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Published at 1st of April 2020 11:26:44 PM


Chapter 1

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Volume 1 | Chapter 1: Spring Vacation

“Shiori, do you know what an ‘Otome Game’ is?”

It was after dinner, just when I was relaxing in the living room.

On a certain day of my spring vacation just before the opening ceremony for my new high school, my cousin asked me such a question with a grim-faced. I couldn’t help but tilt my head in question and stopped playing with my cell phone.

My cousin and I don’t live in the same house. But he hangs out around too much in the house next-door where our grandfather lives alone, so he ends up coming to visit my home for one reason or another. I think it’s because Mom prepares meals for both of them since she felt a male-only household would probably find cooking troublesome. My cousin does rent an apartment elsewhere intended for single men, but he barely uses it.

“I haven’t played any, but I know the genre,” I answered. After hearing my words, my cousin hung his head in depression. “Is that all?” I tried to continue the conversation and ended up losing my words in surprise.

Without warning, my cousin grabbed my shoulders with a terrifying expression on his face. He gripped me hard enough that I dropped my cell phone onto the ground in pain. “Wa– O-Ow! It hurts! Kazu-nii!” I protested.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized in a small voice after my words brought him back to his senses. “…… I’m going to tell you something. Somehow, please don’t think I’m crazy in the head, and hear me out. I’m about to talk about something extremely important. Whatever you do, no matter what, don’t tell me to go to the hospital.”

“When you make a serious introduction like this, it’s going to make me even more cautious about what you have to say,” I told him.

“I’m begging you. My life is at stake. Also, I don’t think this is unrelated to you, Shiori.”

“……Hmm~?”

“Okay, listen clearly. This world is a world of a certain otome game,” my cousin, Hibiya Kazuto, confessed to me.

Hibiya Kazuto has a sweet face, a tall figure, and brown hair with the looks of a host. But for me who’s seen his pathetic faces in ordinary everyday life, I don’t think he’s hot-looking enough to have crowds clamoring for him (even if they do). His occupation was a math teacher in a high school. It seems he’s popular with the students there since young and good-looking teachers were rare and valuable.

The private school I’ll be attending in April is also where he’ll be waving his teacher’s cane. Naturally, I was secretly looking forward to seeing how he is as a teacher. I’ll be staring with wide eyes deliberately with amusement.

Now then, according to Kazu-nii’s explanation, it’s something like this.

This world is the setting of an otome game called [Tokimeki Loveday ~Light the Candle of Love~].

In the game, the everyday life of a certain female high schooler will be sketched from the first day of school to Christmas. She will nurture love with different types of good-looking guys. However, it seems the high school the characters attend to, Seika Maria Secondary Academy, had a peculiar legend. If you light the ‘Candle of Love’ with someone on Christmas in the academy’s church, you will be tied together with eternal love.

The goal of the game is to light the ‘Candle of Love’ with someone. For that sake, the heroine has to trigger various events. Besides the main events with the capture targets, there were lots of sub-events involving Easter service, bazaar, and other related matters in a Christian school.

“But Seika Maria in real life doesn’t have those kinds of events,” Kazu-nii continued. “They might have when they first established the school, but there are little Christian students nowadays and almost none on the teachers’ side. Shiori, it’s not like you took the entrance exam just because Seika Maria was a missionary school, right?”

He has a point. The reason why I chose this school is I’d get to see how my cousin acts as a teacher. And also because the school uniform was cute. The school-level matched with my own, and I heard there’s a lot of enthusiasm in the clubs there, which I liked. 

But let’s put that aside, I tried asking something that caught my attention. “And how did you realize this world is an otome game?”

“I saw this game in my past life. Also, there was a character named Hibiya Kazuto in it.”

“……Kazu-nii, were you a girl in your past life?”

“……My little sister, in my past life, was passionate about that genre. I wasn’t interested in it at all. But every time she triggers a new event, she’d report it to me. She’d also force me to watch these new events with her, orders me to be like the hot guys in otome games, tells me to understand and share the happiness she feels whenever she captures all the targets…… When you live a life like that, you’ll learn the details.”

My Lord! Cousin here doesn’t have a little sister. If he has memories of a younger sister zealous about otome games, then isn’t that what you call a delusion…? That’s how you’ll naturally think, but at any rate, this little sister was what people call an otaku.

“And what does this have to do with your life at stake? Was it a crazy game?” I asked.

“……I’m one of the heroine’s capture targets.”

“Huh?”

My cousin grabbed my shoulders harshly again. I’m telling you, it hurts!

