March 21, 2026 - March 24, 2026

Completion: 100% (All CGs, dictionary terms, and endings)

Play time: ~30 hours (I was on Spring Break…)

Forgot to add this! I created a guide doc from Otome Kitten's site (not my usual, Otome Labyrinth).

Soft Rec’d Route Order:

Mitsuki → Kohei → Yoji → Rokuro –> Secret Route #1 → Nori → Secret Route #2 → Shuya

Routes in Order of Favorite to Least Favorite:

Secret Route #2 /Yoji → Kohei → Mitsuki/Nori → Rokuro → Shuya → Secret Route #1 (AND I’M REALLY MAD ABOUT IT BECAUSE IT COULD HAVE BEEN AT THE TOP)

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I enjoyed this SO MUCH MORE than I was expecting to! I really just wanted to tackle my backlog of VNs, and play something that would be a nice palate cleanser after the emotional devastation of my Hakuoki playthrough. I figured, “Lowkey office romance with no magic or fantasy elements or anything? Let’s go! This one has been sitting in my library for a couple of years.” It ended up being such a great time overall. It’s also quite short, while managing to tell pretty solid stories in each route.

The FMC is Amasawa Akari (23). This game kinda goes back to the old otoge style where the FMC has no actual face, which I hate, but she also HAS NO LINES?! I was super put off by this when I started up the game. She just narrates, and when she’s talking to someone, it’ll be like, “I thought that he was great at his job, and I told him so.” But then sometimes it feels like straight-up narration, and a character will respond as if she actually said something. That part is not the best, BUT, I got over it pretty quickly. Of course, you are still making choices as usual, and some of those are choosing between two emojis on screen as a response, but I don’t think I’ve ever played one where the FMC had no actual dialogue.

I don’t self-insert with books/games, at all. If it’s a cozy game or some other one where I create my character, I have two names that I typically use–Mizuki for girls and Izumi for boys (both inspired by Hana Kimi characters, one of my favorite manga series since I was in MS/HS), and I’m not playing as if that character is me. If it’s a game where there’s a canon name for the character, but you’re given the choice to rename them, I use the canon name (except that time I didn’t know Link’s name in OoT as a kid and named him WORM). When I play a VN/otoge, I want it to be like I’m reading a romance novel with diverging paths and love interests: I want the main character to have a personality, not for me to “be” the main character. Because of that, older trends like not giving the MC a face, not having the characters ever actually voice her first name, and the FMC not having a voice at all, are not my favorite. It’s much more typical now for them to have a face and for their first name to be voiced if you leave it as-is. In this one, they WILL say “Akari” when they’re on a first-name basis, if you leave it.

Overview:

Akari works for an app company called Estario, in the design department. The company’s original news app, Estarci, is not doing well, and a team is put together to try to improve it. Director Kobase Yoji leads the team and handpicks the individuals he wants from various departments, Akari included. The team consists of Kobase, Akari, Minato Kohei in operations, Saotome Mitsuki in planning, and Oe Nanami as the final remaining member of the original Estarci team, working as liaison with another company that Estario decides to work with on this project, Tempesty. In the prologue, you make a few choices, but the final one is what determines your route most of the time. You can choose to work with Mitsuki, Kohei, Director Kobase, Nanami, or directly with Tempesty.

Basically all of the LIs have something in their past that keeps them from fully opening up, and it has to be dealt with as part of the development of their relationship with Akari. I don’t mean this is a mechanic or anything, just that it’s the type of storytelling being utilized.

The five “main” routes (Yoji, Mitsuki, Kohei, Rokuro, Nori) have six episodes each, and three endings. The two “secret” routes and the final route have four episodes and three endings.

All but one of the routes gets a bit spicy, which is really nice to see for once. Nothing graphic, but almost everyone gets a CG where Akari and the LI are in bed together. I read some hella explicit, crazy monster smut with a straight face, but the kissing sounds during these scenes and the voice acting that these guys did (again, not even anything explicitttt) had me peeking at the screen through my fingers. (Some of you know I'm not a big fan of audiobooks, and the ads that I get for spicy ones always sound terrible. So I think part of this reaction was that it made me feel awkward at first from not being used to it, but it was also really well-done and, uh...enticing.)

