Work Text:
Mikoshiba Mikoto looked skeptically at the website, wondering how he'd even gotten to this point.
It advertised a new, free visual novel which was apparently about a guy at a school for disabled kids? Normally, he'd try something else first, but it was a Friday night, he didn't have plans, and the VN was free to download and play.
And, well, he didn't see the problem with trying out a free VN, although he was aware that such visual novels might not be of the same high quality to which he was accustomed (after all, he made sure to buy every girly game that was released which appealed to him, and at this point, well, he probably had more than he could feasibly play through all the way).
If it turned out to be terrible he could always stop playing and delete the game from his computer, so he clicked “download” and read the character bios in the meantime.
By the time he was done, the game was fully downloaded, so he opened it and clicked “new game” on the menu.
It opened with a confession scene, in the snow, and what the fuck was the protagonist having a heart attack?
That wasn't supposed to happen when a girl confessed to you!
In all of his VNs, that had never once been an option!
And here, this was happening before he'd even had the opportunity to select any choices!
But as it turned out, the protagonist had had a heart attack, and that was why the setting was some school for disabled kids; he had to go to the hospital first, apparently. But couldn't they just have started it at the school?
He remembered the options, and decided to try for the blonde blind girl first.
And, well, all seemed to be going well. He was careful with every decision he made, trying to get closer to this Lilly character, and as it turned out, the game was nowhere near as depressing as he'd initially thought. He really just wished he was playing it on his game console and television rather than his laptop, which had a much smaller display.
There was no option for help, or rankings, so sometimes he faltered a bit more than he was used to. He wondered why the guy across the hall was so weird, but tried to focus on the girls. As far as he could tell, there were six girls, although two seemed to be attached at the hip, so maybe there wouldn't be six endings? But neither of those girls were the one he'd initially selected, so he didn't worry too much about it for the time being.
The time for that would come when he had to complete all of the endings.
But first, Lilly – and he'd get her Good Ending first, he was sure of it.
But then... did he really have to befriend this impossibly shy girl to get close to Lilly? He'd thought he was bad at talking to people, but this character just took everything to a whole new level, even for someone who was used to romancing the shy, rich types.
In retrospect, he should have realised that the festival was the critical point in the story; the characters only referenced it constantly.
He should have budgeted more time.
But he thought, perhaps, he'd run into one of the girls at the festival and that's how the route would be finalised.
He didn't realise that not having a date to the festival had already finalised his route.
Somehow, the protagonist was being dragged along by the creepy hall mate to drink on the school roof... now that just seemed like a bad idea, but there was no way, save restarting, to stop it, especially since he didn't know exactly which of his decisions had led to this.
It didn't seem to be going too badly, and for a moment he thought that he'd just made a friend who might help out in the next chapter, but then...
What the fuck?! He was falling off of the roof?!
He hoped against hope that the game would continue, but there was a flash of red and then the credits rolled.
If he hadn't been on his bed, he'd have dropped his laptop in shock.
As it was, he sat rather catatonic for a few minutes before searching desperately for his phone and calling the one person who might understand.
Nozaki picked up just before it went to voicemail.
“I FELL OFF OF THE SCHOOL ROOF AND DIED!” he shouted.
“What?!”
He heard some commotion in the background, and heard Nozaki relay the information to someone – from the other person's voice, he deduced that it had to be Chiyo.
“I didn't know who to pick and then I thought I'd made a friend and we started drinking and the next thing I knew I was falling off the roof of the school and everything flashed red and then it all went black!”
“Where are you?” Nozaki asked. What a stupid question.
“I'm in my room!” He groaned. “I didn't realise that the festival was the critical point in the story! I should have gotten a date!”
“...Mikoshiba,” Nozaki began slowly. “Was this in a game?”
“It was in a visual novel,” Mikorin corrected.
He heard Nozaki inform Chiyo that he was not actually hurt.
“Wait a minute, you thought I was actually dumb enough to get on top of the school roof on a Friday night and then fall off, and that it was a reasonable assumption that my first reaction would be to call you?”
Nozaki didn't reply.
Mikorin hung up on him.
Some friend Nozaki was.
...It was only an hour later, after he'd recovered enough to look up a spoiler free guide to see exactly where he'd gone wrong, that Mikorin realised that tonight had been Nozaki and Chiyo's first real, actual date.
Well, the first date that they both realised was a date, as apparently Nozaki had been convinced that he and Chiyo had been dating for a year.
He texted Chiyo.
Sorry for worrying you; I've never DIED in a VN before! and I forgot you and Nozaki were on a date.
Chiyo texted back a few minutes later, just as Mikorin was beginning to think she hated him.
It's okay, Mikorin. We're just glad you're okay.
“Okay” was relative – he was embarrassed and still pretty shocked by the ending he'd gotten, but... physically. Physically he'd never been in any danger of falling off of a school roof.
Yeah I'm fine, he texted back.
But this time for sure I'm gonna romance the quiet rich girl!