Valentine for Futureless Butterfly [v1.0] By CloverGAME

Story

• The season is winter. It’s around the time just before February begins.
  The protagonist, Sogo Akari, finds an out-of-season butterfly in her apartment’s garden.
• It was a mysterious butterfly glowing in lapis blue — too beautiful to be captured in any painting.
  However, its dazzling wings were cruelly crumpled. Unable to take flight, it clung desperately to a withered branch.
• To this incomplete-emergence butterfly, simply waiting for the moment its life would end, Akari names it “Ao” (碧) and decides to shelter it warmly.
• — The next day.
• When she gets home, an unfamiliar girl is lying unconscious in her room.
• At first glance, a girl who appears to be about her own age —
  wearing a dress adorned with familiar-looking lapis blue patterned feathers, and for some reason, fragments of an insect cage are scattered around her……
  “My name is ‘Ao’. I fell in love with you in an instant.”
• When she woke up, she gave a name that felt familiar to the ear, and conveyed her straightforward affection to Akari.
• And she possessed a mysterious ability.
  It was “perfectly accurate future prediction” —
  as a thank you for saving her, she tried reading the protagonist’s fortune, and a shocking answer came back.
• “…I’m very sorry to have to say this.
  — It seems you will die in 9 days.”
• The butterfly she sheltered had become a human girl —
  — and had suddenly delivered a death sentence.

Characters

• Ao (CV: Shima Shima Hakase)
  A mysterious girl who suddenly appears before Akari.
• Given the circumstances of their first meeting, it’s speculated that she is the incomplete-emergence butterfly Akari sheltered, transformed into human form — but her true nature remains unknown.
  She has almost no memories and doesn’t seem to know what she is herself. However, she appears to have fallen in love at first sight with the protagonist who saved her, and constantly showers her with excessive displays of affection.
• Childish and full of curiosity, yet a bit stubborn and vain.
  Occasionally shows a clumsy side, but is also earnest and straightforward about everything — the kind of noisy but lovable girl.
• For some reason, she possesses the ability to foresee the “absolute future,” and when she read Akari’s fortune, she witnessed the shocking future of Akari dying in 9 days.
  “Butterflies don’t look for meaning in living, you know.”

Mr. Hidaka (CV: Yuuhi)

A teacher at Egamo Academy who serves as the homeroom teacher for Akari’s and Ao’s class.
His subject is science and math, but he’s capable of teaching humanities subjects up to the university entrance exam level as well, and he uses his broad knowledge to tutor Akari for her exams. A calm, middle-aged man who exudes a teacherly strictness during class — someone you can rely on, but who is very pragmatic. However, on the other hand, he readily accepts Ao, who appeared as a sudden transfer student, and for some reason seems to be overly lenient toward her. “Even exam students need to take a breather sometimes, you know.”

Sogo Akari

• The protagonist of this work.
  A third-year student at the academy who lives alone in a run-down apartment on the outskirts of town.
• For a long time she’s felt a limit to this town’s insular customs, and with the university entrance exams coming up this winter, she’s set her sights on moving to the city.
• Intelligent and logical in personality, she’s quite a tough, pragmatic realist.
  Once she makes up her mind, she pushes forward no matter what — and shows an extraordinary level of focus when it comes to things she’s interested in or things she believes she should do.
• She’s been a passionate butterfly lover since childhood, and after sheltering an incomplete-emergence butterfly one day, she meets Ao, and from then on inevitably ends up sharing a roof with her.
  And unfortunately, after being told she’s fated to die in 9 days, she begins searching for a way to defy that prediction — all in order to make her dream of going to the city come true.
• “An incomplete-emergence butterfly… just for that, its value as a life is being crushed.”