[LP CYOA] Spiral

[Nevill]

Sure. I can arrange for that.

Stranger things happened in VNs.

Besides, Uehara never mentioned what kind of man her mom found.

I bet Baltika would be delighted about yet another chance to marry into yakuza family.

That can be done. Shinoseki is now the Abyss.

Does it mean that he is finally driven by a desire to hug and glomp the living?

I can be happy with that.

 

[Akkudakku]

Does it mean that he is finally driven by a desire to hug and glomp the living?

I can be happy with that.

Wonder if the subjects of the hugging and glomping can live with it

 

[Nevill]

I care only about overcoming our personal limits. Survival of the others is optional.

 

[Akkudakku]

I care only about overcoming our personal limits. Survival of the others is optional.

We kind of survived the Abyss. 12 times. If we can others can too!

I can brofist finally. And will abuse the shit out of it.

 

[TOME]

I think I finally fell of the wagon for good. I just can't into all these eastern names.

 

[treave]

I suppose the final two groups are Uehara, Sakimura, Maeda, and Sakaki, Amanozaki, Sawada.

 

[Nevill]

There are a bit more than a dozen people milling about the lobby, looking restless and frustrated. The doors are closed and since none of them have left, it is likely that you cannot escape from here either. The size of the lobby and number of people present makes you slightly uncomfortable. The collar of your shirt is starting to feel a little tight. Though the students run up to the new people animatedly, happy to see other living beings around, Mitsuki stays by your side. You look at the scene, taking in everything that you can. There are probably about twenty people here, including you and Mitsuki.

Hmmm. It seems like we are encountering everyone this night, same as on the third one. In that case, is it possible to deduce who else is here with us by remembering the lobby scene from our past lives?

A. You join the largest group – the students are there, and it seems to be comprised of staff and visitors. A smart-looking young man is talking to all of them at the moment. You can spot two nurses, a man in a security guard’s uniform, an office lady and a crochety-looking old man here.

The students we know about. A smart-looking young man is Tokigawa. One of the nurses is Okuyama. The guard is Murano, the office lady is Kayano.

Unidentified - the second nurse, the crochety-looking old man.

B. You attempt to sit down with a small group of people lounging on the couches not too far from the first group. A well-dressed couple, a girl in a maid uniform, a scruffy looking fellow, a lady who looks like a house-wife, and a good-looking man who looks like he just stepped out of a magazine are here.

A well-dressed ones are Maeda and Taketatsu, the maid is familiar, the scruffy fellow is Sakaki, and a good-looking man is Sawada.

Unidentified - a housewife.

C. A big man in a trenchcoat who is hovering around the edges of the conversations.

D. A frazzled-looking young woman with big coke-bottle glasses who is sitting by herself.

Obviously Mori and Amanozaki.

So, there is a nurse, a housewife, and an old man we still know nothing about. treave, did the old man look like Juuzo?

 

[treave]

treave, did the old man look like Juuzo?

Somewhat. All wrinkly old Japanese men look alike to you.

 

[treave]

Sakimura, Uehara, Maeda

Focus. The enemy comes. With a shout, Sakimura strikes at his opponent. The captain of the karate club crashes to the floor, brought down by a well-timed chop.

“All right, that’s enough!” The instructor claps his hands and stops the fight. “Sakimura, come over here.” He gives a stern glance and beckons, his jaw set. After checking on the captain to make sure that he is alright, Sakimura walks over to the instructor, wiping off his sweat.

“You are not your usual self today, Sakimura.” The instructor frowns at him, hands set at his side. “There was more aggression than you should harness in your movements. Did something happen?”

Sakimura shakes his head. It is not something he wishes to share here. He swallows the frustration and the nascent anger, and puts on a cheerful, cocky grin. “Nothing important, sensei. Just some minor relationship issues.”

