Work Text:
She didn’t open her eyes so much as realize they were already open.
Bright lights. Cool, white. Buzzing faintly overhead. She couldn’t see the source, only feel the cold air on the back of her neck. Somewhere above, something clicked in a measured rhythm—mechanical, distant, like the slow pacing of something metallic.
She was upright.
Standing.
Feet planted shoulder-width apart, arms at her sides, posture straight. Looking upward for some reason.
Which was strange, because she hadn’t remembered standing. She hadn’t remembered anything . Not waking. Not sleep. Not drifting into darkness. No transition at all.
She just… was .
One moment she wasn’t, and the next, she already was. Here.
A flicker of panic pulsed under her ribs.
Where was she?
Hospital?
Had she collapsed? Stroke? Aneurysm? Had she been overworked enough to actually die at her desk? She’d joked about it. Her whole office joked about it. “Keep going until you drop, or until the espresso machine breaks.” Hilarious.
Except her feet hurt . And her calves ached like she’d been standing a while.
Dreams weren’t supposed to come with calf cramps.
Someone shifted nearby. Not close enough to touch, but close enough that she felt the ripple of movement in the air—boot scraping marble, a uniform sleeve brushing against fabric.
Uniform?
She lowered her gaze to look around her.
Rows of people surrounded her. Perfect lines of them. All clad in the same matte-black uniform that hugged the frame in a way that didn’t quite restrict, but disciplined . And it struck her then—not just how alien the place was, but how perfectly everyone else fit inside it. Like they’d been molded for this. Boots polished to a dull sheen. Silver pins on dark lapels. The backs of heads aligned with terrifying precision. She swallowed, throat dry. The taste of metal sat heavy on her tongue.
This definitely wasn't her office.
No flickering fluorescents. No buzzing from the vending machine that ate coins and never returned change. No chatter from that one guy in IT who always microwaved seafood.
This place was silent. Not quiet, silent . Solemn. Even the faint shuffle of a boot or creak of leather was muffled, as if the whole space had been padded in reverence or threat. Someplace massive, cold, metallic. Like a hangar or atrium. And she was standing in the middle of it, among hundreds of others, perfectly still.
A voice spoke from the front of the room.
She didn’t catch the words.
She should have, she realized dimly. The sound echoed cleanly, not too loud, not too soft. But her brain didn’t process it. It wasn’t language, not yet. Her thoughts were still scrambled.
Okay. Inventory. Her hands weren’t shaking. Her stomach wasn’t lurching. No nausea. No pain. She could breathe. Her lungs were fine. Her mouth was dry, but not parched. She had—she flexed a little—all ten fingers.
She looked down to herself.
Black jacket. Matte buttons. Fitted, tailored. Clean. Too clean. The kind of clean you only saw on people who had someone else do their laundry. The sleeve ended at her wrist, revealing a sliver of bare skin and nails painted a muted lilac.
She never painted her nails.
Nail polish? Please. Her boss ran the office like a death cult for Excel jockeys. Basic labor rights were clearly optional under his goddamn watch. She was lucky to crawl through fourteen-hour shifts on instant coffee and pure spite.
She swallowed again. Still parched. Her tongue felt like paper.
A curl brushed her cheek as she turned her head, just enough to glance at the nearest person beside her. Male. Taller. Clean-shaven. Neutral expression. Staring straight ahead.
Like everyone else.
And me.
Okay. Let’s start simple. She was standing in a straight line. That much was clear. Others were beside her, ahead of her, behind. All silent. All facing forward.
It looked like a ceremony. Not a school assembly. No snickering. No fidgeting. Too rigid.
Military ?
She stiffened.
No one around her spoke. No one even turned their head. Everyone just stood. Uniformed. Listening. Waiting.
Waiting for what ?
There was a podium ahead. Some kind of speaker was already mid-sentence—his voice echoed cleanly through the chamber.
“…our world will never be the same. The arrival of the tunnels rewrote every certainty we had. In the years since, each of you has been chosen, shaped, called to defend what remains…”
A speech.
An official one.
Okay. That gave her something.
Lyla focused on her breathing.
In through the nose. Hold. Out through the mouth.
Calm. Stay calm.
Could be a coma dream. She read about those. People inventing entire worlds while their brains lit up like fireworks. This could all be some elaborate, lucid fantasy her subconscious was cooking up because reality was too goddamn bleak.
If this was a dream, she’d like to speak to management. Because who made the dream smell like metal polish and sterile hallways?
Another slow inhale.
She took inventory again, more aware this time.
The uniform on her body was snug but breathable. Beneath it, the weight of thick-soled boots. No hat. Hair was loose—long and heavy down her back. Past her waist. Familiar. Hers. She knew the feeling of that length. She latched onto that detail like a life raft.
Her hands? No gloves. No accessories. She wriggled her fingers and flexed her wrists. They felt fine.
Too fine.
Her back didn’t hurt. Her shoulders and wrists weren’t sore. Even her usual tension headache—the one that nested behind her right eye every afternoon without fail—was gone.
Her body felt… fixed. No aches, no stiffness. Which only made it worse. Because it definitely didn’t track with the way she normally felt getting out of bed.
A badge was clipped just above her chest. Matte black. Silver trim. A name printed in white block letters:
Lyla Zhang
Her name.
Her actual name.
Panic prickled under her skin, slow at first, then rising like a tide.
Okay. Okay. If this were a dream, that name badge shouldn’t be there. Not unless her subconscious was being oddly specific. But it was hers . She didn’t remember putting it on. Didn’t remember dressing in this. But here it was.
She forced herself to breathe through her nose.
The voice up front continued. Something about duty. Change. The need for vigilance. The price of safety. It all blended into a wash of stately platitudes. No one moved.
Not a hospital, then. Not a dream, maybe. Some kind of—
A hiss of static crackled through the air. All the heads in the room snapped up at once.
Lyla mimicked them a beat late.
A projection flickered into being above the stage—three-dimensional, faintly glowing. A rotating image of a badge. Black background. Silver trim. Two word etched in white:
HUNTER’S ASSOCIATION.
Oh.
Oh no.
The words meant nothing to her in isolation. But the moment she saw it, her stomach dropped.
Because it did mean something. Somewhere, buried in a corner of her brain usually reserved for trivia and coworker gossip, a connection was forming. The uniform. The badge. The way people stood.
Those words jabbed at something in her memory, but she shoved the thought aside as panic swells and her breath quickens.
It’s just a coincidence. It probably has a million perfectly reasonable meanings.
Focus. Focus on what's real .
Her name. Her body. Her breath. The quiet pressure in her bladder—a real and very inconvenient reminder that she must have existed long enough to need a bathroom.
Because no game programmed in bladder discomfort .
Just like how no hallucination bothered with bladder discomfort.
As far as she knows anyways.
Which meant— shit . Was this real?
But where was she? Why couldn’t she remember getting here?
She didn’t know anything about wherever this is. About any of this.
She tried to glance around, careful not to move too much. The last thing she wanted was to draw attention. People here looked like they knew what they were doing. They stood with purpose and the ease of muscle memory, like this kind of posture had been drilled into them from childhood.
And her?
She stood because everyone else was standing. She didn’t dare move.
Where is this?
What am I doing here?
What am I supposed to be doing?
Will they be able to tell that I’ve no idea what I’m doing—that I don’t belong here?
She didn’t know what was happening—let alone what came next.
There was a tight pressure behind her eyes, the kind that usually came right before a stress migraine. Her thoughts smeared together, fuzzy and slick with rising static.
