Stranger Things: The Truth

A searing pain ran up Jidenna's leg as the steaming soup splashed on his exposed ankle under his blue trouser legs.

Right on the floor was the bowl of food he had suffered cuts to make. Jidenna's hands shook in anger.

Behind him, Li Wei heard a ding,

[Ding! You have siphoned +30 luck from your roommate.]

Previously, the past few days carried on with Jidenna dragging his beaten and worn self to and from lecture classes, silently bearing the pitying looks given to him by his lecturers.

The good thing that happened recently was the attention of a professor he got—the same professor who advised him to go to the nurse's office: Professor Zhang Wei.

Professor Zhang had really been patient with him recently, helping him with areas he didn't understand, much to the dismay of some people like Li Wei.

Professor Zhang was a straightforward and blunt person who didn't care about how you felt about something. He would tell you exactly what he thought, with no grumbling behind your back.

It was inevitable that, in a prestigious university, he had offended a lot of students, but surprisingly, he was still coming to school without a single word from the management.

Because of this, rumors gradually spread, whispering about "his mysterious background."

Despite his personality, a number of students wanted to get into his good graces, and Li Wei was one of them. But thinking that Jidenna easily acquired something he couldn't, he fumed in anger, wringing the corner of his clothes, thinking, 'Why is he still this lucky when I'm draining his luck?'

That's why when Li Wei heard Jidenna's outburst yesterday and the clamour in the kitchen today he couldn't help but chuckle, thinking, "He's only this much," with a scoff of disdain.

Meanwhile, Jidenna, who was still suppressing his boiling anger and frustration, heard a piercing chuckle behind him.

To the gloomy and frustrated Jidenna, the ordinary chuckle morphed into a cold, mocking cackle, like a vulture peering down from above, readying to swoop for the take.

Before he knew it, he whirled around and barked a, "What!" at his startled roommate, who put his hands up in surrender.

"Whoa!, chill bro, what's the matter?" Li Wei in mock surrender threw his hands in the air.

But the pent-up Jidenna, who had been bottling up everything, let loose like a broken dam.

"What's the matter? You're really asking me that?" Abandoning the broken bowl and spilled food, he walked toward Li Wei while asking him the question.

Li Wei backed away, feeling intimidated by the massive figure cornering him against the couch.

Feeling trapped, Li Wei's eyes darted around, eager for an escape route. At the same time, he secretly regretted his decision to laugh, thinking, 'Is it a crime to laugh?' and cursed Jidenna in his mind, 'Sure enough, he's a barbaric brute.'

"You think something's funny, huh? Is this a joke to you?" The more he spoke, the louder his voice became.

Starting to panic, Li Wei said, "I didn't laugh because of you! Can't I laugh again?" At the end of his words, he blurted out his thoughts.

Somewhere beneath the anger, Jidenna, for a split second, knew what Li Wei said was true, but the other emotions dragged his rationality down, burying it.

For some days now, he noticed a strangeness about Li Wei that he couldn't explain. At first, he ignored it because he thought it was normal, but the more he observed, the more Jidenna figured that something was off.

In the dorm room, whenever Li Wei thought no one was watching, his eyes would flash purple. There was another day when he caught Li Wei pressing something in the air with furrowed brows and a serious expression while muttering under his breath.

That day, on impulse, he had come out from his room heading to the kitchen. When he passed Li Wei's room, he noticed the door was slightly open.

For some reason, Jidenna looked inside the room that day and saw it.

The worst thing was that Jidenna could swear that Li Wei's eyes had a slight glow that was noticeable even in the dimly lit room.

Another strange thing was Li Wei altogether.

Jidenna was pretty sure he did not have Alzheimer's, so he could perfectly remember how Li Wei looked when they first met.

But these days, his face had been changing like a wet clay mold being pinched.

At first, it was little by little, but now Jidenna could hardly say that the Li Wei of today and the one of yesterday were the same people.

On the other hand, Li Wei disliked the feeling he was having as Jidenna's aggressive and hulking figure stood in front of him, cornering him against the chair, so he shot up from the chair.

He did not want to look like a cowardly wimp in front of this brute.

But as he did that, he only further proved a point to Jidenna.

When Jidenna saw where Li Wei reached him—his height—he was shocked and once more felt that his suspicions were true.

Because of how memorable their first meeting was, Jidenna remembered it, and he could also clearly remember that Li Wei's head was at his triceps. Now, strangely enough, Li Wei was at his shoulders.

At a time he didn't know Li Wei had changed, it was a subtle difference at first that's why he did notice— in fact majority of the students didn't either. Looking closely Jidenna realized that the Li Wei before him was different from the Li Wei he met at the start of the semester.

As he thought of that, so many things that did not make sense before—the little hints, the whispers, the sudden suspicious bad luck that plagued him—began to come together.

Because he was living together with Li Wei it is normal that he would overhear something he wasn't supposed to like the night he heard Li Wei's mumblings about "not enough luck to refine…" he couldn't hear the rest because Li Wei's voice got smaller.

And the other time when Li Wei blurted out the word, "I'll suck your luck dry you vermin" while putting up a fuss in his room after a heavy argument with their neighbors.

Additionally, when Jidenna remembered that his "bad luck" and exhaustion began the day Li Wei staggered in drunk.

And finally, Li Wei's eyes— that unnatural purple that flashes through his eyes.

A terrifying thought came to his mind, 'this is not exhaustion and this bad luck might not be natural. It is stealing, Li Wei might have been siphoning my luck'

At that thought, Jidenna sank into a calmness, a calmness before the storm.

For a spilt second he felt shocked, then from the calmness something else was born.

A maddening rage that threatened to eat his mind for the first time since he entered this world.

He didn't feel this when he discovered the original owner's friends were responsible for his death, and he didn't feel it when he planned for their death or when he had his first kill.

But right now, he did. Jidenna didn't care about the pain that'll come after. He didn't care about the consequences.

His body shook with something primal. Blinded by rage, tiny blue lights like circuits sparked to life.

With red eyes, Jidenna abandoned all caution to the wind and lunged, his hand drawn back for a punch.

Within Li Wei's mind the system screeched in alarm his calm expression faltered giving way to panic.

Without thinking, suddenly a thin purple glow encased his body meeting Jidenna's blow head on.