You and the Nonhuman

*Third-person narration throughout. Updated daily. [Please read the pinned comment qaq] Your alcoholic stepfather keeps a pet in the basement. Sometimes, you can hear the sounds of chewing and swallowing as it feeds. He never lets you get close. Even if you merely pass the top of the stairs, he will nervously smash a bottle at your feet as a warning. Meanwhile, your own life has begun to grow strange: a string of murders, disemboweled corpses, people returning from the dead, and... a gaze that always seems to be watching you from somewhere unknown. One thing after another wears down your nerves, making you speed up your plans to leave this place. One day, you finish work early and come home to hear a strange sound. Peering through the crack in the door, you see your stepfather kneeling on a floor covered in blood and bizarre, uncanny patterns, fervently praying to something. Amid a tangle of eerily twisted black tentacles, you meet eyes that are quiet and clear as a summer night, filled with possessiveness. It turns out the “pet” is the one doing the feeding. --- Surviving to the End with My Patchwork Character Setting --- [This blurb was written in a hurry. I'll polish it properly later.] “You're a cannon-fodder character in a horror novel. You're about to die.” Chi Yun: Nooo! Please spare me!! “...You can survive if you earn enough popularity.” Chi Yun, trashy-romance novelist: ? There's no choice. If I want to live, I have to give it a shot! The cake shop on the corner is a place everyone loves to visit after narrowly escaping death. Its owner is a young man with a warm smile and a frail body. Every so often, strange runes and scars can be glimpsed on his wrist, but they are hidden before anyone can get a good look. He brings out a freshly baked cake. “Have something sweet. It'll cheer you up.” To outsiders, the lonely boy from a poor family is actually a puppet controlled by an evil spirit. Yet in a moment of crisis, he takes a fatal blow meant for his enemy. On the brink of death, he weeps and says, “I want to go home. I don't want to hurt anyone.” “If I'd just tried a little harder, I could have taken Mom away from there...” The boy, who has accidentally learned his own fate, walks with firm resolve toward death on a silent night. “The interests of humanity come before my own...” [The shopkeeper went to help the protagonist group deal with trouble again today, right!! He's carrying so much himself, yet he still has to comfort other people... I'm crying my eyes out.] [He finally softened at the very last moment... But you were so close to living happily with your mom...] [Ahhhhh, I'm really going to cry my eyes out. Xingxing's death was just glossed over so casually... Even though it was a sacrifice that concerned all of humanity.] #I'm just a tough, resilient little white flower in a horror novel :)# #What do I have to do with being the white moonlight of both the protagonist and the villain!?# #Forum, don't rush to cry. I just want to survive!!# --- The Anomaly-Raising App --- (The blurb will be polished further once the worldbuilding is settled, but the premise won't change.) After waking from a nap, Jiang Yan finds an app called The Anomaly-Raising App has suddenly appeared on his phone. After trying every possible way to uninstall it without success, he gives up and opens it. He assumes it's malware and is already planning to replace his phone, but to his surprise, it turns out to be a pixel-art pet-raising game. The cute pet on the screen blinks at him, instantly capturing Jiang Yan's heart. He starts the game. At the beginning, the screen is entirely gray, and the only creature he can adopt is an anomaly rated C. Jiang Yan isn't picky. Excitedly, he taps to claim it and begins the daily routine of caring for his pet. On the first day, the pet looks a little shy. It hides in a corner, blinking as it greets Jiang Yan. On the tenth day, the pet has become his friend and keeps pestering Jiang Yan to play games with it. Jiang Yan feels as though his memory has been getting worse lately. For instance, he has absolutely no recollection of when he replied to his friends' messages on WeChat. After a month, the pet levels up and changes form. Double the good news: Jiang Yan's sworn enemy at school, who has always been at odds with him, gets so frightened by something while walking at night that he suddenly announces he is taking a leave of absence and will never bother him again. On the Nth day, the pet becomes listless. The System informs him that he hasn't spent enough time with it. Jiang Yan is a little troubled. He has already been using much of his free time to keep his pet company, to the point that it's affecting his life. Final exams are coming up, so he takes the opportunity to leave the pet to the System and focus wholeheartedly on studying. Some time later, while Jiang Yan is asleep, something with the texture of slightly rotten skin coils around him. A voice murmurs, “%*t...” The System suddenly lets out a piercing alarm: Warning! Warning! Due to insufficient time spent with its caretaker, the corruption value has reached its maximum! Jiang Yan looks at the sanity-shattering creature in the shadows and can't possibly connect this thing with his adorable pet. Is the art style in your game just for reference? :) Question: What's worse than the monster you raised coming to life? Jiang Yan glances down at his phone screen and starts regretting giving in to temptation and adopting even more pets later on... - The uncanny has returned, and evil spirits are running rampant. Monsters are classified by threat level. The most widely recognized as cold and brutal are S-ranked monsters. It is said that Their whereabouts are unpredictable, They are bloodthirsty and deranged, and They even possess the ability to control evil spirits. Jiang Yan, hearing all this: ...? How did playing a pet-raising game end up raising myself into the ultimate villain? Theme: Courage is a force that can save lives.