Learning To Fly

A Katawa Shoujo psuedo-route by EurobeatJester

Thank you for taking the time to click on my little story. I greatly appreciate it!

Let me give an intro as to who I am and why I'm writing this.

Katawa Shoujo had a tremendous impact on me, when I played it for the first time. I had just moved to a new city in summer of last year, a first for me. I had a tenuous promise of a job and had lived in my car for a while until then. I managed to get an apartment, and said job, but it wasn't what I was expecting. Financial crises kept popping up one after another and in October of last year, I was at the lowest point I have ever been in my life suffering from crippling depression. I would browse 4chan more out of boredom, and I kept seeing this thing called Katawa Shoujo pop up from time to time on /b/ and /v/. I didn't know anything about it except it was a dating sim involving sex and cripped girls and it came from 4chan. I downloaded it, figuring it was something to do (and I couldn't hate myself any more) and I was expecting the worst, knowing the type of humor 4chan is known for.

I was not expecting what happened. I'm sure you've heard it from other people who have experienced the same thing. Because I went into it with my guard down, the game hit me like a freight train. The first route I got was Hanako's, and the defining moment for me when I realized that this experience was going to be different was at the end of the first act. Hanako tells Hisao she was burned in a fire, and the BG changes to a crayon drawing of a burning house and a crying girl - the exact type of thing that a therapist would have a child draw.

It took me three days to finish all five routes. While I liked some better than others, when I finished the last one, I remember looking at the title screen with everything filled in, and closing my laptop slowly. I was just in shock from the magnitude of what I just read. I was like a zombie for a good three days. The origins of KS hit me as hard as the story itself. I remember thinking specifically "If a group of strangers from 4chan, the cesspool of the internet, can come together and create this, and have it be so profound, then what the hell am I doing with my life?"

That was the kick in the ass I needed. I started to force myself to look at things positively. In the last year, I've made a bunch of new friends, am making more money at my job and enjoying it, have been losing weight and getting in shape, and overall am a much happier person both with life and myself. I won't say I don't have relapses from time to time, but even those are becoming fewer and farther between. Katawa Shoujo wasn't the main reason for this, but it played a huge part.

Another reason why KS affected me as much is that I can relate to a lot of the themes in it. When I was a teenager, I suffered a neck injury that left me completely paralyzed from the neck down. I was told by doctors there was a good chance I was never going to walk again. I spent months in the hospital and a year in physical therapy and was extremely lucky. While I never did get all of it back, you'd never know except for a few small visual cues.

Years ago, before everything went to hell and I ended up homeless, I used to write. Original fiction, fanfiction, poetry, even technical articles as a freelance position, I loved it. I would sit down for ten to twelve hours straight with my fingers never leaving the keyboard except to eat and use the bathroom. And when things started to go bad, I stopped. I've decided I want to get back into writing, and the few things I have written the last year make me realize how rusty I am. Creative abilities such as writing and drawing are like muscles - if you don't exercise them regularly, they atrophy. I decided I wanted to get back into writing by starting with fanfiction. It's a wonderful tool, because you don't have to worry about worldbuilding or character design for the most part and can focus purely on a story and how it flows. I was thinking about what to write for, and I instantly decided I wanted to write something Katawa Shoujo related.

I knew of Rika and Saki from the April Fool's post, and I knew there were pseudo routes written by fans for other characters in the game, such as Miki and Suzu. I was drawn to Saki's character when I read the short description about her because there's not that much out there for her (compared to Rika) and that her condition would make a story very difficult to write. But I want to push myself with the challenge. I've been kicking this idea around for a few months and have the outline done and the story I want to tell. Over the past few months I've been researching, planning, and thinking, and I'm ready to finally start writing.

I don't know how often I'll be able to update this story, but I'll do my best. Life has been a bear recently dealing with work and some other issues, and I write in a very non-linear style. I tend to write and flesh out larger, major plot points first as the interactions come to my head, or I think of a line, and exchange, a description...and I then try to connect the dots. The beginning is always the hardest for me to write, because it's like that first mark on a clean sheet of paper.

This is a learning process for me as well, and also somewhat therapeutic for me as it's going to help me work out some unresolved feelings and issues from that time in my life. So please bear with me. I love constructive criticism and feedback as it helps me grow as a writer. I know that I'm not the first to write a Saki route, but I haven't read the other ones. I have a very clear idea for the character in my mind and I don't know if I trust myself as a writer enough yet to not have her personality in my story shaped on how others have perceived her.

So why Saki?

Saki Enomoto, as a concept, attracted me because she represents something I felt was really missing from the original game - the concept of mortality. I know that statement sounds counter intuitive given Hisao's condition, but hear me out.

I felt that in a few of the routes, the heart attack and arrhythmia was a plot device simply to get Hisao to Yamaku, and Hisao never really comes to grips with his own mortality or the fact that his heart is a ticking time bomb, and neither do any of the girls. Of the original cast of girls with disabilities, none of them are like Hisao in the aspect that their disability can/will shorten their own lives. All of them have normal lifespans, and if you follow through with the "happily ever after" aspect of the VN, none of the girls or even Hisao really discuss the fact that his reduced lifespan and risk of heart attack is something they'll have to deal with in the future as a couple. Random heart flutters while having sex or the heart attack in Lily's route aside, this was something I felt the original game lacked.

Saki flips that aspect completely on its head. Not only does she know she is going to die, but barring some unforseen circumstance with Hisao, she's going to die much younger than he will. It presents a view that Hisao is going to have to deal with that whatever canon girl he ends up with will have to deal with but never got around to doing in the original game, and in my opinion, a huge well of untapped potential as a writer and a reader.

Anyway, I hope that little essay hasn't scared you off. I've decided to write a few scenes in Act 1 for Saki, and then she goes into a unique Act 2. This is a bit different than what some other writers do, where they skip Act 1 altogether.

Standard disclaimer stuff. I do not own Katawa Shoujo. All credits go to the 4LS team.

This piece of fanfiction is only authorized to be published here on and on the official Katawa Shoujo forums.

Thanks in advance for reading, I appreciate it.