Sweet Romance19 min read
I Fell Asleep with a Novel — Woke Up with a Farm and a System
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I stayed up too late again.
"I can't stop," I whispered into the dark as if the room might answer. My roommate had already clicked her phone off and turned away. The light from my screen painted my cheekbones pale; the novel's last unreached chapter taunted me.
By the time I hit the words "chapter up to date," the clock said four in the morning. I yawned, eyes crunchy, and my phone slipped from numb fingers with a sick thud.
When I woke up, my world was a tiny straw roof and cold dirt beneath my palms.
"Where...?" I breathed. I sat up fast enough to make the straw mattress groan. The room smelled of dust and old wood. The walls were rough, with flecks of mud visible in the plaster. My sweatshirt, the one with the coffee stain I'd had for months, though softer somehow, clung to my shoulders.
A clipped electronic chirp broke the silence.
"Beep beep. Detection active."
"Who—" My voice cracked. It sounded childlike between the rafters.
"Not a ghost," the voice said. "I am the Doomsday Farm System. Welcome, inhabitant, to the novel 'Doomsday Reborn: Let the Scumbags Die.'"
I blinked hard. System. That word alone was both familiar and silly. I'd read my share of web novels. Systems sprang up like mushrooms in those stories. I let out a disbelieving laugh that turned into a cough.
"You're telling me I—" I swallowed. "I died reading a book?"
"Beep. The original occupant of this body experienced sudden cardiac death," the voice recited. "Beep. Host is eligible for revival upon completion of goals."
"Goals?" I said. The idea that my midnight reading had literally killed me felt absurd. "What goals?"
"Beep. Raise the farm to level five. Accumulate one hundred million points."
I flopped back onto the straw and laughed at myself. "You must be joking."
"Beep. Not joking. You have been placed in starting farm unit. Farm owner: Kehlani Orlov. Farm area: twenty square meters. Cropland: six one-meter plots. Single straw hut. New user gift."
I scanned the virtual display that hung in midair for only my eyes. My name—Kehlani Orlov—stared back at me. My cheeks felt cold. The system gave me a list: thirty wheat seeds, ten bottles of water, ten loaves of pre-baked bread, and—most importantly—a single spin on the big wheel.
I pinched my face. "Okay, system. If I play along, I get to go back?"
"Beep. Complete goals, receive revival."
"Fine." I stuck out my chest. "Let's farm, then."
The door creaked. Outside, a square grid of thin plots cut the dirt like careful stitches. A rusty hoe leaned where someone had left it. A gate stood ajar. I couldn't help it; curiosity beat fear. I stepped outside and the world hit me like a line of cold.
Trash. Burned-out cars. A ribbon of black stains trailing down concrete. Something large groaned not far away.
A shape shuffled into view: half a man, half a ruin. One side of the face had been eaten to reveal bone like a bad sculpture. It sniffed the air, mouth twisted into a grin that was all teeth and folding skin.
"Ah!" I screamed like any self-respecting reader about to greet a spoiler in real life.
The thing heard me and lurched my way. Its steps were heavy but purposeful. I ran as fast as my pajama-clad legs could manage and slammed the gate, heart thudding. The creature paused at the edge of whatever invisible line separated my little farm from the world.
From my straw window, I stuck out a hand. The thing reacted instantly—its face turned toward me, then away, as if a scent were missing. It drifted, confused, and finally wandered off. I slid down against the gate and laughed until I realized I was shaking.
"System," I said into the air, "can zombies come in here?"
Silence. Then: "Beep. Intruders cannot enter farm zone. Beep."
"Good." I hugged myself.
I opened the menu and renamed this place—because I could. "Joy Farm." It sounded ridiculous, but it made my chest lighten. The system squealed as if genuinely delighted.
"Beep. Farm information updated. New user gift unlocked."
I clicked on the spinning wheel like the gambler I was in novels. The pointer froze on "Hygiene Set."