After doling out some advice, the instructor dismisses him. Sakimura retrieves his bag,. Moving into the gym storage, where he can have more privacy, he checks his phone. No new messages. Not even from Uehara. He is slightly disappointed; did she care so little about him? The last message that he had received is still in the inbox, a reminder of how little he knows about the girl that he loves.

Uehara Shizuka plans to go to the hospital this afternoon.

The message had come from an anonymous number, a tip-off, so to speak. Sakimura wonders if this mysterious message had come from any of his friends at school? Could it be Shiba or Kozaka? Still, that does not matter. What matters is that he loves her. That’s right, that rejection yesterday did not mean anything. He nods, convinced of his own feelings. She had almost come off like a bitch, but he knows that Uehara is not that sort of girl, not at all. She must have a reason for turning him down. He can understand that. He understands everything about her.

After all, he’s always been watching her from the moment she stepped into this school.

She was so fragile then, like a delicate flower. Sakimura smiles to himself as he reminisces about how she grew; how she spun an extroverted shell around herself as protection, and how no one else will remember, besides him, just how vulnerable she is. Uehara needs his protection. He’s the only one that can save her… but he must be careful. She’s shy, after all. Sakimura knows that he mustn’t push too strongly. If he keeps showing his good side, she’ll naturally come to reciprocate his feelings. After all, he keeps getting confessions from the other girls at school. How can she not love him back, after all he does for her?

That is also why he cannot let her go to the hospital alone. Maiko is there, hospitalized after her suicide attempt. Sakimura had been forced to turn her down, and she had taken it quite badly. Although he feels guilty about using her, he calls up Shiba, and then Kozaka, letting them know his plans. By the time he finishes talking to them, he himself believes that he is truly visiting Maiko out of concern.

And then, he makes the call to Uehara.

***

“Alright. Okay. I’ll meet you guys there. Yeah, I know. See ya.” Uehara finishes her talk with Sakimura and hangs up. She sighs. There was no way that she could turn down that invite, not with Shiba and Kozaka now tagging along. She knows that Sakimura means well… but he does try too hard sometimes. The only thing that she can be relieved about at the moment is that Sakimura doesn’t seem to be taking his rejection too badly. It was nothing personal. He might be the dashing karate ace of the school, and his attention may have earned her the unsightful jealousy of many girls in class, but Uehara could care less.

Right now, Seika is all that matters. She needs to know the truth behind her disappearance. She has to know.

If there was any chance at all that she is still alive, somewhere, waiting to be rescued…

If it means returning once again to Ikei – to where she had first lost her mother, and then her sister – that is what Uehara will do.

***

Maeda spins her phone on the table listlessly. Why now? Just when she thought she was ready to move on… just when she thought his ghost was truly dead and buried, she was pulled back in with a message mentioning Shinohara Seiji. That stupid, useless, bookish, cowardly boy who saved her life so long ago, almost killing himself in the process. Is possible to be even more of an idiot? Then, in a stunning display of rudeness, he had just up and vanished without even telling her goodbye.

She frowns and flicks the phone hard, making it spin around even faster.

It is irrational to be hung up on a boy that she has not seen for ten years. She knows that. She doesn’t even know what he looks like nowadays. Somehow, the Shinohara family has managed to conceal their sole heir from the world all these years. There were – naturally – rumours that he had actually died, leaving Juuzo with no successor. That had motivated the Maedas to make more overt moves in bid to regain their past glory. Amongst those moves was her betrothal to Taketatsu Shinichi.

But then again, there were the rumours that he had returned to the country in secret, that he was working with his family on some secret government project. She had wondered at first if it was the same project that Taketatsu was working on, but it doesn’t seem to be the case. Her fiancé seems to shut down at any mention of Shinohara Seiji, so she has become more careful about bringing him up: from his actions, it is likely that Taketatsu does know something of Seiji, and is hiding it from her.

That seems all the more certain now. The tip may be anonymous, but her gut tells her that it is genuine.

