Morning sunlight slipped through a gap in the curtains, forming a shaft of light that was not particularly harsh and falling quietly across the dormitory floor.
Li Shunchen lay flat on his not-so-soft single bed, staring blankly at the fine cracks in the ceiling as he calmly reflected on why Masamichi Yaga had made such a fuss last night, even resorting to threats of force to make him take time off.
In this quiet moment alone, his rapidly working mind gradually sorted through his thoughts. It was probably because, deep down, he still had not truly adjusted to this very early point in time, when "there was still time to change everything."
After that long, despairing simulation, he had almost instinctively, naturally carried the extreme pressure of its later stages-"fighting for every second, constantly racing against death"-straight into his present reality. He was too tightly wound, like a bowstring that could snap at any moment.
But within Li Shunchen's own cold logic, he did not actually see anything wrong with pushing himself to such extremes.
Because he understood a cruel truth better than anyone: unlike the simulator, where failure simply meant starting over, in the reality he now inhabited, reaching a bad ending or losing someone close to him meant the absolute end. There would be no loading a save and starting again, no second chance to change things.
Precisely because he had witnessed hell, he cherished every minute and second of reality with an almost pathological intensity.
"Whew..." Li Shunchen let out a long breath and raised a hand, gently pressing its cool back against his cheek. Feeling the warmth of this young body, he murmured to himself.
"Looks like I'll need to use 'that' a little around them from now on... at least on the surface, I need