Prologue: Is It Wrong to Pick Up Guys off the Street?

Part 1

The karaoke machine refused to shut up.

At eleven in the evening, its tinny speakers were still belting out the same heartbreak ballad on an endless loop—an overdramatic wail about shattered love that felt a little too on‑the‑nose for the three girls slumped across the faux-leather couch like survivors of a romantic shipwreck.

Sera sat rigidly upright, her neck locked at a sharp angle as she stared at her phone. Her thumb flicked rhythmically, scrolling through a text thread with the clinical intensity of a forensic pathologist. She pinched the screen, zooming into a pixelated yellow heart emoji until it was a blur of meaningless gold.

“I should’ve noticed sooner,” she muttered, her voice a dry rasp. “His emoji usage changed. He never uses the yellow heart unless he’s lying.”

Across from her, Erika lay sprawled in a nest of empty snack wrappers. She didn't move, save for the slow, mournful crinkle of a potato chip bag she was clutching like a security blanket. She held a crumpled sheet of paper to her chest, the official city seal visible through the grease stains.

“It wasn’t even a real restraining order,” Erika groaned into the upholstery.

She lifted the paper and inhaled deeply—too deeply.

“Just a ‘formal warning.’ Who calls the police over a little scent sampling? He smelled like aqua bergamot and dark temptation. I just wanted a reference point.”

Sera didn’t look up. Her thumb kept scrolling, relentless and accusing. “You broke into his dorm room to sniff his gym clothes, Erika. That’s not a reference point. That’s a felony.”

“It was RESEARCH,” Erika hissed, burrowing deeper into the couch cushions like she wished they would swallow her whole.

Meanwhile, Olivia had draped herself dramatically over the low-slung karaoke table. Her cheek was suctioned to the sticky, soda-stained wood, and her limbs dangled with the limp, ragdoll physics of a fallen RPG hero awaiting a revival spell. Every few seconds, she blew a weak puff of air at her bangs, but they stayed plastered to her forehead—a cute quirk in her otherwise perfect "tragic heroine" pose.

“My date fled,” Olivia whispered into the table, her voice vibrating against the wood. “Full sprint. And then he ghosted me.”

Sera finally exhaled—a long, defeated sigh that signaled the end of her digital autopsy. She let her phone drop into her lap, her fingers trembling just slightly. “Olivia… you tried to force him to cosplay as a magical girl.”

Olivia lifted her head just enough to pout, the neon pink light of the monitor reflecting in her glassy eyes. “I thought all boys liked cosplay.”

“Not when you’re the one stripping them in a public park,” Sera countered flatly.

Olivia collapsed again with a tragic groan that was lost beneath the karaoke machine’s soaring, final chorus. For a moment, none of them spoke. The weight of their collective humiliation settled over the room like a heavy, weighted blanket made of lead.

The machine finally hit the last note—a long, agonizing violin screech—and fell silent. In the sudden, ringing quiet, the only sound was the rhythmic crinkle-pop of Erika’s snack bag.

It felt cruelly accurate.

Sera rubbed her temples, her fingers leaving red marks on her pale skin. “Three heartbreaks. One night. Statistically, we’ve defied the laws of probability.”

Erika peeked over the edge of her "Formal Warning" notice, her eyes narrowed. “Are you saying we’re cursed?”

“No,” Sera said, her voice dropping to a terrifyingly sober whisper. “I’m saying… the common denominator is us. We aren't unlucky, Erika. We’re the disaster.”

The three girls stared at each other. The realization didn't just land; it crushed, settling with the slow, inevitable weight of the karaoke bill they’d forgotten to pay. Fate hadn’t just broken their hearts; it had finally held up a mirror.

Part 2

The silence in the karaoke room stretched on—thick, heavy, and humiliating. It was the kind of silence that usually preceded a total mental breakdown or a very expensive therapy session.

Then, the couch groaned.

Olivia jolted upright, her cheek peeling wetly from the sticky tabletop. Her eyes weren’t just open—they were wide, bloodshot, and burning with the frantic light of someone who had just received divine revelation from the bottom of a ramen bowl.

