchen helper, and had even set up a street stall. He was currently making a modest living as an online merchant.
To summarize the first half of his life in one sentence: he couldn't succeed at anything he did, and he never had enough to eat.
Originally, the income from setting up a street stall wasn't bad. He could barely earn two or three thousand euros a month. If he continued like this, perhaps in ten years or so, Adrian could buy a small house in a third- or fourth-tier city where housing prices weren't too expensive, marry an ordinary wife, and from then on reach a modest peak in life. Thinking about it, he felt a little excited.
Unfortunately, strict urban regulations had shut down all the small vendors in the city two years ago.
So Adrian had no choice but to follow the trend of the times, keep up with social development, join a major online platform, become a full-time online merchant, and sell small accessories produced by friends' small factories. The income was so-so, barely enough to make a living in Hamburg, one of Germany's biggest cities. The extravagant thing of falling in love was basically out of his reach.
Speaking of which, Adrian didn't look bad. He was 1.8 meters tall, but his figure had become a bit out of shape due to lack of exercise by the computer in the past two years. He had big eyes and a chubby face. Anything that gets fat gives people a sense of inexplicable joy, and that, of course, included Adrian.
Unfortunately, in this era, people don't talk about feelings—they only talk about money. With money, there are feelings; without money, there are none. So, Adrian, with his mediocre income, was still single.
At this moment, Adrian, in a flurry of activity, had already rescued the clothes he had hung to dry on the corridor back into his less-than-twenty-square-meter rented room. He casually took out a bottle of Coke from the second-hand small refrigerator he had gotten from a recycling station, opened the lid, and gulped down more than half the bottle in one breath. As the ice-cold Coke went down, Adrian felt as if his whole body had cooled down a lot.
Although it was already thundering and raining heavily outside, Adrian dared to open his window to save on electricity bills, relying on the awning on the window and the lack of wind outside.
"Phew!" Adrian breathed a long sigh of relief and sat down at his computer desk next to the window. Looking at the messenger app on the screen that was still motionless, he knew that he probably wouldn't have a single sale this morning.
"Forget it, I'll watch a movie for entertainment!" he said, clicking on his movie software, wanting to find the latest release to pass the time. Suddenly, a continuous burst of thunder sounded outside.
"Rumble — — Boom — —!"
Adrian was so startled that his hand trembled and clicked on a small advertisement on the movie playback page, making him curse, "Which poor soul is being struck down? Must've committed a lot of sins to draw thunder like this!"
At this moment, the sound of thunder outside grew louder and louder, as if it was drifting toward Adrian. Looking from the sky, a ball of light like a comet, dragging a long tail, fell from the heavens. Streaks of lightning bombarded the ball of light, as if vowing to destroy it. The ball of light swayed and fell, stubbornly fleeing downward. Finally, just as it was about to hit the ground, a bolt of lightning as thick as a bucket struck down, hitting the ball of light into Adrian's open window.
"oh shit that poor soul is me isn't …!" In a flash of blinding lightning, Adrian only felt pain all over his body, followed by numbness, and then he lost consciousness.
—
No one knew how long had passed before the charred, human-shaped figure on the floor next to the computer squirmed. Then, the figure slowly climbed up.
"motherfucker!" Adrian opened his mouth and spat out a puff of black smoke. He staggered to his small bathroom and looked in the mirror, muttering, "Please, please don't let me be disfigured. I already don't have any money. If I'm disfigured again, I really won't be able to find a wife in the future…"
The mirror reflected a burned version of himself with darkened skin and frizzy hair.
"Is this some kind of special ability?"
Adrian stared at the reflection in silence for a moment. "But I really don't want some creepy stealth ability!"
As he said this, he turned on the faucet and washed vigorously, muttering as he scrubbed, "It would be better to get a proper golden finger or system… not this mess."
After a while of washing, Adrian finally restored his pale and chubby original shape. He casually found a pair of half-dry underwear hanging in the bathroom and put them on, then walked out.
