Can't Resist Teasing Newbies
"All things considered, the situation isn't bad.
I'd planned to raise the protagonist into my personal command tool anyway. In the end, I was always going to need a setup where he depended on me.
The problem was figuring out exactly which part of all this had made him feel that way. I hadn't done a single thing yet.
If I knew what he was into, I could use that as a foundation to coax him along and train him properly."
"Ugh…"
In the end, Powder and the rest of the Royal Guard gave up and left — but not before threatening me, someone who wasn't even one of them, that if anything happened to Master, they would never forgive me.
What a bunch of order-obsessed idiots.
"I'm grateful you chose me, but I'm sure I'll fall short compared to the Royal Guard. I'm only one person, after all."
"Doesn't matter."
He was definitely different from the protagonist I knew. The way he simply nodded without a word made him feel somehow solemn — but that same restraint made his emotions so muted that I couldn't tell what he actually wanted.
"So… why did you choose me? I'm just curious."
"…Because you were real."
"What was?"
He slowly pointed a finger at me.
What does he mean, I was real?
That I'd spoken without lying, while the others had been deceiving themselves — only pretending to submit to their new Master because they had no choice?
Well… I suppose I do seem more trustworthy, if you put it that way.
If he could actually tell the difference, I probably would have done the same. At any rate, it meant he hated lies — so going forward, I'd stick to honest words whenever possible. Of course, anything that didn't need saying would still stay hidden.
"Come in."
Honestly, I didn't even know where my room was, so finding it had been a bit of a struggle. The only reason I managed was because he was a main-story character — there were plenty of cutscenes of people visiting his room. Recalling those scenes was how I finally tracked it down. Lucky break.
"If you're tired, go ahead and sleep first. I have things I need to do."
I'd roughly grasped the current situation, so now I needed to think about what came next. This was reality, after all — no gacha system like in the game, and no way to just throw real money at every resource. Everything had to be solved through farming.
That meant I couldn't forget the characters I needed, or the items that had to be stockpiled in bulk. Especially those spots where, under the pretext of an "event," you could haul in massive quantities of items from a specific location. Those places absolutely had to be checked and stripped bare…
"Hm…? You're not sleeping?"
"This."
The protagonist spoke while staring at a window that had appeared in front of him. At a glance it looked like some kind of inventory warehouse — an ability that, lore-wise, let him remotely operate the Queen's personal storage. He shouldn't have even received an explanation yet. He'd probably just been fiddling around out of boredom and stumbled onto it.
Inside, there should already be a basic stock of resources a newbie would need.
"This."
I recognized what he was showing me faster than expected. It was the affection gift required to obtain Jasmine — the first character you get in the main story. The lowest grade, of course, raising affection by only a single point… but for a natural 0-Star like Jasmine, that alone was enough to unlock her.
…It was absurd at first. Of all people, the only one you could get was Jasmine — the character who started at the greatest emotional distance from you.
You had to remember that the original owner of that warehouse was the Queen. That gift was a jewel the Queen had bought to give Jasmine as a present. The affection that rose from delivering it in her place was the whole concept.
"How…?"
How do I give it to you? A classic newbie question. Cute.
Heh. Just thinking about how thoroughly I'm going to milk this newbie is already putting me in a good mood.
"If you tap the gift, a name will appear. Tap that name and you can send it."
"Ah."
The moment he pressed the button, a small box arrived in front of me in an instant. The second I took the item, a strange sensation brushed along my back — a faint shiver ran through me.
"Nnh…"
Along with that ticklish feeling, a number etched itself into the center of the tattoo. I wasn't looking at it, of course, but I'd seen the scene often enough in the game to roughly picture it.
Still, it was funny. How did giving a gift raise affection and boost stats?
It's the ring, of course.
The large gemstone ring Jasmine always wore in the game.
…Come to think of it, was the gem always this color? I didn't remember it being this eye-catching.
I tilted my head, roughly slipped the green-gemmed ring onto my finger, and started explaining the points he needed to watch out for with this system.
"In my case, once it becomes '01,' it doesn't disappear even if you take your hand away, right?"
"Mm."
"But some people still lose it when they let go, even after hitting 01."
That was for characters whose natural rank wasn't 0-Star. In those cases, you raised affection further — hit 5 to unlock a natural 1-Star, or if they were a natural 2-Star, push affection all the way to 20.
"When that happens, don't panic. Just keep raising their affection."
"…Necessary?"
"Absolutely necessary."
What could possibly be more important than acquiring characters? He was a complete newbie who knew nothing, so I had to stay patient and explain kindly instead of snapping. It wasn't like I could return him — getting irritated and breaking him would just be stupid.
"Gifts also have grades. The better the gift's grade, the more affection it raises."
