Chapter 3

Ashford University was the most prestigious research university in the state of Meridian, and as a top state institution, its admission cutoffs were never low.

As a full-time undergraduate program, its Semiconductor Engineering and Materials Chemistry departments were flagship majors, staffed by several members of the National Academy of Sciences and ranked among the best in the country.

For most students, getting into a school like Ashford, especially in a state as academically competitive as Meridian, was no small feat. Anthony, though, felt nothing much about it either way.

For reasons of his own, he'd spent the whole of his senior year working part-time jobs and studying on his own at home. It had been brutal, but he'd still shown up on exam day and taken the National Scholastic Exam. Studying entirely on his own, he'd still managed to place in the top fifty in the state—a result that left more than a few of his old classmates stunned when he went back to school to pick up his records.

Not that he thought it was anything worth being proud of. When he really thought about it, his whole life so far had been one long performance as a failure and a clown. Grinding through practice problems like a man possessed, hunting for some sliver of self-worth in a sea of test papers—that had been the only way he knew to prove himself. Studying was the one thing this failure happened to be good at.

Since the apartment he rented sat near the university district, Anthony had walked the whole way to campus with his backpack, both to save money and because he preferred it.

He hadn't opted for on-campus housing, choosing instead to commute. Living in the dorms cost eight hundred dollars a semester—sixteen hundred a year. Not a huge sum for someone with his kind of savings, but Anthony still wanted to hold on to every dollar he could.

After all, the money in his account wasn't entirely his to spend as he pleased.

Once he ended his life, that money would go exactly where it was meant to go.

As for the apartment he currently lived in, it technically belonged to his neighbor, Louise. No matter how many times he'd tried to pay her rent, she'd flatly refused every time.

He hadn't wanted to accept charity from a stranger with no strings attached, but during the period right after he'd dropped out previously, he'd had no one and nowhere to turn. Scraping together enough for meals through odd jobs had already been a struggle, let alone finding somewhere to live.

He'd slept in parks. He'd slept in parking lots. At his lowest point, he'd spent a week sleeping under a highway overpass.

Anthony still remembered it had been raining that particular week. He'd caught a chill and spiked a fever of 39 degrees Celsius, wrapped in a single blanket beneath the overpass, dodging the patrol officers' sweeps the whole time.

He hadn't wanted to be picked up by the police—if he had been, there would have been only two outcomes: getting handed over to social services, or getting sent back to the mother he hadn't seen in years.

As for his mother, back before his good-for-nothing father had gone to prison for murder, Anthony had once overheard him mention her, drunk, in passing. After the divorce, his mother had struggled to raise his older sister alone.

Then one day, someone had tracked the two of them down, claiming they were long-lost blood relatives of the Sinclair family, a wealthy dynasty out of Bayport City, and brought them back into the fold. From that day on, they'd been living a life of wealth.

Every time the topic came up, his piece of trash of a father would grind his teeth in fury—and then Anthony would get the beating that always followed.

Each time, Anthony simply endured it in silence, feeling, oddly enough, more at peace than ever. Knowing that his mother and sister were doing well now was enough for him. He knew that a person like him, even if he crossed paths with them again, would only end up being a source of shame.

He had no intention of burdening them, and certainly no interest in leeching off their newfound wealth. Even as he lay beneath that overpass, burning up with fever and nearly passing out, the thought of asking his mother or sister for help never once crossed his mind.

In the end, it had been Louise, coming home from grocery shopping, who'd stumbled across him and taken him in. He had no idea why she'd done it—though knowing her soft, kind heart, he suspected she'd have scooped up any stray cat or dog she found lying in the street the same way.

Even Anthony had to admit it: Louise was the kindest person he'd ever met in his life. Kind enough to take in and unconditionally look after even someone like him—a walking bad omen, the scum of society.

Once he'd recovered, she'd let him stay in the apartment for free. He'd tried to refuse at first, but once he learned she had a weak heart—a congenital condition—he'd chosen to stay and look after her instead.

Whenever her heart acted up, her face would go pale with pain, and only a fistful of medication at a time could bring it under control.

Because of his Emotional Deficiency Disorder, it was difficult for Anthony to empathize with most people. But even so, he still had a basic sense of right and wrong.

Louise was a good person.

Good people were supposed to live long, healthy lives. They weren't supposed to end up bedridden and dying of illness.

So, he had to—

[Host, look ahead, please.]

Just as Anthony's thoughts began to drift, the System's voice cut in.

He snapped back to attention to find that the crosswalk light ahead had already turned green, and just beyond it stood the gates of Ashford University.

It was the first day of the semester, and students and parents from all corners of the state had gathered here, faces full of both reluctance to part and anticipation for the new chapter ahead.

"Thanks for the heads-up," Anthony said politely to the System, and quickened his pace across the street.

[No, I mean look to your right.]

The System sounded a little put out by how slow he was on the uptake, and spoke up again.

Anthony turned his head slightly, and his eyes landed on a gleaming black stretch Rolls-Royce, its hood ornament—the Flying Lady—announcing just how expensive it was.

A car like that wasn't a common sight at Ashford. Plenty of students and parents nearby were watching it with open curiosity. Their eyes were full of envy and curiosity, wondering who exactly a car like that could possibly be here to pick up.

But after a long while, no one seemed to be getting out.

Anthony spared it a single glance before turning his attention away. "What about it?"

[What do you mean, what about it? You're actually asking me that?]

[That's a Rolls-Royce. Ninety percent of people alive couldn't earn enough in their whole lives to afford so much as one of its hubcaps.]

[All those people back there had their desire meters spike to sixty or seventy percent just from looking at that car for a second. And you're telling me you only registered a 0.1% blip?]

[Do you not have any desire in you at all? Are you even human?]

The System sounded genuinely shaken. As far as it was concerned, every other emotion was secondary. Desire alone was what kept a human being alive.

People lived in this world in order to accomplish one goal after another, chasing down their desires one by one. Desire could be as grand as amassing a fortune and standing at the pinnacle of life, or as small as scrolling through a phone for a few minutes of entertainment. Big or small, it didn't matter.

And it was through fulfilling desire after desire that a person found happiness and a sense of accomplishment.

A person with no happiness in them was nothing more than a hollow shell, even while technically alive.

But as long as a heart kept beating, a person lived off those emotions.

Which was exactly why the System found the current situation such a paradox—satisfying one of those two conditions should, by rights, make the other impossible to achieve.

And yet here it was, witnessing with its own eyes someone living in such a pitiful, tragic way regardless.

Because that morning, when Anthony had brought up the subject of ending his own life, his desire meter had actually spiked all the way to 100%, before dropping right back down to nothing.

At the time, the System had assumed it was some kind of glitch. But now, it was starting to think otherwise—the Host genuinely carried an unusually powerful death wish.

Maybe, for someone with no emotions left to speak of, living was worse than dying.

But—but this System doesn't want to die!

No, this wouldn't do. It had to save itself!

It was August now—it absolutely had to reignite the Host's will to live before the year was out!

But to cure the disease, you first had to understand it.

So before anything else, it needed to figure out exactly why its Host was so set on dying.