Prologue
“This story is set on a small island, about an hour’s flight south of Tokyo.”(1)
The setting sun shone a red, solitary light slanting into the after-hours cla.s.sroom.
“Due to the decrease in population of this island’s academy, it will be combined with the sister school on the mainland.”(2)
The meaningless grunts of the sports club members could be heard from outside the window.
“And so begins the story of the protagonist who goes to a girls school dressed up in girls clothing.”(3)
Because you could hear even the most minute sounds, my voice seemed to resonate impressively in the quiet room.
“A princess from the moon will turn up at the protagonist’s house for a homestay.”(4)
My pa.s.sionate thoughts seemed to scatter quietly alongside the heat.
“I forgot to say, that three realms co-exist in this world: the realm of the G.o.ds, the realm of the demons and the human realm.”(5)
“Hey…”
“The progression of technology will see the protagonist having three maid robots in his house….”(6)
“Listen…”
“Throughout all this, the protagonist will decide to partic.i.p.ate in the Student Council elections in order to protect his club.”(7)
“Oi….”
“Ah, while I’m at it, each heroine will have a special move.”(8)
“Argh, shut up already!!!”
“Woah cut down the volume. You could be disturbing others around us.”
My dignified, calm and biting words were abruptly drowned out by an unreasonable and violent shout.
“You’re saying that despite the fact that you’ve been the one who’s been blabbing on non-stop for more than half an hour!?”
“Huh, it’s been that long already.”
Looking at the clock, I certainly felt that compared to earlier the hour hand had moved only about 15 degrees. I’m the sort of person who perceives things broadly though, so I wouldn’t really be interested in the movements of the minute hand.
“Anyway, I’m heading home now. I’m not going to waste any more time than I already have.”
“Wait, calm down a bit. I haven’t finished talking….”
“If you’d been called out of the blue to meet after school for something important, only to be invited to some silly doujin circle, followed by being shown the cover of a proposal and being forced to listen to some incomprehensible chatter…Well you’d be flipping out too!”(9)
“Even though you were called out so suddenly, having you turn up nonchalantly like that tells me that you’re actually interested in this….”
“Can you stop with the cool-headed replies? There’re a lot of regretful words stirring in my head at the moment.”
“Oh?”
The girl in front of me who had just been shouting earlier held her head down lightly.
Her blonde hair fell past her shoulders, fluttering slightly. Perhaps you could call it her trademark appearance. If you were a man seeing her for the first time, your eyes would without a doubt be s.n.a.t.c.hed by her blonde hair and porcelain-white skin. A student in the same year as me, raised in j.a.pan with an English father and j.a.panese mother,
Sawamura Spencer Eriri.
“Anyway, even though you’re a talentless, irrelevant consumer otaku, why are you suddenly wanting to make a game? Aren’t you overlooking society a bit here?”
Her charming and ladylike mannerisms contribute greatly to her popularity in cla.s.s and school as an attractive girl, yet if you unmask that, her true nature, a violent, ferocious maniac lies sleeping within.
“Despite not being able to do anything, it seems like you’re trying to make a name for yourself by gathering people who can make the game for you! That’s like doujin racketeering! That’s the kind of thing you hate, don’t you?”
“What are you saying!? I’ve got a burning pa.s.sion for it! I’ve also got more motivation than others! Without me, the plan to complete this game would be impossible!”
“That being said, no one else would bother making this.”
“You’re literally crushing me with those words! Even though I spent an entire night writing out the plan…”
“How on earth did you take an entire night to write only your name, the date and this summary?”
“If you’d slept for eleven hours, it’s only natural that there wouldn’t be much time left right?”
“I don’t even know how to reply to this any more…this….this….”
“Ah….you’re so mean!”
The ace of the Art club who has been winning exhibitions since her first year. A person of peerless, artistic talent. Amidst all the praise for this girl, only a small number of people within the school, myself included, know of her true nature. Even so, I’m not someone who would feel particularly superior just for knowing this girl’s “other face”. She’s definitely a mean one, though.
“Even now it’s still ten years too early for someone like you to stand on the front stage.”
“Early? But doujin dating sims surely aren’t ‘front stage’ are they?”
“Tch….you should just do what you’ve always been doing; just keep on watching, buying and preaching the likes of bishoujo anime.”
“Alright, i-if, yo-you’re going to say any more, then I’ll never lend you the last Blu-Ray volume of ‘The Neighbourhood Council’s Dogma?’.”
