Love Collector Ch. 8

Just a note. All the status messages are going to have custom graphics, they're just not ready yet. Consider them placeholder until then.

---

Stacy Lynn was as easy on the eyes as ever. Today, she wore a pink puffy jacket, furry boots, and a white crop top with a black miniskirt. One hand rested on a designer bag slung around her shoulder, where she presumably had her work clothes stashed inside, while her other hand clutched a large espresso so sugary that Oliver could smell it from several feet away.

Oliver wondered how she afforded all those nice things working part-time at a grocery store, but he knew the answer was probably something boring like that she had wealthy parents. Maybe a few sugar daddies, too. She seemed like the type.

Stacy stared at him like she was unnerved, and Oliver figured he couldn't blame her for that. He hadn't checked his reflection before getting out of his car, but he imagined he wasn't looking great thanks to his wild morning- a morning that just got even wilder the second he laid eyes on Stacy.

Two things happened simultaneously, the first being another BGM shift.

Gone was the monotonous Payless Foods theme, and in its place was a track that sounded like it was ripping off every 'bad bitch cheerleader' song from the early 2000s all at the same time. It was poppy, it was aggressive, and it was unrelenting. Stacy's theme was so overbearing to listen to that might've constituted as a form of psychic warfare.

It was some real A Clockwork Orange shit, mentally repelling him and making her company even more torturous than it already was.

The second thing that happened was the appearance of another floating screen, which challenged everything Oliver knew about life, the universe, and, well... everything.

Technically, it was two screens that showed up one after the other. The first was positioned between Stacy and himself, a little below her chin. It only took him a second to read, but the words were so confusing it might as well have been in a different language.

--- New Heroine Encountered! Stacy Lynn---

...What. Oliver thought, but reality wasn't done smacking him upside the head yet, and the real shocker was the screen that followed directly after the first.

--- Graphic goes here ---

Hovering over Stacy's head was an infographic featuring a begrudgingly adorable chibified drawing of her on the left and a few pieces of information about her to the right. The text read 'Stacy Lynn, Status: Coworker', and below that was a meter broken up into ten segments. Five of these segments were orange, while the remaining ones were transparent. The last three segments to the right displayed white text that read '-50', and below the bar was a row of five heart-shaped outlines.

Oliver was intimately familiar with what he saw. It was something straight out of one of his dating sims- a progress meter for a potential love interest.

Welp.

Schizophrenia it was, then.

There was no other explanation. Oliver wouldn't ever imagine Stacy and himself... being together... unless his tenuous connection to reality had been well and truly severed once and for all. There had to be some kind of mistake. Maybe it wasn't actually telling him that Stacy was the real-life equivalent of a romanceable heroine- but... no, who was he kidding?

What else were the meter and the empty hearts supposed to represent, fucking friendship points and friendship hearts?

"Hello? Are you gonna answer me, or what?" Stacy's voice snapped Oliver back to reality, and he stopped staring at the space above her head to look her in the eyes.

"Huh? Oh, uh... I... I could ask you the same question."

"I take the bus and get coffee every morning. I'm always here this early."

"Cool, yeah, that makes sense..." Oliver nodded and wiped off some of his sweat while looking away from her out of habit.

"Wait a minute... are you, like, tweaking out or something? You look like you're on drugs."

Oliver's head was empty because of everything he was going through, so he answered Stacy thoughtlessly, stuttering, "...N-No, not anymore?"

Stacy raised an eyebrow, her eyes taking on a distasteful expression as they scanned Oliver's arms for needle marks. "Huh, I never pegged you for the type. What'd you take?"

He mentally kicked himself for admitting that but didn't see a reason not to tell her the truth. "I had a CBD gummy last night, that's all."

Her expression softened. "Oh, really? That makes a lot more sense, I guess... still, you don't look like weed's the only thing in your system."

"I may also be experiencing a mental health crisis of unprecedented scale and proportion."

"Aren't we all," Stacy sipped her coffee. "Seriously, though. Do you need some help? I can't drive you home unless you're cool with letting me use your car, but I can-"

Oliver stared at Stacy like a deer in headlights, her words passing straight through him.

"You? Help me?" He blurted out.

"...Jesus, Oliver. Is it really so hard for you to believe that I'm slightly less of a bitch these days?" Stacy's eyebrows furrowed, and she narrowed her gaze. "Fucking hell, it's not like I want you to pass the fuck out on the job and get fired."

"N-No, that wasn't what I... I-I didn't mean to upset you, I-"

Stacy let out a long sigh and turned away from him. "Whatever. Did you want me to call you a cab or not?"

--- Stacy Lost 1 Affection! ---

And just like that, Oliver knew precisely what that meter above the empty hearts represented. It was exactly what he expected it to be: affection. Her total now stood at negative fifty-one, which should've confirmed that Stacy wasn't a big fan of his... but if that was the case, why would she get upset about the way Oliver perceived her?

