Chapter 1

Anthony Seymour heard that woman's voice again.

Faint. Hoarse. As if it had been soaked through with damp fog, reaching his ears only in broken fragments.

"Anthony, I'm sorry. Please forgive Mommy..."

Small for his age, he stood in the doorway, chin tilted up, looking at his mother's reddened eyes, and at his sister standing silently beside her.

They were both dressed and ready to go, a packed bag sitting at their feet.

"Mommy, why are you crying? And where are you and Naomi going? Can't I come too? Daddy always hits me when he's home. It hurts so much..."

His mother's lips trembled. She looked like she was on the verge of tears, and yet she never once knelt down to hold him. Not even once.

"Mommy and Naomi are going somewhere far away. You... you have to be good while we're gone, okay?"

"When are you coming back?"

His mother looked at him with sorrow in her eyes and said, slowly, "We're... not coming back."

He'd been too young, back then. Too young to understand what "not coming back" actually meant. He'd simply stood there, dazed, watching the door swing slowly shut in front of him.

The gap grew narrower and narrower.

His mother's face disappeared. His sister's silhouette disappeared too.

And finally, even the light from the hallway was shut out along with them.

The next instant, the memory tore apart violently, like something ripped by rough hands, and reassembled itself into an entirely different scene.

Cicadas droned outside the window, harsh sunlight spilling across the hallway. A girl walked up to him, textbooks cradled in her arms, her tone light and breezy, as if what she were about to say were the most ordinary thing in the world.

"Anthony, there's something I need to tell you."

"What is it?"

"A senior confessed to me today."

"Did you... say yes to him?"

"Of course. He's not like you. He's handsome, athletic, and popular!"

The girl tilted her head, seeming to finally notice his silence.

"Hey, why are you so quiet? Aren't you supposed to be happy for me? We grew up together."

She suddenly laughed.

The smile was bright—bright enough that it almost hurt to look at.

"Huh? Don't tell me you like me? Are you upset enough to cry?

"Come on, there was never any chance for the two of us anyway."

Anthony didn't answer.

He simply watched the bright, easy smile on her face, and felt, all at once, that whatever fragile feelings he'd kept so carefully hidden away hadn't been worth all that much after all.

The scene shattered again.

This time, it was the sound of a few girls, giggling under their breath.

"Ivy, are you really going to date Anthony?"

"As if. Confessing to him was just a punishment from a game of truth or dare. You don't actually think I like that gloomy guy, do you?"

"Then why do you keep talking to him?"

"Only because he saved me once, and he seemed pretty pathetic wandering around by himself all the time, so I figured I'd throw him a bone. It's just pity, nothing more. Anyway, I'll be mad if anyone brings this up again!"

Anthony stood outside the door, a workbook still in his hands—one he'd never gotten the chance to hand over. The corners of the pages had gone slightly wrinkled in his grip.

All those moments that had once tricked him, in his darker days, into believing he could be treated like anyone else—they had only ever been someone else's pity, handed down without a second thought.

He forced himself not to push the door open. He simply turned and walked away.

Then came the sharp, antiseptic smell of a hospital, flooding into his nose.

In the hospital room, the girl stood beside the bed, a smile on her face that was polite and utterly distant.

"Anthony, thank you for breaking your arm to protect me. As a way of making it up to you, I'll cover all your hospital expenses. But please don't come to the music room anymore after this, okay?"

"Why?"

"You're asking why...?"

The girl seemed to hesitate for a moment, as if she didn't quite know how to put it without sounding cruel.

But in the end, she said it anyway, "Why do you think? Because it's annoying, obviously."

Anthony lay in the hospital bed, his broken arm still wrapped in a thick cast.

When he'd saved her, he hadn't been thinking about being repaid.

But he'd never imagined, either, that the person he'd fought so hard to protect would end up finding even his existence an eyesore.

At the far edge of the memory waited the voice of a police officer.

"Are you Anthony Seymour?"

"Yes, that's me, Officer."

"Your father is currently in custody at the station. We're here to ask you a few questions about his usual behavior."

"What did he do?"

After a brief silence, the officer said, "Murder."

From that day on, the way everyone looked at him changed.

He was no longer just Anthony. He was the continuation of something evil.

"He's a murderer's son!"

"A murderer's son is bound to be a murderer too!"

"That's right! We're just doing what's right, snuffing out an evil seed before it grows!"

"Get out of this school! Give us back our peace!"

"Scum! Trash!"

The sharp insults piled up, layer after layer, like countless hands dragging him down into water with no bottom in sight.

