I have never once in my life suffered from psychosis. I have had depressive disorder, but by psychosis, I meant seeing strange windows before my eyes.
Every time I ate a piece of meat, [Affection toward the target has increased (1/100)] kept popping up without pause, making my already dizzy head even dizzier.
Gradually, the rate at which the windows appeared slowed, and eventually they stopped appearing altogether, but what on earth was this?
If it was a window saying affection was rising, then as far as I could tell, it had to be related to a dating sim. I had played dating sims a few times, but I had never liked them enough to develop a mental illness over them.
So even if I were seeing optical illusions or hallucinations, there was no reason for me to see windows that specifically seemed related to dating sims.
Of course, I had once thought that maybe I possessed the same ability to seduce women as the protagonist of a dating sim...
Gasp!
I was shocked by a realization that flashed through my mind like lightning.
——Could it be that these hallucinations had started appearing because the protagonist of a dating sim and I shared the common trait of being good at seducing women?
To think being too outstanding could be a sin.
I hate myself, a sinful man.
As I sat there unable to close my mouth after realizing a truth so immense it left me breathless, a wrap piled with meat slipped right in.
The meat juices slid down my throat, smoothing it with oil, and then the crispness of the lettuce refreshed my throat.
The ssamjang held all the flavors together and made everything taste delicious, so this was no ordinary wrap. It would not be an exaggeration to call it a work of art.
I immediately made one myself and ate it too, but it was not as tasty as the wrap the girl had made for me.
More precisely, it felt like eating an ordinary wrap made with incredibly delicious meat?
According to the hallucination I was seeing right now, this girl was a heroine. She had an ability called “Influence,” but if a girl with the kind of cooking touch you would only see in a comic had an ability, it should not have been something like Influence. It should have been a talent called cooking.
“Can you make me one more?”
“Yeah, as many as you want.”
Even though she made the wrap under my instructions in a way that was not particularly different from mine, the taste was in the realm of the divine.
After eating one more wrap made by the girl, I became certain inwardly.
Perhaps the words floating above that girl’s head were not clues that would explain the sudden situation I was in, but merely ordinary hallucinations I was seeing because I had gone insane.
Of course, even if what I was seeing was a hallucination, the situation did not improve much.
It was true that my body had strangely changed.
It was true that I had woken up in a strange place.
It was true that I was seeing strange things, and it was also true that someone I was meeting for the first time was showing me an abnormally deep goodwill.
Rather, if those letters were not hallucinations but actual system windows like the ones I saw in games, that would be much better for me.
Every game had an ending, after all. If this world was a dating sim, then I would be the protagonist.
If I revealed my outstanding charm without holding back, I could capture every heroine and see the true ending.
“So, just like always, the ones I make are the best, right?”
Perhaps because she saw my mouth had stopped for a moment, the girl rested her chin on both hands and leaned her face toward me so closely it felt burdensome as she asked.
A heroine, was it?
Unlike the affection notifications that appeared and disappeared quickly, the girl’s name, ability, and role had been floating above her head the entire time as she looked at me.
Sub Heroine.
In a dating sim, only a woman with good abilities, good looks, and no lover yet could become a heroine, so the girl in front of me quite literally had the qualifications to be called one.
Her scarlet eyes, which looked so unrealistic and mysterious that it was hard to regard her as a real person; her black hair with a faint light-green sheen; and her appearance, which would put even active celebrities a rank below her.
Adding to that the fact that only the wraps she made were abnormally delicious, it was not something I could simply dismiss as a hallucination that this woman was a heroine favored by the world.
She was the very person who could resolve at least some of the questions I had right now.
Rather than agonizing alone over whether this was a hallucination or not, it would be much simpler to ask this girl.
If I had not been kidnapped and was not suffering from hallucinations, then a careless slip of the tongue might make my life as “this body” difficult, so I had intended to refrain from speaking as much as possible until I fully grasped the situation. But if I asked her just this once, at least some of my curiosity would be resolved.
“Can I ask you one thing?”
“What are you saying, between us? Ask me comfortably. Comfortably. Though I think you were already speaking comfortably~.”
Since we were people who had eaten meat together, she was telling me to treat her casually.
I regretted having doubted this girl, who even had proper values, for even a moment.
However, since the current situation was extremely confusing, I had to make sure to clarify what needed to be clarified.
“The CCTV in the hallway. Why did you install it?”
“...Because I’m worried about you, obviously?”
She had been worried about me even before we ate meat together?
Noticing that the girl’s scarlet eyes had glanced at my wrist for an instant, my own gaze naturally turned toward my wrist as well.
