001 Prologue - A Weird Kind of Love - Mark’s POV

Mom had always been weird.

But I guess I didn’t know just how weird until that incident—after she got hit by a truck.

I was eight years old when I saw my mom die. Or at least, I thought she did.

One moment, we were walking home from the grocery store, my tiny hands gripping a plastic bag filled with snacks. The next, there was the deafening roar of a truck’s horn, the screech of tires against asphalt, and my mother’s body being thrown into the air like a ragdoll.

Mom was literally flying through the air, her silver hair whipping around her like some kind of ghostly veil before she hit the pavement with a sickening thud.

It was what Mom would have called the "isekai experience."

But this wasn’t that kind of story. There was no reincarnation, no sudden trip to a fantasy world filled with swords and magic. This was real. As real as it could get.

I don’t remember screaming. I don’t remember dropping the bag. All I remember was running to her, my heart pounding so hard I thought it would burst.

She lay on the pavement, motionless. Blood pooled beneath her head, soaking into the cracks of the road. Her eyes—those warm, gentle eyes—were closed.

“M-Mom?” My voice came out weak, barely more than a whisper.

She didn’t move.

My knees hit the ground as I reached for her, shaking her shoulders with trembling hands. “Wake up... Wake up, Mom!”

People gathered around us, voices blurring into a frantic mess. Someone shouted for an ambulance. A man in a suit pulled out his phone. A woman tried to drag me away, but I fought her, clinging to my mom’s unmoving form.

She wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be dead.

The sirens came fast. Paramedics pushed me aside, checking her pulse, lifting her onto a stretcher. I could barely breathe as I watched them work, my fingers digging into my knees.

“Is she going to be okay?” I asked. No one answered me.

Then they took her away.

For weeks, she was in a coma. The doctors said it was a miracle she had even survived. They weren’t sure if she’d wake up, and if she did, they couldn’t promise she’d be the same. I didn’t care. I just wanted my mom back.

So I sat by her bedside every day, waiting. I’d talk to her, hold her hand, and tell her about the things she was missing. I’d whisper that she needed to wake up, that I needed her. That I was scared.

And then, one day, she did.

Her eyes fluttered open, unfocused at first. My breath caught in my throat. Then she slowly turned to look at me, and for the briefest moment, I thought everything would be okay.  

“It’s the big bad wolf!”

Something was wrong.

Mom had always been off in the head.

But…

Then, all at once, her face lit up—not in the way I had expected, not with relief or warmth, but with something wild, something almost unhinged. She grabbed my arm so suddenly I nearly yelped. I was expecting something—maybe a weak ‘hey, kiddo’ or even just my name. Not… this.

"This world is an otome game," she said, her voice breathless, urgent. "And if you don’t make the heroine fall in love with you, you’re doomed."

Uh. What?

I stared. My brain short-circuited. That was too much… wasn’t it?

Mom’s grip on my arm tightened. Her red eyes locked onto mine, sharp and almost feverish.

"Do you trust Mom?" she asked.

I blinked. "W-what?"

"Do you trust Mom?" she repeated, softer this time.

I didn’t even hesitate. "Yes, of course."

Her shoulders relaxed, and for the first time since waking up, she smiled—genuinely, warmly. The kind of smile I remembered from before the accident.

"Good. You’re a good kid," she murmured, pulling me into a hug.

I squeezed my eyes shut, breathing her in. She smelled like hospital antiseptic and something faintly metallic, probably from pulling out her IV earlier, but I didn’t care. She was here. She was awake. That was all that mattered.

For a while, we just stayed like that. I didn’t want to let go.

Then she spoke again.

"I wasn’t always this Mom," she said, resting her chin on my head. "I mean, I am your mom, but I also… have memories from another life. A life where I played a game. A very specific game."

I hesitated. "A game?"

"An otome game," she said dramatically, as if that explained everything.

It did not.

I frowned. "What’s an otome game?"

She pulled back slightly to look at me, her expression shifting to one of deep concern. "Oh no. I have failed you as a mother."

"Mom."

She sighed. "It’s a dating sim, Mark. A romance game where you play as a heroine and choose between handsome love interests."

I had no idea what to do with that information.

She didn’t wait for me to respond before continuing, "And in this game, there’s always someone standing in the way of the heroine’s happiness. Someone who exists only to be crushed underfoot by the story’s heroes."

Something about the way she said that made my stomach twist. "...And?"

