How Many Floors Can a Bag of Rice Climb?

Yan Si rubbed his thumb over the knife handle, his purple eyes half-lidded as he paced around the dim room. He had left the main light off, keeping only a small bedside lamp on. Its warm yellow light softened half his face while the other half lay hidden in shadow, making his expression flicker between light and dark. Thoughts kept turning over in his head.

If I could transfer this pain to someone else... No, that would be too boring, too cliché. And why transfer it anyway? Wasn't pain how I earned points?

But what about sharing it? If someone else could hurt along with me, at least I'd have company. Some emotional comfort.

Hurting alone was suffering. Hurting together was sharing adversity. Completely different things. Or, even better...

If I could make whoever hit me hurt too, wouldn't that be fucking...

Amazing!

Inspiration struck. In that instant, his expression looked as though he had dreamed up the most brilliant prank in the world.

Those eyes, still wet with tears, suddenly lit up. They shone in the dim lamplight-too brightly, almost. Dangerously brightly.

"Heeey~ System~"

He called out in his mind, his voice trailing off into a long, soft, sugary lilt. Unfortunately, it was a razor blade dipped in syrup.

[Here, Host.]

The system's voice always had that same quality: a disgustingly oily electronic tone with built-in flattery. Nauseating.

Every time Yan Si heard it, he thought this system ought to sell health supplements. It would definitely make ten million a year.

"My little system buddy."

Yan Si raised the boning knife before his eyes and examined the curve of its blade against the lamplight. The blade was extremely thin, almost transparent. Light passed through its edge, casting a shadow on the wall so faint it was barely visible.

His voice carried an excessively sugary friendliness, sweet enough to arouse suspicion.

If the system had possessed human instincts for danger, it should have started scanning its host's brain waves by now.

"Do you happen to have anything like pain sharing?"

He deliberately pronounced "pain sharing" softly and slowly, as though he were asking, "Is candy sweet?"

The answer, of course, was yes.

The system fell silent for a second. This silence was different from its earlier ones. Those had been helplessness; this was a search.

A second later, its electronic voice sounded, carrying a subtle pleasure.

[Yes, Host. Yes, we do.]

Yan Si's eyes truly lit up.

He straightened, crossed his legs, and laid the knife across his knees. Folding his hands over the handle, he rested his chin on the backs of them.

He looked like a child waiting for a bedtime story, except what he awaited wasn't a fairy tale. It was a skill that could make someone else hurt with him.

The system brought up an interface. The translucent panel emitted a faint blue glow in the dim room, shining onto Yan Si's face and making his smiling eyes sparkle.

[Ability: How Many Floors Can a Bag of Rice Climb?]

[Price: 50 points]

[Description: Unknown. Please explore on your own.]

Yan Si stared at the name for three seconds.

Then he burst out laughing.

It wasn't an ordinary laugh-not a polite, restrained laugh offered sparingly in social situations. It was the wholehearted, utterly uncontrollable laughter of someone whose inexplicable funny bone had been hit dead-on. He flopped onto the bed and buried his face in the covers, his shoulders shaking. Muffled by the quilt, his laughter became little whimpering sounds, like some small animal happily rolling around in its nest.

He tossed the boning knife aside. Its tip stabbed into the mattress, nearly catching his leg, but he paid it no mind.

"How Many Floors Can a Bag of Rice Climb?"

Anyone who had watched even a little Naruto would recognize that name.

It came from the line Pain spoke when he descended from the sky with his arms spread during his invasion of Konohagakure.

"Feel pain." The original Japanese was "Itami o kanjiro," but Chinese netizens had turned its sound into "How many floors can a bag of rice climb?"

Two floors, three floors...

His roommate in his previous life had been a die-hard Naruto fan with a terminal case of anime protagonist syndrome. That line had been his catchphrase.

He shouted it when he lost a game, when he bombed an exam, and even when a girl rejected him. He had practically brainwashed the entire dorm.

And the system had given that name to a pain-sharing skill.

"You fucking..."

Yan Si finally managed to lift his head from the covers, his eyes wet again. He had laughed so hard that tears had come out, sparkling on his lashes and mingling with the tears he had shed from pain earlier. He couldn't tell which drop was which.

Of course, there was no need to draw such a firm line between pain and pleasure.

His voice still carried the breathlessness of someone who had laughed himself into a stitch. "You're sick, aren't you?"

[All function names used by this system undergo rigorous review.]

The system's electronic voice adopted a formal tone, as though it really were conducting official business. Beneath that tone, however, lingered the same sickening oiliness, along with a hint of ill-intentioned humor.

It was like someone who knew full well they were talking nonsense but insisted on delivering it with a straight face.

"Fine, I'll give you that."

Yan Si sat up and casually wiped the corners of his eyes with his sleeve, rubbing away the few tears he had laughed out.

Then he examined the interface again, swiping his finger through the air to open the ability's detailed information page.

Or trying to. The details page contained only a name and a price. Everything else was blank-not even a note in parentheses.

