My Virtual Girlfriend

Qin Island, an ordinary residential building, an ordinary room.

Chen Yan was staring at a document on the desk, lost in thought.

The document was titled "Hidden Guardian."

This was a game Chen Yan had designed over five years, a type of detective puzzle game that was rare in the market. It was his dream since university.

He had already designed the game's process and character settings. But... he always lacked the money to produce it.

According to his estimate, just to start this project, he needed at least a couple hundred thousand yuan. To fully produce it, it might take several hundred thousand yuan.

For Chen Yan at present, this was an unattainable sum.

"Sigh," he let out a light sigh, closed the document he looked at every day, left the computer, took out his phone, and prepared to check out Bilibili for a while to relax.

Upon opening the phone and launching Bilibili, Chen Yan's screen did not show the familiar red and white interface of the site but instead popped up a window.

[Ding. Welcome to the unique game: Virtual Girlfriend.]

[This game is unique. No pay-to-win, no random draws, no grinding, it is a casually healthy game. After binding, it cannot be used by others.]

[Would you like to bind?]

Chen Yan was full of question marks as he looked at the pop-up on his phone.

Was this a game advertisement?

Didn't Bilibili have no ads?

He understood the term "cloud support." It was a new form of entertainment on the internet. Like cloud raising cats, cloud raising dogs, and so on.

Generally, it refers to people who, due to various constraints, cannot raise cats, dogs, or pets themselves, and instead do so via the internet or other methods, obtaining psychological pleasure from remotely raising these pets.

During the raising process, these people would also feed and tip, participating in the process as if they truly owned the pet.

But...

"Virtual Girlfriend? What is that? Raising a girlfriend on the internet?"

"Could it be... some kind of adult game?"

"Is Bilibili aware I'm feeling down and thus recommended this game to cheer me up?"

"Well..."

"That could be something to look forward to."

With that thought, he clicked to confirm.

[Congratulations, you have qualified for the game. Please answer the following questions as prompted, and the system will match you with your first Virtual Girlfriend.]

Simultaneously, a question appeared before Chen Yan,

[Please choose the love view of your ideal girlfriend.]

[1. Self-centric. 2. Deal with things on a case-by-case basis. 3. Only listens to her boyfriend.]

"The girls who deal with things on a case-by-case basis are the cutest!" exclaimed Chen Yan. And then...

He selected [3].

[Please choose your ideal girlfriend's view on relationships with the opposite sex.]

[1. Open. 2. Flirtatious. 3. Normal. 4. Not interested in any men other than her boyfriend and always loyal to her boyfriend.]

Chen Yan: ...

"4."

[Please choose the appearance of your ideal girlfriend.]

There was no character customization system in the game, so Chen Yan could only broadly describe what he liked: "Baby-faced with large assets, fair-skinned and beautiful, petite and cute," and other such words to describe a girl's beauty.

After that, Chen Yan filled out a bunch of questions.

The number of questions he filled made Chen Yan start to wonder if he had fallen into some kind of scam, having his personal information stolen.

As Chen Yan grew more and more furrowed in filling out the questions, finally, his phone jumped to a prompt:

[All choices have been made, the system will, based on the selections of appearance, views on marriage and love, views on relationships with the opposite sex, and other options, match you with a girlfriend who is most suited to you and closest to your proximity.]

[Matching in progress...]

[Match successful! Congratulations, you have acquired a Virtual Girlfriend!]

As the prompts concluded, a photo of a girl appeared on Chen Yan's phone screen.

She had a small oval face, big eyes, lightly painted eyebrows, innocent and cute, the kind of "first love" face that everyone imagines.

The corners of her eyes and brows naturally carried a tempting innocence; her beautiful large eyes seemed to possess a soul-stealing charm.

She wasn't tall, appearing to be only around 1.6 meters, but her proportions were even, with an exaggerated upper body curve that did not lose its aesthetic appeal, captivating at first sight and drawing the eyes inescapably.

When she smiled, her eyes turned into two crescents, confident and happy, giving off a very sweet look, conveying a healing sensation.

Chen Yan looked carefully at the girl's photo, feeling that she was his type.

At the same time, he also heard an introduction in the game,

"Yu Qiao Qiao. 19 years old. She grew up in an orphanage, innocent and strong, but also somewhat insecure and sensitive deep down."

"Not long ago, she successfully got into Qin Island University with a score of 612, becoming the pride of the orphanage. Besides studying, she also works part-time to earn living expenses."

"The surplus from these expenses, she would regularly mail to the teachers of the orphanage, bettering the living conditions for her younger orphanage siblings. She's a kind and good girl."

Looking at this introduction, Chen Yan clicked his tongue in amazement, "This game is made quite realistically. Even the girlfriend's background is so detailed."

"But... The summary and photo don't match. The photo looks so confident, but the evaluation is 'insecure.'"

"The production team isn't very attentive."

At the same time, his phone continued to jump with prompts,

"Virtual Girlfriend matched successfully, the actual game begins. All content of the game will follow the rules of reality and the girlfriend's personality."

