VN Talk: Rose in the Embers - Part 6: Atsuro

Atsuro's route is unique in that he's not one of the four men present when Kyosuke buys the MC's freedom. He shows up on all the routes, so he's a familiar face regardless, but he's rarely presented as a member of the in-group with the exception of Tsukumo's route (where he's allowed to hear about Tsukumo's heritage at the same time as the rest of the guys). He's also clearly the least accomplished of the men. Though he runs an upscale restaurant, he appears to be a man of limited means himself, living in a small space above his business rather than a stand alone home.

Because of this, his route starts off a little differently, mirroring Kyosuke's. Kyosuke takes the MC to his house, drops her off with the other maids where she doesn't have a good time of it, and eventually he sends her to work for Atsuro, who has privately inquired if he might borrow one of Kyosuke's maids to help out with his restaurant.

This sets up the MC's new situation where she lives at Kyosuke's, but works at Atsuro's, and Kyosuke gets a month's worth of free curry rice out of the deal.

Atsuro's route is a bit of a slow burn. He's an older guy, which unfortunately leads to him calling himself "old man" even though he's in his thirties, and he's not worried about formalities, leading to incidents such as him appearing in his undershirt in front of the MC like it's no big deal. The age gap is likely part of the slow burn, though it never comes up aside from his "old man" comments.

Mostly it feels like he and the MC are two people just trying to get by, who happen to have found a happy companionship in each other, which for the MC turns to love before she knows it. Aside from the fact he's probably ten to fifteen years older than her, I can see why he's appealing to the MC. He's considerate, he works hard, and he's not a lofty part of society so he's relatable. Their "date" at the festival is sweet, as are their evening trips to the baths on his bicycle (back when riding on the back of a guy's bike was still romantic rather than a safety hazard).

But, of course, that's not all there is to him or this would be a very boring route.

Atsuro is not his birth name. He actually comes from a well-to-do family, was university educated, and got a job tutoring a viscount. Problem was, he tried to elope with the viscount's fiancee, which didn't end well for either of them. They got caught, his lover was forced to marry someone for the money in order to save her family's standing, and he was forced to change his name and start over from nothing. He started the Omurice Cafe because that's what he and his lover had wanted to do together after running away, even though at the time neither of them knew the first thing about how to run a restaurant.

The second half of his route focuses on government corruption around a contract with a steel company, and Atsuro's plan to expose it, not necessarily because he thinks it's the right thing to do, but because the head of the steel company is his lover's husband. If the man goes down, Atsuro hopes his lover will be free to leave him and live her own life (and it's pretty clear that the man is not a good husband to her).

Atsuro's been digging up this dirt for a long time, and Kyosuke and the others are aware, even helping where they can, though they don't think it's a good idea for him to be doing this. The implication is that fighting the system is going to be too hard for a lone man like Atsuro, and even when confronted with evidence, the government may brush it under the rug and charge Atsuro with treason.

When the MC stumbles across all this, she's trapped between wanting to stop Atsuro to protect him and wanting to support him. She's in love with him, but he's taking such risks for the sake of another woman. For years, this has been what's kept him alive, even though he has no expectation of ever seeing her again. He just feels awful about how his lover's life turned out, and this is his way of making it up to her. His backstory is an interesting contrast to the cross-class romance that happens on other routes, where the implication is that even if things suck, the couple will remain together.

Of course, an important difference is that in all player-experienced romances, the man is a member of upper class society and unlikely to be punished, whereas in Atsuro and Yae's case, Yae is an upper class woman and Atsuro a man of lower standing.

The MC spends a lot of time moaning over the fact Atsuro is in love with someone else, which I understand, but I kinda wish she would dial it back a little since it felt like the biggest drag to the story. Push comes to shove though, I did like her deciding to burn down his home and restaurant to destroy the evidence he amassed before the police force could confiscate it. It was foolhardy, but she didn't have many options, and she wasn't about to sit around and let her man get arrested.

One of the nicer things about having an older love interest is that it allows them to have more complicated backstories like this, and though I can understand why it might not be to everyone's tastes because Atsuro's old flame is still in a position to influence him, I liked it.

In the end, Atsuro is finally willing to let the past go and acknowledges that he doesn't want to miss what's in front of him right now, which is the MC. With a bit of convenient luck, the wind from the fire blows some of his collected papers to the protestors against the steel company, and armed with that knowledge the government corruption gets exposed anyway. This causes the head of the steel company to be disgraced and Atsuro's former lover is able to divorce him.

Closer to home, Kyosuke cleans up the MC's arson tactic so nobody officially suspects a crime happened, leaving her free to stay with Atsuro. And now that he did what he wanted to do, Atsuro realizes that he was pursuing this agenda because he felt he owed it to the woman he loved, and there was nothing else left to him at the time. Now that he's met the MC, some joy has come back into his life and he wants to spend it with her in his rebuilt restaurant.

It's not the most compelling route of the game, but feels like it was solidly in the middle of the pack. His two endings aren't much different, mostly changing the location of the final scene, but in the Fortune's Fools ending, which is the one with the CG, he specifically calls out that he appreciated that the MC did not try to stop his agenda, because she knew what it was like to do something that a loved one might never appreciate, and that parallel between them was one of the strongest in the game.