"The '1' written on the gift — that's how much affection it gives?"
"Yes, exactly."
He was starting to manage longer sentences. Nice.
Honestly, the affection values per gift were simple enough — just feed whatever you had. The real issue was handling the useless ones.
"You see the Sell button next to the gift recipient's name?"
"Mm."
"If you sell it, you get something called Choco."
You received an amount equal to the affection value. And you could spend that Choco to buy gifts for characters you'd already obtained — five Choco for one point of affection. You could give them to anyone unlocked, but the efficiency tanked to a miserable 20%.
"So only sell something when you're absolutely sure you don't need it, and only use Choco on people who truly need it."
"Mm."
Normally, affection items came from the gacha. Pull a duplicate and the game handed you an affection item worth enough to raise them to their natural star rank. The maximum base rank — 4-Star — required 100 affection, so a natural 2-Star at 20 affection needed five total pulls to max out.
But there's no gacha here.
I'd checked the system just in case. No Star Candy, no summon-related currencies — nothing yet. That made Choco an extremely precious resource that had to be spent with extreme care. Raising affection boosted stats, yes, but more importantly, star ranks unlocked skill level-ups. It was a critical number.
"Anyway — once the writing stops disappearing, you'll be able to empower them with other abilities. I'll explain those tomorrow."
True to Korean game design, that was where the real money sink lived. Most of it was dressed up to look like it ran on the in-game currency, Sugar — but the amounts they actually gave you were nowhere near enough. You had to convert the cash currency, Star Candy, into Sugar just to keep up. Resources would be desperately scarce, so nearly everything would have to be spent only where it truly counted.
"Ah — you said you were tired. Don't push yourself. Go to sleep."
"Mm…"
The moment he said that, he wrapped his arms around me. Before I could even process the sudden back hug, I was pulled down onto the bed still locked in his hold. The scent of chestnut blossoms flooded over me all at once and short-circuited my brain for a second.
"Hauh…! W-wait a moment. Sleeping in this position is a bit…!"
"Don't like it?"
"I-it's uncomfortable."
I managed to adjust the position, but he still refused to let go of my arm. He had the look of a lost puppy, so I sighed and lay down beside him. When a newbie looked at you with eyes like that, even a veteran had no choice but to lose.
"……"
We're just holding hands while we sleep. Nothing's happening. Overthinking a perfectly innocent situation would make me the weird one.
If he'd started groping me or doing something perverted, that would be different. But he was just clinging to my arm and sleeping like a complete innocent. Having dirty thoughts in a situation like this would make me the degenerate.
I refused to end up on the wrong side of that equation.
That was what I told myself — and yet, surrounded by the scent prickling at the tip of my nose, I couldn't sleep at all. I just held the same fixed position and guarded the bed.
…My arm wasn't a body pillow, but he slept holding it exactly like one.
"Mm…?"
He woke, stretched, and finally released me — but I'd spent the entire night so tense from being held that I hadn't gotten a single grain of sleep. At least I'd napped at the fountain yesterday, so it wasn't completely unbearable…
"Hah…"
After breathing in his scent all night long, my head felt blank and stupid, like my brain had turned to mush.
I am not gay. I am not gay. I am not gay.
Only after repeating it several times in my head did the heat in my cheeks start to settle a little. My body was still trembling, and every trivial touch felt far more sensitive than it should — but it was within a range I could endure. I gritted my teeth and pulled myself together.
He, on the other hand, clearly had no idea what was going on. He just tilted his head and blinked at me.
"It's nothing. Shall we go get breakfast?"
"Hair."
"…Pardon?"
Ah. He meant my hair was a mess.
…How did women even manage hair this long?
"Sit."
"…What?"
He sat me down in a chair, picked up a spray bottle and a comb that had been lying on the desk, and began brushing my hair with gentle hands. Every stroke scratched at the itchy, congested spots so perfectly that a sound slipped out of me before I could stop it.
"Hauh…!? W-wait— hak!?"
"If you move, you might get hurt."
He misted my hair just enough, carefully worked apart the worst tangles with his fingers, and tended to it with startling skill.
…Intellectually, I understood this was a perfectly normal process. But those vaguely ambiguous touches and strokes kept tickling my scalp, building up and then releasing in clean, satisfying scrapes of pleasure — so intense that it felt like I was being subjected to something indecent. The sensation drove itself deep into my mind.
I tried to pull away without thinking, but a man's hand — far larger than mine — held me still. I was clearly the stronger one, and yet that single gesture made resistance impossible.
…Only after a long stretch of brushing did I finally get released, rewarded with hair that fell in neat, pretty waves.
"Done."
"Hah… haah…"
It had only been a combing. And yet some part of me felt as though it had been dirtied.