Reincarnated as the Protagonist of a Legendary Depressing Eroge – I Paired Up My Two Childhood Friend Heroines to Avoid the Bad End, But Their Possessiveness Completely Broke Through the Limits - Episode 08: Confrontation / Winter & Episode 09: Confrontation / Winter

Episode 08: Confrontation / Winter

Outside the window, thick winter clouds hung low, painting the whole town in nothing but shades of gray.

In the classroom after school, only the icy cold air remained once the heater had been turned off.

Far away, the faint sounds of the brass band practicing their instruments drifted in like something from another world, only to be swallowed up by the heavy silence.

I—Keiji Kageyama—was standing in the corner of the empty classroom, quietly watching Yoru’s back as she packed her bag alone.

Her movements were incredibly careful.

She lined up every textbook neatly before slipping them into her bag.

She adjusted the direction of her pencil case.

She ran her fingertips along the inside of her desk to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything.

Each little gesture looked like she was cherishing a place she would never return to, or maybe carefully erasing every trace that she had ever been there.

Yoru let out a small sigh and turned around.

The moment I saw her face, my breath almost stopped.

There was none of yesterday’s restlessness or sharp rejection.

Instead, an eerily calm, crystal-clear smile floated on her face, like the surface of a lake on a winter morning.

“Kei-kun… what have you been doing over there all this time?”

“…Nothing. I was just waiting for you, Yoru.”

My voice trembled weakly in the chilled air.

Yoru gave a soft “fufu,” letting out the gentle laugh she used to make.

That laugh sounded so much like the old Yoru that it drove a cold wedge straight into my chest.

“You were waiting for me. Thank you… Hey, Kei-kun. Want to take a little walk on the way home? I don’t really feel like going straight back today.”

Her suggestion sounded completely ordinary.

But deep in her eyes lay an emptiness like an abyss where no light could reach.

I didn’t say anything, just nodded.

When we left the school gate, the streetlights began flickering on one by one, casting orange glows into the freezing twilight.

We walked side by side without speaking.

The park bench, the back gate of the elementary school, the spot in front of the convenience store where we’d eaten ice cream together that summer.

Yoru stared at each of those familiar scenes as if she wanted to burn them into her memory.

“…Hey, Kei-kun. Do you remember?”

Yoru suddenly stopped and asked.

We were standing in the grounds of a small shrine we used to duck into whenever it rained.

“Last summer, when that sudden evening shower hit… You put your bag over my head to shield me from the rain, remember? In the end we both got completely soaked… and Mom got really mad at us.”

“…Yeah, I remember. You kept scolding me, saying it would be my fault if you caught a cold.”

“Was I like that? Fufu… That cocoa we had afterward was really warm, wasn’t it?”

Yoru gazed at the old bench in the shrine grounds with eyes that seemed to be looking far, far into the past.

Every memory she talked about was just an ordinary, everyday little fragment.

How she’d pushed the green peppers from her school lunch onto my plate and lied, “It wasn’t me.”

How we’d stayed late together in the library to study for tests.

How she’d put a bandage on my knee when I fell and scraped it.

“Kei-kun… The time I spent next to you was my favorite thing in the whole world.”

Yoru turned toward me.

Her thin hair swayed in the winter night wind.

Right then, that unpleasant “adult smell” drifted faintly from her body.

Cheap cigarettes. And a thick, decadent perfume that didn’t suit her clean skin at all.

It cruelly pointed out exactly where she was heading next.

“…Yoru. What are you—”

I reached out to grab her hand.

But Yoru gently slipped away, her movement full of quiet refusal.

“Thank you for everything until now… Meeting you made me really happy, Kei-kun. Because you were there, I could pretend to be a normal girl.”

Yoru’s words sounded like a perfect farewell.

There was no scream asking for help, no anger cursing her fate—nothing like that.

Only a pure, reckless despair crystallized into the wish that the person she loved most would remember her at her most beautiful.

