Owl

Hello everyone to my new series! Please read this!

First, this series doesn't play in any specific country, so don't trouble yourself with details, okay?~

Second, there is mature content later on, but only in Arc 3. Be warned! Mature content is from first-person view, as well!

Third, don't take this story too seriously. It's meant to be fun, and Riku does give a lot of weird comments. This story is filled with Anime Logic and plot devices - it's pure fluff and nonsense!

Have fun!

When people get a system in a webnovel - after transmigrating or being reincarnated or sometimes at random - they always go ‘Oh wow, this is so useful!’ and shit. Maybe some of them find it creepy. They try it out, use it to become overpowered, yada yada.
I, on the other hand, heavily questioned my consumption of caffeine.

I should have listened to my mum, was my thought. That was one energy drink too much. Or two. Or maybe five.
Anyway, I found the display-like apparition in my sight highly abnormal. It had a menu button that was softly blinking at the lower edge of my sight, along with a yellow pop-up in the middle that said [Booting...] and vanished automatically after a few seconds.

Faced with this unnatural happening, my reaction was simple:
I should probably go to sleep instead of just taking a nap. Yep, sleep sounded great. A nice long sleep to let my system do away with the overdose.

I looked at my clock, which read that it was the middle of the night anyway, stretched, and turned over in my bed.
When I closed my eyes, the weird button was gone, so that was perfect and I didn't need to worry about it.

In the morning, everything would be normal again.

Except it wasn’t.

With my head leaning into my hands, I took a deep breath before fishing for my phone.
I hadn’t even gotten out of bed, just opened my eyes and seen that dreaded menu button.

“‘Seeing… game… system’ … Eh, I don’t mean novels… I need…”
Mumbling to myself, I scrolled through the search results, opening pages that looked relevant before falling back into my bed with a groan.
“I want actual medical problems that could cause this, not 8th graders trying to sound mysterious!”

I stared at my ceiling. The menu button was still blinking.
Now then, how do people in stories open those up? If I remember right...

“Menu”, I said out loud with a monotone voice. A slightly translucent window opened. On the upper half, I could see that there were tabs to switch through. The first one was open.
The right side was still an empty template but the left half was filled with names and small images. The list scrolled down and up as I wanted it to, which wasn’t too weird, because that was my hallucination so of course, it should obey me.

I found pretty much everyone I knew in there - ordered nicely in small sections. The uppermost, family, was displaying my parents and three siblings. My - admittedly - beautiful older sister, my - annoyingly - talented older brother and the little brat of a little sister were all listed. I scrolled to find farther family such as cousins, scrolled to find my friends, scrolled to find acquaintances, scrolled to find enemies…

“Augh!” I sat up in shock, then hurriedly slapped my hands in front of my mouth and waited. No one reacted, thankfully, which meant that none of my siblings had heard me.
The walls were somewhat thick and while I didn’t think that my brother was in his room this late in the morning - almost noon -, I still didn’t want him to come barging in, just because I had screamed after seeing something awkward.

The lowest section was lovingly titled ‘Love Interests’. Now I’m not saying I didn’t know which people were catching my eye, but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t something I would rather push to the back of my mind.

Since all of them were male.

As I might mention, just like I.
The only one in my family who knew was my sister, and only because I could gauge her reaction. She was a helpless fujoshi¹Meaning 'rotten girl', describes women that enjoy BL, after all. Other than her, I had always kept my mouth shut warily, too scared to reveal it even to my family.

I closed the menu without further exploring the tab, rubbing over my eyes.

“Do I have some kinda brain tumor growing”, I whispered before slipping off my bed and loafing my way to my sister’s room.
I knocked - for my own safety. She didn’t mind me walking in, but I minded walking into yaoi anime running on her rather large TV. At least she kept headphones on when watching it.

“Yep”, her voice sounded from inside and I walked in. On her laptop, nice. No weird stuff to see.
She grinned. “Ah, Riku. No yaoi today.”
Nice. Thanks for telling me.

I closed the door behind me and plopped on the end of her bed.

My elder sister had luscious, blonde locks falling down her back and fair skin. Added to that were chestnut eyes with long, dark eyelashes. She was in her homewear; a pair of shorts and a top, accentuating her curvy body.

It made me grumpy. Genes were too nice to her. My eyes were the same colour, but the colour looked dull on me. And the locks that curled my short brown hair made it messy, if anything.

Haru’s white teeth showed between her red lips as she grinned. “What can your lovely elder sister help you with?”
“I think I’ve got a brain tumor or something.”
“Tell me something I don’t know?”

I glared at her. “I’m serious for once. I’ve got, like, a game UI in my vision.”
She laughed. Loudly. “What! You’ve turned into a protagonist! Does that mean I’ll die as cannonfodder?”
Her snickering lasted for a while until she noticed I looked genuinely troubled. Only then did her laughing slowly stop.

“I mean it. It’s been there ever since my nap yesterday. I don’t think I’ve taken any drugs, so since I’m not in an intoxicated state, it’s probably my brain?”

I wouldn’t joke about that type of thing - not for longer than a second. It was enough for her to know I wasn’t joking, moreover, I felt like crying so that was probably showing on my face.

She sat up, taking my hand with a scrunched brow. “This isn’t funny.”
“Wish I was joking. It’s kinda scary.”
Very, actually, but I wouldn’t say that out loud. Haru began chewing on her lip. “Maybe something was wrong with your stupid energy drinks. Some sort of chemical that got mixed in and causes hallucinations? You should go for a checkup.”

I thought about it. A valid course of action. “Good idea. I’ll call to make an appointment. Thanks.”
“Hey, wait, what does it look like?”
...She was curious, after all.

I glared at her for a moment and she winked at me.
“Try to stay calm until you know whether it’s something bad. Isn’t it kind of funny?”

Welllll, it was interesting, I can admit that. She continued looking at me, so I grumpily replied.

“I dunno, I’ve got an album full of people I know in a screen.” “Have you tried... clicking at the people?”
“Nah, not yet.”
The easy conversation helped ease my hurried heartbeat.

I tried doing just that, though. Opened up the menu - I just thought about opening it this time - and looked at Haru’s entry. Staring at it made it appear on the right side, displaying info in the template.

“Ooh”, I hummed, blinking. Part of the template was taken up by a full body image of her, the rest displayed information. I lifted my eyebrows.
Right below her image was a short description, saying [College student. Very popular due to her sunny disposition and looks, but currently uninterested in relationships. Part of a Fujoshi club.]

My eyes went farther right, reading.

“Are you 1,78?” “Yeah?” “68 kilos?” “...” “Shoe size…” “Hey! What the fuck!”
I most certainly didn’t know my sister’s data that well. I had rough estimates, but not the exact numbers. I read on.

“Likes, dislikes, relationship status with me - well, obviously my sister - and lots of other stuff. Also… some kinda bar?” I squinted at it. A short information window popped up.

“98/100. The love of a sister. For her brother, she would give up her life, though she would never admit to it. Her family is her most important treasure.”

My eyes flicked over to the curious face of my sister.
“What? What else is there?”
“...Uhm.” I awkwardly swallowed, feeling embarrassed. I only gave half the info. “Some bar showing numbers. Reminds me of relationship points.”

Hmm, it would be nice if that info was correct. Embarrassing, but nice.

“That’s interesting and creepy. Why do you know my shoe size? Curious much?”
“I don’t know it! Don’t ask me where that info is from!”
I glared at her, then huffed and hurried out of the room. I had to make an appointment to visit a doctor, soon.