Rapture

Many things in life start out uninteresting. Monotony—aka, routine—surprisingly dulls the senses.

The clock on the status bar told me it was time to doze off. My thumb slid down. Notifications animated into view. There wasn’t much there besides the usual game alerts and SNS noise.

My social life was struggling for relevance in a quicksand of push notifications and spam mail.

New banner just dropped! My energy bar restored in another game.

Same old, same old.

But then—an anomaly.

“Tsunder: You have � new matches.”

I almost choked. “You were still installed?” It didn't sit right with me. Why now? I wasn’t going to sleep a second for as long as I had � dating app DMs. Tsunder’s pastel orange icon lured me, a shy gamer, promising the start of my hot guy era.

Tap.

Launching the app properly cleared the mysterious � display bug.

“Hi Ren! You have -99 matches.”

Negative ninety-nine. Of course. I nearly bent my phone in half.

You know how gacha games start you off with a few pulls, some rerolls, and a level of pittance?

Generosity gives you, the player, a reason to keep going—even if it’s your very first time and you have no idea what you’re doing. The most accessible games hand you welcome gifts, like a token SSR just to cheer you on.

She’s going to be power-crept in the next patch, sure... But in the meantime, she’s friendly, nice-to-have, and kind.

That’s not Tsunder.

They made it crystal clear.

Dating wasn’t a game.

I had been tricked by the “Online” moniker, lulled into compliance by my smartphone.

The flip side of doomscrolling on bed was—I could turn around on my pillow, like this…

I screamed on it until I ran out of breath!

A scathing review was in order, and I was even thinking—I should file a lawsuit.

I’d created my account before the age verification policy, but now, I was well into my senior year of high school.

Agreed. I should file that lawsuit. But first, the scathing review.

“If I could leave a negative star rating. Like the app can! I would give it…”

Minutes later, I received an apology email.

In a world after Gen AI, I knew better than to get my hopes up over AI generated mail. Trust me, I counted the number em dashes —. What hooked me was the strange content.

“Beta test?” I read aloud. They wrote, “Help us transform dating. Together, we can gamify dating for the whole universe.” It ended in, “Win cash prizes for it.”

That honestly sounds like phishing. But the news is? I’m a student! There’s no money they can steal from me. If I keep my eyes open and read over things carefully, chances are I’m going to have a sweet part-time job.

They may even get me an account which already has girls to talk to.

It’s web based too. That translated to more space for games.

I judged. I had nothing to lose by trying.

“Sign up.”

EULA? End User License Agreement? When’s the last time anyone has read one of those. I accepted the terms.|

“I’ll upload a Shōnen profile picture, and… submit. Yes to everything!”

The loading spinner churned.

It ran my patience out.

…

CRACK!

Striking like lightning, a blinding bolt exploded from the camera notch and shot straight up my arm.

My right wrist jerked forward violently. My severed arm was sliding into a gaping void, a wound on reality and my sanity alike. As my frozen fingers death-gripped the smartphone.

The world around me fractured like a polar ice sheet. Chunks of my room broke off and melted into nothingness.

I caught my foot on the bed sheets as I tried to flee.

Another crack shot up on the floor, splitting straight up to my waist.

My torso floated weightlessly. Physics no longer applied to the shattered piece I called a body.

The final crack cut across my neck.

Isekai’d by a hookup app.

***

When I came to, a maelstrom of colors assaulted my sight with an HDR rainbow. Flashes popped in and out. My fogged-up vision adjusted, and I made out a pane of glass between me and the boiling whirlpool of lights.

Text scrolled by. My name!

“Warning ⚠: Nakama Ren has entered the game.”

The maelstrom erupted. People, as many as the population of Tokyo, roared my name.

My pod’s light switched on, a faint teal. The color spurred me to look for a sky that wasn’t there.

Only more pods like mine, but their lights were switched off. Mine sat at the spotlight.

A P.A system hissed awake, my name scrambling as the microphone heated up. A music track fired up to back it.

“Last and definitely the least of Team Ares’ contestants… he’s unassuming, he’s unimpressive, he’s fading into the noise already! Meet the potential love interest, ‘Background Character, Nakama Ren!’

“Ren’s representing the Earth of the 21st century. Take care, ladies! He comes from a dystopia without excitement. Our live audience is voting him as the Most Likely to Fall For a Robot during this season of DATE ♥ DEATH: the Multiverse’s deadliest dating show!”

I seized where I stood, my heart rate seized by the woofer’s bass. I heard ‘deadly.’ I prayed for it to be videogame deadly, like another of those elimination games.

What have I signed myself up for? Tears… Where are the cash prizes? They promised girls too, but in my situation I feared I would retch at the sight of a female. It’s just… Do I have to die if I am not liked here?

The announcer wanted to show me something.

The central platform, tens of meters under my pod, illuminated a giant cube.

Greenbacks.

“Behold! The most prized treasure in his dimension—a lump sum of one-hundred billion dollars!”

The music died. I think I did too. But soon, I was revived by a strong pulse on my wrist.

My left hand wore a teal-blue plasticky gizmo. Its screen said, “Mic On.”

I’m a gamer.

$100B could bankroll the development of the next PlayBox, and Virtual Reality, a second season for That anime released 10 years ago, and anything else I want. Virtually, I would become God.

Mic On? “I’m a gamer. I play games, I win ‘em, and if I suck, I just have to git gud.” Quest accepted. “I’m going to win no matter what it takes!”

“And there you have it, haters! The ‘Background Character’ is coming in force.”

“His is one of the strongest declarations we’ve had today. Almost everything is allowed in DATE ♥ DEATH, other than cheating—and we ain’t speaking of adultery!”

“Pfft~” I scoffed. I don’t have any other hobby, I eat cheaters for breakfast.

My lips parted, but a sudden shift threw me off balance.

My pod was moving…

Then its floor opened.

Trapdoor!

I dropped straight toward the next arena, transported across space and time.

The first round—The Button Game.