Hard Pity

If people had a visible luck stat above their heads, Hayami’s was definitely zero.

“Y-You guys are kidding, right?” The question scraped out of her throat. Hayami gripped the strap of her bag until the leather bit into her palm. "I don’t understand w-what I did wrong!"

It was a blazing thirty-four-degree day and on top of that a really rough day at school, so Hayami would really like to be home by now. Unfortunately, a human barricade—a group of five girls—stood in the way of the queue to get onto the bus.

Perhaps more unfortunately, the group was led by the class darling, Hina.

With the scowl Hina was giving her right now, you’d think that Hayami murdered her family or something.

“You’d think playing all those otome gacha games would clue you in. Or maybe you are deliberately being obtuse. Either way, you are not getting on the bus with us.”

“B-But the next bus isn’t for another hour!” Hayami really didn’t like how grey those clouds hung overhead. She could feel the moisture practically forming on her skin.

“You think we care?” the girl hissed, taking two steps towards and therefore all her personal space. “Riku's taken, you freak. Yet you thought you could stand next to him, let him ogle you? Pllllllease.”

“I just happened to be next to him! I-I was just waiting for the vending machine to be restocked, I s-swear.”

"Like anyone with half a brain doesn't know your scheming. Yes, I’ve known you were pretty since middle school. Everybody knows!" Hina gestured vaguely at Miko, who was examining her cuticles. "But you’ve made Miko doubt herself every step of the way for too long. Do you really think a guy like Riku would look at a gacha-addict creep like you?"

"I barely talk to Riku. Ever!"

"You’d have to be willfully ignorant to not notice his stares," Hina sneered. "Or are you too busy staring at your phone to notice Miko standing right there? Miko’s too nice to say it, so I will. Your attempts are pathetic. You rolled your skirt waistband up twice just to show off your legs. You loosened your ribbon on purpose. Dressing like a bitch was probably the only way you thought of that will get you any attention."

Hayami’s instinct screamed at her to retreat. She shuffled backward, inch by inch, and Hina gladly took the lost space.

Unfortunately, Hayami forgot where she was standing.

Her heel caught the jagged edge of the curb.

"Ah—!"

Hayami felt the air leave her lungs as her heels lost their footing. Stumbling, falling, as gravity took over and introduced her ass onto the concrete sidewalk.

Hina looked down at her, shaking her head. “Look at you. I can’t believe we used to be friends.”

She stepped away.

Hayami’s vision swam—enough to see Hina’s group start getting on without her. She had enough strength to lift herself, but not enough to reach the door in time…!

Hayami reached out a hand and wobbled it helplessly.

But the bus driver wasn't looking.

He checked his mirror—the blind spot covering Hayami perfectly—and looked at his watch.

The driver hit the lever.

"N-No! I am right here!"

The pneumatic doors hissed shut.

Soon, a thick dark exhaust plume hit Hayami squarely in the face.

And all the while, as she rubbed her bleary eyes, coughing on the fumes, she saw Hina in the window—giving Hayami a small, pitying wave as she got smaller and smaller before the bus finally turned at the traffic light.

For a while, Hayami just sat there on the dirty footpath. She brought her trembling hands to her face.

For more times than she could count, she’d ask herself and the occasional higher being: ‘Why? How could people be so cruel?’

No one ever answered.

Perhaps it was the universe telling her to stop using otome games as an escape? Maybe, if she put down the phone, she’d actually become likeable?

Hayami shook her head.

She looked back at the road. All Hayami saw was the entire rear of the bus wrapped in high-gloss vinyl.

She scowled. Akira.

The visual demigod of the sweetheart K-pop group, Perchance to Dream.

Akira was smiling, holding up a smartphone with that familiar, gothic logo.

ANNOUNCING EXCLUSIVE COLLABORATION: KINDRED TEMPTATIONS 2.

Hayami scowled at the departing idol. "I c-can’t believe some normie like him is collaborating on my gacha… the game’s really gone downhill."

Squelch. Squelch.

‘What… the…’

Her head turned toward the sky and felt liquid pin needles stab her face.

‘Shitshitshit!’

Of course, the rain started the second she was forced off the bus!

She pulled out her one lifeline from her bag. A crummy, transparent convenience store umbrella.

It opened with a click and worked for all of ten seconds before a strong gust of wind nearly knocked her over.

"Ah!!"

She hadn’t even opened her eyes, but she knew in her heart of hearts her umbrella was suspiciously unbalanced.

She looked up and paled. Its plastic ribs had inverted.

The sound she made after she got drenched sounded akin to a puppy being kicked.

See, Hayami wasn’t just known as the gacha freak at school—though that was true as well.

She was also known for having the worst luck this side of Osaka.

At this point, she didn’t even care. She just walked through the monsoon season rain, walking past convenience stores filled with people that stared at her.

Eventually, she rounded a corner and found her salvation.

A vending machine, with a little metal roof hanging above it.

‘Perfect.’

She got on her hinds, and crouched under the small overhang.

Hayami soon took her phone out. If she was going to be stuck here for who knows how long, not being allowed to even do her homework… she could at least try to cheer herself up.

The game's logo flashed on her phone.

‘KINDRED TEMPTATIONS 2’

‘How pathetic,’ she thought. ‘An otome gacha game being the highlight of my day really was degenerate behavior.’

After all, her loving otome gachas a bit too much was what made her so socially maligned in the first place.

As she checked the news feed, a banner scrolled across the top: [NOTICE: HIGH TRAFFIC DETECTED. LOGIN QUEUES ACTIVE DUE TO 'DANGEROUS TERRITORIES' EVENT.]

"Great," she muttered, wiping her wet thumb off the part of her blouse which wasn’t utterly soaked.

