The wind at this altitude didn't just blow; it judged. Up here, six stories above the pristine, silica-white sands of the Emerald Archipelago, the air felt cleaner, stripped of the heavy, suffocating scent of Botox, expensive single-malts, and the quiet desperation that drifted up from the "plebs" outside the gates. Hiroki stood on the razor-thin edge of the Shujin Academy rooftop, his toes hanging over the concrete lip. He was seventeen years old, and he was tired of breathing air that didn't belong to him.
From this height, the Archipelago looked edible. It was a nepo-baby pornographic dreamscape: lawns so perfectly emerald they looked like they'd been spray-painted by God's own gardener, Mediterranean McMansions flexing their stucco abs against the coastline, and private docks where yachts sat like oversized bathtub toys for the ultra-rich. This was "Paradise"—the most exclusive gated community in the world, a place where the laws of physics and finance seemed to bend for anyone with the right last name.
For Hiroki, it was just Hell with a better filter. It was the "Next Level After Hell."
He closed his eyes and let the trauma montage autoplay one last time. He wasn't doing it out of some "nostalgia kink"; it was simply that his brain was a petty, vengeful bitch that refused to let a single receipt expire. Every insult, every cold glance, every moment of being treated like a "biohazard site" was stored in high-definition.
It wasn't always like this. Or maybe that was the lie his brain told him to make the present feel worse.
The rot started when he was seven. He still remembered the smell of burnt rubber and the rain—the night his parents were turned into "speed-bump confetti" by a drunk driver who had enough money to make the police report vanish before the sun came up. Within forty-eight hours, Hiroki had been "overnighted" to the Thorne estate like a limited-edition orphan. He had arrived with a single suitcase and a heart that was still beating only because it didn't know how to stop yet.
Sayaka-san had met him at the door. He remembered her then—a vision of ice and silk, looking down at him as if he were a muddy boot someone had tracked onto her white marble floors. She never called him "nephew." She called him "the boy."
"You should be grateful," she had whispered, a sermon she would deliver for the next decade. "Grateful we took you in. Grateful for the Thorne name. Grateful for the scraps from our table."
Gratitude, Hiroki realized early on, was just humiliation dressed in its Sunday best.
The Thornes were the royalty of the Archipelago. Money so old it had cobwebs, and money so new it still smelled like the plastic wrap. They didn't just open doors; they built the cathedrals and charged admission for the right to breathe the incense. Hiroki lived in the "closet-suite"—a converted staff room next to the laundry that perpetually smelled of artificial lavender and quietly dying dreams. It was the only room in the house that didn't have a view of the ocean, which was fitting. Parasites didn't need a view.
Then there were the cousins. The "Golden Trio" plus one.
Ryota. Nineteen. A senior-year god with a trust-fund smirk and the kind of athletic build that made girls at Shujin Academy lose their ability to speak. He treated Hiroki like a bio-waste disposal unit. Ryota's favorite pastime was using Hiroki's room as a post-rager rathole. He'd bring back some "half-drunk influencer," kick Hiroki out onto the hallway carpet, and leave behind "victory confetti"—used condoms knotted and flicked across Hiroki's bed like trophies of a life Hiroki wasn't allowed to have.
Airi and Miku. The twins. Eighteen. They were ivy-league venom in human form. To them, Hiroki was a "human loading screen"—a beige wall with feelings. Airi once made him refold every towel in the mansion because they "weren't angled at the correct degree of submission." Four hours on his knees, his wrists cramping, while she narrated his "pathetic trembling" to her followers on a livestream.
And then, there was Nanami. Sweet seventeen. The same age as Hiroki, but from a completely different species. She was the kind of "lethal pretty" that made you want to commit a sin just to be excommunicated closer to her. She didn't bully him like Ryota or ignore him like the twins. She watched him. She watched him with a clinical, detached curiosity, like a scientist observing a bug that refused to die.
The final straw hadn't been a blow; it had been a liquid.
That morning, Hiroki had woken up to the sound of splashing. He opened his eyes to see Ryota standing over his open closet, calmly pissing on the only suit Hiroki owned—the one he'd saved for his graduation.
"Toilet's clogged upstairs," Ryota had said, zipping up with that lazy, sleepy smile. "You'll handle it, yeah? Can't have Mom seeing a mess."
