Chapter 2

Hikari tried to refrain from cursing herself for the third time that night. Apparently, finding a boyfriend was going to be her life's latest obstacle. The issue wasn't a lack of willing participants. There were plenty of older men looking for a young girl to spoil. Boys her age could've worked, but none of them appeared to be able to fake a year-old relationship. Not by how the boys on dating apps reacted, at least.

She chewed at the edge of her French-tipped thumb as she scoured the internet. Hikari wanted her theoretical boyfriend, the man she would pretend to love, to be the One. Someone she could be with for the rest of her life. The fake didn't need to be perfect, but he at least had to be interesting and someone she could stand while they played pretend. Her standards weren't exactly high; all she needed was someone who wasn't too bad to look at and who could make her feel alive and wanted. Considering how her last crush turned out, she felt those bare necessities were easy to meet. The internet boys just didn't seem like they could do it.

Groaning quietly, she leaned back from her desktop computer and relaxed in her chair. Hikari glanced at the time and winced. Dawn was arriving in a few hours and she was still out of luck. She closed her eyes and took deep breaths to recenter herself. Everyone in her friend group would be understanding of the lack of photos except Miro. The short haired girl already smelled blood in the water; she would find some way to make Hikari look even more like a fool before the situation could be salvaged.

Unbidden, her thumb returned to her mouth as she absently bit at it again. Stress was the enemy here, and it was winning. Hikari felt like there was too much riding on her proving her lie to be true by morning to even consider trying again another night. She didn't want to see Sakura and Nanami look at her differently. She didn't want to see the smugness on Miro's face, or worse, some mix of vindication and pity. Most of all, she didn't want to see Ren's disappointment. He trusted her; she promised him earlier that week that she would make an effort to change.

A sharp pain wretched her out of her spiraling thoughts. Hikari looked over her thumb; somehow, she bit herself hard enough to bleed. There wasn't a lot of blood coming out though, so she brushed the slight injury off to be dealt with later and returned looking through various dating sites on her computer. She was determined to stay focused and find someone regardless of the cost. Worst case scenario, she would put on a little extra makeup in the morning to hide the bags under her eyes from staying up so late.

Her computer had other ideas. Out of nowhere, the desktop screen began to glitch out into static and a whirlwind of colors. Both the monitor and keyboard were heating up, and Hikari jerked back in surprise at the absolute meltdown her computer was experiencing.

"Wait, seriously," she moaned as her chair rolled her back away from the electronic, " I need my computer. Why choose now of all times to stop working? What am I even gonna tell my parents?"

With a distant look in her eyes, she watched her computer screen go completely black and thought to herself that it didn't matter what she told them in the end. They were probably just going to call and express their disappointment that she broke their gift, then mail her a new one after making her promise to be a little more careful with the damned thing. That was a can of worms Hikari wasn't looking forward to, so she decided to save it for later while she focused on figuring out what she was going to tell her friends.

Her computer let out a tiny beep as the screen slowly regained life. The webpage on the screen didn't look familiar, but at this point, she already lost track of the many sites she visited earlier. Maybe the browser reset to a previous page in her history. Scooting her chair closer, Hikari carefully poked her keyboard and her computer monitor. Both were cool to the touch as if the last few minutes never happened.

At this point, she chalked the whole event up to a fever dream created by her sleep-deprived brain. She just wanted to get this night over with, catch a few hours of sleep and watch her social life go down the drain. This was going to the last website she looked at before she went to bed. She scrolled up and down the page, taking in the red to brown gradient behind the solid mahogany background. The somewhat fancy font on the page called out to her.

"Well, if I did visit this page before I sure don't remember it. This is such a weird site...I mean, come on. Sinful Bliss? It sounds so cheesy."

She snickered quietly to herself as she scrolled through the available profiles. Each profile had a unique, sometimes unpronounceable name and a photo of the face attached to it. Likes and dislikes were listed along with strange profile attributes like conditions and types. The amusement on her face melted into confusion as she looked over the men and women on the website.

