Ethan stared at the translucent blue screen that hovered in front of him, he squinted his eyes, rubbed them, and blinked them multiple times but the screen was still.

His hand came up to rub his temples as he laughed bitterly, “Now, I’m even hallucinating, great!” His voice came out, sounding hoarse, but no one heard him.

The doctors who were too busy staring at Ethan who attempted to move his limbs and squint his eyes, gathered their jaws from the floor as soon as the head doctor cleared his throat out loud.

*Ahem*

“Check his pulse, and look for any other abnormalities,” The guy who wore white among several others said in a commanding tone.

Two among the group stepped forward and approached Ethan. With them, the head doctor walked forward.

“Hello, I’m Doctor Wilson, and is it okay if I ask you a few things?”

Ethan’s head bobbed up and down in return.

Doctor Wilson cleared his throat again. Somehow, he was feeling a bit weird with the entire situation. “How are you feeling? Do you have any discomfort or pain in any areas?” his voice filled the room.

He had been working in the field as a professional for twenty solid years and had never seen such a case.

This was his first time—and it showed through his body language no matter how hard he tried to hide it behind his professionalism.

It was all because the young man in front of him had been hit by a truck, and was admitted to the Emerald Hospital located in the heart of the city. The worst part was how his condition was as dire as it could get, at least until this morning. He was literally on life support.

Even after all the efforts to save the young man’s life, his kidney failed, and soon after, one by one, all his organs started shutting down—and in the end, even his heart stopped performing an hour ago.

Doctor Wilson had to declare him dead and the staff were preparing documents while trying to contact his family for the postmortem procedure. That was when they found out that he was the youngest son of the famous industrialist Peter Larson.

But now, after an hour of the guy being announced dead, there he was—smiling awkwardly at the doctors with his pale blue eyes darting from one white coat to another.

“Well…” Ethan’s voice came as a cough as he started to talk to the doctor.

-

Two hours later, multiple tests were done on his body just to find out that all of his organs were working perfectly fine and they were as healthy as they could be.

Wilson’s finger raked down the pages and halted at the end of the report.

“This is beyond a medical miracle,” Wilson was flabbergasted at what was presented before him.

“And I’d hope you keep all the lips sealed tight about this–whatever it is. Miracle. Pfft.”

An overbearingly commanding voice resounded from behind Doctor Wilson, making the doctor sweat on his feet. He swiftly turned around to see a similar pair of blues looking back at him, but much older and with a much colder expression.

“P-Peter Larson—I mean… Sir?” Wilson’s stutter was loud and clear. The doctor who always felt like a God near patients, felt small in the presence of the business giant.

“Doctor, don’t leave any records of this incident anywhere. I don’t want any media circulating news about this or any researchers performing experiments on my family… I hope it’s not too much to ask,” he added in the end.

“B-But…” Before Wilson could meekly retort, he was cut short by an old man who walked from the doors.

It was the chairman of Emerald Hospital and he was huffing and sweating when he replied, “Yes sir, don’t worry. Not a word of this incident would be mentioned by anyone. Right, Doctor Wilson?”

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The chairman’s withered face, aged by years of experience, turned to a stern look. His sharp eyes looked as if they could cut through thin air. His lips, usually relaxed, tightened into a thin line, extremely disappointed with the head doctor’s reaction.

After not receiving a response from Doctor Wilson, he closed his eyes, unable to comprehend why the doctor wouldn’t understand the depth of the situation.

“R-right you are. Erase the case files and any data on Mister Rize. Right now. And as you have heard, I don’t want to hear a single word from this incident from anyone,” Doctor Wilson’s commanding voice once again filled the air.

“Yes sir!” Multiple voices replied in sync.

“Now, if you’ll excuse us,” Peter showed them the door, asking them to give the son and his father some privacy.

After everyone left the room, Peter walked closer to the hospital bed.

“Ethan…” Peter muttered seeing how his son had his eyes turned away from him.

His voice was much gentler this time, it almost fooled Ethan that he was being soft on him. The latter almost turned to look at his father, but was soon interrupted by the cynical voice of his father.

