Natsuki Takamizawa’s end, Yoake Mae Yori Ruriiro na, 夜明け前より瑠璃色な

Three nights worth of hard work I have managed to get to the final arc of Brighter than dawning blue…  Before I even realize it, I am starting to develop a habit to talk about Bishoujo game character profile, I may eventually devote a specific section just for that.  Some people might wonder why I care so much about the story, and to that I can only say the eroge scenes are not as exciting as if one do not understand the story that is leading to the scene and what happen afterward.

The final arc, Brighter than dawning blue 夜明け前より瑠璃色なhas finally shown up on the game menu.  With this, I can finally finish this game and move on to the PS2 port version and work on Estel Freesia.  I really like how the stories are setup in such a way that you don’t have to start over from the beginning.  However, in order to get to this point in 3 nights time, I have to summon the all mighty “crtl” key a lot, I skipped over Mia, Mai and Sayaka while finishing Natsuki and Wreathlit’s stories.  I have always wanted to dive deeper into their stores since I watched Crescent Love.  Since Feena’s story has already been well covered in Crescent Love, I am going start talking about Natsuki first.  Eventually, I do plan to go back to cover Feena’s story after I finish the final arc to settle any differences between Crescent Love and the game, eventually the after story in Moonlight cradle.  While I could hardly wait to finish the rest of Feena’s story, but I feel compelled to cover Natsuki’s story first because her story is relatively unknown.

Basic background information can be found in the Yoake mae yori ruriiro na wiki page, although some  information may be inaccurate

Update: I have updated this page to include some of my new posts on the game, it’s highly recommended that you first visit the following links first.

Feena fam Earthlight’s normal ending

Estel Freesia’s ending

Natsuki Takamizawa’s ending

Major spoiler to follow

I am just going to say it to get it off my chest, Natsuki Takamizawa (鷹見沢 菜月) deserves more attention than she is getting!  Ok, while I don’t think Natsuki is in the same league as Feena in terms of elegance and beauty, and she may just be a plain Jane next door neighborhood girl; but she is quite cute in her own rights, I don’t understand why there hasn’t been a single figure made of her yet.  She ranked 3rd in popularity contest in August soft website after first place Feena and 2nd place Mai.  Natsuki has a tsundere personality (partly due to the continuous teasing from her brother Jin (鷹見沢 仁) and Tatsuya, and her inability to cook even a simple meal), is a waitress at her family restaurant – Trattoria Samon, sports a chest size bigger than Feena (I only took notice of this because it was mentioned several times in game, and I subsequently verified her size to be 88D, Feena is second place 84C), is a childhood friend, is cheerful, and have been silently fulfilling her childhood promise to Tatsuya even though he had completely forgotten about it!  Is it just me or most of these True love simulations always involves the main character forgetting their childhood promises?

Her story branches off Mai’s storyline and really took off when Tatsuya found out that Natsuki has received the school’s recommendation to attend a far away university to become a veterinarian.  At the time, either Tatsuya or Natsuki has really noticed their true feelings for each other since they have been next door neighbor for so long.  When their school break for  summer holiday, Natsuki went on a trip to Milan to visit her mother who is on a culinary training mission to perfect her cooking skill.  Tatsuya was finally forced to realize how much he missed Natsuki’s presence, especially in Trattoria Samon where he also served as a waiter.  He was caught calling for Natsuki even though she was no where to be found and Jin, being the comic relieve that he is, pretended to be Natsuki and spoke in a girly voice throughout the rest of the day to tease him.

Tatsuya continued to exhibit traces of loneliness throughout Natsuki’s absence and was caught looking up to Natsuki’s windows before he set out to take the dogs out for a walk.  This sequence of events has led the entire Asagiri family (including Feena and Mai) to grow concern over Tatsuya’s well being even though Tatsuya continued to deny that there was any special relationship between him and Natsuki.  Right at this moment, the Asagiri family meeting was interrupted by a phone call, just when Tatsuya thought he was saved by the bell by picking up the phone himself, he found out the caller to be none other than Natsuki herself!  As soon as he heard Natsuki’s voice, he had completely forgot he was surrounded by his family and openly exchanged dialogues with Natsuki about how much they missed each other even with the entire family waiting in line to talk to Natsuki.

