Prologue
IDEAS LIKE GOOD AND EVIL are relative and differ based on point of view.
Ordinarily, such philosophical pretension never crossed my mind, but I was beyond exhausted. Mentally, I was wiped. Emotionally, let’s just say that my face had been devoid of all expression for hours.
What I really wanted to do was flop down on my bed and spend the rest of my meager time on Earth immersed in my favorite manga. Or maybe an anime. Playing a game wouldn’t have been bad either, so long as it was one made for a male audience, i.e., me.
Unfortunately, I—a full-time employee and functioning member of Japanese society—was playing an otome game instead, my eyes dead-fish glazed. These dating sims were made principally for women. They featured female main characters with a bevy of male love interests to pursue. The opposite of these were galge—dating sim games targeted at men.
That’s right. A man like me had no business spending his precious afternoon off on a game like this. Maybe if I genuinely liked otome games it would be a different story, but I exclusively preferred galge.
“Uggghhh, why do I have to spend my whole freaking day trying to rack up affection points with a bunch of dudes?”
The blushing man on-screen did absolutely nothing for me.
Of course, most of the characters in this game were some kind of gorgeous. A popular artist had done the character designs and sprites, and the cast was voiced by famous actors. If this were a galge and these were all female characters, I would have been crying with joy. But what was I supposed to do with this guy’s husky voice?!
I wasn’t playing this game for pleasure, so I was using a guide on my phone to clear it quickly. My eyes flitted between the game and the walkthrough as I made my selections. A cheery little sound echoed, indicating I had successfully raised my affection points with the idiot love interest I was currently pursuing. The character’s 3D model struck a pose, his cheeks flushed as he pushed his hair back.
“You’re not like all the other women,” he said. “Tell me your name.”
This man was some kind of prince, and he was oh-so-popular at the academy. The protagonist had encountered him by chance, and since she didn’t know his true identity (gasp), she was treating him just like a normal person (gasp!) in this scene.
“What a load of bull,” I couldn’t help grousing. I’d already completed my first playthrough and this encounter was old news to me. “She’s lying. We’ve been through this before. She totally knows who the prince is. I’m telling you, this protag is calculating. Conniving, even.”
But no matter how I warned him, the prince was completely oblivious to her scheming.
“Acting all happy, blushing like a fool,” I grumbled at my screen. “This guy really has no taste.”
Work had been such a nightmare lately that it was my first weekend off in ages, and here I was throwing it all away playing this excruciating game. It was already Sunday afternoon. Seriously, why?
My phone chirped with an incoming message. When I checked it, I found a message from my sister with a picture attached: I’m enjoying my time abroad with my friends!
The photo showed her and her friends having the time of their lives on some hotel beach. Her smiling face made my blood boil.
I immediately replied: I call BS! You’re making me play this game for you because you said you were too busy to do it yourself!
The otome game presently sucking out my life force actually belonged to my little sister. She was a university student living at home with our parents, while I lived by myself. She had dropped by Saturday morning. I knew something was off the second I saw her, and lo and behold, she hadn’t come for the pleasure of my company.
All smiles, she said, “I’m sure you’ve got nothing better to do… How about full clearing this game for me?”
Full clear. In other words, complete 100 percent of the content in the game. Collect all the illustrated moments, animations, and scenes, so they could be viewed later through the menu. She was asking me to play through the entire game.
What I really wanted to tell her was, Enough of your crap! Do it yourself!
My phone dinged again with my sister’s reply: What the hell? You sure you want to take that attitude with me? Maybe when I come back I won’t sort out that whole misunderstanding with Mom. Come on, I’ll buy you a souvenir, just full clear the game for me, okay? Please? (FYI, if I get back and you haven’t done it, I’m going to leave even more naughty stuff in your room) ~ Sincerely, your cute little sister.
I had to suppress the urge to chuck my phone to the ground. “Damn her!”
