Chapter 1

“So you’ve been pretending to be clueless all along?”

I lay in a pool of blood, staring at Yuna Cooper in disbelief.

She had an arm around Joshua Cook, her dark eyes filled with coldness.

“That’s right. How else was I supposed to make you feel sorry for me and stay?

“But I should still thank you for telling me about the System. Otherwise, I never would have known how to save Joshua.”

Joshua stood beside her, his face pale.

He was Yuna’s first love. He had leukemia and was fighting cancer all this time.

Yuna once told me, “His illness has nothing to do with me. We broke up a long time ago.”

But only now did I realize that she had begun planning this three years ago to save him.

A tearing pain suddenly ripped through my body. It was nothing like the pain from the accident.

It was the System punishing me.

I had been trying to win Yuna over all this time. If she did not love me, I would be punished.

“It hurts…”

I could not stop myself from crying out.

I had endured this agony, like being torn apart by wild horses, countless times, yet I could never get used to it.

“Does it really hurt that badly?”

Yuna looked at me.

“Can’t people chosen by the System just have the System turn off the pain?”

Her careless expression reminded me of the days when we were happy together.

Back then, her eyes held nothing but me.

I thought I had found true love, so I told her about the System.

But I never told her that I would be punished, because I was afraid she would worry.

The pain kept intensifying until I nearly ground my teeth to pieces.

“Stop talking!”

Every word she said made the pain worse.

Joshua suddenly walked over and took my hand.

“Finn, does it really hurt that much?”

“Yuna, maybe we shouldn’t seek immortality after all. It’s okay if I die.”

“No!”

Yuna immediately shut the idea down, looking at Joshua with heartbreak in her eyes. “Joshua, you’re not like him. He’s someone chosen by the System. Even if he dies, he can return to his original world.

“But if you die, you’ll truly be gone. You don’t need to feel sorry for him.”

Out of Yuna’s sight, Joshua shot me a smug look and whispered, “You know, I told Yuna that whenever she said she didn’t love you, it would hurt you terribly. Once she found out, she kept saying it.

“She doesn’t love you. She only loves me. After all, I’m the protagonist of this world.”

The moment he finished speaking, Yuna pulled him into her arms.

She looked at him with extraordinary tenderness.

“I’ve bought the villa in Southridge. It’ll be our home after we get married.”

I once told Yuna that I had no parents or home in my original world. All I had ever wanted was a home of my own.

She bought me a villa. It was the very same one in Southridge.

I poured my heart into decorating it alone, and I had finally been able to move in this year.

But now, she wanted me dead.

My hand fell limply to the ground as I said to the System, “I’ve finally found you new hosts, and there are two of them. Can you let me go now?”