Part 82: Tokimemo 3, Chapter 11: And they were never heard from again.
Tokimemo 3, Chapter 11: And they were never heard from againSo, the good news is that as of the start of this post, Tokimemo 3 is over halfway done.
The bad news is, unlike other Tokimemos, year 1.5 through year 3 is still an uphill struggle. The bombs come fast and furious, and the game is still Tokimeki Memorial 3. A good example of this is Goon's birthday. Now that Serika is quite fond of our Goon, she's going to give him a birthday present - the first time I went through this segment, she actually gave him a leather jacket, which was quite possibly the best present possible in the game. Sadly, that run was not a keeper. Instead, we ended up with this:
10/26: Goon's birthday
(ding dong!)
Goon: Coming!
Serika: Yo, (awkward $playername pause), sorry for just dropping by without saying anything.
Goon: Serika-san? What's up?
Serika: Well, you know, uh...
Serika: Today was your birthday, right?
Goon: Huh? Oh. Yeah.
Serika: Right, so that's why I figured I'd, um, give you this present.
Serika: Will you accept it?
Goon: Of course I will, Serika-san. How could I possibly refuse?
Goon: Thanks.
Serika: N, no need to thank me.
Serika: Anyway, let's try this again.
Serika: Happy birthday.
Goon: (Serika-san remembered my birthday, and came by my house just to hand me a present.)
Goon: (This is the best birthday ever.)
Received hand-knitted mittens
On the plus side, the mittens are an equippable item. The description of them is "Warm, and made with love."
On the minus side, they are one of a giant freaking pile of useless equippable items, like the budgie smuggler, the secret boots, the decrepit hairband, the baseball hat, the Hawaiian shirt, the sandals, the fake beauty mark, the shorts, the jeans, the sweater, the baseball cap...
10/27: The price of happiness
Goon: Oh yeah, I remember hearing that Tachibana-san went to the hospital.
Goon: I wonder how she's doing?
Goon: As a member of the aikido club, I should probably go check on her.
Option 1: Yeah, I should go visit her in the hospital
Goon: I'll swing by on the way home.
Goon: So this is where Tachibana-san's recuperating.
Goon: Hey, Tachibana-san. I stopped by to see how you're doing.
Emi: Thank you for gooing so far out of your way. How is everyone in the club doing?
Goon: We seem to be getting by.
Emi: Oh, that is a relief.
Goon: So I heard you fell down the stairs - did you really land that badly?
How... wonderfully tactful, Goon. Couldn't you have asked something simpler, like, say "So what happened?" instead of going "I heard what happened, but how'd you fuck it up so bad?"
Emi: Umm, I fell from the top of the stairway.
Goon: Wh, what?!
Way to go, Goon. You have the gentle bedside manner of a sock full of quarters.
Emi: It hurt so much that I couldn't stand, and they had to take me straight to the hospital.
Emi: They diagnosed it as a complete tear of my medial cruciate ligament.
Goon: A tear of the ligawhat?
Emi: Put simply, one of the ligaments in my knee that connects my leg bones together has been cut.
Goon: Wh, whoa!
Emi: But the surgery went well, so I'm fine now.
Emi: Thank you for your concern.
Goon: Oh, I see. Well, I have to go. Take care.
Emi: Um, before you go--
Emi: *sigh*
Emi: No. It's nothing. Thank you for stopping by.
Goon: (Tachibana-san told me she was fine, but it seems like a pretty bad injury to me.)
10/28: Yukiko bomb warning
Yukiko: Oh no! He knows what I've done! I can't let him live!
Oh who'm I kidding, we all know what she's really thinking.
10/31: Halloween
Serika: Goon.
Goon: Hey, Serika-san. What's going on?
Serika: You alone right now? You wanna, um, walk home together?
Goon: Option 1: Yeah, let's go.
Serika: Here, I want you to have this.
Goon: What's this? A little bag of candy?
Serika: Yeah, today's Halloween and I figured I'd give you a little something to commemorate it.
Goon: Oh, I see, today's Halloween. Thanks.
Goon: (While Halloween's mostly for American kids, it's been a fad lately for Japanese people to give candy to their good friends.)
Serika: I, I usually don't care much about these kinds of events.
Serika: But hey, I figured it wouldn't hurt to try.
Serika: Are you gonna accept it?
Goon: Of course! Thanks.
11/3: A relevant discovery, for once!
Goon: Oh, there's a bowling alley behind the theater? I never noticed.
The bowling alley can only be discovered after a date or two at the movie theater, and after that it's kinda RNG-based. And now, we have access to Serika's favorite mini-game! This will come up later.
11/5: Emi's recovery
Emi: Oh!
Goon: ??
Goon: Oh, hey Tachibana-san.
Emi: I wanted to thank you for visiting me in the hospital. They just released me.
Goon: Oh, I'm glad for you.
Emi: Yes, and thanks to them my progress is excellent.
Emi: There will not be any effect on my daily life.
From what I understand, going from a complete MCL tear that requires surgery to being on your feet in 3 weeks is pretty much a miracle of medical science. Good job, Emi's doctors!
Emi: But... it seems like I will have to undergo 2 months of rehabilitation and physical therapy before I can do any strenuous physical activity.
Goon: 2 months? That's a pretty long time.
Emi: I cannot blame anything but my own carelessness for the injury, so I just have to accept this.
Option 1: You should be more careful from now on.
Option 2: It might be really rough, but good luck.
Option 3: If there's anything I can do to help, just tell me.
Option 3 is obviously the one that you're supposed to choose, while option 1 is "ha ha, sucks to be you" option. Since we're on the Serika route, we'll pick the neutral option.
Goon: It might be really rough, but good luck.
Emi: Thank you for being so considerate. Now if you'll excuse me.
Goon: Yeah, see you.
Goon: (Seems like it'll be pretty tough for Tachibana-san.)
11/19: Bomb warning (Emi)
I guess she wanted Goon to hang around more during her rehab sessions, or something.
11/24: Post-birthday date with Serika
It's time to run an experiment. Let's wear exactly what Serika (and, honestly, every other girl in the game because the designers had no imagination) likes Goon to wear, except we're now also going to add the mittens that Serika theoretically knitted for Goon with love. It's late November, it shouldn't be weird to see people wearing gloves while waiting outside for the bus, right?
Serika: What's with that outfit? You look like a mess.
Goon: What? This? Well...
Goon: Well, I'm wearing what you gave me a month ago. For my birthday. Remember that? You made these for me?
Serika: Well, whatever. It doesn't matter, I guess.
YKWSTG count: 9
I'm so annoyed by watching this portion of the video that I'm just not even going to translate the date. The right answer is to agree with Serika's assessment of marine life and say that rays have an elegance to them.
It is significant that one of the only non-canned responses comes if you ask Serika about Emi's knee injury, though.
Serika: I wonder if Emi's really gonna be alright...
Serika: She keeps telling me I shouldn't worry, but that's not something she can just brush off.
Goon: (She's really worried about Tachibana-san, isn't she?)
Oh, and here are the alternate names you can try to call Serika:
Secchin, Serika-hime, Seri-pon, Serika-tan, Seri-tan, Anego, Serikacchi, Seri-chan.
She will slap you upside the head if you try to call her any of them. But she will let Goon drop the relative formality of Serika-san and call her just Serika from now on. So at least that's something. But we're relegating these damn mittens to the bottom of the scrap heap - they can't even be displayed, unlike most of the other useless crap in this game.
Next time: Covert ops...
And black ops.
