Wei Hao stopped in front of Wen Jiayi like Yan Ye wasn't there.
"Ms. Wen!" Bright smile. Loud voice. The kind of greeting designed to be noticed by everyone within ten meters. "What a coincidence! I didn't expect to see you here."
He didn't glance at Yan Ye. Not once. Not even the automatic look people give strangers who happen to be standing next to the person they're talking to.
Wen Jiayi's expression didn't change. Not cold. Just flat.
"Wei Hao."
Two words. No smile. No returned enthusiasm.
If Wei Hao noticed, he didn't show it. He stepped closer, hands in his pockets, chin tilted up like always. Behind him, Luo Meiyin had stopped walking. She stood a few steps back, shopping bags hanging from both arms, eyes moving between Wen Jiayi and the situation with the kind of alertness that didn't match her relaxed posture.
"Are you here shopping alone? If you need recommendations, I know this district pretty well. There's this great—"
"I'm not alone."
Short. Final. She didn't gesture toward Yan Ye. Didn't need to.
Wei Hao's smile flickered. For the first time, his eyes moved to the left.
To Yan Ye.
The flicker lasted about half a second. Recognition. Processing. Then a look that clearly said why are you here without bothering to ask it out loud.
He turned back to Wen Jiayi.
"Oh, is this a tutoring thing? That's really dedicated of you, Ms. Wen. On a weekend and everything."
The tone was friendly. The implication wasn't.
Wen Jiayi didn't answer.
The silence stretched. Wei Hao's smile was still there but it had hardened around the edges. His eyes darted toward the bags in Yan Ye's hands, then the café bag, then back to Wen Jiayi.
Yan Ye watched all of this from about thirty centimeters above Wei Hao's head.
He didn't say anything. Didn't need to. He just took one step forward. Casual. Not aggressive. The kind of step you take when you're shifting your weight.
Except that step put him directly in front of Wei Hao.
And directly in front of Wei Hao meant directly above him.
185 centimeters. 178 kilograms. Looking down.
Wei Hao looked up.
The smile died.
It wasn't dramatic. No clenched fists. No threats. No words. Just a short kid suddenly realizing that the person he'd been ignoring took up a lot more space than expected. Yan Ye's shadow covered him completely. The size difference, which had been easy to ignore from a distance, became impossible to miss at arm's length.
Wei Hao's shoulders pulled inward. Barely visible. But there.
"We should get going," Wei Hao said. Not to anyone in particular. His voice was half a note higher than before.
He turned and walked away. Fast. Not running. But fast.
Luo Meiyin watched him go. Then her eyes moved to Wen Jiayi. Brief. Tight. Not pleased.
She adjusted her shopping bags and followed Wei Hao without a word.
Silence.
Yan Ye and Wen Jiayi stood there for about three seconds.
Then he said it.
"He looks exactly like Lord Farquaad."
Her composure cracked. Not slowly. Instantly. She turned away, pressed her hand over her mouth, and her shoulders started shaking.
"The height. The chin. The outfit that costs more than the personality."
She made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a wheeze.
"Stop."
"If he had a taller mirror he'd have seen it by now."
She lost it. Full. The hand over her mouth wasn't enough anymore. She bent forward slightly, laughing in that silent, breathless way where no sound comes out but the whole body moves.
He stood there watching her laugh and felt something warm and stupid settle behind his ribs.
Worth it.
They walked the rest of the district in a different gear. Lighter. She made a joke about the confrontation. He responded. She bumped his arm once while pointing at something and didn't move away after. He noticed. Didn't say anything.
Near the east exit she checked the time.
"I should head back."
"Yeah. Me too."
They stood near the ETT platform. Evening light. The district shifting into nighttime mode, crystals in the lamp posts warming up.
"Thank you for today," she said. "For the gift. And for..." She glanced in the direction Wei Hao had disappeared. "That."
"I didn't do anything. I just stood there."
"You stood there very effectively."
She booked an ETT. The vehicle descended. She climbed in, turned, and looked at him. Green eyes. Evening light. The Frieren bag in her lap.
"See you Monday."
"See you Monday."
The door closed. The ETT lifted and curved into the sky between the trees.
He watched it go.
Then the warmth faded.
Wei Hao.
That look when he'd stared up. That wasn't surprise. That was humiliation. And Wei Hao didn't seem like the type to forget it.
And Luo Meiyin. That look she'd given Wen Jiayi.
She teaches my class. He's in my class. Both of them saw me with Wen Jiayi on a Saturday. Both of them left feeling some type of way about it.
