D-Day 996 (2): The Status Window
The room was pitch black. Even though it was broad daylight outside, the blackout curtains turned the interior into something indistinguishable from night. Tomorrow was the weekend and my day off, but I usually forced myself to sleep at this hour anyway. If my sleep rhythm got disrupted, it would cause problems with my night shifts at the convenience store. It wasn’t out of any noble professional conscience. If things went wrong from the very first day, the stretch until my next break would feel like hell.
But sleep refused to come. Every so often I heard a faint rustling from beside me. My older sister was probably fiddling with her phone under the blanket. It wasn’t annoying enough to complain about, yet it kept me from drifting off. Maybe it would have been easier if we had a mattress. Lying on nothing but a blanket spread across the hard floor left my lower back rigidly compressed. If I stayed there too long, my bones began to ache.
It wasn’t that I had skipped buying one to save money. On the contrary, I had sold the original mattress secondhand long ago. The reason was simple: there wasn’t enough space. The studio was already cramped for one person. Now two of us lived here. A small desk with a computer. One large wardrobe. A multi-purpose drawer unit. Those alone devoured most of the floor. Adding my sister left no room for anything like a mattress. So we spread blankets on the floor and slept practically glued together.
If I couldn’t sleep, I would simply have to endure it. What other choice was there?
“…….”
But the truth was, I knew the real reason lay somewhere else.
996 days. The time remaining. I had already wasted four of them.
I had excuses. Who would believe something like this right away? I had run my own checks in my own clumsy way—whether the status window was real, whether other people could see it, whether I had simply gone insane. Someone smarter might have finished confirming everything in a single day. But that wasn’t me. I had a somewhat dazed side and I wasn’t particularly intelligent. If I were a character in a novel or movie, I definitely would not be the protagonist. I would be the supporting character who hesitates, unable to choose a path, and dies. The kind of guy who, when the zombie outbreak hits, cannot tell whether the figure in front of him is human or zombie, approaches asking if they are all right, and gets his throat torn out.
Fortunately I was timid and suffered from severe social anxiety, so that particular death seemed unlikely. Instead I would probably die stupidly in some other manner.
“…, fuck.”
The curse slipped out before I could stop it. The rustling beside me stopped dead. She must have heard it; she was right next to me. Even without seeing her face, I could feel her carefully reading my mood, wondering if she had caused it. I closed my eyes again. Sleep still would not come. My thoughts sank even lower.
What the hell was I supposed to do? Cursing myself as an idiot inside my own head would change nothing. An idiot is an idiot for a reason. The same went for being a virgin. 996 days remained. That could feel like a lot or pathetically little depending on how I looked at it. I could not even decide whether we still had 996 days or only 996 days were left. Being a virgin was depressing. It triggered decision paralysis on everything. Of course I did not know whether the virginity caused the paralysis or the paralysis caused the virginity. Chicken or egg. Either way both were equally shitty.
With customers I could talk. With fellow part-timers I could manage at least a greeting. If someone dropped something I could pick it up. I was capable of that much. My social skills were not completely destroyed. If a girl approached me first and said she liked me, I was confident I could welcome her with open arms—so long as she was not too ugly. I was in no position to be choosy.
But that was the limit. Without a clear purpose I could not initiate conversation. The idea of me approaching a woman first to flirt with her? It would never happen even if the sky split open. Well, if the sky actually split open I suppose I might. This situation was perhaps exactly that kind of moment. That was why I was tormenting myself like this.
The conclusion remained the same. Without a sufficient trigger I was hopeless.
“…….”
Yeah. Let’s suppose I somehow managed to talk with her, the mood improved, and we started dating. Even reaching that point seemed impossible, but let’s assume it happened. Then what? The conditions the system demanded were far removed from any normal romance. In a world that had excellent contraception in the form of condoms, would any girlfriend obediently allow it? I would be lucky not to get slapped. The system grandly spoke of training and slaves, but how was that slave-like in any way? Were there slaves who watched their master’s every mood like this?
When I imagined it the answer came at once. Far from having many slaves, I saw myself constantly anxious, trying to appease a girlfriend’s whims and never knowing when she would dump me.
Should I visit a brothel? A place that would accept those conditions. There had to be somewhere. But STDs frightened me, it felt dirty, and above all it cost money. The amount I would lose each visit would be considerable. Decisively, I did not have that kind of money. If it could be finished in one time, maybe things would be different.
It varies depending on training state.
It will fluctuate according to the target’s level of resistance and the player’s progress.
