Katawa Shoujo Forums

Hello. Welcome to my humble thread.
I am a new poster that has been dwelling in the message boards for several months before signing up. It was after reading several other stories that I wanted to try and create my own. To all the other authors, thank you for all your effort and time dedicated to writing your stories. To some people, like myself, they are a helpful escape from what troubles us in our real lives. I can not express the gratitude I feel towards you. I can only hope to somehow pass that hope and those feelings on to others. Now, before I rant too much on this, I present to everyone the first chapter in my tale.

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"Yuudai, wait up!"

I slow down and turn around, waiting for the person calling me to catch up. It's mid April, so the chilly breeze catches me off guard. I shift the sling, so that my bag isn't digging into my shoulder anymore. A couple seconds pass before my friend is walking beside me.

"Morning Hisao. Running a little late today, huh?"

He chuckles, and rubs the back of his head. "Just a little bit. Ended up staying out later than usual last night. Had a harder time waking up. Happy birthday by the way"

"Thanks man." At least someone remembered." Your mom and dad worked late again I take it. You know, you could always come over and hang out at my place." I give him a weak punch to the shoulder and grin. "Besides, my mom keeps asking when "Hicchan" is coming over again." I chuckle as he starts to frown.

He groans, "Don't start calling me that, you know I hate that name. Besides, only my mom calls me that."

"I'll try not to, but it's well worth seeing you all flustered." I can't help but poke at him. We've been friends since junior high and I know all his soft spots. Walking through the front entrance of our school; Hisao and I both catch a glimpse of Iwanako. She is one of the cutest girls in our grade, and its easy to see why most of us guys have a crush on her. Long black hair, A cute face, a soft and gentle personality, curves in the best places; she is perfect.

We grin at each other as we both know the other has had a crush on her for years. We walk to the lockers, making small talk. I secretly wish Iwanako would confess to me, today of all days would be awesome. After changing our shoes, we head up to class. The classroom is halfway full when Hisao and I get to the door. He takes his seat and starts to get his stuff ready for class. I keep going down the row and sit down two seats behind him. After a couple minutes the bell sounds, starting homeroom and announcing the start of another boring day.

As lunch arrives, Hisao is acting antsy. As I get up to go to have lunch with him, he says he has something important to do and he'll be back later. I just wave it off and tell him it's not a problem. We both leave the room, with me heading down to the cafeteria to grab some bread and a drink. Accomplishing my mission (I was able to get some curry bread and juice), I had back up to the classroom and enjoy my meager birthday meal. A couple minutes before the bell rings, Hisao...is he skipping?...sits down in his seat with the biggest grin on his face.

"Somebody got some good news I take it."

"You have no idea Yuu," he chuckles, "I'll tell you on the way home."

"I'll hold you to that, Hisao."

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When class ends for the day, both Hisao and I get our books and stuff together. There's no football club today so we're both heading home after school. When we get to our lockers, Hisao is floating on cloud 9. Outside the gates, he turns towards me and finally explodes.

"I'm dating Iwanako! This is just amazing man! One of her friends put her note in my book and she wanted to see me at lunch. That's where I had to go earlier."

I almost trip, WHAT? What the hell is going on?

"Uh...I'm really happy for you man. You've had a crush on her for three years now." I try to not sound bitter, but I don't know if it comes out that way or not. I don't think Hisao would have detected it right now anyway. Hisao stops suddenly and pulls out his cellphone. After checking his text, he says that he has to go back to school real quick. I just wave him off and say it's okay. He smiles and says that he will see me later, and runs back towards the school. I guess this works out for me though. Right now I just want to be alone with my thoughts.

When I get home, I walk into the kitchen to get a drink and I notice the note on the counter. Dad is gonna take us out for my birthday. Well something might as well go right today. I get a glass of water and I decide to go up to my room until its time to go. When I get up to my room, I shut myself away and hope to bury my mind with homework to distract me from my thoughts. I get through some of my math homework when my little sister knocks on my door; saying that she had something to ask me. I say she that can come in and she opens the door and sits down on the bed. Umeko is looking at her hands, which she keeps clasping together nervously.

"Yuu-nii, um, is it okay if I start liking boys?" She pauses, an edge of nervousness in her voice. "There's a boy in my class that confessed to me today and I don't know what to do. He's really nice and I think I like him too. What should I do?"

Caught off guard, I try and reply evenly, "Uh.. I think it's okay for you to like boys, although you need talk with Mom first. I don't know if she will like her thirteen year old daughter dating. I'm not really someone you can ask about that though. Besides, I would just try to scare him away from my precious little sister if I knew who it was." I try and chuckle there at the end to lighten the mood.

She looks up and smiles at me, "Thanks Yuu-nii. I'm gonna go wait for mom to get home." She kisses me on the cheek and leaves my room; shutting the door behind her.

All I feel is a sinking depression in my gut after the door is closed. First my best friend gets confessed to by my crush, and now my little sister is maybe in a relationship. Dammit, it's MY birthday! Why can't anything good happen to me.