LI POV:

The LIs all have a handful of scenes in their POV throughout the routes, typically one per episode. These are really nice and give us some insight into their background or on certain interactions without giving away too much. With the game being quite short, it really evened things out with the pacing.

The types of endings:

Best/Perfect Ending, Love Ending, Work Ending - They’re all pretty “good,” honestly. There are no game overs or bad endings where someone’s getting stabbed or hit by a car or some shit. The answers you give when presented with choices can add to your love or work gauge. Keeping them balanced gets the best ending, and then having it higher for work or love gives you those endings. Best ending means good results for the work aspects of the story as well as relationship, and more depth to the ending overall; work ending just has more of a focus on work but the relationship is generally still a thing; and the love endings usually mean the team does well with the Estarci revamp, but often still gets disbanded shortly thereafter, and the romance with the LI is the focus. Again, nothing terrible.

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The Routes:

Saotome Mitsuki:

Age - 24

He pissed me off right away, which, honestly, was likely the point. He’s considered the company’s planning ace, as he comes up with and implements all sorts of great ideas. He’s very intelligent and capable, and also really casual and friendly to everyone. Buuuut, when he thinks he can just get things done himself, he makes other people feel like shit with his offhand comments and he therefore obviously doesn’t work well in a team.

He grows a lot in this sense over the course of the route. His working dynamic with Akari is tense at first because he keeps making her feel bad, but eventually her own methods get them working like a well-oiled machine. In the prologue, he makes assumptions about her, like, “I’m surprised you took the offer to join this team,” or, “This didn’t seem like the sort of thing you’d do,” and making other comments about how she doesn’t have any ambition. Considering the fact that they barely knew each other, it was really irksome. Take all of that, as well as the fact that he kept treating her like a lackey and running off to seemingly loaf elsewhere all day, and I thought I was gonna hate his whole route, haha.

Eventually, some rumors start up about Mitsuki’s time in high school, and this strains his and Akari’s budding relationship because he tries to protect her from it…

Akari finally gets him to open up to her and he reveals what happened when he was in high school. He’d made an app that was for keeping track of assignments and exams and whatnot, and his classmates and even his school itself made a lot of use of it. However, people asked for a chat feature, and he made one comment about a student giving another the wrong answer while tutoring them, and the whole chat feature turned into a bullying hub. He was blamed, the app was deleted, and he spent the rest of high school isolated.

The two work together to figure out who was spreading the rumors at work. It’s pretty obvious from the start who it would have been, as these routes are all quite short and straightforward and there aren’t a ton of supporting characters. But that didn't really take away from the impact of it all.

I think Mitsuki and Akari are actually a good match once he realizes how his attitude affects the people around him. Despite the fact that it takes him so long to notice why people don’t love to work with him, he’s quite perceptive, and is usually the one catching on to Akari’s relationships in the other routes before everyone else does. At his core, he’s doting and sweet. I think I like him best in his support role in other routes, though.

Six episodes. All CGs found in Best route.

JUST HAND HIM WHICHEVER DRESSING. RUDE.

For real, though, their dynamic is so much fun.

Success!

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Minato Kohei:

Age - 25

He just wants to be left alone!

Kohei works in operations, dealing with customer feedback and making sure things are running smoothly. He’s very stoic, and sees no reason to get to know his coworkers, but gets roped into going for drinks and such because Mitsuki is so persistent. He is focused on being efficient and going home on time. His reactions to Mitsuki are hilarious, and honestly, as much as I laughed overall while playing this game, a large portion of it was because of Kohei.

