Lucky Totem Im Lua
“Early-puller, early-puller, early-puller, early-puller!”
Lua was pinching my cheeks over and over, throwing a fake tantrum that wasn’t really a tantrum at all.
It was a childish, ridiculously cute side of her I almost never saw, so I couldn’t help smiling—but even the cutest stimulation gets old if you get too much of it.
Knowing that perfectly well, I lightly tapped her fingers away.
“Cut it out… my cheeks hurt…”
“Ah, sorry.”
Lua immediately pulled her fingers back.
Yeah. Moments like this really drove home how kind and gentle she was.
The second I said it hurt, she stopped without hesitation.
That was that, though.
“I’m not an early-puller.”
I was not an early-puller.
It sounded a little pathetic to say out loud, but I was genuinely unlucky. Whenever I gacha’d, I almost always hit hard pity, and when I did hit hard pity I almost always lost the 50/50.
The number of times I had actually pulled a character I wanted early was small enough to count on one hand. At this point I was starting to wonder if I was cursed.
And that guy was an early-puller? That was pure slander. If anything, Lua was the one with catastrophically bad luck.
“You totally are. You rolled a six and launched the yacht, then ate four more sixes after that and cleared the quest like it was nothing.”
“Well… okay, that part’s true.”
When she put it like that I had nothing to say. But if I really thought about it, this was actually a bad thing.
“That’s exactly why I hate it more.”
“What do you mean?”
“Lua, think about it. If I’d had this kind of luck on a real gacha, wouldn’t I have actually been able to early-pull for once?”
“Well… um… yeah, I guess…”
Lua trailed off, then looked at me and asked,
“Jinwoo, what gacha games do you even play?”
“A bunch.”
I was still playing Margo Company—the one I’d recommended to her and that she was still enjoying—and lately I’d also started Myeongshin: Bridge Wave.
On top of those I was also playing Athena: Goddess of Victory.
Of those, Athena was the one I really didn’t want her finding out about. She probably knew the game existed, but the designs were a little… suggestive. If Lua ever learned I was playing it, she’d look at me like I was some kind of weirdo.
So I left Athena out entirely and only mentioned Myeongshin.
“I play Myeongshin, among the gachas.”
“Myeongshin? Oh, the one Aris unnie plays a ton.”
For the record, Aris was a massive Myeongshin fan. Among gacha games it had the most actual control elements, and if you were talking open-world action quality there basically wasn’t anything above it.
“I’ve been wanting to try it because of the control stuff, but…”
“It’s pretty fun. Yeah, there’s a lot of control, but you can ignore most of it and still have a good time.”
“Really? How does it compare to Ihyun?”
Lua immediately asked for a comparison with the game she’d advertised just yesterday, and I answered with absolute confidence.
“Myeongshin wins, no contest.”
“That big a difference?”
“That big a difference.”
Ihyun had gotten popular for its generous rates, the fact that it had no off-banners, and its overall light feel, but it still fell short in a lot of ways when stacked against Myeongshin, one of the Big Three of subculture games.
Personally I rated Myeongshin highest among those three, so maybe I was underselling Ihyun a little—but at least for me, that was how it was.
“You should try it sometime.”
“Hmmm… so you’re saying you play Myeongshin, right?”
“Yeah?”
“Then pull the Myeongshin gacha right now, in front of me.”
“…In front of you?”
“Yeah. What, is that a problem?”
“Not really.”
Today just so happened to be the day Myeongshin’s new character dropped. Story update came with it too.
Lulu’s stream was off today and Elia wasn’t streaming either, so I’d planned to finish the Lulu clip compilation and then binge the Myeongshin story—but doing the gacha a little early wouldn’t hurt.
I pulled out my phone and showed Lua Myeongshin, already pre-downloaded and ready to play.
She looked at the title screen and asked,
“You’re using the male protagonist, huh.”
“I don’t care about other games, but with Myeongshin I specifically wanted the guy.”
“Why?”
“I immerse better as the male lead.”
“Hmmm~”
Lua glanced back and forth between Myeongshin’s male protagonist and my face a few times, then started teasing me with a grin.
“The face is better-looking on the male lead’s side, though?”
“…Fact ban.”