“Kei-kun… I really loved you… I truly did.”

Yoru looked straight into my eyes one last time.

The tears gathering in her eyes caught the streetlight and sparkled like glass.

Then she turned her back on me and started to walk off into the darkness.

“Yoru, wait!”

I shouted without caring how it sounded and broke into a run toward her back.

If I let her walk into a darkness deeper than death like this, I would never forgive myself.

What stopped Yoru wasn’t my voice.

It was because I had grabbed her arm with desperate force, as if I might tear it off.

“…Ah. Let go. Please, Kei-kun. Let me say goodbye while I still look pretty.”

“…Yoru, what are you trying to do?”

Yoru’s body gave a sharp little tremble.

She slowly turned back toward me like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

What was on her face now wasn’t the calm smile from before, but a muddy emptiness that had given up on everything.

“…Hey, Kei-kun. You don’t know anything… about what kind of dirty blood is flowing inside my body.”

Her voice sounded low, crawling along the ground.

Winter rain began to fall, pattering softly against our cheeks.

—

Episode 09: Confrontation / Winter

The rain kept falling quietly, stealing the warmth from our bodies.

My fingers gripping Yoru’s arm could feel her endless trembling.

It was so thin and cold, like it might snap at any moment.

“…Let go, Kei-kun.”

Yoru’s voice was terribly small.

Maybe she had no strength left to resist, because she just looked up at me with eyes that seemed to be clinging on for dear life.

The cool sparkle that used to shine in them was gone, replaced by a deep, deep sadness.

“Mom has been fighting all alone to raise me… But I was born carrying the blood of the men who destroyed her. Just by existing, I keep Mom trapped in that night forever.”

She began quietly confessing that she herself was a curse.

The truth about her birth that she had learned.

The violent remnants left by the men who had violated her mother.

All of that had taken the shape of her, standing right here in front of me.

To her, her very existence had become an act of violence against the mother she loved most.

“Mom is wearing herself out with night work because of me… So if I take her place, it’ll be fine. If I cover myself in mud, Mom can finally be freed from that night… Hey, Kei-kun. This is the only way I can repay her.”

Yoru gently placed her hand on my chest.

Not to push me away, but as if she was quietly begging, “Please just let me go.”

The smell of the cheap perfume she was wearing drifted sadly from her rain-soaked uniform, completely out of place.

“…Yoru.”

I gently took her hand again, wrapping my fingers around hers.

I spoke in the softest voice I could, hoping the words would reach her heart.

“You don’t have to do anything like that, Yoru.”

“…!”

“I know how much you love your mom, and how badly you want to take her place. It hurts to even think about it. But that won’t save her.”

While feeling the beat of her heart, I kept talking.

“The reason Mom has been protecting you every day, even when she’s falling apart, is because she never wanted you to see the same hell she went through, right?”

Yoru’s eyes trembled just a little.

“Blood, the past, all of that… None of it is your fault, Yoru… To me, you’re still the same Yoru who secretly pushes the green peppers from her lunch onto my plate and lies, ‘It wasn’t me.’ …I’ve never once thought about whose kid you are, and I never will.”

“But I… I’m still the dirty daughter of those disgusting men.”

“You’re not dirty… Yoru, you’re the most beautiful girl in the world. Even if you think you’re filth, I’ll always be on your side.”

I softly cupped her freezing cheek with my palm.

“…If you want to help your mom, let’s think about it together. Not by sacrificing yourself, but by finding a way for both you and your mom to be happy. So please, stop talking about throwing yourself away.”

The tears Yoru had been desperately holding back finally spilled over from her eyes.

She grabbed my shirt tightly and collapsed against me, sobbing.

“…Ah… ugh… Kei-kun… Kei-kun…”

Her sobs mixed with the sound of the rain.

It was the moment her heart, which had been trying to treat herself like an object, finally returned to the pain of being just an ordinary middle school girl.