His big secret is that his father abandoned the family a few years earlier, leaving them with a ton of debt. Kohei was initially working for Tempesty, and then an old schoolmate who also worked there had him leave and start working for Estario to get inside info for said schoolmate to use to boost his own career. Kohei has been putting off doing this as much as he can, but he’s constantly harassed by phone calls to do this and other sneaky tasks for the schoolmate. It’s just him, his mom, and his two younger siblings who are elementary school age, so he’s under a lot of pressure and pulled in multiple directions all the time. This is part of why he’s such a stickler about finishing work and going home on time.

At first, he tries to just delegate tasks when Akari decides to work with him. He thinks it’s more efficient to hand her a manual and complete some portion of the work he’s already doing, rather than teach her. When set to work on customer support responses, Akari tries to be extra helpful, which Kohei gets on her about because it’s going to take her forever if she’s digging through old docs to get info for clients rather than giving standard replies. (“Just use the manual.”) Akari ends up organizing the types of requests/feedback/complaints, because to her, doing so first helps to prioritize. He scoffs at this, but eventually Yoji sees it and comments positively on it, and then it becomes really handy in a later situation.

Little things like this help to sort of break Kohei’s strict mindset about just doing things by the literal manual instead of bringing a human element to the job. Due to his situation, he doesn’t want to get close to anyone, and befriending coworkers puts both them and him at risk. The thing is, he truly is quite kind, and will absolutely be the first to comment on how well something works, what a good job someone has done in a certain situation, etc. He’ll getcha with that deep monotone and a sneak-attack compliment.

Six episodes. All CGs found in Best route.

Haha, get 'im.

Begrudgingly helpful.

All about ~efficiency~.

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Kobase Yoji:

Age - 31

My weakness for glasses strikes again.

Director of the newly-formed Estarci team. He’s in charge of sales and other managerial work.

He’s honestly such a good dude. A lot of Estario employees are scared of him because he seems intense and strict, but he’s always super supportive of the team’s work, goes to bat for them again and again, and when you’re not doing his route, he’s like the biggest cheerleader of Akari’s relationships. Honestly, the whole team is so wonderful, and it’s great to see how Mitsuki and Kohei boost Akari up when they’re not the LIs. (Nanami is a super supportive girl’s girl no matter the route. She’s precious and I love her.)

This one is definitely the spiciest. There are several kissing scenes, the main spicy one, and a few other interactions where it’s borderline. Bro is not playingggg.

What really gets things rolling for this route is that Akari’s apartment building is suddenly undergoing construction, and she needs to find a new place for two months. The team is worried about her looking at temporary housing because real estate agents tend to take advantage of single young women. Kohei actually suggests that Yoji goes with her to look at a place, and he’s perfectly happy to help. They go to look at the one she’d narrowed things down to and it seems fine, until a dude who lives there harasses her while she’s waiting for Yoji to come back from checking out utilities. Yoji then offers up his extra room.

The “big secret” in this route is that he apparently hurt a pedestrian while riding a motorcycle as a teenager, ending up in juvie for a while and leaving that pedestrian with permanent injuries. When this info starts to make its rounds due to comments on the app, which are from the victim’s sister, he steps back from the team to try to take the fall and keep them safe. He abruptly has Akari move out with no explanation in order to keep the harassment from affecting her, and this obviously puts a strain on their clearly-developing feelings. Akari and Nanami do some investigating and find out he covered for his friend back then, but Yoji has no intention of coming forward with the truth at this point.

Things are, of course, eventually cleared up, and we reach our endings.

Six episodes. All CGs found in Best route.

Best boss.

~Helpful.~

SIR.

SIRRRRRRRRR.

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Yoshioka Rokuro:

Age - 28

Rokuro is the son of the president of Tempesty, the other, much bigger, tech company that the Estarci team is working with while they revive their app. As with all of the other LIs, you meet him during the prologue. He is competent, but has that princely appearance, is very polite and kind, and comes across as “perfect.” Because the Estarci team plans to have drinks with him to celebrate the partnership kicking off, he and Akari exchange contact info. His RiNG user icon is a horse, so Akari mentions aloud that he really is like a prince. He honestly just gets a kick out of this.

