The morning after felt like stepping into a badly rehearsed play. Kai moved through the motions of getting ready for school in a daze, his reflection still a source of muted shock. The amber eyes with their slitted pupils were the hardest to ignore. He practiced widening them, trying to make them look rounder, more human. It was a pathetic effort. The subtle but undeniable increase in muscle mass was easier to hide under his usual loose-fitting, threadbare school uniform, but he felt different. Stronger. More solid.
His mother, thankfully, was already out for her early shift at the district textile recycler. Elara, his younger sister, gave him a curious look over her bowl of nutrient porridge. "You look… bigger, Kai. Did you sleep well?"
"Like a rock, squirt," he lied, ruffling her hair with a hand that still felt faintly stained with phantom blood. The System's status updates on his attributes scrolled mockingly through his mind. Strength 13, Vitality 13. He was a walking, talking bundle of enhanced stats, fueled by a horror he couldn't voice.
Meeting Leo at their usual corner was the first real test. His best friend's eyes, usually sharp and observant, widened almost comically.
"Whoa, Kai!" Leo circled him, a grin spreading across his face. "Did you hit a growth spurt overnight or something? You actually look… filled out. Less like a starved sewer rat, more like a slightly less starved alley cat. Seriously, man, you look good! What gives?"
Kai forced a shrug, his cheeks flushing. "Maybe all that worrying about credits is finally paying off in… stress muscle?" He tried for a light tone, but it sounded hollow even to his own ears.
"Stress muscle? Is that even a thing?" Leo laughed, punching him playfully on the arm. Kai instinctively braced, and Leo's fist bounced off muscle that hadn't been there two days ago. "Oof, solid! Been doing secret MBL training without me?"
"Something like that," Kai mumbled, turning towards the school. The lie felt heavy, another brick in the wall he was building around himself.
School itself was a sensory overload. His heightened perception, courtesy of the System's unsolicited upgrade, turned the usual cacophony of District 7's dilapidated technical school into a bewildering assault. He could hear conversations three rows away, smell the stale synth-coffee on a teacher's breath from across the room, see the individual dust motes dancing in the weak sunlight filtering through grimy windows. It was distracting, overwhelming.
And people noticed. Not just Leo.
During the morning assembly, Anya Sharma, a girl from his data-processing class who usually wouldn't give him a second glance, did a double-take. He caught her whispering to her friend, their eyes flicking towards him. Later, in the crowded hallway, a couple of older students who usually shoved past him without a thought actually sidestepped, one of them muttering, "Huh, didn't see him there before."
It wasn't just the subtle increase in muscle. There was something else, an almost imperceptible shift in his presence. He stood a little straighter, not by conscious effort, but because his body now seemed to demand it. The haunted, predatory intensity in his eyes, which he tried so hard to mask, perhaps leaked through, giving him an unexpected edge. Some glances were curious, some appraising. A few, disconcertingly, seemed to find the change… appealing. He overheard fragments: "...Kai? He looks different, right?" "...healthier, maybe?" "...kinda intense today. Handsome, even."
Handsome? Kai almost snorted. If they knew what made him look "healthier," what fueled that "intensity," they'd run screaming. The thought was a cold knot in his stomach.
Throughout the day, the System remained a silent, constant presence in the back of his mind. Occasionally, a new, unprompted message would scroll:
[System Suggestion: Observe social dynamics. Understanding pack behavior is crucial for a developing apex predator.]
Or:
[System Alert: Minor energy fluctuations detected in Sector 7, Sub-District Gamma. Potential low-tier Anima activity. Non-threatening.]
Kai did his best to ignore these "helpful" intrusions. Apex predator? He was just trying to survive history class without his newly enhanced hearing making him privy to every whispered secret and bored sigh in a ten-meter radius.
He felt like an imposter, a monster wearing a schoolboy's uniform. The normalcy of the timetable, the drone of the teachers, the petty classroom dramas – it all felt profoundly unreal compared to the bloody reality of the previous night and the cold, calculating System now fused to his very being. He was a walking secret, and the fear that it might break free, that the hunger might return, was a constant, gnawing companion.
The final bell was a release. He practically bolted from the building, desperate for the relative anonymity of the crowded streets, desperate to escape the eyes that seemed to see too much, even if they didn't understand what they were seeing. He needed to think, to understand what was happening to him, far away from the mirrors of other people's perceptions.