"The girlfriend may get angry, cry, be touched, happy. She may also study, graduate, job hunt, become unemployed, start her own business, go bankrupt."

"She does not know of your existence as a virtual supporter, but you will be her sole reliance, please treat and love her with respect."

"Yu Qiao Qiao's initial favorability: 0 points."

"Player's initial wealth value: 0 points."

"Note. The wealth value is the player's in-game assets, which can be used to purchase various props or to withdraw."

"Feeding the Virtual Girlfriend, or buying things for the Virtual Girlfriend, will earn you wealth points."

"The initial withdrawal rate of wealth points is 1:10. For every 1 yuan you spend on the Virtual Girlfriend, you will receive 1 point of wealth, which can be withdrawn for 10 yuan."

"Virtual Girlfriends have their own likes and dislikes as well as character, thus they will have favorability towards the player."

"Favorability will affect the game functions to a certain extent. After increasing, the Virtual Girlfriend may also become your real-life girlfriend, never leaving your side!"

"So, please do your best to increase the favorability of the Virtual Girlfriend. And... keep buying things for the Virtual Girlfriend!"

Chen Yan looked at the continuous prompts from the game with a perplexed face.

What was all this?

How did it get involved with "withdrawal"?

Was this a text written to increase the game's immersion, or some new scam to milk money?

Charge 1 yuan, spend it, and then withdraw 10 yuan?

1000% return rate? Is this a scam targeting fools?

Who would lose their mind and rush in thousands of yuan, only to find out they can't withdraw? That would be a total scam!

I must not be fooled.

After silently warning himself against being deceived into spending money, Chen Yan clicked [Continue] out of curiosity to see what the game was about.

[The actual game begins...]

With these words, Chen Yan's phone flashed twice, then a pixelated game interface appeared.

On the interface, a pixelated chibi character resembling Yu Qiao Qiao walked and walked, finally entering a convenience store.

Simultaneously, a tip appeared over the pixel character [Shopping...]

Chen Yan tapped a few times but couldn't find anything to interact with.

He started tapping on other parts of the interface.

After a minute of trial, Chen Yan realized the game's design was very simple.

Aside from the main interface and the girlfriend's profile page, there was only an unopened [Shop].

There wasn't even an in-game charging entrance; he couldn't even get scammed if he wanted to.

It looked very rudimentary.

"Is this game still incomplete?"

"Advertising for an incomplete game? They sure have money. If only they gave me the money to produce 'Hidden Guardian.'"

After fiddling aimlessly because he couldn't figure out how to operate the game, Chen Yan threw his phone aside, stretched lazily, then felt his stomach – he was a bit hungry.

He glanced at the time; it was already noon.

Searching the house—in the fridge and under the bed—he couldn't find any food stocks.

"Eh? All the instant noodles are gone?"

Chen Yan scratched his head and decided to head down to the convenience store to "stock up."

Putting on his coat and grabbing his phone, Chen Yan went downstairs in his slippers...

...

Chen Yan, a local of Qin Island, loved playing games since he was young. His dream was to start the biggest game company in the nation, changing the status quo of domestic games!

And he had always worked hard for it. Even during university, he designed two small games, which upon release, garnered quite a few good reviews.

And "Hidden Guardian" was also a game he had been designing since university, setting high hopes on this project.

To launch this project, after graduation, Chen Yan opened a game studio specializing in gold farming business, that is, grinding dungeons, earning Gold Coins, then selling them for RMB.

Although tedious, the income was quite substantial.

Every day, as he worked towards his dream, he felt especially motivated.

This house served as his workplace and resting spot.

Usually, he would stay home, playing and farming dungeons from morning to night, and simply order takeout at mealtime.

But as with gaming, he sometimes lost track of time, so he needed to keep some instant noodles on hand to avoid hunger pangs at "midnight" realizing he hadn't eaten "lunch"...

Arriving at the convenience store, Chen Yan pushed open the door and saw a woman in her forties behind the counter.

Chen Yan greeted her, "Aunt Liu, you're on duty today. Please get me a box of instant noodles."

Counter clerk Aunt Liu seemed familiar with Chen Yan, and she smiled when she saw him, her face full of wrinkles, "Xiao Chen is here for supplies? Still the Stat Laotan sauerkraut flavor?"

Chen Yan replied, "Yes. And get me two packages of sausages as well."

"Right away," Aunt Liu said as she turned to get the instant noodles from a small room.

Chen Yan stood bored by the counter, browsing the nearby shelves to see if there were any tasty snacks to buy along.

However, as he was looking, a girl came out from beside the shelf and entered Chen Yan's view.

She had fair skin, a cute and pretty face, a touch of youthful innocence and melancholy between her brows, and proud curves highlighted by a tight T-shirt that accelerated the blood flow with their impact.

Suddenly seeing a beauty, Chen Yan couldn't help but linger on her face a little longer.

Then... he froze.

Eh...

Why does this girl look so familiar?

Chen Yan kept staring at the girl, his puzzlement growing more profound.

After a moment, a bolt of lightning struck his brain.

This...

This looks exactly like the Virtual Girlfriend I raised in the game?