Cia opened his door. The sunlight made his eyes water. His fever had already gone down, but his body aches were terrible.
[Host, are you sure you're okay? You don't need to wake up this early. You should rest first.] The system was very worried. Last night, Cia didn't get good sleep.
From the system's perspective, Cia was having a nightmare, then all of a sudden, he stood up and started sleepwalking around the room.
He didn't go out and just stayed inside. Then he randomly started banging his head on the wall.
The system panicked and simulated Cia's mind space in order to wake him up.
Cia didn't answer. He leaned on the doorframe, staring at Sam and Eri sawing the foot of the table.
They seemed to be cleaning up the mess that he made last night.
"..."
Wait!
Cia finally 'woke' up.
His eyes widened. "Why did you come home early?" The two of them were now working at the mess that he created last night.
Eri wiped his sweat and pointed at Sam. "That guy had been muttering like a lunatic last night that something happened at home." He tossed the left leg of the table to the side and continued sawing the other.
Sam just sat there, staring at Eri doing all the work. He arranged the three feet that had already been removed from the table and looked at the messy-haired Cia. "You look really bad."
Cia's long hair was crumpled in a mess, his lips were cracked from dryness, and his eyes were bloodshot from all that fever last night.
"I got sick." He touched his neck. It was still warm, but not as hot as it had been before. "Fix that table first. I'll go cook us breakfast."
"We're done eating," Sam said. He was still staring blankly at Eri, no thoughts behind those dark eyes. "You should fix your look first." Then he glanced at Cia's appearance.
Cia didn't walk back inside the room. To be honest, deliberately waiting until they brought up the fact as to why the house was a mess was eating him.
He better confront it first so that he could finally feel at ease.
"You guys are not curious what happened in the house?" They came home and saw that their floor was replaced with a table. Surely, they'd be curious.
Eri raised his head and saw an apprehensive-looking Cia. He laughed. "It's okay. You don't need to feel bad. We do this all the time."
Cia had a bad feeling. "What do you mean?"
"Rena's very short, right? She managed to hit the fan on the ceiling with her toys. The blades flew everywhere, shattering the window and even almost hitting Ain in the face." Eri started listing the 'crimes' that the siblings committed.
"Then Sam. He's an airhead, so don't mind him. He narrowly burned the house multiple times. Our rooms were supposed to be separate, but when he was hanging a picture on the wall, it crumbled." Although Sam wasn't really the one to be fully blamed for that incident, Eri held a grudge and took note of that.
"As for Ain. He is a total disaster. His cooking is horrible as hell. One time, it created some kind of horrible gas. Everyone needed to evacuate out of the house because of how toxic it had been. The house smelled like rotten meat for at least a month."
Sam, who was listening to the side, looked at Eri. "Those are bad, but you're the worst. You kept damaging furniture for no reason." Then he slowly slid towards Cia. "Don't come near that guy. He has violent tendencies."
"You!" Eri wanted to drag Sam to his side, but Sam was leaning on Cia's legs.
Seeing that he was helpless, Sam's usually emotionless eyes flashed a victorious look. Eri wanted to punch him for his smug look, but he held back.
Cia took all that information in. Did they mean clumsiness and a taste for disaster were engraved in this family's genes?
\[It looked like you just blend with this family, Host.] The system was happily storing the gossip that it just heard.
"Then thank you." Cia didn't know what to say. He remembered something. "The two of you, stay here and watch Rena. I'll buy some groceries."
Eri and Sam paused. They looked at each other and realized they had forgotten to inform Cia about something important.
"Brother..." Sam looked down and played with the discarded wood. "Actually... our family is not doing well right now."
"We are in debt. 126 silver coins exactly. As for why that happened, it's when grandmother was really sick and our parents suddenly vanished. With no money, we had no choice but to borrow money." Eri rubbed his nose. This entire family relied on their parents, but a year ago, they suddenly stopped sending letters and money.
Cia clutched his chest. "Wha— this family had no savings?" Debt. That is a word he avoided very much in his past life. He never expected to experience it now.
