Cain contemplated between asking Lily again or not and decided on the latter. He was going to ask Lily but not now. It was already night time. He didn't want to scare himself into losing sleep.
He'll ask again in the morning.
When he stepped inside the apartment, it was dark and silent. He turned on the lights and looked around.
Cain looked around the large, family sized apartment and found that he seemed to be the only one living in it. Aside from the master bedroom, the other three rooms were turned into a gaming room, a small study with two floor to ceiling bookshelves and the last one was a guest room.
Lily told him that his current circumstances should match with his real life.
Cain was relieved after hearing that.
Cain didn't have any parents nor close relatives. His mother and father died in a car accident when he was young and Cain was left to his grandfather. The Reia family was rich so Cain didn't really have a hard time living. When he was seventeen, his grandfather died and he was taken under his uncle's custody. His inheritance was a lot so he lived without relying on his uncle. When he turned eighteen, he became independent from the Reia family.
He didn't have any experience on getting along with family. Fortunately, he didn't have to experience the awkwardness of suddenly having a family after living his life without one.
He didn't care about any of that anyway.
After taking a shower, Cain curiously took a look at his backpack. As an idol, he had to drop out of school and was only assigned tutors. It was around middle school and he barely had any actual time to be a student, running around to settle his family matters.
There were a few books and notebooks here and there. Seeing the 'biology' label, Cain took a second look at the cover of the page.
But.. why does it seem weird?
The cover was of orange and in the middle, there was a double helix. On the side of the helix, there were words written in vertical form.
'The Study of Singularity'
... This doesn't look like a book for a junior year student.
Cain read the book with a skeptical mind and after an hour, he closed the book after roughly shoving a bookmark in one of the pages. Afterwards, he slammed the book down on the desk, his breath disorganized.
"Lily." He murmured under his breath with a grit of his teeth.
[ Yes, Host? ] He could sense a faint hesitation in the system's words and was even more annoyed.
"Why did you not tell me about these things?"
Although Cain was quite fond of Lily and there was an unconscious trust on the other, Cain was still rationally aware that he shouldn't completely trust the system's words. He could trust the other with his safety but not with other things. Still, although he knew that Lily was most likely hiding things from him, it still makes him angry when he sees it for himself.
[ Host, please understand. You should've already realized something when you were given the chance to choose. ] Lily said. Afterwards, it continued after seeing Cain listening intently, [ Although Eros Dimension is idle, it's not completely free that it could spend time creating functioning timelines that have their own history. We could only derive worlds from good books with clear settings and no plot hole. ]
Cain understood.
"Then I'm in a book?" He leaned back on his seat and massaged his temples.
[ Yes. Do you want to read the book, Host? ]
Cain sighed lightly. "Give it to me. "
A physical copy of the book materialized in Cain's hand. He froze for a second before his hand flicked the book open.
The title of the book was 'Love is War' and unexpectedly he was the protagonist.
[ The book has already been altered. ]
That.. seems illegal. For copyright reasons.
This was the story about 'Cain' and how he got unexpectedly entangled with a singularity, a villain, who had tried to kill him before. Cain was the son of two singularities who worked for an intelligence agency and had confidential information about the genetic make up of singularities. In theory, using that gene map, it would be easy to artificially alter someone's genetic code and turn them into a singularity.
The villain singularity was the leader of the people who wanted the genetic make up information.
Now what is a singularity? Well, they are people who had evolved in different ways over time and had a completely different genetic make up than normal people.
They have abilities of their own. Some could manipulate the space around them, some could fly, some could even read minds. It was a crazy world full of crazily powerful people.
Cain, however, was not one of those people.
The villain singularity was… supposedly Cain's love interest.
"Don't tell me that singularity is Rain?"
Lily was silent.
Cain continued reading. The 'Cain' in the book was similarly in love with his childhood best friend and at one point, he confessed his feelings, only to get rejected. 'Rain' then avoided him like a plague. The villain singularity took this as a chance to strike and in one swoop, Cain was dazedly brought to the other's arms.
When he woke up, he had already been taken advantage of.
There was also a lot of drama involving a secret society, Cain's parents and some other things that was enough to leave him dizzy.
Of course, all of this was summarized by Lily for him. The book was long and Cain was too tired to read all of it after the first ten chapters.
After confirming the plotline, Cain sighed with relief. Thankfully, it was still in the start of the plot and he hasn't encountered that singularity. In any case, Lily already assured him that the ending of this world for him is up to his choices.
He remembered the fear he felt when he thought about confessing and realized that it should have been instinct of his character.
Unlike Cain who basically has free trials in his and Rain's relationship, the 'Cain' in the book only had one chance so his fear was evident in his actions. He was always cautious and hid his feelings very deeply. It was only because he was threatened by the villain that he had the sudden impulse to confess.
He had every reason to be afraid. The more you love someone, the more you fear losing them. That was the truth despite everything.
Cain felt exhausted after thinking about everything. He went to the bed and immediately fell asleep.
In the bedside, a small chibi character with a sprouting leaf on its head appeared.
It was Lily.
The system's eyes were the color of neon red. In the absence of any sort of light, those eyes glinted fiercely in the darkness.
It looked at the sleeping person in the bed and opened its small mouth.
[ Goodnight, Master. ]