In short, it was not a problem that could be solved in one shot, and even if I went crazy and committed rape I would end up behind bars. Therefore there was no answer at all. Even if it were possible, I doubted I would have the courage. There are people who cannot jump from a bungee platform even though they know it is safe. Knowing and doing are two different things. The difference is like heaven and earth.
It was all because I was a virgin. Wasn’t there something simpler like hypnosis?
Instead of an answer, only the date floated up blankly. It seemed there was no such convenient option.
“…….”
The message was that I had to somehow catch a woman and seduce her. After going in a full circle I was back at the starting point. At least with 996 days remaining the sense of crisis felt less urgent. I could not tell whether that was fortunate or unfortunate. It felt like realizing you had summer homework the moment vacation began. I knew about it, but I did not want to do it, and it still seemed as though there was time. Then the day before school would arrive.
There was still one possibility left. The possibility that I had simply gone insane. I genuinely hoped that was the case. Truly. But if it was not, then I was fucked, which was why I lay here unable to sleep.
“…, haa.”
I had tried to hold it in, but the sigh escaped on its own.
The blanket on the other side twitched again.
“…….”
I was not angry. Only one thought rose in my mind.
She really has it easy in this life, that sister of mine.
The conditions for training this woman have not been met.
Vaginal Ejaculation required.
“…….”
That status window alone made the situation hopeless. Those three sizes were the very picture of obesity. Looking further, her body-fat percentage was a staggering thirty-six percent. She weighed eighty-four kilograms. She was roughly two centimeters taller than me, yet she weighed nearly ten kilograms more. I could not tell whether I was raising a person or fattening a pig.
There were plenty of overweight people in the world. But someone who stayed shut inside the house, never worked, and simply repeated the cycle of eating and sleeping—could anyone blame me for thinking of her as a pig? A thousand days was nearly three years. During that time, slave or not, would I have to keep feeding her until the zombie outbreak finally arrived? The prospect was bleak beyond words.
Her sexual-experience count was naturally zero. The moment I first saw it I understood completely. Even if she had been bullied through high school, she had lived in society for nearly ten years afterward. She should have had some connection with men. In the realm of dating, women held the advantage. Just looking at the customers who came into the convenience store proved it. Women uglier than my sister dated without trouble. But not her.
The reason was most likely her personality. She would have avoided company dinners like the plague, and even receiving simple work instructions would have made her tremble. The slightest strange glance from others would have left her frozen solid for the rest of the day. So she had probably been ostracized. The thought might sound cruel, but it was not far from the truth.
The more I examined it, the more absurd it became. Her first kiss was surely still intact. I could not picture my sister kissing a man at all. Apparently even her hymen remained. The absurdity of it made me laugh. Her history showed she barely even masturbated. Well, that made sense. She had lived under our grandmother’s thumb as a child, entered a factory at a young age, and worked without rest. It would not be strange for her sexual desire to be lower than average.
Still, it was pitiful. Not that I should be the one saying it, but being a twenty-seven-year-old virgin—wasn’t that more pathetic than a twenty-three-year-old male virgin? Yet it was not completely hopeless. There was still a chance. It would probably be far easier for her than for me, who was writhing in agony over the decision. Realizing that actually irritated me. My sister might be fat, but she was not extremely ugly. Objectively speaking, she was not bad at all. This was not me viewing her favorably because she was my sister; after seeing every kind of person at the convenience store, that was my honest assessment.
There were many people in the world. Many men. Among them were those who cared more about body than face, and some whose taste ran toward plump women. Besides, my sister was surprisingly domestic. She did not work, but she cooked. She cleaned. She did the laundry. If someone had the financial leeway to support a full-time housewife, she might not be impossible to date. It would make my own life easier as well. The studio really was narrow.
Her personality was not bad either. To be exact, it was subservient. At least while dating we would probably not fight much. She would do whatever she was told. If I said not to do something, she would not do it. If my voice rose even slightly she would carefully read my mood and try to appease me however she could.
Therefore, if such a man appeared, my sister would not be able to refuse him. Sex would probably be possible from the very first day of dating. It was obvious without even seeing it. Because she did not want to be hated. Because she did not want to be abandoned. She would simply nod.
The vaginal ejaculation I was agonizing over? If I told her to take a morning-after pill she would spread her legs without a word. No—if I simply said I would take responsibility, everything would be approved at once. Easy. Simple. That was the kind of woman my sister was. Someone should just take her away. How convenient it would be.
“…, huh?”
Wait a minute.