[Sender: KIM573]
[Subject: To the Story Department—if you don't want to ruin this game any further, read this.]
[This game's illustration, graphics, and optimization are impeccable. Almost everything is perfect.
Except for one thing—the story your department is in charge of.
Honestly, with a game of this quality, unless the story is truly abysmal, I don't see any problem with it becoming a hit.
But that doesn't mean you get to throw the work's plausibility into a blender like this.
Let's just say the fact that all the main characters have been TS-ed into women is a stylistic choice and let it pass. But I can't let it pass that the majority of the cast are low-intelligence.
If you want the protagonist to shine, you should have devised well-constructed tricks. In a deduction game, what are you doing nerfing everyone else's intelligence?
And why are all the incidents that occur just shoddy minor copies of the Sherlock Holmes series?
Fin-de-siècle London where paranormal abilities exist. An urban fantasy about detectives who track the bizarre cases that happen there.
With a setup this attractive, I cannot for the life of me understand why you're fumbling it.
With so many figures and works you could weave in, I don't understand why you insist on sticking only to cases from the Sherlock Holmes series, either.
And even though the time period spans from the late 19th century to the early 20th, how is it that your so-called detectives don't know about fingerprints? Don't tell me you put that in the name of historical accuracy?
The London police adopted fingerprint investigations in 1901. Even in the Sherlock Holmes series that this game is based on, the first person to mention the importance of fingerprints wasn't Holmes but an Inspector.
Maybe laypeople wouldn't know, but professional detectives of that era not knowing the importance of fingerprints is a clear historical-accuracy error.
Of course, that's not the only problem. Your story is riddled with plausibility issues and accuracy errors of every sort.
But the crowning touch among them all is the final hidden mastermind who suddenly pops out in the ending and wraps everything up: Professor Jane Moriarty.
To use a character as compelling as Moriarty as a one-off—and in the worst way at that.
Why is it that you can't manage the things that need proper research, yet you've gone and 'researched' this part so well?
As story consultant, I simply cannot allow this story.
Tear it all up from beginning to end. Every last ounce of this absurd story's plausibility must be satisfied.
Until then I absolutely will not give approval. I'll stop it even at the cost of my life.
Well then, have a nice day.]
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If I boil down the 5,700 characters of soul I sent a few days ago to the story department of the game company I work for, it was more or less that.
After a few phone calls that followed, I was eventually summoned to their conference room.
Failing utterly to make them understand, I ranted with pent-up fury—and then blacked out on the spot.
And now that I've come to my senses again, I bitterly regret sending that official letter.
"Then, we'll end class here."
The final boss of the game we're developing.
The one that put the cherry on top of the story's lack of plausibility.
And yet, an impact that was nothing short of overwhelming: Professor Jane Moriarty.
"Don't forget to stop by my office."
Because somehow I had, right to her face, declared that she would fall to her death at Reichenbach Falls in her later years.
For good measure, I'd even wrapped up and name-dropped her achievements—which at this point in time hadn't even happened yet—in grand style.
'This is possession, obviously.'
I sat there in a daze, quietly, until everyone else had left the classroom, and then I began to think to myself.
'Damn company. I knew something felt off.'
Developers, the president—whoever—they were, I had never once met them in person. As story consultant, I'd been working almost entirely from home.
Come to think of it, today was my first time visiting the company. Even when I was ranting in the meeting room, people's expressions looked… off.
I should've been more careful with the job hunt. I grabbed the offer just for the high salary and "stable work environment," and this is what I get.
'…I should go, right?'
I'd already realized this situation wasn't a dream. I'd pinched my cheeks more than a few times.
It seems I've possessed a game our company was developing—a pretty-girl detective game based on the Sherlock Holmes series.
Not into the era when Professor Moriarty reigns as the Napoleon of Crime, either, but into when she's still newly appointed as a professor at the academy.
Which means now is the time to move for survival.
Honestly, considering what's happened to me, I wanted to zone out alone for a few days, but as things stand, my life is in danger.
Because I've caught the aggro of none other than the game's final boss.
If I had my way, I'd ditch this detective academy or whatever and run.
But given Professor Moriarty's disposition, that's impossible.
I probably wouldn't last a few years—no, not even a few months—before being taxidermied and displayed in her house.
So, with tears in my heart and mustard on my tongue, I headed for Professor Moriarty's office.
Recalling the old saying that even if you enter a tiger's den, you can live if you keep your wits.
'…Who knows, maybe it'll surprisingly pass without much trouble.'
And come to think of it, maybe it wasn't something to worry about that much.
I'm scared because I know what Moriarty is going to become, but right now she's not the queen of the underworld—just a young professor.