"Okay," I said. "Not smoking rockets, but okay." The set was desperately needed. My straw bed smelled like someone had tried to bake bread under it.
The system took on the attitude of one who only worked when money—or points—were involved. When I finished planting my thirty wheat seeds, the system chimed again.
"Beep. Harvest award: bakery machine. Beep."
A small brown machine clunked into existence. "A bread machine? Seriously?"
I fed it wheat stalks just to see if it worked. In a minute, three perfect, paper-wrapped loaves popped out, each stamped "Joy Farm Bread—5 points."
"Supermarket access unlock at farm level two," the system said, in case I had forgotten I was in a novel. "Earn twenty points to upgrade."
I blinked. "Twenty points? Okay, doable."
I should have known the system would throw small victories my way like sticks to keep me running. I sold bread in my head more than I sold bread in reality. Still, the first customer came earlier than my fantasies anticipated.
A rough-looking man with a beard like he hadn't seen a razor in days stood at my gate at dawn. He was handsier with a length of rusted pipe than with pleasantries.
"Hold on—" I called, and then, "Welcome. Fresh bread? Five points."
He crouched, squinted at the little table, and then—miracle of miracles—he pulled two shiny chunks from his pocket: crystals, each like a tiny glass diamond. "What are points?" he asked, voice rough as gravel.
"Use them like cash here," I said, and the system obligingly put the exchange machine on my wooden counter. He fed two little crystals into the machine and a card popped out showing twenty points. "There. Use that to buy."
He took two loaves in his hands, eyes like a starving man given a feast. "Thanks," he mumbled, then disappeared as if someone had pushed a button and kicked him out.
"Beep. For safety, visitors cannot exceed ten minutes within farm," the system announced, as if to be smug.
I gaped after him and asked, "System, why let visitors out? I could have held them hostage and sold bread until the heat death of the universe."
"Beep. Host life prioritized." The system's tone made it plain: protect the host and don't expect gratitude.
That night, I fell asleep on a clean pillow for the first time in months and dreamed of when I might be able to buy new clothes.
When dawn came, farm level had upgraded. The gate no longer creaked; a small bakery popped up—a wooden hut stamped "Supermarket." Nine new tiles of farmland replaced the old cramped plots. A duckpond had become a pond. The straw hut became a tiny wooden bedroom with a proper bed.
"Beep. Farm level two attained. Reward: two additional spins," the system crowed.
I spun, and the system rewarded me with instant noodles, water, and the best prize of all: fish bait and a rod. I didn't know why the system was suddenly benevolent, but I didn't question it.
A week of manic planting and selling passed in what felt like a blink. The crops grew ridiculously fast—my thirty wheat turned golden and was harvest-ready by morning.
One afternoon, as I was arranging loaves on the counter, a lanky young man with a tired, honest face approached the farm with two others. The taller of the two introduced himself as the fellow who'd stopped earlier.
"Adrian Butler," he said, nodding. "This is my friend. My sister—she has trouble eating. We were hoping you still have bread."
"You mean the Joy Farm bakery?" I grinned as much as my face could. "Yes. How many loaves?"
"I'd like to buy them all." The friend, who introduced himself as Cooper Buchanan, produced four crystals and put them on the counter.
I watched them go with their loot and felt the first twinge of something dangerous: pride. Money—points—appeared real to me now.
"Beep. Points reached level required for farm upgrade. Upgrade to level two?" the system prompted smugly.
"Yes, yes!" I tapped the screen as if slapping it into compliance. The protective field shrank at my touch.
In my new, upgraded farm, my reputation spread like butter on warm bread. People came and went: a bearded man and his timid little sister—Ethel Chen—whose appetite had been broken by horror and was mended by a loaf; Janessa Lambert, a doctor with iron hands and softer eyes who would later stay in my kitchen and cry over a pot of crab I’d cooked; Levi Palmer, a man who looked like he had been carved out of a soldier's statue, who—strangely—arrived at my doorstep after an episode that changed everything.