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The rest of my day doesn't get any better, my luck just must be that bad. While out at dinner, the restaurant first dropped my order on the floor when they were bringing out our meals. Then, while we are waiting on it to be redone, I get yelled at by my parents to stop being so mopey on my birthday. I get close to snapping back at my parents, but that's not going to fix anything right now. When my meal is finally brought out, its the wrong thing entirely. I just grumble and curse under my breath, just being happy to have something to eat.

After dinner, my dad asks if we don't mind walking to a couple nearby stores. He still needs to pick up a gift for me and wants me to pick it out. We all agree and start walking down the sidewalk towards some of the local shops after the bill is paid. That's one of the good things about living in a decent sized city, you never have to go far to find something interesting. Umeko is a couple steps ahead of my relaxed stroll and Mom and Dad are a little ways behind me. Umeko turns around and gives me a cute little grin. I try and give her a smile, but I just don't really have it in me.

The sudden screeching of metal rips me out of my thoughts and puts me on edge. I turn towards the noise and notice a moving truck barreling towards Umeko from out of an alleyway. Its maybe only six meters away when I dash forward, grab Umeko and toss her out of the way. Just as she falls over, right where I was standing seconds ago, the truck slams into me; pinning my left shoulder between it and one of the buildings front walls behind me. A sickening crunch sounds out; causing the nerve endings in my left arm to scream violently to life before suddenly falling silent. The same cannot be said for me however. I yell and scream myself hoarse. Umeko and moms crying is the last thing I remember hearing before everything goes black.

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I don't know how much time passes before I truly wake up. I drift in and out of sleep many times over what has seems like days, maybe weeks, I can't really be certain. My dreams are strange and incorporeal; nothing has a defined shape or edge. Even when I'm awake, things are not much better. The doctors and nurses keep asking if I'm fine; if there is anything I need, and I just shake my head a little and try to talk but my throat is still sore. They just check the IV drip to my right and make sure everything is fine. I usually don't stay awake long.

Eventually there comes a day when as I'm waking up, I notice that everything has the proper shape. The TV no longer is a fuzzy box of blurry images. Well that's a step in the right direction I muse. I can hear my mom and dad talking to someone to my right, but I can't see who it is because of the curtain. I can only guess that it's my doctor. As I start to look around, I catch the attention of my little sister. Umeko jumps out of her chair and starts crying as she runs over towards me. I hear everyone else start moving towards my bed before Umeko jump onto the bed and buries her face into my chest. Sobbing, she clings onto my gown; she doesn't make any sense as she tries to talk in between her sobs. I lift my hand and I start to stroke her head and try to reassure her that I'm okay.

It's at that moment that I finally notice that something is wrong with me. When I try to wrap my sister in a hug, my left arm doesn't move. I honesty can't feel it and that's strange in and of itself. I turn my head expecting to see it in a brace or maybe a cast. The image that I see, though, makes me feel cold and I hear the heart monitor start beeping faster. My left arm is gone, not numb as I thought, but gone. I start to scream but my throat lets me know that it is still not healed and I start coughing and shaking. I hear the door close loudly and suddenly my parent are also around my bed. Umeko is bawling at this point and I can feel her trying to hold me tightly. My mom comes around to the left side of the bed, and puts a hand on my cheek. She looks in my eyes and I have never seen that look on her face. The pain and level of distress on her face seem to age her. The tears are falling down her cheeks as she tries not to cry aloud. Dad stands beside her and wraps an arm around her shoulder and kisses her cheek, trying to calm her down. He whispers something to mom; she nods her head and walks around to Umeko. Slowly wrapping her arms around her daughter; she extracts the sobbing little girl and cradles her in a hug. Its then I hear my dad speak clearly in what seems like years.

"Yuudai...we need to have a very serious talk."
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Thanks for reading. Any and all criticism is accepted.

Many thanks to ForgetMeNot for helping me with the idea and direction of this story. If it wasn't for him, this fanfic would be much shorter and many times more poorly written.

Very well written! Great job. I'm going to assume you'll be replacing Hisao with Yuudai?

It's a good start, with one particularly interesting deviation — your protagonist has a sibling, AND he knows an alternate-Hisao and alternate-Iwanako. Lots of potential there, you should indeed persevere!

I enjoyed reading that! It wasn't too long, which was nice, and it got to the point. I did think, though, that you did a whole lot of "and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened", and it got a little rushed. Don't try and get every single event out in one big stream, take your time! I know that kind of contradicts what I said before, but hopefully you know what I mean.

Other than that, I don't have anything else to add really, besides the fact that I hope you continue on with this! Do you plan on writing more?

Frosticle wrote:Very well written! Great job. I'm going to assume you'll be replacing Hisao with Yuudai?

Yeah. I wanted to create a OC that would take over for Hisao. Dont worry, I have plans for him to resurface later.

Walshy12238 wrote:Other than that, I don't have anything else to add really, besides the fact that I hope you continue on with this! Do you plan on writing more?

