Fuck, I only have one year until graduation—what do I do, what do I do?
It didn't feel like just a thought. It hit my body. My stomach tightened and my throat felt blocked. Like a rat gnawing at my intestines, scrabbling up my esophagus. Cold sweat slicked my palms, making the thin bedsheet felt sticky under my fingers, almost like cling film.
I don't like this shit, but I don't have a choice. My mom is so proud, already told everyone I'm about to graduate. Beaming at her friends' dinner parties, "My son, the lawyer." That pride? It was like a tattoo I never asked for. Permanent. Burns every time I remember it's there
Can I just abandon everything and go to another country? A flash of a passport, a one-way ticket. Somewhere with warm beaches and no expectations.
But what would happen to my family? Definitely can't. Their faces, disappointed, crushed. My father's disappointed look, my mother's silent tears. No.This life's a cage. But the bars are made of love and duty. Same difference—still can't get out
I have to make money somehow so I'll have the courage to say I'm dropping out. That was it. The key. Freedom bought, not fought for, everyone is happy. But what can I do? Become an influencer? A streamer? Me? My expressionless face, blinking into a phone camera?definitely nah. Just the thought was absurd. Try dropshipping? maybe sell some kind of course. "How to become a millionaire in your 20s while having an anxiety crisis." Bitter laughter scraped my throat.
I can definitely do it. The mantra was weak, thin as paper. But... What if something goes wrong? The rat, now a wolf, tore at my insides. My heart was pounding so hard it hurt, like it was trying to smash right out of my chest. Everything else just... disappeared. All I could hear was this crazy thumping in my ears, the room spinning like hell, the ceiling going round and round. Shit, I thought I was gonna pass out any second
But... ugh... wtf, why am I on the floor?
Pathetic. Twenty-fucking-one and I just rolled off the damn bed mid-panic attack. Nice one, Yan Ye. Real smooth.
At least I'm not feeling pain. Wait... I didn't even feel myself fall.
The disorientation was sudden, absolute. The familiar ache of my back against my bed was gone. Instead, there was hardness. Unyielding. And... dampness? A sour, thick smell clogged my nostrils. My own body felt alien, immense. As if someone put a lead blanket pinning me down.
Fuck, did the ceiling just fall on me and I shit myself? I can't even breathe with this smell.
Pitch fucking black. Smell's horrible—rotten, choking. If this is a prank and someone exploded a sewer, I'll kill them. Or die trying. Jail might actually fix half my shit anyway.
Anyway, I should get up off the floor already. Okay. Let's do this. One push. Just one. Thud! Ah! What the hell—why does it feel like I weigh a ton?
I tried to get up.
My muscles gave way immediately, before I could even move my legs. My shoulder hit the floor. My knee too. The hard, cold sensation of the floor reminded me that I was back to square one.
Okay, Yan Ye. Again. 1, 2, 3—ugh! I did it! I'm sitting up.
I felt dizzy as I stood up. Afraid of falling again, I spread my arms and legs trying to maintain my balance. Luckily, the dizziness passed quickly and I was able to overcome this challenge.
"Haa… that was harder than it should've been. Now I just need to find the light switch and see what's going on and… huh? Is that a beam of light? Seriously, is it already daytime? I need to get myself together fast!
The floor felt like a minefield of junk. Bags, clothes. My feet couldn't take two steps without finding something new. Sometimes just fabric. Other times plastic bags stuffed with who-knows-what that crunched under my weight—including one with something metallic inside. Or rather, something that was metallic, until I stepped on it and it went crunch. Empty soda can, probably.
I froze. If there's one can, there could be more. And if I step on a crushed one the wrong way? Hello, ER visit. Perfect addition to the day.
So I switched strategies. Mummy mode activated. Arms out in front like some mummy walking, feet shuffling millimeter by millimeter, trying to detect landmines before they detected my soles.
Didn't matter.
Bam!
"AH! FUCK! My pinky toe! Since when is there furniture here?!"
Pain exploded up my foot. Bright, sharp, the kind that makes your eyes water and your brain short-circuit for a second.
"Son of a bitch—that hurt. Perfect. Just perfect. Now I get to limp around for the rest of the day. Amazing. Really top-tier luck."
I kept moving toward the window, hopping on one foot like an idiot, and a thought wormed its way through the pain. Why are there so many bags and clothes everywhere? I couldn't see shit in this darkness, but my feet felt it—the constant crinkle of plastic, the soft give of fabric, the random objects lurking underneath. This wasn't my dorm's usual level of disaster. Sure, I wasn't exactly winning cleanliness awards, but this? This felt like a hoarder's nest.
There's no way someone broke in and robbed me... right?
Didn't make sense though. If someone robbed me, stuff would be missing, not scattered everywhere..
Whatever. Window first. Find out later why there are so many things on the floor. Hopping on one foot like an idiot, I stretched my arm into the darkness until my fingers hit something solid. A wall. Good. I patted along it—and found strings. Blind cords.
I pulled. Hard.
Everything snapped into sharp focus. I was facing the window, and the sunlight hit me like a truck.
My eyes, used to that pitch-black room, slammed shut on instinct.