No one cared whether he'd actually done anything wrong.

No one cared, either, that he was, in truth, nothing more than a child who happened to have survived being raised by that murderer.

People needed someone to hate. And Anthony simply happened to be standing there.

Until, at some point, every voice suddenly fell away, far into the distance.

…

When Anthony woke from the tangle of shattered memory fragments, dawn had only just broken.

He sat up slowly, pressing a hand to his throbbing temple, and drew a deep breath.

Another dream. Always the same rotten memories.

Not that anything of that magnitude could shake him anymore. Not even a little.

In the dream, he'd watched himself the way a perfectly rational bystander might—coldly examining the ridiculous, pathetic mess of his first eighteen years.

He looked toward the window. Morning light had just begun to filter in. Anthony didn't go back to sleep. He climbed straight out of bed and dropped to the floor to do push-ups, waking his sluggish muscles from their slumber.

Just then, a cold, mechanical voice sounded in his ear.

[Loading... System binding successful!]

[Please open the interface to view relevant information.]

Anthony, mid-exercise, paused for a fraction of a second but didn't stop moving. He finished five full sets of push-ups without missing a beat, then rose from the floor, breathing lightly.

Once that was done, instead of immediately pulling up the system interface, he stuck to his usual routine—washing up, changing into workout clothes, and leaving his cramped one-room apartment.

A pile of his neighbor's household trash sat across the hallway from his door. Without a second thought, Anthony picked it up on his way out and dropped it in a trash can downstairs.

After a few stretches, he set off at a steady pace along the near-empty street.

He'd kept up this morning jog for years now, for one reason alone—maintaining his physical health, for a reason he found hard to put into words.

As the cold air filled his lungs and his heartbeat quickened, Anthony finally felt something like a sense of being alive.

Not that it mattered anymore what he himself actually thought about any of it.

The System, arriving so late to the party, couldn't stir up so much as a ripple in the still water of his heart.

The reason was simple.

What was the point, at this stage?

If the System had come to him at eleven, when some scrap of hope for the future still lingered in his heart, maybe things would have turned out differently.

But he was eighteen now.

He'd already lost everything, drifting through the world like a hollow shell, repeating the same day over and over.

Anthony didn't know whether this was some kind of punishment from above or something else entirely. He simply endured it alone.

Passing a breakfast stall, he caught the smell of warm oatmeal and fresh muffins steaming from the trays, and he found himself narrowing his eyes at the scent. Seeing that an elderly man was running the stall, he stopped without thinking and decided to grab something to eat.

"One blueberry muffin, one sausage roll, and a carton of orange juice to go."

"That'll be eight dollars, young man."

Just as he reached for his wallet, he heard hurried footsteps rushing up behind him. Before he could even turn around, the impact hit.

Anthony was knocked sideways by a sprinting man. If his frame hadn't been sturdy, he would have gone sprawling. Even so, he felt no anger or irritation—he simply glanced in the direction the man had run off to, got back on his feet, brushed the dust from his clothes, and prepared to pick up his food and go.

"Move! That's a thief! Don't get in the way of an officer doing her job!"

Just as he turned to leave, a breathless female voice rang out from a distance.

Anthony looked up to see a young woman in a police uniform chasing after the fleeing man.

A thief?

It took only a split second of thought before his body was already moving.

Assisting the police and stepping up to help when needed was every citizen's duty. He didn't stop to wonder whether the thief might be carrying anything dangerous, or whether he himself might get hurt—he simply shot forward like an arrow loosed from its string.

The thief wasn't especially fast. Within a matter of seconds, Anthony had closed the distance between them to about a yard.

Then, planting his feet and lunging forward, he tackled the man to the ground in a clean takedown, right as the thief realized, in disbelief, what was happening.

...

"Thanks for helping out!"

The young officer, ponytail bouncing, cuffed the man writhing on the ground and looked up at Anthony.

Upon getting a good look at the young man's face, her eyes lit up slightly. It had been a while since she'd seen someone so clean-cut and handsome, and with such a strong sense of justice and responsibility besides. She couldn't help but warm to him.

Anthony shook his head. "It's not you who should be thanking me. It's the other way around."

"You?"

The officer looked puzzled at his words. Just as she opened her mouth to ask what he meant, he'd already given her a nod, picked up his food and juice, and walked calmly away.

What a strange guy... The officer shook her head, then gave the thief squirming on the ground a kick, arching her brows sharply. "Behave yourself! We'll sort this out at the station!"