“Oops, I’ll mute myself!”
Lua playfully clapped a hand over her own mouth. It was kind of annoying, but she was cute enough that I let it slide.
Thinking that, I held the phone out so she could see the gacha screen.
On it was the character I needed to pull this time—Aimeia.
“She’s pretty.”
“Really pretty. Super popular too.”
“She’s got, like, two watermelons strapped to her chest.”
Lua puffed her cheeks out in a sulky pout.
“I’m pretty big myself, you know.”
“…I’m just pulling the gacha.”
A powerful premonition that speaking any further would be a death sentence hit me, so I said nothing else and just announced I was rolling.
Lua dropped the pout and asked,
“Jinwoo, how many pulls have you stacked?”
“I haven’t. I’ve been holding back hard.”
I showed her every last scrap of gacha currency I currently had. Lua’s eyes widened a little at the ridiculous pile.
“How long did you save for this?”
“About two months.”
“You got this much in two months?”
“I burned all the first-clear stuff I’d been sitting on.”
Lua blinked at me like she couldn’t believe it.
I just shrugged at her expression and tapped the 10-pull button.
With this gacha I was going to prove it to her. This mountain of currency existed purely to cover for my catastrophically bad luck.
Which meant that with this many pulls, I was guaranteed to brick.
That was the plan, anyway…
Fwoooosh…!
Golden light began pouring out of the gacha.
In Myeongshin, golden light meant a 5-star—the highest rarity character.
Since every game used different colors for different rarities, Lua asked about it.
“Jinwoo, golden light means… how many stars?”
“…Five-star. Top tier.”
“…Liar. Early-puller. Trash.”
“It could still be off-banner.”
Honestly I was completely sure it would be off-banner.
There was no way my luck was that good. I hadn’t even been playing Myeongshin that long, and every permanent 5-star I owned was already C3 or higher. No way that same luck suddenly flipped.
But my words meant nothing, because—
“Can you… see me?”
…Aimeia dropped right then and there.
“…It’s the rate-up?”
“Yeah.”
“You said you had zero pity.”
“…Yeah.”
I didn’t even try to defend myself—I just nodded.
Thwack!
“Ow!”
“You trash bastard, you early-puller bastard…!”
“No, no! It’s a misunderstanding…!”
“Misunderstanding my ass…! Die! Die!!”
Lua started kicking my legs over and over in pure irritation. I took every hit while laughing on the inside.
I wasn’t supposed to be a lucky person. So why had my luck suddenly gotten this good?
While I was thinking that, I glanced at Lua, who was still mid-tantrum.
A sudden suspicion hit me and I asked,
“Hey, Lua.”
“What, early-puller.”
“…Can I sit next to you for a second?”
“W… what?”
Lua blinked in flustered confusion. I simply took her with me and headed for the swings in the playground like it was the most natural thing in the world.
We sat side by side on the swings, and I burned every single pull ticket I’d saved.
I’d stacked roughly 150 tickets total—just enough, if I hit hard pity every single time, to barely scrape the character and her signature weapon.
And yet…
“Can you… see me?”
“Can you…”
…I hit C2. On top of that, her signature weapon dropped in just twenty pulls using only the weapon banner currency. Double jackpot.
“Lua.”
“Hmph. I’m mad. You lied to me. Seo Jinwoo, you trash.”
Lua huffed and whipped her head away. I leaned into her line of sight so she had no choice but to look at me.
Why did she look especially pretty today? She’d always been pretty, but right now she looked even more so.
“From now on, can I only pull gacha when I’m sitting next to you?”
“Do you actually want to die?”
Lua glared at me with pure rage packed into her eyes. I just snickered at her.
“I don’t particularly want to die. You just feel like my goddess of luck.”
“…You think saying that is going to make me less mad?”
“I’ll buy you pizza later.”
“…When we go out next time, you’re covering the entire bill.”
“Absolutely. I swear.”
I nodded.
If I cleared every bit of currency available this version and burned all the shop mileage, I could probably even hit C6. Covering the cost of a date was the least I could do.
“Please sit next to me for future gachas too.”
“Have you actually lost your mind?”
Lua’s razor-sharp reaction only made me laugh harder.
Im Lua. Seriously, way too damn cute.