The shirt was too big.
Kai pulled the rough brown fabric over his head and immediately felt like a kid playing dress-up in his father’s clothes. The sleeves hung past his wrists. The hem reached mid-thigh. Whatever previous version of "Kai" had lived in this body clearly hadn’t been eating enough to fill it out.
He looked down at himself and snorted.
Sixteen years old, malnourished, wearing hand-me-downs that make me look like a scarecrow. Charm seven, my ass. The System must be grading on a curve.
The blue window still hovered at the edge of his vision, politely waiting. He flicked it with a thought the way he’d seen protagonists do in a hundred novels. It expanded.
[Tutorial Quest: 23 hours 41 minutes remaining]
Secondary Objective: Experience arousal – Incomplete
Current Desire Points: 0
Kai stared at the secondary objective for a long second.
"You really weren’t kidding," he muttered. "I have to get hard or I die. That’s the actual win condition."
The System, to its credit, did not reply. It just sat there looking smug in blue light.
He tied a frayed rope around his waist to keep the oversized pants from falling and pushed open the wooden door.
The hallway outside smelled like boiled cabbage and unwashed children. Narrow, dim, lined with identical doors. A few younger kids scrambled past him, barefoot and noisy. One of them—a gap-toothed girl no older than eight—actually stopped and stared.
"You’re awake," she said, blinking. "Miss Helga said you might not wake up after the fever."
Fever. So that was how the previous occupant had checked out. Convenient.
Kai forced a thin smile. "Lucky me."
The girl tilted her head, then ran off without another word. He watched her go, filing the information away. Miss Helga. Caretaker, probably. The one who never looked the previous Kai in the eye, according to the blurry leftover memories.
He followed the sound of the bell and the smell of food.
The orphanage’s main hall was a long, low-ceilinged room with two rows of wooden tables. About thirty kids of various ages were already seated, shoveling watery porridge into their mouths like it might escape. At the far end stood a heavyset woman in a stained apron—graying hair pulled into a severe bun, face set in permanent disapproval. Miss Helga.
The moment Kai stepped into the room, several heads turned.
Conversations dipped.
He felt it immediately: the subtle shift in atmosphere that came from being the weird quiet kid who almost died. Some looked curious. A few of the older boys looked annoyed, like his survival was personally inconvenient.
Ah. So that’s the dynamic. Background character energy. Perfect.
He took an empty seat near the end of the nearest table. A bowl was shoved in front of him by a younger boy who didn’t make eye contact. The porridge looked like gray paste. It tasted worse.
While he forced it down, Kai’s eyes moved.
Cataloguing.
Three older boys at the opposite table—maybe seventeen or eighteen—kept glancing his way. The biggest one had a thick neck and a permanent scowl. The kind of face that said he’d spent years ruling this little kingdom of unwanted children through fists and stolen food.
Classic. Every orphanage story needed its resident bully.
Further down, a girl about his new age sat alone. Light brown hair tied back with a scrap of cloth. Thin, but not as starved-looking as some. She was reading a worn booklet while she ate, completely ignoring the noise around her. For half a second her eyes flicked up, met his, then dropped again.
Kai’s brain, traitor that it was, immediately started evaluating.
Decent face. Quiet type. Probably the "overlooked bookworm" archetype. If this were a game, she’d have hidden high magic stats and a tragic backstory.
He felt a faint, familiar heat stir low in his gut.
The System window pulsed.
[Arousal Detected – Minor]
Progress toward Secondary Objective: 12%
Kai almost choked on the porridge.
Are you serious? Just from looking at a girl across the room?
Another line of text appeared, almost lazy.
[Host’s baseline threshold is statistically abnormal. Previous life data supports this conclusion.]
He wanted to argue. He really did. Instead he shoved another spoonful of gray sludge into his mouth and tried to think pure thoughts. It lasted three seconds. The brown-haired girl’s neck was visible where her collar had slipped, and his brain helpfully supplied several extremely impure thoughts about what that neck would look like with—
[Arousal Detected – Moderate]
Progress toward Secondary Objective: 34%
Kai closed his eyes and exhaled through his nose.
I am going to die in an orphanage because I can’t stop being a degenerate for five consecutive minutes. This is peak performance.
A shadow fell across the table.
He looked up.
The thick-necked boy from earlier stood there, flanked by his two friends. Up close he was even uglier—crooked nose, yellowing teeth, the confident posture of someone who’d never been punched hard enough to learn humility.
"You’re the fever kid," the boy said. His voice was low, meant to carry just enough for nearby tables to hear. "Heard you were talking to yourself in your room this morning. Lost your mind along with the fever?"
Kai stared at him.
In his old life he would have looked away. Mumbled something. Let it pass. That version of him was dead on a bedroom floor with cooling cum on his stomach.
This version smiled.
It wasn’t a nice smile.
"I was talking to the voice in my head," Kai said mildly. "It called me trash. I think it’s growing on me."
The boy blinked, thrown off for half a second. Then his face darkened.
"Funny. Let’s see how funny you are when—"
A sharp crack cut him off.
Miss Helga’s wooden ladle had slammed against the nearest table hard enough to make half the room jump.
"Garren," she said, voice flat and tired. "Sit down. If I have to separate you again, you’ll be on latrine duty for a week."
Garren’s jaw worked. He gave Kai one last look—promise of future violence—then turned and stalked back to his seat. His friends followed.
The brown-haired girl was watching now. Openly. When Kai’s eyes met hers, she didn’t look away immediately. There was something assessing in her gaze. Then she returned to her booklet as if nothing had happened.
The System window flickered again.
[Social Encounter Logged]
Minor Hostility Registered: Garren
Interest Registered: Unnamed Female
Arousal Progress: 41%
Kai scraped the last of the porridge from the bowl and stood.
He could already feel the shape of the next few hours. Avoid the bully long enough to not get his new face rearranged. Find a quiet place. Finish the secondary objective before the System decided he was taking too long. Figure out what the hell "Desire Points" actually did.
And maybe, if the universe was feeling generous, learn the name of the girl who looked at him like she was already calculating something.
He stepped out into the muddy courtyard, morning air cold against his skin, and let the grin return—small, private, and deeply unclean.
Alright, Eldoria. Let’s see what you’ve got.
The System pulsed once, almost approvingly.
[Tutorial Quest Progress: Ongoing]
Time Remaining: 23 hours 12 minutes.