“In my third year of teaching! I’m in the critical moment where I may or may not have the world pointing fingers at me, calling me a lolicon! I’m begging you, Shiori! Help me not get captured!”

“Haaaaaa!?” I shouted, taken aback for a couple of minutes in shock. It looks like it’s true that you can lose your voice from complete and utter shock.

But, hmm, what should I do? I crossed my arms, pondering about his situation. But that was when curiosity crawled and popped out its head at me. I don’t know if Kazu-nii’s story about his past life and so on was genuine. However, I will admit this sounded interesting.

“…How do you want me to help out?”

“I see! You’ll help me!” My cousin cries out in delight, shaking me back and forth. My world is shaking, and it feels disgusting, stopppp——!

Afterwards, the two of us discussed this and that and decided on a general plan for the future.

First, we need to understand the current situation.

Sadly, Kazu-nii never played the otome game in his past life. On top of that, Kazu-nii’s little sister in his previous life did all kinds of otome games. All sorts of events from different games were now mixed up in a mess in Kazu-nii’s head. He didn’t know every full name of the capture targets, let alone how to capture them.

In love simulation games, there are usually various events such as the first meeting, the main story, and the ending. To progress with the capture targets, you have to improve statuses like looks and intelligence and choose conversation topics that the target is interested in. Furthermore, all of the capture targets have their own troubles and worries. The heroine will have to resolve them to nurture love.

There are seven capture targets in the game, ‘Tokimeki Lovedays.’ All the capture targets have a kanji from the days of the week in their last names, being: Monday (moon), Tuesday (fire), Wednesday (water), Thursday (wood), Friday (gold), Saturday (earth), and Sunday (sun). So seven targets for each day of the week. I think that’s also where the game’s title, ‘Loveday’, comes from.

Kazu-nii’s last name is ‘Hibiya’ written with ‘sun, period, and valley,’ so he’s the Sunday target.

The heroine’s default name is Aikawa Maria. But in the game from Kazu-nii’s past life, the player can freely change the heroine’s name.

“Do you have proof you are a capture target, Kazu-nii? Like, is it in a guidebook?” I asked.

“Guidebook…… I wonder about that. Maybe it was sold in my past life, but I’m sure it won’t exist in this world,” Kazu-nii answered. He thought for a bit before he opened his mouth again. “Oh. Come to think of it, I have something like a clue with me. Here it is.”

After he said that, he took out a pendant with a pretty gem attached to it from inside his shirt.

……I couldn’t help but think he had an awfully sexy chest. The way he pulled out the pendant from the exposed gap of his shirt, the size of his hand, and the length of his fingers all coupled together screamed with sexiness. But discovering the sexual appeal of my cousin doesn’t make me happy one bit.

“What’s that pendant?” I asked. “It’s yellow… no, it’s more like light brown…… Amber? Citrine?”

“I don’t really know. But it’s a stone I was holding the moment I was born. It’s pretty but it’s not a real gemstone.”

“This? Since you were a baby? Does it mean something?” I was surprised by his answer and looked at the stone once more. A baby born holding something in their hand is something I only heard in legends and fictional stories. Actually, isn’t it a really strange way to be born?

“I don’t know, but I think it’s a key item in this reality here.”

His answer was pretty vague. At any rate, I came to understand Kazu-nii was a little abnormal. 

As we continued to discuss, we came to a conclusion that it’ll be good if the heroine turned her eyes to the other capture targets.

So we decided to narrow down all the capture targets next. According to Kazu-nii, since the otome game’s setting is a school, there’s probably only one teacher, with the rest being students. The teacher target is Kazu-nii; we just need to find good-looking male students with kanji from moon to earth in their last names.

Teacher Hibiya, with self-protection as his first priority, took home from school a list of all the new students this year. It didn’t list their addresses like I expected, but it does list their last names and what class they’re supposed to be in.

“We won’t know how they look until they come to school. All we can do now is check out their names. Oh, right, I couldn’t get a list of the seniors, so we can only put them off until later. Well, I do know the current students who are popular or stands out by their names, even if I haven’t seen their faces.”

“Eh? But won’t the students even teachers remember someone having a high potential of being a capture target?”

“……Is that how it works?” Kazu-nii questions.

“Cause, isn’t this an otome game? I never played one, but isn’t that the kind of game where you romance a guy you normally can’t get close to, but longed for anyway? Like a celebrity and stuff. Also, a good athlete and the student president? And some young master with lots of money works too, I think?”