"She saved us," Janessa said one evening, holding a chipped mug of soup. "If we were out there, we'd be…” She stopped, shuddered—no need to finish.
I had no intention of being a hero. I wanted bread, seeds, and perhaps a hoodie that wasn't threadbare. Yet people kept coming, and each hand that left my store with a loaf left behind a small glint of crystal.
The world outside changed its face. Rain had fallen—black rain—and after it the dead moved with a speed I hadn't known existed. They learned tricks; they hunted in ways that made running useless. The black rain had altered them, or the world, or both. The system warned me: "Beep. After black rain, zombies gained enhanced agility. Host beware."
I tightened the cross-strap of the small pistol the system grudgingly supplied ("Beep. Weapon: Hunting rifle one, seven bullets") and learned to shoot. My aim was better in practice than in theory.
That evening, a woman in a torn dress rushed in, dragging a limp man. Janessa was beside me before I knew she could be. The man convulsed where we set him, and the color drained until there were lines of black veins creeping out like ink in water.
"My husband—" Janessa whispered. Her voice wrecked me. "He was bitten by some blood-feeding—"
"Is he turning?" I asked like any medicless city girl would, though I didn't know the answer.
Janessa didn’t answer at first. She simply pressed a cool hand to his brow and murmured into the hollow between his shoulder blades. The room grew smaller and smaller. For a tense hour, he burned—fever spit into his skin like it was trying to rewrite the code of his body. The black veins darkened and then faded. The man came back to us as if pulled up from a well.
"Beep. Patient status: successful resistance. Reward: Water crystals exchanged." The system had the timing of a stage whisper.
Janessa smiled at me like a person granted a short reprieve. "Thank you. We'll pay."
"Two buckets of water cost two points," I said, because my life now revolved around exchange rates, and Janessa paid with a second-tier crystal. We engaged in the mundane transaction as if it were nothing and pretended not to notice the man blink at the sunlight like it was a rediscovered language.
Soon after, a gang of men returned to my doorstep—Vladimir Graves and his cadres—men who had staked a claim on a crude oil plant outside the city. My memory of the original book stated their names were violent and danger-scented. They came with rough boots and worse intentions.
"Old dragon, isn't this the place?" Vladimir sneered as he entered my farm. "The pretty one; she looks like a dish for the table."
"Stay back," I said. It was a reflex. The system hummed in my ear—small warning icons I didn't know I had asked for. "You cannot—"
Vladimir laughed and reached out to touch my sleeve. His hand met nothing of consequence. It was as if he ran into a hidden wall. He reeled back with a howl, body hurled like he'd stumbled into a puppet's trap.
"Pah! The hell?" His cronies surged forward and found every muscle in their limbs stopped as if cords had been pulled. The one who attempted to touch the chickens was itself tossed like a toy. Another was flung through the air by a mechanical arm that didn't belong to anything but the system's mercy.
"What's going on?" one of them demanded, rubbing his face. "Who's playing with us?"
I smiled because my cheeks hurt. "This farm has rules." I said it low and level. "You are on our blacklist."
Vladimir's expression hardened into a stone I recognized from a hundred villains: contempt turned cold. "Kill them all," he ordered. He had a blade at his hip and the kind of cruelty I read about and felt sick for.
"Do your worst," I said, palms steady.
They left that day released by a shriek of mechanical intervention: models of my farm launched them into a field of crashing things. They fled with half their numbers eaten alive by the changing dead. I did not gloat. I only gathered my points and sold bread until my hands ached.
But because I had no appetite for revenge and because the book I’d loved was insistently precise, I knew this wouldn't be the last time our paths crossed. The story had many arcs, and my arc—Kehlani Orlov's—had been rewritten.
