Chapter 0: Prologue

There’s always a shop where you can get anything, anywhere.

This holds true in reality, in RPG games, and even in so-called gacha games, where you exchange in-game currency for character upgrade materials.

And if it’s a game featuring a plethora of beautiful girls or boys, it’s only natural for a pretty girl to be running the shop.

Of course, there are exceptions, but the shop character is encountered almost as often as the lobby.

The design is usually attractive, and its popularity is inevitable.

Even though it’s a non-playable character, it’s common to find R-18 tagged illustrations of it on certain art posting sites.

‘Amadeus,’ an RPG that incorporates gacha elements, also employed such a shop character.

This character appears in the shop window of any event, handles all sorts of strange materials (character upgrade materials), and is the character you see upon entering any shop, regardless of the protagonist’s location in the story.

Moreover, the character’s sly eyes add to the overall air of suspicion.

And now, that elusive character is the one I see every time I look in the mirror.

“Cheap! Very cheap!”

That is to say, me.