Vol 1 Chapter 4 【Vol 1 – The Woman Next Door】

【Choice 1: Calmly explain that you’re not a burglar】

【Choice 2: Use the Sleep Spray】

Only two options. Strangely enough, once the choice window appeared, my arm alone could move. It wanted me to pick one. Not much to think about — Choice 1 was never a real option. Who in the world would calmly hear out an intruder?

I moved my finger to Option 2.

The frozen world snapped back into motion. And the 【Item】 I’d been trying to pull up materialized in front of me.

【Use Sleep Spray?】

I tapped the window and kept my eyes fixed on her. Sakurai’s eyelids fluttered closed, and she crumpled to the floor. I rushed over and brought my ear close to her face — steady, rhythmic breathing. She was asleep. No other explanation made sense.

She was out cold, sleeping peacefully.

And the moment I saw her like that, something animal uncoiled inside me.

Just the two of us, alone in her apartment. She wouldn’t be waking up for about an hour. My pulse hammered again, and the turmoil in my chest became something closer to torment.

Hot pants and a T-shirt. My gaze drifted, completely on its own, to her thighs as she lay there in those casual clothes. I swallowed hard. A defenseless woman, right there in front of me. A devil’s whisper told me to reach out and touch those full thighs, that chest straining against the fabric.

I’d come here to find out whether the act between a man and a woman was the conquest condition. If that was the reason — there was no need to hesitate anymore, was there? If that’s what the game demanded, then I had no choice.

The moment I finished rationalizing it to myself, the world froze again. A white window appeared, presenting two more choices.

【Choice 1: Press forward as-is】

【Choice 2: I’m a gentleman. Stop here and search the apartment instead】

The instant I saw them, Option 2 might as well not have existed. My finger was already moving toward Option 1 on pure reflex.

I tapped it. The white world dissolved, and my body was free.

I moved over her, exactly as the choice dictated, and lowered myself down.

But that’s when everything went wrong.

The front door burst open, and police flooded the room. I blinked at them, slack-jawed, the look of a man whose soul had just vacated the premises.

“Don’t move! You’re under arrest — sexual assault and breaking, caught in the act! You have the right to an attorney and blah blah blah…”

The lead officer’s voice cut through the room, and the situation resolved itself with brutal efficiency. I was arrested on the spot, handcuffed, reclassified as a criminal, and deposited in the back seat of a patrol car.

Whether sex was the conquest condition — I still didn’t know. But one thing had been driven home with devastating clarity: forcing yourself on someone was not the path. I let out a long sigh in the back of the first police car I’d ever ridden in.

This wasn’t going to work. I moved my finger and tapped 【Load】.

【Load?】

The world went white again, and I was back inside my apartment — the moment of my first 【Save】—10:30:22 AM. If I hadn’t run that experiment with 【Save】 earlier, there would have been no load point. I would have had no choice but to be hauled off to the station. The weight of that reality made me shudder.

The police appeared out of nowhere — maybe they were an enforcement mechanism, something that triggered whenever I tried to break the game’s rules.

I opened 【Status】 to take stock.

Hasegawa Ryo

Age: 25

Occupation: NEET

Level: 1

Vitality: 55

Charm: 12

Funds: ¥3,808,930

EXP: 0

My funds had taken a brutal hit. The 950,000 yen I’d spent on Items, plus the 50,000 yen for 【Load】 — all gone. But the 【Save】 point I’d returned to was from before I’d bought any of it. Still, the 950,000 yen had vanished.

I tapped 【Inventory】 immediately.

【You currently have no items.】

Of course. I’d 【Saved】 before the purchases, so naturally, everything reset to zero. But the money I’d spent didn’t come back with me. That seemed to be how the system worked — and it was brutally player-unfriendly.

…Hah.

I exhaled. As I moved to dismiss the game window, I noticed something: a new window had been added. It was labeled 【Time Remaining】. When had that appeared? It definitely hadn’t been there before. I reached for it out of curiosity. A message popped into view.

【Time Remaining: 8,755 hours】

【Time Elapsed: 5 hours】

【If you fail to achieve a full clear within the time remaining, your physical body will die.】

The contents hit me like a thunderclap. Terror began to seep through every part of me. It was essentially a death sentence — play hard or we’ll kill you. All while never once explaining what a “full clear” even was. The game couldn’t be bothered to explain the win condition, but it had no problem threatening my life.

Holding a human life as collateral was unconscionable.

And loading back to a save point didn’t pause the timer — it kept running regardless. From the moment I’d woken up, processed all of this, taken that patrol car ride, loaded back, and returned — exactly five hours had passed. If I hadn’t saved when I did, I would have been dragged to the station, spent the next 8,755 hours in a cell, and died there.

I steeled myself and looked my situation in the eye.

Was the death threat real? Looking at what these Items were capable of, it seemed like it was. Whoever had thrown me into this game had power that bordered on omnipotence. I might have stumbled into the plaything of gods. Which meant ignoring the “fail to clear and die” condition was not an option. The only path forward was to keep putting myself on the line, finding the conquest method one step at a time, and clearing it.

A truly terrifying game had apparently swallowed me. Honestly — I was scared. But time was flowing whether I sat here trembling or not. I had no choice but to adapt to the reality I’d been handed.

I tapped the window and pulled up the 【Item Shop】 again.

【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】

This time, I had no intention of blindly buying everything on the list. I thought carefully about each item. After some deliberation, I decided to put 【Sleep Spray】 and 【Camera】 on hold — no immediate use for either, and I could buy them when the time came. Pass.

That left the 【Master Key】. I had uses for it in mind. But if there were any chance that simply entering an apartment with it triggered the police again, I’d be throwing 600,000 yen away for nothing.

The use limit also nagged at me. Six uses — an oddly specific number. Trap items shouldn’t have use limits. Maybe they’d capped it to prevent abuse of a particularly powerful tool. Fair enough.

Either way — it seemed like it was the act of forcing myself on someone that summoned the police as an enforcement response, not the act of entering. Just breaking in alone didn’t seem to trigger it. If that was right, the 【Master Key】’s use limit was genuinely frustrating — you could get inside, but you couldn’t touch her—a completely useless item, in theory.

Except — the ability to open any door was undeniably appealing. Infiltrating places. Creating escape routes. There were scenarios where it would be invaluable. Thinking it through, the potential upside of the 【Master Key】 was too significant to dismiss. That settled it: repurchase.

【Purchase Master Key for ¥600,000?】

I hesitated at the price, breathed out slowly, and tapped the window. With 600,000 yen spent, I opened 【Inventory】 and pulled up the Master Key’s entry.

【Master Key】

【Opens any door.】

【Stand in front of the desired door and tap the Window to use.】

【Uses remaining: 5】

— Repurchasing does not restore the use count.

— After leveling up, repurchasing will restore the use count.

I’d checked to confirm the use count. As expected — down from 6 to 5. The takeaway was clear: in this game, 【Loading】 back to a save point did not restore key item values. That was worth internalizing.

With the Item purchased, I immediately updated my 【Save】.

No way I was letting a newly bought Item slip away again, the way it had before.