Breaking The Perfect Heroine Simulator

Ever since I was a little girl, I knew that whatever I wanted, no matter how ridiculous, would always be mine.

At six, when I wanted to ace my exams, every single question on the paper was something I had memorized the night before.

At twelve, when a girl bullied me, her family unexpectedly packed up and moved out of the city the very next day.

At twenty, I casually mentioned how much I missed the snow; at my midsummer birthday gala, artificial flurries blanketed the entire estate like a winter wonderland.

But my mother was the sole exception to this rule of my universe.

She never held me close. She never spoke a single word of warmth or affection.

Desperate to force even a fleeting glance from her, I began a spiral of self-destruction.

I drag-raced down dark highways, cut my wrists, and finally, at my own engagement party, drank a glass of poisoned champagne with a smile plastered across my face.

Yet the next morning, I woke up completely unscathed.

And my mother, true to form, never came to check on me.

It wasnt until the third day after the engagement party that I found an unfamiliar phone resting on my nightstand.

The screen was still glowing.

On it was an app I had never seen before.

A new notification popped up.

[Player is nearing death.]

[Transfer control to daughter?]

...

I reached out and tapped the screen.

The game loaded painfully slowly, a single line of text materializing in the center of the display:

[Life Simulator.]

A second later, a character status panel flashed open.

I stared at a face that was identical to my own.

The same name: Gwen.

The same birthday.

The same age.

Even the faint, tiny mole just beneath my right eye was perfectly replicated.

My finger hovered over the screen, frozen.

The character attributes were nothing short of flawless.

[Beauty: 100]

[Wealth: 100]

[Health: 100]

[Fortune: 100]

[Connections: 100]

[Wish Fulfillment: 100]

[Loved Status: 99]

I let out a soft, humorless laugh.

It made sense.

This characters profile was a mirror image of my life.

Growing up, I was beautiful, brilliant, wealthy, and possessed an absurd amount of good luck.

Everyone whispered that I was a child favored by God.

But when I scrolled down to the very bottom, the final category was grayed out.

[Motherly Closeness: 0]

I stared at that digital zero, a sudden, heavy tightness squeezing my chest.

Even a game knew the truth.

I had everything.

Except a mother.

I remembered getting a terrible fever when I was a child.

One hundred and three degrees.

My nanny had been on the verge of tears, the family doctor had rushed over in the dead of night, and even my father had stood by the bedside, his brow furrowed with rare concern.

Only my mother sat quietly in the armchair near the headboard, her head bowed, staring at her phone, playing a game.

Delirious with fever, I had reached out, weakly tugging at the edge of her sleeve.

"Mom, please hold me."

Her fingers paused on the screen.

For a fleeting, hopeful second, I thought she was finally going to look at me.

But then a crisp notification chime echoed from her phone.

Tapping the glass, she didn't even look up as she muttered,

"Youve had your medicine. Go to sleep."

I slowly pulled my hand back beneath the heavy duvet.

The medicine worked wonders that night.

My fever broke before dawn.

But I lay awake for hours.

Because I couldn't wrap my mind around it.

Why was she willing to give me the best doctors, the most expensive medicine, and the softest blanketsbut couldn't bring herself to hold me, not even once?

During a parent-teacher conference in elementary school, she sat in the very back row, wearing a pristine white coat.

The teacher stood at the podium showering me with praise.

She told the room how bright, well-behaved, and effortless I wasthe easiest child in the entire grade.

The other parents turned to look at my mother, their eyes filled with unmistakable envy.

I clenched the hem of my school uniform skirt.

More than anything, I wanted to hear her praise me.

I even bargained with myself in the quiet corners of my mind: If she just holds me today, I'll stop caring about how she always plays on her phone.

But she just sat there in the back.

Head down.

When the teacher handed me my award and the classroom erupted into applause, she didn't even raise her eyes.

The moment that truly broke me happened when I was sixteen.

I had accompanied her to the hospital for a routine follow-up.

In the sterile corridor, a little girl running too fast tripped and fell right in front of her. Her knee was scraped and bleeding, her face stained with tears.

To my absolute shock, my mother knelt down.

She gently drew a tissue from her purse, wiping away the girl's tears, her voice incredibly soft.

"Don't cry, sweetheart. I'm right here."

Standing just feet away, I froze, the breath catching in my throat.

So, she did know how to comfort a crying child.

