Common Sense Altering System

After finishing the noodles and paying for the food without drawing any more attention, the two of them walked back toward the suburban housing area. The evening air was starting to feel cold. Ray walked behind Milady, hands stuffed in his jacket pockets while watching the girl’s always-straight back.

As soon as the door of that cute-looking house locked from the inside, Ray kicked off his shoes and flopped down on the living room sofa. A pair of big cat plushies got shoved and almost fell to the floor.

"Watch the plushies," Milady warned cold. She walked over to the kitchen table, set her bag down, then pulled something out of a drawer.

"Your sofa’s hard as hell too," Ray muttered while stretching his sore back. "I sleeping here?"

"You wanna sleep in my room?" Milady turned around, squinting at Ray.

"Hell no. Sofa’s fine," Ray shot back fast.

Milady tossed something at him. Ray reflexively caught it with one hand. When he saw what was in his hand, Ray raised an eyebrow.

It was a phone. Weird looking, way thicker than any modern smartphone, with a plain black case and no brand logo anywhere. It felt pretty heavy in his grip, like a mix between some old factory phone and a homemade military device.

"What kind of phone is this?" Ray asked while weighing the thick thing in his hand.

"Use that if you wanna get on the internet," Milady answered while walking toward the hallway to her room. "The connection’s encrypted through a private network. Nobody’s gonna be able to track your IP or physical location from that phone, even if the interface looks like some cheap pirated OS."

Ray turned on the screen. Sure enough, the display was kinda rough with sloppy icons, like a cheap modified Android OS. But Ray didn’t complain. In his situation—on the run and being hunted all over Indonesia—a thick brick phone that was safe was way more valuable than some thin flagship phone the cops could track.

"Thanks," Ray said.

"Don’t use your real name to log into personal accounts if you don’t wanna trigger a risk trail," Milady warned from the bedroom doorway. "But if you just wanna check social media, use the hidden mode I already set up."

"Yeah, chill."

Milady looked at him for a second before finally closing the bedroom door with a quiet click. The house instantly went quiet, only the ticking wall clock and the faint hum of the fridge from the kitchen.

Ray adjusted how he was sitting on the sofa, leaning his back against the plushie pillow, then opened the X app that was already installed on the weird phone. He typed his account name with fast fingers.

As soon as the homepage loaded, his phone screen got flooded with notifications and wild trending numbers.

#RayMissing, #KidnapRay, and #WhereIsRay were sitting at the top of trending. Ray scrolled fast, reading dozens of tweets flying around from news accounts and regular netizens.

Conspiracy theories were everywhere. Some said Ray got kidnapped by a secret organization because of the weird phenomena happening lately, some figured he was being hidden by foreign parties, even wild speculation that he’d already been quietly executed.

Worst of all, Ray found a clip of an official government press conference. A neatly uniformed spokesperson stood in front of a bunch of media mics, firmly stating that neither the government nor the police had ever detained or arrested Ray. That official statement didn’t calm things down at all—it just made netizens panic more and accuse the government of lying.

The X timeline got even more chaotic when news about last night’s store fire started bubbling up. Photos of the burnt building wreckage on the edge of the forest got posted by a bunch of local news accounts. Netizens tied the fire to Ray going missing, creating a rumor spiral that was getting more and more out of control.

Ray cracked a thin smile. Chaos as hell, he thought. The world out there was going nuts looking for him, while he was just slacking on the sofa in some cold girl’s anime-themed house after she made him eat noodle soup.

But Ray’s smile suddenly faded when his eyes caught one tweet that had been retweeted tens of thousands of times.

The tweet came from the account @Karl_V.

Ray sat up straight. Karl. His own close friend.

Ray immediately tapped the tweet and read it line by line.

@Karl_V: I used to think life was just about chilling and going with the flow. I was dead wrong. This world’s hard, and if you don’t fight to level up, you’re gonna get steamrolled. Starting today I ain’t staying quiet. For my bro Ray, wherever the hell he is right now... this place is waiting for you to come back. I’m gonna keep climbing and help you through whatever path I got. Don’t give up, Bro. #StandForRay #HustleHard

Ray stared at the thick phone screen without blinking for a few seconds. His forehead furrowed deep.

"This... Karl?" Ray muttered, confused.

The writing in that tweet felt completely foreign to Ray. The Karl he knew wasn’t the type to drop poetic-ass posts like some alpha male hustler grinding money and life motivation. Karl was the chill dude whose hobby was hanging at the coffee shop till dawn, throwing dry-ass jokes, and the laziest person if you tried talking to him about the future or life ambition.

But this tweet in front of him? Karl sounded like some top-tier business influencer giving a motivational speech on a seminar stage.

Ray scrolled to the comments. Sure enough, the tweet blew up. Thousands of netizens were praising Karl’s loyalty, calling him a real man standing up for his friend who got hit with disaster. Karl’s name even climbed onto the local trending topics.

Suspicion started creeping into Ray’s chest. This was way too weird. Karl’s personality change was straight-up drastic, like he became a different person in just a few days.

Ray leaned his head back against the sofa, staring at the dim living room ceiling. His memory drifted back to a while ago, to the moment they all got these weird abilities.

That junk slot machine.

Ray’s eyes went wide when a realization slammed into his brain.

Karl also got a Business System from the same junk slot machine! Even though there was some distance, Ray got his system first.

And the most crucial part: Karl had no idea at all about Ray’s system or Milady’s. Karl was moving completely on his own will and thoughts, using the business system he got without anyone interfering.

"Don’t tell me..." Ray whispered to himself.

Ray’s suspicion peaked even more. If Karl got a Business System, that meant every move Karl made had to be tied to his system’s mechanics. The motivational speech on socials, using Ray going missing to pull public sympathy, building a strong personal image—was all this part of some branding play or business strategy directed by Karl’s system?

With fingers a little shaky from curiosity, Ray tapped Karl’s profile pic to go to his main page.

In Karl’s bio there was a new link and a neatly written description:

Founder & CEO of ’The Irony’ Comedy Club.

Turning dry humor into serious business.

For business inquiries: contact via link below.

Ray froze.

Karl actually opened his own Comedy Club.

Ray rubbed his face hard, then let out a quiet disbelieving chuckle. Karl wasn’t just using the situation to climb socially—his friend was straight-up using his Business System to brutally pivot his whole life. Karl used his name getting dragged into the news about Ray going missing as a stepping stone to build his first comedy business.

"Karl’s crazy..." Ray muttered, somewhere between impressed and stunned at his friend’s balls. "He actually used my missing name for marketing his new business."

Ray turned off the thick phone screen, then tossed it gently to the other end of the sofa. He put both hands behind his head, staring at the quiet wooden ceiling of the suburban house.

Karl had already started moving far with his Business System. Out there, his friend was building his own little business empire in the middle of the city’s chaos. Meanwhile Ray was sitting inside a hidden house with a mysterious girl, having to hide behind a mask and grind his system levels just to survive being hunted by the world.

Ray smiled thin in the darkness of the living room.

"Good for you if you keep climbing, Karl," Ray whispered quietly before closing his eyes on that hard sofa.

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