[Western Crossover] Everyone Seems Crazy to Me

System: You are a rich young man. Though sickly, you are handsome and wealthy, melancholy and amorous, romantic, gentle, and immensely talented.

The hot-tempered Elian, who only just made it into college with top marks in sports: ?

Listen to what you're saying!

The System didn't pause. It kept going, its tone shifting from low and slow to an elegant aria. It would be a huge success onstage if it ever appeared in a play.

System:

Your parents worry about you and cherish you;

Your younger brother supports and admires you;

The sun gently casts down golden threads that become your coat, a glory more dazzling than the gods of this world;

The moon is intoxicated by your beauty and showers you with radiance, a coronation gentler than that of Zeus's daughters.

There is no one in all of Gotham, no, in the entire world, who could resist your beauty.

Elian, who had never cared about his looks and had been eating rather carelessly, lifted his face from his food: Ah... Huh??

The System's elegant aria grew low and indignant, tinged with a hint of scorn and sorrow.

And its story was about to reach its climax:

Even the gods envied your beauty, and laid a vicious curse on you. They cursed you to never possess a healthy body.

More fragile than glass, more delicate than flower petals, more fleeting than the morning sun.

Elian, who could safely roll through a hail of bullets three times over: ...???

Seriously, dude, what the hell are you on about?

He's Chinese-American, not a mixture of arts and renaissance, thanks.

And that wasn't all.

Ever since this damn System started talking, Elian's life as a delicate, frail (emphasis on frail) young man had begun.

Including, but not limited to:

Taking two steps and starting to cough up blood (yes, that's right, blood spurting out of his mouth);

Spending three minutes in the sun and watching the world start to spin (oh, maybe that was passing out :));

Touching a cold food basin and feeling cold all over (yes, he eats out of a basin, so what?);

A gust of wind hits him when he goes outside, and he has to politely develop a headache (fuck you, System, you hear me? System, fuck you!!!)

Just as the damn System had said, Elian had become a fragile thing hundreds of times more troublesome than a crystal doll.

Elian's tough-guy heart was shattered.

He wasn't giving up. Manly Elian would never admit defeat.

Nothing could take down a Chinese-American.

And if something could, see the previous line.

And so the days went on, stumbling and bumbling along.

Even the damn System that had assigned him this character setup was shocked at how stubbornly its Host clung to life. It didn't dare say another word, afraid its mistakenly bound Host might end up in an even worse state.

Unaware he'd been bound by mistake, Elian tried his best to survive each day.

Until he discovered that eating a Chengdu-style hot pot made him weep uncontrollably, doubled him over with stomach cramps, and left his legs weak.

Elian: ...

The third time Elian put down his chopsticks and sat on the toilet, pondering his shitty life, he finally saw the light.

He muttered to himself:

What is the point of being alive?

Hot pot.

Ah... Huh?!

The System was horrified. It suspected it hadn't heard correctly, so it scrambled around and ran a virus scan three times before asking again:

What is the point of being alive?

Hot pot.

Oh, its audio receiver must be broken. The System calmly and rationally deleted the last recording, then asked again in a kind and friendly tone:

What are you living for?

Hot pot.

As someone who would die without hot pot, Elian squatted on the toilet and said, in a calm, utterly flat voice, simply and frankly:

"Let me die."

System: ...

It was horrified. It couldn't understand how its unlucky Host had suddenly leapt from the survival zone across the Himalayan Mariana Trench into the late-night emo zone, accelerating at 250 miles per hour and almost running it over.

With no time to worry about anything else, the System offered haphazard reassurances as it scrambled through its files.

Luckily, there was still a way forward. It solemnly told its Host: only magic can defeat magic.

In other words, if they could switch the Host from the character setup zone to the magic-and-absurdity zone, they could apply to lift the curse and give the Host back a body of steel, eyes like a red sun, skin that defied gravity and Newton's laws, and a stomach that wouldn't get upset no matter what he ate.

A stomach that wouldn't get upset no matter what he ate.

The hot-pot-loving Elian was ecstatic.

Elian decisively switched to the magic-and-absurdity zone and quickly and perfectly did everything a Host changing careers needed to do.

At the very end, Elian got a spellbook that supposedly contained the cure for the curse.

[How can the gods' curse be broken?]

[Two liang of nine-leaf Chonglou, one qian of winter-solstice cicada pupae, simmered in snow from the previous year.]

Elian, who had never studied traditional Chinese medicine: ...?

The System, which had only ever hung around in Western fandoms: ...?

What the hell is this stuff? Huh?!

The pages opened and closed, then closed and opened again.

The contents didn't change.

Elian took a deep breath, held it in and held it in, and when he could hold back no longer, spat out a mouthful of blood.

He calmly set the book on the toilet lid, calmly wiped away the blood, calmly straightened his clothes, and calmly cleaned up the bathroom stall that looked like a murder scene.

He said serenely, "Excuse me, I'm going to beat up, no, ask that riddle-teller a few questions."

System: ...

This is the divider line

The foolish author is terrible at writing blurbs, and this story has a chaotic timeline while combining lots of different things.

Please read with an open mind. If anything doesn't make sense, feel free to point it out in the comments. You don't have to announce it if you drop the story.

The foolish author is a little thin-skinned, so please go easy. This is my first time writing a DC and Marvel crossover, so I may get some things wrong.

OOC is mine, the glory belongs to the original works.

(I've already written fanfiction, so please cut me some slack, okay? QAQ)

Theme: Fill the world with love