Shinohara Seiji is in Ikei.

With a sigh, Maeda stands up and grabs her phone. That’s right. It doesn’t have to be personal. Whatever the Shinoharas are hiding could be detrimental to the Maedas’ resurgence. For the sake of her family and her future, she needs to investigate Shinohara Seiji and get an answer once and for all.

***

Uehara sees Sakimura waving at her. Shiba and Kozaka are already with him, the two of them bickering about something as usual. She forces a smile on her face, and goes up to meet her friends.

***

Maeda strides into the lobby, passing by a group of high school students. She stops for a while, turning to look at their youthful chatter. Their uniform is nostalgic: St. Xavier Academy, her alma mater. It has a long and illustrious history, with many famous graduates in multiple spheres of society. In fact, wasn’t that one guy an alumnus of…

Before she can remember, she spots her fiancé waiting just ahead.

***

First it had been one person in the lobby, snapping and attacking the child next to him.

Then, it was two people.

Then three.

Four.

And then, the entire hospital was swamped by a wave of violence.

***

Sakimura flinches, kicking away the madman attempting to strangle him. The hospital is in chaos. It is filled with screams of terror, cries of pain, and the rumbling of stampeding feet, attempting to escape the madness. Something is terribly wrong.

“Uehara!” he shouts out ,trying to make his way over to her.

***

She should not have come back here, not to this place where the boundaries between the world of the living and the world of the departed are thin and easily crossed. Not to this place, where she can barely distinguish man and spirit. Those who kill and those who are killed. The dying, and the dead. In Uehara’s eyes, there is little difference between the two now. She saw Kozaka crawling on the floor, his throat cut, dark blood pouring down on the white linoleum tiles and mingling with the blood of others. Shiba is missing. Sakimura is at her side, shouting at her to get up.

Yet she no longer sees or hears him.

She no longer perceives anyone, but the man standing on the second floor balcony, clad in a white coat, looking down on the bloody mess as if he were lord of this tiny little kingdom of insanity.

She’s seen it before, that man’s cold yet handsome face...

It was in the pictures Seika sent her.

Their gazes meet. His eyes widen almost imperceptibly. The man turns away, disappearing from view.

“Hey, Uehara!”

Uehara screams a howl of pent up anger, frustration, and joy at finally having found a concrete lead regarding her sister’s disappearance.

There he is.

I’m not letting him get away.

Never.

Shaking off Sakimura’s helping hand, she chases after Shinohara Seiji.

 

[Nevill]

Shinoseki Adachi is a failure all around. Outloliconed by Keiji, out-Nii-saned by Seiji, outstalkered by Sakimura.

What avenues are left to us?

 

[Rex Feral]

Still, that does not matter. What matters is that he loves her.

Sums up my expectations on how an Sakimura-Uehara coupling would go

 

[Kz3r0]

Oh, another creep, well, is not that bad after all, less people whose safety we should be concerned with.
At this point I suspect that he is the one who killed Uehara in the first night.

 

[Rex Feral]

It should have been clear already, that the only one we can trust here is Mori. And Maeda...

 

[Akkudakku]

Shinoseki Adachi is a failure all around. Outloliconed by Keiji, out-Nii-saned by Seiji, outstalkered by Sakimura.

What avenues are left to us?

We can always absorb them.

Also I taken not to like Sakimura from this monent on.

 

[Nevill]

At this point I suspect that he is the one who killed Uehara in the first night.

Le fuck? Even a karate adept does not have the sort of strength to blow the head off one's shoulders.

Besides, he is not too bright to get rid of all the evidence or plan a murder so that there would be none left. It's not like there are spare uniforms lying all around the hospital for him to change into.

He is a bit of a dick, but he isn't too bad.

 

[Kz3r0]

Still, that does not matter. What matters is that he loves her.

Sums up my expectations on how an Sakimura-Uehara coupling would go

It's not that there were better options, we don't know enough.
It's startling however that is exactly as Nevil wrote, we singled out all the non shitty ones in our interactions with them.

