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 looped the same overwrought heartbreak ballad until the notes felt like a personal insult. The three of them were draped across the faux-leather couch like survivors of a romantic shipwreck, each in a different stage of emotional dehydration.

Sera sat bolt-upright, phone clutched in a white-knuckled grip. Her thumb flicked through a text thread with clinical patience. She pinched-to-zoom on a yellow heart emoji until the pixels blurred into a jagged, yellow accusation. Her thumb hovered over one message—We need to talk—and stayed there, trembling just enough for the screen to catch the neon-purple light.

“I should’ve noticed sooner,” she muttered, her voice a dry, rhythmic rasp. “His syntax shifted. 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-pop of a potato chip bag she was clutching like a security blanket. Pressed to her chest was a crumpled sheet of paper; even through the grease stains, the official city seal was visible.

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

She lifted the paper and inhaled deeply—waaay 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 needed a reference point.”

“You broke into his dorm to sniff his gym clothes, Erika,” Sera said without looking up. Her voice was flat and precise—an autopsy report delivered in three syllables. “That’s not a reference point. That’s a felony.”

Erika flushed, then forced a laugh that came out as a dry, hacking cough. “It was RESEARCH,” she hissed, burying her face deeper into the cushions as if the couch might finally 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 with a wet thwack, her limbs dangling 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 pathetic "tragic heroine" pose that was failing in real-time.

“My date fled,” Olivia whispered into the wood, her voice thin and theatrical. “Full sprint. He didn't even look back. He just... became a silhouette against the setting sun. And then he ghosted me.”

Sera let out a long, defeated breath and set her phone in her lap. The motion was small but absolute—the kind of exhale that closes a cold case. “Olivia,” she said, her tone dry as a courtroom, “you tried to force him to cosplay as a magical girl.”

Olivia lifted her head just enough to pout, the neon from the monitor painting her eyes a ridiculous, glowing pink. “I thought all boys liked cosplay! It's a staple of the genre!”

“Not when you’re the one stripping them in a public park,” Sera replied, and the line landed with the soft, heavy thud of a verdict.

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 lead blanket.

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 until pale crescents marked her skin. “Three heartbreaks. One night,” she said, the words small and clinical. “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’s voice dropped, the humor draining out until only something colder remained. She straightened, her movements precise and brittle. “I’m saying the common denominator is us. We aren’t unlucky, Erika. We’re the disaster.”

They stared at one another. The realization didn’t land like a joke; it settled like a physical weight—slow, inevitable, and deeply humiliating. For a moment, the room felt like a mirror held up much, much too close.

Part 2

The silence in the karaoke room stretched on—thick, heavy, and smelling faintly of cheap room spray and regret. 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 from the sticky tabletop with a wet, Velcro-like rip. Her eyes weren’t just open—they were wide, bloodshot, and burning with the frantic light of someone who had just received a 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 her discarded hoodie over her head like a funeral shroud, tightening the drawstrings until only her nose was visible. “Oh no. Here it comes. The reincarnation monologue.”

“Listen!” Olivia’s voice cracked with theatrical fervor as she spread her arms like she was summoning a chorus. “In my past life, I was Oliver the Magnificent. A Harem King! 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 and looked up, her expression a perfect mask of exhausted skepticism. She held her phone up to the light, checking the reflection. “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, her fingers tangling in her messy, soda-matted 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,” Erika’s muffled voice came from inside the hoodie. She kicked a plastic maraca on the floor. It gave a pathetic clack-clack.

“Look at this place!” Olivia gestured wildly at the cramped, four-by-four 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?”

She slumped back against the wall, her dramatic energy leaking out as she stared at the empty screen of the karaoke machine.

“Real life doesn't have a walkthrough,” she whispered, and for a second, she looked less like a King and more like a girl who just wanted to know the right buttons to press.

Sera leaned back, her phone clicking shut with a finality that sounded like a guillotine. “If that’s the case, we could just date girls.”

The karaoke room went dead. Even the hum of the air conditioner seemed to cut out in shock.

“I’ve run the calculations,” Sera continued, her voice slipping back into that detective-noir monotone. “Even if there were an equal number of straight men to women, we would be the last three women on the planet to be selected. At least if we dated other girls, we’d understand why we’re being rejected. I’m flexible.”