Only then did he see his room, which looked like a storm had passed through it, and a miserable cry rang out. "Ah!!! All my possessions... my goods... my livelihood!!!"
It took Adrian a long time to clean up the place from a typhoon aftermath to something resembling the aftermath of an earthquake. Anyway, a bachelor's home is just like that unless the bachelor has obsessive-compulsive disorder or is a neat freak.
"What a heavy loss!" Adrian said, habitually opening a bottle of cola and sitting down at the computer, casually pressing the power button. After pressing it, he couldn't help but mock himself: "I'm really stupid... I clearly saw the lightning strike—"
"Beep—" The power-on sound before the computer started interrupted his self-mockery.
"The computer!... Damn, is this cheap assembled thing really so durable? Or am I in protagonist mode?" Adrian stared intently at his computer screen, as if trying to see a miracle bloom. Thinking of novels like My Computer Can Travel Through Time, Adrian's heart couldn't help but get excited. Was he going to be the protagonist from today onwards...?
As the familiar welcome screen appeared before his eyes, Adrian's heart, which had been pounding faster due to excitement, finally calmed down. He leaned back in his chair, disappointed that he thought he could get some kind of golden finger. "Forget it, I really don't have the protagonist's fate!"
But unwilling to give up, he casually opened his online shop. What if his golden finger was Ten Thousand Realms Shop? Unfortunately... the messenger app was still silent. Adrian searched back and forth several times, but everything looked normal. He shook his head in frustration. It seemed he really wasn't a protagonist.
Still unwilling, he clicked on one of his favorite movies, prepared tissues, and planned to relieve the depression in his heart.
But for some reason, the movie that used to excite him seemed to have no appeal to him today.
"Damn, have I been electrified into a saint?" Frustrated, Adrian lit a cigarette and casually tossed the lighter onto the keyboard. At that moment, an accident happened—the lighter, under the rebound of the keys, bounced toward the computer screen like a small stone skipping across water. Then, like a stone falling into a lake, ripples spread across the screen before it vanished.
"...Damn!!!!!!!!!!"
Adrian rubbed his eyes in disbelief, afraid that he was seeing things. The lighter might have just fallen behind the screen. Having been disappointed once, he really didn't want to face a second disappointment so quickly. So he carefully checked the computer desk. Nothing. He turned around again, looking at the back of the computer screen—still nothing.
Enduring the excitement in his heart, he slowly turned his gaze back to the movie that was playing. With sharp eyes, he immediately spotted his familiar disposable lighter on the pillow in the scene.
"Damn, is this real?" Adrian opened his mouth wide, staring intently at the screen.
"Calm down—calm down! Adrian, you can do it!" He pressed his chest hard, trying to soothe his racing heart. "Don't be excited, it's not certain whether this is traveling into the movie world or just some kind of projection…"
After a while, Adrian steadied his mind. He opened another video, this one a beach scene.
Trembling, he reached out to the computer screen. His hand rippled as if it were reaching into a pool of water. Then, an irresistible suction pulled him in. Adrian felt dizzy, and in a moment, a beach appeared before his eyes. Bikini girls walked past, waves crashed, and the smell of the sea filled his senses.
"Holy crap, this is real!" Adrian clenched his fist in excitement, completely ignoring the fact that he was only wearing underwear.
A whistle sounded, and a girl in a life jacket walked quickly toward him, shouting something in rapid German.
"What? What are you saying?" Adrian looked at the girl, not understanding her words.
"You're not from here?" she switched to broken English.
"Yes!" Adrian nodded quickly.
She tried to gesture, then pointed to a large signboard nearby. On it, in big bold letters, were the words: "No Swimming in Underwear." She pointed at Adrian's lower body.
"..." Only then did Adrian realize he had run onto the beach in nothing but his underwear. His face turned red instantly. "Damn, I'm losing face here!"
The girl looked at Adrian's flushed round face and couldn't help but cover her mouth and laugh. In her opinion, this strange man was so awkward that he was funny.
Adrian felt depressed hearing her laughter. "I just want to disappear from here!"