Riku's apartment was a shrine to failure.
Stacks of dirty laundry rose into scary towers against the wall, the smell of instant ramen cups battling a losing battle with the dirty laundry, and the futon in the left corner sagged like it was tired of supporting him.
The clock on the wall blinked past midnight, but he wasn't asleep. He couldn't sleep.
Because no matter how hard he tried to shut it out, the words hovered there, etched in pale blue light against his vision.
[Next Step: Establish Physical Contact.]
[Time Remaining: 66 Hours.]
Riku pulled the blanket over his head. The words cut right through the fabric, glowing stubbornly in his vision. He rolled onto his stomach. Same thing. Shut his eyes. Still there.
He groaned, dragging the blanket tighter around his face. "You've got to be kidding me. Even my eyelids aren't safe?"
The text didn't answer, but the silence spoke louder than any answer he probably would've gotten.
"Stupid god," he muttered into the blanket, voice muffled. "You couldn't have given me, I don't know, the Money-Making System? Or the Get-Rich-Quick System? No, you saddle me with this cursed hentai questline."
The glow pulsed, as if in smug agreement.
Riku flung the blanket off and sat upright, hair sticking up in every direction. "Fine! Establish physical contact. What the hell does that even mean, huh?"
He pushed himself to his feet and began pacing across the tiny room, muttering louder with each step.
"Does a handshake count? What about a pat on the shoulder? Or maybe if I just, you know—" He mimed bumping into someone's arm. "Oops, my bad, system cleared, right?"
The glow didn't so much as flicker.
Riku's muttering grew darker, more desperate. "Or maybe they expect me to… to actually… touch her. Like that." His face heated immediately, shame bubbling up from the pit of his stomach like he was a geenager going through puberty.
"No. No, no, no. She'd kill me before the system even had the chance. I'd be a chalk outline in the hallway by morning."
He dropped back onto the futon with a groan, covering his face with his hands. The thought of trying—of actually trying—made his chest tight with dread.
But the alternative? His mind flashed back to the Soul Erosion simulation, his body crumbling to ash.
Riku shuddered.
"Alright," he muttered finally, dragging a hand down his face. "Test the waters. That's it. Tomorrow morning, I'll… try something small. Safe. Easy."
He forced himself to lie back down, though sleep didn't come for another two hours.
Soon came the hour he awaited, morning time and the morning sunlight was crueler than the system itself.
It stabbed through the thin curtains and into his eyes, dragging him into a half-conscious haze. His whole body felt heavy as he threw on a wrinkled hoodie and stumbled out into the apartment stairwell.
Halfway down, he froze.
Junko Takashima.
She was there, as though summoned by his fear, balancing a laundry basket piled high with clothes. Her keys dangled precariously in her hand as she tried to unlock the utility room. Her brow furrowed, lips pressed tight in irritation.
Riku's throat went dry.
Alright, Riku. Easy. Just brush past her, bump a little shoulder. That counts. That has to count.
Tudum! Tudum!
He descended the steps slowly, heart hammering. Junko didn't notice him at first, too busy juggling the basket and muttering under her breath. When she shifted to the side, he seized the chance.
"Excuse me," he muttered, and as he slipped by, he let his shoulder lightly brush against hers.
A faint ping echoed in his vision.
[Physical Contact: Invalid. Accidental contact does not count.]
Riku's jaw dropped. What!?
Junko turned her head sharply, eyes narrowing. "Watch where you're going, you idiot."
Riku froze, caught in her furious glare like a bug under glass. Her gaze lingered a second longer than usual, suspicion simmering within those eyes of hers. Then she turned back to her lock with a huff, muttering about "worthless tenants."
Riku stumbled down the last step, face burning. The words still floated in front of him, merciless.
Invalid.
He clutched his hoodie tighter around himself, teeth clenched.
"…This system's gonna be the death of me."
The hologram's letters rearranged themselves, slow and patient, like a teacher repeating instructions to a student who'd refused to pay attention.
[Clarification: Contact must be deliberate. Emotional effect on target required.]
Riku stared at the words as if they had insulted him personally. He pressed a fist into his mouth to keep from shrieking. "…Of course it does," he muttered. "Of course it won't be easy."
He spent the rest of the morning pacing like a caged animal, running through scenarios that were either pathetic, illegal, or both. At noon he ate a sad bowl of instant noodles and tried to convince himself that maybe Junko liked clumsy people.
At 1:30pm he nearly hurled when he imagined an entire meter filling on a screen with his name and Junko's portrait smiling beside it. By 3:00pm, he had given up on dignity.
