[Prologue] Error Code: Hope

People say life's what you make of it. They're wrong.

Life's just a dating sim with all the good routes locked behind a paywall. And if you're not born as the protagonist type, the system quietly sets you to NPC mode.

You can move around, press "interact," maybe run a few side quests— but you'll never trigger a real cutscene.

I grew up on Yakushima. Tiny, rain-soaked island south of Kagoshima. One looping road. One convenience store that closes before eight. More deer than people.

It's so green it looks photoshopped. It rains so much the locals joke we get "four hundred days of rain a year." Everyone there dreams of leaving. I just wanted someone who knew what BL stood for.

Most of my teenage life was on repeat. Wake up. Walk through mist thick enough to drink. Go to school. Come home. Scroll through manga forums like they were portals to better worlds.

Sometimes I'd watch the ferry cutting across the horizon and imagine Tokyo waiting on the other side— bright lights, crowded trains, cafés where "fateful encounters" happen. The starter zone for every shōjo heroine ever. Every manga swore that's where real life begins.

But I never made it there. Grades too low. Courage nonexistent. Parental patience at zero.

So instead of unlocking the Tokyo main route, I got the Kagoshima extension— the kind of filler map the devs add just to pad playtime.

Technically bigger than Yakushima. Louder, too. But somehow it feels the same.

Maybe the map wasn't mid. Maybe the player was.

No one bullies me. No one notices me either. I'm not hated—just not rendered.

Background element, quietly existing between storylines.

Maybe I'm like UMA, "Unseen," from Undead Unluck— visible, but not perceived.

After a while, I stopped fighting it. Background-character life isn't so bad once you stop trying to reach the main route.

I've got a tiny apartment—mine, even if it's one typhoon away from leaking. Shelves packed with manga and light novels. A Switch full of dating sim save files—perfection takes retries. A fridge that never runs out of strawberry milk. Cupboards stocked with cup noodles.

I've even got my online bestie, Yuyu. She laughs at my jokes, gets my references, never ghosts mid-conversation. We read each other's fanfics on Pixiv. They're terrible, but it feels good to make something. Even if it's trash.

And then there's Mandarake. My favorite part of this cut-content life.

I work the twelve-to-twelve shift— just me, the smell of old paper, and the flickering ceiling lights trying to survive another night.

The manager's asleep in the back. The AC barely works. Most nights, it's just the hum of the lights, the rustle of pages.

Quiet. Predictable. Safe.

People call the place outdated, but those people don't know anything. All its flaws are what make it perfect.

I spend most of my shifts "checking stock," which really means reading. The lineup's always the same— shōjo sparkle, overpowered isekai, love triangles with an MC so bland you start rooting for the girls to date each other instead.

Even the "mature" stuff's predictable. Helpless angel, creepy landlord, recycled spice. I complain, but I still read them all.

Because even if it's trash, at least it's alive.

Still, every so often, the supply-chain gods bless us with something truly sacred— pure, uncut trash.

Omegaverse. Reversible. Obsession BL. Master-servant melodramas that commit so hard to their own stupidity they loop back into genius.

The kind of manga that makes normal people flinch— but for me, it's divine revelation in paperback form.

We don't get many customers. Most people go to the big store. But we've got our own clientele.

Nervous salarymen who can't risk being seen buying their favorite "adult" manga in public. They come here instead, playing the world's worst stealth mission. Awkward smiles. Quick pay. Wrapped purchases. Stealth cleared.

But that's just life. My life.

You grow up, stop chasing miracle routes, and learn to live with what's scripted. It's quieter this way. Safer. And most of all, boring.

I tell myself that's what being an adult means— accepting this patch for what it is, and pretending I don't still hope for an update.

And if I say it enough times, maybe I'll start to believe it.

Except lately, the game's been glitching— throwing out false hopes like error codes.

Next Episode : The Prince of Trash Manga Appears