 

[Kz3r0]

At this point I suspect that he is the one who killed Uehara in the first night.

Le fuck? Even a karate adept does not have the sort of strength to blow the head off one's shoulders.

Besides, he is not too bright to get rid of all the evidence or plan a murder so that none would be left. It's not like there are spare uniforms lying all around the hospital for him to change into.

Desire go far in this place as Seiji told us.
Besides a roundhouse kick could have done the job quite fine, expecially if he's wearing weight reinforced shoes, Ichi the killer style.
Not that I really arguing in favor of this.

 

[Nevill]

It's startling however that is exactly as Nevil wrote, we singled out all the non shitty ones in our interactions with them.

People may have some dirty underwear, yes. But they are also capable of great feats and grand gestures as well.

I can understand why one would be repulsed by looking into another's soul, but if you think about it a little, Sakimura does not really deserve the scorn. Did he not risk his life for Uehara when he charged the Nurse with nothing but a stick? Did he not stay to help Kozaka and Shiba when we made our flight during the Third Night?

He may wear a mask, but it grew close enough to his face that I am willing to overlook a few selfish thoughts he might have had when he first donned it.

It's not like Shinoseki Adachi is a shining beacon of righteousness. If we forgive the others their weaknesses, we ourselves would be more likely to be forgiven. And we have quite a few things to be sorry for.

 

[Akkudakku]

Sakimura is a minor case of yandere it looks like.

 

[Nevill]

He is a case of 'ALL YOUR GIRLS ARE BELONG TO US'. Confident, athletic, good-looking. Hardly ever had a girl refuse him. Most likely he views it as another sport - an obstacle to overcome, an achievement to accomplish. And he is very competitive about it, too.

But if he keeps at it long enough it may yet turn him into a better person.

 

[Akkudakku]

He is a case of 'ALL YOUR GIRLS ARE BELONG TO US'. Confident, athletic, good-looking. Hardly ever had a girl refuse him. Most likely he views it as another sport - an obstacle to overcome, an achievement to accomplish. And he is very competitive about it, too.

But if he keeps at it long enough it may yet turn him into a better person.

For now it turned him dead

 

[Nevill]

Not that rare of a case among our acquaintances.

 

[Akkudakku]

Not that rare of a case among our acquaintances.

We are too shy to try talking with the living.

 

[Nevill]

You should probably look anywhere except through the cubicle door that she has left slightly ajar. Turning away, you glance at the mirrors along the sinks. They are well-polished; under the gentle lighting of the washroom, you can spot no blemishes at all. You move closer to one of the mirrors – this is the first time you have gotten the chance to examine your features. Your black hair is wild, messy and would do better with a good trim. Your spectacles are slightly skewed – that you fix quickly. Strangely enough, the colour of your eyes are closer to being a dark green than they are brown… are you mixed? There are noticeable dark bags under your eyes too. You do not look particularly well-fed; at least, your cheeks are more angular than round. You suppose your features wouldn’t be considered terribly unpleasant by the standards of the day… well, whatever standards you can recall, at least.

She’s seen it before, that man’s cold yet handsome face...

So which one is true? Are we hot, or are we not? It's kinda important!

It looks like Uehara knew who we are since the very beginning. I wonder if our First Night was really her First Night as well or if she had met us before. Something in her behavior implies that it was the very beginning, but...

Things do not add up. These people saw the others murdered. Yet they reacted as if nothing happened. Was their memory of arriving to this place tampered with just as ours was? Are they in a capsule somewhere, being fed false memories a la Matrix? How does this tie in with Maeda's ending?

And most important of all... our body was alive in the real world! But who owed it? Wasn't Shinohara Seiji supposed to be dead?

 

[treave]

So which one is true? Are we hot, or are we not? It's kinda important!

Shinoseki has low self-esteem.