I Was Paid $40 a Night to Play the Villain in a ‘Love Companion’ Game. What I Saw Made Me Quit.

She bounced up off the floor.

The back of her head had just hit the ground. Thud. Crisp as snapping a celery stalk. Three seconds earlier, she'd been cradling her dead lover in her arms, sobbing herself hoarse. Then she collapsed backward. I thought I was about to call an ambulance. But she opened her eyes, twisted her head toward a corner of the room I hadn't noticed anyone in, and asked:

"Did that camera get my good side?"

There was a guy crouched in the corner, lugging professional filming gear, as quiet as wallpaper. I'd been in that room for the entire scene and never once realized he'd come in, or how long he'd been squatting there. He was stealthier than an Assassin's Creed character.

I realized then: there are no spectators here. Everyone is performing. Even grief is sold in installments.

My first time, a friend dragged me along. She said there was a romance-themed script murder game that needed a villain, and I could fill in—free meal, comped ticket.

I walked into the shop and met her "love companion." My brain short-circuited.

The guy was six-four, built like a Korean manhwa character in a double-breasted suit, face like Takeshi Kaneshiro after a growth spurt. I'm not into men, but I still caught myself staring for a good few seconds. My friend had gone all out: full makeup, an evening gown (bare arms in the dead of winter), and a dozen gifts—a handwritten letter, customized keychains, a box of expensive-looking chocolates.

During the reading session, she sat regally in her chair while that six-four love companion crouched at her feet, holding her hand in both of his, pressing his forehead to her fingertips. They murmured to each other, cheek to cheek, close enough that I wondered how he was still breathing.

Then came the "little black room" segment. This was a privilege reserved exclusively for the player who booked the love companion. NPCs didn't get one. In theory, it was a private space for advancing the plot and whispering things no one else was supposed to hear. But theory has a way of diverging from reality. The line between "not meant to be heard" and "not meant to be seen" is razor-thin.

Fifteen minutes later, they came back out. My friend's eyeliner was smeared on one side. The love companion's collar had a faint lipstick stain that hadn't been there before. No one asked. No one explained.

Then came the performance segment, and that was something else. They stood in the center of a small raised area, a flimsy backdrop behind them, dim mood lighting washing over them. My friend had no cue cards. She launched into a long monologue of devotion—longing, attachment, promises to find each other in the next life. Her delivery was a one-take wonder.

Then the love companion died. In the story, that is. A noble, tragic death for a greater cause, collapsing in her arms, full of pathos and regret.

She clutched him so hard I saw the guy's brow furrow in pain, his fingers twitching. He was struggling to breathe. But he didn't flinch. A professional corpse to the end.

Then came the fainting scene. Sobs, wails, screams, silence. She pitched backward, the back of her skull hitting the floor with a crack, and lay still.

I was reaching for my phone to call an ambulance when she snapped back up three seconds later and asked about the camera angle.

The videographer, meanwhile, had been squatting in that corner the whole time, filming everything.

In the parlance of the scene, she was a "water tap"—someone who can cry on command and can't stop once they start. That day, there were four female players, and all four were water taps. They took turns weeping on that little stage, a chorus of sobs that made the room feel like a group funeral. From that day on, my view of the entertainment industry entered a strange superposition: watching streaming platforms made me despair for cinema; walking into a script murder shop made me believe cinema had a bright future. The Oscars still have a ways to go.

Eventually I started taking gigs. The shop needed villain NPCs, paying two to three hundred a session. Regular extras got fifty to a hundred. I made triple, because the shop owner said, "You're too convincing—we've never seen a villain so ugly, vicious, and vile, someone who actually looks like they're trying to break the couple up."

What they didn't say out loud was that the extra money was hazard pay for emotional damage.

One period piece session, I opened my script and saw my character was a prince—pretty high status. Then I kept reading: I was in love with my own mother. She died on the first page. So I transferred that obsession to her daughter—the friend who'd brought me to this game—and treated her as a substitute.

Per the script, I had to pretend to be deeply in love with her, compete with her love companion for her affection, and sabotage their relationship. During their sweet moments, I had to perform agonizing pain. That pain had to be feigned, because I didn't actually love her. She was just a stand-in.

