#they're hitting so many genre tropes so quickly it's hard to keep track lmao

[josouhenshin]

day 1 part 2

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Welcome to the map screen. Usually there’s various points of interest to choose from, but for now it’s just our apartment.

Back in the house, mizuki proposes they go clothes shopping for shinobu. He’s kind of trying to rush him out the door, probably before shinobu has time for second thoughts. But it’s too late. Shinobu wonders if it’s gonna be suspicious that two guys are buying women’s clothes. Mizuki retorts, well do you see anyone else here? Mizuki’s solution to the problem is obvious: crossdressing! Certainly it’ll be less embarrassing to go if it’s with a girl. Mizuki says he’ll go get changed, and breaks out the feminine-sounding sentence ending particle wa. Shinobu wants to watch but mizuki adamantly refuses. 

While waiting, shinobu tries to imagine what girl mode mizuki will look like, but comes up dry. He worries what to do if he has a bad reaction to seeing her. Or what to say either way. But surely someone with a pretty face like mizuki should be pretty good at looking girly. 

“Sorry for the wait,” Mizuki says.

Shinobu barely recognizes her. She’s so pretty he’s barely able to string a sentence together. He also comments that her way of speaking is more typically feminine too, though whether this is just down to phrasing or if mizuki has mastered the art of Up Voice is unknowable in this medium.

“Mizuki, you look just like a real girl,” shinobu commends.

“Shinobu... I’m not ‘like’ a girl, right now I really am one!” she says, having swapped to using the feminine first person pronoun atashi.

After shinobu bashfully offers some more superlatives, they head out. Shinobu feels tense. He’s trying to square the experience of being around someone that pretty but also knowing it’s mizuki. That, and he also gets the feeling people are staring. He asks mizuki what happens if they get caught, and mizuki brushes it off. If anyone’s watching, it’s because they look like an attractive young couple. This flusters the shinobu.

They get to the store and shinobu feels weird being the only guy around. 

Mizuki takes point. “Obviously since it’s your first time, I should be the one to pick things out right?” she aks what kind of vibe shinobu would want to go for. Shinobu protests but mizuki just starts browsing. 

He sticks to her as if his life depended on it. He feels totally out of place. Even though mizuki said they’d just scan as a couple, it’s kind of embarrassing. More than anything he just wants to go home. “Just pick whatever, let’s get out of here,” he pleads. 

Mikuki brushes him off and keeps browsing. It’s important to choose the right thing for your first time. They keep wandering around. Shinobu is curious about everything too of course, but worries that something really bad will happen if he touches anything. But like, there *is* a lot of cute stuff.

Eventually they decide on some things and check out.

“Ehehe, thanks for buying everything, darling~!”

Shinobu becomes flustered. It’s unclear the extent to which shinobu understands that he’s being flirted with through all this but being omega dense in that way is par for the course sometimes.

“Anyway, next up is underwear,” Mizuki declares. 

Shinobu stammers in protest.

“Crossdressing starts from the underwear, yknow!” She professes.

Shinobu really just wants to go home though, he was already feeling weird in the regular clothes store, but if he goes lingerie shopping she might faint. Mizuki agrees to call it a day and head back. 

Back at the apartment, mizuki is excited to see shinobu try everything on. He does. Compared to men’s clothes the new stuff has a much more pleasant texture. And the skirt is kinda breezy. “So this is what women are always feeling.”

Mizuki yelps when shinobu finishes putting everything on. “I knew you’d be cute.” she urges shinobu not to look in the mirror yet, and offers to loan her a wig and do some makeup. But after this, she says, shinobu’s gotta do it herself. When she finishes, Mizuki admires her handiwork, and tells her it’s okay to look. 

“Cute! Is- is that... me?”

Mizuki promptly chides her for saying boku while being a girl. 

Shinobu thanks her excitedly.

Mizuki tells her to look forward to the next step: going out in girl mode. Shinobu is nervous, but mizuki assures her that she’s even cuter so it’ll be totally fine. 

“You’re still looking in the mirror! Did you fall in love with yourself?” Mizuki jokes. She says that she has a present ready for shinobu once she’s finished. It’s a makeup kit. Just a little something to welcome her to the world of crossdressing.

Mizuki has one more thing to say: “If we’re out and we meet someone we don’t want to catch us, call me mizuho.” She continues, “you should come up with a girl name too.”

After thinking for a suspiciously short time, our hero comes up with “紫乃” which can be read a few different ways. Until the game makes it more obvious, I’m going with “shina” as the reading, but “shino” and “yukarino” are apparently also options.

“Shina? Well, nice to meet you, shina.”

Shina stays up late imagining all kinds of different personas she could adopt, and eventually drifts off to sleep. 

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