Okay. Think. Logically.
You are in a room filled with elite-looking soldiers. You are wearing their uniform. You have an ID badge with your real name.
Which meant you had a life here. You weren’t a stray. You weren’t some isekai trope where you woke up in pajamas in a fantasy world. No, your hair was washed. Your uniform was pressed. You even had goddamn painted nails.
So this version of you existed.
Some version of Lyla Zhang belonged here.
Her throat tightened.
She looked around again.
Faces. Dozens of them. Different shapes, shades, expressions, but all united by that eerie composure. The kind that came from people who had seen too much and learned to hide it.
Then she saw her.
One row ahead and one row across. Just off-center. A girl with long dark hair, standing like the rest. But something about her made Lyla freeze.
The curve of her jaw. The slight downturn of her lips. That exact, unfortunate dip to the outer corners of her eyes that made her look like a kicked puppy even when she wasn’t sad.
It wasn’t similar . It was identical.
It was hers .
Her face.
Down to the smallest asymmetry. Down to the one slightly thinner upper lip.
The girl didn’t glance her way. Didn’t blink. Just stood there, completely composed.
The only difference between them was the expression—She looked determined, curious, alert. Lyla knew that face from every mirror she’d ever walked past, and it had never looked that composed.
She nearly laughed out loud that moment. Hysterically. But managed to keep her lips sealed and swallowed it down.
And just like that, suspicion turned into certainty and suddenly Lyla knew .
Not everything.
Not the why.
But the what .
She knew this girl. She’d made her.
She’d been her.
She had spent three agonizing hours sculpting that face in the character editor.
She had given the MC her own face for immersion.
And now—God—there it was, right in front of her.
Her breath caught.
The game.
Love and Deepspace .
That ridiculous, over 40GB otome game with 4k abs and weird cross-dimensional monsters. The one her officemates were obsessed with. People she worked with. Grown adults giggling about which of the hot companions they pulled like it was lottery.
She’d gone in and checked things out on youtube out of morbid curiosity—and yeah, the graphics were insane, and the character design was suspiciously… delicious. And maybe she’d downloaded it on a whim just to see what the fuss was about for herself.
She hadn’t even gotten that far in the game. Just made the character, clicked through a few screens. Watched some cutscenes. Maybe an hour, tops. Honestly, she probably spent more time watching random lores and dates on youtube than she had spent time on the actual game itself.
The combat tutorials were annoying. She’d never liked RPGs.
She just wanted to customize the MC, maybe flirt with a hot doctor, then delete it and move on with her life.
But combat and training kept getting in the way, and—okay, fine—maybe she spent way too long on the character editor and was too burnt out to actually play by the time she got it just right .
And yeah, maybe she’d sunk three hours into adjusting the MC’s face to match her own like the perfectionist she is—because if she was going to play a romance game, might as well make it immersive, right?
She sculpted that face down to the smallest asymmetry.
Then named her Kayla instead of Lyla —out of a flicker of paranoia—just in case her officemates ever happen to stumble on her character profile. Not because she was ashamed, exactly. Just... selectively private. The game had sexy content. And she’d made the in-game character look exactly like herself.
…And she didn’t really want her coworkers knowing she was simping over fictional men.
So yeah. Kayla. Kayla Zhang. Close enough for immersion, and far enough for plausible deniability.
…If anyone asked, she has a sister (which she doesn’t but no one needs to know).
It was just supposed to be something casual. A break. A few clicks before bed. A distraction from the fact that her manager kept scheduling 6pm meetings like a sadist.
She just hadn’t expected to see that face standing five feet away.
In the same dimension.
But then again, she hadn’t expected to get isekai’ed into a damn mobile game, either.
And now that face— Kayla’s face —was right in front of her.
And it wasn’t hers.
Lyla didn’t know how long she stared. It was like watching her own reflection peel off the glass and walk away.
Not a clone. Not some weird fever-dream hallucination.
Just… Kayla. Her creation. Alive. Breathing. Blinking. Exactly how she’d sculpted her: from the slight downturn of her inner lashes to the lazy curl of her lip, that unspoken smirk that always read "I’m not impressed, but I’m listening."
Her own face.
In a game she’d only touched on a whim.
Her thoughts didn’t spiral.
They plunged .
This wasn’t a dream. Dreams don’t come with fabric tags scratching the back of your neck. They don’t let you smell deodorant and tension and the sharp, sterile edge of an air-conditioned briefing hall. They don’t come with the taste of iron in your mouth from biting your cheek too hard.
This was real.
And—
The President’s voice rose slightly in pitch.
"Next up—ID 031297-K. Lyla Zhang."
Her spine locked.
Shitshitshitshit—
Thousands of eyes didn’t turn to her.
That was the only mercy.
Everyone stood like mannequins—rigid, formal, trained not to gawk. The formality of the moment held them stiff.
Still, her heart pounded so hard she was sure someone could hear it.
She stepped forward. One foot, then the next.
Boots thudding against the floor with eerie clarity.
Her knees felt wrong. She was sure she looked suspicious. Her hands were damp and shaking slightly, and it took effort not to clutch them into fists.
Don’t clench. Don’t stumble. Don’t look suspicious.
Just small, steady steps toward the hovering holo-panel.
Waist height. Glowing faintly.
The President nodded at her.
She nodded back, trying not to visibly tremble.
“Place your hand here to confirm your personal info,” he said calmly.
She obeyed.
The pad was warm under her palm. It hummed faintly, scanning.
The screen lit up.
A brief flicker of static—and then her face appeared. Along with her name. Her Evol class (Simulation), her ID, her "potential."
Right. Evol was a thing in the lore, wasn’t it? Something like superpower?
The President glanced at the screen.
“Ah,” he said. “Simulation class. It’s been a while since I’ve seen that one. Trainees this year really are something.”
She didn’t speak.
Her throat felt like it had been scrubbed with sand.
He continued, giving some canned lines about looking forward to her potential and the unpredictability of Evols. Something about how Jenna had picked her early. She vaguely remembered that being mentioned in the game’s intro. Jenna was the superior officer in Unicorns, she thinks. Or the one with the questionable hair.
Then the machine sputtered. Soft warning beeps.
“Undetectable level,” the President murmured, entirely unfazed. “Not uncommon. Don’t worry.”
Right. Cool.
She took the badge when it was offered and marched right back down to her spot in line, head ducked, face blank.
No one looked twice.
The ceremony droned on.
She stood with the rest.
Spine straight.
Thinking.
Trying not to throw up.
I am going to be publicly outed as a fraud.
Not because she wasn’t supposed to be here—but because she wasn’t actually qualified .
Everyone else looked like they were born in a damn military sim.
Sharp stances. Alert eyes. Resting hero face.
Even the nervous ones looked like they could land a punch.
She had office carpal tunnel.
Sure, given the record earlier, she might have some mysterious type of evol but how does that even work ? What did that even mean ?
If it even exists, she thought darkly. For all I know, I’m going to wake up tomorrow in a Wanderer’s stomach because I can’t shoot fire or fly.
And the worst part—
The absolute worst part—
This wasn’t even the kind of game she liked.
Why the hell did she fall into this game?
Why couldn’t it have been Stardew Valley ?
That was safe. That was idyllic. Chickens. Carrots. Fishing. No dying.
But no. Of course not.
Of course she ended up in a dystopian otome with space monsters, corrupt science institutions, end-of-world prophecies, and morally ambiguous love interests.