Kazu-nii grimaced at my suggestions. “……Shiori, do you guys like that too? Like a celebrity?” he asked with an unamused tone.

“Eh~? ……I’m fine with being their friend but I don’t think I want to date them,” I told him.

“But if they are your boyfriend, won’t you be able to brag about them?”

“It’ll be bad if everyone finds out, so I can’t brag about them. I’m sure their agency will make us break up. In the first place, celebrities are good cause they don’t belong to anyone. Once people know they have a lover, won’t their popularity drop anyways?”

“……You’re surprisingly dry.”

I cut down his suggestion so easily that Kazu-nii deflated.

However, those were my true feelings. Plus I don’t think a celebrity attending a normal high school will be selling well, so I really can’t say much about it. Instead, I think ‘a guy hot enough to become a celebrity’ is much more down-to-earth, close-by, and will be more popular. You know, like an idol, but only within the school. Kazu-nii doesn’t seem self-aware, but he was that kind of high school idol back in the day.

“By the way, when you mean a good athlete, you mean like a baseball player going to Koshien1 or a soccer player representing Japan?”

“And an Olympic athlete! Having an Olympic athlete as a boyfriend might actually be good. Though if he gets famous worldwide then you’ll have to make sure he doesn’t cheat. Still, I think he’ll get less exposed in the media than a celebrity.”

“There won’t be an Olympic athlete in Seika Maria,” Kazu-nii points out. “We don’t have the kind of environment to train one. In the first place, if there’s an athlete who can compete in the Olympics, they won’t be in a normal high school. It’ll be a waste.”

“That’s disappointing….”

“Well, let’s put athletes to the side……. I think a student president is a good guess. The current president is good looking, has excellent marks, and the teachers like him too.”

“What’s his name?” I asked.

“Tsukishima Keiichirou. He’ll be a third year starting April. He’ll only be the student president until the end of June though……. There’s ‘moon’ in his last name too.”

“Then I think we have the right guy. We narrowed down one more person!” I clapped my hands in delight. Kazu-nii laughed lightly. “What?”

“No…… I just thought I’m glad you’re having fun even though I mixed you into something troublesome,” Kazu-nii said before he kindly caressed my hair.

I didn’t hate being patted by him, so I obediently closed my eyes, letting him do whatever he wanted. When his hand stopped, I figured he was now satisfied. I opened my eyes and naturally looked up to see Kazu-nii.

“There’s no way I can coldly refuse a favour from my great dear cousin, right?”

Kazu-nii looked a little embarrassed, his cheeks flushed slightly in red.

“R-Really, am I?”

“Also, I’m a little bit interested in how a game will look like when it turns into reality,” I admitted, overflowing with curiosity. Kazu-nii seemed a little anxious in response.

Alright, our plan for the future is more concrete now.

We are going to find the heroine’s friend (advisor). I’ll report the heroine’s movements via messages to Kazu-nii. (Like where she’s going. A summary is fine too.) We’ll discuss how the heroine and capture targets interact with each other. We want the heroine’s eyes to shift away from Kazu-nii and have her interested in the other targets. If needed, we’ll help shift the targets to the right way. Kazu-nii will immediately share what he remembers from the game.

What piqued my interest was plan number one. According to Kazu-nii, in most otome games, there will be a character, an advisor, who will support the player in the game. This advisor will tell you things like the rumours in the school or about the target you are interested in. This advisor can be a best friend, a sibling, a teacher, and so on.

“That’ll be hard, you know. I guess we’ll have no choice but to find the advisor from all the people Maria-jou’s interacts with,” I said.

“Maria-jou2?”

“The heroine.”

“…….Well, okay. Anyways, if we know who this advisor is, we’ll be able to avoid them. I’d rather not have a situation where you carelessly talk about this and that and have all that information about me pass directly to the heroine.”

“You don’t remember who this person might be?”

“This is all from my past life so…….” Kazu-nii stopped. “Shiori, if I tell you to recall things from back when you were still in elementary school, you can’t remember it in detail, right? For me, it’s from before I was even born.”

“Even if you put elementary school and memories from a past life together, I still don’t get it. Actually, come to think about it, when did you notice? That this world is exactly like that otome game?”

“I graduated from Seika Maria, didn’t I? Since I was there……. I kept having déjà vu. And then it happened when I went to the academy for the first time after becoming a teacher. Suddenly, I could recall vividly. I was really confused in the beginning, and it was a disaster. I didn’t know which memories were from my previous one, and which ones were from this life. There was a time when I called you with my little sister’s name……”

“Did you…..?” I couldn’t quite remember.

