The man looked like a skeleton that someone had hastily wrapped in skin and forgotten to finish. His collarbones jutted through his rag of a shirt like jagged rocks breaking through eroded soil.
He didn't shout this time. He didn't try to pitch his wares or haggle with imaginary customers.
He just sat there on that crate looking utterly defeated, scratching his head with dirty fingernails that hadn't seen soap in what might have been weeks.
The pan sat on his lap like a neglected pet, unloved and chronically unsold.
Kaizen felt this sharp, phantom pain lance through his chest.
It wasn't a system glitch. It wasn't some weird status effect or debuff kicking in.
It was memory.
Not from whatever past life he supposedly had, because he still couldn't remember any of that frustrating blank space. This was from this morning. Just a few hours ago, which somehow felt like a lifetime.
He remembered the cold biting into his skin like tiny needles. He remembered the hollowness in his stomach that made everything feel distant and unreal. He remembered feeling like a ghost wandering through a world that had no interest in acknowledging his existence.
And then he met Helga.
The warm plastic bag pressed into his hands. The scalding coffee that burned his tongue but felt like salvation. The gruff voice that tried so hard to hide genuine concern behind layers of insults and complaints.
"You look like a stray dog about to keel over."
She didn't have to give him anything. He was just some random student. A forgettable face in an endless parade of forgettable faces. But she did it anyway.
That warmth was still there somehow, sitting in his inventory as literal items, but also sitting somewhere deeper in his chest. It was this strange, foreign weight that he wasn't quite used to carrying around.
'A life isn't worth living if all I do is consume.'
'I don't want to be someone who only takes from the world without giving anything back.'
'I want to actually matter to someone, even if it's just one person.'
Kaizen thought about this while gripping the coins in his pocket hard enough that the metal edges dug into his palm.
'I wanted to be efficient. I wanted to play this whole thing solo, keep everything simple and controlled.'
'But somewhere along the way, I didn't realize just how cold loneliness could actually be when you're living in it every single day.'
He looked down at the silver coin in his hand.
One thousand crowns.
What is my actual purpose in this world?
To someone like Gino, the black market merchant with his spatial storage ring and gold teeth, it was basically pocket change. To any noble lounging around in their mansions, it was literal trash money that they wouldn't bother bending over to pick up off the street.
To Kaizen right now, it was an absolute fortune. It represented potions that could keep him alive. It meant supplies that would let him survive the mountain. It was security in a world that had given him absolutely none.
But looking at this man right now, looking at those shaking hands that clutched a rusted piece of junk like it was the only thing anchoring him to reality, looking at the defeat written across every line of his face...
Kaizen swallowed hard against the lump forming in his throat.
'I know what hunger feels like. The real kind that makes your stomach eat itself.'
'I know what being invisible feels like, what it's like when people look straight through you like you're not even there.'
He stepped forward. His shadow fell across the man sitting there in the dirt.
"Hey," Kaizen said, and his voice came out softer than he expected.
The man flinched like he'd been struck. He looked up with eyes filled with pure fear, clearly expecting to be kicked or mocked or spat on by another arrogant student who thought poverty was funny.
"I don't have a million crowns lying around," Kaizen whispered, crouching down until he was at eye level with the man. "And I definitely don't have enough money to just throw crowns away on stupid things."
He reached out slowly. He took the man's trembling hand in his own, feeling how cold the skin was, how the bones shifted underneath.
He pressed the heavy, cold metal of the silver coin into the man's palm and closed his fingers around it.
"But I have this."
The man looked down at his own hand like it was a foreign object.
He saw the silver glint catching the morning light. He saw the royal crest stamped into the metal by the mint.
One thousand crowns.
Enough money for actual food, not scraps from garbage bins. Enough for a warm bed in a cheap inn instead of sleeping in alleyways. Enough to live like a human being for an entire month.
The man completely froze. His breath hitched in this awful sob that sounded like dry leaves breaking apart.
He looked up at Kaizen.