She was capable of speaking with such tenderness.

It wasnt that she lacked warmth.

It was just that her warmth was never, ever meant for me.

After we got home, I deliberately tripped and fell right in front of her.

My knee slammed hard against the sharp wooden edge of the coffee table. The pain was sharp and real, and tears immediately welled in my eyes.

I looked up at her, waiting.

She frowned slightly.

"Why are you so careless?"

Her phone buzzed again.

She immediately looked down and went right back to her game.

In that moment, I realized just how pathetic I was.

Back in the present, a sudden surge of desperation took over, and I began frantically tapping the [Motherly Closeness] stat on the screen.

A prompt flashed.

[This value cannot be purchased.]

Refusing to accept it, I tapped it again and again.

[This value cannot be modified by the daughter.]

A bitter laugh escaped my throat.

Of course.

Summer could bring snow.

Lethal poison could lose its venom.

The entire world could adore me.

But never my mother.

I prepared to close the app.

Just as my thumb brushed the back button, the screen flickered violently.

At the very bottom of the character sheet, a line of incredibly faint, translucent text appeared.

[View hidden attributes?]

I paused.

Driven by some inexplicable impulse, I tapped it.

The display went pitch black.

Every single attribute began to rearrange itself.

And there, at the very bottom, a brand-new metric emergedone I had never seen before.

[Maternal Love: 100]

I stared at that glowing "100" for the rest of the night, unable to move.

When dawn finally broke, I took the phone and walked downstairs to find my mother.

She was in the sunroom, a thin shawl draped over her shoulders. Her face was alarmingly pale, her lips completely drained of color.

Yet, her fingers were still wrapped tightly around her phone, the screen brightly lit.

She was still playing that game.

I walked over and stood directly in front of her.

"Mom."

Her fingers stuttered on the screen, but she didn't look up.

I stared down at her, my throat tightening.

"Do you love me?"

She finally raised her eyes to meet mine.

For a split second, a wave of sheer anxiety washed over me.

I told myself that if she said yesjust onceeven if it was a whisper, even if her face remained cold, I would let go of all those years of quiet resentment. I would forget it all.

But she merely stared at me, her complexion somehow turning even more ghostly.

"Why are you asking this again?"

My hands slowly clenched into fists.

"Because I need to know."

She looked down, averting her gaze.

"Stop acting out."

Those words again.

I had heard them a thousand times growing up.

When I begged her to hold me: Stop acting out.

When I begged her to celebrate my birthday with me: Stop acting out.

Even when I woke up from drinking poison, searching for any shred of concern on her face, she had looked at me and said: Stop acting out.

My father came down the stairs just in time to hear her.

His face darkened instantly, and he pulled me protectively behind his back.

"I told you, Gwen, don't bother asking her."

"If she were capable of loving you, would you have spent your childhood crying yourself to sleep?"

My mothers fingers curled slightly around her phone.

My father let out a harsh, mocking laugh.

"Why the pity act now, Diana?"

"When she was burning up with a fever, you were glued to that game. When she won awards at school, you were on that game. Even when she almost died at her own engagement party, you couldnt tear yourself away from that damn game."

"Have you ever cared about anything other than that stupid phone?"

My mother kept her head bowed, her shawl slipping loosely off her shoulders.

It was only then that I noticed how terribly thin she had become. She looked fragile, like a piece of paper that could drift away in the wind.

Yet, she didn't utter a single word of defense.

A hollow ache bloomed in my chest.

I wished she would fight back. Even if she just screamed, Thats not true!at least I could cling to that lie to comfort myself.

But she remained silent.

She accepted the silent accusation, behaving as though she truly was the cold-blooded mother everyone believed her to be.

My father gently patted my head, his voice softening.

"Sweetheart, don't waste your breath on her."

"Daddy loves you."

"Whatever you want, I will always give it to you."

I looked up at him.

"What if I just want my mom?"

My father fell silent for a long moment.

Then, he said softly,

"She isn't worth it."

As those words hung in the air, I saw the last remaining drop of color drain from my mothers face.

The second time I sought her out was later that afternoon.

She was in the study. The curtains were half-drawn, plunging the room into shadow.

When I pushed the door open, she was hunched over, coughing. It was a soft, muffled sound, as if she were desperately trying to hide it.

The moment she saw me, she quickly flipped her phone face down on the desk.

I stood in the doorway, watching her.