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

She smiled grimly. "That someone is you, sweetheart."

I just stared at her. "...Huh?"

She nodded. "You were born into the role of a villain. The arrogant young noble who bullies the heroine, makes enemies of the love interests, and—spoiler alert—gets destroyed in every single route."

I opened my mouth, closed it, then opened it again. "What?"

"I know," she said, shaking her head. "When I first realized it, I had the biggest existential crisis. I thought, Oh no, my son is doomed to be a villainous little brat who gets wrecked by the plot. But then I thought—wait. What if we changed the story?"

She leaned forward, gripping my shoulders. "Mark, you don’t have to be the villain. We can fix this. If you make the heroine fall for you, then the game can’t kill you off!"

I didn’t get it. I really, really didn’t get it.

But I missed my mom. I missed her warmth, her presence, the way she spoke with so much certainty that it felt like she could make anything true.

So I just nodded. "Okay."

She beamed. "That’s my boy!"

And then, before I could process anything further, she ripped off the heart monitor, yanked out the remaining IV tubes, and flung the hospital blanket aside like a dramatic anime character.

"Now let’s go hunt cryptids, son!"

I watched in mute horror as she stood up, wobbling slightly but looking absolutely determined.

Maybe the coma had messed with her brain after all.

That was the day my mom woke up, decided to choose violence… and turned my life into a dating sim from hell. Forget dating sim. It basically turned into an open world thug life sim the next second..

I thought waking up from a coma had left my mom a little weird.

I was wrong.

She was completely insane.

The moment she stood up, alarms started blaring. Her little prison break had set off the hospital’s monitoring system. Nurses burst into the room, shouting for her to calm down, but Mom just cracked her knuckles.

"Mark, sweetie," she said, rolling her shoulders like a street thug about to throw down. "Stick close to me."

And then she punched a security guard in the face.

What was even happening?

I barely had time to process it before she spun around and kicked another one in the gut. He crumpled instantly, wheezing. The third guy actually tried to pull out a stun baton, but Mom yanked out his radio cord, wrapped it around his neck, and sent him face-first into the hospital bed.

"What is happening?!" I shrieked, pressing myself against the wall.

Mom, breathing heavily, flashed me a grin. "Survival, my dear son. It’s a lawless world out there."

The remaining guards wisely backed off, probably questioning their life choices. A nurse screamed. Someone hit the emergency button.

Mom ignored them. She grabbed a handful of syringes and pill bottles from the nearby counter, shoving them into her hospital gown pockets like a raccoon on a crime spree.

"Mom, you can’t just—"

"Shh," she whispered, holding a finger to my lips. "We have no money."

"That’s not how—"

She suddenly pivoted, grabbed the nearest elderly patient—a sweet-looking old granny in a wheelchair—and yanked her up with unnatural strength.

"ALRIGHT, EVERYONE STAND BACK! I HAVE A HOSTAGE!"

"MOM!"

The entire hospital froze. The poor old lady blinked in confusion, then scowled. "Young lady, what do you think you’re doing—"

"Sorry, ma’am," Mom said, adjusting her grip. "But this is an emergency acquisition of assets."

And then, she hijacked a car.

—

I sat in the backseat, still in shock, as Mom swerved wildly through the city streets, the stolen sedan barely avoiding pedestrians. The granny, now safely tucked into the passenger seat with a stolen juice box, seemed less terrified and more mildly inconvenienced.

"This is a lawless world," Mom muttered, gripping the wheel. "The corpos control everything. Money, medicine, power. And we have none of it."

"You literally just stole medicine," I pointed out weakly.

"Exactly! That’s called wealth redistribution."

"You also kidnapped a grandma."

The granny took a loud sip from her juice. "I was getting bored in there anyway."

I buried my face in my hands.

At some point, Mom must have realized that having a child and zero resources was not a winning strategy, because she suddenly changed course. When we finally pulled up to a familiar building, my stomach dropped.

I knew this place.

The orphanage.

"Mom, no—"

She parked the car, got out, opened the back door, and dragged me out by the collar like a stray cat.

"Mom, PLEASE—"

She marched up to the front door and knocked. Hard.

A tired-looking nun opened it. The moment she saw Mom, her face paled. "You—"

"Here," Mom said, shoving me forward. "Hold this for me."

"I AM NOT A BAG OF GROCERIES."

