The Affection Multiplier - Side Story 6: The reflections of Mrs. Susan Miller. (Patreon)

Author's Note: This time the side story is very short, and more than a story, it's a look at Mrs. Miller's mentality. I tried to find a balance between the premise of the story and what I wanted to do with her character. I always wanted to keep her on the more ambiguous side to let each reader decide what became of her. It sound a little mean, but her role in the story  is done.

I don't think I can do much more than this without writing a series of short stories about her. And even then I'm not sure they'd be very fun.

Idea by Ultratalon: Emily's mother's perspective following the encounter with David and how he tells her that she's been using the AM wrong.

This is canon to the main story.

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It was five years ago that the strange app appeared on her phone.

‘This is a gift. Please enjoy it!’

The app greeted her with those words.

It sounded like a bad joke. A magical phone application that makes people like you more? Just like that? It seemed stupid. She didn’t have time for pranks. Her husband had recently died, leaving her alone with their two daughters and making her find a job to survive. She had to pay for Julia’s university studies, Emily’s high school and the final payments for the house.

She was desperate. Julian, her husband, was the one that went out to work while she stayed in the house. It wasn’t a very exciting life, but it was comfortable. She didn’t need to do much and could focus on her now hobbies as long as she also took care of her daughters and the house.

But when Julian died, everything came crumbling down. She had to find a job and could only find one with minimal pay. She had to resort to the savings they had going for the last three years just to make ends meet. Her working conditions were terrible. She was bad at hear job and everyone yelled at her for it.

She was very near the point of suicide.

But after the app appeared in her phone, things simply started changing with very little effort on her part. Suddenly, her coworkers were treating her fairly. Her boss was a little more understanding. She saw the scores on the screen go up, and came to accept the magic app was really working.

And being at the end of her rope, she decided to make use of it.

It only started with a few suggestive smiles to her boss. Then a few flirty comments. Then she saw love and lust scores appear and rise. She started to notice her boss was looking at her with desire.

It was working.

In just a few days, she had him wrapped around her finger. They started a secret relationship and she managed to coerce him into helping her financially. He was definitely not hurting for money, being the company president.

All she had to do was whisper sweet, loving words, please him in bed and act like a love-struck fool and the man would pay for everything she asked. That relationship lasted a full year and ended when they were discovered by a co-worker.

Susan took that chance. The man was boring and her financial situation had greatly improved now that she no longer had debts. Convincing her co-worker to keep quiet was easy due to the AMA. Susan just had to act like her life would be destroyed if her relationship was revealed and her co-worker took pity on her. And to solve things, Susan quit the company and left her boss, saying it was better for him to let her go or he would really get in trouble.

After that, she found a job as a trainer in a gym. The interview was extremely easy, again, thanks to the multiplier. However, since she liked this job, she made it a point not to get involved with her co-workers too much. She kept her distance while still being friendly with them.

But the great thing about working at a gym is being able to meet all sorts of handsome men. Those she would unabashedly flirt with. The app did say to enjoy it, so she stopped thinking about ways to improve her situation and just indulged.

She started looking for the hottest, richest gym-goers and soon she had them to herself. It took very little effort. Even if their affection and love scores never went past 50, their lust for her consistently reached 100. Their desire for her was enough to have them do all she wanted, just like her old boss.

It soon became the perfect life. Easy and enjoyable.

…

She didn’t realize she had completely forgotten about her daughters.

The moment Julia got a job at Hayes Academy, she moved out. And Susan was happy about it. It meant more spare space in the house. Why did she think that? Emily started spending less time in the house as well. She would be out there playing soccer or just hanging out with her best friend, Megan.

It left her all the time in the world to go on dates and enjoy her life.

How did five years pass so quickly? She remembers her score with her daughters started at the high ends of 60. In five years, she didn’t pay attention to them until that man, David Walker, pointed it out. In five years, their affection scores went down to 21 for Julia and 22 for Emily.

To say it was a shock would be an understatement.

It was like she realized everything she’d been doing wrong in that instant. She neglected her family just so she could indulge in her own desires. Her own daughters were disappointed in her, and probably the only reason their scores weren’t in the red was because the multiplier still had an effect on them.

She’d become complacent. Everything was going just as she wanted, so she didn’t realize that behind her she was losing her daughters. No. There’s a chance that a small part of her was okay with losing them so long as she could still indulge. It was seeing the numbers that truly woke her up. She was used to them, always checking to see what people thought of her. And to see such low scores from her own family, and hear that they had plans of leaving her if she really didn’t care… it shook her whole world.

“I don’t mean to speak from any sort of moral high ground. In the end, I’m also using the app to live how I want, just like you once said. But are you sure this is really what you want?”

Those were words that made her rethink her goals. Where is she headed? Having boyfriend after boyfriend is fun and keeps things interesting. She enjoys is. But is it worth it if it earns her the scorn of her daughters?

…

“When I told Emily you had the app, she wasn’t angry at you having it. She was angry at you for using it to fool around with men without building any meaningful relationships. She’s angry that you’re wasting your chances to be truly happy.”

Meaningful relationships. What does it mean to be truly happy? What’s the difference between that and the life she had before?

Perhaps that’s the question she needs to answer first. What is it she truly wants? There are only two things she knows for sure. She doesn’t want to have many boyfriends, like what David Walker wants. She doesn’t have the strength or the will to care for more than one person at a time in that way. And she also wants to get back her relationship with her daughters.

Only once the possibility of them leaving her life became true, did she realize how much that scared her. To have her little girls simply walk away… No, to have pushed them away from her would be a wound she’s not sure she could ever recover from.

She has to thank David. If they hadn’t had that talk, she wouldn’t have realized it until it was too late.

Now the relevant question for the present is: Where does she begin?