What was she supposed to do here?
Pick berries and flirt while dodging acid-spitting wanderers?
I am not cut out for this. I don’t know what the Stellarium counter even means. I don’t know what attacks are compatible. I don’t even remember which button pulls up the damn watch interface.
She let the thought drop like a stone in her skull.
Heavy. Final. Inescapable.
If she had to trans—transmigrate—which she didn’t, thank you very much —into a game.
Of all the games—
Of all the peaceful, cozy, potpourri-scented universes she could’ve fallen into, where the worst thing that could happen was a missed birthday gift or a lost cow—
Why this one?
Why Love and Deepspace ?
Why the one with psychological trauma, memory wipes, dimensional rifts, and dark broken lore so dense it needed a wiki to breathe?
Why this world-ending, trauma-laden hellscape where humans were science projects with actual combat mechanics that required reflexes and coordination?
She hadn’t even learned the full combat mechanics. Point and shoot sounded easy until you realized you didn’t know which button pointed and which one shot. How the hell do you lock onto a target in real life?
All she knew was questionable lore and vague clips from YouTube.
She didn’t know the monster types and weaknesses.
She didn’t know how to break shields.
She didn’t know the difference between skill synergy and total button-mashing.
How am I supposed to survive this?
What would happen after the ceremony?
What if they expected her to fight?
What if they gave her orders she didn’t understand?
Her heart beat hard enough to echo in her ears.
This wasn’t safe.
But she couldn’t run.
Not here. Not in front of trained soldiers who could probably drop her with one shot.
Not when she didn’t know where the exits were or even how to leave the building.
Not when she didn’t even know if she was allowed to leave.
So she stood.
Hands clenched.
Fists curling tighter with every second.
Why this game? she thought again. Why not something normal?
Why not Stardew? Or Animal Crossing. Or Pokemon. Or even The Sims. Hell, she’d take Minecraft on peaceful mode over this.
Her mouth pulled into a bitter, shaky line.
And thought bitterly to herself.
I could’ve been planting cauliflower. Feeding goats. Wooing a nice, emotionally stable doctor.
Instead, she was probably going to get stabbed in the neck by a void-born monster on Day Two and die uninsured in a world that didn’t even have dental.
Her knees wobbled.
Okay, okay—focus.
She inhaled slowly through her nose. Let the smell of polyester and stress settle in.
Assess your situation. Start with essentials. What do I have?
She subtly pat herself down again, pockets and all.
No phone. No wallet. No indication that she had any money .
And that—of all things—was what snapped her into full-blown adult panic mode.
“Shit,” she whispered.
Because this wasn’t just fantasy and romance and sparkly abs in four different skin tones.
It isn’t even about whether she belongs in this world or not already.
This was survival.
And she had no idea how anything worked here.
Do I have any money? Savings?
Where do I live?
An apartment? A dorm? Do I need to pay rent?
How much does food cost here? Do I even have an income?
Do they pay rookies?
Or was this one of those propaganda-heavy, honor-and-duty setups where you got a cot, a weekly protein ration, and trauma-induced insomnia for your trouble?
No cafeterias. No vending machines.
She didn’t even know how to ask.
Do I have to work to earn money?
How do taxes work in this dimension?
Bank account? Retirement fund? Any kind of healthcare?
Her heart thudded in a slow, dreadful pulse.
God. The healthcare.
It was bad enough in the real world, but here?
Here, people get impaled by shadow monsters appearing out of nowhere on a daily occurrence.
What did the medical system look like in Love and Deepspace?
Did they even have actual proper hospitals, or just some hot companion pressing his palm to your forehead while whispering emotionally repressed things until your HP bar refilled?
“Please don’t let me die of something stupid,” she murmured.
Like infection. Or hunger. Or a badly-timed allergic reaction.
She didn’t even know if she had allergies here.
What if I need antibiotics? What if I get food poisoning from the wrong protein ration and spend six hours vomiting in a bathroom stall while everyone else is off bonding with their genetically-engineered squads?
How does their organization even work? Was there an HR portal here? Would I need to submit a ticket to get access to my own weapon?
God. What if my request got stuck in processing for three to five business days and I died waiting for a password reset?
What’s the ambulance hotline? Do I have an emergency contact? Do they even have police? How do you even call anyone on this watch thingy?
Her name was called and there was a record. The uniform was already on her when she came to, with her ID tag attached. Her boots were broken in. Her body felt like it had lived here.
Like she had always belonged.
Which made it worse.
Because now she had to play along.
She had to blend in.
She had to survive .
And not just physically. Socially. Financially. Functionally.
This world was beautiful, sure—but it was not built for comfort. Everything gleamed in sharp edges. The people stood with soldier-spine posture. The uniforms didn’t crease. The smiles didn’t reach eyes.
This wasn’t a school. This wasn’t a job.
This was a goddamn war machine dressed like a gacha game.
And she was inside it.
Do I even know how to use a weapon?
She tried to recall. The in-game tutorials had been annoying. Overcomplicated. She skipped most of them.
Some kind of combos? Shield breaking? Stellarium resonance?
Hell if she knew. She remembered red and some charging bars. Something about combo timing. A few confusing diagrams and a lot of flashy particle effects.
And monsters.
Too many monsters.
Screeching, twisted things that clawed out of dimensional rifts and didn’t stop until you were bleeding or someone pressed a special attack at the right moment.
And now she was expected to fight them?
“I want to go home,” she whispered under breath like a silent prayer. “I want my stupid desk job and my 6pm meetings and my overpriced bubble tea and I want to wake up tomorrow and forget this ever happened.”
But she didn’t wake up.
She looked down for a minute, waiting for some sign from the universe to show up and tell her what to do next.
None came of course.
“Fantastic,” she muttered.
This is what I get for downloading an otome game.
This is divine punishment for judging my coworkers.
And still— still —she couldn’t shake the fact that of all the places she could have landed…
This was the one that required her to risk her life and keep a day job.
Worse than a full-time office grind. This was corporate capitalism with literal giant haunting monsters. Game-play was one thing, but she is pretty damn sure that human bodies in all its flesh and blood glories are not made to endure and survive all those smacks and hits like MC shakes off in battles on daily basis no matter how much HP she might have. Sure looked like it’d fucking hurt.
At least in Stardew Valley, the worst thing she had to deal with was bats in a cave and a few rainy days.
Here? It was blood. And trauma. And unpaid overtime.
She wasn’t even sure she had insurance—or if she’d live long enough for it to matter.
She clenched her jaw.
Hard.
One thing at a time.
She listed them, methodically. Silently. Like she was filing a report.
What I Know (for Now):
- My name is Lyla Zhang.
- I have a badge. I have a uniform. My name was called, they have records. A version of me existed in this universe before I came to be.
- I’m in line with other recruits.
- The badge ceremony is currently ongoing.
- The protagonist and her NPC friend are here, looking terrifyingly competent.
- I have no known inventory or weapon.
- I seem to have a evol.
What I Don’t Know:
- Where I live.
- If I’d live.
- What’s expected of me.
- Whether I’m being watched.
- What is my evol.
- How to fight.
- What my Stellarium is (do I even have one? What the hell does that even mean? Can’t game developers just stick to common English terminology these days? —No, bad Lyla—Focus!).
- …If I can get sick, hungry, tired, injured.
- If I have any money, income or insurance.
- If I have any relatives or friends.
- If I’m going to die tomorrow.
The list helped.
Temporarily.
Until she realized there was no action plan.
