The Gacha Game's Mystery

Old Wang clicked on the game interface again, his fingertip hovering over the "Single Draw" button, like a bomb disposal expert about to press the detonation button. He had already drawn three hundred times today, all useless items and duplicate character shards. He sighed at the phone screen. Qin Che, the handsome virtual boyfriend in the game, still ignored him, as if he were an unreachable bubble.

Since the release of the "Deepspace" game, Old Wang's life had been completely occupied by it. He was like a man possessed, spending a lot of time every day grinding dungeons and doing tasks, with only one goal—to draw Qin Che’s SSR card. For this, he had sold his cherished calligraphy and paintings collected over the years, and even installed a signal booster at home, just to be one step ahead when the card pool was updated.

Today was the last day of the "Limited Card Pool". Old Wang knew that this might be his last hope. He looked at the only 500 yuan left in his account, which was his rent money for next month. He licked his chapped lips, like a gambler tasting the flavor of fate before going all in on the last round.

He took a deep breath and pressed the button.

"Congratulations, you have obtained—Qin Che's N card." The cold mechanical female voice was emotionless, as if mocking his persistence. On the screen, a chibi version of Qin Che revealed an awkward smile, completely lacking the gorgeous special effects of an SSR card.

Old Wang was stunned. He felt like a squeezed lemon, losing all its juice and flavor. He slowly put down his phone and pulled out an old photo frame from the drawer. It was a photo of him and his wife when they were young. In the photo, his wife was smiling brightly, her eyes full of longing for the future. He remembered his wife once saying that they were each other's most precious SSR cards in life.

He looked at the photo and smiled, a smile filled with bitterness and self-deprecation. He decided to use the remaining money to buy a bouquet of flowers for his wife. It had been a long time since he last gave her flowers.

Old Wang walked out of his house, through the neighborhood, and arrived at a flower shop. He carefully selected a bouquet of fresh roses. Just as he was about to pay, the morning news on the flower shop's TV was playing: "Deepspace" game company announced that to celebrate the game's first anniversary, they would be giving all players a "super welfare reward," and all players would receive a free self-selected SSR card.

Old Wang looked at the announcement on the TV screen, holding the roses in his hand, a look of crying and laughing on his face. He suddenly remembered the prompt that always appeared when clicking the draw button in the game: Please do not be overly addicted to the game, real life is the most real.

He hugged the flowers tighter, turned around, and walked briskly towards home. He decided to cook a sumptuous dinner today and have a good chat with his wife about their ordinary and beautiful real life that he had forgotten. He suddenly realized that what he really needed to "draw" was not the virtual boyfriend in the game, but the treasure he had already possessed in real life but had ignored.