"Oni-chan, I'm going out now."
In the evening, upon being reminded by her agent's call, Hoshino Rin changed into her outdoor clothes and got ready to leave for the recording of the evening show.
Hearing his sister's farewell, Hoshino Gen, who was still sitting behind the coffee table and fighting with the mouse in his hand, looked up at her, nodded slightly, and then shifted his gaze back to the game screen on the TV.
The apartment door closed, leaving Hoshino Gen alone in the apartment.
The soothing melody of the game echoed in the living room. Staring at the cute and healing game screen, there was no ripple in Hoshino Gen's eyes. After all, he had racked his brains to please the little girl on the screen for the whole day.
But it was normal, I guess. After all, not everyone could calmly accept the feeling that although they had made countless efforts, just because they accidentally chose the wrong answer to a baffling question, all their previous efforts went down the drain.
In the game, under the blue sky and beside the blooming cherry trees, the girl with an angelic cute face smiled at the outside of the screen, as if looking at the three-dimensional player through the limitation of the two-dimensional space. "Mr. Y, thank you."
Another inexplicable sentence. Hoshino Gen sighed inwardly. Y was his game name, and Mr. Y was the current way Qian-chan addressed him as a player. Usually, during the plot parts of this game, whenever Qian-chan finished a sentence, several options would appear on the screen for the player to choose. The game couldn't be reloaded, and there was only one chance to choose.
So every time Gen made a choice, he would think carefully before clicking the mouse.
However, to Hoshino Gen's surprise, what appeared on the screen this time wasn't options but a blank dialogue box. The flickering cursor indicated that this time the player's reply wouldn't be a multiple-choice question but a subjective question where the answer needed to be edited freely.
This damn game...
Hoshino Gen was already on the verge of swearing in his heart. But just then, the sound of the fingerprint verification passing came from the apartment door. Then the door was pushed open, and Hoshino Rin, who had just left, poked her little head in. Seeing Hoshino Gen looking at her, Hoshino Rin gave a rather forced and embarrassed smile.
"Oni-chan, could you accompany me to take the elevator?"
Hoshino Gen looked at Qian-chan with a warm smile on the TV screen, and then at his sister who seemed to be on the verge of crying behind the door. Then he put down the mouse decisively and got up. He would rather go out for a walk and waste some time than sit here and try hard to win the favor of a virtual little girl.
The Hoshino family's apartment in the Koto Ward was on the twelfth floor. When taking the elevator, whether going up or down, it usually stopped several times in the middle. Sometimes people would get on, and sometimes there would be nobody outside. Nobody knew what they would encounter before the elevator door opened.
In the past, although Hoshino Rin wasn't the bravest type, she definitely wasn't so timid that she didn't dare to take the elevator alone. It could be imagined that although she seemed fine when staying with Hoshino Gen, in fact, last night's incident seemed to have really left her with a bit of a psychological shadow.
Wearing a mask, a baseball cap, and sunglasses to cover her special eye color, Hoshino Rin adjusted her sunglasses and then pinched the corner of Hoshino Gen's clothes with her slender, fair fingers. During the descent of the elevator, she felt a slight sense of weightlessness under her feet and unconsciously moved closer to her brother, as if this could bring her great sense of security.
"Brother, do you think there are really ghosts in the world?" Hoshino Rin asked in a low voice.
Hoshino Gen, who was sending a message to the person who posted the game to ask if they would sell the game guide, didn't even raise his head, and his voice was quite casual. "Don't think too much. Since you haven't encountered one in all these years, it means that whether there are ghosts in the world or not has no impact on your life."
Hoshino Rin retorted, "But last night..."
"You had a nightmare." Hoshino Gen interrupted her.
Hoshino Rin slowly puffed up her cheeks. Her beautiful big eyes stared angrily at Hoshino Gen's side face through the sunglasses. However, from beginning to end, Hoshino Gen didn't turn his head to look at her. Finally, she could only deflate and pout, muttering in a low voice, "Liar."
Since Hoshino Rin's agent and assistant had been waiting in the lobby on the first floor for a long time, when the elevator reached the first floor, Hoshino Gen didn't even get off and went back directly the way he came.
I don't know if it was an illusion, but after returning home, Hoshino Gen always felt that the temperature in the living room seemed to have dropped a lot. First of all, environmental hints could be excluded, because at this moment, the evening sunset was streaming into the room through the floor-to-ceiling windows, and the living room was almost filled with warm-toned light.
Almost instantly, Hoshino Gen realized something. He walked to the TV, and as expected, the game screen had changed.
Before going downstairs, the scene in the game was clearly blue sky and white clouds, but now the setting sun covered the whole world. Qian-chan, who had been standing under the cherry tree smiling at him before, was now squatting on the roadside crying.
The evening wind blew her hair ends. Against the backdrop of the setting sun, even the teardrops on the girl's face were shining brightly. If any lolicon saw this picture, they would probably lose control on the spot. However, Hoshino Gen wasn't affected by this.
The blinking cursor in the typing box was still there, indicating that the game session hadn't been skipped due to a long period of inactivity.
Hoshino Gen stared at the sobbing Qian-chan and thought for a few seconds, then smiled happily. It seemed that there was really something wrong with this game.
He thought for a while, went back to sit behind the coffee table, put his left hand on the wireless keyboard, and typed quickly, "Sorry, I had to leave for something just now. What's wrong with you?"
After playing for the whole day, Hoshino Gen had more or less realized that Qian-chan in the game didn't seem to be much different from a real girl. The so-called favorability wasn't an accumulative value but the other person's perception of the player's actions.
She would be unhappy if the player chose the wrong words to accompany her, and she would cry if the player ignored her. She would say thank you, and she would also say sorry. She could cry and laugh.
If you really wanted to increase Qian-chan's favorability, you couldn't treat her as a string of game data but as a "person" separated by just a glass.
After all... ghosts were also people before they became ghosts.
But having said that, in fact, he had even less of a clue about how to increase a "person's" favorability.
Hoshino Gen switched out the panel and took a look at the current favorability.
21 (Acquaintance)
He remembered it was 23 before going downstairs... Tsk, this was really the most difficult game he had ever played.
Hoshino Gen took out his phone and glanced at the time. It was six forty in the evening. He didn't know if he could raise the favorability to sixty before dawn tomorrow. Finally, he switched into a chat interface. The message he sent to the person who posted the game asking to buy the game guide still hadn't received a reply.
With a long sigh, in this day and age, whether it was catching ghosts or playing games, you had to keep your feet on the ground.