I was playing a character who was playing a character.

Then the GM pulled me aside and gave me three tasks. Three rounds of mini-games, each with a sticker as the prize. Whoever collected more stickers would "prove" she loved him more.

Round one: confession. The love companion went first, reciting a half-baked, pseudo-classical speech. They locked eyes for five minutes, spinning emotional silk. My turn. I improvised a heartfelt monologue about "a prince and his sister depending on each other in a harsh world." She listened, then asked one question:

"Between me and your mother—who do you love more?"

You're not supposed to ask that in character.

I hesitated for a second. She said, "You hesitated. You love her more. I'm just a replacement." The sticker went to the love companion.

Round two: gift-giving. I had no props. I rummaged through my pockets and found a piece of gum at the bottom. I announced it was a "millennium sandalwood candy" that would grant eternal youth and beauty. She took it disdainfully and said, "This is just gum." I said, "You're a princess—princesses don't know what gum is." The love companion stepped up and pulled out a glass marble. "This is my thousand-year-cultivated inner core," he said. "Take it. It wards off fire and water, balances yin and yang, makes you immune to all poisons."

Her eyes went dewy. "If you give me your inner core," she breathed, "what will happen to you?"

I was done. Sticker number two went to him.

Round three: photography in the little black room. It was pitch dark. I pulled out my phone—according to the GM, a "sacred Yang-fire mirror"—snapped a few awful shots and handed it over. The love companion walked up, reached under the chair my friend was sitting on, and pulled out a ring light.

My composure shattered.

I was a clown. A crawling, shadow-dwelling Joker. Every morning I wake up to a bed full of Batmen.

My friend grabbed my arm. "Hold on," she said. "Your character's big moment is coming. You'll get your payoff."

I held on. The big moment arrived: I confessed to everyone that I never loved her. She was just a replacement for my mother. Then I confessed that I'd killed everyone else's loved ones and family members, wiping out hundreds of people from some cultivation clan.

Then everyone took turns yelling at me. "Beast!" "Butcher!" "Madman!"

That was my payoff.

I walked home that night with three hundred yuan in my pocket, cold wind cutting through my collar, one thought circling in my head: Who the hell actually enjoys being yelled at?

But that's the logic of this industry.

It doesn't sell scripts. It sells the illusion of being loved. The top-tier love companions—the handsome ones—their product is their time, their gaze, their body heat, the fifteen minutes of whispered intimacy at your feet, the little black room where no one can interrupt. Players aren't buying a game; they're renting a relationship by the hour.

The hierarchy is rigid. At the top, the headliners book by auction, their WeChat friend lists maxed out at five thousand, receiving transfers and gifts daily. Mid-tier love companions are assembly-line workers, paid per session. At the bottom are NPCs like us—the F4, with a lowercase f to signify our insignificance. We are emotional fuel, designed to be humiliated, crushed, and used as stepping stones to amplify the male lead's devotion.

That six-four Kaneshiro lookalike had a WeChat list at the five-thousand cap. I watched two wealthy women bid against each other for one evening of his time in the group chat. My friend told me about it afterward. I thought about the afternoon when he'd gazed at her with such tenderness, when he'd coaxed her into a daze with that "thousand-year inner core" glass marble. Those marbles cost two-fifty a kilo wholesale.

After that session ended, where they went and what they did—nobody knows. It wasn't in the script, and there were no cameras outside the game.

A lawyer recently said that script murder games might conceal sexual services. That needs to be unpacked.

If something transactional happens in that little black room, it's illegal, plain and simple. But most shops currently operate in a grey zone. Hand-holding is "plot requirement." Eye contact is "immersion." Whispering cheek-to-cheek is "character embodiment." None of it violates the law on its own. But strung together, they form a complete emotional massage—a soft-core psychological service.

The "little black room" is the most ingenious invention. It gives privacy a legitimate cover—advancing the story, sharing secrets. But it also creates a camera-free physical space. What happens inside depends entirely on the accounts of those involved. The line between "private words" and "private touches" is translucent at best.

