Teaser: This is the graveyard where otome games go to die.
Mira took one step into the fog and nearly choked on the scent of roses and rejection.
Everything smelled like perfume samples and emotional baggage.
Rows of floating textboxes hovered, dim and flickering. Each one displayed some variation of:
> "You chose someone else. She never got her ending."
"This place is depressing," Yuto muttered, hugging himself. "Why does it feel like I forgot to reply to 200 love letters?"
"Because you did," Mira deadpanned.
The Otome Graveyard wasn't made of tombstones. It was made of untriggered flags, unloved routes, and system-generated guilt.
In the center of it all stood a forgotten heroine.
She wore a frilly pink dress, half-rendered, with code glitches around her eyes. Her dialogue box flickered.
"Please... pick me this time?"
Mira stepped forward. "What's your name?"
The girl hesitated. "I... I don't remember. I was always 'Option C'."
"That's messed up," Yuto whispered.
"Welcome to the genre," Rion muttered, flipping open a scanner. "She's stable, but stuck in loop logic. If no one chooses her, she can't leave this place."
Mira frowned. "And if someone chooses her?"
"She resets. All over again."
---
They set up camp on a broken carousel that used to be a confession scene backdrop. The lights twitched. The music box looped half of a sad violin track every eight seconds.
"I don't like this place," Yuto said. "Feels like it's judging me."
"It is," Mira said, roasting a glitchberry. "Every unused heroine here remembers every time you didn't pick her."
Suddenly, something rustled from the fog.
Five more girls appeared—different uniforms, different faces—but all with the same hollow eyes.
"You're not supposed to be here," one said.
"We were written with love. Then replaced."
"Your presence destabilizes our pain."
Mira stood up. "We're not here to fix your arc."
One girl pointed. "Then why bring him?" she said, nodding at Yuto.
(And that's when the graveyard started rewriting itself.)
---
Flags erupted from the ground—literal ones, made of glowing data.
Lines of pink, white, and pastel green slashed across the sky like route paths.
The girls screamed, not from pain, but from forced scripting.
Rion tried to stabilize the ground. "They're locking the scene into a harem reversal! If we don't leave, Yuto becomes the center!"
"Hell no!" Yuto shrieked, backing away.
But the forgotten heroine grabbed Mira's arm. "If someone picks me, even once... I can leave."
Mira looked her dead in the eyes. "You want out?"
The girl nodded.
Mira slapped the patch tag onto her chest.
(For a moment, the entire graveyard went silent.)
---
The girl vanished in a blink of code.
One of the floating textboxes shattered.
The violin stopped.
A wind blew through—soft, light, and free of perfume.
"You freed her," Rion said. "You didn't pick her. You gave her an ending."
"She wrote her own," Mira replied. "That's different."
Yuto stared at her. "What are you?"
"I'm not a heroine. I'm not a villainess. I'm not here to be chosen."
Mira stepped into the fog again. "I'm here to break every genre that left girls behind."
---
(Next: Mira meets the Heroine Who Deleted Her Own Story.)
(And learns that sometimes, freedom comes after erasure.)