It took a few moments before I realized what had just happened. I had just transmigrated Cheng Ye after he accepted the first task, so naturally, he had been sent to his new body. He wasn't dead or disintegrated, and I didn't fail my job. I felt glad nobody had been there to see me panic.
Cheng Ye opened his eyes in a school setting. Urgh. He had already gone on without me, didn't he? I wasn't able to explain the task to him yet, but it couldn't be helped. Cheng Ye seemed to have already become comfortable in his new environment. Since it was his first task, I had taken the extra time and liberty to request him a world with a side character with the same name as he did. Maybe that helped.
He was talking to a silver haired beauty with wavy hair and blue eyes. She had an elegant demeanor and a sweet smile. She was probably the daughter of some rich family, I deduced. There was also a very handsome boy who looked as though he could be a male lead. I looked for their names on my papers, but they weren't there like they were supposed to. I flipped through my papers frantically. Yep, my mistake. I had forgotten to print out the world details.
I eyed the two. It looked like Cheng Ye was pretty busy anyway. I should go and come back after I print my files. Without them I couldn't explain Cheng Ye's task to him. At that, I ended the connection and appeared back in the office. It should be okay to leave my host alone for a couple of hours. I hoped he wouldn't mess up. It would suck having to work overtime cleaning up after his corpse.
When Cheng Ye died, he never imagined he would receive a system.
It was a very stupid death. He didn't die saving a cute girl, nor did he die squished by a truck. No, he was pretty sure he died after he fell off the stairs and accidentally fell into a lake. Even more stupid was the fact that Cheng Ye knew how to swim, but he didn't remember trying to swim his way out. He could only remember the tight pressure on his lungs filling up with water, the desperation and the pretty sunlight shining on his eyes as he just... forgot to swim at that moment.
His system had a cold, robotic, feminine voice. The voice seemed to be originating straight from his brain- he couldn't pinpoint where it was coming from. It sounded strict, reminding him of his high school math teacher. If his system was alive, she would be a middle-aged lady with glasses and office clothes, he thought to himself.
He poked around the space, looking for her, but as expected, he couldn't see her anywhere. The entire space was mostly white with some faint shades of color. The illumination seemed to be coming down from the blank sky. It was a very weird place, and it was around three or four times bigger than his tiny complex in the city, though maybe that was to be expected- it wouldn't be easy to have a space smaller than a one-man flat in China. He bumped into one of the walls. They were smooth and hard, like glass.
"Starting your first task, Host, please get ready." Cheng Ye heard the system's strict voice again.
He ignored it and continued to observe the space. The space wasn't completely white, he found. For instance, there was a small black dot on the ground. He tapped it curiously, but was surprised to find he couldn't pull his hand away. The dot sucked in his palm, as if it was some kind of powerful magnet. Cheng Ye, suddenly worried, tugged on his palm, trying to tear it away from the spot.
"Argh!" He yelled as he tried to pull his hand free. Luckily, he succeeded. Unfortunately, since all that momentum had to go somewhere, he ended up rolling on the ground and crashed into a wall. His hand hurt as if it was torn apart. Tired, Cheng Ye panted and swept back the front of his hair with his hand, when he realized it was sticky. Oh. He was bleeding.
Cheng Ye looked at his hand, wondering why he was bleeding. He was already dead, after all. Usually in Chinese quick transmigration novels, before the protagonist transmigrated into a new body, they were in some sort of spirit form. Cheng Ye wasn't sure if spirit forms could bleed to death, or if he even was in a spirit form. He felt pretty solid.
Cheng Ye dug around in his pockets to find the wooden stick of the ice cream bar he was eating when he died. Now, why was that with him? And clothes. Why did he still have his clothes? How exactly did this transmigrate thing work?
Cheng Ye decided to just ignore all those details and went back to the small black spot in the ground. No matter what it was, it was pretty dangerous. Cheng Ye had assumed the space he was in was safe- like in all those other webnovels he had read before he died. He had assumed it was his golden finger. Sadly, that didn't seem to be the case. He poked the spot again with the ice cream bar stick. The spot sucked the stick into itself like a black hole.
