Nora (CV: Sugita Tomokazu) is a reporter that’s not part of SideKicks and gathers information to uncover truths. ((His route unlocks after everyone else as ‘Chapter 5’))
Inori meets Nora at a cafe and has tea with her. He asks how she’s doing in SideKicks and she’s doing well especially due to him encouraging her. He invites her out on Sunday night for the ‘Sakurada Festival’ which she happily agrees to. He says he likes talking with her and she jokes asking if its so he can get dirt of Sakurada lol. He then pays for her meal and he walks her back to the station. On their way, it starts to pour rain. Inori already had a umbrella prepared though and tells Nora she had a dream of him saying its going to rain. When they get to the station, Inori offers him her umbrella but he says he likes the rain and leaves.
After that, there’s another rain killer murder with no witnesses or evidence. The chief, Yashiro, wants SideKicks to officially participate in the rain killer investigation. The rain killer case is an on-going case that had only recently gotten popular due to its publicity online. The criminal slashes the throat of their victims and only kills them on rainy days. No evidence or witnesses are present. They’ve murdered 6 people so far, one being an accountant, a video game developer, an IT secretary, a doctor and a lawyer with no seen connections with each other. Suddenly, Shisui appears after being questioned due to his interest in the rain killer. He says he wants to know the truth and so they ask him what he thinks about the case. He believes the rain killer isn’t killing out of mere pleasure, rather because it’s task to be done with some sort of purpose in mind. He suggests speaking to Nora about it too since he’s also investigating the case.
That night, Inori goes to meet up with Nora at the park like she promised. She finds him near the bridge and he offers her takoyaki. Apparently one of them has something really spicy, so he tells her to choose one ((like russian roulette lol)). When she chooses the spicy one, Nora laughs at her reaction and gives her some water to cool her mouth. He then brings up the rain killer incident and Inori asks him why he’s investigating the case. Although he says he just wants to know the identity of the rain killer. He become a reporter because after being surrounded by lies, he wanted to uncover all truths. He goes on to say he was actually born as a millionaire’s son. He was born in Mew York and his father owned a famous hotel in Manhattan. His father was a liar who used his method of lying to get what he wanted, whether it be power or love. As much as he hates lies, he knows its a powerful weapons in the world. Inori is glad Nora finally talked about himself for once and so they then watch the fireworks together.
The next day Inori sees a vision of someone holding a check for 30k. She doesn’t know what it means, but tells everyone at SideKicks. Nora and Tatewaki then appear and Nora asks to borrow Inori. He tells them the case has no leads, but he has an idea about it but won’t say any further. He believes Inori’s power will be one way to get closer to the truth and wants to use her for that. Tatewaki tells him not to address Inori as a thing to be borrowed and if he wanted in SideKicks he should’ve joined in the first place since he was originally scouted for it apparently. Nora says he won’t join SideKicks but if they don’t allow him to borrow Inori, they won’t find out the truth of the mastermind being among them.
A few days later, Inori comes home and thinks there’s an intruder in her house, but its actually Nora. He apologizes for intruding on her home but needed to talk to her. First, Inori asks what he meant when he said the mastermind of the case is in SideKicks. He begins to tell her when he first met her, he did want to merely use her power. But over time he felt a sort of connection to her, realizing they had more in common they he thought. He also apologizes for his way of words when he said he wanted to borrow her. He believes the rain killer wants to bury the people involved with a certain “issue”. And when he said the rain killer is among them, he doesn’t necessarily mean SideKicks, but the police. Regardless, he tries to assure Inori he doesn’t want to merely use her. Inori has a flashback of her dream and remembers the hand with the check for 30k. She realizes it was Nora’s hand and says she saw a vision of him. He refuses to tell her anymore though but promises the purpose of what he’s telling her is to protect her and not let her know things that would hurt her. She doesn’t understand him and tells him to leave, upset that no matter how much she asks him, he won’t reveal the complete truth to her.
