The Gal Game Heroines Who Were Supposed to Die Somehow Learned My Secret ～By the Way, Where Did My [Diary] Go?～ - Chapter 14: [Four Beauties] side 4

Chapter 14: [Four Beauties] side 4

“This is it…”

The apartment where Satoshi Iriya lived was about three train stops away from our high school. It was a three-minute walk from the nearest station, with convenient access to supermarkets, retail stores, and entertainment facilities. It seemed like a very comfortable place to live.

By now, the surroundings were pitch dark. The lights peeking out from nearby rooms had shifted from bright daylight tones to warm, orange hues. The eerie sound of footsteps echoed as we climbed the stairs. At the front, Shino stopped walking. Room 205—this was apparently Satoshi Iriya’s apartment.

“I’m opening it.”

We nodded silently in response to Shino’s words. She inserted a key, though none of us knew where she had obtained it. The lock clicked open with a soft sound. This was, of course, the first time any of us had ever broken into someone’s home. My mind raced with fears—what if someone was inside, or what if the neighbors saw us? But those worries turned out to be unfounded.

“Let’s go in.”

“Right…”

“Excuse me~.”

“I-I’ll go in too…”

Lingering outside would only draw suspicion. Hurriedly, we stepped into Satoshi Iriya’s apartment. The first thing that hit us was the foul smell.

“Ugh, this stinks~.”

“It’s pretty bad…”

“Let’s turn on the lights… I can’t see a thing.”

“Good idea. Lights, lights…”

The room, naturally, was unoccupied and, without any moonlight, felt even darker than the night outside. Bringing up the rear, I ran my hand along the middle of the wall until it hit a switch. Flicking it on, the light illuminated the space.

“Whoa…”

The first thing that caught my eye was the kitchen, resembling a garbage dump. Empty cans, plastic bottles, and containers from convenience store meals or takeout orders littered the floor. Between them were dark stains of spilled liquids, glistening under the harsh light.

“Wasn’t Satoshi Iriya supposed to be meticulous?”

“…Please, leave it alone.”

Reine smirked mischievously, causing Shino to pout just a little.

Even with a handkerchief pressed to my nose and mouth, the stench was overpowering. Carefully stepping around the mess, we made our way to the door at the back of the apartment.

“Hey, there won’t be… you know… a body in there, right?”

“Don’t say scary things like that~! Bad Shuna, bad!”

Was Shuna actually scared? 

It was hard to tell, as her playful tone didn’t exactly scream fear. Still, her lightheartedness managed to ease some of the tension in the room.

“Alright, here we go.”

When we nodded, Shino boldly swung the door open. Inside, a single one-room space spread before us, with curtains fluttering in the breeze and revealing a glimpse of the night sky through the balcony. While the room was still messy, it lacked the overpowering stench of the kitchen; the chaos here was limited to scattered belongings.

The furnishings were minimal: a sofa and a small table at the center of the room, where a lone laptop sat. Its screen glowed faintly, indicating the owner had left without shutting it down, or perhaps it had gone into sleep mode. The only other noteworthy feature was a ladder leading to a loft at the far end of the room.

“…Let’s get to work, shall we?”

“Yes, let’s.”

Shino wasted no time, pushing debris aside and seating herself in front of the laptop. Meanwhile, Reine wordlessly began climbing the ladder to the loft.

Do these two even know the meaning of hesitation…?

This was straight-up trespassing. It felt absurd to hesitate at this point, but my sense of morality still clung to me, making it hard to act freely.

“I’ll clean up the room~. It’s way too dirty like this~.”

That seemed… risky.

If the place were spotless when Satoshi Iriya returned, wouldn’t he be completely bewildered? Yet, without a second thought, Shuna had already started tidying up.

“Everyone’s just doing whatever they want…”

With nothing else to do, I decided to climb up to the loft where Reine had gone. It seemed like an ideal spot to hide something.

“Did you find something…? Wait, Reine, are you okay?”

The loft’s center was occupied by a futon, surrounded by piles of cardboard boxes. Reine sat at the far end, knees tucked beneath her, but when I called out to her, she turned her body toward me without lifting her face. Instead, she tossed an old, water-stained wallet in my direction.

“Satsuki, do you know what this is…?”

“…No idea.”

“It’s my mother’s. The position of the scratches matches exactly with what I remember…”

“!”

