Love Collector Ch. 1

As this is new material, it's very important to let me know what you think. I hope you like it, 2 and 3 will be ready soon as I edit them.

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If Hell existed, Oliver Chase imagined it had to be a pretty similar experience to waking up in the morning and getting ready for work after taking a little too many edibles the night before. His head was fogged over by a thick shroud of residual CBD that hadn't entirely passed through his system yet as he swung his legs out of bed and quieted the alarm on his phone.

"Fuck..." Oliver rubbed his forehead, hunching over. It wasn't like him to take more than he was comfortable with, but the night before was a special occasion. Purest Love: Azure College Days had finally released, and what better way to enjoy a dating sim he'd been waiting ages for than getting high and edging to it all night long?

There were plenty of stopping points along the way, but Oliver ignored them all and couldn't stop himself from taking a little more the longer he played. He always became enthralled by the heroines he encountered in his games, and once he started pursuing one, he found it impossible to stop until he'd seen her story to the end. The quiet, red-haired member of the art club he'd been chasing, Nakayama Akari, had charmed him with her soft smile, sleepy voice, and her surprisingly passionate lewd scenes. Needless to say, Oliver was hooked.

Aside from there still being a few more bonus CGs of Akari to unlock, he finished the route and was eager to see what the subsequent six heroines had in store for him before he tackled the canonical harem route. So far, the game was living up to his expectations and then some. If only Oliver could stay home and continue his virtual life where he was a handsome freshman on campus focused solely on chasing skirts as opposed to his real one where he was a twenty-two-year-old loser with a tiny studio apartment and a dead-end job.

His place was pretty barren. He had a small coffee table in the center of the room with cushions to sit on, a small TV with a few game consoles hooked up, a shelf with games and a few volumes of manga, and not much else in the way of personal belongings. As for his job, Oliver worked full-time at a grocery store uptown called Payless Foods, and he had to be there by 9:00 AM. Traffic would take him at least a half-hour to get through, and it was already 8:15.

There was no time for a shower. He'd overslept, and Oliver needed to get his ass in gear. God knows his boss was already looking for any excuse to fire him as it was. He closed the still-opened laptop sitting on his twin-sized bed, plugged in his headphones so they'd charge by the time he got home, and darted off to the claustrophobic storage closet his landlord generously claimed was a bathroom.

Oliver looked at himself in the mirror, feeling as apathetic as he always did about the schmuck staring back.

He wasn't overly handsome, but neither was he hideously ugly. Oliver was average, scrappy-looking, without a hint of muscle, and a little on the shorter side- standing at only 5'3ft. He had hazel-colored eyes, a clean-shaven face, and shaggy black hair that could use a good brushing.

After brushing his teeth, putting his deodorant on, throwing on some fresh boxers, a white polo, and a pair of jeans, Oliver yanked a cheap-ass nutrition bar filled with raspberry jam from his pantry, and walked out the front door, heading to the end of the hall down the stairs. He lived on the third floor of a shitty apartment complex in downtown Vista Venus, a Californian city you could call 'scenic' if you were only talking about its beaches and purposefully ignored the countless homeless encampments that were scattered across its streets like bandit camps in a buggy, open-world RPG. Aside from that, it was an okay place to live.

On his way to the parking lot, Oliver checked the time on his phone. 8:24. Good. His head was still a little disoriented, but it was clearing up and wouldn't be a problem for much longer at this rate. He was good to drive as it was comparable to a slight headache at best. That slight headache made him forget a detail about today, however. Oliver only remembered after seeing the date on his phone.

"Oh, yeah..." Oliver mumbled in recognition. "I totally forgot. Valentine's Day, huh?"

To be fair, there wasn't a reason for him to have remembered it was February 14th. He didn't have a girlfriend, though that was probably self-evident by the fact that he got high and edged himself to a newly-released dating sim for six hours straight the previous night. Today was just another Wednesday for him, and the only romantic evening he had planned was continuing his playthrough of Purest Love: Azure College Days later that night.

"Eh, whatever," he shrugged and opened the door to his crappy Boldo Roadman, a car he got for pennies on the dollar a few years back because it already looked like shit when it was brand-new about twenty years ago. Buckling in, Oliver pumped himself by reminding himself of what he had to look forward to. "As soon as I get home, Mihiru-chan, you're next!"