After that, Inori gets a call from Shisui, inviting her to his studio to talk. He says Nora and him have had a contract of giving each other info, but Nora has been out of contact for a little while. She tells him about what Nora told him and he tells her what he knows. He believes Nora is trying to atone for his sins and Inori getting closer to him will bring him closer to the truth. That night, Inori goes to Kirara’s diner by herself to get something to eat. Its there she encounters Nora the same way she did before, dropping her phone and him picking it up for her. He tells her he’s been thinking a lot and realizes him saying he can’t tell her the truth to protect her was just an excuse. He wants to protect her, but knows he can’t by building up a wall.
After that, Nora invites Inori to his place to talk. He enters the same room she saw in her dream and begins to explain from there. The check she saw was another obligatory check from his rich father. He begins to explain when he was 22 around 5 years ago, he worked as a freelance reporter at a newspaper company but quit to spread better truth and uncover deceitful people. He also mentions how Ripcord, which is known as a highly addictive drug that causes hallucinations and suicides, was initially a new drug to save lives. Apparently it was called “Ripcord” because of the cord pulled just before you land with a parachute. Basically a doctor made the drug but it had serious side effects and Nora wanted to uncover that truth.
In the end, the doctor ended up dying from knowing too much getting too involved. Before he died on a rainy night, he called Nora and warned him. He spoke of a list of names as well that were actually names of the rain killer’s victims. Ishizaki, who was also researching about Ripcode, died as well. Basically, everyone who’s gotten involved with Ripcord has been killed. Which is what Nora meant when he said he wanted to protect Inori by not getting her too involved. He promises he won’t allow what happened to Asahina to happen to her. Although he blames himself for trying to uncover the truths and getting Asahina too involved, causing the murders. Inori tells him its not his fault and hugs him. After that, he walks her home and when he calls her, he tells her to open the window and says another reason he became a reporter was to find someone with “truth” within them.
The next couple of days, Inori frequently visits Nora. Unfortunately, there has been no clues to the case and Yashiro is growing inpatient. Inori wants to tell them about what Nora told her, but he told her not to tell SideKicks just it case it risks them getting too involved. That night, Inori goes to Nora’s place like usual and makes pasta from some things he had in the fridge. She asks him if he doesn’t trust SideKicks since she believes telling them and collaborating with everyone would be best. But Nora tells her that telling a secret like that could endanger their lives. He says this why it took him so long to tell Inori.
The next day, Inori gets a usual call from Nora. However, he’s acting strange and directs Inori into a dark alleyway. Suddenly, Chika grabs her from behind and there, stood Chika holding a gun to Nora while he had a knife to his neck. Chika thought Inori’s behaviour was strange so he followed her. He demands to know what he was going to do and he says he was merely protecting himself from him. Inori begs Chika to put down his gun because she trusts Nora and when he does, he puts lowers his knife. Chika says he doesn’t trust him and gives Inori a gun to protect herself with before leaving.
After that, Nora decides to invite Shisui over to talk about the case with Inori. They know the criminal is someone who was involved with the pharmaceutical company that sold the drug and Asahina told Nora the criminal is someone within the police. Shisui manages to figure out the next two victims and lets them know that even if they find out the truth, it doesn’t necessarily set them free. After he leaves, Shisui sends them a picture of the two of them, thanking them for sharing their info. Nora says he usually deletes his photos or any sort of info on his phone so he’d probably have to delete it. Nora starts blaming himself again for what happened and Inori tells him its not his fault. He kisses her and says he’ll probably blame himself forever, but thanks to her he feels like he’s been forgiven.