No instruction on what to do after this ceremony.
Just assignment.
And then combat.
She had the sick, crawling feeling that the only way she’d survive the next 24 hours was to keep pretending she was who they thought she was.
Blend in.
Nod.
Salute.
Shoot when told.
She couldn’t afford to break formation. Not mentally. Not physically.
Not yet.
First she needed shelter.
Then information.
Then supplies.
Then, maybe, if there was time between shift rotations and whatever nightmare patrol they stuck her on, she could find a way to survive this place long enough to understand it.
But right now?
She just had to stay upright.
Lyla’s knees locked.
Her spine snapped a little straighter.
And her mind—the exhausted, hyperfunctioning mess of a mind that had carried her through fourteen-hour days and unpaid reports and managers that thought “urgent” meant “midnight”—
—her mind started to build the outline of a schedule.
Because with her luck, of course it had to be this game.
Not a cooking game. Not the cozy medieval village or cafe sim. Not even something chill like Pokémon.
No. It had to be the one with monsters that scream in fractal pitch and timelines that collapse on themselves like wet paper.
The badge on her breast felt like a dare.
A corporate name tag for a job she never applied for, never interviewed for, and might die in before payday.
I’m going to die in this strange new world, she thought. Broke, unarmed, uninsured, and alone.
Her eyes stayed on the podium in front.
Unmoving.
Emotionless.
But inside, her voice was a deadpan rasp of despair:
If I survive this, I’m uninstalling it.
Twice.
Then something miraculous happened.
A shimmer in her peripheral vision, faint and gold, like light catching on a ripple of water.
It blinked in and out between one of her spiraling internal rants about how this game—of all games—was the one that dragged her here.
Like a calling.
An answer to her desperate prayers.
She turned her hand slowly.
And there, nestled between her fingers as if it had always been waiting, was a folded piece of parchment.
She didn’t scream.
She just stared.
Blink.
Blink.
Then—carefully, like something sacred—she opened it.
The paper was soft. Worn smooth with time. It smelled faintly of wildflowers and old wood, like it had been pressed between pages of a book for years. Like it remembered a place she hadn’t yet seen.
At the top, in delicate cursive, the words unfurled:
"If you're reading this, you must be in dire need of a change."
Her breath caught.
Her pulse stuttered.
No. No way.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
Breathed in. Out.
Opened them again.
Still there.
Her fingers trembled as she read on.
"...The same thing happened to me, long ago. I'd lost sight of what mattered most in life... real connections with other people and nature. So I dropped everything and moved to the place I truly belong."
The world narrowed to a pinpoint.
Everyone else stood as they had before. No one else moved. No parchment. No golden shimmer. No invitation to another life.
Just her.
Her hand shook.
Her heart didn’t.
Her heart skipped.
Her Evol.
It had triggered.
Simulation. That was her class, wasn’t it?
The one with undetectable potential .
It didn’t give her a gun.
It didn’t give her a sword.
It gave her a letter .
A life hook .
A way out.
Her trembling fingers curled around the parchment like it might disappear.
Maybe—just maybe —she wouldn’t have to die in this slick metal hellscape, bleeding in some hallway next to someone else’s love interest.
Maybe she could carve out something else.
Something warmer.
Something quiet and soft and hers.
Maybe—God—maybe she could live .
For the first time since waking up in this world, Lyla didn’t feel like a glitch in someone else’s mission.
She felt chosen.
And she knew exactly where she needed to go—
—right after this ceremony.
Xavier didn’t usually get called into Division 1’s side office unless someone was bleeding out, blowing up, or blowing the whistle on a political landmine.
But this time, it was none of those.
It was paperworks.
Field verification of all things.
He stared at the dossier that had just been dropped onto the steel desk in front of him, eyes narrowing at the name stamped cleanly across the top.
Zhang, Lyla.
The name didn’t ring any bells.
“New recruit?” he asked, glancing up at the admin officer, who was too caffeinated to blink properly.
“Was,” she replied, popping the ‘s’ like gum. “She resigned.”
Xavier’s brow furrowed. “Already?”
“She made it a whole three hours past the badging ceremony. Didn’t even stay for the free lunch. Beat the speedrun record, honestly.”
He opened the file. Sparse. Profile photo. Transcript. Aptitude scores—unreal. Field readiness—untested. Simulation class, the rare kind. Blank in all mission logs.
“She didn’t even get formally assigned yet,” he muttered.
“Exactly,” the admin said, already halfway to the door. “You’re going to want to find and talk to her.”
“Why?”
The woman paused. Turned halfway back with the kind of grin that promised nothing good.
“Because she just legally claimed a property out of nowhere, signed all the exit clauses with flawless documentation, transferred her pension stub into an agri-subsidy account, and ghosted the Association without tripping a single red flag. No words or any further contact for weeks. We can’t even reach her. So you, are going to go on a quick hunting trip to make sure nothing is amiss.”
Xavier blinked.
“She… we lost contact ?”
“Yup. Not a single word. Right after she resigned with full benefits.”
He stared down at the file. The ink hadn’t even dried.
No failed mission. No disqualifying trauma. No visible trace of defection or sabotage. She hadn’t run. She hadn’t been taken.
She had just… walked.
“Where is she now?” he asked slowly.
The admin passed him a note. “Somewhere in Zone 14. On the outskirt of Linkon, near N109 zone. We couldn’t get precise coordinates. Her boundary ward is legal and government-registered.”
Of course it was.
And so, less than four hours after learning the name Lyla Zhang, Xavier was on a transport shuttle with a thermal satchel, a water canteen, and absolutely no idea why he was being sent to chase down the most competent runaway the Association had ever unintentionally trained.
They typically don’t send someone like him out unless there was a real concern.
The fact that Xavier is sent on this investigation is a sign of itself.
A newly badged Hunter resigning wasn’t unheard of—some cracked in their first week, others vanished after their first real assignment. But Lyla Zhang didn’t crack. She didn't run. Didn’t wait for trauma to settle in or politics to break her spine.
She resigned the same day she was badged. No formal complaint. No visible trauma. No incident on record. No report. Just paperwork so perfect it passed every audit.
And then she disappeared.
No crime, no breach, just— gone .
Which was the irregularity at its peak.
No one resigned on badge day. Not after surviving three years of prep, trauma acclimation, ability stabilization, and hours of interviews with risk compliance. Especially not with a Simulation-class power. Those didn’t just walk away. Those were watched. Groomed. Retained.
But Lyla had. Neatly. Cleanly. Without a whisper of malfunction or sabotage.
Which was why Xavier was here.
Officially? Field verification. Confirm subject is alive and well.
Unofficially? Make sure there wasn’t a goddamn threat brewing beneath the surface.
He briefly wondered if the girl is still alive out there.
After all…
According to her files he was handed, it had already been twenty-two days.
Exactly twenty-two days since Lyla Zhang—brightest newcomer of her year, Simulation-class, and the only rookie to ever outscore a combat specialist on theoretical survival routes—had handed in her badge, filed every necessary form with digital precision, and walked clean out of the Association’s fortress-like headquarters.
Not ran. Not vanished. Not defected.
Just… exited.
Clean.
Not a word since. No one seen her at all afterward.
This simply isn’t normal .
As far as the Association was concerned, Lyla had vanished into the wilds with no explanation.
The Hunter’s Association couldn't afford unknowns—especially not when it came to a Hunter trainee as promising as her. Top percentile across every exam. No red flags, no disciplinary marks. Impressive enough that Cap Jenna even handpicked her into the Unicorn unit as an early recruit. People like that didn’t just walk away. Not after fighting tooth and nail to get into the field.