I waited a few seconds. Then I raised my hand like a visor and pried my eyes open—just a crack. Tiny bit. Smart, right? Ease into it. But then my brain actually processed what was on the other side of that glass.
And I forgot how to breathe. I forgot about the pain. Forgot about the smell. Forgot about everything.
My eyes were burning. Stinging like I'd been chopping onions for an hour straight. But closing them? Not an option. Not anymore. That world outside—impossible, insane, completely wrong—had me locked in. They just refused to close
"Wow… what a beautiful place. All this green… the size of those trees."
I blinked, forcing them open. My dorm was a shoebox overlooking a brick wall. This... this was impossible. A forest of giants. Trees so wide they looked like buildings, so tall their tops were lost in the clouds. The air, even through the glass, smelled clean, like damp earth and pine.
"Wait… w-w-where is this? How are the trees so tall—what kind of tre—WHAT?"
My brain stuttered, trying to process the next sight. Something sleek and metallic, silent as an owl, shot between two colossal trunks. Then another. And another.
"How are there flying cars? 1, 4, 9… so many! WHY is there someone riding on top of a huge lion, and why isn't anyone running?!"
Down below, on what looked like a mossy path, a figure sat astride a creature that had no business existing. A lion, but bigger than a damn car, with a mane that shimmered like spun gold. They were just... strolling. Calmly. Like it was a fucking Sunday drive.
"My God… th-this isn't my dorm. Where am I? Am I going crazy?"
The panic was back, that cold, electric thrum in my veins. But this was different. Not the abstract terror of a future I didn't want. This was immediate. Present. Here.
"It can't be a dream—this pain in my foot, the smell of this place, and this weight… those would be impossible in a dream… weight?"
Weight. The word snagged in my mind. I looked down.
And then I felt the true terror of someone who cares about their appearance.
"Oh my God…"
My hands weren't mine. These were... paws. Thick, fleshy things, with stubby, sausage-like fingers. My stomach wasn't just pudgy; it was a mountain, a pale, fleshy continent spilling over the waistband of what looked like ridiculously stretched-out grey sweatpants. I couldn't see my feet. Just a vast, quivering landscape of me.
"I'm in an obese body—this must weigh close to 200 kg, right? The only saving grace is the height: at least over 180 cm. If not, it'd be almost impossible to walk with this much weight."
I poked my stomach. It was... real. The sensation was dull, muffled by layers of fat. My brain short-circuited. Head injury? Or I could be in a coma and this is a world my subconscious generated? I got wasted and blacked out and this is some super-vivid hallucination? I'm not that unlucky, am I?
Going insane is pretty unlikely. If something were wrong with my mind, I probably wouldn't be able to think this clearly… not that I actually understand how the brain works tho
As I said before, the other possibility is a coma. According to some theories I've read, this situation wouldn't be impossible, but theories are just theories—and I don't exactly have a way to fact-check any of it.
Taking all that into account, the last possibility surfaced in my mind. My breath hitched. The least grounded possibility—the craziest one—the one that was born from years of reading shitty webnovels in class to avoid studying.
"No way… this can't be. Am I… in another world? Did I get… transmigrated? Or reincarnated? But I don't think that I really died,"
"Don't be stupid, Yan Ye. Don't be a fucking idiot. There's no way…"
But what if? What if it was like in those comics and novels?
"System?" I whispered, the word feeling insane on my tongue. Like trying to summon a demon. Nothing.
I tried again, louder this time, my voice still that weird, unfamiliar baritone. "System! Activate! Open menu! Interface!"
A faint chime echoed in my head. Then, a pale blue light flickered in my vision, like a screen booting up.
DING!!!
─ Initializing System...
─ Loading User Profile...
─ Synchronizing memories...
─ Memory Recovery initiated.
A tidal wave of information slammed into my skull. Not my memories. His, the body's real owner. And, to my surprise, we even have the same name. You could say that's our only similarity—aside from the fact that we're both human men and we have the same hair color. Everything else? Not even the same world.
This place is called Blue Star. It used to be a normal world, almost identical to Earth… but everything changed about five hundred years ago. To be precise: 486 years ago, in the year 2035—more precisely, on February 17th. The day not only the world evolved, but the entire solar system did.
With that evolution, Blue Star expanded by about twenty-three times. Literally. New forests, deserts, and continents appeared out of nowhere—more accurately, energy was converted into matter.
As if the chaos from that sudden expansion weren't enough, rifts began opening all over the planet, bringing something called dungeons. They're portals that appear without warning. There are different difficulties and types—some contain only resources, others have monsters and can be cleared repeatedly, others only once, and so on.
Fortunately, the changes didn't stop at the world expanding and deadly dungeons. Something else inexplicable came with it: the Global Awakening System, nicknamed GAS. On February 17th, every creature on Blue Star with at least a minimum level of intellect and reasoning received this system. It allowed its holders to awaken classes and evolve into something that went beyond what anyone thought was possible at the time—becoming superhuman. And that's how humanity managed to survive to the present day.
Nowadays, there's already an established way for people to awaken—receiving GAS and getting their class awakening.
And the system I just obtained… is definitely not the same one everyone else on this planet has.