"Sometime I really would like to hear all about your world," Shen Yuan says as they get settled in. "We could exchange stories." Ugh, stories. Poor chase of words on his part, for all he'd meant it sincerely. He listens with silent grumbling on his part as Viktor outlines the bullshit Trench has already put him through, and rubs his forehead afterwards with a less-silent groan. "I was afraid you'd say something like that," he grouses. Stories and mistakes... "There is one other thing I've been avoiding mentioning, partially because I thought it would be too weird even for Trench, partially because it's embarrassing. But this whole quest-chain might as well be designed to humiliate me, so." He props his chin up on his hand, staring out the kitchen window.

"There was this book, a serialized novel, that I used to read when I still lived here," he says quietly. "It was honestly pretty shitty, dropped plotlines and continuity errors all over the place, low-IQ side characters, everything always had to play out as melodramatically as possible, but I kept reading because I...I just really liked the main character. He was, you know, the kind of borderline-villain protagonist who started with nothing, enduring thousands of misfortunes, and then unlocked a secret power that made him nearly invincible and let him go back to wreck bloody vengeance on everyone who'd ever wronged him." He grimaces with deep, heart-felt embarrassment. "A transparent power fantasy, but I liked him. Or at least, I hated how shitty the actual story was in comparison to him. I used to get so angry with Airplane -- with the author for it. I felt like Luo Binghe deserved better."

And there it was, the heart of the matter. Shen Yuan hides his face in his hands. "Of course the whole 'pay back kindness and evil ten-fold' thing got a lot less appealing when I suddenly woke up in the body of one of Binghe's antagonists!" he groans. "Really sucked all the fun out of the power fantasy!"