I shoved through the underbrush. Every branch, every thorn, every leaf caught at my clothes, tore at my arms, slapped my face in mean succession.

The forest pressed close. Thick with shadow. Too still. Even my own breathing sounded wrong, a trespass that did not belong here. The air seemed to close in, each step a shove through something alive that wanted me gone.

The howls kept rising. Long, low, closer each time.

I turned and caught sight of a crooked tree, its limbs bent toward the earth. Not a great option. Barely even a plan. But it was all I had.

Maybe climbable. Maybe not.

Another howl tore through the dark, louder now, right at the edge of reach. I had seconds, maybe less. The ground already hated me.

I jumped for the lowest branch.

Missed. Hit hard. Pain cracked through my back and rushed up my spine. My lungs folded. For a moment, I forgot how breathing was supposed to work.

Lying there was not an option. Not unless I wanted to become something else’s midnight snack.

I forced myself upright. My legs trembled, unsure they still belonged to me.

“Ugh, come on,” I hissed, a thin mix of pleading and accusation.

I tried again.

Jumped. Grabbed. Missed. Fell again.

This time I hit the ground on my elbow. Skin gashed along my arm and a sharp scrape shot straight into the nerves. My hands told their own story, torn up in a way that suggested I had pressed them against something that never wanted to be touched.

“Who am I kidding?” The words came out cracked and quiet. I peeled dead leaves off my cheek and spat grit from my mouth. Whatever dignity I had was not here anymore.

And then the past pounced.

Kindergarten.

I recalled it clearly. We were playing hide and seek. I saw a tree. Thought it would be the perfect spot. Climbed up, or tried to.

The other kids scrambled up like baby ninjas. Me? I went down fast and loud.

At that moment, Mai was watching. That sharp little laugh of hers, more cutting than amused. Always observing. She did not even wait a second before she started in. Called me weak. Said I would never climb anything in my life. Never stand up for myself. She delivered those lines with the certainty of someone announcing a truth carved into stone.

Now here I was. Flat on my back again. Same dirt, different decade. Same voice, still loud.

“You’re still that kid, huh? Still falling.”

You might think I’m blowing this out of proportion, sprawled on the ground while death draws closer with every breath. Maybe that’s true. Maybe I am. But you have not heard her voice in your head. Not until it presses in close and speaks straight into your memory.

My hand closed into a fist before I knew I was doing it.

Nope. Not this time.

I pushed the thought away and forced myself to stand. Everything hurt. My legs threatened mutiny. My arms shook.

Did not matter. I moved. I had to move. Because those howls? They were not waiting.

Up ahead, a wall of tangled undergrowth. Not exactly a fortress, but I was not out of options. When you were half a heartbeat from getting torn apart by whatever was out here, you stopped being picky.

I hit the dirt, belly down, and crawled into the bushes. Branches pressed into my ribs. Twigs snapped under my weight. Everything stabbed me, and I felt I had broken some forest rule simply by existing. It was cramped, damp, and smelled of rot and old leaves.

The silence between us was not empty. It felt expectant.

Still, if I curled up tight, stayed small enough, quiet enough, maybe they would pass right by.

There was still daylight left. An hour, maybe two, before everything got swallowed by shadow. I decided to wait it out. Let the dark settle in. Try to move again once the light faded and the odds tilted a little less toward death.

So there I stayed, half crumpled, half splayed, leaves jabbing into every soft spot I had. And of course, my brain decided to unbox all its favorite questions.

None of this feels real.

I kept flashing back to the orientation. The System rolled out its rules with that fake smile clarity, treating the process as a friendly introduction. Just a warm up tutorial, then off to the races. Compete. Survive. Level up. A free to play game dressed in prizes and empty promises.

Yeah. Right.

Then suddenly I was back in the now. Half buried in twigs, waiting to die or win.

I did not even know what winning meant anymore. Whatever this was had drifted far from any game. The whole place felt born from grief pressed into every inch of its structure, every part shaped by something someone never learned to face.

And yeah, I should not have been focused. Hyper aware. Counting every second, tracking every sound.

But instead, my mind kept circling the same questions.

Why me? Was it because of the accident? The one that pushed everything to the edge.

Did I die and get rerouted into this place because somebody decided I had more to prove? Was this penance? A second chance hidden beneath pain.

Were there others caught in the same plight as me?

Dead. Dying. Broken in ways no one ever saw.

Tell me this.

Are we just unlucky enough to get conscripted into this cosmic joke?

The thoughts looped. No answers. I shifted my weight an inch at a time, breath shallow.

Then I focused and called up the Player Status.

There it was. My stats. My name. My loadout. It was the one thing that made sense here. The one piece of this nightmare that still followed rules.

And I kept my grip on it.

________________________________________

AKIRA SAKAMOTO (AOI PLAYER)

LEVEL: 2

CLASS: MARKSMAN

SUBCLASS: GUNNER

TITLE: LOVER OF PEACH

MAIN STATS

HEALTH POINTS (HP): 40 — 100%

MANA POINTS (MP): 300 — 100%

STRENGTH (STR): 1

DEXTERITY (DEX): 2+1

WISDOM (WIS): 2

CHARISMA (CHA): 1

INTELLIGENCE (INT): 30

LUCK (LCK): 1

FREE STAT POINTS: 2

OVERALL PRESTIGE (P): +120% (MAX 1000%)

________________________________________

I pressed my lips together and squinted at the screen, as if it might apologize if I glared hard enough.

INT sat at the top. Not just high. Weirdly high.