I wanted to refuse her request, really I did. The problem was, my sister had surreptitiously stored some of her more dubious reading material at my place, since she still lived with our parents. Namely, the kind of books hardcore nerd girl fujoshi are into. She didn’t even tell me she’d done it. When my mom came to clean my apartment and found all that racy, homoerotic content carefully tucked away, she assumed it belonged to me. I tried clearing things up with her, but the harder I defended my real taste the more it sounded like I was trying to hide the truth.
It was a nightmare. Both because of the misunderstanding with my mom and because now I knew way too much about what my little sister was into.
To make matters worse, my parents believed my sister’s lies over my protests. She was pretty, talented, and always got good grades. People often praised her for being kind and considerate. In reality, she was just really good at wearing a mask, as I learned the hard way time and time again.
If you couldn’t tell by now, my sister’s personality sucked.
She made my life hell in order to hide her hobbies, and no matter how much I might try to convince our parents otherwise, they would never take my word over hers. When my mom first called about it, worried, I almost felt like crying. I vowed then and there that I would have revenge on my sister.
I swallowed my anger and the need to throw things, and set my phone aside. I reached for the controller again and tried to focus on completing the game so I could clear my good name.
There was only one path left to me: I had to see this game through to the end. Frustrating as it was, my sister had a way with words. When she showed up Saturday morning, she not only twisted my arm into playing her game for her, she also talked me into giving her extra cash for her trip. I felt pathetic for letting myself be blackmailed.
It was clear I didn’t stand a chance of winning against her if I played fairly. I would have my revenge, though. And as I continued farming affection points in the game, I began concocting a plan.
“I’m going to make her regret pissing me off.”
My little sister had always been cunning. She knew she was cute, and she knew how to use that to her advantage—the complete opposite of me. Her only weakness was probably this hobby she’d hidden from the rest of the world.
I stewed in frustration as I kept playing. My brows furrowed. “I keep getting stuck at this same spot…”
The creator of the game had clearly poured a lot of money into making this series, hoping it would be a hit. My sister was so enthralled with the artist and voice actors that she bought the first-press limited edition of the game the second preorders went up. But the game had a slight problem: there were roleplaying and strategy elements. The developers had only made games targeting men in the past, so this one was (unsurprisingly) missing the mark a little for their new, largely female audience.
The setting for the game was a whimsical fantasy world with swordplay and magic. Characters lived on chunks of land that floated in the air. You might think the civilization wasn’t very advanced given the existence of royalty, but actually, people flew around in airships, and knights fought in mobile suits called “Armor.”
The protagonist was attending the nobles’ academy, although she was just a commoner. She was a plain girl from the countryside who’d received a scholarship. High-ranking noblewomen bullied her for her special status, and she had to contend with various other challenges as well.
And of course, the world in this otome game showed incredible favoritism toward women.
My little sister initially intended to clear the game herself but gave up when she couldn’t best the strategy elements that originated in other game genres. Thus, I was suffering in her place.
“You’re always playing these kinds of games,” she’d said. “It should be a piece of cake for you.”
True, I did enjoy video games, but even I found myself annoyed with the difficulty here.
“Who would even want these kinds of elements in an otome game anyway?” I grumbled as I worked the controller.
Airships were lined up on the screen, shaped like rugby balls, standing across from one another on the hexagonal grid of a battlefield. Each side would fire cannons at the other in a turn-based system, and then the knights, in their mobile suits, would fly in and charge the enemy.
“Shit! Why the hell does the enemy use its skill right then?! Makes it insanely hard to win.” I glared at the screen. “They should have made it so players can speed through this stupid stuff.”
My allies suffered enormous damage even when they attacked, due to the enemy’s special abilities. Then, when it was the enemy’s turn to go on the offensive, my units lacked sufficient defense. I got wiped out every time. Even if my units had superior skills, a lot of random elements (hit chance, crit chance, etc.) still made winning difficult. I could make all the right moves, account for the best field positioning and terrain, and those pure RNG elements would still take me out.
No wonder my sister threw in the towel.
“Ah, crap,” I groaned. One of the conditions for winning this map was to keep the prince alive, and the airship he was in had just gone down. The words Game Over popped up on the screen.
“Seriously, again?! How the hell can I lose when I’m following the walkthrough?”