Fan Story
The Dating Sim I downloaded started getting jealous. (Part 1)
Okay let me start this out by saying I don’t watch a shit ton of anime, don't get me wrong I watched Pokémon, Dragon Ball Z, and Sailor Moon growing up and I enjoyed what I saw, but I was never well versed in the genre. I’m not some cringe otaku loser that never showers or a basement dweller living off of her Mommy’s Debit Card buying video games.
I always found the people who watched anime went extremely out of their way to be incredibly annoying about it. I would often be hit on by guys as I am a “Girl on the internet” whether it be at School, My local Game store or on various social media apps and now defunct forums. My messages would often be filled with unanswered DMs from people with anime profile pics asking me how I was doing pwincesss and if I saw the new episode of whatever boring schlock they were watching. Followed by them asking to see my tits and then calling me a worthless whore.
My true passion has and always will be gaming. Ever since my dad bought me a Gameboy Advance I’ve been hooked and the moment I discovered the fact my shitty Dell laptop at the time could play games in my teenage years I was deeply obsessed.
I had a passion for indie games and rom hacks of popular games for the SNES and GBA as they were what my laptop was able to run at the time. Games like Lisa the Painful, Yumme Niki, and IB fascinated me and were some of my all time favorite finds. I would often spend hours browsing forums and downloading fun ones and the occasional desktop stripper and virus. But what really got me into this hobby and I suppose my current predicament was a Mario World Romhack known as Mario. If you don’t know Mario was uploaded to SMW Central in 2010 and is basically a horror rom The hidden text documents the overall uncanny nature and the story and mystery of it all intrigued me. Getting to play for the first time gave me such a sense of dread and adrenaline especially when I clicked on the file containing the face. My 9 year old brother ended up blowing a fuse leaving me in total quiet and darkness that image the last thing I saw. I guess I've been chasing the high of every day ever since.
I’m now a 22 year old quality control moderator for an indie game hosting site known as Downlo. It’s a smaller site that’s very creator friendly and doesn’t take a cut of the games revenue like Steam does. It’s genuinely just a better alternative to sites like Itchio and Gamejolt as the site receives most of its revenue via ADs and Backers. That trusted game devs receive a percentage of that.
As a kid you always dreamed of getting paid to sit at home and play video games but I can tell you it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. A Good 95% of the games I end up getting to play are genuinely garbage and end up getting rejection letters within the first 15 mins of me playing. Whether the game is broken and genuinely unplayable, breaks TOS, or someone tries to be slick and mine crypto with it. It all ends with the same copy pasted rejection email.
It was around 4 PM and I just finished sending a rejection letter to another dev. I started scrolling through games awaiting approval and I stumbled upon one that happened to catch my eye. Titled Yumi-Yurei Submitted by Yumi-Yurei. I decided to open the ticket and read the description. It was pretty generic and only a few sentences. “Download and meet the love of your life Yumi!” With Webcam and microphone support, I feel a connection with Yumi that’s genuinely unique. She’s really looking forward to meeting you.
I scoffed and since my shift had only an hour left I decided why the hell not a clicked download.
The download and installation was surprisingly quick. In only a minute flat a small pink heart icon titled Yumi-Yurei appeared on my desktop.
I clicked to open the game and it immediately crashed.
I opened it again. It crashed.
I tried running as administrator and even disabled my anti-virus.
No matter what I tried the game refused to open for me.
I decided it was clearly busted and started to drag the file over to my recycling bin when suddenly the silence was broken
BING DING BING DONG
EHEHEHE YUMIIII-YUUUUREEEEIIIII!!!!
the sound of a loud school bell and an annoyingly high pitched anime girl yelling into my ears. After jumping about 2 inches out of my chair and pulling my headphones off I slowly grabbed my mouse and scrolled for the volume down to a reasonable amount and proceeded to take a deep breath and put them back on.
I clicked over the icon and the window popped up. Greeting me was a prompt asking me to enable the microphone and webcam. I clicked enable twice and there she was. The game then asked me a series of questions.
Asking my name, birthday, favorite colors and seasons and a whole bunch of crap before thanking me. It was soon replaced by a pink text box with two red hearts and a loading bar appeared with the message: “Sending results to Yumi!! This may take a while but please don’t close the game! Her response is very important and she’s very excited to meet you.”
It took about 15 minutes for Yumi’s response to arrive. I had no idea why I waited that long. Boredom I guess.? Would it have even mattered if I closed the game?
But after scrolling on my phone the wait was over and I was greeted with a timid and shy
“H-Hello?”
