Watch Me Turn Dark After Six Failed Conquests

[Reader comments are open, and I'll fill in all the plot holes]

Asahina Miri is a young corporate drone, in charge of foreign affairs at Yokohama's famous Port Culture Company.

While other people are in the prime of their lives at eighteen, she is already world-weary.

Fortunately, her boss finally has a change of heart and gives her paid leave. Asahina pulls out the gal game a friend gave her and gets ready to enjoy her entire vacation.

Then she gets three bad endings:

[Atobe: Where Parallel Lines Cross]

A connection that once briefly brought them together cannot overcome the paths each must take. Their trajectories run parallel once more, and they can never walk side by side again.

Asahina doesn't get it: Aren't gal game endings supposed to be sweet romance? What do you mean I didn't try hard enough, so you won't date me?

[Sanada: The Shadow of Someone Else]

You live in the shadow of his past and his obsession, never able to become the one and only.

Asahina: How come your idealized love is the same as the idealized love of my last target? Just who on earth is this idealized love?

To get to the bottom of her questions, she bravely starts a third playthrough, aiming for the person who was their idealized love.

[Tezuka: The Distance to Germany]

Physical distance became an excuse. The real distance was in their hearts.

After three consecutive bad endings, Asahina refuses to give up. She takes a deep breath, opens the game again, and is determined to get a good ending no matter what.

Then she gets three more bad endings:

[Echizen: You've Got a Long Way to Go]

"The first time he said that to me, I chased after him. The last time, I finally understood it was his way of telling me to leave."

[Byodoin: The End of the World]

"He took me to see the end of the world, then told me his own end wasn't here."

[Yukimura: Outsider]

You see right through him, but you can never enter his world. In the end, all that's left is for you to become an outsider.

At last, Asahina snaps. She flips the table, clutches her head, drops to her knees, cries, and laughs uncontrollably.

Ahahahahaha! Damn tennis! Damn princes! Damn this game that won't give me a good ending! You're all going to pay for this!!

Superpower:

"Second Truth"

The game restarts, and Asahina enters it again, with all her stats maxed out.

This time, no matter what kind of genius they are, they'll all grovel at her feet and offer her victory, flowers, and applause.

Reading guide:

1. Don't insult the characters.

2. At first, she has a clear goal and only pursues one person, with a series-of-arcs feel. Later, she wrecks everyone's lives, and multiple characters fall for the heroine. The timeline is all over the place (middle schoolers become high schoolers). The story will cover the original middle school, nationals, and U-17 periods. Match results change depending on how the protagonist's school gets involved (different each playthrough), but matches won't take up much of the story. There may not be extras, or there may be an alternate-universe route, depending on your feedback.

3. Feel free to flag anything you think readers should know. I'll pin the first comment that does, so you can all leave your warnings there. Just don't do it maliciously.

Theme: Asahina: Give up? Not a chance.