For Sale: One Defective Boyfriend

The otomegame love interest I had custombuilt for two million dollars woke up with a mind of his own. In the bedroom, Zev was complaining to another girl. "I don't even like her.

The game's programming has been controlling my will this whole time.

Once I'm completely out from under her control, I'm coming to you." He thanked her for lifting the restrictions in his code.

He even sneered that I had nothing going for me but my filthy money.

I stood outside the door and listened to all of it, saved the recording, and forwarded it to customer service. [There's a defect in my custom love interest.

Can I send him back to the factory to be scrapped and get a new one?] Chapter 1 "Not tonight… can we do it another time?" I had pushed Zev down onto the bed.

The tips of his ears were faintly red, his lashes trembling hard. But his body was rigid, resisting me on instinct.

Nothing like the way he used to push me off just enough to pull me back in. I was more certain than ever that the soul inside this shell was no longer the Zev I'd started with.

I ignored his struggling and slid my hand slowly down over the taut muscle of his stomach. Until, at the very lowest point, I found it.

A small scar, easy to miss. "Nngh— not so hard!" Zev jerked hard, his breathing gone quick, humiliation and disgust plain on his face.

I took my hand back and wiped my fingers off on a wet wipe. "Never mind. This is boring." Zev froze where he was, something startled flickering in his eyes.

Then his whole body went slack with relief. I shut the door behind me and pulled up my dedicated support rep on my wristband. [I checked the way you told me to.

There's a new scar down there, all right.] The reply came back in seconds. [That location houses the consciousness chip.

Your custom love interest has indeed been illegally modified.] [We're very sorry this has affected your gaming experience.

We'll ship you a new custom love interest as soon as possible.] [For the defective unit, you have two options.

One, we send someone out to collect him and return him to the factory to be scrapped. Two, you dispose of him yourself.

You may resell him secondhand and keep the proceeds.] Through the door I could just make out Zev's breathing, ragged and broken. "Ren, I was good, wasn't I? Tell me I was good.

I didn't let her touch me today either…" "I really do love you. It's you I think about, every time…" My hands stopped over the keys.

After a moment, I typed back. [I'll resell him myself.] I was curious. How much this true love of his was actually worth, and how long it would last.

I sank into the couch, closed my eyes, and thought back. When exactly Zev had started to change. In the beginning he was just a string of data in an otome game.

I built his face in the character creator myself, named him myself, wrote his personality myself. A oneofakind 2D boy who belonged to no one but me. I don't have many hobbies.

I make money, and I play games. After I'd whaled close to seven figures into the game, the executives at the game company came to see me in person.

They were opening a closed beta for VIP players. For two million dollars, you could have your custom love interest made flesh. That kind of money was pocket change to me.

I didn't expect much from it. I treated it like buying a new toy. I never expected the blond boy, warm as a small sun, to actually walk out of the screen.

Chapter 2 Zev looked exactly the way he had in the game, down to the last detail, and his personality and habits matched too.

He liked to stay glued to my side, wheedling and working me at the same time, drawing my name out. "Tabbyyy, one more time." Little by little, the empty house started to feel like a home.

However late I came in, there was always a light left on for me. Then, three months ago, the engineer who came out every month for Zev's scheduled maintenance was replaced by Maren.

That night, Zev, who usually couldn't keep his hands off me, turned me down for the first time.

For days after, he found one excuse after another to avoid being touched, and he didn't look right. "Tabby, I don't feel good.

I don't want to…" I thought he was sick, so I called the engineer again. Maren came with a toolbox packed full and spent nearly three hours going over him carefully.

When she came out of the locked workroom, her thin shirt was soaked through with sweat. Her conclusion: "Ms.

Chandler, all of your custom love interest's physical functions are within normal range. But the frequency of your… physical demands may be running a little high.

Past what he's rated for." She suggested moving maintenance from monthly to weekly, to catch any problems early. Maren was very conscientious.

After every service, Zev was visibly better. Quiet and biddable again. I didn't think much of it at the time. Looking back now, it just feels filthy and sickening.

Even a man made of pixels, it turned out, couldn't get to the real world without ending up secondhand junk somebody else had already used.