“That’s it,” she declared, voice trembling with the conviction of heartbreak or pure delusion. “I’ve figured out why we keep failing.”

Sera didn’t look up. She was too busy scrubbing a smudge off her phone screen with the hem of her shirt—aggressively, obsessively. Squeak. Squeak. “Because we make terrible decisions.”

“No,” Olivia insisted, scrambling to her feet. She wobbled on the uneven couch cushions, her shadow looming large and shaky against the neon-purple wall. “We keep failing because this world is nerfed. The mechanics are broken. And I should know.”

Erika let out a long, wheezing groan and pulled a discarded hoodie over her head like a shroud. “Oh no. Here it comes. The reincarnation monologue.”

“Listen to me!” Olivia’s voice cracked with theatrical fervor. She threw her arms wide, nearly knocking over a half‑empty pitcher of flat soda. “In my past life, I was Oliver the Magnificent! A Harem King, beloved by the Goddess of Affection! My charisma stat could make a stone statue blush. Women fought duels for my favor! Men wept when I left the tavern!”

Sera finally stopped scrubbing. She looked up, her expression a perfect mask of deadpan exhaustion. “Olivia, you can’t keep blaming your love life on a fictional past existence. You were an only child who watched too much Late‑Night Isekai.”

“I have memories, Sera!” Olivia clutched her head, fingers tangling in her sticky hair. “Vague, golden‑hued memories of dramatic sunsets and women with very large… plot relevance! But then I woke up here. In this… this Low‑Spec reality.”

“That’s just every isekai anime ever,” Sera muttered.

She kicked a plastic maraca on the floor. It gave a pathetic clack-clack.

“Look at this place!” Olivia gestured wildly at the cramped room. “Where are the affection meters? Where are the event flags? How am I supposed to know if a guy likes me if there isn't a glowing pink heart over his head or a ‘Confirm Relationship’ dialogue box?”

Sera leaned back, her phone clicking shut with a finality that sounded like a guillotine. “We could just date girls, Olivia. I’ve run the numbers. At least then we’d understand why we’re being yelled at. I’m flexible.”

Erika’s head popped out of her hoodie, eyes wide. “Sera! You know there is nothing better than a sweaty man fresh out of the gym for me.”

“What? It’s a valid proposition,” Sera muttered.

Olivia tapped her chin thoughtfully. “A Yuri route would simplify things… but no. I refuse to abandon the main quest. I will conquer romance the proper way.”

She climbed onto the table, her boots making a sickening squelch against the syrup‑slick surface. She stood tall, a fallen hero reclaiming her crown.

Erika stared up at her. “And what exactly is the ‘proper way’?”

For the first time all night, Olivia hesitated. Her shoulders slumped—barely, but enough for Sera to notice. The neon lights flickered, casting a softer glow across her face.

“I don’t know,” she admitted quietly. “I try so hard, and it still never works.”

The room softened for a heartbeat. Even the karaoke machine seemed to lower its volume out of pity.

Then Olivia straightened, determination snapping back into place like a badly written character arc.

“But!” she declared, thrusting a finger toward the ceiling. “If real life won’t give us romance flags, then we’ll create them ourselves.”

Sera squinted. “Create… flags?”

“Exactly!” Olivia’s grin was wide, unhinged, and dangerous. “We treat dating like an RPG. A structured progression. A Heroine’s Journey! We don't wait for 'The One.' We hunt for XP until we’re too high-level to be ghosted!”

Erika stared at her. “You want us to… grind for affection points?”

“Precisely!”

Sera exchanged a look with Erika—a look of pure, unadulterated dread. But beneath it, a tiny ember of why not? flickered to life. After a restraining order and a failed magical‑girl transformation, “Leveling Up” was practically the most sane thing they’d heard all night.

Almost.

Part 3

Sera reached into the dark maw of her backpack, hunting for a tissue. Her eyes were stinging—not from tears, she insisted, but from the toxic combination of neon glare and Erika’s lingering “research” fumes.

Her fingers brushed something that wasn’t soft paper. It was stiff. Cold. Unnaturally heavy.