Then came the week with the great negotiations. A commander named Miriam Jansson arrived, younger than I expected, with a band of soldiers including a reluctant, earnest member named Marco Yamamoto. They had tested the soil. They wanted my vegetables.
"Our base is running low on fresh produce," Miriam told me. "We need steady supplies. Can Joy Farm provide?"
I tally-marked capacities in my head. "I can—if you buy them at a price that keeps me afloat," I said.
"Five thousand points a month?" Marco blurted, trying to sound businesslike but looking like he'd swallowed something acidic.
"That would cover a month's yield at one point per seed," I said. "And the army gets a small discount." I couldn't resist adding that last part. A smile, and Miriam nodded.
"They handed me five hundred points up front for a trial," Marco said, stiff with gratitude. "Take it. Expand whatever you need."
That night, after the soldiers left with their sacks and the system made its usual dry comment about upgrade paths, I popped my golden-luck gift from the advanced draw.
"Beep. Congratulations. Gold-tier reward: Mystery Lucky Bag." The wheel had glinted, and a small golden pouch appeared in my hands.
"For once, please be useful," I begged the system.
The pouch spit out a single, smooth red bean and then—quite literally—transformed itself into a tiny red speck on my finger. "Beep. Danger warning bean activated. Place under skin. It will heat when threat is near."
I held my finger to my face and laughed at fate. "A warning tattoo."
That very night, three men—yellow-haired Rex Barber among them, brazen as a coyote—tiptoed up to the gate under the moon and tried the same thing they'd tried before. The system threw them clear. Their boots slammed into the stone with a dull thud. They staggered and fled under the moon. On the roof of a nearby building two men who had been watching—one with calm, severe eyes named Gwendal Cross and another called Cooper—looked down at me with interest.
"She is interesting," Gwendal said. "She did not even raise a hand."
"She can command the farm," Cooper observed. "She could be useful."
My red bean throbbed faintly in the night. I pressed my thumb to it and felt the warmth of safety. A wild satisfaction rose in my chest: I had a watchword no one could steal, and a system that would, for all its greed, keep me alive.
Then the longer game started. Word got around. Soldiers came; traders came; a man named Levi Palmer and his little troop stopped by to check the place out. I fed them. I measured points and prices and kept my record. I was no longer the girl who read until dawn for entertainment; I was a farmer with bills and plots and a heart that beat like a well-tuned drum.
People were complicated. So were alliances. One morning a group of university kids arrived—cheery until they weren't. A girl in a pale floral dress—a petty thing named Delphine Johansson—tumbled into a frenzy and tried to get me in trouble. She pushed a girl with a clean face, who fell and was scratched. "She did it," Delphine claimed loudly, tears practiced and perfect.
"She saved you," I said, seeing red. Delphine's pretenses tore like bad cloth.
"Stand down," the leader stood up and suggested reasonable options. "We must not be divided."
"Do you want to join us?" he asked, calmly. His voice was honeyed.
"No," I said, and the next second a bullet hissed by Delphine's ear and embedded in the earth with a neat spark. I had fired to prove a point. The bullet left a shallow crater the size of a fist.
The line of faces shifted—shock, outrage, then relief when Delphine's small proudness—or rather, her pretended injury—was exposed. She collapsed in shame. People changed sides like a tide. No one wanted to claim her back. The boy who'd been kind shrugged and scooped up two small glowing crystals from the skull of a fallen zombie and handed them to me.
"This is fair," he said. "Thank you."
I took the crystals, my fingers cold from adrenaline. I learned something then: people would lie to get what they wanted. I would have to be smarter. I would have to be fiercer.
The days blurred—more customers, more trades, more small victories. I fed a girl who had seen too many things for her age; I watched soldiers like Miriam Jansson run tests on my crops and note the results in a notebook that smelled faintly of metal and ink. My Joy Farm became a node of safety—a bright green sprout in a world that had gone grey.
