Yasui grabbed a handful of fish food and pushed open the creaking wooden door.
The sticky afternoon sun of April poured over his exposed wrists, feeling pleasantly warm.
He strolled down the blue cobblestone steps.
A few stubborn tufts of moss peeked from the gaps between the stones, crushed by his slippers with a subtle, juicy squelch.
The small pond in the center of the courtyard was the soul of the old Yasui estate.
In his past life, he had fed the fish here for over a decade; he could count the scales on those old koi with his eyes closed.
(Haha, just bragging—he actually had no idea.
He wasn’t insane, so why would he count that kind of thing for no reason?)
“Dinner’s served, everyone.
I’m the cafeteria auntie today.”
He opened his palm, letting a small scatter of fish food rustle down into the water.
Ripples exploded across the surface as koi in woven shades of red, white, and gold swarmed over.
Their tails whipped up fine sprays of water, reflecting fleeting rainbows under the sunlight.
[Points +0.2]
“Tsk, points for feeding fish too?
System, did you suddenly grow a conscience?”
[When the Host experiences a pleasant mood, pain nerve sensitivity increases, allowing pain threshold values to meet standards and yield points.]
“…Fine then, you’re still the same old bastard.”
Yasui looked down at his left hand.
The gauze was half-unwrapped, the wound on his palm turning slightly pale in the humid air, its edges rimmed with red.
Too lazy to keep unwrapping, he simply used his fingernail to pick open the scab.
Dark red beads of blood instantly surged forth, crawling down his palm lines and pooling into a plump droplet at the tip of his index finger.
The droplet fell.
*Drip.*
A subtle ripple spread across the water’s surface.
Several koi with sharp senses of smell turned around immediately, chasing that thread of pale red dissolving in the water.
The way they pecked at it was almost devout, as if it were some rare bait.
Yasui watched the fish and broke into a sudden laugh.
“You lot certainly know good stuff when you see it.”
“Wonder if koi taste good…”
He turned around and headed back inside, humming an out-of-tune song as he dressed his wound.
The second the alcohol cotton ball pressed down, his hundredfold pain sensitivity sent his whole arm into muscle spasms, his teeth grinding with audible clicks as veins bulged on his temples.
Yet three seconds later, he recovered, even whistling at his teary-eyed reflection in the mirror.
“Gorgeous.”
After treating the wound, he changed his clothes: a black windbreaker with the zipper pulled only halfway below his collarbone, revealing half of his pale neck, paired with black cargo pants and cotton slippers on his feet.
His waist-length hair was left unbound, lazily draped over his shoulders, swaying with his footsteps.
He needed to head out for a breath of fresh air.
This body was fifteen and hadn’t gotten a driver’s license yet, but the old estate wasn’t far from the town’s commercial street—a fifteen-minute walk.
Hands in his pockets, he ambled out the door.
Passing the century-old camphor tree at the alley entrance, he casually plucked a fresh leaf and crushed it, the bitter scent of sap spreading over his fingertips before he casually popped it into his mouth.
(Dangerous action, please do not imitate!)
The street was bustling.
On an April day in this water town, tourists were scarce, but locals were out enjoying the final dry stretch before the plum rain season arrived.
The side effect of his five senses being magnified a hundred times proved quite entertaining right now.
He could hear thirty meters away in the roasted chestnut shop, the rasp of the iron spatula turning gravel in the wok.
He could smell in the tailor shop three doors down on the left, the shopkeeper’s freshly finished lunch of braised pork with bamboo shoots (wants some), red-braised pork, vinegar-glazed cabbage, and tomato egg soup.
He could see clearly in the second-floor window opposite him, the trembling fingertips of a young girl holding up her phone to sneak a photo of him.
He stopped, tilted his head toward the lens, and flashed a peace sign.
*Click.*
The shutter sound was crystal clear through his hundredfold hearing—noisy, even.
The young girl instantly flushed red from her neck to her ears, nearly dropping her phone from the second floor as she frantically hid it behind her back.
Yasui smiled with curving eyes, the vibrant speck of red between his brows looking striking under the sunlight.
He bought skewers: ten skewers of lamb, five of rice cake, and two of grilled green peppers—extra sugar, extra spicy.
He also picked up a bottle of iced Sprite from the convenience store, condensation clinging to the plastic.
Pressing it against the gauze on his palm, the cold made him hiss.
It hurt.
[Points +0.1]
“This gives points too?”
[Host, pain is the primary source of points, but not the only one.
Any strong physiological or psychological (negative) stimulation may generate minor amounts of points.]
“I see~”
Munching on skewers and dangling his Sprite, Yasui sauntered back to the old estate.