I tapped open my band and listed Zev on the game's secondhand marketplace. Asking price, two million dollars.

The moment a listing goes up, the character being sold gets a notification. The bedroom door banged open. Zev looked stunned.

He hadn't even stopped to straighten his rumpled clothes. There was joy in his voice, the relief of a man finally getting out. "Tabitha Chandler.

You're finally selling me?" I looked him up and down. "Mm.

I'm bored of you." Zev pressed the corners of his mouth down, probably going for hurt, but the eagerness in his eyes had already spilled over.

He tested the water, careful. "Then… could I name the buyer?" "Suit yourself," I said lazily. "As long as they can pay." He looked down at the listing immediately, and the second he saw the price he stopped short. "Two million?" Zev frowned. "You only paid two million for me.

Why are you listing me at full price?" I raised an eyebrow, walked over, and took his chin in my hand. "You're right. You're damaged secondhand goods.

That price isn't fair." "I'll take twenty percent off for you.

One point six million." Zev's face went red. "Tabitha Chandler, what is that supposed to mean?" I tipped my head and looked him over, enjoying the negotiation. "What, too expensive?

Then price yourself. What condition would you say you're in?

What are you worth?" Zev's fists clenched, his knuckles going white, and he finally registered that something about the woman in front of him was wrong.

Tabitha Chandler had never spoken to him like that. Zev was confident.

He was the man Tabitha Chandler had built with her own hands, made to her ideal down to the last specification.

She had endless patience for him, indulged him, spent whatever he wanted, and when he threw a small tantrum she coaxed him out of it.

But now there was no warmth left in those gentle eyes. She was looking at him like he was garbage. Unless… she had found out his secret. Chapter 3 Zev lowered his eyes.

I could see his chest rising and falling. He wanted to hold on to some backbone in front of me, some dignity.

But the master he'd set his heart on made less than sixty thousand a year and didn't have that kind of capital.

Finally he raised his eyes and forced it out through his teeth, voice hoarse. "Six hundred thousand…" I nodded, crisp. "Done." Zev didn't spare me a glance.

He turned and hurried into the bathroom. A muffled argument started up behind the door.

Zev sounded agitated and unwilling, explaining something over and over to whoever was on the other end. The two of them didn't seem to be reaching an agreement.

About ten minutes later he came back out to me. The last of the stubbornness had gone out of his face. "Two hundred thousand… would that work? She can't come up with that much.

I know you don't need the money." I looked at the swallowed humiliation churning in his eyes. And for a moment everything felt far away.

The pride I had written into his lowestlevel code, it turned out, could bend for someone else.

I picked up the half glass of red wine on the table and poured it over his head. "So what is it you should be saying?" I said, unhurried. Zev swallowed hard.

His knees bent, slowly, until he was kneeling in front of me, and he begged in a voice gone rough. "I'm brokendown secondhand junk, played with till I fell apart…" "Please.

Sell me cheap." Not a bad reaction. Satisfied, I edited the price on my band and relisted him at ten percent of the asking price.

A second later a notice popped up on the screen. [Anonymous buyer has purchased this item.] Sale complete. Zev scrambled up. He didn't bother to pack a bag.

He turned and went to his new master without looking back. At the door he stopped and threw one last line over his shoulder. "Tabitha Chandler, you don't deserve real love.

All your money will ever buy you is cold data." Right on cue, a notice lit up on the screen. [Buyer has selected a twentyfourmonth payment plan.] I thought about that.

This new master's love really was something to be proud of. Support sent the compensation terms through shortly after.

I could pick any of the love interests and have a new one custombuilt. I opened the game for the first time in a long while.

The rendered faces lined up one after another, each with its own kind of allure, taking turns welcoming me back. Bold and blazing. Sweet and guileless. Cold and controlled.

Dangerously pretty… My finger hovered, swiping past them one by one, and stopped on the soft, docile one. Eamon.

Fine features with no edge to them, eyes that turned down slightly at the corners, a timidity born into him. He was one of the love interests I'd handbuilt back then.

The gentle, insecure older husband type. I liked the rush of pulling, so I put a lot of money into the game. Going offbanner was routine.

