Williams Everett, a young man whose current life was just as normal as every other person could wish for, sat in his minimalist apartment staring at the ceiling with the same empty expression he wore every single day.
Graduate from the University of Oxford with a PhD in Quantum Cryptography, he had done his master's in International Relations and had a very aspiring future ahead of him according to everyone who knew him.
He worked in an intelligence company and earned a six-figure salary every year, even his colleagues at work praised him for how excellent he had done for himself considering he came from absolutely nothing.
Like every other story he had a humble beginning—he used to be an orphan shuffled between foster homes until he aged out of the system, but now he was a businessman plenty of people looked up to as some kind of inspiration for pulling himself up by his bootstraps.
Yet with so much he had achieved, William felt his life was too boring, too mechanical, too suffocatingly predictable in ways that made him want to scream into the void just to feel something different.
Everyday he woke up, tried to look his best with those expensive suits that cost more than most people's monthly rent, went to work and sucked up to his seniors with fake smiles and calculated compliments to earn more future benefits while trying to make an impression on the juniors by pretending he actually gave a damn about their problems.
He hated that kind of life with a passion that burned quietly beneath his carefully constructed professional facade, he wanted to be free from the expectations and the corporate ladder climbing and the networking events where everyone spoke in the same hollow platitudes, in control of his own life instead of constantly meeting other people's expectations like some kind of performing monkey, and although William couldn't do anything about it without throwing away everything he had worked for, he had one escape that kept him sane through the monotony.
Novels.
They made him feel better in ways nothing else could because when he opened those pages or scrolled through those chapters, he wasn't Williams Everett the orphan turned successful analyst who had to prove himself worthy of the air he breathed, he was someone else entirely living lives far more interesting than his own. The fantasy worlds with their magic systems and power hierarchies, the cultivation novels where hard work actually meant something beyond quarterly performance reviews, the academy stories where the protagonist could punch an arrogant young master without worrying about HR violations—these were his sanctuaries from a reality that had become unbearably dull despite all his material success.
He devoured them voraciously during his commute, during his lunch breaks, during those late nights when sleep felt like just another obligation he had to fulfill, reading everything from the masterfully written to the absolute garbage because at least garbage was entertaining in its own special way.
Then he stumbled upon one specific novel, more like an erotic kind of novel called "Celestial Academy: Conquest of Hearts and Realms" which he felt made no sense with its protagonist who somehow bedded every single female character through the power of existing and its plot that seemed to forget important details every other chapter like the author was making it up as they went along.
William had hate-read through two hundred chapters out of spite before he finally couldn't take it anymore and opened the comment section to type furiously: "This novel is absolutely brain-dead garbage and I'm convinced the author wrote this entire thing with one hand while high on paint thinner because there's no other explanation for how the MC can be this much of a spineless dense idiot while simultaneously having women throw themselves at him for literally no reason, the power system makes zero sense, the academy setting is just window dressing for poorly written smut scenes, and I've seen more character development in a fortune cookie, please for the love of everything holy get a beta reader or at least a basic understanding of cause and effect."
He hit send with the satisfaction of someone who had finally released months of pent-up frustration, closed his laptop, and went to bed feeling slightly better about wasting his time on such a monumentally stupid story.
Only for him to wake up the next day not in his apartment but in an unfamiliar room with unfamiliar furniture and an unfamiliar face staring back at him from the mirror across the room, a face that was younger and more handsome than his own but definitely not his, and the moment that realization hit him like a freight train, glowing text appeared in his vision like some kind of augmented reality display.
[Welcome, Williams Everett]
[You have been transported to the world of "Celestial Academy: Conquest of Hearts and Realms"]
[Character Status: William Cross - Minor Extra Character (Mob Student)]
[Current Location: Cross Family Estate, Three Days Before Academy Entrance Ceremony]
William—no, William Cross now apparently—felt his eye twitch as he processed what was happening because this couldn't be real, this had to be some kind of stress-induced psychotic break or maybe he had died from an aneurysm and this was his brain's last desperate firing of neurons before everything went dark.
But then more text appeared and shattered any hope this was just a bizarre dream.
[Warning: Anomaly Detected]
[You are Cursed]
[Curse Type: Mark of Irresistible Desire]
[Effect: Both Heroines and Villainesses will feel an unnatural attraction toward you that intensifies with proximity and interaction, causing them to develop obsessive tendencies and possessive behaviors that escalate into yandere-like characteristics regardless of their original personality traits, this curse cannot be removed through normal means and will affect all major female characters within the narrative]
William stared at the floating text with the kind of expression someone might have if they opened their bank statement to find out they somehow owed money to every government on Earth because this was exactly the kind of stupid cursed blessing garbage that the original novel would have pulled except now he was the one stuck with it.
[Curse Compensation System Activated]
[Due to the severe disadvantage of the curse, a reward system has been implemented]
[Condition: Successfully achieve intimate relations with any cursed-affected character]
[Reward: Acquisition of Overpowered Traits and Skills corresponding to the character's narrative importance]
[Current Available Traits: None]
[Unlock conditions will be revealed as you progress]
William sat down on the expensive-looking bed in this stranger's room that was apparently his now and tried very hard not to laugh hysterically because the universe had looked at his comfortable boring life and decided to throw him into a third-rate erotic academy novel with a curse that would turn every important female character into a dangerously obsessed woman who wanted him, and the only way to gain power in this world was to actually go through with what the original novel's protagonist did.