"First, let's break this whole mindset of you being ugly," Ember said. "It's annoying sometimes… and sometimes it's cute. Go ask someone out—anyone." She looked around at the people walking down the street.
Ashborn narrowed his eyes at her but said nothing, choosing to ignore her. He had no interest in being rejected again.
"If they reject you… I don't know, I'll give you my bra," Ember added with a look of disdain. "Perverts like you are into that kind of stuff."
Ashborn's face darkened immediately.
"First, I'm not a pervert. Secondly, you're too flat to even think about using the word 'bra.' When someone imagines a flat surface, you're the first thing that comes to mind. You're so perfectly flat that if someone stood on you and stepped off, they'd go crazy thinking the whole world was tilted." Ashborn snapped, his voice sharp with frustration.
Ember's body trembled with rage. Her teeth cracked from how tightly she was clenching her jaw. Ashborn was ready to keep going, but he wisely stopped, realizing Ember just might kill him if he pushed her any further.
To quickly change the subject, he turned and approached a random, nice-looking girl. She blinked at him in stunned confusion as Ashborn awkwardly rubbed the back of his head, clearly avoiding eye contact.
"This is a bit weird and all, but I couldn't help but notice you. I was wondering if we could, by chance, get to know each other?" Ashborn asked.
The woman's mouth dropped open in shock, her face slowly turning red. She took a step back, stammered, then abruptly turned and ran away, leaving Ashborn standing there with a lost look on his face.
'No, I can't. I know my worth. I'm not good enough.' Ember's face darkened as she read the woman's thoughts. It wasn't rejection out of disgust—it was self-doubt. The woman didn't think she was good enough… and that truth made her flee in tears.
"Try someone else. She was crazy," Ember said.
Ashborn shot her a glare, clearly not in the mood to be humiliated again. Still, he stepped forward, choosing to believe Ember wasn't setting him up.
"Hey, I saw you across the street, and I knew I'd curse myself if I didn't at least try to get to know you," Ashborn said with a friendly smile.
"S-Sorry, I can't," she said, her face bright red. Ashborn couldn't tell if it was from embarrassment or rage. He opened his mouth to say something, but she slapped him across the face before he could.
"I said I can't!" she screamed, tears streaming down her cheeks before she turned and ran off. Ashborn stood there, eye twitching, barely resisting the urge to slap her back.
"I'm married… I can't… I can't…" Ember read the woman's thoughts, her eye twitching in frustration. Why couldn't she just tell Ashborn she was married? Her mind was too chaotic—those words never made it out. All she managed to say was that she couldn't.
"She was married. One more," Ember said to Ashborn, who now looked like he was ready to kill her. He gritted his teeth but still forced himself to approach another woman—one who hadn't witnessed the earlier outburst.
"Hey, I couldn't help but notice you… I don't have a pickup line, but I saw you reading a book, and I thought that was beautiful," Ashborn said to a young woman sitting in the park. She looked up, stunned, her eyes wide as she stared at him. For a moment, she opened and closed her mouth as if searching for words—then, suddenly, she burst into tears and ran off, leaving Ashborn to sigh and sit down on the nearest bench.
'Why! Why wasn't I born as a girl?' the young woman thought as she fled, leaving Ember speechless after reading her mind. The former male had desperately wanted to jump into Ashborn's arms, but the fear of lying to him and facing his reaction was too much to bear. So she ran, too afraid to speak her truth.
'Is someone out there making sure he can't have a girlfriend or something?' Ember was speechless. A part of her even considered hiring someone to sleep with Ashborn just to see how it would turn out, but deep down, she knew it would probably end the same way. He had to be cursed. And then it hit her, when she rejected Ashborn, it was just like everyone else had.
"Leave me alone," Ashborn said coldly. He had made peace with being ugly, yet he'd let himself believe Ember twice. That meant a part of him still held hope… hope that he might actually look good. But what kind of person gets rejected the way he had today? Not even people considered unattractive were treated like that.
He didn't even want to look at Ember right now. The fact that she dared to sit next to him after doing something so cruel and heartless only made him angrier. But at the moment, he was too swallowed by grief to show that rage.
"Idiot. Read the minds of the ones who rejected you. Even if you don't want to dig into their thoughts, at least read their emotions," Ember said sharply.
Ashborn looked at her in confusion, but he followed her advice anyway. The moment he tapped into their thoughts and emotions, his eyes widened in disbelief.
"Siri, do a scan of my body. Why am I being rejected?" Ashborn asked, and his phone appeared in front of him.
"The reason for rejection is due to your extremely low love luck," Siri replied. "Those you approach become unusually self-aware, overly self-conscious, and emotionally unstable. In extreme cases, the universe itself may twist fate to prevent the relationship from happening."
Ashborn and Ember stood there in stunned silence, speechless.
"Fine… just one more reason for me to quickly regain my former strength," Ashborn said calmly, before pausing as he sensed reality being torn apart. His attention instantly locked onto the source of the disturbance—Trigon, locked in battle with a 5th-dimensional imp.
{A/N: This bad charm luck is going to disappear once the fated one appears.}