- 1-2 generations prior to the events of the first game: A phenomenon envelops Earth in the isekai word; the sky becomes pink and equally luminescent at all times of the day, and people begin arriving from other parallel worlds, often in the general vicinity of the corresponding place they unwittingly left from. Some of them have luck: whether days or years after their arrival, a change in their perception of the sky and a general sense of unease can alert them that a “gate” back to their universe is open; rare people trying to use a gate to a universe other than their own remain in the isekai world, their bodies heavily damaged by the attempt, but this is rare enough that it doesn’t become common knowledge.
- To counteract the myriad semi-unintelligible parallel languages problem isekai victims have, some Esperanto speakers propose a variant of Esperanto as a universal language to teach new arrivals; they name it ‘Juliamo’, for ‘July love’ (as it was a July when the world became an isekai destination). Its usefulness causes it to catch on to daily life for indigenous and vizitantoj (‘visitors’, or isekai victims) alike, to the point it starts to supplant some local languages (including the isekai world version of Japanese in its Japan).
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The uncontrollable influx of people, the atmospheric changes and the spread of Juliamo fuel a simmering anti-vizitantoj sentiment through the indigenous population. Vizitanto administrations are created to help newcomers acclimate to life in their destination world, beset by this resentment from all angles; in particular, they encourage people to find “guardians”, natives or naturalized people who take on responsibility for their well-being.
- Mai crosses over as a high-school-age kid. She has trouble finding a guardian for several years, until a local family who couldn’t have children decides to take her in.
- Reiko crosses over at an unspecified time around here as well.
- Kanako is born to Mai’s foster family. Feeling unwelcome, Mai, barely out of school, decides to leave to naturalize and go live on her own. Her foster parents decide to hide all traces of her in the house, hiding family photos and raising Kanako without telling her she had a foster sister.
- Mai and Reiko meet and fall in love. They move together in what is likely Mai’s apartment. They promise each other that they’ll be together forever, though this version of Japan also doesn’t have same-gender weddings. Mai keeps a diary of her life that she shows Reiko.
- Mai visits her former foster family. They introduce Kanako to her as a ‘family member’ without telling her the story.
- Mai begins seeing the change in the sky that heralds the arrival of her gate. She is torn by the wish to remain with Reiko and the burning need to return home. She tries to compromise by pushing Reiko to come with her. They both find and pass through the gate; Mai leaves, but Reiko is severely hurt and is found in a coma, still in the isekai world.
- Kanako finds the hidden photo albums of her family rising Mai. She confronts her parents, who admit to hiding the truth. This breaks her trust in them, in herself (feeling responsible, through her birth, for the disharmony between her parents and Mai) and in vizitantoj, whom she projects her anger on.
- Reiko wakes several weeks later from the coma. She will stay in the hospital a long time after, and falls into a deep depression. When she is released, she pursues naturalization and a job at the vizitanto administration, taking the name Rei Arbaro. She copes by living in Mei’s apartment and continuining her diary, imagining Mei meeting Rei Arbaro and looking at herself as a new person through her lover’s imagined eyes.
- Rei finds Ruka (age 8) at Sugita station, apparently having crossed over recently, and recognizes the Japanese on her hat as similar to her world’s own (and ours). She brings her to the administration, which gets her into an orphanage. Rei, taken with the kid, pulls some strings so that she can see her regularly. Something traumatic happens to Ruka in the orphanage that the game never makes us privy to, but that seems to drive a rift between Ruka and the administrators there and drives Ruka to become self-sufficient.
- Kanako has a significant health scare that keeps her out of school for a year. She enters one grade lower than is usual for her age.
- Rei becomes Ruka’s guardian and foster mother. Ruka moves in with Rei and grows up in the apartment with her. She eventually enters school, where she ends up in Kanako’s class.
- Kanako and Ruka become friends when Ruka is the only kid to be accepting of her prickly, trauma-driven ways. Ruka hides her vizitanto status from Kanako and everyone.
- Ruka pushes for further independence. She emancipates and asks to be living by herself, even passing an exam to be recognized as a guardian — a move to ensure she will be left alone by the administration that Rei and Ruka plan together for. Rei moves out, focusing more on her job as a library clerk in the vizitanto administration, but the two keep a weird but loving rapport even as they live apart.
- Kanako discovers that Ruka is a vizitanto when a slip-up becomes the subject of vicious rumors around the school. Her rage is misinterpreted, causing opportunist bullies to use it as an excuse to further bully Ruka as “Kanako’s betrayer”.