Because I had been searching the room and then immediately been drawn out by the smell to eat meat, I had not had time to check my body. There was also a part of me that had deliberately ignored it, even though I knew something had changed.
That was why, the moment I saw the few lines carved into my wrist, I understood the meaning of the CCTV.
This was a kind of proof-of-life check.
It had not been installed to stop the other person if they came “outside,” but to go look for them if they did not come “outside.”
The self-harm scars, far messier and deeper than the lines I had drawn on my former body, were not something that could be imitated just by taking hormone shots.
Well, I had roughly guessed about the “body,” but now that the evidence was directly before my eyes, I was not sure whether I should call it bitter or absurd.
“What kind of relationship do we have?”
Then another question inevitably arose. I had guessed that this “body” was not something that could be created through mental illness or female hormone injections, but if the point was to prevent self-harm, she should have put it in the room or bathroom. There was no reason to put it in the hallway.
Everything was a complete mess.
As if to stop me from saying anything, she put another wrap into my mouth and answered my question.
“We’ve been childhood friends since we were seven. ...And lovers!”
[Affection toward the target - Yu Inna (20/100) - You have reached the Stage 1 cap. The target already knows the self-harm keyword that releases the Stage 1 cap. Stage 1 cap released. From now on, affection toward the target can rise up to 40.]
[Warning. Warning. Warning. Please be careful. If your affection toward the target reaches 100, you will be trapped in this world forever.]
[A person who has raised your affection above 20 has appeared for the first time. From now on, you can view the profile of a target whose Stage 1 cap has been released.]
[Heroine Name - Yu Inna.]
[A childhood friend who has known you since you were seven years old. You grew distant due to a certain incident, and she naturally comes and goes from your house while your parents are away on a distant business trip. Currently, she believes you are deliberately pretending to have lost your memory and acting and speaking strangely in order to deny the incident that happened at school. She is flustered because she did not know you would like grilled meat this much. She has decided to buy more meat next time.]
[Please be careful, as the methods Yu Inna uses to capture you are likely gaslighting through Influence, isolation through Influence, and her specialty, cooking.]
A profile that told me not how to capture the other person, but how the other person would “capture” me. And a declaration that if my affection reached 100, I would be trapped in this world.
I was starting to roughly understand what kind of situation I was in.
I had not been kidnapped.
I had not developed a mental illness either.
And even if I had truly developed a mental illness, if it was a mental illness indistinguishable from reality, then it would be right to stop denying the world I saw through that illness and go along with that world’s rules.
Because that would be far better than later realizing that this was the world I would have to live in from now on and regretting it.
The reason I was able to accept so nonchalantly a situation that it would not have been strange for me to keep denying was that every incident I had ever experienced had always happened abruptly.
“We’re not lovers. And you, why are you in this house?”
I did not know how much I should trust something called a profile, but in order to get out of this world, I had no choice but to at least trust the system that kept telling me this world was inside a [dating sim].
“So you really were joking and pretending not to know? Our homeroom teacher said you have to come tomorrow no matter what. And also, I thought you might be starving, so I came to cook for you. You’ve always eaten the meat I grill deliciously, haven’t you?”
Fortunately, whether the words I had spoken after trusting the profile were correct, the girl named Yu Inna obediently affirmed them instead of denying me.
“Not always. I just felt like eating meat today.”
Was that the right thing to say?
Since I thought it was right to imitate the original owner of this body, I had spoken as my mouth moved on its own, but the expression of the girl in front of me was strange.
As though I had said something odd.
“...Really? Well, if you say so, then I guess that’s how it is. I’m going to wash the dishes now. Are you going to stay here?”
“No, I’m going upstairs.”
“Okay, got it. I’ll wash the dishes before I go. You have to come tomorrow, okay? I’ll be waiting in front of your house.”
Imitating an utterly shameless bastard who, though she was clearly not family, had made her cook and was even making her wash the dishes.
It was difficult for me, who had once been a gentleman overflowing with manners, but perhaps this was something that happened often, because Yu Inna accepted it without any particular reaction.
The incident that had supposedly happened at school.
The reason the original owner of this body had grown distant from Yu Inna.
I still did not even know what kind of world this was aside from the fact that it was a dating sim, yet this body already seemed to have caused some sort of trouble.
On top of that, the woman who was the first sub heroine I had met was kind as a comrade who had eaten meat with me, but there was also something subtly bothersome about her. I still did not know what that bothersome part was, but the situation I was currently experiencing alone made my head ache, so rather than help with the dishes, I went up to the room on the second floor.
I liked eating delicious food, but...
Doing the dishes was a pain...