He gives it a carefully-considered sixty seconds.

And then he slides the little arrow left again.

This time, he gets up, leaving all his stuff in his seat.

He starts unbuttoning his pants again before he’s gotten fully out the door.

Camillo puts the arrow back where it belongs, while he rethinks the nature of the universe.

Ethan stops in his tracks, and then nearly sprints the rest of the way out of the classroom.

(A little +10 pops up on the screen before fading slowly into the background. It’s unclear for exactly what, but he is 10 pearls richer now.)

So he has ... a magic ... phone ... app.

With gachas.

Camillo does the only reasonable thing and checks out the store. Maybe there are more options now that the tutorial has freed him from its clutches.

There are many, many more options.

There’s two tabs within the store, now. One of them has a countdown timer, and evidently refreshes at midnight. It has items like $1000 (10/10 available) and Subtool Draw Ticket (3/3 available) and Favorable Vote (1/1 available).

The others would take a long time to finish reading.

If he scrolls and skims, he’ll see items like Novel Leukemia Treatment and Manned Moon Landing and Voting Age Bill and Improved Saltwater Filtration and Flawless Transcript and Russian Coup.

Oh.

Oh, wow. Oh. Oh.

Those are ... available. For pearls. For numbers of pearls that are ... large ... but not ... unachievable. Not if it keeps giving him ten pears here and ten pearls there and -- this had better not be one of those apps where it's super generous with the currency at the beginning and then gets all stingy.

Even just the money -- a thousand dollars is a lot of money. He could get a new phone. ... he probably shouldn't get a new phone. He could get a new laptop. He could get a queen-sized bed.

He could cure leukemia. All of those cute sad pictures of kids on coin boxes at McDonald's -- gone.

Can he still add people to his, uh, stable.

Yes, he can.

He has, apparently, 9/10 slots remaining.

Oh. Shit.

Well, important question: can he kick Ethan out?? He doesn't want to waste a slot on Ethan. He has no interest in following Ethan around all the time trying to make virtual currency off him.

He can! It asks him if he’s sure, then—

Would you like to reset Ethan before removing him from the Stable?

YES        NO

What did he even -- oh, right, the hands. Ethan can have normal hands back.

He returns to 10/10 slots remaining.

Oh shit is this a situation where it's free the first time and then it costs pearls to add people to the Stable after that. How many pearls. Did he just accidentally softlock himself out of the magic app.

There is a pearl cost next to every name in his second picture. Luckily, it’s 0 this time.

Thank fucking god.

...does he have to use his live camera to add someone to the Stable, or can he upload a photo from his library. Inquiring minds want to know.

There’s no way to add a picture from his camera roll. It’s live or nothing.

Camillo will (resentfully) wait for the end of chem class to go find Z.

Towards the end of class, Ethan returns, looking moderately harrowed. There’s a little whispering about it.

Z is hanging out on a bench just outside the building with a rapidly depleting takeout box of chow mein.

He waves lazily as Camillo approaches.

Camillo waves back, pulling up the app camera with his other hand.

There are 5 iridescent stars next to Z’s name.

Adding him apparently costs 1500 0 pearls.

Camillo is literally the smartest person on Earth.

He adds Z immediately.

"Hey you!" 

“Hey! I saved you the fortune cookies!”

Z appears, lovingly rendered and spinnable, on his screen.

(There’s a button labeled TRAITS, a button labeled LOG, a little checkbox labeled Show Clothing…

"Is that because I'm your favorite?"

Camillo joins Z on the bench and shows him the phone screen.

“—I’m, uh, on your phone?”

(Z’s pearls per minute drop instantly from 1/m to 0/m, and his name is greyed out in the interface.)