Because of how he’s initially presented, I really thought this was gonna be the route where the LI is a secret psycho. Since that’s not unheard of, and because some elements of this game are like older otoge where that’s very common, he was who I had pegged for that. But nope, he’s really and truly just a super good guy.

The big “mystery” in this one is actually discovered super early, because, again, this game is rather short. Rokuro’s first and only love is the little girl who made him feel better one summer, when he stayed with his uncle while his parents cared for his sick younger brother. He was lonely, scared they wouldn’t want him to come home, and dealing with the pressures of being the heir to the company and all of the expectations that come with that. He remembers this, but Akari doesn’t, initially. Pretty soon they realize she was the little girl, but he’s already been starting to fall for her, and her for him, so it’s just destiny and all that.

The prooooblem, though? Rokuro’s dad has long planned for Rokuro to marry the daughter of one of his biggest business partners, the Bitous, and Bitou Sakura has no intention of stepping aside because Rokuro has fallen in love. It’s the typical mean girl, making-work-miserable, snide comments bullshit. I haaaaate those sorts of characters and plot elements, but it’s all resolved neatly eventually, as all of the other big problems in this game are.

There was one point where Sakura took over a meeting that Rokuro was supposed to be running, taking it off his calendar without permission and trying to assert dominance as the fiancee he never asked for. Akari is there because she’s the liaison in this route, but Saotome is as well, and boy takes nooooo shit. He verbally wrecks Sakura for doing what she did, and then Rokuro shows up. One of the Tempesty employees sticks up for Akari as well, despite being scared of Sakura, which was really sweet.

Six episodes. CGs are a little wonkier in this route, for whatever reason. Most are found in the Best route. Love end has another CG. Then you make a different selection in that same spot to get the final one. Work end is reached through setting Work HIGH and Love LOW and playing episode 6, rather than just having two different later-episode save states to get the Work/Love endings.

This is during the prologue, and just something about how it's written made me laugh so hard.

~Prince~

I forgot to include the screenshot where he drinks milk tea for the first time and exerts more force than necessary to get the boba and chokes, hahahaha.

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Secret Route #1: YOFY

Real name:Yoshioka Soh

Age - 19

*None of the character profiles/promotional stuff online includes this character or the Secret Route #2 character. I knew who they were ahead of time because I compiled my doc guide and wanted to know anyway, but I’m marking all of that as spoilers for anyone who doesn’t want to know until they tackle the route. Honestly, most of this section is marked as spoilers because of the nature of my commentary on it.

**Making one specific choice option in the first episode of Rokuro’s route leads you to this route instead.

Sooo… This probably would have been one of my favorite routes. It was making me laugh a lot, YOFY was cute and sweet, and it was just looking to be a really fun route.

And then they decided to go the way of older otoge and make him a psycho. ALL OF MY RAAAAAAAAAGE.

Estario has been working with a mysterious freelancing programmer for some time now. No one has ever seen him in person, on video, or even heard his voice…

Once it’s determined that Akari will be working more directly with YOFY, she manages to get him on a video call sans video on his end, and he uses a voice changer. But then, he comes in to meet with the company president about his contract, and Akari clocks that it’s him when she sees him. From there, he grows comfortable hanging out with her and talking with her on the phone and such, but he’s still a mystery to everyone else.

A woman was attacked in the neighborhood recently, and so when Akari starts hearing footsteps behind her on the way home at night, she eventually tells YOFY and he starts walking her home after work.

But then she realizes she double booked a Saturday hangout with him when she had a prior engagement–a farewell party for a former coworker who helped her a lot. So she cancels on him, and he sees her going into a bar (where the party is being held) at the same time as Rokuro. He loses it, and when she’s on her way home, she hears footsteps following her again, and calls him for help. Turns out, HE’S BEEN THE ONE FOLLOWING HER THAT WHOLE TIME. He accuses her of lying to him about her plans, forces a kiss on her, she bites his lip, he kisses her again and bites hers back, she shoves him and runs home.

