Vol 1 Chapter 2 【Vol 1 – The Woman Next Door】

Hasegawa Ryo

Age: 25

Occupation: NEET

Level: 1

Vitality: 55

Charm: 12

Funds: ¥4,910,130

EXP: 0

I pulled up 【Status】 again. That’s when I noticed my funds had dropped by 100,000 yen. So saving and loading costs money, too, apparently. There’s no other reason for it to go down. Then again, it’s the ability to turn back time. It would actually be strange if there were no price to pay.

I accepted that and moved on to the other entries. What exactly was this “Level” supposed to mean? Was it a system where leveling up raised your Vitality and Charm? If so, then naturally I’d be at Level 1 — I’d only just been dropped into this game. Not that I had the faintest idea of how actually to level up.

There’s nothing harder than a game with no manual.

Where would Vitality and Charm even come into play? The numbers felt vague, too. Fifty-five, really? My Level was 1, but my Vitality was already 55 — which meant 100 probably wasn’t the cap.

EXP, of course, was a standard feature of most RPGs: the number you needed to level up. Raise your EXP, raise your Level, raise your Vitality and Charm along with it — presumably. The more I looked at it, the more it was just a game. But that was as far as I could get. There didn’t seem to be anything else to uncover here.

Letting go of any lingering curiosity, I moved over to 【Items】. Two more semi-transparent windows appeared.

【Item Shop】

【Inventory】

Tapping 【Inventory】 produced a message.

【You currently have no items.】

Obviously. What was I expecting? I went back and tapped 【Item Shop】. A list of items appeared. Given that levels existed, it seemed reasonable to assume that leveling up would expand the available inventory — that was basically an unwritten law of gaming.

【Lv.1 Scouter — ¥100,000】

【Sleep Spray — ¥250,000】

【Master Key — ¥600,000】

【Camera — ¥100,000】

【Foreign Car — ¥50,000,000】

【Domestic Car — ¥8,000,000】

I tapped each entry one by one, starting from the top — the Scouter.

【Purchase Lv. 1 Scouter for ¥100,000?】

A purchase confirmation appeared with absolutely zero information about what the item actually did. Just as there was no manual, there apparently was no description of the items either. Truly a game without a shred of user-friendliness.

And on top of that — why were these 【Items】 so expensive? The price tags were enough to make my head spin. The 【Foreign Car】 and 【Domestic Car】 in particular were basically priced like real estate. What kind of godlike abilities did those things have? Not that it mattered; I couldn’t afford any of them with what I currently had.

Even so, I figured I needed to buy something. If only to learn more about the game I’d been sucked into. That’s when the 【Lv.1 Scouter】 caught my eye.

Cheapest one on the list — as good a place as any to start experimenting. Not that I could stop myself from grumbling that the cheapest item still costs 100,000 yen.

I completed the purchase and tapped 【Inventory】. The 【 Lv. 1 Scouter】 appeared in the list. I tapped it — and to my surprise, a detailed description rolled out.

【Lv.1 Scouter】

【While the Scouter is active, focusing your gaze on a target female will reveal information necessary for her conquest.】

【Higher-level Scouters reveal more detailed information.】

Not a word of explanation before I bought it, but the moment I committed to the purchase — there it was. And the description it gave was a pretty significant clue about the game itself.

【Focusing your gaze on a target female will reveal information necessary for her conquest.】

Specifically that part.

That was… loaded with implications. In other words, the objective of this game was to conquer women? Was this some kind of… adult visual novel situation?

The moment that thought actually sank in, my confidence took an immediate nosedive. My history with women wasn’t exactly impressive. Conquering real women, in real life, was an absurdly tall order. The proof was right there in my Charm stat: 12. A number that told its own story.

Having blown 100,000 yen on the purchase, I reopened the 【Status Window】 to verify.

Hasegawa Ryo

Age: 25

Occupation: NEET

Level: 1

Vitality: 55

Charm: 12

Funds: ¥4,810,130

EXP: 0

Exactly 100,000 less. At least the math was airtight.

That got me thinking. Even if I was stuck inside a game, the only things that were actually unreal were the 【Game System】 elements. Beyond that, I still couldn’t get online, and I still couldn’t reach anyone I knew — but otherwise, everything else was the same as the real world. Which meant my stomach still got hungry. And I still needed to use the bathroom.

Which meant I needed to eat.

If I bought food outside, would my funds go down?

This was a matter of survival — the most essential thing — so I needed to check. I grabbed my wallet and headed out. Stopped at the nearest convenience store, loaded up a basket with a few things, paid by card, and then stepped outside and opened the 【Status Window】.

Hasegawa Ryo

Age: 25

Occupation: NEET

Level: 1

Vitality: 55

Charm: 12

Funds: ¥4,808,930

EXP: 0

Exactly 1,200 yen deducted. So it wasn’t just 【Item】 purchases — any real-world spending came out of my total funds too. The saving grace was that, unlike the absurdly priced 【Items】, things you could buy at a convenience store were still priced like normal. I’d be able to eat and keep breathing for a while at least.

As long as I didn’t go throwing money at high-cost items for no reason, I wasn’t going to starve. The real question was how to increase my funds. With no internet connection, anything online was completely out of reach. Part-time jobs or finding actual employment? Also out.

If I started working, I’d have no time left to progress through the game. And this was just a hunch, but — I had a feeling that any action aimed at escaping the game wouldn’t be permitted. The money problem wasn’t something I could solve on the spot. For now, I decided to stop stressing about it and, since I was already outside, take the chance to test out the Scouter.

【Use Scouter?】

I went into my Inventory and tapped the use button — another window appeared. The clunkiness of the interface was already grating on me. If I’d been sitting in front of a computer, I probably would’ve gone to some forum thread to complain about the UI design. Tilting my head in mild exasperation, I activated the Scouter and fixed my gaze on the girl working the register.

Masaki Arina

Age: 21

Boyfriend: Yes

Conquest Difficulty: C

Occupation: College Student

Address: Unavailable at current level

Phone Number: Unavailable at current level

Conquest Info: Unavailable at current level

Not exactly groundbreaking intel. Outside of whether she had a boyfriend, her name, and her age — nothing. Which meant: conquest impossible. But more to the point, what even were the conditions for conquest? Did “conquering” someone just mean going out with them? There was still way too much I didn’t know.

If anything, this had only piled on more questions. I trudged home, deflated.

That’s when I ran into the woman from the apartment next door.

She was someone I bumped into fairly often when I took the trash out at this hour. Seeing her home in the middle of the day like this, she was probably either a NEET like me — or maybe she worked nights.

The reason I knew that much detail about her life was simple: the long hair that fell past her shoulders and her slightly full lips were, frankly, incredibly sexy, and my eyes had always drifted toward her without me even meaning to. Every time I watched her retreating figure heading back into the building after throwing out her trash, my heart did something it had no business doing.

So — could she be conquered?

The thought came to me out of nowhere. I immediately summoned 【Items】.

【Use Lv.1 Scouter?】

I selected the 【Lv.1 Scouter】 in a hurry and fixed my gaze on her as she moved to step into the elevator.