- Rin, an energetic Japanese girl with undiagnosed ADHD and depression, crosses over from “our” Japan into the isekai world. She is found and taken in by Ruka. EVENTS OF THE FIRST GAME BEGIN HERE.
- Rin and Ruka bond quickly under the supervision of Rei. Ruka applies to be Rin’s legal guardian. The two live together at Ruka’s place, Mai’s old apartment. Rin clumsily begins to learn Juliamo, and helps with Ruka’s budding Japanese. Miss Rei schools both kids, pushing Rin to learn Juliamo while also overseeing Ruka’s education half of the week, while she goes to school for the other half.
- Rin finds Kanako and other people teasing Ruka on the way back from school. She defends Rin to them, using her shaky Juliamo to rebuff them. Kanako takes this for a wake-up call and realizes, after it, that she’s been an ass.
- Rin has a chance encounter with Rei on a weekend, when she sees her in a cafe dressed in mourning. Rei, who is very reticent about her own past, tells Rin a story that is just the account of what happened between Mai and her, thinly veiled as “it happened to a friend”.
- Rin and Ruka both begin to see a shift in the sky, signaling that their gate is about to open; they confide to Rei but keep it a secret from each other. This strains their relationship, as communication — already hard over the language barrier and Rin’s untamed impulsiveness and RSD — starts breaking down.
- ENDING A & B (MEDIUM BAD/TRUE): Rin is drawn to the gate, and Ruka follows her. The gate begins attracting her inescapably. Rin can either accept Ruka’s hand trying to pull her out, or swat it away to prevent her from falling into the gate (and possibly harmed like she is aware “Rei’s friend” was). In the latter case, she crosses over alone, separated forever from her love. In the former, it turns out Ruka was originally from “our” universe too! They return to “our” Japan together ever after.
- ENDING C: Rin decides to hide at home so that she won’t be tempted to see the gate, which opens and closes. Rin and Ruka are together in the isekai world. In the ending of the first game, Rin becomes bittersweet, and not talking to Ruka about the choice she made drives a subtle wedge between them over time.
- SEQUEL BEGINS HERE. Rin has begun Ending C from the first game but hasn’t decided yet whether to tell Ruka or not about what happened. You can make the choice to cement Ending C, or start opening up — slowly, painfully, and still through the language barrier — to reprocess what happened together.
- ENDING A (BAD): Same as ending C from the first game.
- ENDING B (MEDIUM): Rin opens up about that hurt but not about her feelings of jealousy and RSD against Kanako after seeing her and Ruka reconcile; her wilting doesn’t create the space for Ruka, who is used to hold onto her own secrets, to also open up. After a sudden fight that Rin doesn’t understand the origin from during an otherwise nice date, the two split up temporarily, but Ruka cannot stand it and asks Kanako to find Rei. The two resolve to talk and be together even if the past is hurtful for them.
- ENDING C (GOOD): Rin opens up about both the gate and her feelings of jealousy after seeing Ruka and Kanako reconcile after the bullying. Her butting in causes misunderstandings due to the language barrier, but her earnestness and her request for help from Ruka drive Kanako to open up to Rin about why she is so prickly and angry with her (and reveals her past). Ruka is inspired by her friend opening up to also open up about the gate having also come for her. She and Rin process the hurt together, growing closer — to the point that, some time later after a fun birthday party, Ruka confesses to Rin her secret name, one her mother had asked her to ‘never give to strangers’ because, if she did, ‘she might not return home’: her real name is Alice, and she can reveal it now that she’s sure she wants to be with her forever in the isekai world.
- DAYS GONE BY SIDE STORY: Rei, still running away from her past, reminisces with Rin, Kanako and finally Ruka about Ruka’s past, but can’t help reminisce about her own in the process. She gifts Rin the locked room in the apartment — her and Mai’s old bedroom — as her own room, ending a year of Rin sleeping on Ruka’s couch. She gives Kanako the last copy of the Japanese-from-her-world-to-Juliamo dictionary she authored, when Kanako expresses the wish to understand Rin and Ruka’s words more. She reminisces with Ruka about her emancipation and her failings as a traumatized adult and guardian, but Ruka calls her “her mom” — not ‘foster’ or ‘guardian’ — for the first time. She finds happiness in being the mother figure of a band of weird gay teens bound together by the weird physics of the isekai world and their growing affection. The end.