Not unless something spooked them. Or tempted them.
Either way, it fell to Xavier.
He didn’t like errands. He didn’t like investigations. But he understood what silence meant. He’d lived long enough with the kind of silence that came after something went wrong.
Xavier didn’t remember how long he’d been walking.
He’d followed a legitimate property claim—double-verified and sealed with three layers of authority—to the outer edge of Zone 14’s habitable rural land.
The rough coordinates they gave him led to a remote stretch of registered private land. Borderline wilderness, several hours out from the nearest outpost. It shouldn’t have taken her long to build a fallback home here—if she’d prepped for it.
And she clearly had.
The transfer of ownership was surgical. Legal. Clean. No gaps in the paperwork. No trail to follow beyond a name on a deed.
But that was already strange. You don’t claw your way through blood and mud just to leave the field the moment you get your badge—unless you always meant to. Unless the badge was just a key.
What should have been an abandoned farmhouse surrounded by some amateur terracing had turned into a full-on biome .
The first boundary marker of territory was barely visible—just a stone, sunk half into the overgrown grass, etched with a faint symbol from her record. No active surveillance. No defenses he could sense. No outward threat.
Still, his fingers twitched at his side. The familiar weight of a blade coalesced beneath his skin—dormant, not drawn, but there. Just in case.
The grass underfoot changed as he crossed the threshold. Dryer, then richer. Like it remembered rain. The trees thinned. The air thickened, warmer than it should’ve been this time of year. The breeze smelled... faintly of rosemary.
His GPS stopped working at the edge of her boundary ward. Coordinates scrambles and spun in lazy circles.
Xavier frowned. That was the first red flag.
Not necessarily danger . But control.
Someone had curated this place.
Intentionally keeping this off-grid.
The path narrowed ahead. Not paved—just worn, natural dirt, packed by steps and wheels. Carefully disordered stones were tucked into the edges, forming lazy borders, overrun in places by creeping ivy and wildflowers that didn’t belong to this region.
He kept moving.
There was no music. No chatter. No indication of life.
But the quiet was too clean . No birdsong. No insects. Just the hush of leaves and the occasional rustle of something small scurrying out of sight.
His senses stayed sharp, gaze sweeping all around for traps, sigils, cameras—nothing. No one had followed him, either.
There was no reason for the creeping knot in his gut to grow heavier.
Until the hedges began.
They weren’t wild. They were carved. Trimmed. Maintained. He stepped between them, cautiously at first, then steadily, until the winding trail began to curve and twist beyond what felt natural. Hedges of flowering vines over eight feet tall, leaves trimmed like fractal art.
After the third loop he couldn’t retrace, he knew he’d been led into a maze.
Every turn changed subtly depending on his pace.
Clever. Subtle. Built to mislead without confrontation. A pacifist’s design. A boundary that didn’t need to be enforced with force—just patience.
Xavier didn’t like that either.
Still, he pressed forward.
The turns didn’t repeat themselves. The plants changed—box hedges, then taller brush, then bursts of lavender and chamomile. He suspected it was adaptive.
By the time he found the sloped break in the brush that led into a clearing, he’d nearly drawn his blade out of frustration.
He didn’t. Because his breath had caught.
It was like stepping into someone’s dream. Or an old picture book from a childhood he barely remembered.
A rolling expanse of fields stretched before him in every direction—wild, rich, blooming. Raised beds lined with trellised vines. Crops planted in mathematically precise, eerily straightened rows—some in bloom, others just budding. Decorative fencing separated patches—painted wood, some pastel, some rich dark brown, none of it chipped.
The soil was so perfect it looked rendered—rich, tilled earth sectioned into neat rows, every furrow identical in depth and spacing. A footpath wound between them like a question mark, flanked by potted herbs and stone planters. Somewhere nearby, chickens clucked with startling authority. A windmill creaked in the distance, lazily rotating in the sunlight. He smelled wheat, lavender and wet soil.
And everything was… alive.
That was the word for it. Not just growing. Not just functioning.
Thriving.
Too alive.
The tomatoes were unnervingly red. The leaves on the cucumbers shimmered with dew despite the dry wind. Beans climbed upward like they had somewhere to be. The sunflowers turned slowly, deliberately, even though the sun wasn’t visible through the canopy overhead.
He walked, slow now, careful not to disturb anything.
“Doesn’t look much of an enemy stronghold,” he muttered.
He’d followed the path to the edge of a white gate. No security. Just a painted sign that said:
Welcome to Bitterleaf Hollow. Don’t bother the bees.
Everything about this stank of sugar-coated nonsense. Xavier reached for the latch of his holster anyway, fingers grazing the slim firearm at his hip.
Better ready than regretful.
He approached warily and pushed the gate open with a stick. It didn’t creak. It swung cleanly, smoothly. Maintained.
He’d been briefed on Simulation class once during an inter-division seminar. Ultra-rare. Evol that didn’t fight or shield or strike—but restructured their surroundings in line with abstract mental models.
It wasn’t a combat class. It was support. Terrain manipulation. Safe zones. Glorified landscaping, some agents joked. Reality mapping, some called it. World-building.
Is her power at play here? He wondered to himself.
What kind of world had she built?
What danger lies beneath the surface?
He cautiously stepped onto a path lined with fenceposts glowing faintly under sunlight. Each was marked with a tiny sigil— Protection Rune —and a hanging lantern that pulsed with faint warmth.
Then came the carrots.
Rows of them. Neat, suspiciously uniform. No weeds. No pests. Every vegetable looked airbrushed. A translucent popup blinked into his vision upon his approach.
[Crop: Goldenroot Carrot | Quality: ★★★★] – Buff: +5 Vitality, Duration: 12h
Xavier blinked.
Body auto-reacted on high-alert before his mind could even perceive it, he instinctively and reflexively backed away and the popup disappeared from view.
He froze.
Either he was hallucinating, or reality had finally given up.
Then with a hand gripped tight on a manifested blade, he stepped forward again in cautious small steps.
[Crop: Goldenroot Carrot | Quality: ★★★★] – Buff: +5 Vitality, Duration: 12h
Sure enough, the popup showed again without fail when he reached within a certain distance. Stubbornly remaining in his peripheral vision like some weird gaming Heads Up Display, AR overlay wherever he looked at those carrots.
He paused and looked around.
There was no enemy. No attack. No danger. No projector.
Just an innocent transparent HUD floating mid-air like it was perfectly normal.
Xavier widened his eyes and tread forward.
He passed more, each with their own little tiny floating scripts and labels shown within distance: tomatoes sparkling with dew like gemstones. Cabbages the size of beanbag chairs. Strawberries with aura shimmers. He leaned close to a lettuce and it emitted a faint musical chime.
None of it is normal.
For one, the water droplets on the leaves weren’t evaporating. For two, the plants all look suspiciously identical and have a tendency to glow faintly when you stared too long. For three—
"What—"
He jerked back as a literal spark shot from a green stalk he tried to inspect with a chime, triggering another UI notification-like floating message mid-air.
Access Denied: Low Farming Skill Level and Affinity With Owner. Please increase your Farming Skill and Affinity Level to interact with this crop.
“Excuse me?” Xavier muttered.
He stared at the floating tooltip for three full seconds before it dissolved.
Oh, so that was how it was going to be.
He didn’t know whether to be impressed or afraid.
