The Golden Toad Test
I still didn’t understand why the gate monster had to pull that stunt, but Romance Academy was—at least on the surface—set in the modern world. To keep it from feeling too ordinary, the game added a twist: from the moment they were born, a tiny fraction of people received specific “classes” that made them far stronger than ordinary humans. Then they poured monster-spawning gates on top of that pseudo-awakening setup. Ta-da. This is your Romance Academy. What the hell.
Jisoo…
To make matters worse, it wasn’t even just Korea. It was the Unified Korean Empire, with North and South fused together, reigning as the world’s dominant superpower. They clearly wanted imperial-family characters but had to shoehorn them into a modern setting, so they must have wracked their brains for a way to make it work. Still, there was no real need to memorize the background lore. From the opening to the ending, you barely ever left Romance Academy. You spent all four years stuck inside this floating city.
Is this even coherent?
No matter how you looked at it, even for a female-oriented dating sim, wasn’t it reckless to hurl settings together without any restraint?
Female-oriented… dating sim.
Yeah. There was one more thing I’d been deliberately ignoring. The fact that Romance Academy was, at its core, a female-oriented dating simulation. It did feature battles, student events, and exams, giving it the flavor of an academy game, but the main genre was still a dating sim.
I trailed at the very back of the seven students walking down the path toward their special exam.
The prince, the mage, the hero.
Those annoyingly handsome bastards were the so-called “main capture targets.” There were others, of course, but when it came to characters who possessed special classes and wielded real influence, those three stood at the top. They all fell for the female protagonist… or at least that was how I remembered it.
I only played three routes as the female lead, so the details are fuzzy.
True to its genre, the default protagonist was female, but you could choose a male protagonist if you wanted. The problem was that doing so created a massive issue.
All the romance elements get locked.
Choosing the male route didn’t let you romance the female characters; affinity and relationship values simply refused to rise high enough for any romantic developments. All the dating, confession, and marriage events vanished, shrinking the already limited content even further.
Honestly, that worked in my favor.
Yes—the biggest advantage of the male protagonist was that fewer mandatory events meant you could reach the ending faster. It might sound strange to call “seeing the ending quickly” a selling point for a game, but for someone who had sworn to clear every single class route, it was an incredibly powerful benefit. What was supposed to be a simple new-game-plus became torture after the tenth repetition.
So for the first three playthroughs I used the female protagonist, squeezing out every possible event and CG. After that, I switched to the male lead and pure speedran. The time savings were small, but as the saying goes, many grains of sand make a mountain. Those tiny efficiencies added up, shaving precious minutes off each subsequent run.
The insane developer who watched me play like that threw a fit, screeching that I was ruining her game. If she didn’t like it, she should have made a better one.
That day, as I sat in my chair, a pillow flew at the back of my head—
“—Min?”
—the same woman who nagged me for picking the peppers out of her fried rice—
“—Namgung Min!!”
“…Ah.”
I had gotten lost in thought for far too long. The memories of messing with that crazy woman were so entertaining that time simply vanished whenever I replayed them. That was the problem.
When I turned toward my still-ringing right ear, I found a female student with long, flowing black hair and a deceptively cute face glaring at me. Knowing exactly who she was, I answered before anyone else could speak.
“I’m sorry. I became lost in thought for a moment.”
“Can someone with a so-called special class really afford to space out like an idiot?”
“It concerned my own class, so even though I knew it was rude, I couldn’t help but sink deep into reflection.”
“Then whatever.”
She spoke informally despite it being our first meeting, snapped at me as she pleased, ended the conversation as she pleased, and wore a mischievous, almost devilish smile. A girl noticeably shorter than the others. Jet-black hair that reached her waist. A body draped in luxury brands and jewels that screamed obscene wealth. People called her the woman loved by fortune itself.
The Great Wealthy, Liu Yen.
Even though she wasn’t yet an adult, this genuine tycoon—who could casually cover the national budget of most superpowers—was looking up at me.
“Hey, you said you were a fortune teller, right?”
