Hua: Simulation (1)

Processing…

90%…

99%…

What seemed like a string of zeroes and ones to Dabria and her code obviously meant a lot more to the suffering girl before her.

Having been brought up in a village, Hua knew nothing of technology. All she felt was emotion. With each passing moment, Hua's facial expressions grew more and more contorted until the point that her eyebrows were so furrowed together that they were near-touching.

Since Dabria had tested the system herself, she knew that this shouldn't have been a painful process. What she forgot to account for was the factor of potential emotional trauma and the agony of ripping that mental band-aid off. Dabria simply didn't understand.

100%…

Beads of sweat hung to Hua's forehead, and she immediately collapsed, hugging her own legs and rocking herself gently back and forth. But as soon as she regained the slightest bit of energy, she looked up with hopeful eyes.

"Can I try the simulation now?" Her voice was wispy, and one hand cupped her chest as if there was a sense of pain throbbing in her heart.

Dabria nodded, typing a few lines of command code.

She pressed enter:

*

When Hua opened her eyes again, she wasn't sure if she had been lied to. Instead of a chance to rewrite her fate, she found herself inside a giant's lair.

All around her were towering people more than double her size, and she had to crane her neck and look up to check that they were indeed human. Looking forward, all she saw were knees and legs. Even so, from in between the mob, she could barely look at her new environment.

All she could make out was that it was loud and a kaleidoscope of color. Used to the monochromatic green from the countryside, her eyes hurt from looking at the commotion and blinking lights.

She pushed forward, stumbling to avoid being knocked over. But no matter how far she thought she went, it was still the same. The place reeked of cigarettes.

Cultlike chants sounded from all around her, shouting "Ya! Ya! Ya!" and pounding stones onto her eardrums. She wanted to run and flee from the scene before her and to wake up from this world.

All she wanted was to see her birth parents and find an identity. All she wanted was a chance to live something that was remotely similar to a life. All she wanted was to know what her parents looked like so she could visit them and not push through the crowds on Qingming only to find that she didn't know where to even return to. Was it really too much to ask for?

Without knowing, she had been sobbing, no longer caring for the people's judgments around her. They weren't real anyway. But surprisingly, her voice sounded strangely childlike.

A hiccup broke her muffled cries, and she found that she lacked control over her own body. The terror of being beaten for hiccupping so often in her youth plagued her mind, and she knew she became conditioned over the years to suppress her hiccups. But now, it was as if everything went back to square one.

As she brought her hands up to cover her mouth, she instead found a pair of pudgy fingers in place of her coarse ones. But before she had the time to reconcile the situation, a coarse shout pierced the air.

"Look at that baby girl over there! Boys, I'm calling her to be mine!" A tattooed-man looking to be in his thirties snarled, licking his chapped lips. A gleam of lust lit up his eyes, and he began stalking over, each step shaking the weak wooden platforms beneath Hua.

The scene was so familiar yet so different.

Before she knew it, all of the people's eyes were on her. Some were in amusement and some were in incredulity. But of all, there was a sense of threat.

Hua bolted, running as fast as her tiny legs could carry her. She knew that they were closing in. Her heart thumped, beating faster than the rhythm of the harsh music, racing faster than the men who were coming nearer and nearer.

She glanced behind again and again, fear dominating her entire body.

She hit something soft and intrinsically looked up, knowing that she should have kept running. But her small and frail body simply couldn't handle it anymore.

The man towering above her was familiar, all too familiar.