The first thing Luna saw when she opened her eyes was darkness.
Not the poetic kind. Just her room. Curtains shut tight. Lights off. Blanket tangled around her like she'd fought a ghost in her sleep.
She didn't move right away. Her brain hadn't loaded yet.
Buzz.
Her phone vibrated somewhere under the pillow. Again.
She groaned and fished around until her hand found it, brushing past crumbs, a pen, something sticky, and finally the phone's warm rectangle.
3:08 PM.
Battery: 12%.
Another buzz. A reading app notification:
TrashCultivatorGod_69 has updated: Chapter 1290 – "I Ascended Because My Aura Said So."
Luna stared. "Didn't he die last chapter?"
She opened the app anyway. Curiosity was stronger than common sense.
Her stomach made a sound. She ignored it. Hunger wasn't urgent when compared to the pull of truly terrible fiction.
Ten minutes passed before she got out of bed. Her legs flopped down like wet noodles. Her back cracked like a glow stick.
She stepped on something soft. Maybe her hoodie. Maybe not. She didn't look.
Yawning, she shuffled to her desk. Her laptop sat unopened. Dusty. Ignored.
She picked up her phone again. Reopened the app. It was like muscle memory.
Recommended for you: "I Got Reincarnated With 999 Cheat Systems, a Harem of Goddesses, and the Power to Destroy Universes by Sneezing."
"…That can't be real."
She clicked it.
[Synopsis]
I was just a loner until Truck-kun made me a God. Now I'm the strongest being ever, and every woman falls for me when I flex.
Luna blinked slowly.
"Who writes this? Who reads this?"
She scrolled.
Chapter 1: MC wakes up in a palace surrounded by goddess maids.
Chapter 2: Defeats a demon lord by farting.
Chapter 3: Unlocks a cheat called ASS – Absolute Superiority System.
She set her phone down, screen still on.
"I need help," she muttered.
Then picked it up again.
An hour later, she was on Chapter 9.
She'd eaten a melted chocolate bar she found beside her pillow. Her glasses had slipped so far down her nose she looked like a tired librarian. Hair: chaos. Motivation: missing.
She hadn't talked to anyone all week.
But she now knew the full backstory of Harem Girl #7.
4:26 PM. She finally put her phone down.
Back aching. Stomach rumbling. Eyes burning.
She stumbled over to the mirror.
The reflection wasn't pretty.
Dark eyebags. Hoodie with crumbs. Hair that gave up hours ago.
"…Flawless," she whispered dryly.
She cracked the curtain open. Sunlight stabbed her eyes. She closed it immediately.
The outside world felt like a different planet. People there had routines, breakfast, schedules. Showers.
She turned on her fan. Sat back down. Stared at the floor.
One sock. A pen cap. An old ramen cup.
Her eyes drifted to the wall. A sticky note that read: "Get a life." She'd written it herself. Months ago. As a joke.
Wasn't funny now.
The sink had dishes. The floor had laundry. The calendar had exactly one word written: "Maybe."
Back at her desk, she opened her laptop. Blank document.
Just white.
She stared at it. Then typed:
"Today I woke up at 3PM and started reading a novel I immediately regretted."
She paused.
Then laughed. Quietly. The kind of laugh that comes from being too tired to cry.
It wasn't deep. It wasn't funny.
But it was real.
Half an hour passed. She hadn't moved.
She was thinking about something stupid. Like that one webnovel where the MC dies by slipping on a banana peel and gets reincarnated as a banana god.
She'd read 200 chapters. Regretted all of them. Couldn't stop.
"Why am I like this," she whispered to herself.
She opened a messaging app. No new messages. No notifications.
She scrolled up to an old convo with her cousin:
[ME]: hey u reading anything good?
[COUSIN]: stop sending me weird stuff. get a job.
Fair.
She put the phone down again. Her eyes drifted to her bookshelf. It was mostly manga, old notebooks, and a half-eaten bag of chips.
She stood. Stretched. Walked to the fridge. Opened it.
Inside: a single egg, expired yogurt, and regret.
Closed it again.
She sighed and sat back down.
This was her life. Endless loop. Sleep, regret, read, regret, repeat.
But the thing was—reading made her feel something. Even if it was stupid. Even if it made her cringe. Even if the plot made zero sense.
Sometimes, a line hit. Sometimes, a scene stayed.
And sometimes, in between the trash, she found a story that felt like it understood her.
That was enough.
Her phone buzzed again.
New comment reply on: 'I Became a Chair in a World of Cultivation and Still Got a Harem.'
Someone had replied: "Same. I also felt emotional when Chair-kun got broken and rebuilt. Peak literature."
Luna smiled. She didn't know them. Probably never would.
But they got it. In that weird, lonely, internet-reader way.
She opened a new doc.
Typed:
"Some stories are stupid. Some are so stupid they circle back to genius. And some—some just make you feel less alone."
She paused.
Then kept typing.
Not for anyone else. Just for her.
Not to escape life. But maybe to understand it.
The sun dipped lower. Her fan hummed on. Somewhere outside, a car honked.
Inside, a girl in a hoodie stared at the blinking cursor on her screen.
She thought about writing something.
Then opened another tab.
Typed: "funny webnovel titles."
Back to square one.
But hey—at least she was awake.