Jay has a decision to make

It was a quick breakfast before the girls headed out to the park to have their run, leaving you alone in the apartment. The three of you had a peaceful breakfast together due to an unspoken agreement, between you and the girls, to pause all of the things that need to be discussed for now: Stella making amends with her mom, your night with Tanya, and why you left Cassie all of a sudden.

If this morning was any indication about how those conversations are gonna go, all three of you are going to need a breather first. Especially with what you’re seeing right now.

- Jones, Cassandra - Affection Score: 100. (+9)

Love Score: 53 (+18)

Lust Score: 100 (+22)

+50 Friendship Points. Total: 230 (For reaching the 100 Affection Score goal with a person)

+50 Love Points. Total: 50 (For reaching the 50+ Love Score goal with a person)

+50 Lust Points. Total: 50 (For reaching the 100 Lust Score goal with a person)

Available points: 230 Friendship points / 50 Love points / 50 Lust points

How is that even possible!? You’re not even doing anything!

As much as you’d like to doubt those numbers, the Affection Multiplier has made you believe that it is most definitely real. It’s given you enough evidence to completely believe that. You haven’t thought about lighting up a cigarette since you bought the ‘Non-Smoker’ trait for yourself yesterday, and although you don’t know how it’s affecting Stella, she did make the pinky promise with you after you bought the trait for her, so it’s not a logical leap to assume it’s the trait’s influence on her. More than that, the Advanced Trait ‘Magic Touch’ definitely fucking works. No way you could give Tanya whatever she experienced with you last night without the help of magic.

Holy shit! Magic Touch!

Did Cassie derive pleasure from you just touching her arms, or from her hugging you? Is that how her Lust Points are so high?

Wait… what about Stella!?

- Craig, Stella - Affection Score: 100.

You breathe a heavy sigh of relief. You can’t imagine unintentionally giving your daughter sexual pleasure just by touching her innocently.

So if the app’s real, then these numbers are accurate. Which begs the question, how do you deal with Cassie moving forward? Without intending to, you made Cassie as devoted to you as your own daughter is… with the added wrinkle that Cassie really, really, really, wants to have sex with you.

Is that why she asked about why you left last night? Did she want to have sex with you last night already? If that’s the case, shouldn’t she be angry with you that you left and had sex with Tanya? It doesn’t make any sense!

Speaking of Tanya, there’s a complication there now too.

- Ramirez, Antonia - Affection Score: 76 (+26).

Love Score: ??

Lust Score: 71

-This person is confused about their own feelings-

‘I’M confused about my own feelings, app! Don’t give me this shit right now.’ you mentally shout to your phone. You remember Tanya’s words last night ‘Don’t fall for the first girl you fuck’. Now she’s the one who doesn’t know if she has feelings for you or not. You’d make a snide remark about that, but you realize you don’t know what you want with Tanya either. She was right with what she told you last night, you just came out of an almost two decade long relationship, do you really want to jump into a monogamous relationship already? What about wanting ‘more’? Do you nip it in the bud while she’s still unsure about it, or do you take the risk and see where that goes, or… or do you actively pursue a relationship with Tanya?

But what about Cassie?

Jesus Christ, this girl is living in your head rent-free.

As you contemplate what to do, the little shopping cart button in the app that leads you to the Trait Catalogue has a push notification that pops-up. You tap it and it and a message pops up:

New Trait suggested for Wishlist!

Normalized Polyamory (350 pts): Everyone accepts the fact that you have two or more romantic and/or sexual partners. Partners will not feel jealousy towards your pursuit of more relationships.

You can’t afford this trait right now, but it’s nice to have a goal! Add to Wishlist?

YES/NO

Okay, so the app can read your mind. You’d be creeped out, but you realize this thing is literal magic that tells you how much people like you, amplifies how quickly they grow to like you, and even gives you trait options to accelerate the process even further. Being able to read your mind is par for the course, you suppose.

You take into consideration the suggestion of the app and do the math in your head. You realize that you need to max out three people’s Love Scores and get one more person at 50 to be able to afford this. How do you even go about doing that? You failed miserably with your one and only romantic relationship, so you can’t even fathom dating two people at once and making it work, let alone four. Then you start thinking about not having to go that far, how you can game the system entirely. If you can get seven people to just 50 Love Score… and you mentally slap yourself.

You remind yourself that these are people’s emotions you’re talking about. They’re not just numbers on a magical phone app. If you go down that road, it stops being about having genuinely good and loving relationships with people but instead becomes just about having enough people to like you so you can buy magical traits for yourself. You’re mature enough to know the latter will only lead you to a dark path. A path where you can discard people like yesterday’s garbage once you got the numbers you need. If you recall correctly, 55 is even the lowest average score happily married couples have. If you get someone close to that number and discard them because you weren’t being honest with them and just wanted points, how would that make them feel? You've recently been discarded yourself, so you know the pain it causes. You wouldn’t wish that pain on anyone.

You take a breather and try to think clearly. You go back outside to the external fire escape out of habit as this is the place where you did most of your thinking in the past few months. Granted, what you were thinking during those times weren’t exactly healthy. You’re reminded it was just yesterday that you looked down to the alley below and contemplated ending it all. Now, you’re wondering how to go about pursuing two possible romantic relationships. You chuckle at the thought, thinking it’s a better problem to have.

Losing someone you loved and being betrayed by them hurt you more than you can imagine, which resulted in a months-long spiral. It was only after being reminded that there are still people who care for you and love you that you're beginning to recover. It’s here that you realize that you don’t want to lose any of these relationships you’ve unintentionally built with the help of the app, because it’s these relationships that makes you want to continue living. You don’t want to risk finding out what kind of pain you’d feel if you lose any of them.

You look away from the alley and back to your phone.

Add to Wishlist?

YES/NO

…

YES.

Author’s Note: Clarification on how I intend the ‘Magic Touch’ trait to work - Those touched derive some form of pleasure from the MC’s physical touch, but it is up to their interpretation what that pleasure means. In the case of Stella, all she got were warm fuzzy feelings of comfort. In addition, since it’s a Sexual Trait, it’s effectiveness outside of sexual situations has a limit, while it is most effective in sexual ones.