The whole place was built like a life sim cranked to full immersion.
A soft cluck broke his focus.
He turned slowly—hand reflexively near his weapon—only to find a chicken staring him down.
It stood atop a polished tree stump. Fat. Feathery. A little bow tied to one leg. Staring up at him judgingly at a distance.
Another chicken waddled out of a nearby coop—painted mint green with white trims—and eyed him warily before boldly wandered right up to him and tilted its head.
A faint shimmer flickered above its head—five empty heart shapes, like a child’s chalk drawing suspended mid-air.
He blinked. The image held.
“…Hi,” he tried cautiously.
The chicken peeped and fluffed its feathers. Blinked at him like it was judging his performance.
He crouched and extended a gloved hand. After a pause, it stepped forward with all the arrogance of an emperor and allowed him to run fingers through its feathers. The moment he gave it a gentle pat—
A faint pulse and chime.
🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍
+5 Friendship with Cluckles
A heart was barely filled in with a faint affection +5 sign. Subtle. Almost imagined.
“…Right.” Xavier blinked again. “We're doing this.”
His mouth twitched.
He moved on.
The farm seems to go on forever.
Xavier kept walking. There were zones. Literal zones. Orchard, pasture, apiary. Each transition came with a little ping of acknowledgment like he was entering a new area in a mobile sim.
The plots expanded as he walked—each labeled in small wooden signs, hand-painted in bright lettering: “Zinnias,” “Mint,” “Turnips Batch 3.” Some had journal notes tucked into waterproof holders nailed beside them. One had a long checklist scratched in pen, with items like “test compost ratio” and “prune aggressively.”
He passed a bulletin board near a pond.
Daily Goals:
- Water 30 crops [✔]
- Pet 3 animals [✔]
- Craft 1 new item [✔]
- Fish up 1 rare [In Progress]
Crafted items lay on nearby tables—pies, glowing lanterns, mana-enhanced fertilizer. Each tagged with a daystamp, a rank, and sometimes a heart icon.
He stepped into what looked like a tiny forge and tripped another popup.
[Tool Upgrade Station – Next Slot Unlock: Day 15]
He ignored it and continued down the path. Eventually passed a grove of peach trees—low-hanging, sun-warmed, glowing faintly with a “Harvest Ready” tooltip.
He plucked one. It popped free like it wanted to be held.
After a brief pause, he bit into it.
The flesh was soft. Fragrant. Perfect.
Real.
He stopped walking.
Xavier muttered in awe under his breath, “…She turned her life into a farming simulator.”
This wasn’t an escape.
This was deliberate.
Intentional.
She hadn’t run or hidden. She’d chosen.
Built. Crafted. Rewritten the rules.
The world around him—gentle, harmonious, absurdly ideal—was her answer to everything they’d demanded.
And she’d done it alone. In under a month.
No threats. No enemies. No trauma. Just… a hard pivot into idyllic game mechanics, as if she’d decided life should come with tooltips and tiered rewards.
It was genius. And terrifying.
He caught a glimpse of himself reflected in the rain barrel next to a row of parsley. Dressed in combat-tuned gear, blade nearly humming with tension, posture still coiled for violence. He looked like a wound in the middle of a watercolor.
And yet… it didn’t reject him.
The soil didn’t shift. The paths didn’t vanish. The world didn’t spit him out.
He followed the trail toward what looked like a flower field, ringed in low, smooth stones and unguarded.
His boots crunched gravel. The air changed again—lighter, warmer, fragrant with something floral and sweet. The sun crept in dappled patches between the trees, and the plants opened around him like they were turning to greet him.
He wasn’t a man made for softness.
But here, there was no war to fight. No bloodstains to scrub off tile.
Just a stray breeze, a page of someone’s open journal fluttering on a bench. Gloves tossed beside it, stained with pollen and dirt. A half-filled watering can still dripping onto the grass.
The absurdity should have put him on edge. And it did, at first.
Xavier had been trained to anticipate illusions, mimicry, false sanctuaries. He’d seen hallucination domains shaped like dead childhood homes, like temples, like entire functioning cities, just to keep monsters hidden inside.
But somewhere during the journey, the tension had begun to drain.
He wasn’t sure when it started. Maybe after the third chicken followed him like an escort unit. Maybe after he stumbled on the orchard and saw tiny signs above the trees reading “🍑 Favorite of Buttercup (the Cow)!”
He hadn’t realized how tightly he’d been holding his shoulders until they hurt from releasing.
This wasn’t a hostage situation. This wasn’t a cover-up. This wasn’t even madness.
It was a sandbox. A constructed world carved out of reality, crafted with such obsessive, joyful precision that it felt surreal.
A bridge stretched over a koi pond up ahead—wooden planks clean and perfectly spaced. He crossed it, passed another storage shed (Shed Locked: “Requires Relationship Level 2 with Owner to Enter” Tip: Try gifting presents or spending more time with the owner. Stalking discouraged.), and came to the edge of a flower field.
For the first time, he let go of his wariness and stepped off the path.
The flowers cushioned his feet.
He looked up, and looked .
A massive flower field stretched out before him, curving down toward a sparkling lake. Every color imaginable was layered in deliberate patterns. Cosmo, poppy, lavender, bellflowers, night-rose. Fields organized in gradients like a living palette. Some arranged in spirals. Others in open rings, inviting and aimless. The air was thick with scent—honeysuckle, chamomile, something like spun sugar. Bees buzzed with musical harmony. Flickers of lights pulsed into being when he stepped close.
The flower field didn’t just exist.
It shimmered—alive and attentive.
He crouched, touched a bloom. Real. Soft. Fragrant.
His sword dissolved, fading into vapor at his side. It felt almost rude to keep it drawn in a place like this.
A dog padded out from between two tree stumps. Quiet. Friendly. Big, but not aggressive. It looked at him like it had been expecting someone eventually, then trotted forward, tail wagging once before it flopped into the grass beside him.
Xavier reached out automatically, scratched behind its ears.
🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍
+5 Friendship with Lucky
Above its head—like the chicken before—five empty hearts shimmered faintly. A tiny flicker of light filled one partially in with a faint chime.
Lucky let out a pleased huff and nuzzled his arm. Then shuffled towards him, laying directly on his boot .
Xavier made a noise in the back of his throat that wasn’t quite a laugh, but wasn’t not one either.
He sat there looking at the scenario, absently petting Lucky for a long moment.
Eventually, dizzy and maybe a little enchanted, Xavier dropped down into the grass between glowing poppies and collapsed into it. The warmth was instantaneous. The tension in his spine dissolved.
Somewhere above, a tooltip blinked:
[You are now resting in: Comfort Field Tier 2 | Buff: +10 Stamina Recovery, Mental Fatigue -15%]
He squinted at it.
“…This is a joke. Right?”
There was no sense drawing his blade. No purpose in running mental scenarios of attack vectors or hostage retrieval.
There was no fight here.
Only choice.
Lyla had made hers.
She’d walked through hell, earned her stripes, and said no. Said: enough. And built this.
Not just to retreat. But to live.
He laid back, folding his arms behind his head.
Okay, so maybe he was tired. He hadn’t slept much since the assignment began, and this whole place was like being piped directly into a serotonin machine.
The grass was cool beneath him. It bent under his weight and warmed quickly beneath him, cushioning in a way that almost felt pillowy. Up above, butterflies drifted. He watched them turn lazy figure-eights between tall stems, watched the petals shift hues in the breeze like watercolors. The scent of flowers soaked into his lungs. The dog’s breathing slowed beside him.
