Metropolis.
The sunlight was fairly bright.
Inside a psychiatrist's office.
A light breeze gently stirred the curtains, and mottled shadows swayed across them. A boy sat on a sofa that was not exactly comfortable and looked up at the psychiatrist in front of him.
"I'm not mentally ill."
Ian Kent spoke softly.
"Most people who come here think they're perfectly fine."
The sharply dressed psychiatrist looked every bit the gentleman, sitting with elegant, upright posture. In front of him lay a refined notebook and a fountain pen.
"It's just that my parents often notice me waking up in the middle of the night, so they think I need some counseling." Ian shifted on the sofa.
He seemed to be trying to find the most comfortable position possible.
"What did you dream about?" the psychiatrist asked at the right moment, casually picking up the fountain pen in front of him. His rich voice carried a kind of power that could draw people into confiding in him.
Ian, however, had no such need.
"Teenage boys always have some unrealistic fantasies they're too embarrassed to talk about, don't they?" After a moment of thought, Ian chose to answer vaguely.
The psychiatrist's expression did not change. He simply nodded.
"I understand that you don't trust me very much yet. We can come back to that question later." As he spoke, he began writing in the notebook.
From where Ian sat, he could not see what the psychiatrist was writing.
"Maybe you could just prescribe me something."
Ian offered the suggestion himself. Compared to talking his way through treatment, he would much rather swallow some modern medicine and be done with it. There were things in his heart he did not want anyone else peeking into.
Like the fact that he was a transmigrator.
Or the fact that his father in this life was Superman, whose hearing was more sensitive than sonar.
And then there was that world that kept appearing in his dreams every few days.
Everything there seemed frozen solid. Endless snow swept through the air with razor-sharp winds, while the outlines of ruined buildings appeared and vanished in the haze. It was the sort of place that made anyone walking through it feel ever more oppressed.
Maybe it was a nightmare.
Or maybe it was something else entirely.
After all, he was living in a world where anything was possible. Ian could not really be sure what his dreams meant. He only knew that every time he heard the tolling of bells, he would wake up on the dot.
By the time Ian emerged from his memories, the psychiatrist had already stopped writing.
"In my entire career, I haven't seen many patients in your situation who actively ask for medication."
He seemed a little surprised.
"Even though I firmly believe I don't have any mental illness, I do sometimes feel some symptoms of anxiety..." Ian paused, then added in a somewhat transparent attempt to cover things up, "It might have something to do with my rather heavy school workload. I think taking some medicine for that could help calm me down."
The boy's voice sounded sincere and open.
The psychiatrist instinctively glanced at the top of Ian's head, apparently confirming that there were no pointed ears growing there. "As far as I know, your grades are exceptional."
He was clearly questioning whether academics were really the source of Ian's anxiety.
"That's exactly why. If I want to stay ahead of my peers, then the pressure I'm under is definitely much greater than what other people have to bear." Ian gave what looked like an earnest answer, even though it went completely against his real thoughts.
"Mm."
The psychiatrist nodded first, then held Ian's gaze for quite a while with those deep-set eyes.
"I don't think you're telling the truth."
He stated his opinion very directly and made another note in his notebook. Ian only watched him in silence.
The source of his anxiety really was not school.
In truth, before transmigrating, he had been the unlucky type who scored over seven hundred on the college entrance exam, only to die before even making it to university and get forced into starting over. Compared to that, the workload at this life's public school was honestly not difficult for him at all.
What truly made Ian anxious was the cheat he had only recently awakened, the so-called transmigrator benefit that everyone talked about.
The moment that familiar ding rang out in his mind, he had known he was no longer the ordinary person he once was.
Yet the awakening of the system did not make him happy for long.
It was nothing like the sign-in systems, check-in systems, or even sugar daddy systems Ian had always dreamed about. It was more like a character status screen from an unfinished game.
[Name: Ian Kent]
[Normal Class: Student Lv.7 (12/640)]
[Extraordinary Class: None]
[World Recognition: Ordinary NPC]
[Strength: 0.7]
[Constitution: 1.5]
[Intelligence: 2.3]
[Spirit: 2.5]
[Talent Skills: None]
[General Skill: Learning (Elite)]
[General Skill Points: 7]
...
There were no quests, no shop, none of the flashy features you would expect. There was only a panel and a function that quantified and digitized Ian's abilities and overall state.
The skill [Learning] was probably a legacy from his previous life. It had naturally appeared at the (Elite) rank, allowing Ian to learn new knowledge faster than most of his peers.
But since he had never truly entered society in either his previous life or this one, and textbook knowledge had not manifested as actual skills, his skill list looked rather empty.
The real source of Ian's anxiety was the [World Recognition] displayed on the panel. The glaring words Ordinary NPC stabbed at his eyes so hard he almost wished his corneas would fall out.
His liver, gallbladder, and kidneys all felt equally unsafe.
Wasn't this the textbook setup for a sacrificial character? The kind who gets killed off to motivate the family and awaken everyone else's potential? Ian watched movies too, so of course he had his suspicions.
That was exactly the sort of thing these stories loved.
And now, wasn't he living in a comic book world himself? Ever since awakening the system, Ian had realized that he was not the biological child of his parents in this life. And what could be a better sacrifice to ignite Superman's fighting spirit, as well as the bloodline potential of his two brothers, than an adopted son?
How was he supposed to stay alive?
That was the greatest source of anxiety for Ian, someone who had already died once.
He had been working hard to raise the level of his [Student] class, but aside from gaining a bit more Intelligence and Spirit, all he had received were seven general skill points. At best, those could be used to learn and upgrade skills like [Cooking] or [Dancing].
Maybe studying really could not change your fate.
Ian was living proof of that in the most literal sense.
He had even started to feel a little hopeless because of it, which was why he had taken the initiative to ask for medication. And there was no way he could tell the psychiatrist in front of him the true reason for his anxiety.
It was not just because the truth involved secrets he could never reveal.
It was also because the psychiatrist his parents had found for him did not sound like the kind of name a decent person should have.
Ian's gaze drifted to the nameplate on the doctor's desk.
[Hannibal Lecter]
That's right.
The moment he stepped through the door, Ian had noticed there was something extraordinary about this psychiatrist.
What a cursed prejudice.
He could only hope he really was being paranoid.
(End of Chapter)
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