The ambient hum of the office wasn't just the air conditioning; it was the slow, methodical drain of my youth. Every click of a keyboard, every sip of lukewarm coffee, was another tiny tax levied on my soul by Corporate America.
I, Kaito Minami, was twenty-three, and my most notable achievement this week was convincing the vending machine to accept a crumpled five-hundred yen coin.
Job Status: Junior Programmer (Level 4, 'Code Monkey')
Life Status: Unremarkable (Pending Upgrade)
Lunch Status: Instant ramen (Spicy Chili Flavor, Rank: C-)
I idly ran my finger over the scarred laminate desk. My gaze was fixed on the ceiling, or more accurately, the ceiling fan. It had been aggressively wobbling since Tuesday, spinning with a jerky, suicidal determination that seemed to perfectly reflect my mood after debugging three hundred lines of legacy code.
"Kaito," whispered Hana-senpai, leaning over the partition. Her expression was a mix of concern and exasperation. "Did you even sleep last night? You look like a protagonist who just realized he forgot to save before fighting the final boss."
I managed a grim smile. "Almost. I spent four hours tracking down a semicolon in a nested loop. It was a fight to the death, Senpai. I won, but at what cost?"
She sighed, flicking a loose strand of her practical, shoulder-length hair. "The cost is coffee and maybe an hour of fresh air. Take a break. Just try not to stare at the fan, you'll give yourself motion sickness."
Hana-senpai retreated, leaving me alone with my existential dread and the violently gyrating ceiling fan.
She told me not to stare. But how can I not?
That fan was a symbol. A symbol of deferred maintenance, corporate corner-cutting, and the terrifying, slow-motion physics experiment that was my Tuesday. It looked ready to detach and commit a brutal act of workplace violence at any moment.
I leaned back, adjusting the flimsy headset I used for morning meetings. My eyes narrowed, focusing on the dark, cracked plastic housing where the wobble originated. I found myself thinking not about code, but about force.
If I could just... apply a tiny, precise opposing force to the mounting bracket...
It was a ridiculous thought. I was a programmer, not a carpenter-ninja. I couldn't shoot tiny, stabilizing energy beams from my eyes.
And then, a tiny, almost imperceptible flicker in the corner of my vision.
It was like a subtitle box had popped up during a conversation, except the conversation was happening entirely inside my brain.
Target Acquired: [Ceiling Fan, Model XZ-88, Durability: $14/150$]
Potential Intervention: [Apply Telekinetic Field (Rank F)]
Cost: 1 [Stamina Point] per second.
Success Chance (Current Condition): 1%
"Wha... what?" I mumbled, instinctively rubbing my eyes.
The box didn't disappear. It was floating just above my monitor, translucent blue text shimmering faintly. I panicked, thinking I'd been staring at the screen so long I'd hallucinated a rogue pop-up window.
Focus, Kaito. Just focus on the fan.
I did. And as I stared at the wobbling menace, the text shifted.
Target: [Ceiling Fan]
Action: [Telekinetic Field (Rank F)]
Effect: Minimal stabilization (Projected: 0.05% improvement).
Warning: Extremely high chance of immediate [Stamina] depletion.
I looked down at my hands, which were resting limply on the keyboard. They looked normal—pale, slightly cramped from coding, and completely incapable of generating an invisible psychic force field.
Yet, the message was insistent. It felt incredibly real, like a system tutorial screen.
"This is insane," I whispered. "I must be overtired."
The fan gave a particularly vicious shudder. A small, black plastic shard—no bigger than a pinky fingernail—flew off and bounced harmlessly on the carpet ten feet away.
My eyes snapped back to the screen.
Target Durability: $12/150$ (Critical Damage Imminent)
Action: [Activate Telekinetic Field?]
Success Chance: 0% (Failure results in Ceiling Fan falling and causing localized structural damage.)
The 0% stung my pride, even if it was just a hallucination. Was I really such a loser that even my brain's delusions were telling me I couldn't handle a simple problem?
I took a deep, shaky breath, gripping the arms of my office chair. I was going to push the button. Not because I believed it would work, but because I was tired of feeling helpless against the petty indignities of office life.
If I'm going to get fired, it might as well be for trying to Jedi-fix the ceiling fan.
I mentally pushed. I visualized a tiny, silver thread of energy leaving my forehead and weaving around the fan's faulty mount, pulling it back into balance.
Instantly, a searing, white-hot pain bloomed behind my eyes. It felt like someone had replaced my cerebrospinal fluid with boiling soda water.
[Stamina] Depleted!
[Telekinetic Field] Activated! (Duration: 0.1 seconds)
Effect: Initial stabilization successful. Fan RPM reduced by 3%.
[STAT] Gained! [Willpower] +1
The pain vanished just as quickly as it appeared, leaving me dizzy and panting.
And the fan... the fan was still wobbling, but less violently. The difference was minuscule—a tremor reduced to a shaky vibration—but it was there. The suicidal wobble had become merely unprofessional.
A new, much larger blue panel appeared in my vision, making my heart hammer against my ribs.
Kaito Minami
Class: Initiate (Unassigned)
Level: 1
[STATS]
Strength: 4 (Average: 5)
Dexterity: 3 (Average: 5)
Stamina: 1 (Average: 5)
Intelligence: 7 (Average: 5)
Willpower: 2 (New!)
[SKILLS]
Telekinetic Field (F): 0.1% Progress to Level 2.
Coding (D+): 89% Progress to Level C. C.
I stared, mesmerized. Level 1. My stamina was a pitiful 1. My strength was below average. But I had a stat called [Willpower], and a skill called [Telekinetic Field].
The fan above me settled slightly more, the residual tension releasing.
Clang.
Another plastic shard fell, this time hitting my monitor with a light tap.
Target Durability: $8/150$ (Failure Imminent)
I looked down at the [Stamina] stat. It was slowly regenerating, ticking up from 0/10 to 1/10.
I had maybe five minutes before the fan committed hara-kiri and took me with it. Five minutes to regenerate enough stamina to attempt another stabilization.
My heart began to pound not from fear, but from a sudden, wild rush of purpose. Debugging legacy code was hell, but this was real. This was a System. This was a challenge with measurable parameters.
The only thing that matters is power.
"Hana-senpai," I called out, my voice a tense, high-pitched whisper. "I need you to get the ladder from the storage closet. Hurry! We have a Level 1 Boss fight up here!"
I didn't wait for her reply. I closed my eyes, focused on the dull ache in my core, and started manually concentrating on the painful, slow grind of my [Stamina] regeneration. The wobbling fan was no longer a symbol of my corporate misery. It was my first target. My first quest. And I was Level 1.
I have to hit Level 2 before that thing hits the ground.