The nun sighed deeply. "Miss Evelyn, you can’t just—"

"Shh," Mom said, putting a finger to her lips. "I’ll be back."

She turned to me, her expression oddly soft despite everything. She knelt down, ruffling my hair.

"I will be back, Mark. I promise."

I stared at her, still too stunned to process what was happening. Then she turned on her heel, hopped back into the stolen car (granny still in the passenger seat), and sped off into the night, hospital gown flapping in the wind.

I watched her go, my fists clenched at my sides.

Screw you, Mom.

And then a few weeks later, she was back.

Most people would consider breaking into an orphanage a crime.

Most people would also consider stealing a child from said orphanage a crime.

My mother was not "most people."

It had been barely a few weeks since she dumped me at that miserable place with a half-hearted promise to return. And now, in the dead of night, I found myself being yanked out of bed, slung over her shoulder like a sack of rice, and smuggled out the window.

"Mom, what the hell?!" I whisper-shouted as she effortlessly scaled the orphanage wall, moving like some kind of rogue assassin.

"Shh, keep your voice down. I’m in the middle of a stealth mission."

"This is literally kidnapping!"

"Relax, it’s only kidnapping if you take a kid away from their home. I’m bringing you back to our home."

"We don’t even have a—"

She vaulted over the last barrier, landing on the pavement with an almost supernatural grace. I, meanwhile, did not land gracefully.

The next thing I knew, I was in the passenger seat of yet another stolen car, being whisked away from civilization at illegal speeds.

"Where are we going?" I asked, rubbing my sore arm.

Mom grinned. "Training arc time, baby."

I had a very bad feeling about this.

—

A few hours later…

"Okay, Mom, this is too much!"

I was inside a dungeon. A real-ass dungeon. The kind you see in video games, full of glowing moss, eerie tunnels, and—most importantly—cryptids.

Specifically, goblins.

And I was holding a club.

Mom stood behind me, casually dual-wielding a stolen handgun and an energy knife. Every time a goblin so much as breathed in my direction, she put a bullet in its head like she was grinding EXP in an FPS game.

"You need to awaken your ESP fast," she called out, reloading like this was just another Tuesday. "So we can begin your Spartan training and grind your stats."

"This isn’t Spartan enough?!" I shouted, ducking as a goblin swung at my head.

"You have no idea what Spartan means until you survive on your own for a week with nothing but a rusty knife and some ration bars."

"WHAT?!"

Mom casually shot a goblin that was about to ambush me from behind. "I did it in a few weeks after we escaped the hospital, you know?"

I could only gape at her.

Mom, what the actual hell have you been doing?!

I saw the goblin coming.

For once, I actually saw it. The way its muscles tensed before lunging, the crude dagger in its grip aimed right for my gut. I didn’t think. My body just moved.

I twisted to the side, the blade whiffing past me, and swung my club with all the strength my tiny, noodle arms could muster.

CRACK.

The goblin’s skull caved in. It dropped like a sack of rotten meat.

Another one screeched and charged at me. I didn’t wait. I stepped in, grabbed its head, and twisted.

A sickening snap rang out. The goblin went limp in my grasp.

For a second, I just stood there, panting, my hands trembling slightly. Then I turned to Mom.

She clapped her hands together, looking way too pleased. "Bravo! So? Do you feel anything new? ESP much?"

I checked.

I still felt like me. My limbs were sore. My breath was ragged. My heart was still hammering in my chest from the sheer adrenaline of almost getting stabbed. But… nothing else.

"No, Mom… I still feel like me…"

Mom sighed dramatically, holstering her gun. "Tsk, I was hoping for an instant awakening. Oh well, guess we’ll have to do things the old-fashioned way."

I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like the old-fashioned way.

She ruffled my hair, then slung an arm over my shoulder. "Listen, this world is filled with cryptids and ESPers. You and I? You’re just a normie. For now. But we have six to seven years to pad up your stats."

"Pad up my stats?" I asked, still trying to process the fact that I had just killed two goblins with my bare hands.

"The ESPer Academy is a tough place," she continued, completely ignoring my horror. "And you will have even tougher competition. You can do it, my boy! This mommy of yours is rooting hard for you!"

I barely had time to process that before another goblin nearly took my head off.

"Not helping, Mom!" I shouted, scrambling away.

Mom simply laughed as she shot the goblin in the face. "No worries, sweetie! Mom’s got your back!"

This woman was insane.