VN Talk: Rose in the Embers - Part 2: Kyosuke

I picked Kyosuke for my first route of Rose in the Embers since he seemed like the nicest guy out of the four in the prologue. When the MC is being made fun of by some geisha at her new job, Kyosuke stops to offer her a handkerchief to clean herself up. It's clear he's a very important customer and far above her station, so the fact he took the time to look after an otherwise unremarkable maid, made an impression. Not to mention, he's the one who buys the protagonist's freedom at the start of the game.

The early chapters of his route are a bit rough though, as he has a rather capricious personality (which allows for him to buy her freedom but also dump her on one of his friends on other routes) and the game really wants the player to know just how big the social gap is between him and the MC.

As the son of an earl, Kyosuke is fabulously wealthy and has no need to work, though he does run a business of some kind (more on that later). He lives in a big house, staffed by tons of maids who make it clear the MC doesn't have the creds to be a maid in this household, and he's expected to eventually have an arranged marriage to someone of the appropriate social status. (The MC's narration notes that arranged marriages are common even in her village, so the issue isn't that he's expected to have an arranged marriage nearly as much as the class difference is enormous.)

But after the initial rockiness, the story really picks up. After accidentally helping Kyosuke secure an important business deal, he gives the MC the day off and invites her out on the town where the game gives her the Pretty Woman shopping scene treatment. She gets out of her maid uniform, goes into an actual department store where she gets dolled up, and Kyosuke takes her out to the opera where she knows someone like her would ordinarily never go.

Until this point, Kyosuke's just having a good time, doing things "on a lark" as he likes to put it, and the MC is just trying to humor the man who saved her from a bad situation. But the opera is the turning point, since it gets them to talk about their views on love and the aftermath of their "date" is a hoot.

The opera is a romantic tragedy, and Kyosuke finds the love depicted to be pointless since the lovers didn't get anything out of it. On the other hand, though the opera heroine's life ended poorly, the MC is glad that the heroine and her lover got to share their feelings before they died, because they found their love to be worth it.

This conversation colors the rest of his route since the MC is aware of his outlook and that any romance between them cannot end well. So even though they have private moments between them when the class difference is erased, it always comes roaring back again and no one's more aware of it than her.

But that heaviness comes up later when the MC starts to realize she's falling in love with Kyosuke. The scene immediately after they leave the opera house is great because they see the awful customer who wanted to have sex with her (that part's not great), he recognizes both of them, and the two of them run in their fancy clothing to beat the hell away from the guy.

They end up hiding in a church where they both are pretty dirty and messed up, and like Cinderella after the ball, she no longer looks like a noble lady. But this scene while they're hiding is the first time they have a real heart to heart and she starts to see another side of Kyosuke. Though he's fabulously wealthy and has no need to work, he tells her how important it is to him that he does work. He runs his businesses because he wants to have built something of his own rather than relying on the circumstances of his birth, and this is understandable once we fully realize what those circumstances are.

So why does Kyosuke even pay attention to the MC given that she's a country bumpkin who's constantly getting her clothes dirty? It's pretty much a running gag (except usually without the humor) that she gets dirt on her, to the point that Kyosuke calls her Cinderella because of how her clothes look. And the answer is twofold.

The first is his initial impression of her. Aside from causing a scene to avoid prostituting herself, when he initially saves her, there is a lot of chatter on the spot about how if she plays her cards right she could end up his mistress. Kyosuke even suggests she should sleep with him given all his wealth and power (which is one of the reasons I didn't like his early chapters), but the MC stoutly replies that her heart is not for sale. This made an impression and he likes her spirit.

In fact, to get the bold ending (which is the one with the extra artwork), the MC should believe in herself and be as mentally strong as possible. This includes making choices such as telling him she has no plans on crying when he insists she keep his handkerchief as a gift.

The second reason Kyosuke's interested is that he dislikes class differences. Even though he's the son of an earl, he's also the son of a maid, and his parents' own tragic romance (and his poor relationship with his father's wife) colored his outlook on life. This is why he thinks poorly of romance. It did his parents no good and placed him in the awkward position of being his father's heir (due to his father's wife being infertile) while dealing with a "mother" who sees him as a living reminder of her husband's infidelity.

Because of his hidden background as the son of a maid, he finds the whole class thing rather stupid, which explains the company he keeps (barring Takahisa, the others are not upper class) and why he relates to the MC standing up to power. Though saving her does appear to have been more because she captured his attention rather than love at first sight (the Fortune's Fool ending makes it clear he was down on the opera because he had yet to experience love himself), his willingness to keep engaging with her is because he doesn't care that much about status. He won't blow things entirely out of the water, but in private he's happy to drop pretenses.

And I suppose the ending of his route may be a bit disappointing in that he does hew to social expectations, at least as far as his public face is concerned.

The second half of the route is largely concerned with Kyosuke's impending engagement to a young woman of royal heritage. It's considered a good match and one that would raise his family's already lofty status. But someone spots him and the MC dancing in a corner of the garden when he tries to get away for a bit at a party, and that bit of news makes it into the tabloids. Given that she wears a uniform, it's all too obvious that the young lord is making a move on "the help" and his "mother" is furious about what this could do to the engagement.

This is when the game teases the idea of eloping with the MC. Kyosuke ditches a meeting with his fiancee and her family in favor of picking up the MC, which results in his "mother" sending out the police to find her. Disgusted and dismayed by how out of control this has gotten, Kyosuke grabs the MC and runs away with her, and it looks like he's so fed up he's just going to elope. (Certainly the tabloid reporters who spot them think so!)

But it's not the end of the route (despite the celebratory music) and what Kyosuke actually does is bring them to an acquaintance of his who we met earlier in the route and turns out to be his fiancee's grandfather. This man is understanding of a class-crossing romance, and agrees to handle the arrangement. In the Favored Bold ending, he specifically says that he doesn't want his granddaughter to marry a man in love with another woman, and adds that he doesn't want to force her into marriage either. It sounds like she and Kyosuke are mutually unattracted to each other, so it all works out. The Fortune's Fool ending just breaks the engagement and says she's going to study in England.

In either case, the engagement is called off and Kyosuke and the MC return home. They acknowledge they love each other, but their romance can't be public. Oddly there's nothing on how Kyosuke settled things with his father's wife, or if anything was even settled at all, so the only resolution is really that the pair are back home and safe. In Fortune's Fool, Kyosuke says he'll work hard for a day when she can openly stand beside him, which he oddly doesn't in Favored Bold, even though it feels like that's the one where he really should be making a stand.

The primary difference between them is that he's more demonstrative in Favored Bold, but otherwise they're not much different.

Next week is Takahisa, who is actually the one who got me interested in the game.