My Life of Absolute Gacha Misery

I stared at the screen in disbelief.

"Fuck."

Another total disaster. That had been my thirty-ninth ten-pull. In other words, my three hundred and ninetieth spin.

Nothing but 1-stars and 2-stars. It looked exactly like my pathetic excuse for a life. Oh, but there was a 4-star, you say? That one was the guaranteed reward you get with every ten-pull. No skill involved.

The game I was currently playing was a subculture mobile gacha title packed with cute anime girls. People called it a degenerate game or simply a gacha game. The one I was hooked on was Girls Never Cry, or GirlNec for short.

Despite the title, every single character in it cried at some point. On top of that, the heartbreaking story and beautiful friendships between the girls made it a certified tearjerker that left even the players sobbing. At least, that’s how the marketing described it.

Me? I just played it because the characters were hot.

Yeah. The girls in this game were stupidly pretty. That was exactly why the gacha mattered so much. All the best-looking ones were locked behind the 5-star rarity.

Since it was an outright collectathon, pulling characters was the entire point. The new heroine they’d just dropped was exactly my type, so I’d already dumped money into the game in advance. The moment the update went live, I logged in and started hammering the new character’s pickup banner.

After three hundred and ninety pulls, I had gotten exactly one 5-star.

Someone who doesn’t play these games might think, Well, at least you got one.

Nope. Fuck that.

These kinds of gacha games usually have what’s called a pity system. Once you hit a certain number of pulls, they give you a guaranteed reward ticket. In most games it’s around two hundred pulls. GirlNec was the same—one pity at two hundred pulls.

That meant in three hundred and ninety spins, I had only gotten a single 5-star thanks to the pity. Everything else had been trash.

"Does this even make sense?"

The base 5-star rate in GirlNec was three percent. Some people might think that’s low, but three percent is actually pretty generous for this genre.

"And yet I still couldn’t pull one naturally. What the fuck."

Shouldn’t I have stopped after hitting pity?

"One copy is useless."

In these games, getting a single copy of a character is called a business card. To make them actually strong, you need to pull duplicates for limit breaks. The more you limit break them, the stronger they get. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Usually you need at least three copies—three limit breaks—to bring out a character’s true potential. A single business card is basically dead weight.

Sure, casual players who only pull one copy of every new character and enjoy the game lightly might be ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fine with that. But I wasn’t that kind of player.

If I was going to play a game, I had to be in the top one percent. That meant I needed at least three limit breaks on every strong new character that came out. Since most new characters were meta-defining, it basically meant I had to go for three or more copies almost every single time.

But the real problem was my luck…

I had run out of in-game currency, so I poured in more of my hard-earned cash. Then I tapped the ten-pull button again.

Four hundredth pull. Second pity.

Meteors of light rained down from the sky. Each one had a different color. Eight white ones, one gold, and one purple.

One 3-star, one guaranteed 4-star, and eight 1-stars.

"......"

In the end, even after reaching two thousand pulls, I still hadn’t seen a single natural 5-star.

I closed my eyes and tried to meditate, forcing myself to calm down.

"Regression to the mean… Regression to the mean will come. It has to… I believe…"

With that pathetic attempt at mind control, I clicked 【Additional Ten Consecutive Summons】.

· · · · ·

The currency I had just bought vanished in minutes. Now it was time for the final pull—the five hundred and fortieth spin.

".........."

Five hundred and forty pulls. Zero natural 5-stars.

"...Heh… heheheh… heh heh heh ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…! Ahahaha… hahaha… haaaaaaaaah…!!"

I couldn’t stop laughing. The kind of laughter that brings tears to your eyes.

I must have spent around three or four hundred thousand won. And what did I get for it? Just enough pity to get two copies.

"Wow~! I can limit break the new character once! I’m so fucking excited~!"

And if I just pulled sixty more times, I could get the third copy! What a steal!

"Hahahaha! What a steal! My ass!! Stop bullshitting me… stop bullshitting me!!! Seriously, fuck off with that bullshit—!!!!!!"

Bang! Bang! Bang!

-Shut the hell up, you bastard!!!-

"......"

It was the musclehead next door. As expected, the walls in this place were paper thin. Still, the interruption snapped me out of my rage mode and helped me calm down a little.

"Haa… Yeah, fuck. It’s not like this is the first or second time. This is just how it always goes. Let’s calm down…"

I’m an ordinary guy.

Born into an ordinary family, received an ordinary upbringing, went to average schools, had an average school life, survived the shitty military, graduated from a mediocre university, and now worked a mediocre job. A completely ordinary man in every way.

But even someone as plain as me had one very obvious trait that set me apart from everyone else.

A truly fucked-up trait.

My luck was absolute garbage. No—my luck was so dogshit it felt like a curse.

And the funny part was that my misfortune was always just the right amount of annoying. Never life-threatening, never something that dragged others down with me. Just consistently, annoyingly bad.

The number of times my PC seat at the internet café was the only broken one. The countless times I stepped in dog shit while walking. The pigeon that scored a perfect hole-in-one into my open mouth. The vending machine that ate my 10,000 won bill when I didn’t have smaller change. The way mosquitoes only ever swarmed me during summer trips with friends. Buying stocks only for them to crash within a minute. Falling backwards and somehow breaking my nose. Every electronic device I bought turning out to be defective. Buying a bicycle only to have it stolen within a week. Finding out my trusted friend was actually gay. The one and only confession I ever received in my life… was from that same gay friend.

If I started listing them all, I’d never stop.

Anyone who knew me even a little would agree without hesitation: I had no luck ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠whatsoever.

I had lived my entire life this way, so while it sucked, I could endure it. At least nothing truly catastrophic ever happened to me, right?

Yeah. I could endure it.

Until I got addicted to this goddamn gacha game…

It all started when a mobile game based on an anime I really loved was announced. I got curious. That was my first mistake.

In that game, I experienced my very first gacha pull.

At first I tried to play completely free-to-play, but the pickup character happened to be my absolute favorite heroine. I used up what little currency I had, but of course I got nothing. In the end, I told myself I’d just spend a little and made my first ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠real-money purchase.

That small amount was like trying to put out a fire with piss.

I had no choice but to keep increasing the amount. Ten thousand won. Twenty thousand. By the time it was all gone in the blink of an eye, I should have stopped.

But once I started spending, I couldn’t stop.

I finally got the character I wanted on my one hundred and eightieth pull. Only then did I regain a sliver of sanity.

But there were only twenty pulls left until pity, so of course I spent more.

From that moment on, I became an unstoppable runaway train.

After a few more gacha sessions, I finally realized the truth.

My dogshit luck applied to this too.

I should have quit the moment I realized it. But I couldn’t.

I couldn’t forget the intense rush of dopamine I felt when I finally pulled the character I wanted.

I was already addicted to gacha.

Before I discovered gacha, my hobbies were action games, anime, manga, webtoons, and novels. I didn’t spend much money at all.

But after I started gacha, most of my paycheck disappeared into the game.

Bad gacha results? No problem. Just spend more money.

I didn’t date, I didn’t care about living in a nice house, and I didn’t have any other expensive hobbies. So somehow, I could still endure it.

It sucked, but I could live with it.

But there was one thing that truly, genuinely pissed me off.