“Indeed, though it’s more than I deserve.”
“Then you can tell fortunes, I assume?”
“Of course. That goes without saying.”
The moment Liu Yen spoke in that deliberately provocative tone, the others turned around and stared. Correction—they weren’t looking at me at all. They were all looking at her.
These guys already know each other.
From their backgrounds alone they were the imperial family of a superpower, a great wealthy heir, children of Europe’s oldest noble house, the grandson of a former U.S. president, and a saint under the Church’s protection. Future powerhouses who had stood at the pinnacle of society since birth and whose positions only grew more secure once they received their classes.
There’s no way I’d catch their eye.
A random fortune teller who had somehow wormed his way into their group. Naturally, they wouldn’t view me favorably. But that didn’t necessarily mean outright rejection.
“…Liu Yen. Isn’t it possible to show basic courtesy even though this is our first meeting?”
“Huh? Hey, why the hell should I show courtesy to a retard like this?”
“He’s also a fellow student taking the Romance Academy entrance exam—and even a classmate taking the special exam with us. Isn’t that reason enough?”
“Not interested.”
“…Ah, yes. Of course.”
Lane Arthur, the Psychic who had pointed out Liu Yen’s attitude, let out a sigh. Raphael Martina, the Saint, shook his head wearily, while Kim Seong-il of the Imperial Family sent a look of pure contempt.
Yes, these people had known one another since childhood. That didn’t mean they were all friends. Their relationships were as tangled as wired earphones stuffed in a pocket.
And untangling that mess is my job.
To see the ending and return home. And, more importantly, to personally grab my little sister by the collar.
I smiled at the growling Liu Yen and Lane Arthur.
“Liu Yen, you were asking me about fortune-telling, correct?”
“…Oh ho. That’s right.”
“Since I don’t have my cards with me right now… how about a simple test?”
“A test?”
Liu Yen’s interest locked onto me. Lane Arthur and Lucas Arthur turned their gazes my way as well. In fact, with the exception of Abel Legion—the Hero who never paid attention to his surroundings—everyone’s focus had shifted to me.
Time to make a first impression.
The first impression held by the very characters who formed the core of Romance Academy. That impression would heavily influence their future behavior.
Choosing my every gesture and word with care, I pointed to the small pouch tied at Liu Yen’s waist—the one she always carried.
“Shall we begin with what’s inside that pouch?”
“This pouch? Hey, you’re saying you can tell what’s in here?”
She let out a hollow laugh, as if the idea were absurd. A natural reaction. We had only just met; knowing the contents of her pouch would be closer to clairvoyance than fortune-telling. Of course it wasn’t something you could learn through normal divination. And since I couldn’t use tarot either, I had zero intention of gambling ten percent odds on something as crucial as first impressions. I was simply going to employ a tiny cheat.
“What I see is merely four pillars of destiny or nonsense. I’m not some fake quack—”
“Golden toads, right?”
“—What?”
Her arrogant posture and tone froze solid. The look of disbelief on her face halted awkwardly in place. With a single sentence I had petrified the haughty heiress. I continued before she could recover.
“And it’s not just one. Let’s see… two? Three? No, four of them. My goodness—four golden toads in a pouch that size? They must be artifacts, correct?”
“………You.”
“The carvings are exquisite. A dragon on the toad’s back, a tiger on its front legs, a snake on its hind legs. Even the toad’s face is captured in that exact croaking posture.”
“Hey.”
“Yes?”
“What the hell did you do?”
To Liu Yen it must have been utterly baffling. She carried those golden toads for the sake of childhood memories. The one she had received as a birthday gift from her parents and younger sibling during simpler, happier times had long since disappeared. She kept these replicas to preserve at least that memory. Hearing this, one might assume there were three—but because she had included one of her own to insert herself into the recollection, the correct number was four.
In any case, the golden toads were Liu Yen’s private secret. For someone who had developed terminal paranoia from her childhood experiences, the fact that I knew about them must have been driving her insane.
Of course, there was only one thing I could say to her.
