Unable to Refuse

In an open-plan room of about forty square meters, the curtains were drawn, and a man with tousled long hair lay on the bed.

Perhaps because he was feeling unwell, he frowned slightly. After tossing and turning several times, he finally opened his eyes, his face filled with exhaustion.

"Ugh..."

He couldn't help letting out a low groan, his voice somewhat deep and hoarse.

The first thing he did after waking was instinctively reach for his phone on the bed and check the time.

9:36.

It was morning, as could be seen from the light shining through the gaps on either side of the curtains.

After checking the time, the man felt a dull pain in his head. He couldn't help covering his forehead and rubbing it hard as the memories of the past decade or so flashed rapidly through his mind.

Most of them were blurry. Only when the image of a cold and beautiful girl flashed by did his impression become much clearer.

"No... That's wrong..."

"The memories... aren't right..."

A puzzled expression appeared in Yimo's brown eyes.

Yimo was twenty years old this year.

As far back as he could remember, he had already been living in a private orphanage.

Later, the orphanage went bankrupt, and he and a girl one year younger than him were adopted by an elderly entrepreneur who had lost his wife and had no children.

Although the entrepreneur didn't show them much familial affection, he gave them plenty of money. For a time, he and his unrelated younger sister lived a fairly good life.

However, that entrepreneur eventually evaded taxes, withheld payments and wages, and finally got into trouble and was investigated. Then he vanished without a trace.

Yimo and his unrelated younger sister were left struggling through days when they never knew where their next meal would come from.

It was also then that Yimo, determined not to be separated from his sister,

dropped out after graduating from junior high and raised her himself.

The year was difficult, but it was also warm and happy.

However.

His younger sister was gone now, leaving him all alone.

In between, there had been a period when he had completely given up on himself.

Yimo blamed everything on himself.

Perhaps suffering really did make people stronger. After his sister left, Yimo gradually began making money.

He made a great deal of it, too.

.

His memories should have been like this.

But... Yimo felt something was very strange now.

Because the memories of the past two years...

It was as if he had forgotten many things, as if many things had been lost.

They were very important, yet he couldn't remember them.

Even his most recent memories had become somewhat blurred, as though he had slept for an extremely long time.

Still groggy, Yimo raised his head and saw that the wardrobe directly opposite the bed was open. It was packed with all kinds of beautiful dresses. His body instinctively recoiled, driving him to get out of bed and walk over to pull the wardrobe doors shut.

Those... were all his dark history.

He didn't want to see them.

Seeing them made him feel awful from the bottom of his heart.

After returning to bed, he looked at the dense array of livestreaming equipment around the computer. He had no desire to work and simply lay back down, planning to play on his phone for a while.

Out of habit, he opened QQ. After confirming that a certain person still hadn't logged on as usual, he lost interest.

"Maybe I should sleep a little longer..."

"Perhaps I haven't woken up yet..."

The jumbled, hazy memories in his mind made him want to sleep a little longer.

But just as he was about to put down his phone, he was drawn to a particularly conspicuous app on the home screen.

'Become an Idol!'

The name was terrible and gave no clue what kind of app it was. But the app icon showed a beautiful girl with long silver hair and a slightly cold expression, while the words "Girlfriend at the Start" were written beneath it. Yimo assumed it was probably some cheap gacha mobile game.

As a professional gaming VTB, Yimo was certain that he had never downloaded this mobile game.

There was only one possibility, then: the game must have been installed on his phone through a bundled advertisement from another app.

If this had happened normally, Yimo would have dragged it into the trash without hesitation and uninstalled it.

But as a gaming VTB, Yimo couldn't resist tapping it.

Maybe he could use it as livestream material.

His viewers quite enjoyed watching him tear into trash games.

Of course, that was only an excuse.

The real reason Yimo tapped it was that the silver-haired girl in the app icon looked far too much like his former younger sister.

If he had to put it into words, aside from the hair color and the fact that she had become even prettier, they were practically identical!

It was... bizarrely uncanny.

"There aren't even any ads?"

"That's unusual." Yimo couldn't help complaining.

After entering the app, Yimo froze slightly.

Because this wasn't a beautiful-girl gacha game at all. It was actually a gaming platform!

It contained all kinds of games.

Puzzle games, shooting games, horror games, large-scale dungeon and story games, beautiful-girl romance games, competitive battle games...

"Uh..."

"So many games, and they can all run on a phone?" Yimo frowned slightly, realizing that things weren't so simple.

It would be perfectly normal on a computer, but on a phone, a gaming platform like this was absurd, wasn't it?

Out of habit, Yimo planned to open the store first and see what kinds of money-grabbing schemes it contained.

Your level of access is insufficient.

However, that was the prompt that appeared on the screen.

"Got it, got it. It needs a tutorial, beginner tips, and an account registration, right?"

"Sigh... It's all the same old routine! Next, there'll suddenly be a starter gift pack, limited-time top-ups of one yuan, six yuan, and thirty-eight yuan, with gifts worth 399 yuan, right?"

Yimo didn't give up. It was all material anyway, so he decided to register an account first. But when he clicked into "My," he froze.

Because he was already logged into an account, which displayed Lv. 0.

An automatically created account wasn't particularly strange. But the player name displayed there—Yimo—was quite frightening.

"Fuck... As expected, bundled software is trash. It actually stole my personal information!!!"

As a VTB, his personal information was absolutely confidential. He couldn't let anyone steal and exploit it, or the consequences would be unimaginable!

Yimo became somewhat angry and planned to exit the app and uninstall it immediately.

But he discovered that he couldn't exit no matter what he did.

"This is just a virus, isn't it..."

"Curiosity really does kill the cat. I fell right into it!"

Yimo stared at his phone with dead-fish eyes, wanting to smash it hard against the floor and stomp on it a few times to vent his anger.

But it had cost him money, so he merely thought about it.

Just as Yimo was about to force the phone to shut down, a window suddenly popped up on the app page.

Current remaining points: 0.

Automatically matching a game.

Game type: Random.

Matching game... Countdown: 10, 9, 8...

As Yimo watched the countdown numbers on the screen, he felt an ominous chill rise from the bottom of his heart for no apparent reason.

Below them were two options: "Confirm" and "Cancel."

Yimo instinctively tapped "Cancel," but the two gray characters didn't respond at all, leaving him confused as he could only watch the countdown numbers.

'4, 3, 2...'

'Game matched successfully. We wish you an enjoyable game and hope you survive.'

Click...

At that moment, before Yimo had time to think any further, his mind went completely blank, and he lost consciousness.

This damn app hadn't given him the right to refuse at all.