Chapter 14
Chapter 14
Of the three heroines who included Ye Sa-ra, Shin So-hee's setup was a bit removed from the others.
She doesn't even attend the same school. While the other heroines go to Hwayeong High School, notorious as a school for the wealthy, Shin So-hee goes to an ordinary high school in the area. She's described as a "Gyaru Character," but Shin So-hee follows the trend that the flashier the appearance, the more innocent the personality, and in the Yuri Route she plays a role similar to Yoon Da-ho.
In other words, the fact that she attends a different school meant she could be pursued fairly easily without much deliberate raising.
The creator's claim was that 'If You Wish' is designed so that clearing a few of these easy-entry routes helps players get the hang of things and makes it easier to pursue other characters.
For example, Yoon Da-ho is the baseline for the Normal Route. He's a rude male character, and the wiki stated that he exists to show how a Romance Target's reactions change depending on how the protagonist is raised—you can pursue him easily no matter what, and he roughly demonstrates the influence "raising" will have when you go after other characters later.
Shin So-hee was essentially created for the same purpose, but the details differ.
In this world, women dating women isn't extremely strange. Yes. Not "extremely" strange. But that doesn't mean it's completely "normal," either.
The basic setting was that, just like the ordinary world I used to live in, most people generally take it for granted that men fall for women and women fall for men, but the social climate doesn't actively oppose same-sex relationships.
As a result, the world of 'If You Wish' also carries a faint aversion to homosexuality, or at least a somewhat peculiar gaze toward it.
Since Yu Ha-neul is a character controlled by the player, her sexual orientation and other detailed personality traits are determined by Choice Options. So that setting hardly matters for her, but the heroines who are Romance Targets are different.
Both Lee Su-a and Ye Sa-ra are set to be bisexual by default, not lesbian. And because they grew up in environments without any particular exposure to homosexuality, they naturally assume they too would feel sexual attraction toward men. Obviously, to pursue those two, the player has to navigate the doubt of, "Wait, do I like her? Even though we're both girls?"
To get there, pursuing them demands more careful raising than a male Romance Route, which starts with the built-in advantage of being the opposite sex. The player would need to tailor Yu Ha-neul's raising to their tastes as precisely as possible.
But Shin So-hee doesn't need that kind of setup. From the very start, she's flat-out a lesbian.
She doesn't like men to begin with. She feels sexual attraction and desire toward women. Naturally, Yu Ha-neul enters her route carrying the advantage of being "female," much like when pursuing the male characters.
Of course, if she were exactly the same as the male characters, she wouldn't serve much purpose as the Yuri Route tutorial.
So Shin So-hee has an obstacle, smaller than the other heroines', centered on her "worries about her sexual identity."
She's clearly aware that she likes women, but she agonizes over whether it's right to feel sexual curiosity or fantasies toward her close female friends. However, she's the type of character whose worries could be immediately cast aside if she found someone she "could date."
That is why Shin So-hee is treated almost like a tutorial for the Yuri Route.
If you ask why I know this character in such detail even though I never played the game myself, the answer is simple. The Yuri Route the streamer played was precisely the Shin So-hee Route. Shin So-hee's design hit the streamer's taste perfectly, and since the streamer had been aiming for the Yuri Route from the start, they rated it far higher than the Yoon Da-ho Route, which was riddled with infuriating developments.
In fact, the various analysis posts on the wiki were probably transcribed more diligently by fans who watched the streamer's videos than by people who actually played the game. After all, there was far less written about Ye Sa-ra or Lee Su-a.
...Of course, Yu Ha-neul and Shin So-hee's first meeting was nothing like this ridiculously provocative scene.
Plop. Shin So-hee's red lollipop fell from her mouth to the ground with a soft sound. My eyes momentarily went to her legs; she was squatting in her short school uniform skirt. Unlike Ye Sa-ra's gaunt thighs, hers looked distinctly healthy and sturdy.
After staring up at me blankly for a few seconds, she finally registered the situation and pulled out her earphones.
"...What the hell?"
Shin So-hee immediately glared at me with a fierce scowl.
...Right. No matter how much of a lesbian she is, if someone suddenly flips up her own skirt right in front of your face, you'd call it sexual harassment.
...Or would she?
I tried imagining a character like Ye Sa-ra walking up and casually flipping up her skirt for me. I'd probably consider calling the police, but whether it would actually hurt my feelings is questionable. Rather than feeling upset, I'd probably be incredibly worried; I'd wonder if she had mental issues, or if someone was threatening her.
And honestly, some of the sexual fantasies I've entertained throughout my life have included sexually forward women... things like that.
The moment I realized that kind of content was in the list of videos I'd been avidly watching, I was struck by a brutal Sage Time.
Was my sexuality really that twisted?
I saw Shin So-hee, who had been squatting in front of me, slowly rise to her feet.
"Are you ignoring me right now?"
"N-no, that's not what I—"
"Then what? Huh?"
Shin So-hee grabbed me by the collar.
Ugh. Just moments ago, when her face was flushed red, I'd thought she was quite pretty, but now that she had me by the collar, she was a little scary. Memories of facing off against bullies back in middle and high school came flooding back, bringing a bit of trauma with them.
But this time, I was definitely in the wrong.
...Was I?