She frowned, brow creasing as she hauled the object into the light. “What the…?”

It was a book. But not just any book. It looked like a relic unearthed from a garage sale at the edge of the universe. The cover was sun‑bleached to a sickly pastel, featuring a 90s‑era anime heroine winking with a thumbs‑up so aggressive it felt like a threat. The title was printed in a chaotic jumble of fonts that screamed budget desperation.

“Is It Wrong to Pick Up Guys off the Street?”

The room froze. Even the air conditioning seemed to hold its breath.

Erika slowly sat up, wrappers sliding off her lap like autumn leaves. She squinted at the cover, her nose wrinkling. "Girl... I know we’re at rock bottom, but I didn’t think you’d go that far.”

“I didn’t!” Sera sputtered, holding the book at arm’s length like a biohazard. “I’ve never seen this in my life! Someone must have shoved it in my bag at the station.”

Olivia gasped—a sharp, rattling sound of divine revelation. “A relic…”

She slid off the table with a heavy thud, boots sticking slightly to the syrup‑slick floor, and reached for the book with reverent hands. As she lifted it, a fine cloud of gray silt erupted from the spine, drifting through the purple neon light like ancient curse smoke.

“It’s not a relic,” Sera snapped. “It’s trash someone shoved into my bag.”

Olivia ignored her entirely, brushing dust from the cover with the tenderness of someone handling a sacred artifact.

Erika leaned in, sniffing the air around the volume. “Smells like a basement that’s seen a lot of unrequited love. And damp cardboard.”

“Exactly!” Olivia’s eyes sparkled, reflecting the winking anime girl on the cover. “Destiny always smells like desperation! Don’t you see? The Goddess of Affection heard my plea. She’s sent us a sacred grimoire to guide us through this nerfed reality!”

Sera rubbed her temples, feeling a migraine pulse in time with the blinking REPLAY light on the karaoke machine. “Olivia, it’s a cheap dating manual from the dial‑up era. It was probably written by a virgin who lived in his mother’s basement.”

“Then why,” Olivia countered, her voice dropping to a theatrical whisper, “did it appear in your bag at the exact second we decided to rewrite our stories? In the RPG of life, Sera, this isn't trash. It’s a Key Item.”

Sera opened her mouth to argue, but the logic died in her throat. In this room, at this hour, “magic” felt just as plausible as their actual love lives.

Olivia flipped the book open. The pages groaned, yellowed and brittle. Inside were diagrams that looked like they’d been drawn by someone who had only ever traced anime girls using warped parchment paper.

Her eyes sparkled. “This is it.”

“‘It’ what?” Sera asked, already regretting the question.

“The sign!” Olivia declared. “The Goddess of Affection has not forgotten about me!”

Erika raised her hand. “Or—and hear me out—it’s garbage. Literal garbage.”

Olivia waved her off and turned to the first page.

“Listen to this,” she read, voice trembling with excitement. “‘A true heroine does not wait for the encounter; she engineers the spawn point. Step 1: Establish Visual Contact. Level 1 Quest: The Gaze of Fate.’”

Sera let out a long, low whistle. “The Gaze of Fate? Sounds like a way to get another restraining order.”

Erika groaned. “I’ve got class at eight. If you don’t need me, I’m leaving.”

“No,” Olivia declared, thrusting the book toward the ceiling. The 90s heroine on the cover seemed to wink harder in the flickering light. “It’s a structured progression! A path forward! No more 'accidental' stalking, Sera. No more 'unauthorized' sniffing, Erika. We follow the Guide. We level up. We win.”

The karaoke machine finally gave a pathetic click and the screen went black, the timer hitting 00:00.

Erika felt her stomach drop.

In the sudden darkness, the three “losing heroines” stood in a loose circle, the bargain‑bin book glowing faintly in the reflected streetlamp light leaking through the window.

Sera exhaled a breath she’d been holding since the triple heartbreak began. “Step one is just... making eye contact?”

“Easy, right?” Olivia grinned—bright, unhinged, and dangerously hopeful.