Erika’s head popped out of her hoodie like a turtle sensing a predator, eyes wide. “Sera! I get that you’re insecure about becoming a lonely cat lady, but you of all people know there is nothing better than a sweaty man fresh out of the gym for me. I have standards. Pungent, muscular standards.”

“It’s a valid proposition,” Sera muttered, though she didn’t look entirely convinced by her own math.

The two of them turned their gaze toward their final member. Olivia was quiet, her chin resting in her hand as she tapped her cheek thoughtfully.

“A Yuri route would simplify things,” Olivia mused, her eyes drifting toward the "Exit" sign. “The character designs are usually better, and the subtext is top-tier... but no. I refuse to abandon the main quest.”

She climbed onto the table, her boots making a sickening, sugary squelch against the syrup-slick surface.

Olivia stood tall, a fallen hero reclaiming her crown. “For the Goddess of Affection, I will conquer romance the proper way!”

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

For the first time all night, Olivia hesitated. Her shoulders slumped—just a fraction, but enough for Sera to notice the crack in the armor. The neon lights overhead flickered, casting a momentarily soft, tired glow across her face.

“I don’t know,” she admitted quietly, her finger tracing a sticky ring on the tabletop. “I pray to her, but she has yet to respond. No pings. No notifications. Just... silence.”

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

Then Olivia straightened, her spine snapping back into place with the jarring determination of 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, looking concerned for her friend’s mental health. “Create… flags?”

“Exactly!” Olivia’s grin was wide, unhinged, and dangerously hopeful. “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, a single potato chip halfway to her mouth. “You want us to… grind for affection points?”

“Precisely!”

Sera exchanged a look with Erika—a look of pure, unadulterated dread. But beneath the logic and the cynicism, a tiny, irrational ember of why not? flickered to life. After a formal police warning and a failed public-park stripping incident, “Leveling Up” was practically the most sane thing they’d heard all night.

Almost.

Part 3

The longer they talked, the more Sera’s left eye began to itch. It was a sharp, nagging irritation—the physical manifestation of a logic-driven brain trying to process pure nonsense.

Her hand dove into the dark, cavernous maw of her backpack, searching for a bottle of eye drops. Instead, her fingers brushed against something stiff. Cold. Unnaturally heavy.

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

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

Is It Wrong to Pick Up Guys off the Street?

Erika slowly sat up, snack wrappers sliding off her lap like autumn leaves. She squinted at the cover, her nose wrinkling in a suspicious sniff. "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 volume 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 while I was checking the train schedules.”

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

She slid off the table with a heavy thud, her boots sticking momentarily to the syrup-slick floor, and reached for the book with trembling, 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, though her voice lacked its usual bite. “It’s trash. Literal garbage someone used my bag to dispose of.”

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

Erika leaned in, her nostrils flaring. “Smells like a basement that’s seen a lot of unrequited love. And damp cardboard. And... is that old VHS tape head-cleaner?”

“Exactly!” Olivia’s eyes sparkled, reflecting the manic wink of the 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 perfect time with the blinking REPLAY light on the karaoke monitor. “Olivia, it’s a cheap dating manual from the dial-up era. It was probably written by a guy who hasn't seen sunlight since the Sega Saturn launched.”

“Then why,” Olivia countered, her voice dropping to a theatrical, conspiratorial 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—a dry, brittle sound of yellowed paper protesting the light. Inside were diagrams that looked like they’d been traced using warped parchment and a dying ballpoint pen.

Olivia’s eyes widened. “This is it.”

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

“The path!” Olivia declared. “The Goddess has provided the walkthrough!”

Erika raised her hand tentatively. “Or—and hear me out—it’s garbage. I'm 80% sure I see a mold stain on page three.”

Olivia waved her off and turned to the first chapter.

“Listen to this,” she read, her voice trembling with the kind of excitement usually reserved for SSR gacha pulls. “‘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.’”

Erika felt her stomach drop.

Sera let out a long, low whistle. “The Gaze of Fate? Sounds like a great way to get a second 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, electronic click. The screen went black. The timer hit 00:00.

In the sudden, ringing darkness, the three “losing heroines” stood in a loose circle. The bargain-bin book seemed to glow faintly in the reflected streetlamp light leaking through the grimy 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.