Take my friend, for instance. The way she clutched that love companion—if it weren't a performance, in any other context it would be assault. But it was "acting," so it was permitted.

Yet how do I know which moves were in the script and which were hers? How does she distinguish the affection that belonged to the character from the person?

There's no way to tell. That's the beauty of the grey zone.

Minors walking into this scene face consequences far more severe than adults.

Once, after a session, I saw a girl crouched outside the shop, crying. She was sixteen. She'd saved up three months' allowance to book a three-hour short session with a popular love companion. When I asked why she was upset, she said: "The way he looked at me was so gentle. No one at school will ever look at me like that."

That sentence gave me chills.

First level of harm: distorted emotional cognition. Real relationships are mundane, messy, full of arguments, cold silences, and disputes over who does the dishes. Love-companion games are concentrated artificial sweetener—one-sided, indulgent, manufactured sweetness. A sixteen-year-old soaked in this loses the ability to perceive real intimacy. Drink enough concentrated juice, and plain water tastes like nothing.

Second level: distorted money logic. The game's implicit rule is: the more you pay, the more devotion you deserve. It teaches a child, explicitly, that the amount you're loved equals the thickness of your wallet. Once that takes root, every future relationship will be filtered through "am I worthy?" and "can I afford it?"

Third level: withdrawal. For three hours in the game, you're the center of the universe. Outside it, you're an ordinary student, an ordinary daughter, an ordinary person whom no one gazes at with melting eyes and whispers poetry to. The crash can spiral into depression, truancy, or worse.

I heard about a girl who booked the same love companion seven times. On the seventh, he turned her down. That night, she posted a photo on her social feed—thin red lines across her wrist. She survived. The shop settled for five thousand yuan, deleted all chat logs, and acted like nothing happened.

By the time parents notice something's wrong, it's usually too late.

Seeking legal recourse? Almost impossible.

First hurdle: evidence. The little black room has no cameras. Whispered words can't be recorded. Intimate touches have no witnesses. The shop can produce footage of the reading session in the main hall, or artsy performance videos from the stage. But private WeChat messages, photos, and anything that crossed a line—parents have no proof. Call the police, and the shop's defense is simple: "Immersive performance; the players got into character." It's hard for law enforcement to prosecute "being too convincing."

Second hurdle: legal classification. Parents say their child was induced into spending, but what is that in legal terms? Breach of contract? The service was provided. Tort? Quantifying emotional damage is nearly impossible. The shop pulls out the user agreement, which reads: "Immersive role-playing experience; players are advised to distinguish fiction from reality." The parents signed it. As for how a minor slipped in, the shop only needs to ask: "Why weren't you watching your child?"

Third hurdle: cost. Even if parents decide to fight, lawyer fees, psychological counseling, time, and energy are bottomless pits. Worse, the process itself is traumatic. The child's chat logs, photos, and videos must be dug up, examined, and interrogated repeatedly. Many parents end up settling, staying silent, transferring schools, and burying the whole affair. Not because they don't want justice, but because the cost of seeking it exceeds the cost of letting it go.

I quit eventually.

Not because of the money. One night, walking home after a session, something clicked: the jealousy, the rage, the humiliation, the sting of being publicly degraded in that room—all of it was real. I was trading genuine negative emotion for three hundred yuan.

And those "water taps" tears? The wealthy women's frenzied transfers? The sixteen-year-old sobbing on the curb?

What they gave was also real.

But on this assembly line, sincerity gets packed into price-tagged boxes, labeled "immersive experience." The shop's GM manual has scripted dialogue. The love companions are trained in "optimal angles for soulful gazing" and "volume control for whispers." Everything is replicable, mass-producible, sellable emotional fast food.

But that tear you paid for—the actor wipes it off after work and forgets.

And that genuine feeling you invested—once the curtain falls, you can't take it back.

That's why I was so good at playing the villain. Every time I saw that six-four, manhwa-bodied heartthrob soak up screams and tips, that feeling of being crushed, unchosen, reduced to fuel in the corner—

I wasn't acting.

It was the only real thing I got out of the whole business.

And it was worth two to three hundred yuan a night.