He kicked off his slippers and sank his whole body into the imported Italian leather sofa in the living room, staring up at the intricate wooden carvings on the ceiling.
The greasy aroma of the skewers exploded in his mouth, while the cold Sprite bubbles slid down his esophagus, drawing a sigh of satisfaction from his stomach.
Now this is living.
Being alive is all about eating.
In his past life, he died in the spring of his eighteenth year, taken out by a banana peel.
In this life, he was fifteen, looking forward to a future where he could be casually beaten to death like a stray dog by Sukuna—pretty neat~
He bit off the last piece of lamb, his chewing suddenly pausing.
There was a breeze.
A breeze drifting in from outside the window.
Wrapped in that wind was the stale, musty smell unique to old houses, mixed with a scent far more metallic, sweet, and putrid.
Disgusting.
Yasui lifted his head directly.
Perched upon the ceiling beam was a tangled mass of something.
It was a Grade 2 Cursed Spirit.
He wasn’t supposed to know it was Grade 2 since he couldn’t gauge its strength, but because the thing seemed to be attacking him, the system registered their “contact” and slapped a label right onto it.
[Grade 2 Cursed Spirit]
It was more than a full size larger than that Grade 4 cutie from this morning.
Its body was a lump of pitch-like material kneaded out of sheer malice, its surface constantly swelling and popping with pus bubbles.
Every time a bubble burst, it squirted a few drops of transparent, highly corrosive slime.
It lacked a fixed head, but its front end split open into a mouth—a mouth that ripped all the way down to its midsection.
Inside were layers of gums, every single tooth vibrating at a different frequency, grating together with a bone-chilling *clack-clack*.
Most nauseating of all were its eyes.
Over a dozen eyeballs were embedded in that pitch-like surface without eyelids or eyelashes—just bare, bloodshot spheres spinning simultaneously, locking onto Yasui on the sofa all at once. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
Gross, gross, gross.
His trypophobia was acting up; he wanted to gouge out every single one of those eyeballs and crush them beneath his heels.
[Cursed Spirit’s aggressive desire toward you: 150%]—Physique effect active.
“…”
He was out of moves here—he couldn’t win this fight.
Yasui swallowed his last bite of skewer, followed by a swig of Sprite.
“This house of mine cost forty million yen.
What a waste.”
He set down the Sprite bottle and swiftly picked up the fruit knife he had tossed onto the table earlier, seeing if he could put up any resistance.
“You can’t afford the damages.”
“Broke ass.”
The Cursed Spirit moved.
Its speed far surpassed a Grade 4.
It seemed this thing specialized in concealment and speed, considering Yasui possessed five senses a hundred times sharper than an ordinary person’s, yet only noticed it when it was practically in his face.
Yasui’s dynamic vision only caught a blurred dark shadow before an agonizing pain hit his chest in the next instant.
“Bang—!”
His body flew backward, smashing through the sofa, shattering the carved wooden screen behind it, and slamming hard against the load-bearing wall.
The instant his back hit the wall, he clearly heard his spine groan in protest alongside the crisp snaps of at least three ribs breaking.
“Cough—!”
Blood surged up his throat, and he spat a mouthful onto the floorboards.
His right hand still gripped that fruit knife—the one he had just managed to grab.
Blood stained the blade, though he couldn’t tell if it belonged to the Cursed Spirit or himself.
Ah, Cursed Spirits didn’t have blood, so this was definitely his.
[Points +52]
“…Fifty-two?
Pretty high…
though I feel like I’m kind of dying…”
Leaning against the wreckage of the shattered screen, Yasui wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his left hand.
A section of his chest had caved in, broken bones puncturing his lungs, making every breath agonizingly difficult.
His hundredfold pain perception amplified all of this to the absolute extreme.
He could feel the jagged edges of his broken ribs grinding, the bloody froth bubbling out as his alveoli ruptured, and his heart racing wildly from the sheer agony—only to be forcibly dragged back to a normal rhythm by the system’s intervention.
The pain turned his vision pitch black, yet he let out a low chuckle.
“That really hurts…
haha…”
The Cursed Spirit granted him no breathing room.
Diving down from the ceiling beam, its dozen-plus eyeballs contracted simultaneously as its giant mouth—gaping down to its waist—opened to an impossible angle, threatening to swallow Yasui whole.
Spending ten points on speed.
[Speed: 2 + 5 → 7]
Yasui rolled violently to the right.
“Boom!”
The wall he had just been leaning against was bitten through, leaving a gaping crater as brick fragments showered everywhere.
A flying shard sliced across his left cheek, tearing open a wound from his brow bone down to his jawline, fresh blood instantly obscuring his left eye.
[Points +21]