By the time Nana Toki walked out, nearly an hour had slipped by like rain on stone.
Jiang Xinli and Bei Yuan had finished earlier, so they left first, shadows easing through the doorway.
Bai Junhui and the head nurse didn’t make trouble; they just told them to come back if anything felt off, no extra strings attached, like a calm river after a storm.
“Why does this plane feel wrong?”
Nana rubbed her temple, a dull swarm buzzing under her skull; a whole day gone, and no main quest.
Was she pressing the wrong buttons?
Ascend to the summit...
With zero abilities, how did anyone climb a peak wrapped in cloud?
Or was this trash System broken?
Trash System: “...”
Could the host not shove the System away every time something went wrong? The System felt very troubled, like a beetle under a boot.
Nana Toki: Not my problem.
“Xixi! (#^.^#)”
While Nana’s headache throbbed like a drum in fog, Luo Shanshan popped up in the vast police hall.
Bags piled around her like little hills, stuffed with bread and cookies, a picnic of comfort.
She spotted Nana from afar and waved, a loyal house dog seeing its owner return. “Here! Over here!”
“Hmm? How much did you buy?”
Fresh from the exam room, Nana didn’t stand on ceremony. She walked over, tore open a loaf, and bit in, like a sparrow pecking at dawn grain.
The disinfectant stench inside had been a sour river in her nose; outside air felt clean as rain on pine.
But.
“This is way too little.”
Nana chewed and eyed the snacks flanking Luo, gaze flat as slate.
Just a few loaves?
They wouldn’t even wedge between teeth, like pebbles on a cliff.
“This is little?”
Luo blinked, surprise rippling; usually, Yu Xi was full on two loaves, soft as a cat in sun.
Now there were five or six, plus random snacks, a small harvest.
How could that be not enough?
She’d planned to eat whatever Yu Xi left, like gleanings after dusk.
“Forget it, let’s hit a buffet.”
Nana walked toward the station doors, bread in hand, steps light as wind. “Let these be a cushion.”
Luo Shanshan: “...”
Who pads a stomach with five or six whole loaves, like stuffing a sack with bricks?
“Dear, are you really that hungry?”
Inside a buffet, Luo stared at the tower of plates around Nana, her voice sharpening like a drawn blade.
Yes.
She felt the Yu Xi before her had swapped species, like a chrysalis cracking wrong.
No, to be precise, swapped into something else.
People at buffets take a little here, a little there, like birds skimming a lake.
Nana was different.
She took a plate here. Another plate there. Yes—plates, broad as shields.
You know how big buffet plates are, moons on a table.
She ate like a hungry ghost reborn, wind howling through an empty granary.
Was this even a person?
A pig, maybe, rooting through abundance.
No, even pigs wouldn’t eat this much, not under a summer sun.
Luo silently slurped rice noodles, then counted the plates before Nana, beads clicking on a string.
One... two... three...
This was the tenth plate, a small mountain.
My heavens, what happened to Yu Xi?
Compared to a normal girl’s appetite, this was frightening, like thunder at noon.
“What kind of look is that?”
Elegantly finishing her eleventh plate, Nana raised her head and dabbed the oil at her lip, calm as a lake at twilight.
“Never seen a pretty girl eat?”
She acted like the ten plates belonged to someone else, a ghost at her shoulder.
Luo Shanshan: “...”
It wasn’t that she’d never seen a pretty girl eat; it was that this pretty girl’s appetite was world-shaking, a tide pulling at the shore.
Of course.
Nana’s usual appetite wasn’t like this; one bowl of rice usually did it, simple as hearth smoke.
Except.
Right.
Ever since she arrived in this plane, she felt possessed by a hungry ghost, a cold hand at her belly.
No matter how much she ate, she wasn’t full.
A prickly hunger kept sliding in, like sand under the skin, restless as cicadas.
Was this an omen?
And then...
[Hidden Prerequisite Task 2: Wait]
[Default Accepted]
[Task Description: Literal meaning]
Reading that, Nana’s urge to drag the damned System out and beat it grew like thunderheads, ink spreading in the sky.
She’d finished the previous body-check prerequisite. She’d expected a hidden task to pop, a pebble to toss into time.
Something to kill the hours.
Who knew the soul-dead System would push a brain-dead prerequisite 2.0 instead, like reheated porridge.
System: “...” Host, could you follow the script.
No.
Host, you can’t be this willful. The System is very troubled, like a paper boat in rapids!
Not my business.
System: “...”
Even so, Nana did as told, stubborn as a pine on a cliff.
After eating and drinking her fill, she sat in a buffet chair and fixed her gaze on the kitchen’s chef, a hawk watching a field.
Most of the buffet trays were picked clean—mostly by her—yet her stomach still felt hollow, a cave with wind.
Luo suspected that if swallowing a person were possible, Yu Xi might try, teeth like white shells.
The chef felt her stare prickle like frost. Soon, he found an excuse, asked the boss for leave, and drifted home like smoke.
The boss was happy to agree.
After all.
With no chef and the food gone, they could close early, shutters falling like dusk.
No more losing money.
A win for everyone, bell quiet at the door.
And so.
The buffet shut its doors ahead of time, moon not yet risen.
Nana Toki: “...”
Luo Shanshan: “...”
They stood outside, facing the early-closed sign, melancholy pooling like evening rain.
Life was too hard, a stone in the shoe.
Head home, wash up, sleep. Tomorrow, continue hunting for the heroine, like following a firefly.
System: “...”
Host, could you not raise the plane’s difficulty on purpose? The System is very troubled, a sparrow in a storm.
Nana bristled at that, thorns out.
You won’t let me do this or that—why not go die?
System: “...”
Having just survived one plane, the System suddenly understood the feeling of elderly parents with a rebellious daughter, winter at the window.
It must be exactly like this.