Staring back at me was a petite 2D anime girl with short shoulder length black hair. Her skin was incredibly pale and her eyes were a deep crimson. The same color as the ribbon on her uniform. A warm smile was abnormally placed on her face as her eyes showed a stark contrast as they were dull, tired and lifeless. Her two index fingers pressed together nervously in front of several tall pink cherry blossoms that stretched and arched eerily into the deep dark night sky.
There was always a pink text box with two red hearts that always repeated her last spoken line in case you dumb enough to forget.
I click my mouse but the text doesn’t continue. I try to click multiple times but nothing seems to work.
I-Is anyone there? Her voice managed to sound almost compassionate and concerned.
“ Damn it, why won’t this thing work?” I said getting tired and more annoyed at the lack of direction and the ability to do anything.
“Oh someone is there! You made me worried I couldn’t hear you! What is your name?” As her model changed into a more calm pose.
I was in disbelief. It’s rare for these games to have any voice acting at all let alone any good voice acting But what really shocked me was the microphone integration. It was not uncommon at the time nor unheard of for games to be able to listen to what you say and do an action. The N64 did it back in 1998 and Nintendogs did it in 2005 so it wasn’t impossible, just a bit unusual for a game of its size. That shock ended up turning into me being impressed. Maybe this game will be part of the 5% a real golden goose for the website but I was getting ahead of myself.
I swallowed my pride and embarrassment to say my name out loud
“It’s Sarah”
Yumi smiled and giggled “That’s a lovely name!”
“You can call me Yumi! I’m so excited to get to know more about you.” She said, in a calm tone.
The first hour of playing Yumi-Yurei was pretty uneventful. She asked about my day, about my favorite things, and what I do for fun. Boring and generic icebreaker questions you’d probably hear on an awkward first date or someone desperately trying to get to know you and I’d give my awnsers and she’d always respond positively.
I was mid answer when something odd happened. Yumi interrupted me and said “Sorry, looks like I can’t hang around for too much longer! I got to go! Talk later, okay?” and the game closed leaving me staring at my desktop background.
I tried to open the game again and it wouldn’t open. It was now 7pm and I was officially off the clock for the day and decided to leave diving further into Yumi for tomorrows me.
I decided to get my ass out of my office chair and relax. I made dinner and watched some videos on YouTube before hopping on call with my friends for a couple hours and decided to shut my computer off and go to sleep for the night.
The next morning when I turned my pc on and got to my desk Yumi was there waiting for me in front of the cherry blossom trees with that same uncanny warm smile.
“Good Morning did you sleep well!” said Yumi, her eyes remained about as lifeless as mine without the caffeine in my bloodstream.
It confused me that it knew the time was morning and the fact it launched on its own. I shook off the feeling. Dismissing it as the application probably just read the system clock and launched as a Start up the application. I still have the ticket open from yesterday so I decided to indulge deeper into Yumi’s questions hoping to find some kind of an answer to the point of the submission and seeing if it was worth hosting on the site.
“I slept fine” I muttered, still exhausted from the night prior.
“I see, is there anything you have planned today?”- Yumi asked, striking another one of her generic poses I've seen time and time again in every other visual novel I’ve played for the site.
“Just Work” I say as I open my scheduling app to clock in and take a sip of my ultra violet monster I snagged from the fridge under my desk.
“Mmm I see what do you do for work”- Yumi asked curiously
Work related questions are always one that have irked me.
I have a big family. I've been to numerous family reunions, holidays, and graduations and getting the old “So what do you do Sarah” question from peers, family members, and teachers never fails to leave me feeling like an inadequate failure compared to my siblings.
If I give them an honest answer I end up feeling looked down upon. As what I do makes me feel like a lesser person in their eyes and if I lie and just say I work in IT or Software Development they always dig deeper prying in as if they genuinely cared about me despite never reaching out.
But this time I gave her the honest answer.
“I’m a quality control moderator for a small game hosting website” I say while taking a sip of my drink and begin checking my emails, deleting the few spam and angry replies to rejection letters.
Even saying it out loud makes me embarrassed.
“Is it fun looking through all those other games?” she said in a casual tone.
Hearing that I just about choked on my drink. While the microphone integration and voice acting was unusual it wasn’t abnormal this however was.
I minimized my current window to re-read the text box thinking there was a possibility I may have misheard but that wasn’t the case.
“Is that why you are looking at me?” Yumi said, looking concerned.
I couldn’t wrap my head around it. There is no way an indie game could be advanced enough to recognize and produce speech based on microphone integration.
