After a series of poor life decisions, Luna Yue’s life was on a downward spiral into chaos, and though she did not want to admit it, it was completely her own fault.

  “Luna Yue.” The dull voice of the biology professor rang throughout the silent classroom, and the gazes of everyone in the room turned to look at the head buried in the sleeves of her gray hoodie.

  Due to the four hours of sleep she had gotten the night before, Luna had been 90% asleep in nearly all of her classes. And it was only the first. week. of. school.

  “What is the answer to question 7, part B:” the professor asked, an indiscernible expression on his face, “What is metabolism?”

  Barely even shifting the position of her head to squint at the professor, Luna answered, “Metabolism is all of the biochemical reactions in a living organism… or something…”

  The professor blinked, and after a moment said, “That’s… right. So metabolism is…” His voice trailed off as he continued his lecture, and Luna propped her chin onto her hand to display a posture that more resembled the act of paying attention.

  However, it was not long before her hand slumped, and her head was back on the lab table once again. The classmate seated next to her, Nicholas, stared at her in mock disappointment, discreetly waving a finger in her direction.

  Luna couldn’t be bothered with her slightly-irritating table mate when there were a dozen other things on her mind, keeping her headache from going away.

  Math test tomorrow, Mock Trial competition tomorrow, bio test tomorrow — no, I’m going to be missing the bio test because of the competition so I’ll have to make it up some other time — I’ll also be missing the show choir rehearsal, so I’ll have to learn an entire dance all by myself…

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  To keep herself awake, she pulled out a rice cracker to snack on. The professor had said on the first day of school that the students were allowed to eat in class, but as the sound of the cracker’s crunches echoed throughout the nearly silent room, he was probably regretting his momentary generosity.

  As Luna self-consciously took another bite of the cracker, her eyes drifted to the only other person whose head was also lowered, his laptop concealing his quietly-sleeping form. Sitting at the table behind her was Felix Won, the academic overachiever who had nearly the exact same schedule as Luna.

  In an incredibly large school with very low chances of having friends in the same classes, Luna shared five out of her seven classes with Felix. In fact, the two classes they had separate were the same subjects taught by the same teachers as well. Therefore, it wasn’t a surprise that Felix was slightly suffering in the same way as Luna.

  When she finally returned home late that afternoon, Luna’s only thought was, I can’t procrastinate, I can’t procrastinate… yet the only thing she felt like doing was: procrastinate.

  With really no energy to do anything else, she scrolled on her phone in a crumpled position seated on the chair before her desk, and only at 10 PM did she regain enough energy to activate her brain cells.

  Taking a deep breath, Luna turned off her phone and opened up her iPad to face her seemingly-endless list of homework and things to do in preparation for her demise the next day.

  “I can’t do this anymore…” Luna sighed. She never really spoke her thoughts out loud, but she was really too overwhelmed this time. With her entire upper body slumped over her desk, she murmured, “...I feel like I’m going to die…”

  [{DING!} Activation command: “I feel like I’m going to die” activated! [SYSTEM: LIFE GLOW UP 101] is now online.]

  The room was silent for a long moment. Unmoving, Luna glanced around at her surroundings, but found nothing out of the ordinary, so she reburied her head in her arms. I’m actually going to die. Now I’m even hearing things.

  [Welcome, distinguished host, to the services of [SYSTEM: LIFE GLOW UP 101], the most efficient life-changing system currently available!]

  Luna sat up straight rapidly, and a chill ran through her spine as she finally discovered the source of that sudden voice.

  A black void of a cat sat atop her desk, barely a few feet away from her face. The only difference between that cat and a real cat was the voice coming out of its mouth, as well as the light blue-purple eyes staring at her unblinkingly.