“I told your fortune.”
“Ha… You talk such bullshit the second you open your mouth.”
At my smiling answer, she let out a laugh even more incredulous than before.
“This guy’s actually pretty interesting?”
She had stopped seeing me as ‘just a retard to toy with for a moment’ and had begun to view me as a ‘suspicious individual.’
“It’s an honor.”
“Hey, can you do it again?”
“As many times as you like.”
Liu Yen was a patient in the final stage of paranoia. She doubted everything in the world, doubted it again, and kept doubting. For now, being with people she had known since childhood had calmed her somewhat. Raising that suspicion again was not difficult at all. After all, she was a psycho who judged everyone as either “retards” or “suspicious bastards.”
Her character event played out exactly like this.
This wasn’t a problem unique to her. Every person carefully watching our exchange carried a similar “bomb.” And those bombs were all pushed to the verge of detonation—only the protagonist’s intervention could stop them from exploding. That was what “character events” were.
They were, in essence, the most important part of Romance Academy.
In the game, curing Liu Yen’s paranoia turns her into the protagonist’s reliable source of unlimited funds.
Clearing a character event resolved their deepest issue, maxed out their affinity, and granted a reward. In Liu Yen’s case, the reward was boundless wealth. Money. That was exactly why I had chosen her as my top priority target. She had approached me first by picking a fight, making it easy to get close, and nudging her paranoia even slightly would quickly trigger her event.
“What about this ring?”
“Small jewels connected like matryoshka dolls.”
“Ha, then what about this coat pocket?”
“The gold coins you always bounce around with.”
“And inside this box?”
“…Liu Yen, are you perhaps mistaking me for a clairvoyant?”
“Why? It’s fun. Keep going.”
The more accurately I guessed her secrets, the larger her suspicion grew. By now she had probably inflated me in her mind to the level of “an assassin sent by a hostile faction pretending to be a fortune teller” or “a disguised Romance Academy instructor.”
It was troublesome. I needed her suspicion to catch her eye, yet the moment I did, that suspicion only ballooned further… The current situation was far from ideal, but I still had one thing I could rely on.
“Keep going, you bastard. What’s inside this pendant—”
“—That’s enough, Liu.”
“Ah, Lucas. Why!!”
“We’ve arrived at the special exam site.”
“………….”
Of course, the conversation had always been on a timer. We hadn’t stopped walking, so we inevitably reached the exam rooms.
Liu Yen ground her teeth after confirming the doors ahead, then glared at me.
“You. I’ve remembered you.”
“It’s an honor.”
With that, her suspicion meter was full. From now on I would deal with her appropriately, build our relationship, and handle her character event when it triggered. It sounded simple, but I knew from experience how grueling that event actually was. Still, since I had cleared it twenty-five times before, I could only believe I would manage it again.
“…Each door has a name on it.”
“We just enter the one with our own name, right?”
“Liu, calm down. The special exam is about to begin.”
“Do I look like I can calm down? That bastard is one hundred percent suspicious. I’ve definitely remembered him!”
Lucas Arthur, the Mage, worriedly tried to soothe the excited Liu Yen, who was pointing at me. Lane Arthur, the Psychic, watched the pair with complicated eyes. Kim Seong-il and Kim Eun-ha of the Imperial Family had already entered their respective rooms. Abel Legion, the Hero, simply stared at the entrance bearing his name. Raphael Martina, the Saint, would likely wait until everyone else had gone in before entering himself.
People I had seen twenty-five times. Actions I had seen twenty-five times.
Feeling a strange emotion at finally standing before characters I had only ever observed through a screen, I walked into the exam room labeled “Namgung Min.”
“Wow…”
An empty space devoid of any decoration or equipment. Lamps installed throughout the room gave off bright, warm light, while the ceiling opened high above, where chandeliers and additional lamps hung. In the center of all that emptiness stood only a table and two chairs.
“Sit, Namgung Min.”
“…Yes.”
Seated across from me was the ever-expressionless Charles Teddybear.
At last, the special exam had begun.