I mean, sure, I really did jump over a wall I didn't need to jump over. But who could have imagined that jumping over a wall would shove the head of the person below right under my skirt?
Now that I think about it again, yeah, I should have checked below first. I screwed up. Even without the skirt, I could have crashed into a passerby.
"Uh, hwa, egh."
I floundered for a moment, stammering,
"S-sorry."
I barely managed to get the apology out.
"You think saying sorry makes it all right?!"
Shin So-hee shouted angrily.
Well, I mean, it doesn't exactly make it all right.
If apologizing doesn't cut it, then what exactly was she planning to do?
But Shin So-hee had only shouted that out of anger, and it looked like she couldn't think of what to say next. Report it to the police as sexual harassment? Honestly, would the police even take a story like that seriously?
'I was squatting under the eaves, and suddenly she fell from the sky and shoved my head under her skirt.' Even the person telling it would be embarrassed.
I racked my brain again, trying to put myself in Shin So-hee's shoes.
So, a pretty girl and a guy doesn't quite work, let's flip it to a same-sex scenario. A man in only his underwear falls from the sky and his, that part of him—pops right out in front of my face—
I stopped my thoughts right there and went pale.
It was horrifying just to imagine.
Even if Shin So-hee's orientation is lesbian, she's clearly still struggling with that identity. So having the... that part of someone of the same sex thrust in her face—it's understandable she'd be freaked out.
"Hold it—!"
Someone shouted that boldly and then dropped right over the wall.
"Who the hell are you, grabbing Sara by the collar and causing a scene!?"
"......?"
Shin So-hee's brows drew together. Still gripping my collar, she stared at the person who had taken my side without knowing anything.
...It was as if a light shone from that face.
The female protagonist, Yu Ha-neul, had literally fallen from the sky.
Well, technically, from over the wall. But from where I was, that's how it looked.
*
The worries of adolescence come in many forms, but if there's one kind that is the most hopeless and frustrating, it's the worry of "I like someone."
Shin So-hee didn't like one specific person—she'd never met anyone she could call a "first love." Instead, she mostly liked all her friends. Thanks to her plucky personality since childhood, she'd been admired by the girls in her neighborhood, and she liked most of the kids who hung around her.
But if those were purely feelings of liking them as friends, there wouldn't be anything to agonize over.
To begin with, Shin So-hee had never liked a man. When she saw a handsome man, she thought he was handsome; when she saw a man with a good body, she was impressed. But she'd never gawked at them the way girls her age did, or thought about wanting to date them.
Her peers seemed to find that breezy attitude refreshing.
But that wasn't what truly troubled her. She figured that if she wasn't dating a man, well, things would work out somehow once she met one she liked.
The trouble began when Shin So-hee hit puberty and grew more sexually curious.
For anyone, man or woman, there comes an age when intense sexual curiosity naturally kicks in. Men might imagine dating or marrying a pretty woman they see; women might have the same fantasies about a handsome man. Strangely, Shin So-hee's fantasies mostly centered on the girls around her.
...Well, maybe not all the way to wanting to marry them, but she'd catch herself staring at someone's lips without realizing it, wondering how they'd react if she confessed, or feeling a strange thrill from casual physical contact.
As those feelings crept toward friends she'd always seen as just friends, self-loathing gnawed at her fiercely.
It was hard to talk about with anyone, and even searching online only brought up generalities. It's not wrong, it's simply the individuality you were born with... Every answer just glossed over the real question: what was she supposed to do right now?
"You're going alone? For real?"
"Yeah. There's somewhere I need to stop by."
In the end, she'd parted ways with those friends and walked alone today. There wasn't really anywhere she had to go. She just needed time to walk alone and think.
She walked and walked until her legs ached, then backed up against a wall and squatted down for a moment—
when suddenly white panties dropped right in front of her eyes. Thud.
No, not just the panties, the person wearing them. Bare legs, no stockings. The body was pitifully thin, but her skin was incredibly pale and fair.
What is this? What am I even looking at?
For a moment, she couldn't grasp what was happening. For a split second, a corner of her brain seriously wondered if all her pent-up fantasies had finally driven her to hallucinate.
Then the panties stepped back.
With a rustle, the cloth draped over her head fell away. Shin So-hee hadn't even noticed there was a cloth over her head, and she only realized it was a skirt after the owner of those panties stepped back.
It wasn't an unfamiliar school uniform. She knew perfectly well that there was a school nearby attended by stuck-up brats.
The Hwayeong High School uniform.
The person wearing that uniform was, of course, an incredibly posh-looking "young lady."
"...What the hell?"
Her temper flared in an instant.
She'd often heard that Hwayeong High kids had no manners—stories about how they'd ignore you or turn up their noses. But they'd go as far as a prank like this?
And on top of that, she was already sick with frustration.
"Are you ignoring me right now?"
Shin So-hee slowly straightened up and asked the unresponsive person.
"N-no, that's not what I—"
"Then what? Huh?"
Enraged, she grabbed the person in front of her by the collar.
And then Shin So-hee collided headlong with the greatest challenge of her life.
Of all things, the face of the person she'd yanked forward by the collar—
was devastatingly pretty.
"Uh, hwa, egh."
On top of that, the flustered noise she made was even cute.
In that moment, it was unavoidable that the image of that slender lower body she'd just seen surfaced in Shin So-hee's mind.