Thank you. I know is seems a little rushed, but I wanted to do a quick intro with my OC. I mean, everyone knows Hisao and his starting story. I wanted to try and immerse the readers into the same setting but through a different set of eyes. I plan on making this a decent length story. I'm already working ahead by a couple chapters so as to not write myself into a corner and have nothing to post.

BilliamDragon wrote:Thank you. I know is seems a little rushed, but I wanted to do a quick intro with my OC. I mean, everyone knows Hisao and his starting story. I wanted to try and immerse the readers into the same setting but through a different set of eyes. I plan on making this a decent length story. I'm already working ahead by a couple chapters so as to not write myself into a corner and have nothing to post.

Sweet, well I can't wait to read more! Any plans on when you might be updating?

BilliamDragon wrote:

Frosticle wrote:Very well written! Great job. I'm going to assume you'll be replacing Hisao with Yuudai?

Yeah. I wanted to create a OC that would take over for Hisao. Dont worry, I have plans for him to resurface later.

I seem to recall a quote from the VN where Hisao relates his heart to a ticking time bomb, or something of the sort...

I really like it so far. I like how instead of simply removing Hisao from the story, you simply had his friend have an accident. Having an already familiar character really helps me get into the story. Can't wait to see where this goes.

You're off to a very good start.
One thing that might or might not be intentional: Your story starts in April.With an injury like that your OC is not likely to arrive at Yamaku before the summer holidays. By then Lilly will already be in Scotland etc.
As I said, you might have it planned that way, but I thought I'd mention it just in case, because at the moment it could still be fixed easily.

To build on what Mirage said, Iwanako's confession to Hisao was in February in the source material.

griffon8 wrote:To build on what Mirage said, Iwanako's confession to Hisao was in February in the source material.

Mirage_GSM wrote:As I said, you might have it planned that way, but I thought I'd mention it just in case, because at the moment it could still be fixed easily.

Thank both of you for the pointing out some things, but just bear with me for a moment. With the amputation and healing, it should take anywhere between 5-9 weeks to recover. I went with 7 as a good round about. Then, with Yuudais birthday being the second week of April(its the 10th), seven weeks brings us into July. This brings us to roughly around the same time that Hisao showed up in the VN. He was in the hospital for 4 months and was hospitalized in February. I used some artistic license by moving the confession into April because that would be towards the beginning of the Japanese school year. I figured a confession towards the start of the year would work just as well as one at the end of a year. But to reiterate, thank you both for bringing those points up.

Hisao starts in Yamaku in the beginning of June, not July.
And while seven weeks might be just barely plausible, I don't think they would push his recovery so much just so he can enter a new school only two or three weeks before the summer break. It would be better to allow his injury more time to heal and have him start school again after the holiday.
That's nitpicking, though. If you have a reason for your story to go that way, go with it.

So far so good I suppose.

BilliamDragon wrote: Yeah. I wanted to create a OC that would take over for Hisao. Dont worry, I have plans for him to resurface later.

That's, right now, what I'm really interested in though. I've always been thinking about AU scenarios were a completely healthy Hisao meets any of the girls or vice versa. One variation being where Hisao's basically back to the beginning after a route's end, keeping his memories but no longer having his arrhythmia.

So, I'm not sure how extensive Hisao's appearance is gonna be later down the line but I'm certainly curious about that. Your OC seems fine so far but I really can't say much about that this early on. What I personally certainly am not looking forward is another generic 'OC replaces Hisao and experiences similar stuff' story. For that I've simply read too many pseudo routes and going through the same notions becomes tiresome eventually. Unless the execution is insanely good that's just going to be boring for me.

Blasphemy wrote:So far so good I suppose.

BilliamDragon wrote: Yeah. I wanted to create a OC that would take over for Hisao. Dont worry, I have plans for him to resurface later.

That's, right now, what I'm really interested in though. I've always been thinking about AU scenarios were a completely healthy Hisao meets any of the girls or vice versa. One variation being where Hisao's basically back to the beginning after a route's end, keeping his memories but no longer having his arrhythmia.

So, I'm not sure how extensive Hisao's appearance is gonna be later down the line but I'm certainly curious about that. Your OC seems fine so far but I really can't say much about that this early on. What I personally certainly am not looking forward is another generic 'OC replaces Hisao and experiences similar stuff' story. For that I've simply read too many pseudo routes and going through the same notions becomes tiresome eventually. Unless the execution is insanely good that's just going to be boring for me.

I get the feeling that a completely arrhythmia free Hisao wouldn't warm to the girls as easily. I feel like it's his condition that helps him relate a lot. Although, I'm sure most people have realised this by now. I'm slow.

I'm also really hoping that this OC goes off the beaten track a little. It would suck for him to turn into a Hisao clone.

Blasphemy wrote:That's, right now, what I'm really interested in though. I've always been thinking about AU scenarios were a completely healthy Hisao meets any of the girls or vice versa.

Well, visiting a close friend who had to transfer to Yamaku would certainly provide an opportunity for a healthy Hisao to meet them...
Well, let's wait and see what's in store for us.