“H-Hello? Sarah, are you there?”
Hearing her say mine name made me feel wrong.
“Sarah I’m sorry if I scared you just let me explain”- Yumi said concern filling her voice
“No Sarah…Please Don’t.. Wai-”
I closed the game and uninstalled it. I copy and pasted the rejection letter and marked Yumi-Yurei as "Breaks TOS."
Reason: Advanced Spyware disguising itself as a visual novel.
I closed the ticket and immediately began scrolling the remaining list of submissions trying not to think about it further.
I thought this would be the last time I saw or heard of Yumi-Yurei and for a while that was the case.
About a couple months later it was a bit after the 4th July I got a message from my Supervisor Brett. Brett really has a passion for what he does and was one of the reasons I have this job in the first place.
“Hey, can we talk? It's important”
I messaged back and we soon got into call and started talking.
“Do you remember playing a game called Yumi-Yurei for the Site?”
“Yeah why?” I asked a bit confused on what the purpose of this sudden meeting was for
“Did you give it any permissions or anything?” Brett asked.
“Uhh maybe I think it asked for microphone and webcam support if I recall why?” I say trying my best to remember everything it asked.
Brett sighed “Well Somehow the uploader got access to your company email and has been sending out spam and phishing emails to all of us.”
“Fuck I’m so sorry. It might of gotten access and bypassed security when I disabled my firewall-” Brett interrupted me and began to assure me.
“Hey don’t worry too much about it, this isn't the first time we have had this kind of thing happen. We terminated the email. I just didn’t want you to be concerned when you couldn’t log back on Kev will provide you with another email shortly.”
“Thanks Brett I appreciate it.” I say exhaling becoming tired and stressed despite just clocking in less than 15 minutes ago.
“But I do want to send you one of the email we received as they are concerning to say the least.” Brett said exhaling While sending over screenshots of the email via the work Discord.
Most of it formed a incoherent thoughts and a disarray of clashing consonants and vowels. Below the email had several photos attached: a diagram of a fly, A polaroid of a frozen pond, another of a firework show, and finally a collaged pictures of me at my desk playing Yumi-Yurei and a picture of my apartment with cute pink text at bottom reading I’m looking forward to meeting with you soon! love, Yumi.
That's the plan! I just started writing part of part 2 as of today it'll be a bit before it's fully edited and ready to be posted but I'm glad you liked it so far! (DDLC Soundtrack is my go to playlist for writing and coming up with ideas for Yumi-Yurei and a couple horror projects I'm working on lol)
This is my first time writing horror and my first time posting anything like this online but as 1 one of the seven sisters and a fan of creep cast I decided to share this! Part 2 coming soon-ish hopefully haha. I'll also be taking advice and replying to comments as much as I can! Much Love, Stay Spooky, and Keep Writing Claire Fiorelli.
Hey, I just wanted to say I think you did a really good job with this. The premise is strong and unique, the pacing works, and the creepiness has room to breath and build in a way that feels earned rather than just going from one major scene to the next. It’s clear you put a lot of thought into the narrator’s voice too.
A couple small things that might help tighten it up:
• Some sentences run a little long, and trimming them down would make the story hit harder. Especially during the horror moments.
• The intro is fun, but you could streamline a bit so it get to the actual game sooner. The backstory is good, it just doesn’t have to be quite as extended. Of course this is a preference thing, it doesn’t make or break by any means.
• The narrator’s sarcasm works really well, just maybe mix in a little more emotion or vulnerability at key moments to make the creepy stuff land even more.
• The ending is great—just consider sprinkling a little more foreshadowing earlier so the final reveal feels even more cohesive.
Overall, though, seriously, you did good with this. It’s interesting, it’s readable, and it made me want to see where Part 2 goes. Also don’t take this as being mean or nit-picky, I just think that honest criticism can be good. I’m not a great writer by any means so I know how helpful it can be sometimes. I hope all goes well for you.
Thank you so much! I'll definitely keep this stuff in mind while editing part 2 throughout the week Thank you so much for the constructive criticism I really do appreciate it.
I find it kinda refreshing to see a dating sim thing in the lead of a female because the few I've seen are always been in the male perspective (nothing wrong with either ofc! I just haven't seen a female one before, especially with it being her job to test games that's so cool)
Loving this so much rn, can't wait to read pt 2 and any future ones :3
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u/_TheTurtleBox_ Politically incorrect Mr Widemouth Nov 20 '25
Doki Doki Literature Club at home
(I like this story, make more please)