My instincts are telling me this isn't going to stay in the shopping district.
He booked his own ETT. Climbed in. Leaned back.
Deal with it when it comes. Right now: quest.
The apartment was quiet. He changed into the training clothes Wen Jiayi had bought. Compression shirt. Proper pants. Laid out the mat.
Push-ups on an actual surface instead of carpet. Sit-ups without his spine grinding against the floor. Small difference. Big improvement.
He finished by 22:15. The run from earlier that morning had already covered the distance.
Daily Quest: All conditions met.Awaiting reset for calculation.
Dinner was a delivery bowl. Ate on the sofa. Tried to settle into the cushions the way he had after the FL's visit on Thursday.
Something was off.
The sofa was the same. The cushions were the same. But that faint warmth from Thursday night, the one that had wrapped around him as he fell asleep, was gone. He shifted. Tried the other end. Nothing.
Whatever. It was probably just the cleaning products.
He went over a mental to-do list for tomorrow.
Buy real clothes. Set up the bedroom. Stop sleeping on this sofa. Read the dungeon materials Wen Jiayi gave me.
Midnight. Rewards. +0.25 STR/AGI/PHY. +0.20 DEF. 600 SP. Body Recovery.
The warmth settled. Familiar now.
Sleep.
Sunday.
He woke up at 10:14 and didn't feel guilty about it.
The apartment was bright. Late morning sun cutting across the living room.He changed into the training clothes, rolled out the mat, and did fifty of each exercise. Then sat on the sofa doing nothing for twenty minutes.
Scrolled his phone. Read two chapters of the chef novel he'd found on Thursday. Existed as a human being without something trying to kill him or train him.
Then his stomach started making demands.
He opened PortalHaul. Scrolled past the junk food recommendations that Big Ye's algorithm still pushed. Found the prepared meals section. Stopped.
I've been ordering every single meal since I got here.
On Earth, his cooking experience was instant noodles, scrambled eggs, and one attempt at fried rice that his roommate still brought up at parties. But on Earth he couldn't afford ingredients worth cooking with. Here he had billions sitting in an account doing nothing.
Might as well learn. I have the money. I have the kitchen. And I've been eating like a king without lifting a finger. I should have a little fun.
He switched to a raw ingredients supplier. GreenVault Market. Specialized in fresh dungeon-sourced produce.
One riverfin fillet from the Jade Current. Silver ginger. Fresh spirit herbs. Crystal salt. Multigrain rice. Dew citrus extract.
Total: 34,000¥.
Portal delivery. Three minutes. Golden symbols on the counter. Box appeared.
The riverfin was cold and faintly luminescent. The vegetables were so green they looked fake.
Steamed fish. How hard can it be?
The knife was buried in a drawer under three spatulas. Dull enough to spread butter with. His cuts were ugly. Ginger in uneven slices. Vegetables in chunks.
The fish was different. Dense. Firm. When he sliced wrong on the first try, the flesh separated cleanly along natural fault lines in the muscle.
Dungeon fish has better structural integrity than me.
Steam. Pot. Rack. Fish on the rack with ginger and citrus. Cover.
Stir-fried vegetables with crystal salt. The salt dissolved into a shimmer on the oil surface before disappearing. The vegetables hissed.
Rice cooker handled itself.
Twenty minutes. One plate.
It didn't look like restaurant food. Overcooked on one edge. Vegetables cut uneven. Rice was fine because the machine did the work.
But it was food. That he made. In a kitchen. Like a person.
He set the plate on the table and looked at it for a second.
[Skill Learned]
Novice Chef — Lv.1 Improves cooking precision, ingredient handling, and heat management.
He stared at the screen.
His brain stopped for a full two seconds.
Then it restarted at triple speed.
Cooking counts. Cooking actually counts.
Then immediately:
Running gives skills. Push-ups give skills. Sit-ups, squats, breathing. And now cooking.
Why the hell didn't I try other things sooner? I've been in this world for three days and all I've done is exercise and eat. I could have been reading, drawing, swimming, doing literally anything, and every single one of those might have generated a skill.
I'm an idiot.
Before the self-loathing could fully settle, a second notification appeared. Different from anything he'd seen before.
[Condition met: 10 skills acquired.]
His chopsticks hit the plate.
[System Evolution initiated.]
The pale blue interface flickered. Not the normal flicker of a notification. A deep, structural pulse. Like the entire system had taken a breath.
Then the screen went dark.
And something new began to load.