It was quiet. The kind of silence that had no judgment. No latent threat humming under the earth. No protocol waiting to be triggered.
His eyes slipped closed of their own record.
In the back of his mind, he still had questions. Why she left. Why she didn’t tell anyone. Why she hadn’t replied to a single message since.
But the farm didn’t feel like hiding.
It felt like a breath of fresh air.
He had spent his entire life preparing for disaster, always ready to battle.
And now, for the first time in what felt like forever, he understood why someone would choose to walk away from the world that made him.
Why someone would build their own.
And never look back.
Xavier drifted into unconsciousness in a field of flowers, with the distant jingle of a content dog rumbling somewhere nearby.
And for once—
he didn’t dream of monsters and losses.
The air was suspiciously... nice.
Which, in Lyla’s experience, meant something terrible was probably about to happen. She never quite completely settled in the laid-back relax atmosphere quite just yet.
The breeze brushing over the hills smelled like basil and plum blossoms. Plants swayed in neat, obedient rows. The decorative lanterns she’d placed three days ago were now mysteriously wired to glow with warm candlelight—despite having no power source. A perfect fairy circle of toadstools had sprouted overnight. Again.
She didn’t remember placing the mushrooms. Then again, she didn’t remember placing half the things on the southern slope. Or programming the windchimes. Or getting the koi that now blinked up at her from her newly-dug ornamental pond.
But that was the thing about her power.
It didn’t always ask her first.
So she'd learned to stop asking too many questions in return. If the universe wanted to give her a little chaos with a side of citrus, then fine. As long as her chickens didn’t explode, she could live with a few autonomous decorative touches.
Still.
Today felt different.
Retrospectively, she should have known something was off when the flower field felt... occupied.
It wasn’t the flowers themselves. The blooms were as they'd always been—delicate bursts of gold and peach and ivory, clustered thick beneath the slight haze of midday. No, it was something about the air. Tensed. Tilted. Like the dream had pulled in something real and didn't quite know what to do with it.
She was halfway through watering all the patches when she saw the boots.
Just past the hyacinths, in the middle of her flower field, someone lay sprawled in the cosmos. A man. Breathing evenly. Silver hair stark against the riot of color. One gloved hand rested against his chest. The other had somehow found its way onto the curled, satisfied belly of her golden retriever, who lay there like he'd been worshipped.
There was a man in her cosmos patch.
Lyla didn’t move at first. She just stared.
Half of her mind calmly registered the absurdity of it. The other half—still nursing the sting of accidentally triggering a weather-dependent tea crop failure two hours ago—couldn’t be bothered to care.
She squinted. He was lying there like a fallen prince out of some watercolor children’s book, surrounded by blooms and warm light like a devotional painting. One arm behind his head. Silver hair, like freshly-spun sugar, tousled like a shampoo commercial gone rogue. White shirt rumpled in all the right places. His boots were still on—rude—but he hadn’t crushed the surrounding flowers, which she found suspicious. A lean, tall silhouette framed in white and gold-orange petals like a Renaissance muse.
His face was calm. Youthful. Serene.
Even his breathing was quiet. Peaceful.
If you looked closely, a bee had landed on his sleeve.
She blinked.
Once.
Twice.
Then slowly straightened, brushing dirt off her knees.
The dog rumbled in greeting but didn’t bother moving away from his position.
...Right. So either a flower spirit manifested in response to my chronic loneliness, she thought dryly, or the game just spawned a limited-edition husbando straight into my cosmics patch. Is this some kind of seasonal event? A random gacha drop from the RNG gods?
Lyla studied the suspiciously familiar man carefully from a distance like he was a riddle to be pieced together.
He was too pretty. The kind of pretty that didn’t belong in a practical, self-sustaining Stardew knockoff where the most dangerous predator was the price of fertilizer.
He looked like a poster from a limited gacha drop: Long lashes. Pale skin. Slim nose. Delicate princely and ethereal features. Sharp jawline, soft mouth, pink lips—honestly, he even had the nerve to be glowing faintly — like a sleeping angel who moonlit as a boyband swordsman.
Also: fully armed.
Her gaze dropped to the faint outline of a sword hilt materialized just beside his right glove, like it had appeared mid-sleep and refused to leave. It shimmered faintly in the light.
She sighed.
Of course. A combat-type NPC too.
She just hopes that he’s not going to be the type of randomly generated NPC monsters that just come in sword-swinging when they are alerted to your presence. The forge is still at a level too low to make any useful weapons at the moment.
She stared at him harder and briefly considered poking him with a stick.
He looked real. Too real. His chest rose and fell. The edge of his glove was frayed at the seam. A small dirt scuff marred his boot.
Is this really something her power is capable of generating?
Then, as if her scrutiny ticked some invisible proximity trigger, the man stirred.
His lashes fluttered. A pause. Then slow, startled blue eyes opened.
Blue. Not the soft sky blue either—sharp and glassy, icy blue so pale they bordered on silver, the kind that could dissect you with a glance if he wasn’t still halfway dazed by sleep and sun and… her flowers.
He blinked, sluggishly focused on her through the glare of sun.
Lyla stared back, blank-faced, hand lightly twitching toward the garden fork still in her inventory.
His eyes met hers.
She waited. To see if he’d attack or interact. Like watching a bear wake up after winter.
Xavier blinked, slow and disoriented. Sat up halfway. Looked around with an air of faint confusion, polite and soft like a noble waking up at a garden tea party he hadn’t been invited to.
She observed him silently. There was no flicker of alarm, no reaching for a weapon. Just a brief glance around the field, like he was cataloguing the fact that he wasn’t bleeding or on fire. In fact, the sword shimmered and vanished upon his awakening.
Then after a moment, his gaze settled back on her, and a faint, sheepish crease appeared between his brows.
“…Ah,” he said.
Lyla stood there before him, like a dream with the endless bounds of the flower field as her background. A basket on one hip, her long dark hair tied back with a garden ribbon. She wore overalls. Mismatched socks. Dirt-streaked gloves. Her nails were painted lavender.
Lyla Zhang.
Alive. Whole. Unapologetically fine .
Lyla tilted her head and raised one brow. “Yes. 'Ah'. That explains everything.” She squinted at him in suspicion, “Are you real?”
He moved to stand. Didn’t quite make it, paused with a hand braced on his knee, and sat right back down. His voice was gentle, neutral. “I think so? Sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude. I—uh. It was open.”
She crossed her arms. “The hedge maze was right there.”
“I—I just walked through it.”
She blinked again and moved closer to him. That alone deserved a reaction. But before she could offer one, a new overlay shimmered gently into existence above his shoulder as their distance closed.
Xavier
Hearts: 0/8 (Romanceable)
Two final hearts of the ten were greyed out. Just like they do for romanceable characters in Stardew valley gameplay.
She watched it hover next to his shoulder, as if glued to his aura. Her gaze darted down to the faint shimmer that followed him—only visible when the light hit just right. The system had definitely flagged him as a character, a romanceable one at that.
She pinched her own arm. Awake.
Right . Of course.
Her gaze shifted.
Another shimmer. This time on top of her own shoulder.
Lyla (Player)
Hearts: 0/8 (Romanceable)
She tilted her head. ...Right. So I am not immune to my powers either. Typical. Embarrassing but typical. I guess that’s fair.
Lyla cleared her throat and continued as if nothing out of the ordinary happened. “This is private land. You’re trespassing right now. If you’re lost, that’s one thing. But most people don’t nap in strangers' flower fields.”