The adorably klutzy, glasses-wearing heroine from the literature club would be waiting for him when he got home, which was more than enough motivation to get Oliver to throw on a podcast covering lore from some obscure RPG game and drive off.

Vista Venus was a city where you could theoretically walk anywhere you wanted to and which had above-average options for public transport, but walking ran the risk of incurring random encounters, and the crowded buses weren't much better. This turned what would've been a fifteen-minute commute on foot into a half-hour slog, but the upside was that his head was mostly clear by the time he parked his car.

Payless Foods was a decently-sized grocery store in a nice, uptown neighborhood. They sold brand-name goods and locally-grown food at a price Oliver could never afford on his fifteen-dollar-an-hour salary. It was posh and above his means, but that didn't mean it was that bad of a place to work.

He'd worked there for two years as an 'Associate', a term favored by out-of-touch employers that anyone with half a brain understood was demeaning corpo-speak for 'Unskilled Laborer'. Aside from cashier work, Oliver did it all. He cleaned the floors and bathrooms, stocked shelves, helped unload trucks, and bagged people's groceries, none of which was difficult. There were a few things he didn't like about the job, though, the literal chief of which was right there waiting for him the moment he walked in.

Oliver's boss was at the storefront fiddling with a display table and arranging some Valentine's Day decorations to be perfect and symmetrical. She noticed him instantly despite how many gods he prayed to in the milliseconds before they made eye contact.

Tessa Robinson was a beautiful woman in her mid-thirties. Her brunette hair was tied in a bun, her scornful eyes were the color of steel, and she had a pair of half-frame reading glasses hanging from her nose and a curvy body that Oliver took great pain to never gawk at lest she murder him in cold blood.

Tessa owned Payless Foods but ran the place as its manager instead of hiring someone else to do the job. She wore the same uniform as everyone else: a white polo, decent pants, and a green apron with the store's logo emblazoned across her expansive chest. The stank eye she gave Oliver upon his entrance was nothing new, but it was something he could never get used to.

She glared at him like he'd spent all morning rolling around in a mountain of used diapers marinated with skunk extract and jenkum.

"Two minutes before the morning meeting, and you're just now walking through the front door?" Tessa derided. Her smooth voice was drenched in such disdain that it was enough to make grown men want to curl up in a little ball and cry, to say nothing of a pushover like him.

"Sorry, Boss. Had a bit of a rough morning." Oliver held back his fear of his employer long enough to give Tessa the same polite and respectful smile he always did. It never worked, but it was presumably better than shaking in fear. There were times Tessa reminded him of a generic villain straight out of some bullshit anime because it was like she projected a spiritual aura around her immediate vicinity that radiated killing intent.

Some people just gave off massive final boss energy, and Tessa Robinson was the biggest example of such that Oliver had ever met.

"Hmph," she laughed a dark laugh. "Better hurry up and clock in, or I'll ensure your morning is even rougher. Don't test me, boy."

Oliver knew Tessa well enough by now. Scary as she was, she wasn't all that likely to do anything beyond rattling him a little for almost being late. However, her words still inspired a primal fight-or-flight response, and he hightailed it to the backroom where the other employees were waiting in the lounge. He didn't pay them attention until he clocked in and retrieved his green apron from the rack.

Around thirty other employees worked at Payless Foods, though only fifteen besides himself were here for the morning shift. Out of the lineup, only two held any significant relevance to Oliver.

One was a ghost from his past, and the other was the closest thing to a friend he currently had.

The ghost was a fashionable, blonde, white chick he first met in his freshman year of high school, Stacy Lynn. Her defining feature was that she was beautiful, slim yet curvy in all the right places, and had a large chest, but it was important to note her beauty only ran skin-deep. Stacy's flawless hair was styled wavy and short with parted bangs, she had long lashes and dark blue eyes complimented perfectly by pink eyeshadow and lipstick, she was taller than Oliver by three inches, and she somehow managed to make her uniform look high-fashion.

Stacy looked up long enough from Slutstragram or whatever vapid social media app she was rotting her brain with to notice Oliver had joined them. The look on her face was that mild disinterest before she resumed her mindless scrolling.

