Dazai's Elm-Nurturing App (Elm Series: The White Comedian Arc)

"If you understand that this is a book, and that you are the heroine of a spin-off, then..."

Would you fall in love with the "hero" destined for you?

*

"If you understand that the other person is simply a being arranged by heaven to 'win you over,' then..."

Would you fall in love with the "heroine" destined for you?

[If I kill you, will I finally be free?]

■

The day he became bound to an unscrupulous doctor as one half of a shared fate, Dazai Osamu found a mysterious app on his phone: Raising Yu Expert.

The app had been downloaded without a trace, which made him raise an eyebrow. But when he opened it, all he saw was the interface of a cheap cash-grab game.

Dazai: ...Boring.

His finger twitched as he prepared to quit and delete the app in one go, but suddenly the screen began to flicker.

[System: Congratulations! You have drawn the SSR character card: ■■ Yu]

Illustration: A girl in a white lab coat, expressionless, with exquisite features. Her obsidian eyes seemed to pierce through the screen and stare straight into his soul.

Dazai: ...

He stared at the character card for a few seconds, then naturally saved it to his photos.

"Nice art."

And so Dazai began raising her halfheartedly: logging in every three days, feeding her every five, slipping nails into her food, and secretly turning up the voltage during experiments.

The System displayed a notification: [Current Affection: ??]

He laughed, but then saw the girl in the character window smile. A message appeared:

[Yu: (smiling) Did you put those nails in my dinner? How creative.]

[Yu: What's your name, and where are you from?]

[Yu: I like you so much, so much that...]

[I want to ■■ you.]

Dazai: Wow?

Interesting.

According to the System, the game's final objective was to help ■■ Yu escape the laboratory and gain her freedom.

Just as he started treating "raising Yu" as a pastime and making plans to help the girl escape the lab, the app suddenly crashed: [Due to unknown interference, the game is undergoing maintenance.]

Dazai: ...

When he reopened the app, the interface was completely empty. Yu was nowhere to be seen.

[Mission failed]

*

"Bang, "

The orange flare from a signal gun tore through the night, like some absurd blessing from the gods, and burst into glowing streaks across the dark sky.

The giant beast in the sky was still roaring, but the black water pouring everywhere surged in like a tide, wrapping around its limbs and neck and strangling it with an inescapable force. The colossal body slowly turned transparent in the dark water, then vanished without a trace.

Horror froze on everyone's faces. Only one white figure descended against the light.

The woman's cloak snapped in the wind, tracing a pale arc like snow falling without a sound.

She knelt on one knee and bowed before the black-haired young man, reverently taking his fingers in her hands. A misty blur spread around the edges of her pupils, but her smile was so gentle it bordered on obsession. "It's been a long time, sir. I've come to see you."

Her eyes curved. "Why did you abandon me, exactly?"

As her words fell, the woman's figure dispersed like morning mist.

Only the black-haired young man remained, looking grim.

*

When they met again, she stood beside that "kind" Russian. Even the curve of her smile was exactly like Fyodor's, but her tone concealed an unreadable hint of testing: "Sir, you've been following me so closely. Would you care to join the Rats in the House of the Dead?"

All she got in reply was Dazai's gaze, cold as an icy lake, and a pitch-black gun muzzle that abruptly lifted toward her.

*What should you do when the game character you raised appears in real life and turns on you, only to get snatched away by a Russian? Asking online, it's urgent.

*Rivals-to-lovers couple, both each other's first, both charmers, locked in a deadly battle of love and hate. A master of psychological manipulation falls in love with his match.

*The cover is a traced edit of a template, source: Douyin user @Burger King.

*The heroine is mentally unstable in every sense of the phrase, including but not limited to committing coercive acts.

*BG/GB, no fixed dynamic.

*Commentary is open.

Theme: Weren't you the one who abandoned me? (smiles)