The memory of a scratchy wool blanket and the distant, familiar snore of a roommate dissolved like sugar in deep water. My eyes opened, sticky with the salt of abyssal sleep. Instead of the cracked plaster ceiling of the orphanage dorm, my drowsy gaze met the curved, shimmering skin of the bubble. It stretched overhead like the inside of a giant, breathing soap bubble, distorting the infinite blackness beyond into swirling, oil-slick patterns. Where my bunkbed's rusty railings should have been, the gelatinous blob hung in a tangled, sleepy knot of pseudopods, softly pulsing a slow, bioluminescent blue. It looked like a discarded, otherworldly Halloween decoration someone had forgotten in the deep sea.
I pushed myself up on one elbow. The sand beneath the writhing memory-foam pillow was cooler now, its glow dimmed to a soft ember-pulse. My movement dislodged a few grains; they tumbled in the thick water, falling with impossible slowness. Across the small space, the whalebone mortar's bowl sat overturned, a lonely fossil of a forgotten meal. And there, beside it, was the rice.
It wasn't food anymore. It was a monument. Preserved in a perfect, teardrop-shaped amber about the size of my thumb. Trapped within it, the star-shaped scorch mark was suspended forever, a tiny black nova in a golden universe. Above it, my
[F-GRADE]
designation hovered in faint, sickly-blue eldritch runes that seemed to sweat a condensation of mild disappointment into the water.
My gaze traveled to the bubble's edge. Mr. Fin's silhouette was a tectonic plate of darkness against the void. He wasn't sleeping. His immense body was motionless, a sentinel. His obsidian scales were no longer just black; they were actively drinking the faint light. They reflected, not a clear image, but the distant, retreating glow of User NightSnack's thousands of eyestalks—a dying nebula smeared across a perfect, black mirror.
A deep, gurgling growwwwwl echoed in the silent chamber. My stomach, empty for so long it had forgotten how to complain, announced its presence with the violence of a waking beast.
I instinctively thought of my pet, Proti—the little hamster I'd secretly fed crumbs to in the orphanage basement. The memory was a sharp, sweet pang. And as it faded, so did the hunger. Not gradually. Instantly. It was like a switch had been flipped in my gut. A sudden, profound fullness spread from my core, warm and heavy and… complete. It was the ghost-weight of a thousand meals I'd never eaten.
"Burp."
It was a small, surprised sound. The air that came up tasted… familiar. Not of the abyss, but of the orphanage's Wednesday stew, of the specific brand of strawberry milk they served on holidays, of the tang of the stolen onigiri. A gust of culinary déjà vu.
"What was that?" I whispered, my voice scratchy with sleep. "What happened? I remember… what STAUST said about my pet…"
My stomach's complaint and my spoken words acted as a trigger.
The fossilized rice monument reacted. A hairline fracture snaked across its amber surface with a sound like a frozen lake cracking. From within, a thin, precise plume of steam hissed out. It wasn't the chaotic geyser of before. This was a directed, brine-scented stream that carried a condensed, overwhelming aftertaste—the savory umami of a perfect broth, the crisp acid of a green apple, the fatty richness of roasted pork, the flat sweetness of white bread, all layered and simultaneous. It was the ghost of every meal I'd ever consumed, returning a final report.
The gelatinous blob convulsed as if it had been kicked. From its tangled mass, a single pseudopod whipped out, not in panic, but with bureaucratic efficiency. It slapped against the front of my shrimp pajamas with a wet splat. The substance spread, hardened, and formed a glowing, kelp-green banner across my chest:
[SATIETY SYNTHESIS: 100%. PROTOZEAN METABOLIC OVERRIDE ACTIVE.]
Mr. Fin's gills stuttered open. What emerged wasn't water or bubbles, but a stream of raw, crackling cosmic static—the sound of dead channels between stars. It filled the bubble with a brief, electric tang.
"Land-grub." The shark didn't turn. His voice was the low grind of tectonic plates at dawn. His dorsal fin gave a single, sharp twitch toward the now-levitating amber monument. The [F-GRADE] runes pulsed, not randomly, but in a perfect, rhythmic lub-dub that echoed the heartbeat still slow from sleep in my own chest. "You fed the abyss a piece of your longing. Now it feeds you the echo. Symbiosis is not a one-way digestion."
From beneath a small mound of sand, STAUST flickered, struggling to life like a buried firefly. Its light was weak, washed out by the blob's banner and the monument's glow. It projected a simple, scrolling line:
[PET STATUS: ENDLESS FACETED PROTOZEAN ESSENCE OF SATIATION - DIGESTIVE CYCLE COMPLETE. SATIETY-LINK ESTABLISHED WITH PRIMARY USER.]
As the words finished, the bioluminescent veins that had grown in my shrimp-pajama's chitin during the night flared. They ignited not with the soft blue of before, but with a deep, resonant, familiar gold. The same hue that had bled from the rice, the same light that had made the eldritch audience recoil in offended confusion. It thrummed through the carapace, warm against my skin, a gentle, constant hum that mirrored the pulse of the monument and the steady, fed beat of my own heart.
I hugged my knees, the clicking plates of my pajamas soft and warm. The terrifying emptiness was gone. Replaced by a different, stranger fullness. I wasn't just fed. I was connected. To a pet that was an equation. To a meal that was a monument. To a shark that was a black mirror.
I reached out a finger, the shrimp-antenna on my wrist twitching, and poked the glowing banner on my chest.
"Okay," I said to the quiet bubble, to the watchful shark, to my weird, full stomach. "Okay then."
My focus turned inward. I thought of the system, the only thing here that felt like a tool instead of a terror or a wonder.
Staust. Show me.
The amber monument's pulse quickened, syncing with my focused intent.
[STAUST]
[ABYSSAL COOKING SYSTEM]
[USER DATA]
The text hung in the water before me, clearer now, its edges sharp. It felt less like a malfunctioning device and more like a report card from a school at the end of the world.
[STAUST]
[ABYSSAL COOKING SYSTEM]
[USER DATA]
The runes glowed, unapologetic.
[OWNER: C'THULLUS THE EVER-HUNGERING (LVL. 456 COSMIC SHARK)]
[Pet: ENDLESS FACETED PROTOZEAN ESSENCE OF SATIATION]
[LVL: 2]
[Class: EMOTIONAL ARTIST]
[Exp 0/250]
I stared at the last line. 0/250. A bigger number. A hill to climb. But next to it, glowing with a soft, unique cerulean light unlike any other text, was my Class. Emotional Artist. Not a chef. An artist. I'd chosen it. I'd argued for it.
A tiny, stubborn smile touched my lips. The warmth from the pajamas, the steady pulse from the monument, the silent, massive presence of my cosmic guardian—it all coalesced into a single, solid feeling in my newly-full chest.
It wasn't happiness. It wasn't safety.
It was purpose.
I had a pet that ate hunger. A class that painted with feelings. A teacher made of teeth and stars.
And 250 points of experience to earn.
I looked from the data screen to Mr. Fin's reflective flank. "Teacher," I said, my voice no longer a scratchy whisper. "What's for breakfast?"