“If you don’t remember then that’s fine. Anyways, I gradually started to remember the otome game. I know one of the capture targets in it. He’ll be attending this year too.”

“I see, I see. And what’s the name of the capture target?”

“Tsuchiya Yousuke.” There was ‘earth’ in that name.

“It’s… kind of a normal name,” I commented.

“Yeah, his name is normal but……. He’s a swimmer who people have high hopes for. Which is why the teachers were instructed to keep an eye out for him. By that, I don’t mean we’re supposed to show favoritism to him in any way……. By the way, he’s supposed to be a childhood friend-type character for the heroine.”

“Oh, oh!” 

I think childhood friend is a heart fluttering phrase. Except I feel like it’s really rare to have a lovely childhood friend like the ones in stories though.

“And what kind of scenario does this young man, Tsuchiya, have?”

“It’s pretty standard. The kind where he always remembered the promise they made when they were kids. But Tsuchiya isn’t the honest type. At first he and the heroine will argue all the time with no progress in love. If anything, his scenario is written so that you will trigger his events for the first time after you become friends with the other characters to a certain point. But you can’t get too close to the other targets carelessly or you can’t progress in Tsuchiya’s main story any further. His capture difficulty is actually high.”

I see, I see~! It’s when rivals appear that he finally panics, thinking the heroine will leave him at this rate. It’s the kind of development you see in a shoujo manga!

“In exchange, once you get his events moving, the story will progress like a snowball,” Kazu-nii continued to explain. “In his scenario, he’ll propose to the heroine on Christmas. Being young sure is amazing…….”

“No, I think he just isn’t thinking much about the future. Anyways, if I look out for him, I feel l’ll find out who the heroine is.”

Now then, I think this is about all I can learn before April. With that thought in mind, I picked up my cell phone again. I was in the middle of sending a message to my friend. “Sorry for making you wait so long!” — I apologized in the beginning of my message.

“Oh, yeah. You need to be careful of one thing. Shiroi, you need to call me ‘Sensei’ at school. Don’t call me ‘Kazu-nii’, okay?”

“I know already. Kazu-nii, you can’t call me ‘Shiori’ either, okay?”

“Yeah,” Kazu-nii nodded with a tired smile.

……I feel like both of us will slip up by accident.

Kazu-nii started to smirk. It’s his face when he thought of something mischief.

“Wanna practice?”

“Sure, fine with me,” I agreed without thinking hard about it. I straightened my posture and looked up to Kazu-nii. “Sensei~ Please help me with my math homework in exchange for cooperating with you,” I said, making a sweet smile on my face.

Flick — my forehead made a nice sound.

“Owww~ You’re so mean. Flicking my forehead!”

“I’m not being mean,” he retorted. “I’m fine with helping you study but homework is only useful when you do it yourself.”

“You only have to give me hints on how to solve the questions~ You know how I’m horrible with math, right? Kazu-nii,”

“Sorry, who?”

“Ah.”

Crap. I said ‘Kazu-nii’.  This is bad. I really need to make sure or it’s over for me. I faked a cough and looked up to Kazu-nii once more. “Hibiya-sensei, I look forward to your guidance starting tomorrow.” I bowed my head politely.

Kazu-nii placed his hand gently on top of my head before opening his mouth, “Of course. I’ll also be in your care, Niimi.”

Being addressed this way with distance is a little lonely, yet it seems kind of exciting……

Putting that aside, I think he should fix his habit of touching other people’s hair so easily. If he does the same thing to the girls in the academy, I’m pretty sure they’ll misunderstand.

 

I said goodnight to Kazu-nii a little bit later and headed back to my room.

I jumped and rolled onto my bed. Yet my eyes were wide awake and I wasn’t sleepy at all. With the entrance ceremony only a few days away, my heart was beating fast.

Cause! Isn’t it obvious? This world I’m living in might be the setting for an otome game!

The heroine will interact with a number of good-looking guys all at once. That’s why I can’t help but think she’s probably a really beautiful girl too. I feel bad for Kazu-nii, but it’s pretty interesting when you can watch from a distance.

I have a feeling my high school life will be filled with excitement.

TL: Hello! This is one of the few completed otome game world novels I liked a lot, so I decided to translate it. I hope you can enjoy a smooth ride from the beginning to the end ヾ(´▽`*)ノ☆

Please note there will be no public illustrations. If you want them, please consider buying the light novel to support the author!

cookiemon here as slave editor for ririkka…lol! Please stay tuned for future chapters.





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