Then at work the next week, a bunch of computers are going haywire, so he has to come in to sort it out. Obviously he doesn’t want to be around people, and she ends up being the one to stay after hours to let him in. HE PUTS SLEEPING PILLS IN HER COFFEE AND SHE WAKES UP AT HIS APARTMENT. After clearing up the whole party thing and finding out that Rokuro is his older brother which has left him feeling inferior for most of his life, he lets her leave and apologizes for everything. She goes home and realizes she likes him. She goes back to his place the next day to tell him.

In the Best ending, he ends up going to work in the office a few days a week. He’s regretful over the stuff that he did to her, but is still prone to jealousy, and she “honestly likes that about him.”

In the Love ending, he stops working with Estario after the Estarci team gets shuttered and goes to work for Tempesty full-time.

In the Work ending, their relationship continues on pretty normally and he develops a word game app as a new project.

I am just so frustrated by how they twisted this one. The whole excuse is that he was bullied and didn’t make friends in school because he was sick so often when he was little and didn’t really figure out how to get along with people. So now he’s almost always shut up inside his apartment working on the computer. He goes for daily walks and stuff but otherwise avoids people.

He was honestly so cute and his rapport with Akari was fun, and then they just nuke him with this character “development.” Ughhhhhhh.

Four episodes. All CGs found in Best route.

From this cuteness...

to this shit.

His profile pic made me laugh.

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Tainaka Nori:

Age - 22

This loveable weirdo.

Nori is a freeloader, or pet. When we meet him in the prologue, he’s living with this other young lady named Kaede. Turns out, he just goes from one lady to the next, taking care of the housework and providing them with companionship (but never physical intimacy). He’s truly just a happy lil puppy that they come home to and take care of. The people he’s stayed with vary, from a lady in her 70s, to office workers, and a single mom who needed help with her kid.

As part of the prologue, he follows Akari on her way home from the bar one night. For every other route, you ignore him and Yoji ends up taking him in for a few days. In his route, Akari agrees to let him stay for the weekend despite knowing nothing about him, and then it ends up being longer.

The part of his past that they need to work through is that he used to love cooking because he would always do so with his parents before they died, but after winning awards and getting a great job, he was bullied and treated poorly by jealous classmates and coworkers, leading to a recipe-stealing scandal where someone stole one from him and he was the one blamed for stealing it. Ever since, he’s been scared to cook for others, and just kind of floats around taking care of the people he stays with.

He’s very upbeat and kind, truly not looking to do anything nefarious. While this whole setup is odd/unlikely, he’s genuinely just a sweet guy who needs to get his life back on track, and Akari is the only one who’s been patient enough to push him toward that, and also keep him around when he tries to run from it.

He’s Mitsuki x 10 when it comes to just ignoring honorifics and formalities and giving people nicknames right away.

Six episodes. All CGs found in Best route.

He's a good boy.

I meant to take more screenshots for this one but apparently didn't.

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Secret Route #2 - Higa Tsukihiko

Age - 34

AHHHH. This one was just SO cute. I don’t even want kids, but this ex-idol single dad widower salaryman route has my whole heart. You meet Higa during the prologue with everyone else, and he just seemed so quiet and sweet. I was so excited to see he was one of the LIs.

In this route, Akari meets his son Hinata (5) while relaxing at a park near her house. He’s sitting alone and an incident with a bigger kid leads to Akari defending him. From there, they’re fast friends, and she wonders if he’s related to the Higa who she’d recently met at Tempesty.

Eventually the connection is made, and she ends up spending a lot of time with the both of them. Tsukihiko’s parents watch Hinata as often as possible, and he’s in daycare, but he’s home alone a lot as well, so at one point she even goes to check on him at Tsukihiko’s request when he works late.

Hinata’s mom/Tsukihiko’s wife passed away four years earlier, so this is the main “conflict” in their budding relationship. Akari wants to respect that relationship, doesn’t know how open Tsukihiko is to dating, and otherwise just enjoys the time that she can spend with them. Tsukihiko is falling for her, but feels like his situation is a lot for Akari to potentially deal with, and feels guilty about wanting her to be around more often.