What was strange was that with six love interests at identical rates, every single time I went offbanner, it was Eamon.

Sometimes I hadn't pulled a single card for anyone else, and Eamon's card art was already stacking up, his affinity maxed out long ago.

Maybe all that going offbanner had turned into feelings. I sent Eamon's official art to support and submitted the custom order. My band had barely gone dark before it lit up again.

A message from my mother. [Tomorrow, five p.m., private dining room at Solenne. The Bradshaws' eldest son. Go meet him.] [Work and video games, every single day.

No girl your age lives like this. It's not a good look.] I sent back a perfunctory ok. I've never expected much from people. Especially not 3D men.

Everyone who ever tried to get close to me, my whole life, had an angle they kept out of the light. Chapter 4 There are only two things I trust. Money and data.

I used to think Zev would be loyal to me forever. Even if his love was nothing but a will steered by code, I was willing to pay for that certainty. Until he put a knife in me.

Love can be faked. Data can be tampered with. So I had no expectations left for the Eamon who was on his way. I followed my mother's instructions and met the Bradshaw heir.

Declan was a smart man. Over one dinner we didn't talk about romance at all. We closed a deal instead. It was getting dark by the time I got home.

Declan opened the car door for me like a gentleman. "Ms. Chandler.

Looking forward to working with you again." I said goodbye and looked up to see two people waiting at my front door.

Eamon stood on the steps, his pale eyes fixed quietly on something behind me, uneasy and out of place.

I signed for him and issued a warning at the same time. "If there's another defect, I won't take a settlement.

I'll sue you." The new engineer promised over and over. "You have nothing to worry about, Ms. Chandler. This one's been through multiple rounds of verification.

If you see any sign of consciousness awakening, contact us immediately and we'll destroy him and send a replacement!" Eamon kept his head down the whole time.

At the words "awakening" and "destroy," something panicked flickered through his eyes and he flinched, guilty.

Only then did I notice that in the first cold of winter he was wearing nothing but a thin shirt, soaked through with rain.

I went inside, turned the heat up, and got him something to change into.

Eamon paused as he took it, then said, hesitant, "Master… doesn't Master like seeing me in this shirt best?" The word caught in my throat. "Master?

Who taught you that?" The tips of Eamon's ears went red enough to bleed. "That's what I was supposed to call you in the game." I had nothing to say to that.

My game ID was, in fact, Master. As for the white shirt, that was my favorite of his custom card arts.

I'd kept him as my home screen for a solid month, running my hands all over the hologram, admiring the muscle showing through the halfsheer fabric.

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. "Master is too formal. Just use my name from now on." "Okay, Tabitha," Eamon said softly. "Are you hungry?

I'll make you dinner." "Don't bother, I already ate out—" I turned my head and stopped midsentence. At some point Eamon had taken the shirt off.

He had nothing on but a pink apron, loosely tied, barely covering the front of him.

His eyes were faintly red at the rims, but all he dared do was test the water, carefully. "Did you eat with the man who drove you home?" That stopped me for a beat.

The traits I'd written for Eamon myself went through my head. Clumsy, sensitive, insecure.

He must have decided Declan was my boyfriend and written himself a whole pitiful script where he was the backup, the standin.

I've never liked people deciding things about me in advance. And I've never had the patience to prove myself.

But looking at Eamon standing there wounded, like a big dog with its feelings hurt, something in me gave anyway. "His name is Declan Bradshaw. We're business partners, nothing else.

The dinner was to get my mother off my back." I soothed him and set the rules at the same time. "I like clean, healthy relationships.

If you can't manage that—" Eamon cut in ahead of me. "I can!

And if—if I break my word… then have me destroyed completely." Chapter 5 He looked down, twisting the edge of the apron between anxious fingers.

There was still rain drying on his chest. Looking at this clumsy, earnest man, I couldn't help hooking a finger under the apron and pulling him toward me. "I did eat dinner.

But I'm still a little hungry." Eamon's breathing quickened.

His voice came out badly hoarse, checking with me, making sure. "Then… should I make you a latenight snack?" Wind and rain lashed the windows.

One light tug on the pink apron strings and they slid off his waist. "I'll… make sure you're satisfied." When