"Maybe I ended up on some sort of adult site...normal dating apps don't have this kind of stuff on them. I mean, come on. Who writes this kind of stuff? I'm a "Wrath" type? A "Pride" type? What does that even mean?"

Closing her eyes, she leaned back in her chair and rubbed her temples.

"I mean," she mumbled as she thought to herself out loud, "some kind of host guy wouldn't be so bad right? I could pay him for a short bit. Just long enough to get a good photo and maybe introduce him as my boyfriend, then say we broke up a few days after the dust is settled. What could go wrong?"

Admittedly, a lot could go wrong, her brain supplied helpfully. Paying a man to like her wouldn't help her find someone she could pretend to like back. Ignoring the thought, she clicked around and looked at various profiles until one caught her eye. She had to go back due to her willy nilly clicking and scrolling, but eventually, she found his profile once more. Hikari read his information aloud as she looked back and forth at the paragraph and the photo of the young man with tanned, sun-kissed skin and fluffy chestnut hair.

"Verkin, that's a cool name. He's a "gluttony" type and likes new, unusual flavors, home-cooked meals, and learning new things. He doesn't seem to be interested in history and hates large animals and the cold. I don't think anyone's a fan of denial, but hey, he's the one who listed it. He's gotta have some vision problems with those weird pupils, but his eye's still pretty. How often do you meet someone with burgundy eyes? Well, they're probably contacts but still..."

Hikari privately thought to herself that it was odd to get contact with misshapen pupils, but maybe older women liked that. Who was she to judge, after all? Weird contacts were a lot more normal than people with naturally purple hair. If he had questions about her hair, she would question him about the oversized appetite he mentioned on his profile. It was only fair. They could probably talk about it over parfaits, maybe at Pretty Kitty Wish so she wasn't such a liar. He would be paid to be nice to her, so maybe she could ask to hold his hand or just sit near each other like the rest of the couples in the shop. Maybe he would smile at her innocent request. His crooked little canines would be even more adorable up close.

And there she was, off track once again. She pinched her cheeks for a moment, making herself focus.

"Come on, Hikari. See if he's available first before you start daydreaming again...or even worse, fall asleep in your computer chair."

Luckily for her, his profile said that he was available for hire. She clicked on the Hire Now button, ready to plug in her information and card details. The website did mention that prices and deadlines were negotiable. However, instead of opening the next page, her computer monitor blacked out once more.

The sudden crash was almost too much for her. Fighting the sleep-deprived urge to fling the desktop across the room, she violently pushed her chair back, stood up, and took a deep breath to try and settle her nerves. Hikari gave the computer a hateful glare as she began to pace the room, debating if it was worth it, after all, to tell her parents that she accidentally broke the machine. Tossing it out of a window wasn't exactly an accident, but they didn't need to know that and would never visit soon enough to see the wreckage themselves. Pacing proved to only fuel her violent fantasies, so she forced herself to sit back down, close her eyes and return to taking deep breaths. If she did it long enough, it could make her stop digging her nails into the arms of the chair.

Caught between the intense need for rest and the adrenaline of annoyance, Hikari almost failed to notice the slight shaking of her computer monitor. The monitor wobbled as vortexes appeared on the black screen. She hesitantly touched one and jerked her fingers back at the oily, foreign sensation it gave her. Before she could examine them further, hands pushed through the portals and gripped the plastic edge surrounding the screen. A head full of wavy, overgrown hair the color of ink followed.

Hikari was frozen in horror as she watched the figure start to pull itself through her computer screen. The head glanced around with its bi-colored eyes, then grinned rakishly once it took in her fear. She could see the dark amusement in its eyes as they made eye contact. Her silent terror made the thing laugh under its breath.

"Well," the figure called to her in a deep voice that promised mischief and corruption despite its sophisticated lilt, "good evening, little lady."