Rasmus raised an eyebrow and looked at his deskmate with a grin. He picked up the pink folded note. He held it up between his index and long fingers.
“Proof,” he said.
The chubby boy looked a little stunned.
It was likely that this character Rasmus was supposed to be didn’t get many confessions. He seemed to be popular enough, but the description also stated “your classmates won’t lend you money” so to some degree he was also not particularly well-liked, or he was known to squander off to do other things with it.
He didn’t show the contents of the note. It just could be seen there was a heart around his name, the handwriting very stereotypical for a girl.
Incredibly stereotypically girly, even. He shouldn’t have expected much less from the System or whatever entity created this place.
He turned back to face the blackboard and quietly played with the note for a moment without unfolding it.
This had merely been a test of what limits he could expect.
He seemed to have figured out two things: as long as it was part of the setting and didn’t clear his mission, he would be given props to fit in; and the details of the setting weren’t necessarily set in stone.
Both the books and the phone were props of the first kind, probably. They fit in with the surroundings while they ensured I functioned in the setting he had been tossed into. Information could have a similar place in managing to solve the mission, most likely.
The latter was a bit of a gamble, but he thought of this possibility when the classmate accepted “nap”. The girl behind him refuted him, but a “catnap” was accepted. That he would find a note in a book he’s never even looked at was purely something he thought as a plausible thing that could be true for his character, decidedly thought of because every time he had thought a question, or when he decided to accept the mission, he had received a response.
Of course, blindly believing things would go his way was silly.
Two hours to essentially solve a mystery, and his clues so far were “girl”, “next class” and “pink note”.
He unfolded the note.
Ding!
The phone immediately gave off a sound.
The classroom fell completely silent as they all turned to him to look at him.
“Oh man, I forgot to turn on DND! Sorry, fam!”
He grabbed his phone as if this really was the case. He hadn’t thought much about the sound of the phone when he suddenly had got interrupted by his classmate. Perhaps this had been a distraction on purpose.
He started by going into the log to see what it wanted to tell him now.
[⟨Player⟩ has cleared the hidden step ⟨Find A Clue⟩! The reward is 1 Store Point! Congratulations!]
[⟨Player⟩ can find more information about their mission in the mission description.]
“…”
Rasmus couldn’t help but think that there was nothing to congratulate anyone for, if all they got was one measly point. What could he even get for that?
The Store had been unlocked, after all, so he tapped the bottom menu option to check it out.
The first that popped up was “a recommended purchase for the current scenario” and Rasmus took a moment to actually look.
[Chewed Regular Pencil (last third)]
[A cheap pencil that someone has chewed on. Still works. Kind of.]
[Cost: 10 points]
He wondered if he had a pencil among his things. Lunch break would likely end soon, and then that would mean he had class. As part of the Scenario, he’d have to attend class, or he would skip it. He needed to determine which was the correct course of action, yet he had no information to base this decision upon aside from the time limit itself.
He tapped the x of the window on his phone and saw that the two first options in the store were grey with locks. One was 100k points, while the other was simply marked as “???” in price. Neither had a title.
Having no interest in these sorts of mystery packages, he sorted the store by price and concluded that… A pencil was really expensive! If he just wanted an un-chewed, unused regular HB pencil, he had to pay one-hundred and fifty points.
He had just this one single point, which wasn’t even enough for the chewed pencil, never mind the regular.
There was no point in looking when he only had this much, so he hopped back to the log tab.
He scrolled up a little and went over what he had planned on exploring earlier. In the other app it was Statistics, Tasks, and Mission.
When he opened the Player Information app, he landed on the Profile tab.
The information hadn’t changed, but a timer was at the top, above the information, about twice the font size and in green.
1:53:34
…33
…32
…31
…30
…29
He was nearing the 7-minute mark since the System had started the timer. He had spent some time on understanding his situation, but it certainly wasn’t time particularly efficiently used.
And yet, there were no consequences! Either he managed or he didn’t. It was just a really fun challenge to “seduce” a girl in less than two hours in a high school setting.
—Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
The beeping from when he woke up seemed to echo in his ears as he watched the timer go down. He hurriedly moved on, tapping the newly unlocked Tasks tab.
The System had let him know that he had cleared his first task before.
When he looked, the task at the top was ⟨Bound to Role; Loss of Self⟩ and its description was simply “⟨Player⟩ has taken upon themselves to become a different student. Will they be the same after this Scenario?”
The reward was five Store Points and a random reward called Grade K.
Other tasks weren’t unlocked, but he could see the reward on some, which were likely “on his level”. The most common reward would be Store Points, while others were items, Attribute Points or even “skill” and “achievement”.
Rasmus’ eyelids were already quite closed as he looked at his phone to begin with, but he had a contemplative aura to him now.
After a few seconds, he moved on to the Statistics tab.
At the top there was “Store Points: 1” to the top right. On the top left he found “Seduction Points: 12”. He couldn’t tell if that was good or bad, but…
Seduction Stats
Charm: 7
Charisma: 3
Cuteness: 6
Handsomeness: 4
Sex Appeal: ‒
Looking at his “innate seductive abilities” it looked quite bleak, didn’t it? Sex Appeal was even greyed out. Why didn’t he have any?! Was he that unappealing?!
Ding!
♠️ The Seduction Game
[New Message from ⟨System⟩!]