Author’s Note
Store this in your brain.
If you are not familiar with Undertale, you might want to look into it.
I will do my best to restore the original feel.
My headcanon is that Chara is female.
If you cannot accept this, feel free to swipe away.
After she leaves the Astral Express later on, she will have a bit of a sharp tongue and a hands-off personality.
Additionally, this book leans a bit towards the Chara x Flowey ship.
If you don’t want to read that, I suggest swiping away.
!
● A monster…
a [Final Froggit] appeared.
● Attack [Final Froggit]
-999
● You won!
You earned 150 [XP] and your [LV] increased.
The night in the forest instantly grew much quieter.
Chara stood in a clearing.
Before her was a pile of dust that was slowly dissipating.
She raised the broken knife in her hand.
The dust clinging to the blade was sliding off.
Most of it fell to the ground, mixing with the leaves.
She flicked the blade, rubbed it against the ground a couple of times, and then put it away.
Then, she let out a breath.
–+–
Name: Chara
Race: Human Child
LV: 7
Weapon: [Broken Knife]
Armor: None
HP: 13/44
–+–
The number displayed for that last strike was 999.
She wasn’t entirely sure how that number was calculated, especially since the knife was truly broken beyond recognition…
The handle was wrapped in several layers of cloth strips just to keep it from cutting her hands, and there was a chip in the middle of the blade.
No matter how you looked at it, it didn’t freaking look like a weapon that could deal that kind of damage??
But she did deal it, and she won, gaining 150 [XP] and raising her [LV] to 7.
…
Chara shook her brown, medium-length hair, and a few broken leaves fell from the strands.
Her hair hadn’t been washed in a long time, feeling a bit rough to the touch.
It revealed her brown eyes with a hint of red, along with a face that didn’t look much different from an ordinary child’s, except it was just a bit cute.
There were mud marks on her cheeks, along with a shallow scratch from a tree branch that had probably already scabbed over.
She closed the panel, found a relatively flat patch of grass, and lay down.
The canopy above blocked most of the night sky, leaving only a few scattered stars shining through the gaps.
She placed the broken knife by her side, within arm’s reach, and then closed her eyes.
…
In her past life, she couldn’t speak or hear.
She couldn’t quite remember how she knew this.
She probably saw some text somewhere, or someone wrote it on paper for her to see.
She learned to recognize characters, some simple and common ones.
After all, no one taught her.
She could only guess, relying on old newspapers and magazine covers that occasionally appeared in the trash.
Wandering in a big city.
They called it a big city, but she didn’t actually know what the city was called, so she might as well just call it “the city”.
She only knew there were a lot of people there.
In the morning, many people would crawl out of their houses, and at night, many would crawl back in.
Those people were always busy, and no one would notice a dirty child curled up next to a trash can.
When digging through the trash…
sometimes she could find half a loaf of bread, and sometimes she could find takeout boxes that others had only half-eaten before throwing away.
She was never picky; she ate anything she could swallow.
The Lunar New Year was the hardest time, and also her most hated and least favorite holiday.
Everyone went home for the New Year.
The people who usually ate on the streets were gone, and the small shops on the street were all closed.
She was so hungry she couldn’t walk, so she leaned against the corner of a building wall, curling into a ball.
There was a red New Year couplet pasted on that wall.
She couldn’t read the characters on it.
She sat by that wall for a long time.
Gradually, her body stopped shaking, she couldn’t feel the cold anymore, and her consciousness grew blurry.
I guess my body just feels sick, she thought.
Then she reached out to feel around the nearby trash can for something to eat, but her hand passed right through it…
Record: During the Lunar New Year in 2020, a child starved to death.
…
After that…
someone found her.
Later, the sound of firecrackers in the city that day was exceptionally loud.
Some people were shouting in the streets, seemingly angry about something, or perhaps crying over something?
She shouldn’t have known about these things.
She couldn’t speak or hear, so it was impossible for her to know what the people outside were discussing.
But she just knew.
It was as if a voice was reading it out in her head, laying those images and words out before her one by one.
She didn’t quite understand why??
Just a feral kid who starved to death beside a trash can.
Who would care??
Would they really care?
Was it even worth it?
…
These memories churned in her mind for a while, then slowly sank back down.
She rolled over, burying her face in the pile of leaves.
૮₍ – ⤙ – ₎ა
She didn’t know how she had retained her past memories.
Maybe it was because it was too tragic?
So tragic that even the universe felt bad for her, so they let her live again with her memories??