In the diary, it was written that Reine’s mother had lost her wallet and, enraged, nearly beat Reine to death. The turning point had been when someone—posing as Yuto Sano—returned the wallet, saving Reine’s life.

“That day, when I woke up, that woman’s mood had completely shifted, and I was so confused. The wallet had been replaced with a newer one, and she was flaunting the cash inside, saying it was all thanks to Yuto Sano…”

“Reine…”

I reached out toward her, trying to offer some comfort, but my foot caught on a cardboard box, sending it tumbling over.

“Oh no! I’m sor—r…y…”

I froze mid-apology.

I’d initially believed rummaging through someone’s belongings was wrong, especially in a teenage boy’s room. Surely, he’d have a thing or two he wouldn’t want anyone to see. That was my assumption, but…

“What… is… this…”

Inside the cardboard box that toppled over was my 1st photobook, the very first one I had ever released as a gravure idol. And not just one copy—there were many.

“1… 2… 3…”

Before I realized it, I started counting them one by one. As I finished, my eyes fell on another identical cardboard box next to the first. The guilt I had felt earlier evaporated. I opened the second box, finding the same contents inside.

“53… 54… 55…”

Back when my photobook was struggling to sell, my manager and the agency’s president had subtly suggested “alternative methods” to boost sales. Then, out of nowhere, I heard that a single devoted customer had purchased one hundred copies in one go. I had celebrated the news with unrestrained joy.

And when he came to the handshake event, I had been over the moon. I was convinced—I loved him, more than anything.

“98… 99… 100.”

Exactly one hundred copies. I didn’t feel the need to search through any more boxes—I knew instinctively this was all of them.

“Hahaha… so that’s how it is. Everything was a lie, huh…”

The last pillar of hope I had clung to, the one thing I wanted to believe in, crumbled before my eyes. Any lingering feelings I had for him—gone, completely shattered. All that remained was…

“I see… so that’s how it is! Fufufu… Ahahahahaha!”

“Isn’t that funny~? Why do you have them all, huh? It’s strange, isn’t it? Strange, right? Right!? RIGHT!”

Peering down from the loft, I could see Shino sitting at the laptop, her laughter unnervingly eerie. Shuna, meanwhile, had stopped cleaning and was holding something she had found, her tone becoming unsettlingly intense as her words escalated.

“Fufufufu… so that’s how it is…”

Reine muttered quietly, her head bowed, but her lips curled into a crescent-shaped smile.

“It’s hilarious! Ahahaha!”

I, too, had lost myself. Lost to madness, just like the others. I wanted to lose myself.

If it had just been the diary, maybe we could have dismissed it as a fabrication—a cruel coincidence, a baseless conspiracy.

But the laugh echoing through the gap in the curtains tore into the tranquil darkness of the sleeping town, reflecting our unraveling sanity.

This world is a fabrication.

Satsuki Saionji wasn’t born to parents. She was created by the creator of this world, programmed to fall in love with Yuto Sano.

The life I had lived until now was nothing but a pre-written script, a charade on a stage laid out for us.

Our emotions, experiences, backgrounds, circumstances—everything was just a puzzle piece meant to complete the story called LoD. Even our very lives.

But…

“I don’t want to die…”

The feeling was like my heart was being crushed by some shapeless, viscous entity. That fear, the only thing left driving our hollow selves, spurred us into action. Without needing to say a word, we all began rummaging through the room.

Even though Satoshi Iriya had saved our lives, the gnawing fear remained—that the world’s enforcement might twist our feelings, forcing us to love that man again. And worse, that we’d be dragged back into a scenario where our lives were once again placed on the scales.

“There’s nothing… nothing at all,”

I muttered to myself. Among the trinkets and belongings that carried memories of him and me, none of it mattered anymore. They were nothing but remnants of false memories, and we no longer had the luxury to indulge in such lies.

After all, even Satoshi Iriya, who hailed from the upper world, had failed to escape the grip of the world’s enforcement. What hope did we have to change anything by learning the truth?

“Haha, no matter what we do… it’s all pointless, isn’t it?”

A heavy sense of despair weighed down on me. The others were still rummaging around the room, their hands shuffling through every possible hiding spot. I felt guilty, but I couldn’t move anymore.

I slumped down onto the stairs of the loft, pulling out the diary once again. I flipped through its pages, one by one, revisiting the words that had shaken us so deeply.