However, the opportunity presented itself without warning.
That afternoon a wind came through the apartment complex that battered loose flyers against the stairwell.
Junko had gone out to fetch some of her laundry from the washing machines down at the utility room and returned cursing under her breath.
The side door to the courtyard had jammed, its lock refusing to play nice. She yanked and twisted the key, sweating, jaw tight with annoyance. The basket of damp clothes tugged at her arm as if trying to pull her into the gutter.
Riku hovered on the landing like a coward, heart in his throat. He told himself this was small. This was not "sex," not "seduction," not the things his brain had been painting since morning. This was assistance. A civilized hand on a broken key. No bloodshed. No headlines. Just… help.
He descended the last three steps and walked up beside her. His palms were clammy.
"Here, let me help with that," he offered, and slid his hand over hers to guide the key.
Junko flinched, then froze. For a single heartbeat, she was nothing more than a startled woman trying to wrestle with metal. The lock yielded reluctantly under their combined effort. The door swung open with a wheeze.
A soft ping cut through Riku's head like an alarm bell.
[Conquest Progress +5%.]
[Skill Unlocked: Basic Analysis — Displays target's surface mood.]
Praise and fear warred in his chest. He snapped the system overlay up without thinking, eyes flicking to the new readout.
[Target Mood: Irritated (mild confusion).]
Riku almost laughed in relief. Mild confusion. Irritation. Not cold but just humanly annoyed. Enough, apparently, to qualify as "emotional effect." He let out a shaky breath that felt like victory and shame at once.
Junko yanked her hand back as if his touch had burned her. Her lips compressed into a thin line. "What are you doing?" she snapped, voice sharp. "Don't get grabby."
He opened his mouth to apologize for the heat in his palms, for the tremor in his fingers, for the way his chest felt like it had been pinned by some invisible force, but what came out was weak and panicked. "I—just—uh—helped."
Junko's eyes narrowed. For a fraction of a second they flicked past him as if searching for something—an angle, an excuse—and then she scoffed and turned away, retreating into the courtyard with her arms full of damp clothes.
The moment she left, her posture softened ever so slightly, shoulders unlatching as if she had been holding herself erect for a long time.
Riku stood on the landing, fist still curled around the key. The glow in his vision flashed that small, infuriating confirmation: +5%.
He felt ridiculous and terrified and strangely... Fulfilled.
The system, in that toneless way of everything in his life that had stopped being human, expanded its tutorial.
[Conquest Gauge — Expanded Tutorial]
[Stage 1 Goal: Reach 25% Conquest for target Junko Takashima.]
[Reward: Unlock 'Bond Perks' — Passive affinity bonuses and reduced punishment chance.]
Riku sagged against the wall. Twenty-five percent felt like climbing a mountain. Bond perks sounded like privileges reserved for saints or villains. Either way, it didn't matter—he had no choice but to try.
It wasn't just about sex. The words clicked into place with a mechanical inevitability: emotional breakthroughs, intimacy, physical acts.
Each stage required a different kind of erosion. A cracked smile here. A secret confessed there. A touch that lingered, then a touch that meant more. The system was patient. It wanted him to chip away, carefully, until the target became not just compliant but obliged.
He imagined a meter filling with a neat green line as he went through checklists, thinking about steps like a manual of cruelty. Something cold about that made his skin crawl.
That night, the apartment felt like an observation chamber. Riku lay on his futon once again, staring at the ceiling while the blue letters glowed in the darkness, like a judge's sentence painted on the air.
The four walls seemed smaller somehow, oppressive with possibility. He thought of Junko in her pressed blouse—weariness drawn all over her face, the quick, brittle jokes she used to cut loneliness into smaller pieces.
He thought of how she'd scoffed at him, how clean her posture had been as she reclaimed her life from the world.
He thought of the ash-simulation and felt his hands go cold.
[Conquest Progress: 10%.]
[Time Remaining: 57 Hours.]
Ten percent. Small, but progress. Enough to keep the system pacified for now, but not enough to reduce the dread at the base of his skull.
Riku stared at the ceiling for a long time and muttered into the dark, "I'm dead. I'm so goddamn dead."
Then, because there was no other option and because the system kept its hunger steady and patient, he dragged his thoughts away from panic and toward calculations. How to get another five percent. How to make Junko laugh, or confess, or lower the walls that had taken years to build.
He felt neither eager nor heroic. He felt like a boy following a stranger's map to a cliff.
But the map was real. The cliff was real too. And the glow in his vision would not be denied. "I'll have to complete this mission one way or another."