Or maybe she was just unlucky??
Most of her past memories were useless.
The things she learned in those years were basically related to what a deaf-mute homeless child could come into contact with: How to tell if food in the trash was still safe to eat?
How to find a place to sleep without getting chased away by security guards?
How to protect herself when being bullied?
That was it.
This time, she became a normal child.
She could understand what the people in this world were saying, and she could speak too.
At first, she didn’t even know what was going on.
She thought she had just been reborn and her memories hadn’t disappeared.
She didn’t know anything about transmigration or reincarnation.
She just felt that her body was much more usable than in her past life.
Being able to hear sounds and speak made it feel very unreal.
But this time, her parents passed away even earlier (fan-made setting).
She couldn’t even clearly remember their faces, only a blurry silhouette.
Then…
white cloth…
a forest…
yellow earth.
It happened so fast that before she could even understand what was going on, the villagers already treated her as an unwanted orphan.
The children in the village started to bully her, pushing, cursing, and throwing mud.
The adults didn’t care when they saw it.
Some even pulled their own children away, as if afraid of catching something.
At first, she just hid, because she thought this was all normal.
In her past life, she was often bullied too, by homeless people older than her, by drunks, and by normal people who just didn’t like the look of her.
She was used to it.
She thought people were just like this, nothing strange about it.
Even if it felt strange, it was because she herself was already strange.
But later, she realized that the people in this world seemed a bit different from before.
In the past, she couldn’t hear what others were cursing at her, and she couldn’t speak a word to refute them.
When those people bullied her, she could only curl into a ball and wait until they got tired or bored of beating her and left on their own.
This time, she could hear them.
The curses, the mocking voices, the whispers calling her an “unwanted bastard”.
Every single word drilled into her heart like a knife.
She couldn’t just curl into a ball like before anymore, because she could understand them.
She understood one thing: whether in her past life or this one, she just didn’t seem to be welcome…
So after leaving that village, she had already become a strange human child, a child who hated humans.
Wearing the dirty green shirt with a single yellow stripe and brown shorts, she walked barefoot on the road, walking a very long way.
She was wandering just like in her past life, except this time her wandering had one more skill: speaking.
But she rarely spoke, because she didn’t know what to say, and even if she did, no one would be willing to listen.
Even if she lived alone, wasn’t that still living?
Living for the sake of living, just living however you want.
…
After that, she learned how to steal.
One thing better about this life compared to her past was that she could occasionally dig up a few things from the trash cans in this world.
But most of the time, the trash cans were empty, or filled with garbage she couldn’t possibly swallow.
“Ugh…
tastes bad…”
She started stealing from the villagers at night.
At first, she only stole some food: steamed buns, sweet potatoes, and dried vegetables drying in the yards.
She would just climb over the wall and steal them.
…
But that night, an accident happened.
She climbed into a family’s yard.
She originally just wanted to steal a piece of clothing.
The weather was getting colder and colder, and her thin striped shirt couldn’t withstand the night wind at all.
She sneaked over to the clothesline, tore off a piece of clothing without knowing whose it was, and just as she was about to turn around, the light in the house turned on.
A man rushed out of the house.
Anyway, they collided.
The man saw the clothes in her hand and grabbed her by the collar, cursing at her.
She was very panicked at the time, her mind a blank, and she didn’t know when she had gripped the knife beside her in her hand.
…
She didn’t remember what happened afterward very clearly.
She only knew that the man fell down.
Blood poured out from the side of his neck, so much of it.
The man struggled on the ground a few times, and then stopped moving.
She stood there, looking at the knife in her hand, and then at the corpse on the ground.
Did I just…
kill someone…??
Then the panel popped up.
Her [LV] jumped from 1 to 6.
Only then did she realize that this world had this kind of setting.
Killing people would make you level up.
That was what leveling up was about.
After being stunned for a while, she started searching through the family’s things.
She took food, took some cloth strips, took the knife, and also took a few pieces of clothing.
She climbed over the wall, ran into the night, and never looked back.
● You equipped the [Broken Knife].
● You stole the food and ate it, recovering 35 [HP].
From then on, she seemed to get used to it.
…
But the world doesn’t run on “what ifs”, otherwise there wouldn’t be so many consequences.
Chara rolled over, the leaves rustling beneath her.
Her breathing slowly became even, and her consciousness began to blur.
But right before falling completely asleep, she reached out and touched the broken knife.
Confirming it was still there, she finally closed her eyes.
“zzzzz…” <( ˉ .
ˉ)>