Transmigration

A gloomy sky shrouded the entire city. Pedestrians moved along the streets everywhere, while waves of pungent odors filled the air, yet none of them showed the slightest reaction.

People wandered numbly through the streets and alleys without speaking. There were clearly so many of them, yet the silence was frightening.

"Cough, cough!"

Naiyuan weaved through the crowd. Garbage lay scattered all around the dilapidated streets, and the stench constantly assaulted him, making him unable to stop coughing.

His gaunt body and bloodless face made it seem unsurprising that he might collapse at any moment. After all, such things happened every day.

Clutching the half-price bento he had painstakingly snatched from the supermarket, Naiyuan hurried away. The smell continued tormenting his body, and he had to get home quickly. After passing through the densely populated streets, a shabby apartment building came into view. That was his destination.

He quickly reached the apartment entrance and turned toward the neighboring door. That was his neighbor's home, and its occupant was also one of his few friends. He lightly knocked on the door several times, but no one answered.

"Working overtime again?"

After waiting briefly and seeing that no one came to open the door, Naiyuan sighed and returned to his own home. It seemed the other person had been kept behind for overtime again, squeezed dry by the company.

The room's layout was simple: a bed, a toilet, and a conspicuous helmet. There was nothing else, aside from a shared washing machine outside.

There was no kitchen. For someone like him, who worked insane amounts of overtime, a kitchen was completely unnecessary. To save on rent, he had specifically chosen this apartment.

"Phew!"

Naiyuan took a deep breath. Although he could still smell some odors inside, it was far better than outside. At least it did not leave him dizzy and disoriented.

"I hope I didn't bet wrong this time. Otherwise, there really won't be any way out."

Carefully washing the exposed skin on his body, Naiyuan sighed. The outside air was filled with toxic gases and dust. Prolonged exposure to such air would cause tremendous harm to the body, so if he did not want to collapse mysteriously one day, he had to wipe himself down immediately.

He could have bought a gas mask, but he had not. Every penny he earned through hard work and endless overtime had been poured into a game called "Yggdrasil," leaving only the bare minimum needed to survive.

Fortunately, his workplace provided air purifiers. Other than feeling somewhat uncomfortable on his commute to and from work, he had not suffered any major problems.

Sitting on the bed, Naiyuan slowly opened the bento's lid and began eating his dinner in small, deliberate bites. A faint smile appeared on his face. Only at times like this did he feel that he was still alive.

This world was not the apocalypse, yet it was like one.

That was the truest thought he had held over the years.

The world had been polluted. With the outbreak of war, humanity had finally received its retribution. The air was full of harmful gases, the rivers had become murky and foul-smelling, and the land was no longer suitable for growing food.

When people finally looked back, they discovered that nothing could be changed anymore. Even taking a breath of fresh air had become a luxury. War had lost its meaning as well; no hatred could come before survival.

The green of plants had vanished from the world's sight. Animals died in vast numbers because of the environment, prices soared, crimes became frequent, and those high-and-mighty entrepreneurs continuously squeezed everything out of ordinary people.

They knew how to maintain a balance: constantly giving people an illusory future while continuously instilling in them a reality called numbness. By the time people realized it, it was already too late. In their despair, they found that they had grown accustomed to it. They did not want to resist, did not want to think, and simply lived each day like this.

As Naiyuan ate the bento that had already gone completely cold, he looked at the calendar hanging on the wall. Many dates on it had been circled and marked in red pen. Those were the dates of various in-game events. Afraid of forgetting to log in, Naiyuan had marked every one of them on the calendar.

The date for the day after tomorrow had been marked with a large X, showing just how important it was.

It had been twenty-eight years since he transmigrated into this world. His memories of his previous life had already become blurry. He did not know why he had transmigrated. He only remembered playing a certain gacha game, cursing the developers a few times, and then losing consciousness.

When he woke up again, he had already become a baby, abandoned in an alley and left to fend for himself. Fortunately, driven by his instinct to survive, he kept crying out and successfully caught someone's attention, avoiding the achievement of "dying immediately upon transmigrating."

The person who adopted him was a middle-aged man. After Naiyuan grew up, he learned that the man's wife had cheated on him. When he returned home that day, the two of them were fooling around on his bed. They noticed that he had come back, but instead of concealing anything, they seemed even more excited.

The other man had not taken him seriously. Afterward, he casually tossed him a card, then left with his wife. His wife had not looked at him once from beginning to end. Perhaps she had been too embarrassed to look at him, or perhaps she simply could not be bothered.

He had not done anything the entire time, merely watching their departing backs numbly. A few years earlier, perhaps he would have been furious, cursing them for being shameless before throwing a punch. But now, he no longer had that impulse. After checking the balance on the card, he had even felt a faint sense of delight. Perhaps the other man had known he would not fight back, which was why he had acted so recklessly.

At night, in an alley filled with foul odors, the man staggered along, continuously pouring beer from a can into his mouth. Burdened by countless complicated emotions, he wandered forward aimlessly until Naiyuan's cries caught his attention. He swayed over, looked at the abandoned child before him, and immediately felt a sense of shared misery rise within his heart.

"Were you abandoned too, just like me? Don't be afraid. I'll take you home."

As if he had found someone of his own kind, the man tossed away the beer can and tremblingly picked up the child before him. Looking at the child in his arms, who was smiling and staring at him with wide eyes, all the agitation in his heart seemed to drift far away. A faint smile appeared on his haggard face as well.

On his first day after transmigrating, he had been adopted beneath fate's gaze. The man's name was Shangluo Yayoi, so he named him Shangluo Naiyuan.

As though he had found hope and purpose in life, Shangluo Yayoi completely changed from his former self and threw himself into work with enthusiasm. He was no longer living only for himself. In that atmosphere, time quietly passed, and more than a decade went by in the blink of an eye.

When Naiyuan was twelve, Shangluo Yayoi died. Years of work and overtime had pushed the man's body to its limit. He had money, but he did not want to use it. Even now, Naiyuan still remembered the smile on his face at the end.

"Naiyuan, my life has been a tragedy. I have endured my wife's betrayal, society's exploitation, and the ridicule of friends and relatives. But the only thing that made me feel truly alive was your appearance. The most correct decision of my life was adopting you."

"Don't be sad or upset. I have no regrets in my life. I kept this card for my entire life. If you spend the money inside carefully, it should be enough for you to live without worries for the rest of your life. Now, I'm giving it to you. Naiyuan, my child, you must live happily."

Thinking back on those scenes, Naiyuan's expression was complicated. There was no doubt that Shangluo Yayoi had been a qualified father. He had devotedly cared for him for more than a decade, and in the end, he had even put aside his pride and given him the card.

"Father, I will definitely live well!"