Tips are Always Appreciated

Practically the second Luke stepped back into his apartment he was eagerly checking his progress on the mysterious new app that seemed to be increasingly dominating his day.

There were currently four names on his Love List, placed in descending order of their affection rating. Rachel was at the top, with nearly a half heart already filled. She had spent much of the working day talking with Luke, and it had been his turn to buy their lunch, which also seemed to have made an impact. Then came Diane, Stefanie from the coffee shop, and finally Gina, with just a feint slither of red in the first of her empty hearts from the one, terse exchange they had that day.

If the rules of the Romance Mechanic were to be believed, anyone with one filled heart could be asked on a date with no chance of refusal. If he was able to get someone all the way to five full hearts it would supposedly result in them willingly fulfilling any of his sexual desires - intriguingly, even those that would not be considered physically possible. Well. that certainly never happened in Stardew Valley.

The part of the system Luke struggled to get his head around the most was that it would apparently allow him to date as many women as he wanted at once, with none of them minding or becoming jealous, unless he went as far as actually marrying one of them, which would remove him from the programme anyway. That just wasn't feasible or realistic, and the app surely couldn't reprogram people's basic human nature for his dating convenience.

Another surprising claim of the app, certainly from a privacy perspective, was that it was mapping all Love List contacts twenty four seven, so he could track them down easily any time he wanted to. Gina's smiling little pixelated face was currently at the gym, which sounded about right, while Rachel was situated at what he knew was her home address.

Despite how convincing this was starting to look, it still had to be pure fantasy - a clever illusion at best. People weren't video game NPCs. They had their own minds, tastes and preferences, and couldn't be turned into someones lover because they'd been given coffee the requisite amount of times needed to fill a digital heart.

Nonetheless, he couldn't resist experimenting further.

---

There was an arcade on the way to Luke's work, and he took a quick detour there, dropping a twenty pound note into the cash converter to transform it into a collection of pound coins. He then proceeded to the coffee shop as per his usual morning routine.

He was in no doubt he was going to make himself look an idiot with what he was about to attempt, but there were plenty of other coffee places en route to his office that he could switch to if this ended in irrevocable embarrassment. Luke walked over to Stefanie and requested his and Rachel's drinks as normal. When she returned with his order, he placed a pound coin into the tip jar.

"Thank you!"

He then placed another one in after it.

"Oh, thanks again!"

Then another, then another, then another.

"Wow that's......very generous of you, sir!"

The barista sounded surprised, but not displeased or weirded out by such convention breaking behaviour.

According to the rules, as set out in the Romance Mechanic user guide, the same kind of gift could be given repeatedly without diminishing returns in the affection it yielded. So Luke continued slotting coins into the tip jar, nothing to lose but a few quid and his dignity, while Stefanie looked on in happy confusion. He was about three quarters of the way through his pile of coins when his phone buzzed urgently at him. He pulled it from his pocket, and consulted his Love List to see that Stefanie's pixelated likeness now had a full red heart beneath to it.

Congratulations! It looks like you have made a great impression on Stefanie! She will now accept a date from you!

It still sounded absurd, but he hadn't come this far to back out now.

"Stefanie, I know this sounds a bit out of the blue, but would you like to go on a date with me this evening?"

"Sure! Swing by here at six to pick me up, that's when I finish for the day" she smiled agreeably at Luke, before moving onto the next customer.

---

Luke spent the rest of his short journey to work in something of a daze.

Perhaps that had been a coincidence? Maybe Stefanie would have accepted the date anyway, regardless of the app?

It seemed unlikely somehow. Walking up to a beautiful barista, ordering a coffee and then asking her for a date didn't seem like it would have any realistic chance of ending in success for Luke under any normal circumstances, especially after his oddball performance at the tip jar. That said, it still felt more believable than a magic dating app.

He walked to his desk and handed Rachel her drink. As she thanked him, his phone buzzed again - when he was able to check it, he could see she now had more than half a heart filled. In a day or two she would be ready to date, according to the app at least, without him even doing anything out of the ordinary within their working relationship.

Luke had always been attracted to Rachel, and they got on incredibly well, but the ramifications of asking her out, being rejected, and then having to continue working with her would be too much for him to handle, especially on top of the ongoing situation with Gina. However, if she was guaranteed to accept his offer, maybe that would be different..

But he was getting way ahead of himself. For now, he was going to continue to operate under the assumption that the app was just a very elaborate hoax, unless he could prove otherwise beyond doubt.

If that happened, then Luke's real world love life was going to get even more exciting than his on screen avatars was in his farming village.