"Do you know who this is?" Medeia asked Seraphina. "I feel like I’ve seen him somewhere."
"Oh, him." Seraphina chuckled softly and smiled at her. "Are you sure you don’t recognize him?"
"No, I’m not sure ...." Medeia looked at that picture carefully, observing every detail on his face.
The young man had a bright smile on his face, his golden hair shining like the sun, and his green eyes sparkling like emerald shards.
He wore a baseball uniform with the number 01 emblazoned on his cap.
The headline, written in bold capital letters, read: "Prince of Baseball Hits Record 10 Home Runs in One Game!"
Golden hair? Emerald eyes?
Medeia’s jaw dropped as she finally could recognize the young man’s face in the magazine.
"Lucian?!" Medeia gripped the magazine tightly and stood up. "This bright, sunshine young man is Lucian?!"
It wasn’t that Medeia couldn’t recognize him, but his face back then was completely different.
His sharp features were softer, almost innocent, resembling a puppy. Well, his smile was still as bright as the sun even now, but his younger self’s smile was the epitome of pure joy.
There was no trace of trauma or sorrow in that smile, unlike the one he wore now.
Medeia’s eyelids slowly fluttered shut, a wave of sadness washing over her as she realized she would never see this version of him again.
After seeing that picture, she couldn’t help but imagine how scared and lonely this young man must have felt when he had to face the apocalypse all on his own.
"Yes, that’s him," Seraphina said with a soft laugh, snapping Medeia out of her reverie. "You probably don’t remember because you were too young back then, but his face used to be everywhere—on magazines, commercials, even billboards."
[Ding! Ding! Quest Completed: Find Out Lucian’s Former Occupation Without Asking Him or His Family (Grade-A)]
[Reward: +700 C-Point // +900 XP]
[Reward Gold Coins: 600]
[See, host? It’s so easy to figure out his former occupation, right?]
Medeia hissed inwardly. "Easy, my ass! If I hadn’t found this magazine in Phina’s bag, I might have failed to complete my quest! Tell me the truth, did you deliberately give me an impossible quest?!"
The system had always given strange and unreasonable missions, so Medeia suspected that it was deliberately doing so because it didn’t want her to complete them.
[What do you mean, host? The system has never given you impossible missions because you always manage to finish them in the end!]
Medeia wanted to retort, but what the system said was actually true. In the end, she always managed to complete the missions, even if they had seemed impossible at first.
[Don’t worry, host! This time, the system will give you a quest that you can complete easily!]
[New Romance Quest: Create a Fur Blanket From a Mutant Mammoth (Grade-S)]
Medeia furrowed her brow. Hunting a mutant wasn’t the problem, taking its fur wasn’t difficult either, but sewing the blanket by hand?
Oh, Medeia would be doomed.
She had never even held a needle and thread before, so how could she possibly make a blanket from scratch?
’This quest is more than impossible!’ Medeia fumed inwardly. ’When is the time limit?’
[Time-Limited: Before the first snow falls from the sky.]
Medeia tried to maintain her calm. ’And when will the first snowfall?’
[The system doesn’t know that. But the system predicts it will fall in no more than two months.]
What did it mean by it doesn’t know?!
The snow might fall sooner than in two months! Medeia sighed. It looked like she would have to ask Lucian to help her find a mutant mammoth.
She had never touched a needle before, and now she had to make a blanket from a mutant mammoth’s fur in such a short time?
Oh, hell, just bring me home already.
[Don’t worry, host! The system believes in you!]
Medeia rolled her eyes. Of course, the system believed in her. It always did, just to make everything more miserable.
Medeia dismissed her thought from the quest because she heard Seraphina continued her story about Lucian.
"Unfortunately, due to his illness, he had to be dismissed from the field and no longer had the energy to continue as a model," Seraphina said, her voice tinged with sadness.
Medeia paused for a moment, and all her anger toward the system turned into a sense of pity for Lucian.
The sun that once shone so brightly on the field was suddenly forced to lie in a hospital, waiting for his death.
No wonder all of his cousins loved him so much.
Medeia couldn’t help but feel a pang of sympathy as she stared at the photograph.
She couldn’t imagine the pain Lucian must have gone through, being so full of life one moment and then facing such a cruel twist of fate.
"My family was too poor, so we couldn’t afford magazines or television," Medeia lied. "What a pity I didn’t know him back then."
Seraphina could sense the hint of sadness in Medeia’s tone, so she tried to lighten the mood. "But that was just the past. Even though you didn’t know him back then, it doesn’t mean you can’t learn about him now."
She patted Medeia’s back. "Just look at him now."
Both of them turned their eyes toward the spring, watching Lucian, who was smiling brightly as he laughed with his cousins. "This is the first time I’ve seen him smile and laugh like that again."
"You may not have had the chance to see his younger self," Seraphina continued, "but you’re the one who’s brought that smile back to him. And that’s worth more than any of his fortunes."
Medeia chuckled. "He was rich, did he?"
"Oh, you can’t imagine it," Seraphina said. "Everyone kept saying that even though he retired before turning 23, he would still be rich for the rest of his life."
Medeia let out a tired sigh inwardly. She really could spend her entire life reading novels if this fucking planet hadn’t been hit by radiation.