ROTSTAR

Word count: about 42,000 words

Endings: 5

Romance routes: 2

Summary/Plot

ROTSTAR is a Visual Novel/Point-and-Click Adventure about Kaito Mochizuki, a 29-year-old salesman from Tokyo who wakes up in a city where you can kill anyone, as long as you ask first.

Kaito isn't unhappy. No debt, no illness, nothing that would make for a better story. He sells stationery, mostly ring binders, and every night at 2:40 he stands on his ninth-floor balcony in Kita Ward and plays back the versions of himself who actually did something. Ten seconds each. Next.

Then one night a star goes over, and he says it out loud.

"Let me do it again. Somewhere else. Anywhere that isn't this."

Something was listening.

The next morning, Kaito wakes up on a roof in his work clothes, with a dead phone and a wallet full of bills that say MERCY across the top. On the surface, Mercy is an ordinary city. The food is good, the neighbors look out for each other, and the butcher down the ladder feeds anybody who looks cold. In reality, however, Mercy has one rule Tokyo never had.

"May I trouble you?"

Ask that, and the other person can say "Please. Go ahead." Or they can say "Not today," and if three grown people hear it, nobody can ask them again for a month. Either way, everybody else minds their own business, and afterward somebody takes a number at the Ledger House on Vaunt Street and files the paperwork.

Kaito is the only person in the city who doesn't know the words. Even so, he settles in faster than he expected, thanks to the people who take him in, including Ozu, the kindhearted butcher who gives him a room upstairs; Nim, an eleven-year-old runner who sells him a coat; Vess, a debt collector who notices him because he flinched; and Wrede, an inspector from Irregular Accounts with a wall of unfiled deaths and a few questions for the new man at Hale's.

He's good at the counter, he's good at reading people, and the longer he stays, the easier the rule gets to live with.

As if that wasn't bad enough, Urame, the goddess who took his call, has offered him three more wishes. She'll grant each one exactly as he words it. There is no refund window.

Will you be able to hold on to who Kaito was, in a city that rewards him for letting go? Will you be able to word three wishes carefully enough to get what you actually mean?

Because whether you like it or not, sooner or later, somebody in Mercy is going to ask.

ROTSTAR is for adults. It shows violence on screen, including the deaths of people you get to know, and it doesn't cut away. There is blood. The story takes place in a city where a child is expected to kill someone as a rite of passage. It depicts suicidal thoughts in passing, drinking and smoking.

The title screen and some scenes use flashing and screen-tearing effects. You can turn them down in Preferences.