*
Xuedai Mie had three friends.
They exorcised curses together, faced life and death together, and saw the snow in Hokkaido and the view from the summit of Mount Fuji together.
She thought they would be friends forever.
Until one of them slaughtered a village and defected, betraying the vows they had once made; another never stopped moving forward, becoming the strongest and leaving everyone behind; and the last was trapped at the technical college, forbidden to leave and reduced to a tool in the hands of the higher-ups.
She was the only one left behind at that fireworks festival.
At last, Xuedai Mie realized she had never really mattered to them.
They were never friends. It had all been wishful thinking on her part, so it was only natural that she had been left behind.
So she, too, chose to defect, fleeing this rotten world of sorcery.
Then she was killed by the hands of her former "friend."
One blow, and she was dead.
At that moment, she had only one thought: As expected, someone like her did not deserve to be loved, and never would be. Dying at the hands of someone she had thought of as a "friend" was not so bad, after all.
*
When she woke again, Xuedai Mie discovered that everything in her past had been nothing more than a full-dive simulation game she had played. Those unforgettable experiences were just a string of insubstantial code.
She stared at the game pod in front of her for a long time, then finally packed it up and threw it in the trash.
Her life returned to normal, and she even had the good fortune to meet a new friend named Okkotsu Yuta.
Every day was a beautiful day.
If only she hadn't seen the "friend" who killed her in the game when the new school year began.
A dark, angst-heavy story. The heroine is sensitive, insecure, and emotionally tangled.
The title is clickbait; the truth is in the story.
Theme: Love is the most twisted curse.
