Something for Chiaki's needs.

Chiaki held the box in her hands and opened it carefully. She knew the thing inside should be capable of awakening something inside of her. Ordinarily, she'd never consider using something like this, but **** times called for **** measures.

Once she removed the packaging, she sat in her bean bag chair, questioning how her life had come to this: why she'd let someone send her something so perverse, and how she'd willingly accepted it. Now, the only question was if her body would accept it.

The object she held in her hands was... obviously, not some kind of tome of magical creatures. Why would it be? No, it was a slick, motorized pink dildo, the kind of thing Chiaki had never held in her hands or dreamed of putting into her body until a stray thought hit her a week ago. She couldn't believe Hajime had almost seen her taking this back to her room...

"Are they supposed to be this big?" she wondered aloud, having never seen one in person and having no frame of reference for the (in actuality, quite normally sized) toy in front of her. She turned it over in her hands, peering at it as if looking for an instruction label. It was still insane to her that a company had offered her a chance to test a thing like this... Frankly, it was on the absolute outskirts of what anyone could reasonably consider a "game" and an inappropriate thing to offer someone in an email correspondence.

But, when they'd been able to reassure her of the confidentiality, shared the sum they were willing to pay to have her test it, and assured her shipping within a week, she decided she couldn't say no.

The truth: Chiaki felt woefully unequipped to process any of the feelings she had about lust or her related needs. As a kid growing up, she had always told herself that she didn't know what love was, or how it worked. She'd tried to learn from romantic games, such as the otome genre, but found herself completely inept in their handling. Far from "Ultimate," her gaming level in such cases as she'd tried reverted to a brute **** method of saving and reloading as she tried to understand what motivated any characters in the stories.

That said... It turned out that being ignorant to romance and ignorant to lust were two different things. Like so many others, Chiaki had a sexual awakening around puberty and had explored herself.

She could do it. She could do it when she had to. But... "Shouldn't it feel better? Am I supposed to think of something specific when I do this? Maybe I'm doing it wrong. I probably don't understand it."

Just thinking about it again made her feel a brand-new surge of malaise. Was it a weakness in her mind, a lack of creativity? Or something biological? She'd tried to tell herself she didn't need it, but eventually she'd find herself masturbating again out of necessity.

Eventually, she'd come to a conclusion. The fits always picked up again when she was thinking of her friends. When she'd become more isolated, that friend she was thinking of was always Hajime. She put together the clues and reasoned: "I'm lonely because I don't have anyone to play games with or do anything with. When I get lonely, I get bored, and that combination... makes me horny. That's just human nature, probably." If it said anything about her mental state, she didn't want to think about it.

All of that being said... Was she so horny that she was about to drop panties and ride a dildo for the first time before even having dinner? Not that she was particularly hungry, but after moping over her own condition for a while with her mailed sex toy in her hand, she wasn't feeling ready to ride, either.

She let out another deep sigh, looked at the plastic thing in her hands, and set it carelessly next to a towering pile of video games. "Forget food. Forget... this thing. Doing what I know is best, probably..." Without even looking into the pile to see which one she was grabbing, Chiaki swiped an untested game she'd received in an unmarked sleeve and popped it into her console. Not knowing which one it was felt good. She didn't want to make any decisions... She just wanted to turn her brain off and play.

Chiaki hit the button on her remote, collapsed back in her chair with a controller in hand, and settled in for a night of...?

"'Shortstack Imp Attack Party Pack: Volume 0...?'"

She frowned deeply. Clearly, as if the universe was having a good laugh at her expense, she'd randomly managed to pick a party game out of the thousands of games and hundreds of genres available to her. What was worse, the name and even the start-up screen she was looking at seemed to exude a **** horny energy, exactly the kind she'd been trying to get away from. She had half a mind to turn it off, and she almost never started a game and gave up on it without giving it at least a thirty minute trial.

Something stopped her. It was... curiosity. Trepidation, almost.

The startup screen she was looking at felt all wrong. The title logo she just read was big, pink, and popping in the center of the screen, but in the background, there was nothing but a low-poly rendering of a single beanbag chair in front of a television, an abandoned controller sitting in front of it. The camera was zoomed out in a way that clearly suggested this screen should be showcasing a more detailed space with more characters. Also, the text that should include a company name responsible for making this game was just garbled, glitched characters.

Entranced, Chiaki pressed the Start button on her controller.

The game screen presented another surprise. Normal video game menu screen principles suggested she'd see something like "New Game," "Continue," or "Options" here. Instead, there were three mysterious choices: "Party Time," "New Register," and "Archive." Only the second was lit as selectable.

It would be easy to assume she was playing some sort of modern and intentional low-poly creation in the meta-aware horror genre, which would explain her uneasy feeling. The uneasy feeling, though...

She muttered to herself. "The game's not wrong, it's just... unfinished, I think. Incomplete? It feels like this game is..."

Another word came into her head. Hungry. It didn't make sense, so she shook it away.

"... Empty. Not all the way made, not yet. I think if I create a new save file, something will happen." Not sure why she was talking to herself, nor why she was leaning in towards the screen with so much excitement towards a game she'd almost stopped playing a second ago, Chiaki leaned in closer to the screen.