Okay, so what did that even mean?

Shouldn’t DEX have carried the significance here?

I had thrown myself in front of a moving car to save someone. That was not brain first behavior. That was muscle memory, reflexes, awareness.

I had seen that car coming from a mile out and still made the call. No hesitation. No time to think. Just motion.

That was not INT. That was instinct.

INT felt reserved for a quiet kid holed up in a tower of scrolls, or the party member who memorized every monster’s weakness and rattled off potion recipes that smelled of cough syrup.

I was not that person. Never had been.

I chose Marksman for a reason. Gunner fit.

Guns were precise. Direct. One pull of the trigger solved a problem. I liked control. I liked obedience from tools. Explosions asked nothing, answered nothing, obeyed every command.

So why had the System poured brainpower into me as though I had wandered into an enchanted think tank audition?

Had I messed up the build? Or was the System messing with me again?

Honestly? Didn’t surprise me. Felt personal at this point.

I opened the guide. My eyes caught one of the INT based traits. A strange pull stirred in me. A piece of myself hid in the fine print, waiting to be recognized.

________________________________________

CRAFTSMANSHIP:

Measures skill in crafting and artisanal pursuits. Influences a character’s ability to create weapons, armor, magical items, or other objects of value. Characters with high craftsmanship are skilled artisans and can produce high-quality goods sought after by others.

________________________________________

It struck with no warning. A hammer blow in the dark. My mind locked onto a piece that had been waiting all along—

Craftsmanship. Of course.

Memory rose. Those years in wood and metalworking class, back when school still offered a faint chance of survival. The others drifted through that room and treated the projects as a break from their real lessons. I walked in and felt the world turn steady for once. The tools, the grain in the boards, the heat in the metal. Everything fit. Everything answered.

Wood. Metal. Sawdust in my lungs. That smell of heat and oil and glue that never quite left my clothes.

My hands just knew things. They did not need permission. I would pick up a project, and they got to work before I even had the full plan. It was not about grades. It was about building something that did not exist five minutes ago. Something real that stayed where I left it.

Even when everything else in my life threatened to unravel, I could still shape objects that functioned. What began as a simple elective to escape PE lesson turned into something essential, something I refused to abandon.

I got good. Better than good. Top of the class. I never said it out loud, never needed to. The work spoke for itself.

Problem solving. Fixing. Improvising. It was not just cutting and hammering. It was knowing how to take a mess and make it do something. Be something. Even the failures taught lessons.

I remembered the time I made a figurine of Mai for her last birthday.

A little rough, a little exaggerated around the chest. Okay, maybe a lot exaggerated, but it was funny. Or at least I thought it was.

She did not.

Her expression went cold, then turned nuclear. The figurine hit me dead on the forehead before I even saw her throw it. It left a mark for days. I told everyone I walked into a locker, but that was a lie.

I reached up and pressed the same spot, expecting the dent to remain.

It was not there, of course.

For a moment, the memory carried the impression anyway.

The forest faded into background noise. The branches. The dirt. The cold pressing in.
I was back there again. Back in that loud, ridiculous moment. Her voice. The chaos. The heat behind the embarrassment. The weird warmth under the sting.

And for a second, I almost forgot where I was.

Almost.

The underbrush shifted.

Everything locked up, and my body refused my will.

Branches creaked behind the noise. Something was pushing through.

Then it stepped into view.

A rabbit. Or close enough.

It was larger than I expected, close to the size of a terrier. Ears stood tall and twitchy, tuned to sounds outside my reach. Its fur held a strange shine. Strands caught the fading light and shimmered with an oily rainbow sheen that refused to dull.

Its eyes glowed red. Not violent. Alert. Not the vacant stare an animal should have. Not the cold focus of a predator. The creature watched me with a composure that hinted I was supposed to grasp something still hidden from me.

“Yeah, you’re not exactly petting zoo material,” I said, mostly to myself.

It did not flinch. Did not bolt. Just tilted its head a little, ears still moving.

After a beat of silence, the rabbit stepped forward.

I eased my grip on the ishi, not aiming yet, but ready. My backup plan if everything went sideways.

It moved again. Just a hop closer. Still watching me.

My mind jumped somewhere else. Not defense. Not strategy. Just a question I did not want to say out loud in case it broke the moment.

Could this thing actually be tamable?

That was not a word I ever thought to apply to a glowing rabbit that seemed to have wandered out of a lab accident. But the thought hit hard and stayed with me.

Perhaps it was not here to bite. Perhaps this was one of those rare moments when the world gave instead of took.

I opened my hand. Not fast. Just enough to show my palm. Not a threat. Not a demand. A simple offer.

The rabbit did not back away. It moved again. Another hop. Then another. It stopped just in front of me and sniffed the air. Then, gently, it leaned forward and touched its nose to my skin.

I held my breath. I slowly reached out and touched its fur.

It was soft. Not just nice to the touch. The contact wiped away every horrible thing this forest had thrown at me. I did not get it, but who cared. It felt good.

I breathed again. A grin slipped out before I could stop it.

The rabbit nudged into my hand once, then stayed there. It was still studying me. Still quiet. But there was something in that quiet that felt mutual.

“I guess we’re doing this,” I whispered.

And for the first time since I came into this world, I was not thinking about running, fighting, or staying alive.

I was thinking maybe. Not definitely, not forever, but maybe this place was not just a nightmare.
That it could surprise me. It was not only about making me afraid.

For once, I did not feel like prey. I felt seen.

And believe me, that mattered more than I expected.