A figure stood looming over him.
'Hah'
Jidenna's eyes snapped open.
A sense of disorientation set in as he looked around the unfamiliar place, wondering, 'Where am I?'
Immediately after his question, he remembered what happened yesterday: the hotel, the security guard, and the admissions office.
'Oh, this is my dorm room,' he realized, propping himself up on his elbows and lazily examining the room—something he only glazed over the day before.
A thought flashed through his mind, 'Isn't there class today?' Jidenna paused, his eyes widening in alarm.
Leaping from the bed, Jidenna dashed into the bathroom to freshen up and get ready for the day.
Some time later, Jidenna walked out of his room, fully dressed with a damp towel hung around his neck, catching the stray dripping water.
Stepping out from his room, he was taken aback when he saw his roommate, Li Wei, grimacing in pain with each step he took.
"Hey," Jidenna called out to him.
For the person who showed him the way yesterday, it's not too much to show concern. On the contrary, it would be heartless and cold not to.
"Are you okay?" Seeing that he obviously wasn't okay, Jidenna changed his words to, "What happened?"
But to his surprise, when Li Wei heard his voice, he jumped in surprise and whirled around, backing Jidenna, but Jidenna still saw the flash of panic that crossed his eyes.
'Panic?' Jidenna frowned at the thought. 'What's he panicking for?'
But he dispelled his speculations when he heard Li Wei's voice, which oddly sounded like he was suppressing something. "Don't worry, I'm fine."
Cradling his side, Li Wei turned around to face Jidenna, and with a strained smile, he tried to reassure him. "I tripped and landed on my side last night when it was dark."
"So—" he winced, "Just some bruises," still keeping the bright smile that looked cracked.
"Okay…" Jidenna trailed off. "If you say so, but have you gone to the sick bay?"
"Sick bay? What's that?" Li Wei's voice now had a tinge of annoyance as he wondered inwardly, 'Why don't you just roll off? This daddy is already angry.'
"I meant, the nurse—" but he was interrupted by Li Wei. "I said it's nothing. Just. A. Bruise."
No matter how concerned Jidenna was initially, at this point, he realized something was wrong. Ending the conversation with, "Okay, I'll be in my room in case you need me," he turned around and went back to where he came from but before entering he gave Li Wei a glance.
Behind him, Li Wei did the same, hobbling to his room.
Once he got inside, he held his breath and lifted his shirt. Under his clothes was a shocking blue and purple bruise.
He let out a hiss as his finger grazed it. This bruise did not come from falling last night.
He gritted his teeth in anger, thinking, 'If you want to help me, why don't you just obediently allow me to suck your luck? After all, you have such a huge amount of luck. Aren't you very stingy?'
The indifference he had towards Jidenna was turning into a mix of emotions.
When Li Wei first received a notification from his system that a very lucky person was in the administration office, he dropped whatever he was doing and rushed over, using the excuse of "collecting his problematic student ID" to mix in with the other students.
At first, he felt panicked, but once he saw Jidenna, the panic gave way to disdain and contempt.
He felt that such a person would not cause any issues for him, but he still had to keep up the facade he had built, being the most bright and welcoming person.
Manipulating Jidenna's information to share a room with him was easy—just a word to his system and it happily obeyed.
The system had said that the more negative emotions Jidenna felt, the easier it would be to siphon his luck later.
That's why at the office, he had deliberately made Jidenna feel isolated, taking advantage of the preference for his skin.
He smiled warmly at everyone while smirking in contempt at their foolishness.
The feeling of manipulating a crowd to unknowingly do his bidding gave him a rush of elation.
But currently, Li Wei's eyes dropped down, eyeing the patch of discolored skin from his rib to his hip.
Li Wei couldn't feel like that anymore. His mind flashed back to what happened yesterday.
As he stood over Jidenna's sleeping figure with tentacles coming out from his side, before he could feel smug, the moment the purple tentacle touched the smooth coal-like skin, the next thing he heard was a piercing screech in his head. Li Wei's body twitched in pain as he felt an electrifying sensation transferred from the tentacle.
It recoiled, wriggling its slimy body. Its screeching got louder, and at a point, he had to hug his head in pain and stumbled out of the room.
He couldn't remember how he staggered to his room, but at one point, the tentacle retracted back into his body, running away and leaving him to suffer the consequences of its actions alone.
The pain was so much that he was knocked out cold the moment his head touched the bed.
'So, what kind of good face can I have towards the culprit behind my pain?' he thought. 'He should consider himself lucky that I wasn't rude.' He patted his chest with a smile that looked more like a grimace.
He looked forward. In his mind, he could see Jidenna's room and his hulking figure.
He realized he had a lot of entangled emotions towards Jidenna.
He had a mix of envy—he was jealous of such good luck—and his height; disdain—he looked down on Jidenna's outward appearance, deeming him less of a threat because he was ugly; and fear.
His eyes trembled at that.
He did not want to experience that excruciating pain again. But does that mean…
His brows sunk. 'Stop…' he sneered.
'Such a fat sheep, who would stop?' he winced, pulling at his sides again.
'Jidenna, don't be that stingy. Besides, I'll just take a little,' he dropped his head downwards, his chin to the floor.
'Compared to the amount you have, you wouldn't even feel a thing,' his thin pink lips curled into a smile.
'It seems we'll have to intensify our efforts. Can't let such a big fat meat go. Now, can we?'