The steady glow of the computer screen illuminated Li Hang's face as he hunched forward in his chair, a wide grin spreading across his unremarkable features.
"Hehehe, it finally released! I've been waiting for the season 2 of this for so long!" His fingers drummed excitedly on the desk as the video began to load.
From his second-floor bedroom window, shouts and laughter drifted up from the street below. Li Hang's expression soured slightly as he glanced outside. The local high school baseball team was celebrating their latest victory, their uniform-clad figures clustering together in animated discussion.
"Must be nice," he muttered, turning back to his screen. "Being all special and stuff."
He wasn't bitter – or at least, that's what he told himself. After all, he was perfectly average. Not bad at sports, just... not particularly good either. His grades? Firmly in the middle of the bell curve. His looks? The kind that neither attracted attention nor repelled it.
As if to drive the point home, his phone buzzed with a notification from the class group chat:
"Dude! We're going to finals!"
"That last play was INSANE!"
"Party at Mei's place this weekend!"
Li Hang scrolled through the messages with detached amusement.
"Look at them, getting all excited about their youth or whatever." He chuckled, but there was a hollow note to it.
"Oh, and what's this?"
"Zhang finally asked Lin out!! She said yes!!"
"Another confession success story, huh?" Li Hang leaned back in his chair, the plastic creaking beneath his weight.
"Real life isn't an anime, you know. Not everyone gets to be the main character with the perfect romance arc."
He glanced at his wall, covered in carefully arranged anime posters – arranged in a way that they could be quickly taken down if anyone ever visited. Not that anyone did. His collection of light novels sat neatly organized on his bookshelf, their colorful spines facing inward.
It wasn't shame, he told himself.
Just... practicality.
"Look at them all," he continued his monologue, scrolling through more celebratory messages.
"Sports stars, academic champions, young entrepreneurs with their part-time jobs... It's like they're living in some kind of youth drama." He paused the video he'd been watching, no longer in the mood.
"And here I am, just... existing. But hey, at least I'm not negative in anything, right?"
He let out a dry laugh.
"I mean, sure, I could study harder. Or join a club. Or actually talk to girls. But what's the point? Being average is fine. It's safe. Besides..." He gestured to his collection of anime figures, carefully positioned on his desk.
"I've got my own world right here."
It was nothing but an excuse.
The very excuse that a procrastinator would always use to avoid working, avoid hardship, and avoid everything.
Just a very lame excuse.
A very, normal, yet pathetic one.
The sound of more celebration filtered through his window. Someone had scored their first part-time job at a popular café. Another person had won a local art competition. Li Hang pulled his curtains shut with perhaps a bit more force than necessary.
"Yeah, yeah, congratulations on your colorful youth," he muttered. "Meanwhile, I'll just be here, being totally normal. Not everyone needs to shine, you know?"
___
The news came on a perfectly average Tuesday afternoon.
Li Hang was in his final year of high school when his phone rang – an unusual occurrence in itself. The voice on the other end was formal, detached. Car accident. Both parents. Instant death. Words that should have carried more weight somehow floated past him like leaves in a stream.
He sat through the funeral arrangements in a daze, nodding mechanically as lawyers explained his inheritance. The house. The savings. Everything his parents had worked for, now passed to their perfectly average son.
Months passed. Graduation came and went. While his classmates rushed off to universities or jobs, Li Hang remained in his childhood home, now eerily quiet without his mother's constant comparisons to the neighbors' children or his father's disapproving sighs.
"You never gave me a chance," he muttered one night, staring at their memorial tablets. The incense smoke curled upward, carrying his bitter words.
"Always 'Why can't you be more like the Wang's son?' or 'When will you take life seriously?'" His laugh was harsh in the quiet room.
"Well, look who's taking life seriously now."
He tried his hand at becoming a YouTuber, his videos gaining a handful of views before disappearing into the digital void. Professional gaming proved equally fruitless – his average reflexes and game sense leaving him perpetually stuck in middle ranks. His anime blog attracted more spam comments than genuine readers, and his attempts at writing webnovels were met with crushing indifference, only to have his mental broken after reading a harsh review.
"Is this what you wanted?" he asked the empty house one evening, after another failed venture.
"Your son, trying to 'find himself' like you always said?" He kicked at a pile of instant noodle containers.
"Maybe if you'd actually helped me discover my talents instead of just pointing out my failures..."
The silence offered no response.
"The gods must have punished you," he declared to the memorial tablets, his voice thick with something between grief and satisfaction.
"All those years of looking down on me, treating me like I was dirt beneath your shoes... Was it worth it? Was maintaining your precious 'face' worth it in the end?"
The rambling goes on.
Through the night.
From that night to another night, and then it became a daily routine.
Then it became his coping mechanism.
____
Five years slipped by like water through cupped hands. Li Hang's world shrank to the size of his house, then to his room, then to the space between his bed and his computer. His average build softened and spread, nourished by convenience store bentos and delivery food. His once-unremarkable features became puffy and pale, like dough left to rise too long in a dark corner.
He became an ugly, fat, useless, piece of shit of society.
"Another isekai anime announcement?" He scrolled through his news feed, lying on his bed. The springs creaked protestingly beneath him.
"Must be nice, getting whisked away to another world. Getting special powers, having adventures..." He rolled onto his side, causing an empty chip bag to crinkle.
"Instead of being stuck here, in this perfectly normal hell."
Not that he hate it.
He have anime, he have the money to live on daily basis through noodles.
But the hollowness.
The nothingness within him.
Within his soul.
Has became a torment.
His days blurred together, marked only by anime seasons and manga release dates. Each morning, he'd look in the mirror and see his former averageness slipping further away, replaced by something worse. Yet he couldn't stop.
Didn't want to stop.
"The world out there?" he'd say to his reflection, "It's rigged. Only the special ones get to win. The rest of us? We're just NPCs in their story." He'd laugh then, a sound that grew more hollow with each passing day.
One particularly dark evening, Li Hang lay on his bed, holding a light novel above his face.
"Truck-kun, where are you when I need you?" he joked weakly, referring to the common isekai trope. "Maybe in another world, I could be..." His voice trailed off. "What the hell am I saying?"
But the thought lingered, taking root in the fertile soil of his isolation.
A seed of desire to escape.
Just like how a person like him, a master procrastinator, a master complainer like him always do.
'A shortcut'
______
"Breaking News: Local Man Found Dead in Home"
The news ticker scrolled across screens throughout the city. A neighbor had noticed the mail piling up, called the authorities. They found him hanging in his room, surrounded by his carefully maintained collection of anime memorabilia. Li Hang, age 24, with no known surviving relatives.
But that wasn't the end of the story.
Two days later, another headline appeared:
"UPDATE: Body Missing from Morgue - Investigation Ongoing"
The mystery of Li Hang's disappearance would become an urban legend, whispered about in late-night forums and conspiracy threads. Some said it was organ traffickers. Others blamed government experiments.
But no one thought to check the growing list of isekai light novels for a new story about a perfectly average guy getting an unexpected second chance.
No one at all.
Would thought that it's the start of a tragedy.
The realistic slap towards those who dream of the 'Isekai' and the 'Other World'.