Nobody’s Route

Red Coren spent five years building Destined Hearts—a dating sim about saving heroines and finding love. He spent fifteen years before that as a mafia enforcer too intimidating to approach, admiring women from a safe distance while secretly collecting dolls and sketching romance he’d never experience. He died saving his brother. Woke up inside his own game. As Black Vance—an NPC who doesn’t exist in the code. The world runs on narrative relevance. Characters who don’t matter to the story fade from existence. Red has seven days before the system erases him. His stats are pathetic. His body is malnourished. His only power, Shallow Grave, forces people to notice him for exactly three seconds before they forget he exists. But Red knows this world. Every plot point. Every character. Every route to every ending. And he refuses to disappear. The protagonist arrives in three days. The heroines—complex, damaged, worthy of admiration—are real and terrifying to interact with. The villain is already moving. And Red has three seconds at a time to prove he deserves to exist in a story that was never meant to include him. In a game full of destined romances, he’s forging Nobody’s Route. The path that shouldn’t exist. The story that wasn’t written. The extra who refused to fade. 3 chapters every week!