Chapter 04
Something was different.
It wasn’t the numbers: they were still stuck at “???: ? ?%“, but the color had changed.
What used to be totally see–through was now tinged with the faintest blush of pink, so light you’d almost miss it.
It reminded me of that first hint of sunlight spilling across a white wall, soft, gentle, barely there.
But somehow warming everything it touched.
I first noticed the change on my second Wednesday at work.
I was working overtime until nine that night, and the whole floor was empty except for Finnegan and me.
My stomach was aching from hunger, and after digging through my drawers, all I found was a pack of expired soda crackers.
Just as I was staring at those crackers, wondering if I was desperate enough to eat them, someone set a steaming mug of milk on my desk.
I looked up, Finnegan was standing there, holding his own mug, looking as blank as ever.
“Drink this,” he said, his voice flat.
“No, really, you don’t have to-” I tried to protest.
“Your stomach just growled,” Finnegan said in his usual
monotone.
“Wait, you actually heard that?” I muttered, cheeks burning.
Without a word, he turned around, went back to his desk, sat down, and started typing again.
I picked up the mug and took a sip. The milk was just right, not too hot, not too cold.
Without thinking, I glanced up at the Heart’s Compass above his head.
It was tinged with pink.
Even pinker than it had been that afternoon.
But the question marks were still there: “? ? ?: ? ?%“.
I gripped the mug, my mind just full of question marks. Seriously, what was going on in that head of yours, Finnegan? I wondered.
By the second month, the project had hit its most intense phase.
The core of the romance game was the Affection Matrix: players made choices that affected the NPC’s affection level, and when it hit 100%, the confession ending would trigger.
The underlying logic for this system was insanely complicated, with tons of conditional checks and random events. And the one in charge of writing that code? Finnegan.
One day, the testing team flagged a bug.
“The NPC’s affection level is acting up. Sometimes, even when the player does nothing, the affection just goes up by itself. And the way it increases doesn’t follow the algorithm we set.”
The project manager didn’t mess around.
He called everyone in for a meeting to hash it out.
During the meeting, the QA girl pulled up the bug and did a live demo for everyone.
“Check this out,” she said. “I made a test character and literally just stood next to the NPC, doing absolutely nothing.”
“After three minutes, the NPC’s affection level ticked up from 0 to 2 all on its own,” she added.
“That’s not right,” the game designer chimed in. “The way we set it up, affection should only increase when the player actually triggers an event.”
“Could it be a bug in the random event logic?” I suggested. “I’ve already checked the random event triggers,” Finnegan said, his voice flat. “No anomalies found.”
“So how’s it going up by itself?” someone pressed, sounding frustrated.
Everyone fell silent.
The conference room was dead quiet for about ten seconds.
Then Finnegan dropped a line that left everyone stunned.
“Maybe the NPC itself is the problem,” he said.
“What’s wrong with the NPC?” someone asked, totally baffled.
“In the NPC’s algorithm,” he paused.
Then he went on, There’s a variable that wasn’t
initialized properly. It shouldn’t increment without any interaction.“
“So…the code’s wrong?” I asked.
“No,” he said, eyes still on the screen.
“The code’s fine. It’s just that the trigger condition for this variable is more sensitive than we expected,” he explained.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
He was silent for a moment, then finally said, “I’ll look into it.”
After the meeting, I was packing up to leave when I happened to glance at the progress bar above his head as I walked past.
The pink shade looked a bit richer than yesterday.
And after the question marks, I thought I saw a number kind of appear and disappear.
It looked like “? ? ?:??%“, but then, no, it seemed more like “? ? ?: 3%“.
I blinked, and the number vanished again.
Guess I was just imagining things, I thought, and didn’t pay it any mind.
But after that, strange glitches started happening all the time.
Bugs kept piling up, and all of them were related to the Affection Matrix.
“Finnegan, why does the Affection Matrix increase when the player sneezes? We never coded that!”
“Finnegan, the Affection Matrix decreases when the player shows up late? That can’t be right. The player
never scheduled anything with the NPC!”
“Finnegan, there’s a line in the NPC’s log: ‘She changed her shampoo today.‘ Seriously? How would the NPC even know what shampoo the player uses?”
Each bug was so bizarre, it felt like the NPCs were developing a mind of their own.
Every time Finnegan looked at those bug reports, his face would subtly change.
His brows would knit, lips pressed tight, like he was trying to keep something under wraps.
Even creepier, the pink progress bar above his head kept deepening in color.
The number after the question marks started showing up more frequently.
One time, when I handed him a coffee and leaned in close, the number suddenly flashed into view, clear as day: “???: 17%”
It was only there for a split second, then instantly reverted to question marks.
My hand trembled, and half the coffee spilled onto the table.