My NPC Husband

Late one night, indie game developer Leo spots a glowing golden UI box floating above his reserved, elite architect husband Ethan’s head — only Leo can see it. The interface displays a real-time “Love Score” from Leo’s unreleased AI companion dating simulator. Backend records show player “Ethan_C” has been bound to the system for six full months.

Leo unlocks the hidden module and finds Ethan built a custom “Ethan_Mode”: he imported six years of private notes, photo annotations and voice memos, then paired the system with his wearable biometric tracker to log every shift in his feelings for Leo. Thirty layers of hidden surprises unfold, starting with a 70-point “love at first sight” rating from their first meeting six years ago, a quiet whispered “I love you” while Leo slept one spring, and a house in Rainford Suburb that Ethan refined for years before completing it. The system pulls up shared AR memory flashbacks and generates daily quests: wear Ethan’s old college hoodie to work, find “his favorite scent”, reenact the day they first met.

When the UI finally reads *Emotion Value Full. Cap is 9999. It simply stops increasing*, Leo understands the system was never the source of their love — it was only Ethan’s long-awaited way to express it.