By this time, it was pretty obvious to the Asagiri family what’s been going on, but Tatsuya continued to deny it.  To everyone’s surprises, Natsuki was found cutting her Milan trip short and came back to town one day ahead of schedule, but her first destination was Asagiri household instead of her own.  She quickly resumed her waitress duty in Trattoria Samon along side with Tatsuya the next day without taking a break, but before they had a chance to properly confirm their feelings for each other, one of their classmates Midori Toyama came to the restaurant to invite Tatsuya to go a movie, before he had a chance to assess the situation, she had already ran away.   Obviously, it just had to happen right before Natsuki’s eyes.

Tatsuya’s hesitancy to reject Midori’s invitation out right has led Natsuki to misunderstand the situation and further complicated their transition from childhood friends to lovers relationship.  Eventually, it just had to come down to Tatsuya to properly sort out his true feeling and confess to Natsuki.

And of course, with love confession comes ecchi scenes!

And more ecchi scenes… and this time, it’s outdoor!

And their first date…

Just when things were going smooth, they both realized this situation may not stay smooth forever since Natsuki is set to go for her veterinarian study far away in the coming spring.  Tatsuya didn’t understand why Natsuki has to be away from him and for what reason she wanted to become a veterinarian.  It was then that Natsuki finally revealed that it was their childhood promise, but the problem here is that Tatsuya completely forgot about it.  Obviously, the date did not end well with Natsuki went home separately.

Tatsuya tried to remember what promise they might have made between them and he could only remember one of their dogs dying about 5 years ago and face of young Natsuki crying.

However, the image and the event didn’t seem to match up.  Feeling frustrated, Tatsuya began to ask Sayaka and Mai and see if they could remember anything, although neither of them could offer anything helpful.  Just when Tatsuya was running out of ideas, Feena stepped in and told Tatsuya that he has to find a way to recall his promise with Natsuki on his own because past history can only exist as memory and their history would be lost if the memory is forgotten.  Back to his room, Tatsuya began to sort out the things they bought together earlier during their first date, it was then that Tatsuya finally noticed something unusual, they had bought 5 puppy dolls, the three dogs he currently has, one that died 5 years ago, but what about the fifth one??!  It finally struck him that there was a fifth one, a stray puppy they found together when they were very young.

The one puppy they tried to save because it was sick, they desperately try to locate a veterinarian to look after the puppy but it died before they could find one nearby.  Now that Tatsuya has finally remembered what happened, but he had to find a concrete proof to show to Natsuki that he really remembered their promise, he dashed out in the middle of the night despite the heavy rain outside to look for the grave where they buried the puppy in hope to retrieve the dog tag; a concrete proof that he really remembered what happened then.  Tatsuya ran through the park where they buried the puppy, desperately looking for the grave that he could hardly remember where it was.  By the time he was able to retrieve the dog tag and got home, he was completely exhausted and collapsed at the door.

When Tatsuya regained his consciousness, Natsuki was by his bed side and he saw a splitting image of a young Natsuki’s crying face.

Although it seemed that Tatsuya has managed to recall most of his memory of the event that happened when they were young.  However, Natsuki told him that the reason why she had to become a veterinarian was not because of the puppy.  The real reason was the fact that Tatsuya fell sick when he tried to look for a veterinarian to look after the puppy, and to stop Tatsuya from doing reckless things again, she promised Tatsuya that she would become a veterinarian so he wouldn’t have to look for one again.  And to that, Tatsuya promised that he would pick up any stray dog he could find, his job at Trattoria Samon was setup so that he can pay for all the dog food they would need.  While it appeared that Tatsuya had forgotten their promise literally, he too was fulfilling their promise by picking up stray dogs and continued his work at Trattoria Samon.

With all the major story points out of the way we are treated with another ecchi scene, this time in Natsuki’s waitress uniform!  It just had to happen, I mean, it just had to!  She is a waitress after all!

At the end of Natsuki’s arc, she was shown waiting at the train station for Tatsuya to pick her up since she has been away to university for a month now.  It seems even though they were apart, their relationship would continue to grow.

End of Natsuki’s arc.

I can’t wait to find out what would happen in the after story, I mean I really do like Natsuki a lot, second only to Feena obviously

This post has taken much longer than I thought it would, I guess it has to do with the fact that I really do like Natsuki’s story, it is not epic by any stretch of imagination, but it is good enough for me to write it down so I can remember it.  I wanted to cover Wreathlit’s story as well since her story was somewhat altered in the animation compare to the game, but I better defer that to a second post.

Edit: Adding a bonus Natsuki wallpaper from the Moonlight cradle premium box

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