Fifty points. The description field was empty, unknown, "explore on your own."

From what he knew of the system, a blank description usually meant one of two things: either it was too simple to need an explanation, like "strength boost" or "speed boost," something so straightforward it explained itself.

Or its effects were so lousy that it was embarrassed to write them down-like discovering hidden side effects after buying it, bizarre usage restrictions, or extra clauses that made you want to curse.

This ability clearly wasn't the first kind.

"Where's the description?"

He asked with the calm of someone saying, "I'm already prepared for you to screw me over."

[Its effect is as indicated by its name.]

The system's answer left no openings.

"Then explain it properly. What does 'How Many Floors Can a Bag of Rice Climb?' mean? Is it Pain's version, or does it literally just mean carrying a bag of rice?" Yan Si pressed. He had to get this straight. If he spent fifty points and got an ability that really did nothing but let him "carry a bag of rice," that would be ridiculous.

Although he didn't think the system would be that stupid, the possibility wasn't entirely out of the question.

[The former.]

The system gave him a definite answer.

"Feel pain... Pain sharing?"

Yan Si sought confirmation. His fingers tapped lightly against his knee twice, his purple eyes narrowing slightly as his mind began running through possible uses.

"You're not selling one thing under another name, are you? Don't tell me after I buy it that 'How Many Floors Can a Bag of Rice Climb?' means I can summon a bag of rice to throw at people. That would be a joke."

[No, Host.]

A barely perceptible smugness entered the system's voice. [This system has always operated with integrity.]

Yan Si automatically ignored the second half. After thinking for a moment, he asked, "What's the sharing ratio? The range? Distance restrictions? Duration? Any side effects? Who does it work on? How do I trigger it?"

He rattled off a string of questions, speaking several times faster than usual. His purple eyes fixed intently on the translucent panel floating before him. That lazy, indifferent expression vanished completely, replaced by delight.

Fifty points wasn't a small amount, but if I could really use it to have some fun, that would be fantastic~

The system went quiet for two seconds, as though organizing its answer. To a human, that brief stretch of data processing was barely the blink of an eye, but Yan Si was certain it had paused deliberately to make itself look professional.

[The core effect of this ability is to share a specified proportion of the pain experienced by the host with a designated target. There is no distance restriction. It can be activated manually, or automatic activation conditions can be set.] The system's voice was steady and formal.

No distance restriction. Those words made Yan Si raise an eyebrow. In other words, even if the person who hit him was all the way in Kyoto, once the sharing activated, they would still feel every bit of pain they were meant to. That range was a little outrageous.

"A specified proportion? How much, exactly?" he pressed, his fingers stopping their tapping.

[The base sharing ratio is ten percent.]

After saying this, the system paused subtly, then added something that sent the corners of Yan Si's mouth shooting upward.

[It can be increased according to the host's preference, up to one hundred percent, if you wish.]

Well, well.

One hundred percent.

In other words, if I took a knife wound, so would the other person. If I hurt a hundred times as much, so would they.

If I cried, they would have to cry too.

If I curled up in bed waiting for the pain to recede, they would have to find somewhere to hunker down too.

Equal blessings for all, universal harmony. Nobody was getting away.

Ah, those expressions probably weren't meant to be used like that.

Whatever. Who cared?

This ability was pretty great.

Yan Si sat cross-legged on the bed, his hands folded over his knees and his chin resting on their backs. The corners of his mouth rose little by little until his smile could only be called radiant. The blue glow of the system panel reflected in his purple eyes.

Fifty points.

Worth it.

With almost no hesitation, he raised his hand and tapped the translucent purchase button.

The instant his fingertip touched the panel, a faint blue light flashed. His point balance in the System Shop dropped from 306 to 256. At the same time, a notification chimed in his head to announce the deduction-a crisp, pleasing ding-dong.

Immediately afterward, new information flooded into his consciousness.

The ability's detailed description, how to use it, its activation conditions-everything the system had left out of the description field was imprinted directly into his mind.

Having knowledge instilled this way felt strange, as though he had known it all along and had simply remembered it just now.

He closed his eyes and spent a few seconds digesting the information, then opened them again.

The moisture in his purple eyes hadn't quite dried, but his amusement was already close to overflowing.

I really wanted to find someone to beat me up on the first day at Jujutsu High.

Maybe I should go provoke Gojo the kitty?

He flopped onto the bed, pulled the quilt up to his chin, and stared at the ceiling light, mentally planning how to use his new ability.

How to choose the person to share with, what ratio would be appropriate, whether to enable automatic activation, and what conditions to set if he did.

Activate when attacked with Cursed Energy? When touched with malicious intent? Or simply set it to "activate whenever injured"? There were so many ways to play with it. Just thinking about them filled him with anticipation for the future.

He even began to feel a subtle trace of sympathy for the people who might beat him up someday.

Not much. Just a trace.

Mostly, he felt delight and anticipation.