"Are you sick?"

"I'm fine," she said.

"You look terrible."

She knit her brows.

"Get out."

I let out a dry laugh.

"See? Youre always like this."

"I ask if you love me, and you tell me to stop acting out. I ask if you're okay, and you tell me to get out."

"Mom, what did I do to make you hate me so much?"

She closed her eyes.

"You are perfect."

"Then why can't you just hold me?"

The air in the room grew heavy and still.

Outside the door, the soft footsteps of a maid approached and then quickly scurried away.

Everyone in this household knew the unspoken rule: I had everything, but I didn't have a mother.

That night, I went to find her for the third time.

She was sitting in a dark corner of the living room. The lights were off, and the cold blue glow of her phone screen illuminated her face.

She looked even ghostlier than she had that morning.

Yet, the instant she noticed me, her immediate instinct was to hide her phone behind her back.

In that fraction of a second, the last trace of my fragile sadness crystallized into pure, unadulterated anger.

I pulled out the mysterious phone, unlocked the game screen, and thrust it directly in front of her face.

On the left, the grayed-out stat read:

[Motherly Closeness: 0]

On the right, a blindingly bright stat glared:

[Maternal Love: 100]

"Mom," I stared at her, demanding answers. "Tell me. What on earth does this mean?"

The moment her eyes registered the screen, her entire body went rigid.

A second later, she lunged to her feet, a look of sheer, frantic panic taking over her face for the very first time.

"Where did you get this?"

I looked at her, suddenly finding the situation morbidly funny.

I thought she never cared about me.

Why was she so terrified of a silly mobile game?

She reached out, trying to snatch the phone from my hand.

I instinctively took a step back, keeping it out of her reach.

My father walked through the front door right then. Seeing my tear-stained face, his expression hardened instantly.

He shot a freezing glare at my mother.

"What are you doing to her now?"

My mother ignored him entirely, her eyes locked on the screen in my hand.

Her lips parted, her voice incredibly hoarse.

"Don't touch that game."

The very last sliver of hope in my heart withered away.

"So there really is a secret. Something you've been keeping from me."

She closed her eyes.

"Just be good."

I hated those words more than anything.

My whole life, she never held me, never comforted me, never explained herself, and never let me near her. She only ever demanded that I "be good."

As if being good was enough to pretend I wasn't bleeding inside.

Turning on my heel, I ran upstairs, slammed my bedroom door, and locked it.

The game was still open on my bed.

I began tapping wildly on the screen.

Tapping the main interface did nothing. Tapping the stats yielded no change. But when I clicked a tiny, overlooked gray gear icon in the top right corner, a prompt popped up.

[View Mother-Player Action Log?]

I tapped it.

The very first entry dated back to when I was seven years old.

[Target is unconscious with high fever.]

[Mother-Player made unauthorized contact with forehead 17 times.]

[Penalty: Pain synchronization for 24 hours.]

I froze, my breath caught in my throat.

I barely remembered that fever from when I was seven. I only recalled floating in a warm, delirious haze, sensing a cool, gentle hand repeatedly soothing my burning forehead in the dark.

The hand had been incredibly light and comforting. When I woke up, I had asked my nanny if it was her, but she had denied it.

The next morning, my mother had come down with a high fever too.

My father had stood by her bedroom door, his tone dripping with sarcasm.

"The kid gets sick, and she has to fake it to get attention."

Back then, I had believed him.

I scrolled down, my heart hammering against my ribs.

[Target wins first place at parent-teacher conference.]

[Mother-Player attempted to praise target.]

[Speech blocked.]

[Penalty: Loss of voice for 3 days.]

I remembered that day clearly. I had deliberately paraded my blue ribbon around the living room.

I wanted her to notice me. I wanted her to say I'm so proud of you, sweetheart. Just once.

But she had sat silently on the sofa, never uttering a single word all evening.

I had assumed she was just ignoring me.

It turned out she physically couldn't speak.

The log entries kept scrolling down, one heart-wrenching line after another.

[Target crying at night, age 13.]

[Mother-Player made unauthorized entry into target's bedroom.]

[Duration: 7 minutes.]

[Penalty: Sleep deprivation for 72 hours.]

It all came rushing back.

I had been ostracized by my best friends at school, crying silently into my pillow until I could barely breathe.

The next morning, I woke up to a glass of warm water and an unwrapped strawberry candy sitting on my nightstand.

