Prologue

I was on the most important quest of my life. Hunting for a treasure grand enough to change my life forever.

“It should be around here…” I said as I navigated deep inside this labyrinth that mortals hadn’t seen in countless years.

All I had to go off was a map I obtained through shady means and my grit. And my prize? A legend so obscure you’d struggle to find mention of it anywhere.

But eventually, in a dead end, I finally could see its distinctive shape clearly.

A vending machine.

Now, vending machines were as ubiquitous as the pavement itself in Luhou City, the country where I lived. You couldn’t really go more than a couple of meters before stumbling into one. But even here, it was frankly bizarre to nest such a monolith to consumerism in the maze-like alleyways in-between buildings where no pedestrian would set foot in.

No, this location was very intentional.

There was a certain urban legend in Luhou. It was said that, occasionally, vending machines with all sorts of bizarre items would pop up in the most random locations for a brief period of time. And then they would disappear just as word started spreading of their existence. There were even groups that organized to hunt down these machines and their rare goodies before they vanished back into the ether.

Who installed and operated these machines? Companies testing out new products, rogue individuals, some even said an organized syndicate using people as guinea pigs. I wouldn’t usually care much about such machines, but when I heard word of this particular one, I couldn’t resist going on the hunt.

Why? Because—

“There it is! The legendary ramen gacha machine!”

It looked every bit like all other ramen machines around the city; the real difference was in its contents. Every single cup inside was made of unpainted white Styrofoam with absolutely no indication of the flavor or even the manufacturer. The only instructions anywhere were the price and that the flavor of the ramen was printed on the inside of the cup.

And what a price it was.

“Just ¥50 per cup! A total steal!”

At a normal store, instant ramen usually went for double that. Even if this stuff was experimental, the savings were more than worth the trip.

“And I can’t not play a little gacha once in a while.”

Should I really be this happy about consuming untested ramen from god-knows-where? Probably not. Did I have the financial space to complain? Definitely not.

And so, putting my better judgment to the side, I brandished my twenty ¥50 coins, and I started randomly pressing numbers on the machine. After all, they were literally impossible to tell apart from each other.

And so, carrying twenty cups in a large plastic bag, I made my way home.

⬡⬢⬡⬢⬡

It took a few days—and a dozen meals—to realize I had made a huge mistake.

Yes, the gacha ramen was technically food, if you really stretched the definition of food. But I understood in the worst possible way the reason they were experimental and tucked away in a forgotten corner of the city.

None of them were good; in fact, most were downright vile.

There was matcha ramen, durian ramen (which made my apartment stink for 3 days straight), peanut-butter-and-jelly ramen (where they faithfully recreated the sliminess; just remembering that one makes me nauseous), and a bunch that didn’t have a named flavor but instead had some codename like “R-348” or something. Some even played with the noodle texture or ingredients, which I found particularly revolting.

This is literally the worst gacha I’ve ever played!

“Sigh. Guess I’ll have another one.”

I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it, but I needed to go through that pile, or else—shock horror—I’d have to go out and buy something else to eat. So I heated some water and grabbed a random white cup, poured the water in, and returned to my work station. No rest for the weak, as they say.

My apartment was humble, and with humble I really mean tiny. With the demand for single-occupant flats through the roof, the only way to fulfill it in this city where space was a luxury was to build tiny and up. The results were these micro-apartments of only twenty square meters—with correspondingly tiny rent. My flat basically had a single Swiss Army knife of a room, which tripled as a living room, bedroom, and kitchen. They sold it as “compact,” but a better description was “cramped.” I barely had any floor space, so pretty much every personal item I had hung on the walls—that is to say, anime posters of the series from ten years ago that almost no one cared about anymore.

The one exception to this was my desk area, containing a large touch tablet still displaying a half-finished pin-up drawing of a girl in a tank top and dolphin shorts.

That’s right—I was an artist.

But as anyone could tell by the tiny apartment and the crappy food, I wasn’t exactly a successful one. The life of a freelancer was always based on the whims of your clients, and when there were no clients, well, you didn’t get paid. I had been squarely in the latter position; even the small rent had been a struggle to pay recently.