This route honestly deals with a lot of heavy topics REALLY well. There’s the widower aspect, and how Tsukihiko will always care about his late wife, but can also make space in his heart for someone else. He explains all of this to Hinata very clearly and carefully, to make sure Hinata doesn’t think his mom is being replaced. He is also very open with Akari once he realizes her feelings are mutual, saying he’s not interested in anything casual, marriage has to be on the table, etc. That wasn’t really anything to worry about on her end, but the communication and his dedication to not just bringing people in and out of Hinata’s life is lovely. Tsukihiko is also a former idol, who left the career when he met and started dating his late wife, in order to provide some stability. The route addresses ridiculous idol fan culture and how they feel like they own idols, getting mad if they try to date or do other human things. A former fan harasses Tsukihiko about leaving the group and how it made the whole group fall apart, something she’s still hung up on years later just because she supported them. She also says terrible things to Hinata, but as with all of the other “bad guys” in this game, apologies and forgiveness.

This is the only route that didn’t get a remotely spicy scene. :c Tsukihiko is 34 and a dad, not deadddd.

But this quick scene in the Love ending was cute. Get ittttt:

EXCUSE MEEEE.

He's so precioussss.

AND THIS WAS BEFORE THEY EVEN CAUGHT FEELINGS AHHHHH.

Four chapters. All CGs found in Best route.

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Usui Shuya Age - 45

Owner of the Evergreen bar that the Estarci employees frequent. Throughout the other routes, Akari and co visit the bar a lot after work or for Friday night team gatherings, and Usui is a frequent supplier of advice and support.

This route unlocks after your first playthrough. This adds an additional little scene in the prologue with Usui. Then you select “support Oe” instead of one of the other LIs to move into this route.

I might have ranked this one kinda low, but it’s not exactly bad or anything. There’s an obvious age gap here (22 years), and while Usui is drawn to Akari pretty quickly, he does everything to avoid making it obvious. He doesn’t want to tie her down to someone so much older, wants her to be able to enjoy her youth, etc. Akari is really bold in this route, though, falling for Usui very quickly and making moves on him.

When he gets hurt protecting her from a drunk dude on the street, she offers to help him out at the bar in the evenings until his hand heals up. He’s very much against this because she’s already working so hard at her actual job. But then she utilizes the fact that she has to present some kind of article proposal at work, and decides to do a series on “adult hideaways” where the reporter (her) works at an establishment to get the best idea of how it operates and provides that feeling of a getaway for overworked adults. She wears Yoji down on the idea and he approves it, saying she can cut her daytime hours at the office until she finishes the project. So, she gets to work at the bar and be close to Usui.

Usui’s family runs a ryokan onsen, which he initially planned to take over. Then his older sister died due to complications with her health from overwork–which is why he worries so much about Akari–and he had a falling out with his parents. His route deals with the choice of making up with them and taking over the inn, or staying at Evergreen. Obviously, the romance aspect of things as well, and the guilt he feels over wanting to be with Akari.

We’re never given any dating history for him, which I kind of expected to see considering the age difference. We learn about all of the family stuff, but I guess he was never married or anything.

Four chapters. All CGs found in Best route.

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Overall thoughts:

Like I said at the start, I was expecting this to just be a little palate cleanser after Hakuoki, and maybe not to be all that impressed by it. Aside from my SR#1 complaints and my dislike of the faceless/line-less FMC thing, this was a really refreshing and enjoyable experience. I loved how the LIs--mostly those on the immediate Estarci team--were so supportive of Akari when you're going through other routes, and how there are just so many truly decent characters, with defined personalities and depth.

Another cool lil feature was how the title screen (bangin' music, by the way) looks different based on the time of day that you're playing.

The art and music were both solid. I was grateful for more "mature" storytelling and content than these otoge usually have, and for the fact that this was a relatively short one that managed to tell good stories.

Yoji, Kohei, Nanami, Mitsuki -- I loved this little teaaammm. Akari has some great people around her.