24 Chapter 23

It was the early morning of a usual weekday, the sunlight timidly peeked through the small opening in the curtains, and precisely hitting the closed eyes of a poor girl who had her sleepy dreams interrupted by the sun. With the annoying sun making her unable to remain asleep, the girl sat up with a tired face.

"… Haa… Another Monday…"

Lazily getting out of her bed, she changed from her pajamas to her school uniform without even fixing her uniform to look tidy, she left her room with a sloppy and wrinkled uniform which gave her a rather "Gyaru" look, only compounded by her relatively good look. As she walked downstairs, the girl noticed a boy slightly older than her doing something in the kitchen.

"What'chu doing, Nii-san?"

"Bread"

With a sleepy and tired voice, the girl's brother gave a short answer as he kept looking at his phone while waiting for the toaster to finish toasting the bread in it.

"…"

Without anything else to say, the girl simply kept quiet as she went to the living room to watch TV while waiting for her brother to liberate the toaster. It would only take a few minutes, for her to hear a ping sound, meaning that the bread was toasted, so the girl got up from the sofa and went on to make her breakfast which was the same as her brother's, bread with butter alongside choccy milk.

After they both finished eating their first meal of the day quite quickly, the two went to brush their teeth, fixing their hair with only water, followed by picking up their bags, and then ending with the two leaving their house as they began making their way to school.

However, as soon as they opened the front door, another girl, who appeared to be the same age as the brother, greeted the two in a very cheerful voice, a stark contrast to the siblings with their tired and sleepy atmosphere.

"Arisu-chan! Masaru-chan! Good morning!"

"Ah… Good morning, Chika-chan"

"Mornin' Chika-chan"

After giving their languid greetings to the girl, called Chika, the siblings yawned at the same time followed by a tired sigh.

"You two are always bad in the mornings, huh?"

" "…" "

Arisu and Masaru kept quiet, feeling too tired to respond to that obvious question, as they stepped forward and joined Chika in their usual walk to school, as it could be seen from the proximity of the three, it was obvious that they were childhood friends since they first met each other in kindergarten. During their walks to school, the three would always talk about meaningless stuff, but most of the time it ended up with Arisu and Masaru both talking about the games they played recently, which Chika could only nod as she lacked a whole lot of game knowledge.

Then as they reached a crossroad, and stopped at the red pedestrian light, Arisu looked to the store right next to them, which sold a lot of game and anime-related merchandise. And as the store window, she saw a few game characters that she could swear to herself that she had seen somewhere before, but she couldn't quite remember where, at the same time she felt quite annoyed feeling inside her when she looked at the smug face of one of the male characters on display, almost as if she passed through many unnecessary hardships because of him.

"Oi, Arisu, we're going to leave you behind"

"! Ah! Wait for me!"

Noticing Chika and her brother walking ahead, Arisu trotted after them and quickly watched up to them.

"Did something in that store catch your interest, Arisu-chan?"

"Not really, I was just trying to remember where I had seen some of the characters at the window"

"Ah! I know that feeling, of when you know something, but you can't quite remember it"

"Yeah, also Chika-chan, when are you going to do it?"

"… W-What're possibly t-talking about, Arisu-chan?"

At hearing Arisu's question, Chika began blushing and cold sweating a little as she became nervous about answering her childhood friend's question.

"? I'm asking about when you're gonna con-"

Before Arisu could finish speaking, Chika forcefully covered Arisu's mouth with her hands, as she nervously looked at Masaru, who luckily for her, continued walking forward without noticing the two being left behind by him, causing her to sigh in relief.

"Arisu-chan, please don't talk about that close to Masaru-chan, a-and… I-I'm working on it, I swear!"

"But you said that last year as well"

"T-That time was one thing! T-This year I-it'll be different!"

"But you also said that last year"

"… F-For now l-let's just continue on our way to school, o-okay?"

"… Eeeeh?"

"I'll buy ice cream after school"

"I'll take your secret to the grave!"

.

.

.

After arriving at their school, Arisu went on a different way than her brother and Chika, as she was still a first year, while the two were already in their final year of high school. Arriving at her classroom, Arisu opened the door, revealing a half-full room, as most of her classmates were talking with each other, or doing something else, in the remaining minutes of free time before class started.

Not grabbing any attention from the rest, Arisu made her way to her seat and sat down, and after doing so, she pulled out a Svitch, to do some grinding before class started. However, before she could turn it on, she was interrupted by someone else.

"Arisu-chan! Very good morning!"