"Oooooh," Cheng Ye commented as the stick turned into small, fine dust particles. Interesting.
"Get awa-"
Now, was that his system's voice? It was different from before, not cold, but surprised. Cheng Ye, startled, let out a muffled yelp, surprised as well. He was shining! It was as if someone had photo-shopped him wrong.
"Ahhhhhh!
"Stop yelling, Student Cheng Ye!" Cheng Ye heard someone snap. "You are disrupting the class!"
Cheng Ye stopped yelling and looked around, dumbfounded. He was... in the middle of a school? He tried to stand up, but it was much more difficult than he had envisioned. Cheng Ye looked down at his pudgy hands and immediately felt reality slap him in the face.
"I'm a fatty?" He said in disbelief.
The entire class laughed.
The teacher coughed, not sounding at all pleased. "Ahem, we shall continue the lesson. Student Cheng Ye, please stay silent."
But Cheng Ye couldn't hear anything she said. So it wasn't just a dream. In his old world, though he wasn't a looker, he wasn't fat. He barely had enough money to buy a cup of instant ramen for his meals, so how could he become fat? This must mean the system really existed. And he was transmigrated to another world!
"System?" He called out. "Side Character Transmigration System, can you explain what's going on?"
The class laughed again.
"Woo, Cheng Ye! Stop dreaming!" A nearby student called out.
"I always knew he was simple, I just never thought that after following Zhang Anqi, he would become even more simple!" Someone snickered. Cheng Ye wondered what that meant. It didn't sound like a very friendly statement.
"Student Cheng Ye!" The teacher exploded. Uh oh, Cheng Ye thought. Maybe he shouldn't have shouted.
But at that very second, the bell rang.
It had been a very long time since he had last gone to school, but Cheng Ye instantly felt relieved at the familiar sound. The class cheered.
The teacher sighed. "Class dismissed." She said, "Everyone, please remember to study page 70 and write an essay until tomorrow. Especially Fengshen Yanyi. We shall read it aloud in the next class."
The class wasn't listening to her now. It was recess, and students never listened during recess. Cheng Ye watched the teacher leave the class, and it instantly turned into a bunch of monkeys. Cheng Ye was reminded of his own time in school back in China. Some bookworms were working on math problems or memorizing English words, but the rest of the students were chatting and goofing around.
"Cheng Ye," He heard someone call his name.
"Yeah?" He answered subconsciously, to see a gorgeous girl standing in front of the door to the class.
She was undoubtedly the school flower. It was to the point that Cheng Ye was sure that no matter which school she was in, she would be at the top ranking in terms of appearance- she was that beautiful. She had flowing silver hair that reached her shoulders, and blue eyes, like a foreigner. But that wasn't what made her so stunning. She had a confident demeanor completely unlike that of a student, giving her the rare atmosphere of a young, rich lady.
He almost asked her 'Who are you', before he realized that probably wasn't a good idea.
"It's lunch." The girl said calmly. "I didn't see you in front of my classroom. Don't forget next time."
Cheng Ye choked. Were... it couldn't be... were he and this girl dating? He looked at the girl, who was curling her lips. Her gaze was directed towards a certain person... ah. Cheng Ye understood.
If the girl was the school flower, then the boy she was looking at was obviously the school grass. He had all the classic features of a Chinese idol, white skin like a vampire and jet black hair to match. And he was too thin, Cheng Ye thought silently. He should eat more rice. No, he refused to accept that he was biased towards popular boys. He was just stating the obvious truth.
The school grass stood up and walked towards them slowly. He glanced at the female students as he did so, exciting them.
"Ahhh!" The girls screamed in chorus.
Cheng Ye felt that something was wrong. He couldn't put his finger on it, but something felt out of place.
"Let's go, Jinyu." The school flower said.
"No."
Frick, Cheng Ye thought to himself, shocked. The school grass's voice was so deep! And it was so... weird! This skinny boy with barely any meat to him, sounded more manly than he did? He was four times that punk's size, damn it!
