[Timeline: Blue Star – Pre-Transmigration]

[Location: Apartment Block 404 – The Grey District]

[Date: December 24th, 2023]

The radiator had died three hours ago.

Lin Ye didn't bother fixing it.

He simply pulled his threadbare blanket tighter around his shoulders and stared at the steam rising from his cup of instant noodles.

Beef flavor. The same flavor he had eaten yesterday. And the day before.

The apartment was small, a single room that smelled of dust and old paper.

The only light came from the streetlamp outside, casting long, prison-bar shadows across the floor.

Outside, the city was alive.

Through the thin glass of his window, Lin Ye could see the world moving.

Snow was falling, coating the grey concrete in a layer of pristine white.

Red and green lights blinked from the windows of the building across the street.

He saw silhouettes.

A father lifting a child to place a star on a tree.

A group of friends clinking glasses, their laughter muffled by the distance but still sharp enough to pierce the silence of his room.

It looked like a cutscene. A pre-rendered video of happiness that he wasn't allowed to interact with.

He pressed his hand against the cold glass. His palm left a ghostly print that faded in seconds.

"Merry Christmas," Lin Ye whispered to the empty room.

His voice didn't echo. The room was too cramped for echoes. The words just fell flat, absorbed by the peeling wallpaper and the silence.

He turned away from the window. It hurt to look at the "Main Characters."

He sat down at his scratched wooden table.

Peeling back the lid of the noodles, and took a bite. It tasted like salt and poverty. It tasted like survival.

'I am an nothing but an NPC,' Lin Ye thought, chewing slowly.

'I wake up. I go to work. I come home. I eat. I sleep. No quest. No purpose. Just background texture for someone else's story.'

Unlike others whose life had ups and down, his was painfully monotonous.

He pushed the noodles away. He wasn't hungry anymore.

Instead he reached for his phone. The screen was cracked, a spiderweb fracture running down the middle, but it still worked.

He opened his favorite app.

[Novel: The Hero Returns]

[Status: Ongoing]

This was his escape. This was the only world where color existed.

Scrolling to the later chapters. He knew them by heart, but he read them anyway.

He read them to feel something other than the cold.

He read them to escape from this depressing world

He read Chapter 340.

...The White Lion General fell to her knees in the dirt of the coliseum. Her golden eyes were dim.

The crowd roared for blood. She looked up at the Emperor's box, not with fear, but with exhaustion.

She had fought a thousand battles alone. She had no one left to guard her back...

Lin Ye's thumb hovered over the text.

"You idiot," Lin Ye whispered to the fictional woman.

"Why didn't you ask for help? Why did you have to carry the sky by yourself?"

He scrolled further. Chapter 380.

The Phantom, Lyra, sat amidst the ashes of her vengeance, her skin now turned obsidian by the Abyss magic she had embraced.

The shadows she had traded her sanity for whispered to her, feasting on the memories of the squad she watched die.

She laughed, a broken, hollow sound; she had slaughtered the slavers, yes, but in the end, the Void was the only thing that hugged her back.

Lin Ye felt a lump in his throat.

These characters... they were powerful. They were "S-Class." They could crush mountains and split seas.

And yet, they were just like him.

They were eating alone in the dark.

He scrolled to the finale. Chapter 400.

Alaric didn't stand triumphantly; he collapsed beside the shattered corpse of Azazel, the Demon King, his own mana heart destroyed.

No fireworks were blooming over the capital, only the choking crimson miasma of a dead world where ninety percent of humanity had already perished.

He looked across the silent battlefield where Elena and his mentors lay cold, realizing the Goddess had abandoned them to the very end.

The Hero had won, but he had bought the victory with his life; he closed his eyes, his blood mixing with the demon's, and died.

Lin Ye put the phone down.

The steam from his noodles had stopped. The soup was cold.

He looked around his empty apartment. No family photos on the walls. No presents under a tree. No one to call.

If he died tonight, the only thing that would miss him was his landlord, and only because the rent would be late.

"It's not fair," Lin Ye whispered.

He wasn't talking about his own life. He was used to being invisible.

He was talking about them. Leona. Lyra. Alaric. Even the villain, Nero. They had so much potential, so much life, and the author had drowned them in tragedy just for the sake of "drama."

Lin Ye rested his head on his arms. The cold of the table seeped into his skin.

"If I were there..." he murmured, his eyes heavy with sleep.

"If I were there, I wouldn't let you die in a coliseum. I wouldn't let the shadows eat you."

He closed his eyes, the image of the snowy city outside fading into darkness.

"I would be greedy," Lin Ye mumbled, his consciousness drifting away.

"I would save everyone. I would hoard every single person... just so I wouldn't have to eat dinner alone."

The wind howled outside, rattling the windowpane.

The phone screen glowed in the dark, displaying the final words of the novel.

[The End.]

Lin Ye's breathing slowed. The cold of the room seemed to deepen, wrapping around him like a shroud.

But deep in the silence, something answered.

Not a voice. But a Ping.

[System Error.]

[Soul Resonance Detected.]

[Desire confirmed: "Greed."]

[Initiating Transfer...]

The cracked screen of the phone flickered. The white light turned into a swirling vortex of gold and violet.

The cold apartment vanished.

And he woke up.

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