"Ah! Good morning, Asaki-chan"

The person who greeted her was a very cheerful girl who wore a lot of accessories and whose uniform looked very sloppy, making her into something more akin to an actual "Gyaru" than Arisu's sloppy look due to her morning laziness and complete disinterest in fashion.

"Nee, have you seen it?"

"… Seen what?"

"That new figures of the characters from Doki Doki Magical Love have been released!"

"… … … The what now?"

"Eh? Did you forget already, Arisu-chan? It's that visual novel that I told you to play a few months ago!"

"… … …"

Hearing Asaki say that, Arisu put all of her mental prowess into remembering about that game that she had mentioned, but all that she could remember from playing for the past few months was Armored Mech 6 and Netherdivers 2.

"Sorry, Asaki-chan, but I don't remember playing it"

"Whaaaat!? But you even asked me how to get the capture targets back then!"

Then as the two were talking another girl approached them.

"Arisu-chan, Asaki-chan, good morning. Are you two talking about DDML?"

"Ah! Niko-chan! Please help me! Arisu-chan is saying that she doesn't remember playing DDML!"

"Tsk, tsk, tsk, Asaki-chan did you forget already? If Arisu can remember something, then all you need to do is show her the game's cover, like this!"

Niko then backed her answer by showing Arisu the cover of the game that Asaki was talking about, which Arisu looked at for a few seconds before a lightbulb flicked on.

"Oooooohhh… That game!… It was boring as fucc"

"Wah! How can you say that!? That game's characters are so good-looking!"

"And useless! This blonde guy is the most annoying frick I ever saw in a game, this other guy was a pain to raise his affection bar, this other guy… … … I don't remember anything about him, and this other guy is just an asshole… And they were all useless for combat! Those fuccs couldn't even survive a single hit!"

"Stahp! Don't make me face the truth of their horrible personalities! I just want to look at their handsome faces!"

"… Arisu-chan, didn't you have one character that you really liked from this game?"

"I had?… … … Oh, yeah, I did! It was this guy"

Arisu then pointed at the most muscular guy on the game cover.

"Ah! Lukas, I see. He's definitely the most well-liked target, in comparison to the rest, even though all he does is training which makes raising favorability with him a little annoying as you need to grind for levels. But it's worth it since his story is one of the better ones in the game"

"What? No. He's not my favorite because of that"

"Eh? Then why is he your favorite?"

"Oh, that's because he's the only meat shield capable of surviving two, maybe three hits from the final boss while only having 20 or so levels, the other characters are useless in combat, all they're worth is carrying HP potions for making the meat shield last longer"

" "…" "

Asaki and Niko both turned silent at Arisu's answer, as they worryingly began to imagine that Arisu might have gotten the worst possible ending in the game.

"Erm, Arisu-chan… Did you, by any chance, let all of the capture targets die in the final battle?"

"Yeah? Not like they can do damage to the final boss, so the best they could do was buy me time so that I could buff my character for the one hit K.O on the demon lord"

"She managed to get the worst possible ending on her first try…"

"Well, at least that's a very Arisu thing to do, ignore the story and go directly to the easiest ending"

As Asaki and Niko began talking between themselves, Arisu began pondering a second time, as she felt like she had forgotten something as well, and then she remembered it.

"Ah! I just remembered"

"Hm? What'chu remmebered, Arisu-chan?"

"Half of the meat shields died in the mid-boss battle against the fox girl"

" "Fox girl?" "

"Yeah… I think… I think it was a boss battle against a fox girl, yes"

" "…" "

This time, it was Asaki and Niko who began pondering about what Arisu was saying, and then it clicked on them.

"You have the pre-order DLC!?"

"How did you pre-order it, if you only started playing it long after the game was released!?"

"Ah! About that, it was Nii-san who gave it to me, he said that he won at a giveaway event at the store where he usually buys his games. And now that I think about it, I vaguely remember him saying that it was a limited version or something"

" "…" "

Hearing such information from Arisu, Asahi, and Niko both fell on all fours, in despair from knowing that their friend who wasn't into visual novels, managed to get the very expensive version of Doki Doki Magical Love for free.

"Arisu-chan, please… At least tell me you fully finished the game"

"… … … I think I didn't even go past the first part or something in my second attempt at playing it"

"Guhaa!"

Receiving that final blow, Asahi fell limp onto the floor in a dramatic act of death. Then the school bell rang, which forced both Asaki and Niko to get up and go to their seats.

"Talk to you later, Arisu-chan!"

"Until later, Arisu-chan"

"Later~"