When I was eleven, I used to hope an owl from Hogwarts would land on my windowsill. That fantasy died when I moved overseas. Before any Hogwarts acceptance letter reached my hands, I got stacks and stacks of never-ending exams.
After barely making it through high school and finally graduating at eighteen, years of hard work had put me at the top. I could take my pick of any of the top universities. Then my adoptive father, who was as good as dead most of the time except when it came to sending money, suddenly called me into his study and gave me two choices:
1. Go to some dodgy, old-established university in the UK.
2. Go to some obscure private university in the US.
If I didn’t know my own limits, and know that even selling me wouldn’t earn my adoptive father back the cost of raising me for over a decade, I’d have called the police right then.
“Aw, sure, you could pick other schools in China too, but these two are clearly the best fit.”
I asked if there was no third option.
“There is.”
Hope rekindled, but my adoptive father smiled and poured cold water all over it.
“The third option is to accept your fate and wait to die. You won’t live past twenty-eight.”
Men with their eyes squinted shut really are no good.
-
I don’t want to die.
After weighing my options, I chose the obscure private university over the dodgy one.
No other reason: first, the first one sounded completely unreliable. Second, it was in a food desert where you hardly ever saw the sun. The other one sounded unreliable too, but at least its region had menus thicker than history books, and it even guaranteed a job after graduation.
So I sadly said goodbye to the desk mate who’d shared three years of school with me, sent my junior schoolmate off on a date with him, then turned around and went to my interview.
Damn, my adoptive father tricked me. I’m going to die even sooner at this university.
Damn, my desk mate tricked me. He came to study in the US too.
Damn, my junior schoolmate tricked me. Why is he following right behind us?
Damn, my junior schoolmate tricked me. We’re like the Calabash Brothers going to save Grandpa one by one.
Adoptive Father, my eyesight is amazing. I can see the end of this godforsaken life at a glance.
Reader Information:
1. The main text is in third person. This is purely a labor of love, and updates are irregular [emphasis added]. It all depends on inspiration and my love-hate relationship with Dragon Raja.
2. I started writing this purely to make myself learn to write romance, and to produce something for my friends who are starving for fanfic. So this story is [all pairings with the female lead, canon pairings broken, romantic interest from both men and women]. Since I’m really not good at romance, there’s an 80% chance this will turn into a plot-driven story where we’re all hardcore platonic friends... I’ll do my best to sell it.
3. Dragon Raja + Type-Moon. The main story begins before Dragon Raja I. Type-Moon content is extremely minimal and only appears in the background setting. It will increase noticeably during the Dragon Raja III period.
4. The protagonist is not perfect, and the female lead has values that differ from ordinary people. (How could anyone be normal enough to become a mage?)
5. OOC and headcanons are unavoidable. This is a free story, so please don’t give me writing advice. My writing is just kind of dumb, and it’s easy for me to get lost in my own art.
6. Thanks for reading this far! Enjoy!
Theme: Can the organ beating in my chest tell me what love is?