“You’re always trying to hook me in by suddenly threatening to leave me to hang out to dry. You’re the worst!”
“Um, this is just me unwilling to admit defeat. I haven’t followed through with these threats before….”
Did she enjoy the show that much? And is “being left to hang out to dry” really that popular a metaphor in the first place?
“Anyway, discussing this is pointless. I’ve already got my hands full with my own things. I don’t have time to be flirting with a worthless amateur project.”
“Just the main heroine character design would be fine… and after that just some of the sub-heroine designs and the original sketches of all the characters and…the background colouring and…!”
“The amount of what’s being requested is rising exponentially! Is this going to be another work made by ‘guest’ artists only?!”(10)
“Did something like that happen previously…?”
Trying to continue this discussion was almost akin to trying to stay alive on a deserted island.
“Calm down, both of you.”
“..Tch.”
“Se-senpai…!”
Our discussion seemed to have cast an illusion of having only two people in the cla.s.sroom; however, now a soft, calming voice brushed my ears.
Ah, that’s right. It wasn’t only Eriri whom I’d invited for this plan. In the event that someone would refuse, I’d made sure to have an ally on hand to ensure a comeback win.
“Well, I’m sorry to say this but this time I’m in agreement with Sawamura-san.”
“Se..senpai?”
Or so I thought I had an ally. My advantage seemed to have sailed out of the port. Where has the j.a.panese spirit of supporting the underdog gone?
“Hey, Ethics-kun” (11)
“It’s Tomoya….”
Well since my name is out now, I’ll introduce myself clearly.
I’m Aki Tomoya, a second year student of Toyogasaki Academy. And to add on some extra details to my profile from yesterday, I’m also the director of the (as of yet unt.i.tled) Circle that will be producing the dating sim.
“I gave your proposal a quick glance. The disagreements of Sawamura-san are spot on. That’s why a more specific, smaller scope would be better.”
Senpai politely smoothed out the wrinkles on the paper that had previously been scrunched into a ball by Eriri.
As the cover of the proposal unfurled, the excessive amount of text amongst the extremely small t.i.tle of what was on the cover appeared.
“If you change the way you speak, perhaps the contents inside your head from the last thirty minutes will be a little more comprehensible.”
“But it’s refreshing being able to speak my mind like that!”
“Yes, because random, directionless ideas formulated at around 10 pm in bed without any further consideration to them are certainly refreshing as opposed to sleep inducing.”
“You’re cruel as always….”
“It’s because I don’t like that pig-headed att.i.tude of yours.”
The flow of the conversation may have seemed calm, but the words being chosen here were a level beyond what you’d simply call being sharp-tongued.
With her glossy, long black hair, this girl, despite her mostly unchanging facial expression, had an objectively beautiful appearance. An uppercla.s.sman one year above me and Eriri,
Kasumigaoka Utaha.
“Anyway for now, even if I were to include your 30 minute oral exposition as part of the plan of the game you propose to make, it’d probably still be only worth 0 points.”
“Oohh.”
“In short, I can’t see this being anything but a bunch of random ideas being thrown together.”
“Uguu….”
“These are probably just all the good ideas from the games you’ve been playing recently, right?”
“Bu-but, if you combine various genres together, you might just get some really avant-garde content….”
“That’s right, the contents aren’t just vegetables in this soup; you’ve mixed in insects as well.”
“Nu, nuuu….”
“You say you want to ‘creatively combine random genres’, yet on the other hand you said today, in effect, ‘Please listen to this mess and fix it….’”
The venom of her words did not just hit a lethal dose, it went way past it. Unlike the emotional Eriri, Utaha is (said to be) calculating: a constantly clicking clock that only ticks to logic.
”B-but, only I can make this plan….”
“This is a story I heard from a certain editor…. Apparently someone having said ‘Only I could do this’, brought forth a ‘good plan which had not been heard of before’.”
“Eh…?”
“I heard this was a a real story that actually happened: One day, a proposal was delivered to a certain game company. According to this author, it was an ‘Innovation never seen until today!’, ‘Truly the product hoped for by all users’, ‘Only I, with the realisation of this plan, can broaden the industry!’, and so on, basically a list of self-praise.”
“Eh, eeehh.”
c.r.a.p, I’m feeling everything she just said.
“Peering into that proposal, you’d find the meddlesome childhood friend who wakes you up in the morning, the short-haired sports girl, the quiet yet close-to-the-protagonist little sister, the mysterious ghost girl, ‘hilarious’ dialogue, depictions of ‘Couples Love’-style dates, a deus ex machina ending,…”(12)
“Ahh, alright, alright already!”
