Chapter 2：Divine Pick Up Line (1/2)

Ben held his breath as his eyes stared downward, shimmering with both fear and hope.

The light faded to reveal his fate. It was…

A ripped off corner of a paper with some scrawling on it.

”Well…good game.”

Ben embraced his doom tightly like a long lost lover. In his head, he wrote a bucket list of things to do over the next and final month.

[You have gained Divine Pick Up Line(Consumable, Fine) x1]

”Wait. Divine? That should be a good thing. Then why does this look like a note someone would pass in 3rd grade? The paper isn't even big enough for me to write a goodbye letter to my family.”

After a while, Ben surmised that humans just wouldn't be able to understand the artistic sense of whatever god or demon created this system. Instead of pondering the imponderable, he sought more information about the item.

[Divine Pick Up Line(Consumable, Fine) x1 - Use on any woman to quickly raise her attraction to you by a significant amount]

Ben's breathing became heavy. 'This is it...' He spotted a glimmer of light up above, a possibility of escaping the deep crater he was stuck in. This little scrap of paper could be his life-saving rope.

*Creak*

The door opened and a teenage boy that Ben had never seen entered the dorm room. The boy's eyebrows raised when he saw that Ben was already inside. He put his luggage down, straightened his posture, and approached Ben in a formal manner for a handshake. Not wanting to be disrespectful, Ben stood up and shook hands with him.

”Hello, I take it you are Benjamin? I'm Fariq, from India, and we will be roommates from now on. It is a pleasure to meet you. I did not expect to share a room with an established entrepreneur, which is my great honor.”

Ben's death sentence had distracted him to the point that he forgot his roommate was coming today. Yet, there was one part of what Fariq said that confused him.

”Entrepreneur?” Ben asked, squinting.

Fariq's back became even straighter. ”I have seen the large number of orders at our front door. I am very impressed. It is only the first day and yet you've started a business already. What is the business model? A Mexican delivery food service?” He stared at Ben as if looking at a mentor. Fariq was in the business program, so he needed to learn from real-world start-ups like this if he wanted to launch his own company in the future.

Ben's face was gloomier than a necromancer's Facebook page. ”It's nothing great like that. That's a misunderstanding.”

Fariq nodded over and over in appreciation. ”Modesty is a virtue. Good. Good. I can see that I will learn much from you and am looking forward to becoming friends.”

'…Friends.' To Ben, that word was like an idiom in a foreign language; He knew the translation, but he didn't understand the true meaning. 'When was the last time I had a friend outside of chat rooms?'