After reading the screen, she opened her mouth in astonishment.

The new information wasn’t what she was looking for, and rather, it was more like a caution than a help. This was a penalty that would make her future even more complicated. Ariel, who had turned on her phone hoping to get some help, only became more distressed as her thoughts became more tangled.

‘…Skylar has two hearts right now.’

There was still some time.

‘Lexius has one heart. Racine has none, and Devoncia’s status is unavailable due to an error.’

Folding her fingers one by one, she counted the status of each of her targets.

Currently, the progress of targets other than Skylar was dismal. If she were to enter Skylar’s route, it would be the worst-case scenario. She couldn’t even imagine if there would ever be any connection with Racine, whom she could hardly even meet face-to-face with now.

Considering her goal of evenly filling three hearts and aiming for an average relationship, pursuing an individual route was definitely out of the question.

‘Would it be better to keep some distance from Skylar until the favorability of the other characters fills up?’

Fortunately, Skylar was currently avoiding Ariel. While she wouldn’t know how long it would last, his reaction to her now was something to be thankful for.

‘Let’s take this opportunity to relax and balance things out a bit.’

Ariel organized her thoughts with a newfound calmness.

The condition for a special ending was that everyone’s favorability rating was three or more. The condition for entering the individual route was a favorability of four or more.

She needed to walk an extreme tightrope strategy of maintaining favorability at exactly three—neither more nor less.

“It’s tough…”

Ariel let out a small sigh.

It was like trying to navigate relationships between characters who weren’t on good terms with each other and had contrasting personalities. She would rather just raise the favorability or simply avoid it and become a bystander.

“It would be nice if it were simpler.”

The game wasn’t going smoothly.

‘Now that I think about it, the aptitude test… what happened with it? Did I pass it well?’

Ariel looked through her phone as a question suddenly occurred to her.

‘Didn’t it mention giving me rewards?’

As she repeatedly opened and closed the system window, she hoped to find something useful for her strategy.

Nonetheless, no additional information was added.

Ariel held onto his phone for a few more minutes before shutting the screen off with a despondent expression. Though the screen went dark, her mind was filled with various thoughts. At the same time, negative prospects and anxious worries would subside and then reappear, occasionally overwhelming her.

With anxiety tangled like threads, Ariel closed his eyes quietly, feeling uncomfortable. The bedsheet was soft and plush, and little by little, the complexity faded away, and drowsiness crept in.

And so Ariel fell asleep like that.

Even in her dreams, messages from the system window floated around. Worries lurked in the subconscious, occasionally encroaching on the realm of consciousness without taking any tangible form.

Ariel felt like she was being crushed by scissors.

She thrashed about in the sheets, feeling stifled and gasping for breath until she suddenly woke up. In the meanwhile, there was a rustling sound next to her. The surroundings felt distracting as she lay still and rolled her eyes. Not far away, she could see Canon in the middle of preparing clothes.

Feeling eyes on her, Ariel turned her head and met her eyes.

“Young Lady, if you’re awake, please don’t stay in bed. Get up quickly. You can lie down again once everything is done.”

As Canon made soothing noises with her mouth and lifted her up with a somewhat firm touch, Ariel’s upper body reluctantly straightened.

Having been awakened in the middle of her sleep, she felt disoriented.

‘I don’t think it’s time to wake up yet?’

Feeling puzzled, Ariel rubbed her still-drowsy eyes. It was still pitch black outside, but for some reason, the atmosphere somehow felt bustling.

“…What’s… happening?”

Ariel asked, stammering in a sleepy voice.

 
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