My Strange Tale Love Strategy Simulator

Zhang Ying hailed a taxi on the roadside.

The artificial leather seat covers in the back seat smelled of smoke mixed with cheap air freshener. He rolled down the window a crack, and the night wind blew in, blowing the cold sweat that had already dried on his forehead.

The driver was a middle-aged man in his forties. A safety knot was hanging on the rearview mirror, and a midnight traffic report was playing on the radio.

Zhang Ying chatted with him intermittently. They talked about gas prices, which roads were congested during the day, and the college entrance exams. He wasn't really interested in chatting; he was trying to confirm that the driver was at least a real person.

Everything that happened today made him wary of anything that came his way. Who knew that halfway through the taxi ride, the driver might suddenly turn around with a deathly pale face.

Fortunately, the journey home was uneventful. The car stopped at the entrance of the residential complex, Zhang Ying paid the fare, and pulled his school uniform jacket tighter around himself as he walked into the building.

The cold wind howled in the early morning, and the motion-activated light at the entrance of the building flickered twice before turning on. He took out his phone and glanced at the time—midnight.

The living room lights were still on.

Pushing open the door, Zhang's mother sat on the sofa, wearing an old sweater coat. On the coffee table in front of her was a glass of water that had stopped steaming. Hearing the door open, she looked up.

"So you finally know how to come back?" Zhang's mother stood up, looking him up and down. "You're almost taking the college entrance exam, and you're always coming home so late. Have you been sneaking out to go online? Going online is one thing, but don't go messing around outside!"

"I didn't go online, something came up at school." Zhang Ying kicked off his shoes, his voice a little hoarse.

"What could be at school that would keep you up until midnight?" Zhang's mother continued talking, but her hand had already brought over a cup of warm milk and shoved it into his hand. "Drink this. Look at your face, it's so pale, like you've been pulled out of the water."

Zhang Ying took the glass of milk. The glass was warm, and the heat of the milk traveled through the glass to his palm, then up his wrist. He lowered his head and took a sip, feeling the warmth slide from his throat to his stomach, then spread outwards, warming him to his very bones.

"Alright, Mom, go to sleep. I really didn't do anything wrong."

The next morning, Zhang Ying was awakened by aches and pains all over his body.

His bones felt like they'd been disassembled and reassembled, every muscle protesting yesterday's overexertion. His brain was still utterly exhausted; the kind of fatigue couldn't be recovered from with a good night's sleep. The aftereffects of his sanity dropping to seven points were far more severe than he'd imagined.

The good news is that his mom got him another day off. He can stay home and rest today.

He rolled over, propped himself up with pillows, and began to recount yesterday's events.

The cause and effect of Li Ziqing's story have been clarified. She was a girl who lacked love. Under the pressure of her parents, she embarked on the path of dance, stood in the spotlight at the best age, and then a car accident dragged her down from the top of the mountain, shattering her body.

Unable to dance anymore, abandoned by her father at home, she returned to school only to be ostracized and bullied by her classmates, and even threatened with expulsion by her teacher who forced her into a relationship. Finally, standing on the school rooftop, filled with resentment, she jumped off.

This is a girl whose value was defined by others from beginning to end. Her father treated her like a discarded third wheel, her teammates used her as a punching bag, and her teachers treated her as a substitute. No one ever asked her what she wanted to do.

The price of figuring this out was nearly dying several times.

But he felt that something was off about the whole thing from beginning to end.

Why did Teacher Zhou receive a phone call on that particular day? Why was there a ghostly creature calling for people in the stairwell? And why did the second ghostly creature calling for people outside the rooftop invite Zhou Ping to Xu Miaofeng's house?

Each event, viewed in isolation, could be explained as a coincidence. But when viewed together, it seemed as if something was constantly pushing him from behind. With each step he took forward, he stepped into a new trap; just when he thought things were over, a new unexpected event forced him to make unforeseen responses.

Zhang Ying stared at the ceiling. That feeling of being watched by something crept back in. It wasn't fear, it was intuition. It was as if he had already fallen into some kind of huge net, only the net was too big, so big that he still couldn't see where its edge was.

His gaze returned to his wrist.

The jade bracelet sat there quietly, the lingering chill on the beads now gone. Morning light streamed through the gaps in the curtains, illuminating the jade's surface. The few dried bloodstains from yesterday were still embedded in the beads' texture, now appearing as extremely fine, dark red lines.

According to Li Danyang, he obtained the bracelet from a master for its purpose of warding off evil and calming the mind. It's a few thousand yuan worth of glutinous ice jadeite, not expensive; he's worn it for so many years purely out of habit.

Could an "inexpensive" bracelet really summon Li Ziqing in a haunted illusion?

Li Danyang either didn't know what the bracelet was, or he wasn't telling the truth. But now that Li Danyang has become an idiot and is on the execution ground, this question remains unanswered.

The bracelet matter can be put aside for now. He personally witnessed the confrontation between Li Ziqing and the ghostly being summoned yesterday. The two monsters merely stared at each other, and the surrounding space began to tear apart.

The filthy creature at the level of the "Calling Man Ghost" couldn't hold out against Li Ziqing and retreated on its own. If Li Ziqing were always by his side, he wouldn't have to worry about some unfamiliar face popping up when going up or down the stairs.

The current time is Saturday, April 14th.

With only five days left until the one-month deadline given by the simulator, time was tight and the task was heavy. His sanity had only recovered to nine points, and his head was still throbbing, but he still tried to start the dating simulation simulator.

The panel lights up.

[Dating Strategy Simulator]

[The current situation of youth facing a no-certainty-to-die situation within the past week]

Zhang Ying stared at the sentence and propped up his pillow.

There's no situation where certain death is inevitable?

With only five days left, he couldn't possibly not go to find Li Ziqing.

According to the logic of the mission Qingchun encountered, if he did not go to find Li Ziqing within these five days, he would be doomed.

Now that there's no certain death situation, there are only two possibilities. First, Li Ziqing won't kill him anymore. Second, even if he doesn't make any choices and goes directly, he can still succeed in winning her over.

The second possibility is too small. His experience from the first simulation had already taught him that while the simulator could make predictions to a certain extent, it couldn't predict the entire course of events.

The first possibility is much more likely. Li Ziqing no longer intends to kill him.

But what if he deliberately courted death? He didn't know the answer. He wasn't planning to risk his life. Such foolishness wasn't his style. This, ironically, also confirmed this possibility.

So the conclusion is clear. Li Ziqing won't kill him. But he'll have to figure out a way to win her over himself.

I turned off the emulator, stared at the ceiling light, and suddenly felt my mind go blank. There were no emulator options, no hints for wrong or right answers; I had to figure everything out myself.

How should I push this?

For some reason, the face of Socrates suddenly popped into his mind.

That guy once said something that fit perfectly into his current thought process.

"If the simulator is your power, then without the simulator, what are you?"

Zhang Ying was silent for a moment. Then he turned over, banishing that face from his mind.

Instead of spending time here having Socrates act as your life mentor, you should be thinking about how to pursue a girl who has been dead for three years.