She ignored the other husbandos who clamored for her attention on the home screen as she navigated to her inventory.

All her husbandos would pale in comparison to what she’d get in this roll—that is, if she hits it.

The thing about Vlad the Vampire Viscount wasn’t only his penchant for sadism that abused you, but an undying loyalty once you intrigued his whims enough—though, that was one of the main reasons she’s whaling on him…

The devs decided to take it to the next level; they needed a human touch. A certain subsection of the playerbase stood a very minuscule chance to get a real human on the other line, roleplaying as the character they portrayed.

The Viscount was one such character. 

The logistics of such a program were a mystery to her and slightly misandrist, but at this point, Hayami didn’t care.

"Please," she whispered, her thumb hovering over the summon button. "Please, please, please, Passion Games. I've been your loyal whale. Just let me have a win today for once, just please!"

She tapped the screen. The summoning circle flared gold.

System Alert: Connection Unstable. Retrying…

"No, no, no! Don't you dare crash!"

Then she felt funny.

She looked down at her hands.

Huh. Her hair began to stand on end. The air also smelled weird.

Wait, wasn’t this something she learned during science class, when lightning was about to…

“Wait…!”

The lightning bolt didn't hit Hayami as she got on the ground for cover, nor did it hit the vending machine behind her.

Instead, rather unfortunately, it struck the main power grid infrastructure for the block, which in turn powered the grid that fed into the nondescript data center three streets over.

The data center that hosted the Kindred Temptations 2 Osaka regional servers.

The light from the vending machine and the adjacent buildings faded.

Effectively, Hayami's world plunged into darkness.

She was waiting for the pain to register, but it never came. The lightning never struck her.

For once, Hayami got lucky.

She looked back at the game.

A black screen replaced the unboxing menu, with text that read:

> CRITICAL_FAILURE: NODE_OSAKA_04

> PACKET_LOSS: 99%

Tears, warm and fast, soon mixed with the rain.

‘Why can’t life just give me a break…?’

Hayami pushed herself up to a sitting position, wiping the mud from her cheek.

All of a sudden, scrolling red command lines raced across her phone, moving faster than she could read.

> TRAFFIC_REROUTE: EMERGENCY_CHANNEL

Hayami tensed. "What's h-happening?"

> CONNECTION ESTABLISHED: DEV_DEBUG_AUDIO_01

Oh.

Hayami chuckled blearily.

Her accidentally getting into the development branch of Kindred Temptations 2 was perhaps the one good thing that happened today.

Something probably happened when the ultra-electrified server tried to handshake with her phone. Kindred servers were based in Osaka. Ergo, some sort of power surge glitch happened.

She didn't think too hard about it.

Hayami looked closer. The UI was still present; she could click all the buttons, nothing was out of the ordinary except for the generic background and the…

Wait.

‘Was that the friggin’ Viscount?!’

He was too handsome not to be one. Yet he looked so… different from the promos. Wilder with his look than Vlad; broader shoulders and better muscle definition, too. He sported dark circles faintly visible under an immaculate pair of lashes.

Hayami pumped the air. No pities necessary—she got it first try!! “YES!!!”

She soon squinted at the text box at the bottom.

It read Viscount Lucien. What?

Then, the audio kicked in.

“Miss… Laurens, huh?”

The voice was the first thing that made Hayami shiver. The way he said her in-game name held such palpable and naked contempt… to die for.

But it was what he said next that made her realize that all the overtime fast food shifts over the weekend, all the skipped meals, and all the hours spent whaling on this cursed app were finally worth it.

“Good grief,” the Viscount sighed. “You spent this much on this game, only to end up with a sad inventory like that? May as well be a lemming with how pathetic you are.”

She managed to roll for a real human being behind the mic…

It took Hayami a considerable amount of effort not to drool.

This person must’ve been able to see her profile stats, then, to make scathing remarks like that.

She could ignore the blatant meta-commentary; this was a dev build after all.

She triple-checked that her mic was plugged in and connected. She wiped a raindrop from her lip.

“H-Hey…”

“Huh?” The voice sounded genuinely surprised.

Hayami pitched her voice up.

“I-I am sorry, Viscount Lucien, for my lack of... offerings. I wasn’t expecting someone as distinguished as you to grace me with his presence.”

There was a pause. Then, the Viscount gave a low chuckle.

“Wow. At least the devs got the training AI voices down pat. This one actually sounds pretty cute. A bit trembling, like a kicked puppy.”

Hayami raised an eyebrow. Again with the meta-commentary. And she was not an AI!

It was an in-character remark, clearly. Maybe the Viscount was just a self-aware god? Yes, a god, aware of his simulation yet helpless to change it.

So she didn’t try to correct him. Instead, she said: “Are you a god?”

…

‘That was cringe, even for me.’

Hayami heard the Viscount scoff.

“What? Why would anyone in the Kindred Temptations universe call the evil Viscount ‘a god?’ It’d be considered sacrilege. The devs couldn’t figure out how to program a believable AI, even for a star like me?” the voice muttered. “Tch. They should be grateful I am even agreeing to this collab. But anything to make my precious Pastries happy, I guess...”

Hayami frowned. Collab? Pastries? The devs had another title similar to this game, where you collected sentient Pastries, but…

Damn it, Hayami should stop thinking about this other stuff; her immersion was breaking!

Without thinking, Hayami clicked her tongue.

“Did it just click its tongue at me?” The arrogance was gone now, replaced with what sounded like genuine shock.

Hayami froze.

‘Wait. That voice...’

She recognized that cadence.

She had heard it on social media every day when she got annoying K-pop ads asking her to attend concerts she couldn’t afford because she spent all her money on gacha.

It belonged to the person who was plastered on the back of the bus that abandoned her.

Hayami found her voice. “Akira?”