Stacy stared at him from over her shoulder, making it clear she was waiting for an answer. Oliver didn't want to screw up any more than he already had, so he collected himself as best he could and said, "No, I'm good. I'm already here, so I might as well calm down and see how I'm feeling before it's time to clock in. Thanks, though. I, um... I'm sorry if I sounded rude. It's just..."

"...It's cool. It's not like I don't get where you're coming from. I'd hate me too if I were you."

Oliver kept quiet because he didn't have anything to say to that. He did hate her, and he didn't think he was capable of not hating her. There wasn't a point in lying or confirming what she already knew, but Oliver did have to slightly reassess his opinion of her. He didn't think she ever would've offered to help him, and that counted for something, didn't it?

"Oh, and since I've already got you here..." Stacy turned around to face him, cupping her chin between her forefinger and thumb. A thin smirk lifted up the corners of her pink, painted lips. "Here's a freebie because I care. Try brushing your hair more often, Ollie. You don't look half bad today... aside from the tweaking out part, I mean."

--- Stacy Gained 1 Affection! ---

After she turned away and started walking out of the parking lot towards the building, the music shifted back to the Payless Foods theme, and Oliver became acutely aware of how red his face was. He did his best to brush away Stacy's teasing while trying to figure out why he was getting these dating sim-esque notifications while talking with her.

Oliver didn't care what Stacy thought of him so long as she left him alone, but... seeing a number go up did feel somewhat satisfying, if only because he had permanent gamer brainrot.

Aside from the overarching mystery of why any of this was happening in the first place, Oliver's biggest question was, why her?

He shoved his face into his palm while rubbing his forehead. "Maybe I'm overthinking this. Whatever's happening to me probably triggers when I talk to any girl or something. Yeah. That would make a lot more sense than the powers that be singling out Stacy, of all people, as a potential heroine... whatever that even means in the first place."

Oliver began walking towards Payless Foods to chill on the benches, not knowing he would have a chance to test this hypothesis after sitting for a few minutes and stewing on his thoughts. Another of his coworkers passed by and entered the store early. Her name was Janet, and she was an unmarried woman in her late thirties. She was easy enough on the eyes but didn't have much of a personality, as far as he could tell. Not that he thought he was anything special. He simply recognized another person who didn't stand out when he saw one.

Before she walked in, she gave Oliver a cursory greeting out of politeness, and he raised his head to give one back. There wasn't any notification telling him that a new heroine had been encountered, and there wasn't a shift in the omnipresent background music when Janet talked to him. If his life really had just transformed into a dating sim, then Janet was an NPC.

Stacy, on the other hand...

Oliver gulped.

Stacy was a main love interest.

As horrifying as that realization was, it inadvertently made Oliver recall something from the night before. He vaguely remembered lying in the darkness alone, wishing his life was more like one of his favorite dating games. He was pretty sure he passed out shortly after that, but he had no idea of what this meant for him.

Did God peek down from the heavens and grant Oliver's hedonistic wish, ignoring the billions of people who actually deserved His help in favor of giving this lonely pervert the stupidest miracle anyone had ever wished for?

That kind of thing happened to losers like himself in anime and manga all the time, but all those dweebs usually had to get run over by a truck before they started getting bombarded by RPG-inspired system notifications. Guess that was something to be grateful for, Oliver thought. If nothing else, at least he got to skip the painful part.

Then again...

Oliver wondered whether or not getting run over by a truck was preferable to romantically pursuing Stacy Lynn and then shuddered, genuinely unsure.

Slouching over in his seat, Oliver exhaled and mumbled to himself. "Before anything else, I need to establish a baseline. No more going in circles."

Whether he liked it or not, this seemed like it was his new reality. Schizophrenia didn't explain how perfectly tailored all of this was to his innermost desires. Rather than wasting time wondering why this was happening, Oliver thought it best to continue his day and see what else developed from here on out.

There was too much he didn't know, and what he needed more than anything else was more experience with his...

"Well... 'powers' might be a bit much, but I don't know what else to call... all of this..."

"All of what?" Mia asked.

Oliver looked up with a start, having forgotten why he was excited to come to work today. A world of possibility and optimism flared up inside of him in the scant few seconds before he made eye contact with his favorite coworker.

This might be huge.

This might be really huge.

Come on, Oliver begged the powers that be for one more favor. Come on, come on, come on...!

If fucking Stacy qualified as a potential heroine, then there's no reason the girl he was actually planning on maybe sort of flirting with wouldn't be one, too, right? There had to be a Mia route. This would all be some sort of sick cosmic joke if there wasn't.

With much nervous anticipation, Oliver met Mia's bright blue eyes to discover...