Hiroki had handled it. He had washed the piss out of his clothes by hand because the machines were "for family only." He had walked to school. He had sat through his Calc exam. And then, he had climbed the stairs.
Now, standing on the ledge, the wind tugged at his Shujin blazer—a hand-me-down from Ryota that smelled faintly of someone else's expensive cologne and a life Hiroki would never lead.
"Silence," Hiroki whispered to the horizon. "I just want it to be quiet."
He leaned forward. He didn't jump; he simply surrendered to gravity.
The fall was slower than the movies. The mansion tilted away, the sky and ground traded places, and the wind screamed past his ears like it was personally offended by his existence. He saw the windows of the Academy flash by—classrooms where he'd been a ghost, hallways where he'd been a punching bag.
He was halfway to the concrete when the world broke.
[DING!]
The sound detonated inside his skull, a digital thunderclap that rattled his teeth and froze the air in his lungs.
[HOST FOUND... BINDING SOVEREIGN PROTOCOL...]
"What the fuck—" Hiroki tried to scream, but the wind swallowed the words.
Glowing blue text began to burn itself across his retinas, hovering in the air like a HUD from a high-end video game.
[ANALYSIS: HOST PHYSICAL CONDITION... CRITICAL.] [HOST PSYCHOLOGICAL STATUS... ERADICATED.] [SUITABILITY CHECK... 99.9% FOR TABOO LUST OVERLORD SYSTEM.]
The ground was rushing up now—the sharp, manicured blades of grass, the hard concrete of the courtyard. Hiroki squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for the "THUD" that would turn him into a memory.
WHUMP.
He hit something soft. Something that gave way with a squeak of vinyl and a rush of air. He bounced once, hard, then again, his limbs flailing like a broken doll before he finally rolled to a stop on his back.
Pain detonated along his spine, a white-hot, vicious fire that made him arch and wheeze. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't move. He could only stare up at the sky, which was now framed by red-and-yellow vinyl.
A bounce house.
Some rich-people fundraiser or "Spirit Week" bullshit had left a goddamn inflatable castle on the lawn.
[DING! SOVEREIGN PROTOCOL: TABOO LUST BOUND!] [MAIN QUEST ACTIVATED: SUBJUGATE THE EMERALD ELITE.] [OBJECTIVES: CONQUER SAYAKA THORNE, AIRI, MIKU, NANAMI, AND THE RUDE NEIGHBOR.] [REWARD: SOVEREIGN BEGINNER PACK.] [FAILURE: PERMANENT DEATH.] [TIME LIMIT: 7 DAYS.]
Hiroki lay there, gasping for air, the blue screens hovering over him like they were waiting for a tip. "I'm dead," he rasped, his voice cracked and wet. "I have to be dead. This is Hell. This is what Hell looks like... a bounce house and a harem to-do list."
[NEGATIVE. HOST IS ALIVE. EMERGENCY HEALING INITIALIZING.]
Slowly at first, then faster, a sensation like "hot honey" began to pour through his torso. The screaming in his back dulled to a grumpy ache. The bruises from Ryota's paintball practice the day before faded. His vision sharpened.
[NOTIFICATION: HOST HAS REGRESSED ONE WEEK BACK IN TIME TO THE MOMENT OF SYSTEM BINDING.]
Hiroki's breath hitched. He fumbled for his phone in his pocket—the cracked, three-generations-old model. The date on the lock screen made his heart stop.
Seven days ago.
He was back. He was in the bounce house, but it wasn't the jump from the roof. This was the night of the Thorne Garden Gala. This was the night Ryota and his friends had "jokingly" shoved him off the second-story balcony.
In his first life, this was the night he had been arrested for a planted "stolen" heirloom. This was the night Sayaka-san had told him he was a "stain on the family legacy."
But as Hiroki stood up, wobbling on the bouncy floor, he felt something cold and sharp settle in his chest. It was a new kind of weight. A predator's weight.
He looked at the mission list again. Sayaka-san. The woman who thought she was a goddess.
"Okay," Hiroki whispered, his voice gaining a resonance he didn't recognize. "Let's see how you like it when the 'charity case' stops playing by the rules."
He took a step toward the vinyl exit. For the first time in ten years, Hiroki wasn't just smiling. He was hungry.