The morning sun was just cresting over the rooftops behind Kaizen's head at that exact moment. To this starving man sitting in the dirt, the boy wasn't just another student passing through. He was a silhouette framed in blinding, golden light. A halo of dawn surrounded him like something out of a religious painting.
He looked like a god walking among mortals in disguise.
"Why?"
The man choked out, and tears started cutting clean tracks through all the grime caked on his face.
"It's just a rusted pan. It's worthless. You know it's worthless."
Kaizen smiled.
It wasn't the smirk he had given Gino the merchant when they made their deal. It wasn't the derp face he had given that kid earlier just to mess with him.
This was something completely different. This was pure and unadulterated and real. The kind of smile that Helga had unintentionally taught him was possible.
"Because you need it," Kaizen said, making it sound like the simplest thing in the world. "And because someone helped me today too. Someone who didn't have to."
The man completely broke.
He didn't say anything else. He couldn't force words past whatever was blocking his throat. He pressed the coin to his forehead first, then to his eyes like it was a holy relic, weeping silently with his whole body shaking. He bowed his head low, his shoulders jerking with the force of his gratitude.
Kaizen just watched him.
He felt that warmth again, the same one from this morning. It surged through him stronger than any potion he could buy, stronger than any level-up notification, stronger than anything the system had ever given him.
'Is this it?'
Kaizen wondered, and his own vision started blurring slightly around the edges.
Is this what actual connection feels like?
To have people you can help when they need it. To have people who help you when you're drowning.
To not just be a background texture in someone else's story, but to be a person who actually impacts what happens to other people.
Family. Friends.
He thought about Leo carrying him all the way to the infirmary when he could barely walk.
He thought about Klaus storming in to collect his supposed lab rat from the infirmary.
He thought about Helga's extra scoop of oatmeal that she pretended was an accident.
'I wonder what it actually feels like to have a place where you belong.'
To have people you can call when you're sad and they'll actually answer. To share a meal with someone without calculating the cost. To joke around with friends without the constant fear that one wrong word means death.
Kaizen sniffed hard, wiping his nose with his sleeve because apparently he was getting emotional over giving away money.
"Keep the change," he managed to say, though his voice came out thick and weird.
He started to turn around to walk away. He really didn't want this man to see him tearing up over what was supposed to be a simple charitable transaction.
"H-hey, wait..."
"Yes?"
"Here, take this..."
It was the pan. The Fire Demon's rusted pan. This man's only possession, the thing he had been trying to sell for who knows how long. The old man didn't even look up, just extended it toward Kaizen with both hands like he was presenting a sacred offering.
"I didn't do it for the pan," Kaizen said as gently as he could manage.
"I know that..." the man whispered, his voice barely audible. "But as someone who's refusing to just keel over and beg for money on street corners, please accept this. So that what we did here is a fair transaction between two people and not just charity."
He kept his eyes down. Not because of the tears, but because of something deeper. The pride of a man who refuses to beg even when he has every reason to.
"This isn't enough payment for what you just did for me. But I swear on my life, I will pay you back properly when I can. Somehow."
Kaizen looked at the rusted metal being offered to him.
"Sure, sure," Kaizen said, and he nodded with his smile returning. "Do that when you can."
Kaizen didn't argue any longer. He understood instinctively that hammering down someone's pride would only damage them further. If this man had encouragement instead of pity, then maybe this rusty nail of a human being could become a diamond nail with enough motivation and time.
"I'll take good care of it."
Kaizen reached out and took the pan from the man's outstretched hands.
The moment his skin made contact with the cold, greasy handle, a blue window flashed into existence directly in his mind.
[Nonstandard Weapon Authority (NWA): Resonance Detected]
Immediately, Kaizen's entire face lifted up. The tears evaporated like they had never existed. The emotion got replaced by pure, unadulterated greed that lit up his eyes.
He wanted to laugh out loud right there in the street, but he managed to hold it in as he read the message floating in his vision...