Chapter 0: Prologue

[I like you, Tetsuya-kun.]

[Miyuki…]

[What do you think of me, Tetsuya-kun?]

A beauty looked up at the tall man with teary eyes.

Her captivating charm lay in her eyes, which showed just a sliver of white beneath the iris, a classic ‘three-whites’ gaze.

She gazed at the man with bright brown eyes that felt both innocent and strangely sensual.

As if urging him to quickly reveal his feelings.

The man, his face flushed red, finally opened his mouth after a long pause.

[…. I’m sorry, Miyuki. I… I don’t really know my own feelings yet…]

The moment I read that sentence, sitting in front of my computer, my lower half shot bolt upright.

‘Is this bastard an idiot?’

Seriously, the most beautiful woman in the entire game world just confessed, and the guy himself has the biggest feelings for Miyuki, his childhood friend among all the heroines, so why…

He’s still agonizing over his feelings this late in the game, right before the end. It’s absurd.

I felt like I could just crawl inside the scenario writer’s head to see what was in there.

I let out a hollow laugh and clicked the mouse.

Hoping the protagonist was just joking and would say he felt the same way about her.

But then,

[Thank you for playing Doki Doki Academy.]

The next screen that appeared had no fancy background, just the unexpected sentence emblazoned across it in huge letters.

Stunned, I blurted out involuntarily.

“What the f* is this crap?”

What? ‘Thank you for playing’? Does that mean it’s just… over?

No, not ending it by melting the player’s heart with sweetness, but by making their blood boil before ending it?

What happens to Miyuki, who confessed, with an ending like this?

She’ll probably go home clutching her broken heart and cry her eyes out for days on end.

And what about the other heroines, Renka and Hiyori? Are they just being abandoned?

This game is a sweet romantic comedy.

Even with conflict, it’s a genre where the protagonist and the main heroine reach the culmination of their love.

So what is this insane ending? Even the most frustrating romantic comedies don’t end like this…

Did they do this because they wanted to see the player vomit blood?

Is the writer a bit psycho?

If they weren’t mentally unstable, they wouldn’t release the final DLC like this.

“Isn’t this totally batshit insane?”

If they wanted an open ending, they should have at least shut Tetsuya up.

If they had done that, I could have let my imagination run wild with positive possibilities, but this… it only brings negative thoughts.

Do they think I put up with this protagonist, who’s way more frustrating than in other dating sims, just to see this…?

Even though the game wasn’t popular, the art style was my type, and I fell for the thrilling, precarious dance of their budding romance, pouring my affection into it.

I even enjoyed it by projecting myself onto Tetsuya, empathizing with him, and spent my days eagerly awaiting the release of various DLCs.

I even bought a bromide poster for the first time ever.

And now they hit me with this betrayal? Don’t they feel sorry?

If you’re going to give the heroines tragedies like this, you might as well have switched to an adult game and stuffed it full of fanservice scenes.

In that case, I would have forgotten about empathizing and just jerked off.

Still stunned, I closed ‘Doki Doki Academy,’ nicknamed ‘Dokiaka,’ which I had been playing until just moments ago.

After that, I accessed the website of the company that developed this game and wrote a lengthy critique.

It was the first time in my life I had ever expressed such intense anger or written a critique.

That’s how immersed I was in this game, and I was furious at the developers and the writer for wasting my time with such a crappy ending.

I play romantic comedies to feel sweetness, but all I got was a foul mood.

It seems I’ve played the worst trash game in history.

After finishing everything, I looked out the window; the night was deep.

Excited about the DLC release that included the ending, I got so absorbed in every sentence and illustration that I didn’t even notice the time.

Swish-!

I irritably drew the blackout curtains and buried my head in my pillow.

‘Fuck.’

Playing this game was the biggest regret of my life.

But what could I do? I didn’t know it would turn out like this.

‘Still, it was sweet at times…’

If only they’d done the ending properly, it would have been a guaranteed masterpiece… Fucking bastards…

Trying desperately to calm my racing heart, I looked at the bromide posters of the three heroines stuck on the wall.

Miyuki, Renka, and Hiyori.

Truly, such beautiful heroines.

If only they hadn’t fallen for an idiot like Tetsuya… they could have been happy…

It was a game I loved for such a long time, only to become trash in an instant because of one ending.

The sense of betrayal is no joke.

Now I finally understand why this game wasn’t popular.

It’s because the developers have no brains.

I let out a deep sigh from the bottom of my heart and tried to sleep.

I thought I wouldn’t be able to sleep from sheer anger, but surprisingly, sleepiness was washing over me.

It seemed my mind was utterly exhausted from the intense emotional outburst.

Yeah, this is good. Let’s forget this trash game quickly.

Thinking that, I soon fell asleep.

‘Miyuki… Renka… Hiyori… they’re so pitiful…’

Calling out desperately to the names of the three heroines, who were bound to meet such unfortunate ends.