“You were incredible… You kept saving us, over and over again…”

Even though helping just one of us must have been a monumental effort, he did it for all four. Our daily lives, fragile and riddled with pitfalls, had been propped up by Satoshi Iriya.

And yet…

“Maybe… it would have been easier for you if you’d just let us die that day…”

I was awful. Blaming the person who had saved my life, asking why he didn’t let me die in peace instead of leaving us with this cruel diary.

I looked down from the loft, measuring the distance to the floor below. It wasn’t enough—not nearly enough.

If only it had been higher…

I flipped through the diary, speeding ahead to the entry on that fateful graduation day.

“Only a resolve unburdened by the fear of death can summon true victory.”

Those words caught my eye and seemed to burn into my mind.

“How pathetic… I am.”

Satoshi Iriya, who had known exactly when he would die, must have experienced terror dozens of times greater than what we were feeling now. And yet, he sacrificed his own life to save us.

“What am I—what are we supposed to do…?”

I leaned back, gazing weakly at the ceiling above me. It wasn’t as if answers would come from above. Of course, all I could see was the flat, unyielding ceiling of the loft. But the crushing despair of always slamming against the wall of the world’s enforcement made it feel as though that ceiling was bearing down on me, smothering all hope.

And yet, something caught my eye. There was a dent in the ceiling, with what appeared to be a stain resembling blood. My gaze was drawn to it.

The culprit was obvious—Satoshi Iriya. Perhaps, even he, in his desperation, had lashed out at the confines of his reality, trying to escape the suffocating situation.

It hadn’t worked for him either…

I glanced downward, noticing the diary, now lying open and facedown on the floor. My careless handling must have caused it to fall. A pang of guilt surged through me as I bent down to pick it up carefully. That’s when something else caught the corner of my vision.

“What’s that…?”

Something was peeking out from beneath the mattress. With trembling hands, I pulled it free, flipping the mattress over to reveal a single torn piece of paper.

The layout and design were eerily similar to the diary. I hurriedly flipped through its pages and confirmed that one page was indeed missing, ripped out.

“What… is this?”

My pupils dilated as my grip on the diary tightened involuntarily.

There was no time to waste.

“Everyone! Quick—get up here! Now!”

Even though it was the middle of the night, I couldn’t help but raise my voice. Perhaps I had disturbed the neighbors, but that thought didn’t matter. What I had found—what I needed to convey—overwhelmed any consideration for others.

“…What’s going on?”

“I-I found it! We… we’re finally…”

The words caught in my throat. Tears blurred my vision as my voice broke into sobs, rendering my explanation incoherent. I was like a helpless child, crying in desperation to grab their attention.

I stumbled as I rushed down the loft stairs, leaping halfway down, only to land awkwardly and tumble to the floor.

“Satsuki-san, calm down…”

“Yeah~ What is it you found?”

“Um, that, I…”

“Take a deep breath first.”

“But… but!”

I couldn’t even remember how to breathe properly. My emotions clogged my throat, refusing to take the shape of words. There was no other way—I had to let them see it for themselves.

I handed over the crumpled fragment of the diary, unable to smooth it out in my haste.

The sound of paper being unfolded filled the room, followed by sharp intakes of breath.

“T-This is…”

My vision was too blurred by tears to make out their faces, but I could feel the profound emotions shared between the four of us.

We had truly been saved.

We were finally free—

◇

To Satsuki, Reine, Shuna, and Shino,

You might find this hard to believe, but in my previous life, you saved me.

In the silence of that empty room, your emotions—your joys, your sorrows, and the stories you lived—became my refuge.

I’m sorry I couldn’t lead you to a happy ending.

I’m sorry for leaving you with a bad ending.

Even though I’ve been the worst kind of person, I swear I’ll protect your futures, no matter the cost.

The LoD scenario was built around a high school life centered on the protagonist, Yuto Sano. But once you’ve graduated, the ‘world’s enforcement mechanics’ that bound you will disappear.

In other words, if you can overcome the annihilation end, you’ll finally be free.

Maybe one of you will find your happiness with Yuto. Or perhaps you’ll meet someone even better.

I don’t know what the future holds for you.

But isn’t that what the future is meant to be—unpredictable and full of possibilities?

Even so, I’ll always pray for your happiness.

Goodbye.

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