Honu jolted awake, sweat slicking his palms. For a dizzy second the ceiling spun—thin wooden planks, water stains like old maps—and his hand flew to his head out of habit. His fingers skidded over bare, smooth skin.
"My hair—" The breath left him in a strangled laugh that didn't sound funny. He pushed himself up and the mattress protested with a long, tired creak. The room smelled of damp straw, boiled rice, and a faint trace of incense that had lost its holiness somewhere in the night.
He blinked at the two other heads piled in the same narrow room. They were shiny and bald, like him; under the morning light filtering through a slit in the shutters their scalps flashed coldly. For a moment he thought he'd wandered into a barbershop for ghosts.
A tiny limb — his — flailed. He stared. His hands looked small, knuckled and callused in the way of children who'd done chores all their lives. His feet were no longer his own broad, college-student feet; they were light, narrow, and absurdly short. He wiggled his toes experimentally and then, on impulse, poked the cheek of one sleeping boy with his toe.
The boy opened his eyes in a snap, sat up like a spring uncoiling, and planted himself in a guard's stance so fast Honu nearly toppled backward. "Who?!" he barked, voice rough with sleep and training.
Honu slapped a hand over his mouth, mortified and delighted all at once. "Shh! Calm down, man," he hissed, which only sounded half convincing to his own ears.
The boy's glare pinned him. He shoved Honu's hand away with the easy familiarity of someone used to handling idiots. "Honu. This is no way to treat your senior brother," he said, tone stern enough to be a scolding and soft enough to be a warning.
"Okay, big brother," Honu said, mock-hurt dripping from the words. He squinted at the boy for a name, for some anchor. "Answer me, brother. Who am I?"
The senior blinked slowly, then, with all the exaggerated patience of someone already halfway back to sleep, folded himself back onto the mattress. "Go to sleep. I have no energy for your mischief. We're assigned to watch you so you don't wander into the capital again."
"You're assigned to baby-sit me?" Honu's eyebrows shot up. He half expected the floor to open and the system to pop out with a daring graphic overlay explaining reincarnation rights and penalties. No helpful hologram appeared. Only the low, steady breathing of the others and the far-off clack of something being polished.
"What's your name, brother?" Honu poked again with childish persistence.
The boy's answer was a sleepy grunt. "…Peon."
The name landed like a stone in a pond; Honu stared until the ripples settled. "Peon?" He made a face—this is what the universe gave him for a guardian angel? A kid named Peon?
Peon blinked, then sat up properly and folded himself into a meditative posture with the kind of effort that implied habit more than earnestness. He hummed, a little chant pattern floating off his lips like steam. "Patience…patience," he muttered. His eyelids drooped, then he looked at Honu with the slow, tired patience of someone who'd seen the same prank the last hundred mornings. "…What is it?"
Honu gaped, still rubbing his bald scalp as if fervent rubbing could conjure back follicles. "What the hell happened? Why am I small? Why am I bald? Who am I—what year is it? Where are we? And—where's my system? The screen was supposed to—" His words tumbled over one another in a frantic clatter.
"Lower your voice." Peon's whisper had the force of a librarian's slap. "The other brothers are tired from training. They just have to babysit a troublemaker too."
Honu rolled his eyes. "You call this babysitting?"
Peon gave him a look that suggested that whatever 'this' was, it had been worse. He sighed and explained, slow and factual like a schoolmaster dictating dates. "You drank liquor, caused trouble in another sect, tripped over your own robes, hit your head on a rock, and were knocked unconscious. You're lucky you weren't sent to solitary; Elders would've had your butt locked in a cave for a month but they disciplined you instead thanks to elder Sama for pleading."
Honu made a face that tried to be rueful and failed spectacularly. "That's not what I—"
"Wait." Peon's voice softened a fraction. "You're Honu. Ten. You're…a headache. Everyone calls you 'Dung' because you say 'shit' all the time." He paused as if the nickname were almost affectionate. "We're in the Allborn epoch—Year 246. This is the Southern Mountain Temple. Now sleep before the master wakes and finds us awake."
"Ten," Honu repeated, tasting the word. Was that an age? A rank? Some stupid sect level? He didn't know, and that fact felt like a tooth missing from his memory. He scanned the room: wooden beams blackened with age, a faded mural of a monk with too-wide eyes and an improbable smile, bowls stacked neatly on a shelf, and a row of sandals lined like obedient soldiers by the door. Dust motes hung in the slanting light.
Peon flopped back down, already half-dreaming. "I'll get you checked at dawn," he mumbled. "Maybe the elders can knock some sense into your head."
Honu eased himself off the mattress and crept toward the door. The floorboards sighed under his weight. Outside, the courtyard stirred—distant thumps of wooden poles, the soft slap of training staffs, and a bell that clanged a single, solemn note, vibrating through his chest like a warning. The air that drifted under the door carried the scent of wet earth and something boiled down to a thick porridge someone in the kitchen favored for early mornings.
"Don't you dare sneak out this time," Peon called, voice a lazy threat. "I'll golden-palm your bald head if you go wandering again."
Honu paused, a grin already forming despite the fog of confusion. He couldn't help it—the old instincts of troublemaking were alive and twitching. Bald head or not, he was Honu. He was stubborn. He was annoyingly curious. He rubbed his scalp once more, felt the skin—real and tender—and decided, with the kind of sudden, unreasonable courage only the reckless have, that first things first: find breakfast, find the system, and find out what the hell this "Yen and Lily" life was supposed to be like.
He eased the latch and peered into the corridor. Sunlight pooled over worn stone steps leading down into the courtyard. Voices rose like birds—some laughing, some chanting rhythmically. Beyond the gate he could see a glimpse of the mountain's shoulder, mist curling around pine trunks like old smoke.
Honu slid the door open a fraction and winced when the hinges complained. He took a breath that tasted of rice steam and early chill, then slipped out, small feet silent, mission simple and childish: survive being a brat in a bald body, figure out whether "Ten" was worse than college debt, and—if fate allowed—find that annoying, absent system and make it explain itself.