Who's to say? Even if she was born with criminal blood, maybe in her early twenties she still had something of a kind heart.
And even if she intends to do something to me, at the very least she won't touch me here, in the holy land of detectives.
"Mm…"
Thinking that, I soothed myself—but before I knew it, the door to her office came into view, and the tension rose on its own.
As story consultant, I had a handle on most of the characters in this game, but Jane Moriarty, who suddenly pops out in the ending, was an unknown even to me.
Which is why I had no idea what would happen once I opened this door.
"…Hoo."
Knock, knock, knock…!
So after agonizing in front of the door for quite a while, I finally took a deep breath and knocked.
— Come in.
At Professor Moriarty's voice, which came at once, I snapped to attention and stepped inside.
"Huh."
And the very next instant—before I could properly take in the room—
Drip, drip…
there was the academy headmaster on the sofa opposite Professor Moriarty, blood flowing with a hole in his head.
'Shit, that guy's one of the mid-bosses.'
For a split second my mind went blank, but then a powerful survival instinct made me stumble backward toward the door.
"Ah, it's you."
But the professor, looking at me with a pleased expression, snapped her fingers.
Clack…!
Before I could do anything, the door locked tight.
"I thought you were a smart one. Did I misjudge you?"
Right after that, she smiled at me as she wiped the bright red blood spattered on her face with a towel.
"Fidgeting with the mana condenser hidden in your uniform pocket isn't a very good habit."
She was right.
Just as Holmes had felt threatened when Moriarty paid him a sudden visit, I too had quietly prepared a means of self-defense in case something happened.
If the situation arose where my life was threatened, I intended to use the mana condenser the body's original owner had carried like a weapon.
"If you're not careful, the mana could backflow and things could get dangerous. Isn't that so, student."
But just as in the original, Moriarty easily saw through it. Staring holes through me, she pointed to the top of her desk.
Click…
Doing my best to look calm as I met her gaze, I placed the mana condenser on the desk where she had pointed.
"Not dying alone—excellent attitude."
With one hand, I still kept hold of the condenser.
'This is bad.'
By hinting I'd blow us both up if it came to that, I barely managed to keep up this war of nerves with Moriarty, but my situation was far from good.
Judging from the continuous flow of blood from the old gentleman's corpse behind me, she seemed to have committed the murder just now.
And yet she had deliberately let me in under those circumstances.
I had no idea what she was thinking, but judging by the sharp light veiled beneath her smile, she seemed to be testing me.
The question was—testing me for what.
'Calm down. Calm down.'
The fear that I might lose my life at any moment. The nausea rising at the sight of a corpse for the first time in my life. The gnawing anxiety that, in truth, I had no idea how to use a mana condenser.
Even so, I summoned every last ounce of strength to keep my composure.
Because I had the gut feeling that if I showed even the slightest crack here, my life would be cut off then and there.
"What is it that you want."
But I couldn't just keep standing here forever.
With outside access cut off, the longer time passed, the more the disadvantage was mine.
"Conversely—what is it you want from me."
So I posed the question in as even a voice as I could, but what came back was Professor Moriarty's counter-question.
"You succeeded in slipping perfectly out of my grasp. Yet instead of reporting me, you accepted my invitation and came here."
As I stared blankly at words I couldn't make sense of, Professor Moriarty glanced at the mana condenser and added,
"What's more, right now you're threatening me in reverse."
And then a frightening silence began to stretch.
"I'm dying to know what it is that you want from me."
Breaking that silence, Moriarty once again looked at me with curiosity brimming in her eyes and began to tilt her head like a lizard.
"Won't you hurry up and give me your answer?"
Silence flowed through the office again. In that silence, I forced my mind—gone white—to grind into motion.
From her reaction, it seemed Moriarty was quite interested in me. The problem was, I could roughly guess where that interest would end.
So what answer could keep me from being killed by her?
What answer could turn her mercurial interest into something like favor?
What did Moriarty like in the original?
What could I say that would make the professor take a liking to me?
"Why are you just standing there, student."
I was out of time.
Come hell or high water, I had to say something now.
"I want to become a graduate student."
With my eyes gently closed, I blurted out the idea that had just popped into my head.
"Specifically, under you, Professor."
To survive, I would throw away my human rights. That was the conclusion I'd reached.
"What do you think?"
Praying that the young Moriarty still had a strong sense of identity as a professor, I waited for her answer.
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Ding!
It was right then.
[Villain Maker: Plausibility of Professor Moriarty's advent fulfilled]
With a jaunty chime, mysterious messages suddenly began to pop up before my eyes.
[Progress: 1%]
"…Huh?"
What the hell is this—shit.