Luck and Disaster

Alice found herself sitting in a classroom. The lights were bright, and the teacher was explaining the key points of the lesson.

She lowered her head. A name was written in rather neat handwriting in the textbook—Class 9(2), Shen Yinghuan.

Alice immediately connected that name with Huanhuan. She subconsciously looked around, searching for the girl who had been by her side every time before... Huh? Why wasn't she here?

The light rays suddenly began to sway. Alice raised her head. Oh, it was the lights... Why were the lights swaying?!

No, not just the lights—the desks, chairs, floor... the entire building was shaking!

Then, she lost control of her body for a brief moment. She sensed herself beginning to run, surrounded by screams, cries, and footsteps...

This school definitely hadn't gone through many earthquake drills. Alice thought absentmindedly. She felt her body gradually growing exhausted from running so fast. She began gasping for breath, struggling to breathe, but she did not dare stop.

She could see the floors shaking more and more violently, as though they were about to collapse at any moment. She saw rubble, light tubes, and fans falling from the ceiling from time to time. She saw teachers standing at the stairwells, taking on the responsibility of guiding the students...

Alice ran desperately, ran and ran, until...

A massive stone slab fell from the sky. Alice felt every muscle in her body stiffen. Time seemed to slow, and she watched helplessly as the enormous shadow drew closer and closer...

"Teacher—!" Alice woke up to her own piercing scream. She realized that she had not died as she had imagined, but had been saved.

Saved...?

She stared blankly at the woman whose lower body was pinned beneath the stone slab—this was her homeroom teacher.

Strict yet gentle, knowledgeable, patient... she was the most beloved teacher in the school, without question. Even the "bad students" who loved tormenting teachers were unwilling to make things difficult for her.

In their impression, this teacher lived frugally and used most of her salary to support students. She treated every student with the same gentleness and patience. Even "poor students" whom other teachers had long given up on could receive her gentle comfort.

Behind her back, the students jokingly called this teacher "Mother"...

And now, she had died to save her...

Tears blurred Alice's vision. Her feet seemed glued to the floor, unwilling to move forward. Then she heard that familiar, hoarse cry: "Huanhuan, run! Don't look back!"

That cry seemed to shatter some sort of restraint. Alice began running amid that shout. Tears streamed down her face, yet she did not even have time to wipe them away. She simply kept sprinting until she escaped the teaching building and ran toward the athletic field.

But this was far from the end of the disaster—the homeroom teacher who died saving her seemed to be merely just the beginning.

Alice saw another similar scene: a classmate instinctively shoved her away from the ground as it suddenly split open, then fell into the Abyss in the instant she was caught off guard. As the crack closed, she seemed able to hear the classmate's screams.

This was not the last similar scene either. During the aftershocks and the rescue efforts, countless similar events occurred. It always seemed to be this way—she happened to encounter an unavoidable disaster, happened to be saved, and happened to watch the person who saved her die before her eyes...

Alice clenched her fists in pain and watched herself hold a pen, writing down word by word on paper the sentence she had already seen once: "Use luck sparingly. Never squander it."

At this moment, Alice finally realized—this was all a price.

But why should the people around me pay the price for something I did wrong? Alice asked herself softly, yet she knew clearly what the answer was—because she loved them, the deaths of those she loved could serve as the price.

When she woke up from the dream, her pillow and blanket had long been soaked through with tears. Alice silently got up, then slowly leaned against the door, crouched down, hugged her knees, and burst into tears.

Alice still had not recalled enough memories to piece together Shen Yinghuan's life. Even among those who had died before her eyes, aside from the homeroom teacher who had left the deepest impression on her, she could not remember most of their names, much less the experiences they had shared.

But Alice remembered the pain that had felt almost tangible.

Pain without memories was like rootless duckweed. Amid her violent sobbing, it slowly subsided and vanished without a trace. By the time her crying stopped, Alice could still recall the feeling of that pain, but no longer felt its suffocating immersion and numbness.

But this didn't mean Alice had forgotten what she recalled in the dream—she needed to pay misfortune as the price for luck, yet she could not control how or in what way she would be unfortunate.

Theoretically speaking, if your misfortune and luck were both controllable, you only needed to keep them balanced to some extent. It was actually quite simple—you could be a little more unlucky in everyday matters in exchange for luck in major ones.

And Alice's pain came precisely from this—she would be exceptionally lucky for a certain period, then exceptionally unlucky for another period to repay that luck, but she could not control the timing or extent.

Thus, in the end, during one period of misfortune, an earthquake happened just like that. Then came the scenes Alice saw in her dream—those deaths that caused her unbearable pain until she went numb.

So, after that earthquake, Shen Yinghuan, unable to control her own Fate, made a major decision—during periods of luck, she would avoid drawing upon luck as much as possible, thereby reducing the occurrence of misfortune.

But I am no longer Shen Yinghuan. Alice looked at herself as a thought suddenly emerged in her heart. Shen Yinghuan's Fate had not followed her here. I do not have the ability to gain luck and pay the price later...

Yet Alice still became wary. She would not forget that an Evil God's Offspring was still hiding in Tingen City, and she did not want Tingen City's Nighthawks and citizens to become the price someday in the future. Even if there was only a one-in-ten-thousand chance that she needed to pay something for past luck, and that Evil God's Offspring exploded as a result, it was still a price she could not bear.

This concern and wariness made Alice somewhat guarded against a Lucky One's luck. She suddenly thought of a question she had never considered before: "If I can only become a Lucky One by relying on Fate's Gift, then when Fate takes back its gift, how can I ensure that I am still lucky?"

"Only by making thorough preparations can I ensure that I will always be lucky..."

To Alice's surprise, this realization touched upon the shell of the Beyonder Characteristic. A cool sensation of feedback came from the Beyonder Characteristic, and Alice realized that her Lucky One Beyonder Characteristic, which had shown no obvious signs of digestion, had displayed clear digestion feedback for the first time.

"So the core of acting as a Lucky One is actually not relying on luck?"

There was a reason Shen Yinghuan had that kind of luck. Just listen to me make it up.