The Lost Child (1)

'Since the Ichihara bullying event and the club choice event happened on the same day as 'The Lost Child', it has to be happening right now.'

Reiji bit his lips nervously, his mind racing as he reviewed everything he knew about this event. A child would separate from his kindergarten class trip when the teacher miscounted the number of kids on the return journey.

The child had wandered off to look at a flower that was growing under a tree and wanted to pick it for his sister. After he realized his class had left, he started to panic and tried to walk back on his own.

'Sigh, I know he's a kid but couldn't he have asked for help?'

The worst part is, the decision the protagonist makes in this event has massive repercussions. And considering Riku's track record so far, Reiji was worried about the child.

'After getting lost, he scraped his knee against a flaky wall because he was trying to run away from a bunch of stray dogs in the bad part of town. I didn't think much about it while I was playing, but that's a fucked up situation.'

Riku would encounter the kid while he was on an errand for his mom, and as usual would have to choose between a couple of different options. The trap here, however, was that there was no neutral choice.

There was one good and three bad options, plus the way the choices were framed made it difficult to discern which is which.

The first option was to fight off the dog and take the kid home. Unfortunately, Riku can't fight for shit, so if the player chose this option thinking he could be a hero, both the kid and the player would end up in the hospital.

The second option was to lure the dog away from the child using the meat he had bought on his errand. This would work initially, but the dogs would attack Riku before he could throw the meat far enough away from him, so while the kid would be safe in the short-term, they both would still end up in the hospital because the dogs would go back after finishing the food.

The third option was the only good one, which was to pick up the kid and run away for two streets, towards the main road filled with people. The dogs would not catch up until they entered the street, by which point they would be scared off by the loud traffic and large amount of humans.

But what Reiji was most scared of was the fourth option, where the player ignores the child and minds his own business. Seeing Riku avoid the Ichihara event and mock Hina, this felt like the most obvious result that would happen.

If the fourth option was taken, the kid would sustain far worse and permanent injuries before a different group of people encountered him and scared off the dogs.

'Damn, you shitty devs. I praised you because it was a game, but now that it's reality will you still just let an innocent kid get hurt that bad?'

Reiji was in a predicament. He recognized the place where the kid would be, which wasn't too far from here. The question was whether or not he should even intervene in the first place.

For one, he didn't want to interact with the protagonist if he would choose to help the child. The other was that if he did save him, he would have to interact with a heroine regardless.

Why? Because the child was the younger brother of one of the heroines, and the protagonist choosing to intervene and save the child, regardless of which of the first three options he chose, would raise the affection of the heroine.

The amount it would raise would depend on the result, whilst abandoning him would not do anything in the short-term, but would badly affect the favorability when the child recognizes him at a later point.

So if Reiji stepped in, he would have to also drop the kid off at his house, where the interaction would take place.

'What should I do? Haha, am I seriously thinking of letting a kid get hurt just for my own peace of mind? Fuck no!'

Reiji made his decision in a split second and ran to where he the attack would take place.

'I hope I'm not too late.'

***

Sora ran as fast as his little legs could possibly let him, tears and snot running down his face. Even while he was running he didn't let go of the beautiful purple flower in his hand, because he knew his sister would love it.

He regretted not letting his teacher know before he wandered off. He regretted not paying attention to where his class was. He regretted walking off on his own instead of asking for help.

But he never regretted picking up the flower. He loved his sister, and she would be really happy if he could give that to her, but he now wasn't sure if he could.

He looked back for a second, and started crying even harder as he saw the rabid-looking dogs that were racing after him. They were getting closer and closer, but Sora didn't realize that he was going deeper into the abandoned roads due to the sheer panic.

Because he wasn't paying attention, his accidentally ran against a sloping wall and scraped his knee badly, tumbling to the ground in pain.

"AAHH!"

The dogs were just over a 100 meters away, and he could practically see the foam dripping down their jaws.

Just as he was about to give up, from the corner of his eye he saw an onii-chan wearing a high school uniform. He was carrying a bag filled with groceries, an annoyed look on his face.

"I know this is a shortcut but this place gives me the creeps," he muttered.

"ONII-CHAN HEEELP ME!!!"

Riku turned in surprise towards the shout and in the distance he saw a child down on the street, with 7 galloping large dogs that scared the absolute shit out of him.

His eyes widened in horror and without even taking a moment to think about it, turned and ran away towards the main road.

"FUCK I KNEW THIS WAS A BAD IDEA!"

"ONII-CHAN???"

Sora stared in complete disbelief at Riku's back, who was getting farther and farther away.

He turned to the dogs that had just reached him, and closed his eyes in fear.

"I'm sorry Nee-san," he whispered.

~BANG~

Yelp

Sora opened his eyes at the loud sound and looked up to see a wide back. Someone else was standing there, with one of the dogs struggling to get to its feet as if it was knocked away.

The rest of the dogs backed away slowly, growling fiercely at the intruder.

"Shit, that was close!"

***

Reiji ran into the abandoned section of the town, rushing past the dilapidated buildings. As he turned the corner to the place he knew the child would be, he saw Riku running away from the bleeding Sora. The dogs were also almost onto him, so he barely had any time to think before he leapt into action.

"Urgh that dickless excuse for a human being," he ranted as his speed allowed him to step in between the two parties and kick away the dog that had just pounced on Sora.

'Too late to take the 4th option and run with the kid, huh? That's ok, I'm not Riku. I can beat these rabid little mongrels.'

Reiji didn't exactly enjoy hurting animals, so his plan was to just kick them away whenever they got close and show them that they would never be able to break through. That should be enough to scare them off.

If that didn't work, he might have to be more aggressive.

As the lead dog got back on its feet, it growled at Reiji and slowly inched closer. The rest of them also started to inch in to surround him.

He cracked his knuckles and grinned. Maybe this time he could get a better gauge on how high the specs of this body was.

Suddenly one of the dogs that had moved to his blind spot saw its chance and jumped at him with a snarl. Reiji knew it was coming and shifted his posture so that he could catch the airborne dog from the side.

He grabbed the dog and threw it at the other two that had jumped a beat later, scattering them through sheer strength.

The dogs froze at the sight, but they never stopped growling.

"You're not getting past me you little shits," Reiji glared at them.

Maybe they understood they didn't have a chance? Or maybe they got scared for whatever reason? But the dogs stopped growling after the lead dog, maybe the alpha, barked at them and they slowly walked away.

'Oh? That was easier than I thought. Just how weak was Riku to get mauled in the game?'

Once the dogs had disappeared back to wherever they came from, Reiji finally turned around to tend to Sora.

A pair of sparkling eyes and a the widest smile he had ever seen greeted him. Sora completely ignored his bleeding knee and punched his cute little fists to the sky.

"Onii-chan, are you a superhero?"

'....What the hell am I supposed to say to that?'