After Every Route in the Dating Game Ended in Bad Endings

Recently, Itsuki Iokawa has been playing a full-dive game called "Romance Conquest." Since the game does not allow players to reload saves and demands an absurd amount of effort, the official website promises a billion-yen reward for clearing the CG endings for two different targets.

For the billion yen, Itsuki Iokawa works hard to win over the key characters. Somehow, no matter how hard she tries, every playthrough ends in a devastating Bad End achievement instead.

"Eternity"

Itsuki Iokawa is the most persistent admirer of the Gojo clan's prodigy, and also the girl he finds most annoying.

The young woman's love is passionate and intense, but he only finds it a nuisance.

So whenever Itsuki Iokawa appears, he treats her with hostility, glares at her, and sneers at her.

Everyone should think he hates her, himself included.

He doesn't care about the desserts Itsuki Iokawa brings him after every mission. He doesn't give her any pointers on her clumsy, sloppy hand-to-hand combat. He ignores the wounds she gets whenever she uses her technique, and doesn't care whether she lives or dies.

At least, that's what he thought.

Only when he sees her on the brink of death does he realize how much pain he is in. But he doesn't understand, just as he doesn't understand why, after saying she will love him forever, she simply lets him suffer and dies in his arms without a hint of reluctance.

Only then does Gojo Satoru finally realize what feelings lie beneath his irritation. But Itsuki Iokawa's forever has already ended in this very moment.

*

"Scars"

The easiest job Fushiguro Toji ever took was to kill his live-in partner for a ten-billion reward.

Even though she had chosen him out of countless people, saved him, bandaged him, and kissed his scars, and even though he had braided her hair, cleaned up after the messes she made, and dealt with the aftermath of her troubles, there was even a moment when Fushiguro Toji had the illusion that things would go on like this forever.

...But he still killed her, and he believed he had no regrets.

Yet when he opened the door to his home and saw the empty room, with no sign of the girl who used to curl up on the sofa and smile at him, when he could no longer hear her welcome him home in a coaxing voice and complain that he was back too late, he began to imagine that the wound she had once bandaged still ached faintly.

A month later, Itsuki Iokawa finally cleared the game and claimed the billion yen. She was just about to spend it all to her heart's content when she excitedly pushed open her front door and found strange, misshapen curses in the clear space before her eyes.

At that moment, she had a vague feeling that something terrible had happened.

Can she still return the money? Help, waiting for answers online.

★ Happy Ending, Out of Character, blurb revised

Coming soon: "He Lost His Memory on the Eve of Our Wedding"

Prince Isaac and Cynthia, the daughter of a count, were once the most famous betrothed couple in the empire.

However, on the eve of their wedding, Isaac was gravely injured during a mission and lost all his memories of his beloved.

*

Before losing his memory, Isaac was the most considerate lover Cynthia could ask for.

Although everyone said he was cruel by nature and hard to please, in Cynthia's eyes, he was the best.

When she cried, he went to great lengths to comfort her. When she acted cute, he smiled and agreed to all her requests. When she snuggled up to him, he picked her up, and they would spend the whole day cuddling.

But after he lost his memory, everything changed.

When her tears were ignored, her cute pleas were met with an order to shut up, her attempts to snuggle were brushed off and pushed away, her messages were read but left unanswered, and her calls were rejected, Cynthia looked at the completely unfamiliar man she was engaged to and finally realized

The lover who would always dote on her was gone.

She decided to break off the engagement and leave the royal capital.

*

Isaac Caesar was cruel by nature, hard to please, hated physical intimacy, and couldn't stand delicate, noisy Omegas. Yet when he opened his eyes, everyone told him that the tearful, coquettish woman sitting by his bed was his beloved.

Isaac felt he was being played for a fool.

The woman named Cynthia was beautiful, but terribly frail. She kept snuggling up to him and acting cute, and was always on the verge of tears. She was undoubtedly the type he hated most.

He figured he must have been out of his mind before he lost his memory.

So even though he felt a pang of heartache when they broke off their engagement, he assumed it was just withdrawal from the woman's pheromones. After she left, he never thought of her again, never asked about her, and forbade anyone from mentioning her, until the day it happened.

During a raid on a space pirate base, he saw his former fiancee where she shouldn't have been.

Not only did she ignore him and turn a deaf ear to his well-meant advice, she also clasped hands with that notorious space pirate and fled in every direction with him like a pair of doomed lovers.

At the moment when the former fiancee who had once clung to him and said she loved him most stood in his way, coldly ready to fight him to the death for another man, Isaac, who had always insisted he felt nothing for her, felt a nerve in his brain snap.

Theme: Cherish the person in front of you.