“Is this how you chase your big dreams?!” Peter questioned as his hand went to his bald head, wiping the sweat that had started to form. “The first day after you walked out on me, you got yourself to lie in a deathbed? Look how well things are going for you, Ethan!” His voice raised in the end, making Ethan turn around to look at him.

“Honestly, I feel much better staying here fighting for my life, than being under your watch, being watched like a hawk, and following your orders around like I’m someone who lives on your paycheck of the month. This feels much better… Oh, trust me,” Ethan felt weak inside, but he didn’t let the emotionless man know it. “Father,” he spit out resentfully.

Hearing the words that came out of Ethan, the old soul’s eyes grew soft.

‘I feel much better staying here’ the words rang in his head. There still were several machines attached to Ethan and that made Peter feel worse.

“You make me worried, son-”

“Stop with that bullshit. All these years, where was that worry? Where the hell was that worry when I needed it?”

Peter stayed muted at that question.

His eyes stayed on him while a few minutes passed. It was just two men looking at each other. One with worry and one sourly.

Peter turned in his heels to leave.

“Do what you want. I’m sure your mother would have wanted this,” he sighed loudly. “But, don’t expect anything from me. I don’t throw good money after bad. Even today, I’m choosing to pay your hospital bill because you’re my blood, that’s that. Nothing more,” he said with his back facing Ethan.

Ethan scoffed at his statement but didn’t say anything.

His father continued to walk towards the closed door and stopped before mumbling, “I hope you prove this old man of yours wrong.”

Although Ethan couldn’t hear those words, his father’s intentions were unknown to him.

Peter walked out of the room, leaving his son with an unpredictable future, something which he hated..

-

Ethan watched his ‘father’ leave the room.

In his head, for a second, he was battling if his father would actually leave him alone and let him take responsibility and do things that he had wanted to do with his life for a long time.

‘But there was something different by the look of his face. Weird, I’ve never seen him like that before’ he thought and convinced himself that his father would follow through his words this time.

From the commotion so far, he had realized the gist of the situation. And apparently, he had come back from the dead.

‘As it was said in Forrest Gump, Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get. And I have a… screen in front of my face.’

He finally believed that he could see an actual floating screen after trying his best to believe that this was a side effect of being back from death. What solidified his belief even further was how the screen stayed right in the center of his vision, no matter which side he looked at, it was just there.

For two hours after his father left the room, he kept trying and trying to make the screen disappear and appear, just by a single command that he gave in his mind.

He just had to think about the screen turning off, and it did. And when he wanted to turn it on… It did.

‘If only turning things and people on were this easy’ Ethan had a funny thought.

The situation settled in.

His face was covered by the blue light. The screen was an actual ‘system’. Just like the ones in fan fiction and novels… Just like the ones that exist in hundreds of them.

‘But I thought, this is all fictional shit. And why me? Why am I the one who has this screen… Did someone fucking mess with my iris when I was unconscious? Or… Or was I a test subject for some experimental nano-technology?’

The face of a girl flashed in his mind, and his whole body shook.

‘No, you’re better than that. You’ve overcome it. Stop thinking about that bitch.’

His mood turned sour as soon as he remembered that face, trauma that had been buried deep inside him threatened to resurface. He immediately shook his head and focused on the translucent blue screen in front of him.

“But even if I was some sort of test subject… They’d have told me when I opened my eyes, isn’t it a part of their Tester-testie protocol….right?”

All sorts of thoughts and questions rose in his mind when he finally settled on the fact that he knew nothing about what was right in front of him.

As unpleasant as that feeling of knowing-nothing was, he wasn't able to give up his gut feeling that there was something to this.

‘What if…’

Ethan had a faint idea. An idea that was not original to him, but one which he took from a hundred other protagonists from different novels.

He could try using different phrases that were common to these sorts of systems—or so he thought.

‘Open the status… or shop!’ he commanded in his head. He wasn’t sure what exactly to think, however—

[You have yet to unlock your status window.]

[You have yet to unlock the system shop.]