The school flower wilted at that answer. She followed behind 'Jinyu', who either didn't notice, or didn't care that he was being followed.
Cheng Ye followed her, not because he was crushing on her, but because he wanted to go to the cafeteria to eat lunch. There was a very nostalgic smell in the air, reminding him of the lunches he used to have in childhood. It would be sweet and exciting, if only there weren't the two in front of him. Cheng Ye internally groaned at all the weird stares he was getting along the way.
"Boss Cheng!" He heard someone call out excitedly. "We brought you your lunch!"
Cheng Ye glanced around for said Boss Cheng, before looking down to see two overexcited high school students with their lunch trays. One of the held two lunch trays instead of one. "Let's sit down on a table!" The other kid added.
Now, these guys were most definitely delinquents. They wore lots of red, were all black and scratched up, and both looked like they would prefer a fistfight over studying. Cheng Ye frowned as he realized that he was supposed to be their 'boss'. Especially with his giant size, he realized that he also looked... embarrassingly similar to them.
System? He thought to himself, tired. System?
There was no answer. Cheng Ye wondered when his system would come back with his 'assigned task'. It was taking far too long. Were there some sort of special circumstances that needed to arise for the system to contact him? Not having much of an appetite, he only ate a little, to the concern of his lackeys. Cheng Ye sighed
And then, at that moment, Cheng Ye heard a loud slap. His eyes widened. Everyone's eyes were drawn over to the scene. There was the school flower, hit by a... girl?
The girl was... Cheng Ye noticed, disfigured to a shocking degree. Her face was blotchy and red in some places, as if someone had poured a kettle's worth of boiling water on her face. The other students stepped back as she appeared, maybe from shock or disgust. It was a pity. She would look very pretty if those marks weren't there.
"Zhang Anqi!" She screamed. "You have the nerve to come back to school after ruining me?"
Cheng Ye had no idea what was going on, but it seemed to be very dramatic. The school flower 'Zhang Anqi', was pushed to the ground and was almost hit again, until the school grass 'Jinyu' reached down and grabbed the offender's hand in a snakelike grip, almost crushing it. The girl's face paled.
"You dare to hit her?" Jinyu said coldly.
Zhang Anqi's face melted in the expression of a girl in love.
Cheng Ye watched in fascination. It was like a really shitty drama on TV, he thought to himself. He could already imagine the backstory behind all this- maybe the girl bullied Zhang Anqi out of jealousy, but Anqi's rich family found out and disfigured the bully. Then, the girl would try to harm Zhang Anqi out of desperation, when the male lead, Jinyin saves her, tempering their feelings for each other!
It didn't take long for the teachers to arrive, bringing the cafeteria into order. Cheng Ye didn't know what happened, but class continued again like normal. It was almost boring.
After he dozed off in math and daydreamed in English, class ended. With the additional bonus of his staying after class after he 'disrupted the Chinese Literature class'. His punishment was only the simple task of emptying the the teachers' trashcans, so he didn't mind that much.
Cheng Ye felt depressed. The system wasn't showing up anymore. Wasn't it his cheat? Did it grow tired of him or something? He lugged his trash bin behind him to the yard next to the gardens, done with his chores, still calling the system in his head. He saw a figure in the garden, which was peculiar. It looked like a student, but classes were over already.
And the figure looked familiar. Cheng Ye stopped walking, coming face to face with the girl from before. He raised his eyebrows.
The girl panicked. She immediately jumped at him, trying to push him to the ground like she did with Zhang Anqi, but Cheng Ye, the six feet fatty, was not easily defeated. He towered over the girl, and it was impossible for her to win against him. She knew that much. Her frail form struggled before she completely gave up. Her eyes became dead fish eyes.
The garden was in tatters. Cheng Ye followed the girl's gaze to the gasoline sprayed on the wood shack behind the school, and the lighter she had obtained from heaven-knows-where. She had dropped it on the floor in a desperate attempt to light it up, but sadly, it spluttered and died, failing to set anything alight. The girl shivered like a wet squirrel. Cheng Ye grinned.
"Hey, you. Need help setting a fire?" He asked.