Amazing…from that mere moment of explanation alone, no less than five t.i.tles had come to mind. What innovation indeed.
Having condensed my 30 minutes of proposing into only 30 seconds, Utaha-senpai rested her hand on the shoulder of my dispirited self.
“It’s been a while since I’ve seen you so serious about your otaku hobbies Ethics-kun, and it’s not as though I want to say that I don’t feel like helping you or anything but….”
“Which is to basically say that you’re not going to help, albeit in a less combative way than Eriri. Also it’s Tomoya…. ”
The academy’s most prodigal student, Utaha had never let slip her hold on the top ranking since her first year. On a whim, she had also written a script for the drama club, and had shown herself to be the owner of peerless literary talent. The “true nature” of this girl, who holds the school in awe around her, is known to a few people in the school, including myself.
Well, that ‘true nature’ of hers…scratch that, this beautiful person is also mean.
“Hey you two! Don’t just conveniently wander off into your own little world!”
“Are you always this harsh to the world around you as you were to me, Eriri!?”
From the side, again came Eriri’s swaying golden twintails and the sound of her piercing, sharp tongue.
“Oh, are you still here Sawamura-san? I had thought you’d already abandoned him and gone home.”
“Nnn….”
I’m not sure what kind of instinct it is, but Utaha-senpai’s self-defence is excessive to the point of coldness.
“Despite what you say, you’re actually soft-hearted Sawamura-san. I don’t dislike that part of you.”
“And that’s what I hate about you, Kasumigaoka Utaha.”
“Well, I wonder whose world was it that the two of us were slipping into?”
“Ngh, I was the one who had already declared my unwillingness to partic.i.p.ate, so could you quit following and mocking what I do?”
“You really haven’t abandoned him have you, Sawamura-san.”
“Huh? I don’t get what you’re saying!”
“Wasn’t it something along the lines of the two of us slipping into our own world? Am I perhaps missing something here?”
I’d always thought that these two got along a little too well—only in that sort of social sense, of course.
“By the way, why out of all people is Kasumigaoka Utaha here?”
“Well, I am after all a student here, so me being here isn’t particularly strange, now is it?”
“I don’t need to be told that!”
“Was the two of you being alone together that great for you? Were you perhaps having some strange fantasies?”
“For your information I’m not going to fall for your stupid mind games!”
“Being so insistent with your words is quite uncouth, Sawamura-san.”
“Going all out is how I always do things!”
“If you’re going to be like that, could you not break the door?”
“It’s not broken! It just made a loud noise!”
“O, Oi wait! Hey, wait up please!”
And thus the commotion and shouting of that pair m.u.f.fled the last of my death rattle. The two of them, whilst arguing, had completely ignored my proposal and left.
“Ah, ah….haaaaaaa.”
Left alone, I let out a long sigh. What a complete miscalculation.
Because the requests I’d made of Utaha for the main heroine conversation samples, the sub heroine plots, scenarios for all the characters, and fanservice scripts had fallen through, as completely as my requests for art from Eriri, my ambitions had now been smashed into nothing.
All that remained was a wrinkled sheet of A4 paper spread out on top of the desk, and myself. My plans, my hopes, and my high spirits of an hour before had been quickly destroyed and shut down, leaving only feelings of insecurity, lethargy, and despair. No matter how I thought about it, this was basically a situation where nothing more could be said.
That’s why it’s fine for me give up already. Having the courage to choose to retreat isn’t a bad thing at all. This was originally, after all, only a project derived from fleeting ideas.
There’s not a single person who hasn’t gone through these battles of life and death. That’s why there’s only one word for all this, inevitability.
“…My battles have only just begun….”
I believe humans are a species that show their true abilities when driven into desperate situations. Now that I think about it, having characters “bloom” in desperate situations is also the trademark of certain super-s.a.d.i.s.tic authors, but that’s another story.(13)
Anyway, for now, any innovation I was hoping to gather for the project has fallen through; no new members were gathered; and the formation of the circle has run aground and is stuck on the reef.
This situation as of now has no new factors coming into play. I don’t even need to say it, but there’s simply no easy road out of this situation.
However this might…just be your run-of-the-mill revival from the brink of destruction story.