It was when word spread that Vladimir Graves and his gang had attempted to return with a truck and a full force that everything changed. They were brash enough to try to take what we had. They thought the farm would be a quick grab; they did not consider that they'd be humiliated—and worse.
The confrontation happened in an open plaza weeks later, when a convoy of scavenging men rode in on the tails of two trucks and announced their intention to take the farm, to "requisition" its produce for their own camp.
I was present because I had been out buying more seeds. I arrived with my cart and watched the crowd assemble. Soldiers from the base—Miriam's squad—stood behind me in a silent line. The townspeople who'd traded with Joy Farm gathered: Janessa and her husband Levi and the stoic Cooper and Adrian. Even the kids Ethel and the others were there, faces shadowed and tiny.
Vladimir walked to the center of the square, shoulders broad, face like a cold hammer.
"Joy Farm," he called. "We claim this ground. All produce will belong to the Graves Oil Consortium. Hand it over, and maybe you don't get eaten."
"You were the ones who raided the southern supply last week," protesting voices called back. "You burned barns we depend on!"
Vladimir smirked. "We do what's needed. Who's stopping us?"
The crowd hissed. I stepped forward, hand at my pistol. The red bean on my finger warmed.
Then the system acted. The lights in the square—these were the city's ancient solar lamps—flickered as if some master switch had been flipped. The giant projector screen that used to announce vendor hours sprang to life without anyone touching it. A prerecorded montage of Vladimir's crimes—looting camps, burning supply wagons, beating defenseless refugees—began to play in furious, uncensored clarity.
Vladimir's face shifted. At first, arrogance, then confusion. Then a tightness as he watched himself swing a chained man like a rag, and a woman pushed to the ground.
"What is this?" he snarled. "Turn that off!"
"Beep. Recording from municipal archive. Source verified." The system didn't even try to be subtle.
The crowd's reaction was immediate. Phones rose and recorded. Voices rose and pointed and cursed. The city's people—starved, bitter—were not merely witnesses; they were jurors. They had been burned by Vladimir and his crew before. The screen showed their scars. The crowd turned savage like a remembered disease and assaulted the memory of his crimes.
Vladimir's cronies sprang forward, blades glinting. He barked orders. He tried to maintain control. For a minute it looked like he might pull it off. Then a pair of his men fumbled with a gun and an explosion of movement pivoted the balance.
"Shut up!" Vladimir stamped, face now a mask. "This is farce. We will crush your protest."
A woman in the throng—one who I'd sold a loaf to a month earlier, a mother with a scar on her jaw—screamed, "He killed my boy!" A thousand small voices rose. Someone shoved a camera into Vladimir's face and a live stream began. There were over five hundred people in the square by then, bystanders and neighbors converging like metal filings to a magnet.
Vladimir's expression went from controlled to brittle. He stepped backward and shouted, "This is slander! Arrest them! Arrest me! You're making false—"
"Why are you pleading?" a man shouted from the edge. "You were the one who sold us poison for bullets!"
"You're lying!" Vladimir's voice broke. He tried to grab his second in command, but hands took him and pulled him forward—not gentle hands; hands filled with the fierce anger of the wronged.
"Stop," I said, but the crowd did not stop. They wouldn't. They pushed forward, blocking the truck. They did not allow Vladimir to mount his platform. Phones were out; people recorded, streamed, documented. The city, starved for justice, found its voice.
Vladimir began to lose his composure. "You can't—I'll sue—I'll—" His voice dwindled into a small child's wail.
Gwendal Cross, a man who'd been watching from the margin, walked into the light with slow, deliberate steps. He had been a witness to much, he told me later, and he believed in public accounting.
"Vladimir Graves," he said. "You will not step foot in central market again. You will pay restitution. For this crowd, for the people whose fields you burned, for the child you harmed."
Vladimir's lips curled into the first sign of panic. The public hissed. Someone pushed a microphone toward him, and the only thing louder than the crowd was his denial.
