Everly had never heard of those so-called “fat-burning capsules.”
She maintained a healthy diet, exercised regularly, and had a balanced, strong physique, so she had no concerns about weight loss and knew nothing about related products.
Misha, on the other hand, didn’t need to lose weight either—but she loved gossip. Wherever there was drama, there was Misha; she was like a nimble little creature darting around a lon field.
So all the way from the student service center back to the dorms, Everly was treated to a crash course on the capsules by Misha.
“This is a weight-loss drug that ca from Japan. It’s been really popular lately. They say it uses cutting-edge biotech. After taking the white capsules, the nanorobots inside the pills target fat cells directly. On one hand, they chanically destroy fat cells; on the other, they act as carriers, delivering fat-burning compounds into adipose tissue to enhance lipid breakdown efficiency. Basically, you can burn fat and lose weight quickly without exercising.”
Misha held her phone and read out loud from a group chat description of the product.
Everly was skeptical about the truth of that explanation.
“Sorry, maybe it’s rude to say this, but does Japan even have that kind of technology?”
It wasn’t just 2X15 now—even in her previous life, well into 2025, she had never heard of any country developing nanorobots that could casually shred fat cells. Those people were definitely exaggerating.
“Mhm~” Misha shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe it’s real, maybe it isn’t. But the drug definitely works. Everyone who takes the white capsules loses a ton of weight in just a month. If it weren’t for the fact that you have to keep taking the pink pills afterward to maintain the results, a bunch of my friends would’ve already been tempted to try SSU.”
“Pink pills?”
“Oh, did I forget to tell you? SSU cos in three types: white capsules, pink pills, and black pills. Look, here’s the description…”
Misha shoved her phone into Everly’s hand.
Anyway, since she was bored, Everly tucked her book under one arm and took the phone with the other, glancing at it.
The group was clearly one created by Misha and her close friends to chat casually. Everly didn’t peek at their conversations and instead directly looked at the product information image shared by one of the girls.
SSU was developed by a pharmaceutical company called Rakucho Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. The fat-burning capsules they produced ca in three types: white, pink, and black.
The white capsule—also called the “white pill”—was said to provide effects lasting six months per dose. Its function was to introduce nanorobots into the body. Each capsule cost 800 USD.
The pink pill had to be taken regularly. Its role was to regulate and suppress the activity of the nanorobots. It had to be taken once every three days; otherwise, the nanorobots might excessively consu body fat, causing rapid and extre weight loss. In severe cases, it could even lead to organ failure—in short, the consequences sounded terrifying.
Each pink pill cost about 100 USD. At first glance, it didn’t seem expensive, but since SSU treatnt required at least a month to take effect, users needed about ten pink pills in total, which ca to roughly 1,000 USD.
Finally, there was the black pill. After the six-month period ended, or once the user reached their desired weight and wanted to stop early, they had to take a single black pill to remove the nanorobots from the body. The black pill cost roughly the sa as the white pill—about 800 USD.
So, calculated over a one-month cycle, the total cost ca to around 2,600 USD.
University tuition in the United States was very high, and more than half of college students carried student loans that took an average of 20 years to repay. For these students, 2,600 dollars was not a small amount at all.
“Based on this description, if soone doesn’t follow the instructions properly while taking it, the consequences could be severe. A weight-loss drug like this… can it really just be sold freely in the US?”
Misha shook her head.
“Not through official channels, of course. In fact, after it was developed, this drug never actually obtained legal sales approval in Japan. Later on, who knows who ca up with the idea—sobody smuggled it into the US and started selling it here. With the help of a few online influencers doing private promotions, it actually sold pretty well and gradually beca popular in the States without anyone noticing.”
“……”
No matter how others saw it, Everly found the drug extrely suspicious.
“This thing clearly looks harmful to the body. Don’t ss around with it,” she warned Misha uneasily. “Health cos first, above everything else.”
Misha nodded. “Of course, I wouldn’t touch sothing like that! A single treatnt cycle costs 2,600 dollars—I’d have to work two months at the pizza shop to earn that. I could spend that money on way better things. Besides, I’m not even fat!”
Only then did Everly feel relieved.
Since neither she nor Misha planned to take weight-loss drugs, the matter had nothing to do with them anymore.
…
After that, Everly spent her ti trying various ways to study the Latin book Alexander Magni Iter ad Pardisum (Journey to Paradise).
It was written in Latin, a language she had never studied before. In her original plan, once the book arrived, she would simply take photos with her phone and use an image translation app to decode the text.
However, only after she finally got the book did she discover that the translation app she used didn’t support Latin at all—damn it.
After that, she tried ordering online translation services, hoping to hire soone to translate it for her. But professional translators were expensive, and even worse, there was a long waiting list due to scheduling backlogs. Unofficial translators were available imdiately, but she worried they might translate carelessly and distort the aning.
After weighing her options, she simply bought a Latin dictionary and started grinding through the book on her own.
At first, it was indeed quite troubleso, but English and Latin were, after all, “language relatives.” After struggling through it for a while and teaching herself so common grammar, Everly was barely able to understand the book—half comprehending, half guessing.
