Magnus Chane woke to the familiar rumble of the 5:12 a.m. freight train shaking his underground dorm room. Most students avoided this building because of the noise, but Magnus didn't mind. Being rattled awake by passing locomotives beat being woken by a roommate who'd actually notice he existed.
He shoved his hair back, blinked at the ceiling, and waited for his heartbeat to stop keeping time with the train. Another day of being average. Invisible. Predictable.
Just how he liked it.
Magnus wasn't unpopular in the hated sense — just the forgotten sense. People remembered to hold doors for him but forgot his name instantly. Professors called him "you there" more times than he cared to admit. At parties, he blended into the background so well he once got mistaken for furniture.
In other words, if "socially invisible" were a superpower, he'd be a superhero.
Ironic, really, considering his namesake — a flamboyant warlock from the urban-fantasy series his mom obsessed over way back in the late 2000s or early 2010s — was anything but ordinary. In high school, people even told him he looked a bit like the guy, probably thanks to his father's Asian genetics doing their thing. Hard to confirm, though, since he'd never met the man.
He didn't complain. He had comics, a scholarship, a mother who sent him far too many cat memes, and the quiet certainty that someday he'd figure life out.
Late, probably.
Awkwardly, definitely.
But eventually.
He stretched, yawned, and muttered, "Maybe today someone will actually remember my—"
Ping.
Magnus froze.
Was that his phone? Laptop? Smoke detector? Did his room even have a smoke detector?
Shrugging it off, he dragged himself into the tiny bathroom and started brushing his teeth. The cracked mirror reflected the same forgettable face it always did — now with added glitchiness, courtesy of the lingering train vibrations.
He spat, rinsed, reached for his towel…
…and froze.
A thin blue rectangle flickered at the edge of his reflection like a bad AR filter.
He blinked.
It blinked back.
Then it locked into place, floating neatly above his head:
[Name: Magnus Chane
Level: 1
Interest: N/A
Popularity: 2%
Sexual History: 0 times (0 known partners)]
Magnus stared.
The menu stared back, brutally honest.
"What the…?!"
He squeezed his eyes shut. Opened them. Still there.
"Okay. Too much caffeine. Or not enough. Or sleep paralysis, but vertical."
He waved a hand through it. Nothing.
He poked the air. Still nothing.
But the box remained, smug and physics-defiant.
By the time he threw on a hoodie and slung his backpack over one shoulder, he'd convinced himself he'd imagined the whole thing. People didn't get floating menus. That was anime logic. Bad anime logic.
He stepped outside into the brisk Monday morning air…
…and everything went to hell.
Menus.
Dozens of them.
Floating above every passing student.
A girl with pink headphones walked by, scrolling her phone:
[Name: Jenna Morales
Level: 3
Interest: 0%
Popularity: 43%
Sexual History: 12 times (48 known partners)]
Magnus stared.
Then stared harder.
"That has to be a glitch," he whispered.
Jenna breezed past him — blissfully unaware her stats were being presented as a great mystery to the one student least likely to talk to her. But to be fair, she didn't even know he existed.
More students passed:
[Name: Gavin Price
Level: 1
Interest: 1%
Popularity: 20%
Sexual History: 3 times (2 known partners)]
[Name: Mira Patel
Level: 4
Interest: 0%
Popularity: 58%
Sexual History: 22 times (1 known partners)]
[Name: Mia Chen
Level: 2
Interest: 0%
Popularity: 14%
Sexual History: 10 times (3 known partner)]
It was like the world got modded by a sleep-deprived dating-sim developer.
And Magnus?
He was probably the awkward, glitchy NPC.
A girl brushed past him, muttering an apology without looking up. Her Interest stat was a flat 0%.
He knew he was invisible, but seeing it quantified still stung.
By the time he reached his elective, Intro to Lit, he was sweating. He slid into a back-row seat, heart pounding. The professor — Sexual History: 1269 times (1 known partners) — good for him, but Magnus didn't feel like he needed to know about his professor's happy marriage life — droned on about symbolism.
His gaze drifted across the room.
And then he saw her.
Alejandra Reyes — Alex to her friends. Cheer captain. Straight-A student. The girl who could shift a room's orbit just by stepping inside. Campus royalty.
Front row. Latina. Striking features. Dark waves in a flawless cascade. Curves that turned heads. A killer smile. Effortlessly radiant.
And above her head:
[Name: Alejandra "Alex" Reyes
Level: 9
Interest: 0%
Popularity: 98%
Sexual History: 105 times (4 known partners)]
"Wow."
That was all his brain managed.
Then a voice — the kind of monotone TTS relic from before he was even born — chimed in his skull:
[System Alert: Welcome, Host Magnus Chane. Initializing Quest Line.]
[Conquest Quest Initiated: Seduce and Sleep with Target — Alejandra "Alex" Reyes. Time Limit: Complete by Sunday at Midnight.]
"What?! How?! In what universe would she even look at me?!"
The system ignored him.
[Random Power to assist with the mission: Please Stand By.]
A glowing wheel spun in front of his eyes like he'd wandered into a cursed game show.
It clicked to a stop:
[Telekinesis Lv1 (Trial).]
[Reward: Permanent Power Retention + Stat Boosts.]
[Penalty for Failure: Heart Failure. And possibly excruciating pain. Good luck!]
Magnus stiffened.
"Heart Failure?!"
"Excruciating pain?!"
A week to seduce Alejandra Reyes or die? And how was telekinesis supposed to help with… that?
He felt sick.
Forcing it? Absolutely not. He didn't spend nearly two decades idolizing Spider-Man and Nightwing just to become a creep with superpowers.
If anything, he'd rather bite the dust before going down that road. Better to die a geek than to live as a monster.
But also… curiosity.
"Do I… actually have telekinesis?"
He stared at a pencil on his desk. Concentrated.
The pencil wobbled… floated… rose an inch.
"Holy…!"
Blushing, he dropped it as Alex turned — completely oblivious to his existence.
Class ended in a blur. Magnus bolted for the hallway. Villain route was definitely not an option, which meant… he needed to get her attention the normal way.
He spotted her at her locker. Heart hammering, he approached like a man entering a boss battle.
"Hey, uh, Alejandra? You dropped this."
He held out… absolutely nothing.
"…Crap."
He focused on her notebook — the one peeking out of her bag. It fluttered loose and fell at her feet. She bent to pick it up; Magnus swooped in too fast.
"I think that's yours! Notebook. For… notes. About books. Or whatever."
Smooth, Magnus. Real smooth.
She arched an eyebrow. Her friends snickered.
The menu flickered: Interest: 1%.
Progress? Technically.
"Thanks…?" She said, definitely did not know his name.
"Magnus! Chane. From Lit. We sit kinda… near."
He gave her the smile of a very nervous golden retriever.
"Right. Cool, but I've got practice." She waved and walked off.
Interest: still 1%.
Magnus slumped against the lockers.
One percent in one day.
At this rate he'd be dead by the weekend.
But it wasn't zero. Plenty of rom-coms let the underdog win, right?
Day one down.
Six to go.
Time to level up his game — literally — before the system turned him into a cautionary tale.