Xavier rubbed at the back of his neck and looked at her—not with suspicion, not with challenge, but with the hesitant, boyish confusion of someone who wasn’t sure if he was intruding on sacred ground or just very lost. Still seated. “You’re Lyla Zhang, right?”
That made her pause.
“...Last I checked.”
“I’m with the Hunter’s Association. I was sent to check on you.”
Lyla frowned. “It’s been weeks. What for?”
“Yes, well, no one had seen or heard from you after the sudden resignation,” he said, somewhat awkwardly. “I wasn’t the first.”
“Let me guess. The others didn’t make it past the maze.”
Xavier looked down. “There was…a lot of—uh, wondering going on, since no one can seem to reach you, digitally or in person.”
She sighed, dry. “Right. I did put a few triggers and blockers in there. Thought it would buy me a season.”
“They thought you’d been kidnapped. Or influenced.”
She snorted. “By pastoral fantasy and early retirement, maybe.”
His mouth twitched, almost like a smile. Almost.
Xavier stood at last, brushing stray petals from his jacket. All tall and broad-shouldered. Tired-looking. He wore weariness like armor—casually, like someone who’d stopped noticing the weight. Sword-callused fingers. Sharp, battle-ready posture even at rest.
When she noticed he was still holding a single cosmos bloom in his hand—just idly, like he'd plucked it without thinking—she narrowed her eyes.
And then he held it out to her.
“Sorry again,” Xavier said. “Here. For the trouble.”
The cosmos shimmered in his hand. And for the briefest moment, her breath was caught.
Oh stars. He was sincere too.
+45 Affinity. “Lyla likes this.”
“A flower she grows herself. Lyla likes thoughtful gestures, even when she pretends not to.”
The moment was instantly shattered.
“Oh my god,” she muttered, face flushing, snatching it out of his hand so that stupid notification would go away. “Did you just gifted me my own flower? From my field. Which you’re illegally sleeping in?”
He blinked. “I—oh.”
The deadpan was too much. She cracked. A short, surprised laugh burst out of her before she could contain it.
“Did you also want to apologize by returning my own shoe?”
“I didn’t take your shoe.”
“Not yet.”
He looked genuinely contrite, then confused.
“I can… return it?”
Lyla tucked the bloom behind her ear with a laugh. “Too late. The damage is done. You’re now a polite trespasser with +45 relationship points. I hope you’re proud.”
He blinked again. “That’s… a high number?”
“You’re on track to unlock my mailbox privileges.”
A pause.
“I can access your mailbox?”
“It’s a metaphor,” she said flatly. “Don’t get ideas.”
He relaxed. Just a little. Then glanced at the basket near her feet. His expression softened further.
“You grow all this yourself?”
“No. I summoned bees and made them do it,” she said dryly. “Yes, I grow it.”
He smiled faintly. Not with teeth. Just a subtle shift at the corner of his lips, a microscopic ripple in an otherwise unreadable face.
Then his stomach growled.
Lyla tilted her head. “So. Lost and hungry.”
“I… haven’t eaten since dawn.”
She looked him up and down.
He looked utterly lost.
The dog, traitor that it was, barked affectionately up at him.
Lyla sighed again, spun on her heel, and waved a hand. “Come on, trespasser. You might as well stay for dinner. It’s not everyday that someone breaks into my property and flirts via accidental flower theft. Maybe if I stuff you full, you’ll walk out forgetting all about these embarrassing stuffs.”
“I wasn’t—” he began, then stopped himself. Followed meekly in silence.
Her farmhouse was a short walk away, nestled between the orchard and a field of idle plots awaiting late-autumn seeds. The porch creaked slightly under his weight. She waved him in and gestured for him to sit at the bench while she lit the stove.
Inside, the house was modest. Not yet finished. The rafters were bare wood. The furniture mix-matched. Half the upstairs loft was stacked with hay bales she hadn’t yet figured out how to convert into anything useful.
But it was home.
The air was warmer inside. Herbs hung drying over the windows. A kettle whistled softly on the corner hob. The house smelled like fresh rosemary, clean linen, and the faint memory of burnt toast.
He watched her with the wary alertness of someone not used to being a guest.
She pulled out a clay bowl of marinated mushrooms, flicked open a small cooler-stone compartment, and retrieved a wrapped cut of meat. Venison. And heated everything on a frying pan with quick precise movements.
The scent of rosemary and pepper chicken already rose from the oven. She moved with casual efficiency, throwing together a platter with the grace of someone who’d made this exact dish thirty-seven times. (Because the system had recorded it as one of her 'likes', and mood bonuses mattered even if she cooked for herself.)
He watched her throughout the process. Quiet. Curious.
His own plate sat untouched until she sat across from him.
Then, with a slight dip of his head, he tried it.
Xavier’s overlay pulsed softly above him.
+80 Affinity. “Xavier LOVES this.”
“Xavier has a hard time resisting good cookings. No meat, no happiness. He has to eat it.”
Lyla glanced at him, amused and satisfied by his appreciation while Xavier stared up at the hearts, brow furrowed in visible disbelief .
“I don’t control those,” she said helpfully. “The system just… reads and generates things on its own.”
“It’s reading that I like meat.”
“You like it a lot , apparently. I haven’t seen a love notification since I fed the dog roast duck.”
He made a strangled noise. “This is absurd.”
“You broke into a magic farming sim and now you’re a dateable NPC. Accept your fate.”
He ran a hand down his face. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Typical romance line,” she muttered.
She finished the dish in silence. Plated it with a smattering of roasted vegetables, a sprinkle of chopped chive, and slid the plate to him with a shrug. He stared at it. Then at her.
“So…this is what you do now after ghosting the Association? Farming and cooking?”
She tilted her head. “I didn’t ghost anyone. I submitted all the forms. And walked out. Calmly.” She didn’t raise her voice. Didn’t even sound defensive. She just was . Calm. Solid. Like this was the version of her that had always been waiting, just beneath the surface.
“…You were our top-ranked newcomer,” he commented with underlying questions beneath the surface. “Elite hunter initiated after three years of rigorous brutal training. You were shortlisted for the Association's internal research division.”
“Now I know how to make fermented strawberry jam in twelve days and how to clip a chicken’s wings. We all make choices.”
He nodded in acceptance and chewed slowly, trying not to enjoy the food too much despite revealing overlays.
The mood settled. He exhaled again—slowly this time, less like a defense mechanism and more like someone forgetting tension for the first time in hours.
Lyla sat beside him in silence after clearing her own plates. The dog immediately placed itself between them like a guardian deity.
“Why’d you really come?” she asked quietly, not looking at him.
“I thought you might be dead,” he admitted. “Or in trouble.”
“That would’ve made your day more interesting, huh? Bet you were expecting monsters.”
“…Maybe.”
She gave him a sidelong glance. “Disappointed you found a girl living out her farming escapism dream instead?”
His lips twitched. “A little. I expected... guns. Blood. A hostage situation.”
“Sorry to disappoint. Closest thing to combat here is when the duck bites the cat.”
Xavier chuckled.
Silence again. But it wasn’t awkward. Just soft.
The field outside glowed gently under the last stretch of daylight. Fireflies drifted along the orchard line. Somewhere in the distance, the soft chime of a windbell rang.
The heart above his shoulder pulsed faintly. Still barely half a heart. Still blue.
But not empty.
He glanced at her. She wasn’t looking.
Yet the corner of her mouth curled.