Her plan was that once she found the chapter on the Fountain of Youth, she would first read through it roughly herself, then take photos and send them to an online translator. That way, the translation would be cheaper, and the chance of errors would be lower.
Probably because she looked too exhausted from studying, one weekend in early April Misha skipped work for a day and invited Everly to the school’s football ga to relax.
Everly wasn’t the type to overwork herself unnecessarily, and as soon as she heard there was sothing fun going on, she naturally agreed.
The two of them bought so snacks and arrived at the stadium, only to find the match had already started. Fans supporting both sides were waving various cheering props and shouting loudly from the stands.
At the edge of the field, the cheerleaders from both teams were also putting on spectacular performances.
New Osebuch State was located at a relatively high latitude, so early April was still a bit cold. In the biting spring chill, the young girls seed completely unaffected by the temperature, wearing thin tops and short skirts, holding pom-poms, performing energetic and passionate cheer routines.
Everly spotted a familiar figure among the cheerleaders.
She carefully picked a seat near an exit in the empty row, then nudged Misha with her elbow, signaling her to look at the cheer squad.
“Look, isn’t that Gracie?”
Misha stretched her neck to look in the direction she pointed and nodded.
“Yes, that’s Gracie. After losing weight, she’s been actively participating in training. She passed the selection half a month ago and beca a mber of the school’s cheer squad. Oh, do you rember when we went to the student service center to pick up packages? That day she was carrying a lot of parcels, right? Clara later told that most of those packages actually belonged to cheer squad mbers.”
Everly thought for a mont and guessed, “Are the other cheerleaders b*llying her?”
Misha shrugged.
“Not really b*llying. It’s more like a kind of initiation thing every group has when soone new joins… They just make Gracie run errands because she’s the newcor. Once soone else joins later, soone else will replace her role.”
“But the cheer squad only recruits once a sester, right? The next intake won’t be until October.”
“Yeah. But there are lots of benefits to joining the cheer squad. It looks good on your résumé, it makes you popular on campus, you can get scholarships… I even heard that not long after Gracie joined, guys who used to look down on her were already confessing to her!”
“That’s true… So is Gracie still taking those weight-loss pills?”
“No idea. I heard her family isn’t well-off, and she’s paying tuition with loans. If it were , I’d stop as soon as I lost the weight. Those pink pills are way too expensive—I definitely couldn’t afford them.”
“Hopefully so…”
Everly muttered under her breath and shifted her attention back to the field.
She and Gracie weren’t close—just classmates who had once worked together on a group assignnt. It would be awkward to suddenly walk up and ask whether she was taking weight-loss drugs and tell her to stop. There was no guarantee Gracie would even appreciate it.
Besides, they were all adults. They weren’t clueless children who needed to be told what to do; they had to learn to take responsibility for their own choices.
So Everly only discussed it briefly with Misha and soon put Gracie’s situation out of her mind.
She didn’t think of it again until a week later.
That day, on her way to class, Everly passed by the stadium and happened to see the school cheer squad practicing outside.
It looked like they had just finished a rehearsal. The mbers were standing in formation inside the field, wiping sweat and resting, while the squad captain stood in front of them, giving sowhat harsh critiques of the previous routine.
Among them, the captain focused especially on Gracie, criticizing her for being clumsy and dull, saying she couldn’t even handle basic positioning properly, and that if she kept making mistakes she should just get lost.
Those words were most likely just spoken in the heat of the mont—after all, the cheer squad only recruited once per sester, and there wouldn’t be any exceptions. Besides, the current team had already trained together for a long ti; adding a newcor ant starting from scratch, which was a lot of trouble for little benefit.
However, Gracie was still just a first-year student with limited social experience. She seed to take those words seriously.
After class ended, when Everly and Misha walked back the sa route, the cheer squad had already finished training. In the empty field, only Gracie remained, wearing a jacket and sitting alone on the steps behind the stands. From a distance, she looked like a small mushroom.
As they got closer, they could see her shoulders shaking slightly—she seed to be crying.
“Hey, Everly, she looks really miserable. Should we go check on her?” Misha nudged her.
Everly was not particularly soft-hearted; even seeing Gracie cry didn’t stir much emotion in her. But since Misha wanted to comfort her, she didn’t object—there was no class afterward anyway.
So she nodded, and the two of them walked toward the “mushroom” behind the stands.
Trying not to startle Gracie, they didn’t hide their footsteps. So as they approached, Gracie quickly noticed soone coming.
Normally, soone who is secretly crying might, out of embarrassnt or awkwardness, hurriedly wipe their face or try to avoid whoever is approaching.
However, when she realized soone was walking toward her, the “mushroom girl” did sothing else entirely—she panicked, almost like she had been caught doing sothing wrong. In a frantic motion, she quickly crumpled up sothing and stuffed it into the backpack beside her feet.
Everly imdiately guessed what it was.
Because after Misha called Gracie’s na, the girl stiffly turned her head, revealing her thin face—and the sar of tomato sauce that hadn’t been fully wiped from the corner of her mouth.
She had just been eating?!
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