Yamiyo no Hotaru

Chapter 73

The phenomenon of the main character's gender swap, whether female or male, is a common trope in pop culture. It is true that the author or the illustrator sometimes draws them as a joke, but they are never made into a serious plotline in commercial works until the end of the story. It remains just a trope, after all, at least in commercial works.

　"April fool's version, seriously, who comes up with this stuff...?"

　I blurted out, lying on my back wrapped in a futon and staring at the ceiling. The sound that escaped my throat was a mixture of sorrow, lamentation, and sighing.

　...In fact, I was in such despair that I wanted to cry out right now if I could.

　(I was completely caught off guard. Seriously, is this really the world I'm in now...?)

　April fool... that is, April 1st, was a common marketing ploy in Japanese subculture, where joke previews or announcements were made in reference to April Fool's Day. The company that produced "Firefly of the Dark Night (Yamiyo no Hotaru)" is one of the companies that put a lot of effort into these jokes. They created high-quality trailers for fake projects, using their series that were already known for their eccentricity. Among the company's series of works, "Firefly of the Dark Night" had been used in this way three times.

　One of them is an IF story in which the main character was gender-swapped to female. Think of a gender-bent version of a certain Fate game's Knight of the Round Table or Proto-Saber. Well, it wasn't quite that drastic a change, but anyway... in the trailer, the main character was a woman, and she looked exactly like the girl I had encountered, that's all you need to know.

　(The question is how much the main character's gender change will change the situation...!)

　While it's not uncommon for the main character to be corrupted into a female in the main game, the problem lies in the fact that the development team stated in a game magazine during the introduction of the April Fool's version that they "created a more challenging game while adhering to the original game."

　...This means that when translated into Japanese by skilled players, they want to make a Lunatic difficulty story where the main character struggles and the player despairs. Oh, why do they have to make a Japanese translation of Japanese?

　Even if the statements and malice of the creators are not reflected in this world, the fact that the main character is a woman poses a significant risk of deviating from several events.

　"At any rate, I'll never let her meet that b*stard, that Minister of the Left..."

　Even if the storyline remains unchanged from the original, that yandere minister who appears rational and intelligent on the surface but is actually quite twisted would pose too much danger if he were to meet the current main character. I mean, the main character was targeted even though his gender is a boy, just because he had the resemblance of a "priestess." So, there is no telling what will happen if that minister meets the girl version of him. There are other troublesome matters, but that one must be strictly observed.

　(As for handling the landmines... The demon (oni) who wants to commit suicide doesn't care if the main character is a boy or a girl. As for Gorilla-sama... I guess she's fine with yuri, right?)