Art Preview - Nozomi Route Ending CG

Note - There are SPOILERS ahead for the main endings of Nozomi's rewritten route, plus a little of Sayori and Hiroko's. You may want to skip this post if you haven't read them yet. Click the links in the article below if you want to see the full image previews of the upcoming CG. 

Yeah, so after having good endings drawn for Sayori and Hiroko, it was kind of inevitable that I'd want to complete the set :)

This CG concerns the main ending for Nozomi's main storyline, as currently written, although I also want to talk about some of the tweaks I'm thinking of making to it now I've had some time to think on it for a while.

So for this scene, it's been a few months since Kyou and Nozomi's largely consensual penlight-related antics and they've stayed close. Nozomi's other friends seem to at least tolerate the guy now, easing up on their initial suspicion. Even better, Nozomi's felt enough time has passed since the scarier aspects of her penlight experience that she's keen to go back to her kink again, to Kyou's delight.

Naturally, since Kyou's proven himself to be pretty trustworthy about this sort of thing, Nozomi invites him to explore their shared interest together once again and he's all too happy to agree. Nozomi's already planning new adventures and before the two of them part ways to head home for the night, Nozomi brings Kyou in for a friendly hug to cement their friendship.

And then... she kisses him sweetly on the cheek and leaves Kyou to think on what that means for them both. Kyou comes to the conclusion that Nozomi's thinking of relaxing her no dating in high school rule, or dodging it on a technicality, since their school days are nearly behind them, and the game ends with him excited at the mere possibility of a relationship with her after all!

... That's how it's currently written anyway. It's quite a departure from the original ending (where they remain firm friends and are comfortable in that), but I'm not sure it strikes the right tone. That both Kyou and Nozomi return to hypnokink in a post-penlight world is an important and good change from the original ending, but Nozomi teasing a relationship with Kyou is a little harder to square. I mean, one of the most important things about the girl's good endings is that they keep their agency. Nozomi's friends both commit to their stated ambitions and Kyou's appearance in their lives does nothing to shake that. Nozomi's a lot more wishy-washy about her future but the one thing she seemed committed to, such as it was, was this thing about not dating. Is it okay if she's seen to be changing her mind because of Kyou's involvement?

Ehh... maybe. I mean, if she's changing her stance on dating she's doing it independently of what Kyou wants, with no pressure from his direction. But leaving it to him to explain her decision-making for us is maybe not such a good look. So I'll probably rewrite this scene to extend the conversation and have Nozomi tell us what's on her mind, possibly revealing another little thing about herself in the process.

I hope to work on this and have it done in time for the early access release on the first weekend of June (is summer approaching already? Gosh). But whatever happens, the finished artwork of this scene will definitely be up by then!