The drawing I had been working on wasn’t for any client. In fact, it was a drawing for my one comfort in this crappy life.

Her name was Mana.

The design wasn’t anything special on purpose. Her hair was pure white and slightly wavy, her eyes were a piercing blue, her skin was pale, and she had an hourglass figure with wide hips, a small waist, and big boobs for some reason. Okay, maybe that was quite appealing in a real woman, but Mana was bog-standard when it came to anime-style characters. About the only unique characteristics she had were a streak of blue hair, slightly bushy eyebrows, and her round glasses. She was the perfect balance of cute and sexy.

The reason why was simple—Mana was my original character, or OC, and she basically served as a model to dress up in whatever I felt like. Cute clothes, sexy clothes, elegant clothes—everything fit Mana to a T. I could challenge myself with different poses or materials and have something to promote my account with. Win-win, right?

I had been so distracted by my work and drooling over Mana that when I noticed the smell wafting out of the ramen cup, it had already permeated all the way into my brain.

“What the hell is this?”

It didn’t smell of chicken, or pork, or mushrooms. It was an indescribably thick, umami-like scent with complex notes of cheese and wood. Compared to some of the others I had had, it wasn’t awful, but like before, I truly didn’t know what the heck I was getting myself into.

They really decided to just use random pedestrians as guinea pigs, huh.

And yet, the more the cup wafted that perplexing smell, the more my curiosity—and hunger—piqued.

“Just gotta go for it, I guess,” I said as I grabbed some chopsticks and began eating it.

That’s certainly… an interesting flavor.

Like, it wasn’t bad, just a bit too earthy and pungent for my taste, and there was this strange aftertaste of melted plastic that stuck in the back of my throat. Just as I was wondering if they had made this with cheese with the packaging still on it, I noticed something odd. And no, not the flavor this time.

My chopsticks hit something solid inside the ramen broth.

Now, I was sure there hadn’t been anything there other than the solid block of noodles and bits of mysterious dried meat when I added the water. But now, there was something hidden in the murky, brownish depths of the ramen. I quickly drained the rest of the broth into my mouth until I could finally see the mystery object.

“What in the world…”

It wasn’t a bit of noodles that hadn’t somehow cooked through. It was something much, much stranger. A small figurine, just a few centimeters tall, had emerged from the cup. Just like the cup itself, it was completely white.

I reiterate—there had been no figurine inside the broth when I added water to it.

Where the hell did this thing come from?

“Oh, I know. It’s like those toys that grow inside water!”

Even I knew that was a flimsy explanation—after all, those toys were gelatinous, and I had a feeling they weren’t exactly made of edible material. But this figurine was completely solid plastic.

Even stranger was that it wasn’t a figurine of a particular character. It seemed like a base model of a 3D rendering software with no defining features at all—no hair, generic body shape, chest completely flat, with quite a stiff pose—arms next to her body slightly open, legs straight. The only reason I knew the figure was female was because, as an artist, I was familiar with how female figures had wider hips and small waists.

But the cherry on top was the text at the bottom of the cup when I pulled the figurine out.

It said “SSR Girl-Flavored Ramen”.

I immediately started feeling my stomach churning.

Did… did they put something untoward in this thing?!

But below the SSR bait text was an apparent set of instructions.

“Wish upon the spirit of this figure, and it will turn into a character of your dreams overnight!”

“What do they think I am? Stupid?!

It was an obvious troll. They pulled that magic trick with the figurine, and so they thought they could convince people that a figurine would magically turn itself into a character you thought about.

But well, it would be nice if this turned into Mana…

An image popped into my head—a small figurine of Mana in that tank top and shorts. It would be adorable to have.

“Maybe I’ll look into printing one myself or something when I have more money.”

And that was about as much thought as I gave this strange incident. Just another quirky chapter in my terrible decision to buy gacha ramen. I hoped that “Girl-Flavored Ramen” wouldn’t somehow give me food poisoning as I put the figurine in my desk absentmindedly and returned to drawing.

Little did I know at the time how much my quest for cheap ramen would actually change my life forever.