The Lover Number System (A Humorous Short-Short)

The Prime Minister had his heart broken, and the nation's system changed.

In the Prime Minister's office in Nagatacho, the air hung heavy like a gloomy rain cloud.
The Prime Minister, who was supposed to be steering Japan, lay face down on his expensive desk, sniffling while playing a heartbreak song on his smartphone on an endless loop.

This was the same man who, just yesterday, had spoken with a cool face at a press conference, saying, "The pride of a politician is to never be swayed by emotions."

"...I can't trust anyone anymore. Cheating should just disappear from this world."

"Prime Minister, here is a tissue. Please blow your nose. It's a loss for the nation."

The Chief Cabinet Secretary offered the box with the same hand movements as a mother changing a diaper.
The elite bureaucrats waiting nearby were also tapping on their tablets with solemn expressions.

"To heal the Prime Minister's broken heart, the Cabinet Office has been considering a system. A system that makes cheating physically impossible... it's called the 'My Lover Number' system."

"...What's that?"

"We will link one official 'lover' per citizen to their My Number. You can only register one person. If you try to register a second person, an alert will sound from the National Cashless Screening Center, and your smartphone's payment function will be suspended. In other words, you will physically be unable to pay for dates."

"Well, it's technically a different layer of the system, but given the Prime Minister's distress, we rushed to integrate it."

The Prime Minister looked up. "...Will that pass unanimously?"

"Of course. The leader of the opposition party was also scammed by a service on a matching app yesterday and was crying. It will definitely pass unanimously and be approved at high speed."

A few days later, the Diet was filled with unprecedented excitement.

"Prime Minister! What about tax reduction measures for people in the 'free' category who don't have a lover!"
"Mr. Speaker! We should establish a grace period for registration cancellation when someone says 'let's go back to being friends' during a date!"
"I request the government's view on how to handle cases where the lover is a 2D character!"
"If you register your 'oshi' (favorite character) as your lover, what are the relief measures when that content's service ends!"

"...Note that there are currently no plans to regulate unregistered relationships or dates paid for only in cash."

The chamber buzzed for a moment, with jeers of "Then it's meaningless!" mixed with applause saying "I don't want to be managed by the state that much."

Watching the scene, the Prime Minister muttered under his breath, "Cash payments... I didn't realize there were still so many of those..."
A bureaucrat whispered immediately.
(We should also include a bill for mandatory cashless payments nationwide...)

While such off-base discussions were being broadcast live on TV, citizens in cafes were staring at their smartphones.

"Ah, another weird system has started. 'Lover Number', they call it."
"Apparently, a hologram saying 'Lover Present' will be added to the My Number card. That's so embarrassing."
"Well, as long as you finish the paperwork at the city office, it saves the trouble of investigating cheating, right?"

On social media,
"#MyLifeIsOverBecauseOfLoverNumber"
"#LetsProtestToLetUsRegisterOshiAtTheCityOffice!"
Half-serious, half-joking hashtags were trending.

The college students at the cafe were laughing, saying,
"It'll probably just get overwritten by another system in a few years anyway."
"I bet a 'Lover: Yes/No' field will show up on resumes soon."
"Seriously, if a company recruitment event said 'Applicants with registered Lover Numbers welcome,' I'd probably just register and hate myself for it."

In the alley across from them, men in suits were excitedly whispering to each other.
"Wouldn't we make a killing if we ran an underground, unregistered matching service?"

One month later. The system went into operation.

The Prime Minister had fully regained his energy and was loudly declaring, "Realizing a society of one hundred million devoted hearts!" during a street speech.
Bureaucrats, relieved that the Lover Number registration rate had reached the 30% target, continued their meetings with straight faces, saying, "Let's move on to drafting the 'Breakup Leave and State Compensation System.'"

Meanwhile, modest tragicomedies were being mass-produced throughout the city.

At a family restaurant register, a man in a suit turned pale.
"Wait, payment error? It was working just fine a second ago..."
On the smartphone of the woman sitting with him, a notification glowed: "Your Lover Number has been revoked."

In the waiting area of the city hall's Lover Number office,
"Look, I want to make you my 'the one,' so could you just cancel your current Lover Number for a second?"
a man pleaded with a straight face, while
"You said that to your last girlfriend, too, didn't you?"
a woman replied with cold eyes, as they argued.

And a few days after the system started,
that same breakup song was playing from the Prime Minister's office again.

Bureaucrat: "Prime Minister, is something wrong?"

Prime Minister: "The girlfriend I registered with my Lover Number... she returned my number..."

Bureaucrat: "...Shall we revise the new system?"

Prime Minister: "Yeah."

Afterword

This work was inspired through dialogue with generative AI (Gemini, Copilot, etc.), but the final decisions regarding structure and writing were made entirely by me, a human.

Production assistance tools: Google Gemini 3 High-Speed Mode, Microsoft Copilot Smart, Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4.5, xAI Grok 4.1 Thinking