Unable to Refuse

Inside the open-plan room, about 40 square meters, the curtains were drawn. A man with messy, long hair lay on the bed.

As if feeling unwell, he frowned slightly, tossed and turned a few times, and finally opened his eyes, his face full of fatigue.

"Ugh..."

He couldn't help but groan, his voice low and hoarse.

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

9:36 AM.

It was morning; the light filtering through the gaps on either side of the curtains indicated this.

After checking the time, the man felt a dull ache in his head. He couldn't help but cover his forehead and squeeze it hard. Over ten years of memories flashed by rapidly.

Most of them were blurry, with only the fleeting image of a cold-faced girl leaving a deeper impression.

"No... that's not right..."

"My memories... they're not right..."

Confusion showed in the man's brown pupils.

Yimo was 20 years old this year.

From the time he could remember, he had been in a private orphanage.

Later, the orphanage closed down, and he and a girl one year younger than him were adopted by a childless widower, an old entrepreneur.

Although the entrepreneur didn't show them much familial affection, he provided them with plenty of money. For a time, he and his unrelated sister lived a decent life.

However, the entrepreneur eventually ran into trouble with the law for tax evasion, withholding payments and wages, and then disappeared.

Yimo and his unrelated sister were then left to live a hand-to-mouth existence.

It was at that time that Yimo, to avoid being separated from his sister, dropped out of school after junior high to support her.

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

But now...

His sister was gone, and he was all alone.

During this period, there was a time when he gave up on himself.

Yimo blamed himself for everything.

Perhaps suffering makes one stronger, but after his sister left, Yimo gradually started earning money.

And he earned a lot.

According to his memories, that was how it was.

But... Yimo felt very strange now.

Because in the last two years of his memory...

It felt like he had forgotten many things, lost many things.

Things that were very important, but he couldn't recall them.

Even his most recent memories had become somewhat hazy, as if he had slept for a very, very long time.

Yimo couldn't understand. He instinctively looked at his phone again, confirming the year and month.

The date... was correct.

After confirming, he clearly realized that he hadn't slept for a very long time.

Dazed, he looked up and saw the wardrobe opposite the bed was open. It was filled with various beautiful dresses. A visceral sense of revulsion drove him out of bed and towards it. He pulled the wardrobe door shut.

Those... were all his dark history.

He didn't want to see them.

Seeing them made him feel deeply distressed.

Returning to the bed, he looked at the numerous live-streaming equipment surrounding the computer. He didn't feel like working and instead lay back down, intending to play on his phone.

Habitually, he opened QQ. Seeing that someone was, as usual, not online, he lost interest.

"I'll sleep a bit more..."

"Maybe I'm not fully awake yet..."

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

But just as he was about to put his phone down, he was drawn to a very conspicuous app on his phone's desktop.

"Become an Idol!"

The name was terrible, making it impossible to tell what kind of app it was. However, judging by the app icon—a beautiful girl with long silver hair and a slightly cold expression, along with the "Girlfriend Included at Start" label below—Yimo assumed it was some trashy gacha game.

As a professional VTuber gamer, Yimo was certain he had never downloaded this mobile game.

There could only be one possibility: some app must have bundled this mobile game during installation and placed it on my phone's desktop.

Normally, Yimo would have unhesitatingly dragged it to the trash and uninstalled it.

But as a gaming VTuber, Yimo couldn't help but click on it.

Perhaps it could be used as streaming material.

Making fun of trash games was something the viewers quite enjoyed watching.

Of course, that was just an excuse.

The real reason Yimo clicked it was actually the app icon: the girl with long silver hair looked too much like his sister from before.

If anything, except for the hair color and being a bit more beautiful, they were identical!

This... was eerily strange.

"There's no ad?"

"That's rare," Yimo couldn't help but mutter.

Upon entering the app, Yimo was a bit stunned.

It wasn't a waifu gacha game at all, but a game platform!

It contained games of all types.

Puzzle mini-games, shooting games, horror games, large-scale dungeon story games, dating sim games, competitive battle games...

"What the heck..."

"All these games, on a phone?" Yimo frowned slightly, realizing things weren't that simple.

If it were on a computer, it would be normal, but on a phone, this kind of game platform was incredibly outlandish, wasn't it?

Yimo habitually tried to open the store to see what kind of money-grubbing projects were inside.

"Your level authority is insufficient."

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

"I get it, I get it. I need a tutorial, beginner tips, register an account, right?"

"Sigh... it's all a gimmick! Suddenly a starter gift pack, limited-time top-up for 1 yuan, 6 yuan, 38 yuan to get 399 gifts, right?"

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

Because his account was already logged in, showing lv.0.

If an automatic account like this wasn't strange, then the player name displayed as Yimo was a bit terrifying.

"Damn it... I knew bundled software was trash! They're stealing personal information!!!"

As a VTuber, his personal information was absolutely a secret and couldn't be stolen and exploited, or the consequences would be unimaginable!

Yimo got a little angry and decided to exit the app and uninstall it immediately.

But he found he couldn't exit no matter what.

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

"Curiosity killed the cat, I'm caught!"

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

But it was bought with money, so he just thought about it.

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

"Current remaining points: 0."

"Auto-matching game."

"Game type: Random."

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

Yimo looked at the countdown numbers on the screen and, for some reason, felt a sense of foreboding from the bottom of his heart.

He saw two options below: "Confirm" and "Cancel."

Yimo instinctively tried to click "Cancel," but those two gray words had no reaction at all, leaving Yimo looking at the countdown numbers in confusion.

"4, 3, 2..."

"Game matched successfully. Wishing you a pleasant game and successful survival."

Crack...

At that moment, before Yimo could think further, his mind went blank, and then he lost consciousness.

This damned app didn't even give him the right to refuse.