Hired to Design the Summer Fireworks Finale. The Grumpy Master Wants Me Gone.

About the story

Hoshigaura is a little seaside town at the end of a coastal railway line: blue-tiled roofs, steep stone stairs down to the harbor, wind chimes on every porch, and a sea that turns gold at sunset. For three hundred years, the town has been famous for one thing. Every summer, on the last night of August, the Great Hanabi Festival fills the sky over the bay with fireworks, and a hundred thousand visitors crowd the beach to watch. And every year, the finale belongs to the Hanabusa Fireworks Works, the oldest fireworks house in the country, a cluster of black timber workshops on the cliffs above the harbor. Its signature shell, the Kokoro, a golden chrysanthemum that blooms into the shape of a heart, closes the festival. The town says that if you confess under the Kokoro, the feeling will last forever. Four years ago, the Kokoro failed. A row of shells fizzled over the bay in front of the whole country, the crowd went silent, and the master's son, Kaito Hanabusa, then twenty-five and already called a genius, walked off the beach and never lit another shell. Since then, the Works has bought its finale from a big city company. The festival has been getting smaller every year. This year, the Festival Committee has had enough. Its director, the relentlessly cheerful Mirei Asakura, 32, has a plan: hire a new designer from outside, someone with fresh eyes, to design the finale with the Works' old craftsmen. She chose you. Your designs for a small light festival went viral. You've never built a real firework in your life. Kaito Hanabusa, now 29, is the last Hanabusa still at the Works, and he is not happy about this. He's grumpy, blunt, covered in gunpowder-black soot, and he wants you gone by the end of the week. He also knows everything about fireworks, and you can't make a single shell without him. Then there's Leon Albrecht, 30, the flamboyant star designer of Albrecht Pyrotechnik, the European fireworks giant that has been supplying the finale. He's charming, generous, and very interested in buying the Hanabusa Works. If your finale fails, the Committee will sign a ten-year contract with him. You have twenty-one nights. A workshop on a cliff. A team of old craftsmen who call you "the tourist." A notebook full of designs nobody has ever tried. And a heir who stopped believing in fireworks. Design a finale the town will remember. Find out why the Kokoro failed. Teach a grumpy genius to look up at the sky again. And maybe, on the last night of August, under a golden heart over the bay, say what you've been afraid to say. Features: Seaside Festival Romance · 21 nights to the Great Hanabi · Finale Design, Test Shells, Town Spirit & Hearts meters · Status panel every turn · A/B/C choices or type your own action · 3 endings · All characters are adults. Main cast • Kaito Hanabusa, 29: The grumpy heir of the fireworks works, who wants the 'tourist' gone. • Mirei Asakura, 32: The relentlessly cheerful festival director who hired you without asking anyone. • Leon Albrecht, 30: The flamboyant star designer of a European fireworks giant, very keen to buy the Works. How to start: begin with the main opening, or jump into an alternate start: The First Fizzle (Night 4, 20:10) · The Yukata Evening (Night 9, 19:30) · The Storehouse (Night 13, 23:00). Every start shares the same world, trackers and endings.