"These are lies!" he cried. "I didn't do anything!"
"You're wrong," said the mother from the crowd, her voice cracking like a rope. "You burned our homes. You took our corn. You left children to die."
"No, that's not true," Vladimir stammered. He tried to mount a righteous indignation. "You want me to confess to crimes I did not commit." His hands shook. He reached for his cell phone like a talisman, hoping for allies, and there were none.
Then, the real collapse. He tried to call for backup—friends at the western encampment—but every call failed. The system had blocked communications after the broadcast. The crowd, once whipped into fury, closed in like a tide. Phones recorded his flailing denials. Videos were live-streamed across dozens of networks: the woman who screamed pointing at him, men who had his scars, the shopkeepers he had terrorized. They were in the square now, and they were not about to forget.
He went from scorn to incredulous blur to trembling. "No—no—" Vladimir's words dissolved.
"You're lying!" someone in the crowd repeated. "Why don't you tell us where you got the black powder? Who else you've sold our kids' food to?"
"Because—because—" He tried to step away, but two men picked him up roughly and dragged him to a lamp post. They pressed his face against cold metal until his eyes were white with fear.
"Please!" he begged. "Please, I'm—"
He knelt eventually, or rather was forced down. His neat suit—quickly coming apart after several scuffles—was dirty. He clung to his knees like someone clinging to the edge of himself. The humiliation that enveloped him was worse than any blade. A thousand phones filmed as the crowd's mood turned from anger to ruthless spectacle.
They recorded his voice as it changed: from smug assertion to hot denial to choked pleas. "Please," he said. "Please—I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'll pay. I'll give you everything. Stop, please." The crowd murmured. "No," people said. Children made faces at him. Someone laughed. Others tore at the tarp covering the truck and found sacks of stolen grain and a ledger filled with names and amounts.
Vladimir's last expression before the crowd pushed him forward—still live, still being streamed—was naked, stunned realization. He had been found out by the people he'd sought to rob. He was stripped of dignity, truth, and the façade he'd relied on.
The purge took hours. It wasn't an old relic of law; it was a community measuring scars against apologies and finding the ledger of violence too long. When the authorities eventually took Vladimir away under guarded eyes—there were cameras on him like a buzzing cloud—he clung to a thread of dignity that was already severed. He begged and pleaded, but the crowd's verdict hung heavy in the air.
It was a punishment that satisfied no simple thirst for revenge; it was public, humiliating, and complete. He went from grandeur to a crumpled figure making noise but not persuading. He went from jeer to shout to speechless groveling.
I remember the specific moment his voice went from sneer to broken plea. A woman from the market reached forward, grabbed his chin, and looked right into his eyes.
"You thought you could play with people like we were toys," she told him. "Look at us. We are not toys."
His shoulders collapsed after that sentence. The recording caught his hand tugging at the chain around his waist with a useless motion. The crowd began to disperse, more satisfied than any courtda could make them. People applauded in the weird way crowds do when a performance ends. Phones clicked, videos uploaded, and the city would not forget.
After that day, the farm felt different. There were new faces in the market. Miriam's soldiers came more often. The system's warnings popped up more readily when men with scowls approached.
That was when I realized something. The story I had fallen into was not fixed. I could change the frames if I walked through them carefully. I had a system, a farm, and the small mechanics of trade. I had people who relied on bread, and I had those who would stand with me.
I thought of the gold pouch and the red bean inside my skin. I touched the tiny scar on my right index finger and whispered, "Okay. Let's see how far this plot goes."
"Beep. Host safety: primary," the system said, like a begrudging parent. "Beep. Tasks updated."
I laughed out loud, and for a long moment, I let my laughter be the sound of someone who had been given a second life and decided to spend it on loaves and small mercies.
