My Strange Tale Love Strategy Simulator

Tuesday, November 17.

At ten o'clock in the morning, Zhang Ying reluctantly woke up from his bed. Before he was fully conscious, a dull pain came from deep in his brain, as if someone had been hitting him with a rubber hammer all night while he was sleeping.

He struggled to climb out of bed, went to the bathroom, turned on the tap, and splashed a handful of cold water on his face. The cold water dripped down his chin into the sink, and he regained some consciousness.

He leaned on the edge of the sink, looked up, and saw a slightly haggard face reflected in the mirror. He sighed and opened the simulator panel.

Name: Zhang Ying

Age: 18

Race: Human

Physical fitness: 1.4

[Practice Method: Acquired Peak Supplementation Technique (Purifying Mantra, Cleansing Mantra)]

【Possessed by Eerie Power: Eerie Eye (Lv2)】

[Sanity Value: 9]

9 points.

He stared at the number, recalling the feeling of being possessed by Li Ziqing at the amusement park yesterday. At the time, he only felt uncomfortable, but later he realized the price was much higher.

His maximum sanity was 14 points, but after being possessed several times, 5 points were directly reduced. If it weren't for his strong foundation, his sanity would now be teetering on the brink of falling below the 5-point warning line.

"It's really not an easy thing to date a weird partner." He turned off the panel and went into the kitchen.

The frying pan was heated on the stove, and the oil swirld in a shimmering pattern on the bottom. He cracked an egg into it, and the egg white quickly solidified into a white, lace-like pattern in the hot oil.

His eyes were fixed on the pot, but his mind was racing. He had less than three days left. Three days to get the strategy progress bar from 50% to 100%.

Yesterday's activities were the best he could think of for a date: the thrill of a roller coaster, the romance of a carousel, the privacy of a Ferris wheel at dusk—he gave them all the romantic moments he could, which pushed their basic goodwill to the limit.

Trying to build up relationships with simple dates is like adding more sugar to a bowl of already undissolved sugar water; no matter how much you stir, it will just sink to the bottom.

The remaining 50% requires time to develop. It requires the two of them to experience enough everyday moments together to build up that unspoken understanding and memories. But what he lacks most is time.

A burnt smell wafted from the pan. He snapped back to reality, looked down, and saw that the edges of the fried egg were blackened, and black smoke was billowing upwards. He quickly turned off the heat, picked up the spatula, and shoveled the charred mess into the trash can.

Zhang Ying sat at his desk in his room all afternoon. A sheet of draft paper lay open on the table, covered with various plans for cultivating goodwill.

Some were circled, some were crossed out, and some had a question mark next to them. He chewed on the pen for a long time, then finally tore the page out, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it aside.

The crumpled paper landed on the ground, bounced, and rolled into a pile of crumpled papers that looked exactly like it. These crumpled papers had almost filled the area around my feet.

He slumped in his chair, head tilted back, staring blankly at the chandelier on the ceiling. If only it were like a dating sim, you could look up a strategy guide.

He sat up straight, opened the simulator panel, and used the mouse to open the dating strategy simulator.

The text on the panel is still the same.

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

He stared at the words for a few seconds. Because he couldn't die, he was highly likely to die. This logical contradiction made him laugh in exasperation.

He slammed the control panel shut and sprang up from his chair. Continuing to think aimlessly like a headless fly wasn't going to solve anything.

Why not just ask him directly!

Zhang Ying focused his consciousness into the jade bracelet. He closed his eyes and waited a moment. Then he opened them again. He looked down at the jade beads on his wrist, his brows furrowing. The connection he had previously felt, able to sense the other end with just a thought, was now completely gone.

The bracelet is still the same bracelet, the beads are still the same beads, but the sense of connection is gone.

He tried several more times. He sank deeper into his mind, using his thoughts to touch the jade bracelet, and whispered Li Ziqing's name.

However, the jade bracelet did not react at all, and became a completely ordinary piece of jewelry.

A sense of foreboding rose up from his chest.

Is it because my sanity level is too low?

Or is the jade bracelet itself faulty?

The origin of this bracelet is a mystery. Li Danyang said it was obtained from a master as an item to ward off evil and calm the mind. Its upper limit of effectiveness has never been clearly stated, and naturally, no one knows its lower limit of ineffectiveness.

Besides the two reasons mentioned above, another possibility lingered in Zhang Ying's mind.

Could it be that something happened to Li Ziqing?

The thought popped into his head, but he immediately suppressed it. She was a monster; what could possibly happen to her?

But the unease in my heart did not subside in the slightest because of this reason.

He sprang up from his chair, ripped open the wardrobe door, pulled the neatly folded black clothes from the drawer, stuffed them into his backpack, opened the door, and rushed out.

The taxi was parked at the school gate.

Zhang Ying glanced out the car window; the security booth light was off. That small guard post, which was always lit 365 days a year, was now dark, its windows shut tight.

Zhang Ying pushed open the car door and got out.

It is now seven o'clock in the afternoon. The sun has just set, and a dark orange twilight still lingers on the western horizon.

The sky inside the school wall was the same as the sky outside, but the things under the wall were different. He skillfully turned into the alley, changed into his black clothes, and crawled through the dog hole.

A thin mist rose from the playground. It wasn't the kind of mist that appears on autumn or winter mornings; this mist hung suspended in mid-air, spreading from the track all the way to the outer wall of the teaching building, just inside the fence.

Standing inside the school and looking out, the street outside the wall is clearly visible, the streetlights are on, and pedestrians are slowly crossing the zebra crossing; everything is normal.

But when I turned my head to look into the school, everything ten meters away was a vast expanse of white. The teaching buildings were just blurry outlines, like they were being soaked in diluted milk. The surroundings were unnaturally quiet; even the cicadas chirping in the row of sycamore trees along the playground had disappeared.

Standing in the fog, Zhang Ying felt an even deeper unease creeping into his heart.

He took a deep breath of the misty air, started walking, and headed towards the teaching building.

He had walked less than ten meters into the fog when he realized something was wrong. The fog around him was thickening, and with each step he took, visibility decreased.

Five meters away, you can still see the outline of the crooked lamppost on the playground; three meters away, the lamppost is just a blurry shadow; a few more steps and even the shadow is swallowed up.

Visibility was compressed to just a small patch of concrete beneath my feet, even my toes began to blur. My sense of direction was gradually diluted in the thick fog, and all directions became mixed up.

He could only walk forward by feeling. There was a straight line from the back wall to the teaching building. As long as he walked forward, he would always bump into the wall of the teaching building.

As he walked, a wall appeared in front of him.

His heart skipped a beat, and he quickened his pace, only to find himself facing a wall. Beside the wall lay a few moldy planks, and next to them stood a trash can. This was the spot he had just crawled through.

Zhang Ying stood there, stunned for a moment. He looked down at his toes, the tips of his shoes pointing towards the outside of the playground.

He was certain he was moving forward, without turning a corner or going back. But what he saw told him he was back where he started.

Zhang Ying turned around and faced the playground again. The fog surged silently behind him, and the indistinct track lay quietly in the fog, waiting for him to step onto it again.

He mentally retraced the route he had just taken, walking straight from the dog hole towards the inside of the playground, his feet didn't veer off course, his direction didn't change, and his stride length was the same as usual.

If he had been walking in a straight line, he should be in the middle of the playground now, not back against the back wall. There's only one possibility that could bring someone moving in a straight line back to their starting point: this fog isn't ordinary fog. It has the ability to distort the sense of direction, or to distort space itself.