Post-Apocalyptic Romance Game

“Hey, young man, want to buy some bananas?”
In front of the fruit stall at the market, the robotic shop assistant’s face flickered with a smile as it asked enthusiastically in a warm, lifelike tone.

Standing across from the robot was a boy of about fifteen or sixteen. He had short, unremarkable hair, wore a standard-issue high school uniform, and possessed the kind of generic face you’d expect from the protagonist of a dating sim.

But the boy gave no response to the shop assistant’s greeting. He stood there, staring blankly.

After a long moment of contemplation, he finally spoke:

“Oh my god, did I just transmigrate into the very game I was designing?”

In his previous life, Chen Shang had led a relatively comfortable existence as a game writer and planner. By 2077, the year he hailed from, the world of gaming had evolved to unprecedented heights—even VR was considered an archaic relic. Immersive consciousness games were now the industry standard, and major companies had begun developing “quantum-leap games,” which would shatter and reconstruct a player’s mind and body in some alternate reality for the ultimate gaming experience.

None of this had much to do with Chen Shang, since he worked for a company that made dating sims. Their business model was simple: low production costs, meticulously crafted art designed to appeal to shut-ins, and stirring, formulaic romance stories—an efficient way to rake in cash from their target audience.

Over the years, Chen Shang had worked as a writer on five or six romance-raising games, each