What? I'm Cursed?

In the six months since crossing over, he had spent the first two months lying awake night after night. Why? He wanted to play on a computer! He really wanted to play on a computer—more than anything! A transmigrator with no computer to play on was going to die!

But there was no chance of that happening.

His fingers trembled as they touched the familiar keyboard. Zheng Yichen opened a game on the desktop, only to be disappointed: it launched, but remained stuck on an endless loading screen. The games that did load were ones he knew inside out. He had already mastered everything in them.

As for online games, not a single one would open!

"What's a computer?"

"Well, how do I explain..." Zheng Yichen scratched his cheek. How was he supposed to explain a computer to someone from another world? He knew how to use one and play on one, but explaining it was another matter. "I'm just a user."

"Oh." The little girl nodded calmly, watching as Zheng Yichen kept working the computer. What a novel thing...

After losing himself in it for a while, Zheng Yichen remembered the strange little girl beside him and gave up on playing any longer. This was only a dream, after all. "What do you want?"

They hadn't been able to communicate before. Now that they could, there were naturally things he needed to clear up.

"I only wanted to confirm a few things." The little girl studied Zheng Yichen for a moment, then said slowly, "You're very special."

"..." As a transmigrator, wasn't he special to begin with? The body he'd crossed over into was pretty special too. It had popped out of a stone—too bad it was a dragon, not a monkey.

"It's troublesome to enter your dreams, so from now on, you need to learn the Common Tongue."

"I tried to master a foreign language from elementary school all the way through university. I failed." Zheng Yichen rubbed his head. Learning a new language? He thought of how he'd failed to manage that in over a decade, then of all the stories he'd heard before crossing over about people teaching themselves English in a few months. He knew he simply wasn't cut out for foreign languages.

"That's all right. I can transfer the Common Tongue to you all at once." A point of light appeared on the little girl's fingertip. "Don't resist."

"...That's a little hard." Zheng Yichen looked troubled. What if it was something that could control him?

"Then read it yourself." The light on the little girl's fingertip turned into a book with a black cover. "As long as your mind can bear it, you can stay in the dream until you've mastered it completely."

"Give me a break..." Despite what he said, Zheng Yichen took the black-covered book she offered. Its contents resembled the primers he'd used in elementary school: each character of the common tongue had a corresponding Chinese character written above it.

Wait, wait. What's going on? Since when has my brain been this sharp? After suffering plenty from being unable to communicate, Zheng Yichen genuinely settled down to read a few pages. When he tried recalling them, it seemed he'd remembered... every single thing he'd seen!

Not a word forgotten. Holy shit, this is incredible! If I'd had a memory like this before crossing over, I could've become a top-level translator no matter how badly I did otherwise.

And so Zheng Yichen became completely absorbed in the "simple and easy-to-learn" book. It wasn't thick, but once he reached the halfway point, no matter how many pages he turned, its thickness remained split evenly in two.

While he was too engrossed in studying to pull himself away, the little girl imitated what Zheng Yichen had done earlier. She sat down at the computer and began fiddling with this machine that had appeared in his dream. Because of how clearly he remembered it, much of the software wouldn't run, but some of it still did...

"Ahh~" A sudden breathy moan beside him yanked Zheng Yichen's attention back. Hey, wait. That sound couldn't be...

He whipped around. Sure enough, the computer was playing an embarrassing sort of video. Oh God! How did she find that!?

"Uh—this, this isn't for kids!" Zheng Yichen hurriedly pressed the button on the computer tower to shut it off, crying out in a fluster.

Why?

The little girl looked up at Zheng Yichen. She said nothing, but the displeasure in her eyes made her meaning clear.

"You're still little."

"I'm twelve hundred years old."

"What!?" Zheng Yichen's brow twitched. Suddenly, he felt he'd underestimated the world he'd crossed into. He glanced around, pulled open the computer desk drawer, and took out the headphones inside. After putting them on the little girl, he planned to leave his bedroom and study in the living room.

But when he opened the bedroom door and saw the pitch-black darkness beyond, he promptly shut it again. Ah, it was best not to venture into darkness that looked so dangerous.

He kept stealing glances at the little girl watching the computer. With his mind elsewhere, his study efficiency dropped by a full fifty percent... Yet as time passed, the book that had seemed impossible to finish gradually grew thinner. The instant he turned the final page, the little girl took off her headphones.

"..." Perhaps it was his imagination, but Zheng Yichen thought her cheeks looked a little flushed... Ignoring his gaze, she vanished from the dream without a word.

Zheng Yichen stood there in a daze. Um... If she was going to leave that quickly, shouldn't she at least have told him how to get out?

Was he supposed to just think about waking up? The moment the thought occurred to him, everything went black. When he opened his eyes again, his body was back in dragon form. He looked down at his claws. Huh, waking up like that was convenient. Still, such a vivid dream apparently came at a cost.

He didn't feel refreshed the way he usually did after sleeping, and there was new knowledge in his head—clearly the Common Tongue he'd learned in the dream.

"I..." Zheng Yichen realized he was still speaking Chinese. He immediately shook his head and switched, somewhat awkwardly, to the Common Tongue he'd learned so quickly through the little girl's unusual method. "Can you understand me?"

"Yes." The little girl rubbed her cheek against Zheng Yichen's hand as she answered. The inexplicable affection still left him at a loss. It had come too suddenly. Surely nothing about his appearance could attract a soft, adorable little creature like her?

Even if she did claim to be twelve hundred years old.

"What exactly do you want? I don't think there's anything about me that would attract you." Zheng Yichen asked, puzzled.

"Everything about you attracts me." The little girl shook her head lightly and stared straight at him. "A forbidden thing that should be the least possible to exist: a cursed dragon."

"...What the hell are you talking about? I'm cursed?"