Dazzling Starlight Sleepless
Chapter 1
I’m Bruce, the most notorious good-for-nothing playboy in the Capital City.
My stepbrother happens to be the lofty CEO of a corporate empire. He indulges my every whim—street racing, reckless spending, stirring up trouble—and then quietly cleans up every mess I leave behind.
I used to believe that kind of extreme pampering was love.
Then a Favorability System bound itself to my mind.
**[Scanning target: Dennis. Current Favorability: -99. Emotional Analysis: Disgust.]**
**[Warning: Host is currently under a "Spoil-to-Destroy" plan. The target will legally seize your shares and eliminate you upon your coming of age.]**
That negative number hit me like a plunge into ice water.
So all his kindness was nothing but meticulously crafted poison.
Just when I "risked my life" to save him from an avalanche and prepared to disappear for good, the system chimed again:
**[Target Dennis, Favorability +100. Emotional Analysis: Possession.]**
He looked at me, his gaze crazed and desperate. "Bruce, did you really think you could get away?"
***
Lying in bed, I stared up at the million-dollar crystal chandelier overhead, feeling like a deflated balloon. Every breath left me in a hollow, leaking hiss.
-99. Disgust.
Those two words pierced my brain like venom-tipped needles, turning my whole world inside out.
The system’s voice droned on.
**[Warning: Target Dennis's "Spoil-to-Destroy" plan against the host has been active for eight years. Its objective is to legally seize the 11% of Dennis's Group shares held in your name upon your 22nd birthday, citing mental incompetence and erratic behavior, followed by… host elimination.]**
Eliminate.
Such a cold, clinical word.
A violent shiver seized me. I bolted upright.
Impossible.
This can’t be true.
How could Dennis possibly *disgust* me?
He’s always been so good to me.
My eyes swept the room. Everything in this bedroom, lavish as a presidential suite, down to the smallest trinket, had been handpicked by Dennis. He always said I deserved the best.
**[The host need not deceive himself.]**
The system’s tone was flat. **[Recall: last Wednesday, the midnight snack you personally prepared for Dennis. Did he eat it?]**
I froze.
That day, on a whim, I’d tried cooking for the first time and simmered a pot of soup for him.
He’d smiled, praised me for growing up, even patted my head.
But the next day, taking out the trash, I saw the soup pot—completely untouched—sitting in the kitchen bin.
The butler had explained, *Sir had an unexpected international meeting. He was too busy and forgot.*
**[Last month, for your birthday, Dennis gifted you that eight-million-dollar Patek Philippe. When you handed it to him to help you put it on, did he subtly avoid touching your fingers?]**
My heart turned cold, inch by inch.
Yes. He took the watch, but pinched it by the edge of the dial with his fingertips. Carefully. As if my hands carried some fatal disease.
**[Three years ago, after your mother—Dennis’s stepmother—passed away and Mr. Oliver fell into depression, it was Dennis who brought you into the Dennis household. But are you aware that Dennis’s own birth mother died of depression, brought on by Mr. Oliver’s emotional affair with your mother?]**
*Boom.*
The last thread in my mind—the one called "Trust"—snapped completely.
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