That’s right, in just a few moments of brainstorming through some old fairy tales, you would be able to remember no less than five such stories coming to mind. Even now, I bet I would be able to accurately recall the contents of some of those famous stories! No matter how many times it’s repeated, no matter how worn something becomes, in the world of stories a good thing is still a good thing!
“…Alright!”
With renewed power in my hands, I’m going to once again regain the resolve I had last night. From tomorrow I’m going to triumph in my own battles….
“It’s a shame that those two didn’t choose to help out.”
“……Ah, you’re still here.”
“Um, weren’t we originally going to make a game with me as the heroine?”
“Sorry, my bad, I’d forgotten up until now.”
“Ah I understand. You really have forgotten, Aki-kun.”
(Oops, let me make a quick change: ‘Our’ fight has only just begun…)
“Well Katou, it’s just that you have absolutely no appealing presence in front of those two.”
“It’s just that my aura is completely different. Those two are extremely famous within the school.”
“Well, there’s that…but….”
“I don’t think those two heard my name at all during all that.”
“No…um, I think at the beginning they might’ve taken a quick glance at you. That might have been it though….”
“You really are amazing, though, Aki-kun, knowing both Sawamura-san and Kasumigaoka-san of all people. You’re even quite close to them.”
“……”
Even though I’d completely forgotten about her up until now, she hadn’t said a word of complaint. And now we were having a completely normal conversation.
Or at least, visually speaking, that’s how it appeared.
We were students in the same year who had been attending the same school for more than a year now, and up until one month ago, she was someone who had made absolutely no impression on me,
Katou Megumi.
But even though her impression was negligible, it was because of her name that this possibility arose.
“Well since the discussion is now over shall we get going? There’s also a place I want to stop by.”
“…You’re too light-hearted on these things Katou.”
“Isn’t that just normal?”
“What you’d call normal isn’t appropriate at all for a heroine. You’re going to be the main heroine of our dating sim aren’t you? ”
“Ah that’s right, in the game it’d be better to change your name as well, yeah? Since Katou Megumi is too ordinary a name for a heroine.”
“I’ll approve of one myself….”
I remembered one more thing about the theory behind those masterpiece stories. Whatever work it may be, even now, names and visuals are things which make people remember the appeal of charming heroines.
If characters stand out in a story, it is said that the story is already 90% as good as it can be. Basically, characters who don’t stand out would place the entire work in a dire situation….
“Is it closing? The key.”
“……Aah!”
Ah…the battle has just begun once again!
If I go all out with this kind of determination, I’ll have twice the power in my hands.
Actually, the lack of feeling in my hand right now is probably all in my head.
At any rate this is my…no, Aki Tomoya’s and Katou Megumi’s, day to day, battle-filled story. The kind of battle where I create a story about this Friend-A cla.s.smate of mine and make her the main heroine.
“Hmmm…I wonder if this is going to be OK.”
“What is it, Katou?”
“Ah, um, the door seems to be broken. It’ll need fixing.”
“…You too should try going around breaking things at times. It’s another form of character development.”
Next Page
Translation Notes and References
1. The setting of the visual novel Kono Aozora ni Yasoku o.
2. A reference to Mashiro Iro Symphony.
3. A reference to Otome ha Boku ni Kois.h.i.teru.
4. A reference to Tsuki ha Higashi ni Hi ha Nishi ni: Operation Sanctuary. In hindsight, this is probably more of a reference to Yoake Mae yori Ruri Iro na.
5. A reference to Shuffle!
6. A reference to To Heart 2
7. A reference to Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate
8. A reference to Maji de Watashi ni Koishinasai! (If you got all these references, you’re an eroge G.o.d. *clap clap clap*)
9. A Doujin Circle is a group or people who have come together to create Doujinshi; independent, fanmade goods of a non-commercial nature. It is close to the term Indie in the west although there are some differences.
10. Sometimes Doujin Circles invite guest artists etc. to do some work for them. In this case though, someone had probably invited Eriri to do the whole work for another group under their name. As you’d imagine, this probably wouldn’t go down well.
11. Ethics-kun is a pun on his name Tomoya. The Kanji for it are 倫也（Tomoya) and 倫理（Rinri, aka Ethics). We’ll learn more about the origins of this later, although you can probably figure out from his personality alone.
12. Couples Love, translated from the j.a.panese slang word イチャラブ which is a shortened version of イチャイチャラブラブ. This word is going to be bantered around a lot. The best description of it would be a depiction of two people who appear in love. Dating sims would be about this wouldn’t you agree?
13. Perhaps a reference to a certain Gen Urobutchi and Madoka.