"Well, Mother and Father started sending less before they vanished. First, it was every month, then half a month, until just a few months." Then Eri gave Cia a sneaky glance. "Most of the money was set aside for your schooling."
"As for Ain..." Sam suddenly spoke from the side.
Eri gave him a glare and Sam shut up.
With that, Cia was silent. The original owner was supposed to be the hope of the family. But he messed up big time and ended up blacklisted.
"Okay. Give me the IOU and let's see what we can do." Cia resigned to his fate and just sighed.
...
"Fuck, it feels like shit to be rejected because you are too overqualified." Cia sat there in defeat.
[Host, what about finding a job that matches your education level?] The system was also speechless. Cia went from being truthful to lying, but still didn't manage to land a job because they needed to ask for an ID, and Cia's ID clearly stated that he was a scholar.
"No, you're too much. Our store can't accommodate a scholar."
Cia was close to giving up. "I'm not very good when it comes to finding a job. Better be a sugar baby."
The system was immune to his bout of insanity. [In this town?]
They started bickering when a shadow suddenly covered Cia.
He looked up and saw the beautiful Bea standing in front of him. She was holding a small paper bag and offered it to him.
"A pastry from my mother's bakery." She smiled shyly. Although she tried to make eye contact, it ultimately failed.
"Uhm. I'm full, but thank you." Cia smiled as he refused. Better avoid entanglements early when you know it's not going to work.
Bea seemed to know what he was thinking, and she suddenly felt calm. She offered the pastries to him again. "Don't worry. Mother saw you walking around and told me to help you. These pastries also came from her."
Since it already reached this point, it would be rude to refuse. Cia accepted the pastries and moved to the side. "Why don't you sit?"
Bea sat down. She tucked her hair behind her ears and gathered all her hair on her left shoulder, showing her bare and slender neck. "I heard you are looking for a job?" she asked as she looked at the grass on the ground.
[She's still interested in you.]
"Hush, I'm talking."
"Yes, but I didn't realize it would be very hard." Cia felt like a bag of chips being passed around. It wasn't a nice feeling at all.
"How about you try at the library?" Bea pointed in the southern direction. "At the edge, there's a library. Maybe a 20-minute walk. Many people wanted to apply there before because of the pay, but they all got rejected. They guessed that the owner might be looking for a scholar."
"How's the pay?" Cia wasn't being a hypocrite. He needed money. He might sound very vulgar to those who valued being 'highly educated', but it can't pay their debt.
"Five silver coins a week. You just need to be a librarian until 5:00 PM." That's also the reason why many people tried to apply. Such a leisurely job with high pay... who wouldn't be tempted?
...
While walking towards the destination, a new mission suddenly popped out.
---
[EXP Mission: Kill 10 Sinners.
Countdown: 6 days, 7 hours and 15 minutes.
Number Of Sinners Killed: 0/10
Reward: 1000 EXP (not including earned from killing)
Punishment: One of the system and the Host's limbs will be cut off.]
---
After reading that, Cia's first question was, "You have limbs?"
[Waaaaah! Again with these brutal punishments! Of course I have limbs!]
No one could understand what the system was feeling. Your life is tied to another person. There is nothing you can do. Cia had all the decision rights, and whatever his choice was would affect the system.
The only thing it could do was try its best to become useful and encourage its host to be healthy and participative. Because if Cia had some strange 'game over' thoughts, then the system would also go bye bye.
It tried to encourage and talk to Cia as much as possible. Although the system was quite naive, it understood that humans might feel some mental imbalance after arriving in an unfamiliar place.
In order not to make Cia feel lonely, it would try to talk to him as much as possible. Fortunately, aside from the dazed look that Cia had sometimes, he was still quite mentally stable.
The system wiped its tears, feeling that life was really hard.
"Don't worry. I don't want to become an amputee for nothing." Cia's survival instincts were still intact. While he was looking around for the library, he was also thinking about how to execute the task.
"I clearly can't move around at daytime... so let's check it out at night." Still, there was resistance in his heart. "Killing humans and demons are different. The Punisher Mode is making me feel uneasy..." Then his steps paused.
He finally arrived at the library, but there seemed to be an issue.
"This does not look like a library—"