His 'friend' was more of an acquaintance than anything else, really.

Tessa typically assigned every associate a designated partner to everyone who wasn't a cashier to improve efficiency, and Mia Rosas ended up as Oliver's default not long after she was hired a year and a half ago.

Mia was a petite, dark-skinned Hispanic girl the same age as Oliver. She had an unreadable, expressionless face, pouty lips, and bright, light blue eyes hidden behind thick, rectangular, silver-framed glasses. The intense color of her irises contrasted heavily with her bored, distant gaze, but other than that, Mia's most striking feature was that the tips of her short, boyish black hair were dyed crimson.

Mia's appearance and body language gave off the impression that she was slow and sluggish, but that wasn't the case. In actuality, she and Oliver functioned together like a well-oiled machine. The reason for that was simple- he was shy, and Mia rarely spoke. This allowed them to focus on their jobs instead of each other, much to the approval of Tessa.

Oliver sometimes wished he could be more vocal with Mia, though.

She was laid back and chill, and they seemed to have a lot in common based solely on the fact that she always wore a rotating collection of three anime pins just below her nametag.

These pins were usually characters from various popular series that Oliver often recognized. Today, Mia's pins displayed the faces of the three titular Tatari sisters from the hit romantic comedy slice-of-life harem series Big Yikes! All my Love Interests are my Literal Blood Related Cousins, and I Lack the Mental Fortitude Required to Spurn Their Incestuous Advances!

The fact that Mia publicly wore merchandise from such a scandalous ecchi anime was hilarious to Oliver, especially knowing that their other coworkers were none the wiser. Unfortunately, he had too much in common with the timid protagonist of Big Yikes Literal Blood Cousins for his own good, and he was unable to chat his coworker up over their apparently mutual fondness for the show's 'plot'.

"Morning, Partner. Just in time." Mia greeted him as he joined the standing circle by her side. Her gentle, sleepy voice was a comforting delight after dealing with Tessa. It also helped that Mia sounded a little like Nakayama Akari's voice actress and that Oliver always had a thing for soft-spoken kuudere types, but that was neither here nor there.

"Somebody else thought otherwise," he grumbled back. "Tessa gave me shit the second I walked in."

"Hm. Not surprising. Valentine's Day isn't exactly the boss lady's favorite holiday."

"How do you figure?" He'd been here for two Valentine's Days by now, and given that Tessa was always in a bad mood, he hadn't ever noticed a significant difference.

Tessa barged into the employee lounge, her face steeped in irritation. She looked like she'd rather be anywhere else, so not much was different from how she usually looked. She addressed the crowd in a similarly unenthused tone of voice. "Okay, everyone. Shut up and listen to what I say so we can make this as painless as possible. Yes, today is Valentine's Day. Big fucking deal. Never cared for it, never will. Do you know what I do care about? My bottom line. If you're on the floor and you aren't pushing as much goddamn chocolate onto our customers as you can physically cram down their grubby little mouths, then I have no use for you. Is that clear?"

As everyone else gave Tessa an obligatory 'yes, ma'am', Oliver turned to Mia and whispered, "Nevermind. I think you might be onto something."

It looked as if she might've smiled subtly at him in response, but it was hard to tell since her face was always so cold, and he was more focused on Tessa in the first place.

"Good. Now, this should really, really go without saying, but I don't want to hear a word about any funny business- you hear me? Not. A. Word. The last fucking thing I want on my plate is sexual harassment complaints, so keep your hands to yourselves for as long as you're on the clock. Today is just another fucking day, and I expect all of you to act like adults and treat it like one. Yeah? Yeah. Okay. With your partners, everyone. Stacy, Jeff, start stocking shelves. Amir, Pascal, I want enough sugar cookies packed onto those display tables to give an entire elementary school diabetes. Mia, Oliver, sweeping duty-"

Oliver stopped paying attention after Tessa barked her orders at him, and so did Mia. They splintered off from the group just as everyone else started doing so, heading for the nearest janitor's closet to pick up what they needed. Oliver took the broom while Mia took the pan, and thus began another day of mind-numbing work at Payless Foods.