The Sin System: My Wife is Envy

I woke up.

Dark wood beams, a chandelier with the candles burned down to nothing, light coming through windows way too tall for any room I remembered sleeping in.

That came back cleanly. Itsuki Amagi. The wasted heir. The four-month clock. I knew where I was.

And nothing.

There was a shape of a tree. Warm edged. I reached for it and it wasn’t there.

I sat up.

[System Stabilizing...]

[Corruption Contained: 37% → 12%]

[Foreign Entity Isolation: ACTIVE]

[SIN SYSTEM INITIALIZATION COMPLETE]

[Welcome, Host. Synchronization process: SUCCESSFUL. Your original system has been partially overwritten to prevent collapse.]

"System."

[Yes, Host.]

[I am the system you...]

It stopped there. Half a sentence with nothing attached to it.

Luna was in the chair by the window. Her coat was different from before. The rank insignia was gone from where it had been.

"You’re awake," she said.

"How long."

"Three days."

I looked at the lamp. "The lamp ran down."

"I let it run down. You needed dark."

I checked my hands. The cuts from the sand were gone.

Everything the desert had taken from me had been returned, but my body still didn’t feel quite right.

"The Contract," I said.

"Still there. Something got into the architecture while you were in the loop. The Sin System has priority now. The Contract runs underneath." She looked out the window. "You’ll notice the difference."

"The four-month clock."

"Gone."

"Iris."

"Still your problem. Different reasons now." She said it without elaborating, which meant either she didn’t know the new reasons or they were worse than the old ones.

Outside, the courtyard. Snow on the path. The mana lamps unlit in the morning. The tree in the far corner with its branches weighed down.

I stopped looking at the tree.

"You’re missing something," Luna said.

"I know."

"I’m not going to tell you what."

"I didn’t ask."

She stood and set something on the desk. The diary. The cover that read Happy Birthday, Brother.

"The shop still works. Ink carried over." She moved toward the door. "Figure the Sin System out yourself. I don’t have clearance for what it is."

"Luna."

She stopped.

"The thing I’m missing." I didn’t finish it.

"Yes," she said.

"Does it matter."

She looked at me.

"It will," she said, and left.

Morning arrived.

I looked at the tree.

Snow on the branches. Nothing there.

Just a tree.

I turned back to the desk and opened the diary.

Right.

New project. Figure out what’s left.

***

[Ink Received from Survival Quest]

[Total Ink: 321]