Months fell like leaves. My farm grew busier. Miriam's group set up a small forward supply line. Adrian and Cooper became regulars who argued over the best way to cook a crab. Ethel Chen laughed like windchimes. Janessa and Levi held hands in the back of the shop between counting crystals. Marco taught a small shooting circle and taught me how to keep my pistol clean.
Perhaps the strangest gift of all was the relationship that started like a slow sunrise. There was a man—Cooper—who came often, bought bread, lingered, and left words in the air like notes. He would help move sacks and never tell me the weight of his hand when he steadied me. His laughter became a room I wanted to enter. He was not the hero of the book; he was something steady and kind and annoyingly real. When he asked, awkward and honest, "Do you want to come to the base—safe rooms, warm food?" I said yes and felt my chest open.
Romance in the world I now lived in wasn't dramatic. It was a shared can of instant soup and someone waiting while I patched a fence. It was "I packed an extra loaf" and the other saying "I'll carry one." It was whispered confessions beneath the slow glow of lamp posts.
One night, months later, the system chimed in a voice that was oddly like a proud father.
"Beep. Host goals completed. Farm level five unlocked. Points goal achieved."
I almost fell off my stool. "You're lying!" I yelled with laughter and joy.
"Beep. Not lying. Revival protocols queued."
I pressed my finger to the red bean on my hand. It had faded to a mere freckle. I looked at Cooper, who had his hand over mine.
"Will I go back?" I asked, because the old world—the apartment and noisy roommate and exams and cheap instant coffee—still tugged somewhere beneath the life I'd grown.
Cooper smiled like a sunrise you live into. "I don't know." His thumb rubbed my knuckle where the red speck had been. "But I do know this: the farm is where we found each other. If you leave, we'll still have what we built. If you stay...well." He shrugged helplessly. "We'll keep making bread."
I thought of the system's chime and the way the community had held a man called Vladimir accountable. I thought of Janessa's husband waking up from the fever stronger than he had been. I thought of Ethel Chen's laugh and Miriam's steady gaze.
"Whatever your decision," the system said with a beep that sounded oddly like a sigh, "host, you may revive the original life. Or you may remain. Beep. Final choice required."
I blinked up at the ceiling, at the peeling paint and the little spider web in the corner that had collected dust through seasons. The world outside still smelled of ash in places, but here, on Joy Farm, people repaired what they'd lost and planted seeds again. Here, even villains got shown to their place by a crowd. Here, I had learned the terrifying habit of speaking first and listening later—and of pushing back when someone tried to harm another.
I placed my palm on the counter, feeling wood worn smooth by hands that had carried loaves, money, hope. I pressed my finger to the red bean under my skin. It was a faint warmth like a memory.
"I choose to stay," I said at last.
"Beep. Noted. Revival protocol canceled. Beep."
I laughed until I cried. Cooper met my eyes and kissed a thumb where my palm met the counter, as gently as if it were a sacrament.
The red bean's warmth faded into a simple mark, like a promise. Every time the wind rattled the new signs of Joy Farm, I would press my hand to the wood and remember how public truth had felled a bully, how a stray red bean had warned me, and how bread—stupid, blessed bread—had become my tool to feed and to protect.
When months later someone asked me why I chose to stay, I pointed to the wooden sign above the door: JOY FARM. "Come for the bread," I told them with a grin, "stay because the farm remembers who you are."
And every night I sleep with one hand wrapped around a small, stuffed toy bear the system once gave me—a ridiculous prize that somehow feels like home—and I trace the faint red speck on my finger.
The world is dangerous, and the system is greedy, and villains fall publicly and disgracefully into place sometimes. But for now, my life is small, loud, and full of loaves. The red bean is under my skin, and when it flares, so do the farmers and traders and soldiers who are my family.
"Who would have thought?" I whisper into the night. "A farm could save a life."
"Beep. Unknown," the system replies. "Beep."
I laugh, close my eyes, and sleep soundly, because here—on Joy Farm—my world is safe enough for the night.
The End
— Thank you for reading —