Chapter 2: The Room That Knew Him

Chapter 2: The Room That Knew Him

He loosened his grip on the sink. The stranger’s fingers were long and bloodless, with a signet ring hanging loose around one of them.

"Anyone but him," he said again.

The boy in the mirror moved his mouth at the same time.

"Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me."

His new voice cracked halfway through. He stopped, partly because talking hurt and partly because there were apparently worse things than dying alone in an apartment. Being overheard confessing that the body in the bathroom was not yours ranked fairly high.

His chest tightened. He let go of the sink long enough to press a hand against it. The pain here was different, lower down, but he could still remember trying to reach that phone.

But people who died in stories were supposed to wake up as princes. Heroes. At minimum, someone with an absurd bloodline and a dragon sleeping under the family estate.

Of course I didn’t get the dragon. I got the cautionary tale.

He laughed once, then doubled over the basin coughing.

For a few seconds, the absurd part almost won. Dale could keep his presentation. There would be no 7:45 call, no rent renewal, no smiling while someone handed him work they planned to take credit for. He was free of all of it.

He wanted to sleep late, order a proper breakfast, and decide what to do afterward. There were places in this world he’d spent hours exploring through a screen. He could see them himself now, if he ever got well enough to travel. Even staying home sounded wonderful, provided he had the money to enjoy it and nobody waiting to drag him back to work.

Then he looked up and saw Silas Rooke again.

The Guaranteed-Death Young Master.

His knees gave out. He slid down the wall and sat on the bathroom floor.

Those deaths were supposed to happen later. Silas always had time to provoke somebody first. He tried to remember an exception, a line in a guide he might have skipped.

No route opened with Silas dying quietly in his room seven days before the entrance ceremony.

The game had never shown him sick, either. This body struggled to fill its lungs. Something beneath his ribs ached whenever he shifted, and standing for a minute had left sweat cooling down his back.

What else had the game left out?

His gaze moved toward the main room, where the empty vial still lay on the rug.

Was it that?

He had no idea what belonged in a mana supplement. For all he knew, the bottle had been keeping this body alive. He would have to find out before he swallowed anything else.

Then a memory hit him.

A girl stepping around him in a corridor without lifting her eyes. Books jumping from another student’s arms and landing open on wet stone. A boy gathering practice weights while an invisible force knocked them away again.

The third time had been funny.

Silas felt the dead boy’s satisfaction warm his chest. He barely reached the toilet before his stomach cramped, though there was nothing in it to bring up.

"Jesus Christ."

He stayed there until the nausea eased. Another memory followed: the original Silas rehearsing something in a mirror, lowering his voice until it sounded like one of the great heirs. He had bought a similar coat, too.

Silas almost felt sorry for him. Then he remembered the books lying open in the water.

You could have just worn the fucking coat.

He rinsed his mouth. The old boy’s embarrassment lingered, tangled up with things Silas would rather not remember enjoying.

Going outside was a terrible idea. The original had collected enemies, and one of them might already have killed this body. Worse, this world knew that souls could be displaced or replaced. Suspected possessors were detained, examined by clergy, and usually executed once everyone important felt sufficiently certain.

If Silas Rooke walked outside apologizing to people and behaving like a decent human being, someone would notice.

So I survive by pretending to be an asshole.

He rubbed both hands over his face. Fantastic.

He got up to check the lock.

With his back to the main room, Silas suddenly knew where everything was.

The empty vial lay behind him, slightly to the left. The desk chair had been pulled out at an angle. Water gathered at the kitchenette faucet and dropped into the sink. The delivery compartment beside the entrance was empty.

He spun around. Nobody was there.

The knowledge remained when he closed his eyes. He crossed the studio without looking and touched the chair on his first try. He could feel the walls, the window, the folded towel in the bathroom, even the drawer beneath the desk that did not close properly.

Beyond the entrance was blank. His awareness ended at the threshold.

He had stopped shaking somewhere along the way. His breathing had steadied too. The pain remained, but the few steps back to the bed no longer felt like a negotiation.

Silas sat down and reached for an explanation.

[STATUS]

[Name: Silas Rooke | Age: 17 | Race: Human]

[Combat Rank: Rank One – Middle]

[Innate Soul Talent: The Shut-In Young Master — SSS / Singularity]

[Public Talent Record: Remote Grasp — C / Common]

[STR 16 | VIT 7 | AGI 17]

[PER 15 | WIL 19 | MANA 21]

[Condition: Severe systemic damage]

[Foreign residue: Unidentified]

[Recovery: Unstable]

[Residence: Registered and active]

Vitality seven explained plenty. An average unranked adult had ten. Rank One Middle was survivable, but embarrassing for a Crownless student.

The foreign residue could wait until he had something better than guesses. His attention kept returning to the line above his public Talent.

Fewer than a dozen known people carried SSS-Rank Talents. They were national guardians, great heirs, and monsters who happened to possess citizenship. He had never heard of Singularity at all.

He questioned the Talent one function at a time. The entire studio had been registered as his residence. Inside it, his physical performance and Talent output doubled. Healing, stamina, mental recovery, and mana regeneration ran at twice their normal speed. The room could repair ordinary damage by consuming his mana. Anyone who crossed the threshold could be appraised, and their Soul Talent recorded into an available temporary slot without alerting them.

He looked around the studio again. He could recover here and train here, but the academy would eventually expect him somewhere else.

Silas checked whether it could be moved.

[RESIDENCE REASSIGNMENT RITE]

[Primary Sacrificial Medium: One intact heart from an SSS-Rank Soul Talent bearer]

[Secondary Medium: Blood of the residence owner]

[Requirement: Complete the designation rite within the proposed residence]

"Oh, fuck off."

Perhaps a dozen qualifying people existed. Getting close enough to ask for one of their hearts would solve his housing problem by getting him killed somewhere else.

This room was home, then.

Another panel appeared.

[TEMPORARY TALENT SLOT — 1/1]

[Talent: Remote Grasp — C / Common]

[Assimilation: 6%]

[Remaining Duration: 7 days]

[Restriction: Temporary copy usable only within the registered residence]

[At 100% Assimilation]

[Talent becomes permanent]

[External use becomes possible]

[Temporary slot is released]

The original’s Talent had shattered when he died. The room had caught the remaining imprint before it disappeared.

Six percent. The body remembered using Remote Grasp for two years, mostly to shove people and snatch things from their hands.

Please tell me I can do better than you did.

The copy would disappear in seven days. The official story also began in seven days.

If he failed, he would enter it sick, under-ranked, publicly hated, and without a Talent he could actually use.

Silas looked at the locked door, then at the vial on the rug.

Stay inside. Learn Remote Grasp. Try not to die again.

For the next seven days, that was enough.