I had assumed the nanny left it there.

My eyes burned with hot tears, but I forced myself to keep reading.

The final entry was from the night of my engagement party.

[Target initiated self-destruction/death event.]

[Mother-Player initiated forced correction.]

[Violation level: Maximum.]

The penalty section below was obscured by a thick block of black pixels. I couldn't click it open, but a stark red warning was plastered beneath it:

[Player's remaining authority is insufficient.]

Suddenly, her recent sickly pale complexion made sense.

She had grown so painfully thin, looking as though a gust of wind would shatter her.

A soft, hesitant knock sounded at my door.

The latch clicked, and the door swung open.

My mother stood in the doorway, her face terrifyingly pale.

She stared at the phone in my hands, her voice barely a whisper.

"Don't look anymore."

"Please."

I looked at her.

She had to lean heavily against the doorframe just to keep her balance.

Yet, seeing the screen in my hands, she summoned every ounce of her remaining strength to take a trembling step forward.

"Gwen, please... give the phone back to Mom."

I clutched the phone to my chest, and my tears finally broke free, spilling down my cheeks.

"Give it back to you?" I thrust the screen toward her, my voice shaking violently. "So you can keep me in the dark? So I can go on believing you hate me?"

"So I can keep acting like a fool, begging you to hold me for twenty-six years?"

Her eyes filled with a devastating, silent agony. Her lips trembled, but she couldn't find the words.

I stared at her, my chest tearing apart with a physical pain.

It wasnt that she didn't love me.

It was that she couldn't.

"Mom, you love me. You've always loved me. Why couldn't you just tell me?"

"Do you have any idea what it was like? Every night, I wondered what was wrong with me. Was I not smart enough? Not good enough? Is that why my own mother hated me?"

My mother took another agonizing step toward me.

Suddenly, the phone in my hand began to vibrate violently, the screen flashing a blood-red warning.

[WARNING: Mother-Player is approaching target character.]

[Proximity restriction is about to trigger.]

Before I could process the words, my mother was standing right in front of me.

She looked at me, tears streaming silently down her pale cheeks.

"My sweet girl."

My entire body went rigid.

It was the very first time she had ever called me that.

The next second, completely ignoring the shrill, deafening alarms blaring from the phone, she reached out and pulled me into her arms.

The embrace was incredibly gentle.

I stood frozen in her arms, terrified to move.

I wanted to wrap my arms around her.

But I was terrified.

I feared that if I reached out, she would vanish like a ghost.

But then, her hand softly patted my back.

My hands began to shake as I finally reached up, clutching the fabric of her coat.

Her touch was awkward, tentative, and filled with a desperate care.

"Don't cry," she whispered. "Mom is here."

I sobbed, the tears choking my throat.

But we had only held each other for a few seconds before her body suddenly shuddered violently.

A dark crimson cough of blood escaped her lips, staining her pristine white shawl.

"Mom!"

I panicked, desperately trying to support her sagging weight.

My father burst into the room, alerted by the commotion. When he saw the blood splattered across the floor, his face drained of color.

He lunged forward to pull me away, but I violently shoved his hand off.

"Don't touch her!" I screamed.

My father frozen, stunned.

I dropped to my knees, cradling my mother in my lap, frantically wiping the blood from her chin with my sleeve.

But no matter how hard I wiped, the blood wouldn't stop.

Yet, a soft, peaceful smile spread across her pale lips.

She looked at me, her eyes filled with a tender warmth, as if her deepest wish had finally been fulfilled.

"I wanted... to hold you every single day, my sweet girl."

"But the system said... if I got close to you, you would lose your fortune. Your perfect life."

"You would feel pain. You would get sick, meet misfortune, and get hurt by this world."

"Your mother was weak."

"I had to pretend I didn't love you."

I shook my head violently, tears blinding me.

"I don't care about fortune! I don't want to be the main character! I just want you to live!"

She raised her hand, her cool fingertips brushing against my cheek.

This time, the system's alarms shrieked so loudly they threatened to split my skull.

But she didn't pull away.

"My baby was meant to be loved by the whole world."

"But Mom forgot..."

"...all you ever wanted was me."

Her hand slipped limply from my face.

The screen in my hand flared with a blinding crimson light.

[Mother-Player HP: 0.]

[Original player is disconnecting.]

[Direct bloodline detected. Transfer system control to daughter?]