Alex woke up to the smell of money.
Not literally, but the room smelled like expensive perfume, old wood, and generational wealth. He blinked open his eyes and immediately wished he hadn’t.
The ceiling wasn’t just a ceiling. It was a fresco. Angels, clouds, gold leaf—it looked like the Sistine Chapel threw up in a master bedroom. He sat up, the silk sheets sliding off him like water. The walls were lined with portraits of stern-looking men in wigs, and every piece of furniture was gilded. It was gaudy. It was excessive. It was ridiculous.
He turned his head to the right. A massive, floor-to-length mirror hung there, framed in—you guessed it—more gold.
Alex froze.
"Damn?"
The word slipped out before he could stop it.
Staring back at him wasn’t his usual reflection—the scruffy, dark-circled face of a guy who survived on caffeine and spite. Instead, a stranger was looking at him.
It was a boy. A slender, delicate, terrifyingly pretty boy.
His skin was pale porcelain, flawless and glowing. His limbs were thin, lacking even a hint of muscle definition. His collarbones were sharp enough to cut glass. He didn’t look handsome in the rugged, hero-protagonist way. He looked beautiful.
If you put a dress on him and slapped on some lipstick, he wouldn’t just pass as a girl; he’d win a beauty pageant.
"Oh no," Alex whispered, horror dawning on him.
He looked down at his own waist. Slender. Fragile. Breakable.
"I look like a twink," he realized with a shudder. "I look like the type of guy who wouldn’t last five minutes in a prison shower."
An imaginary phantom pain shot straight up his ass. His hands instinctively flew back to clutch his butt cheeks.
"What the fuck kind of joke is this?" he hissed, glaring at the ceiling. "Hey! Devs! Is this funny to you? I know I flamed your game, but do I really deserve to be isekai’d as a character suffering from a gender identity crisis?"
He paced around the room, legs wobbling.
"Please tell me this isn’t a BL novel," he muttered, panic rising. "If I woke up in a Yaoi dating sim, I am ending it right now. I am jumping out that window. I will not be the bottom in some melodramatic romance!"
He tightened his grip on his ass. The fear was real.
[Hey! Would you shut up for a moment?]
The voice rang out inside his skull. It wasn’t majestic or divine. It sounded like a monotonous, underpaid IT support guy speaking through a drive-thru speaker.
[Sigh! I can’t even get a peaceful nap now.]
Alex jumped about a foot in the air. "W-Who?"
He spun around, fists raised in a pathetic boxing stance. "Who’s there? Show yourself!"
[Quit being dramatic,] the voice droned. [I am inside you.]
Alex’s face went pale. He clenched his butt cheeks so hard he could have cracked a walnut.
[... Seriously?] the voice sounded annoyed now. [Hey, you shit-minded moron. Can you think like a sane person for one second? What is wrong with you?]
"You said you were inside me!" Alex yelled, his face flushing red. "What else am I supposed to think given my current appearance? I look like a target!"
[No sane person jumps to that conclusion immediately! It’s just that your mind is perverted.] The voice sighed, a sound of deep, digital exhaustion. [Why do I always get the defective hosts? I’m filing a complaint with HR. Next time, I want a cool sword saint, not a neurotic pervert.]
Alex straightened up, clearing his throat awkwardly. "Ahem. Cough. Well... your phrasing was ambiguous."
He paused, his gamer brain finally catching up to the situation.
"Wait. Snarky voice in my head. Insulting tone. You’re my System, aren’t you?"
It was standard protocol. Every transmigration webnovel had a System—a cheat code, a guide, a floating blue window. It wasn’t rocket science.
[Sigh~ I hate self-aware NEET transmigrators,] the System grumbled. [You take all the fun out of the introduction.]
"Just state your function," Alex demanded, trying to regain some dignity. "Do I get a status screen? A shop? Infinite mana?"
[Do I even need to explain?] the System drawled. [You’ve read a thousand of these trashy novels. Do tasks. Get points. Exchange points for broken abilities and items. Don’t die. You know the drill.]
"That’s it? No tutorial?"
[I’m going offline,] the System said dismissively. [Just mental-command ’Status’ or whatever if you need something. Don’t bother me unless it’s an emergency. I was in the middle of a very good dream.]
The presence in his mind started to fade.
"Hey! Wait!" Alex yelled at the empty air. "You lazy bastard! Come back here! I still have questions!"
Silence.
"You useless piece of software!" Alex screamed. "Who the hell am I? What world is this? Is this actually the game or some fanfiction nightmare?"
[Oh. That.]
The voice returned, sounding bored.
[Yeah, I withheld the previous owner’s memories because your tiny brain would have melted. You would have gone insane inheriting eighteen years of trauma and rich-kid drama all at once.]
"I can handle it," Alex scoffed. "I’ve memorized the lore of Erosbound back to front."
[Right. Since you’re so ’sane’ now, I’m unlocking the data packet. Brace yourself. It’s going to sting a little.]
"Sting? What do you me—"
ZAP.
It didn’t sting. It felt like someone had swung a sledgehammer directly into his frontal lobe.
Images flashed before his eyes like a movie on fast-forward—faces, names, humiliation, a crying mother, a disappointed father, the Academy gates, the sneering faces of the protagonists he used to play as.
"Fuuuu—"
Alex’s eyes rolled back for the second time that hour. His knees buckled, and he face-planted onto the expensive Persian rug.
Darkness took him again. At least the rug was soft.