The next couple days, Nora loses contact again which makes Inori worry. When she goes to his place, she finds it ransacked. She immediately has a vision of Nora being beaten on a chair in a marine and heads there. Just as she thinks to contact SideKicks, she’s caught by someone near an abandoned wearhouse. Somejima was there and demanding Nora to tell him who and where the rain killer is. They ask if Nora knows Inori and he lies and says he doesn’t. They then show him the picture on his phone, which Nora said he’d delete, proof that Nora and Inori know each other. He whacks Inori so Nora will tell him what he wants to know, the Inori takes out the gun Chika gave her and says she’ll shoot him if he doesn’t let him go. He doesn’t think she’s serious bit as she trembles to pull the trigger, she ends up shooting in a random spot. He then gets pissed and just before he can do anything, Nora starts laughing and says he’ll tell him what he wants to know.
He tells him that he’s the rain killer and that he was Asahina’s son working in the same research company. He wanted revenge for what they did to his father, Asahina and made a list of people to murder. After that, he leaves to contact the other target of the rain killer. Inori contacts SideKicks and embraces Nora. After that, Nora is taken to the hospital. Takewaki informs her that Somejima was killed by the rain killer which means Nora really was lying to save Inori when he said he was. Inori tells everyone about what happened and that she’d been investigating the rain killer with Nora in secret. She apologizes for not telling everyone, but they tell her to rest for now and will ask more questions later. Inori then stays the night at the hospital watching over Nora.
The next day, Inori meets everyone at Kirara’s diner to tell them everything Nora told her. The next target will most likely be Tsujidou. They speculate that even if they catch the rain killer who’ll try to kill Tsujidou it won’t solve the root of the problem since the mastermind behind the killings is within the police. Nevertheless, they make plans to find Tsujidou and stop the murder from happening. After that, Inori goes to the hospital to check on Nora’s condition. She then has a vision of a place that looks to be the Sakura Tree observatory and Tsujidou with someone in a raincoat. She could see fireworks go off so its around midnight. She immediately contacts everyone to tell them and they all head there at once.
There, they spot Tsujidou who seems to be looking for someone. Suddenly, a person in a dark raincoat appears and everyone immediately intervenes. Inori speaks out to the rain killer, asking if for the sake of what he’s doing is to take over what Asahina couldn’t accomplish. He wants revenge, which is why he’s killing people involved with trying to reveal the truth of the Ripcord drug. Tsujidou asks the rain killer if its true he’s the son of Asahina, who was in charge of the development of Ripcord. He starts saying he was an excellent researcher that abided to their needs so as long as they provided him with hush money. But when he acted against that and tried to reveal the truth with an act of justice.
Tsujidou continues to provoke him and suddenly takes out a gun, aiming it at the rain killer. After that, Nora appears saying he wanted to meet him for a long time now to apologize for what happened to Asahina and how he blames himself for his death. He tells him he should be his target instead. The rajn killer continues to be silent and just as Tsujidou is about to shoot, Nora intervenes. Unfortunately, the rain killer escapes and Nora yells out to them. Yashiro informs the press how the rain killer has acted out on revenge on people who are involved with Ripcode due to what happened to Asahina. The pharmaceutical company had been secretly distributing these drugs and when Asahina tried to reveal the truth and find an antidote, he was murdered.
After that, Inori visits Nora like usual. He was cleaning up his desk and she decides to help. He asks her how she knew he was at the marine and she said she saw a vision of him there. He tells her not to do something so dangerous again but she says she can’t promise she won’t, since she was worried about him. He tells her that Inori is the one who saved him and that his “truth” he was looking for in someone was her. And so they kiss confessing their love for each other. In the epilogue, Nora reveals the one who’s pulling the strings is most likely Tatewaki.
Thoughts: Nora was such a fucking mystery the entire game before his route. He never appeared in anyone else’s route from what I can remember so I only ever suspected him as the rain killer culprit cause the way he acted was sketchy as fuck. His route involved much more plot so it was much more connected to the story. But because of that, there wasn’t enough romance for his route unfortunately. Thankfully everyone in this game got kiss CGs but I wanted more scenes!! Also maybe I was just fucking stupid and it went over my head, but I didn’t get the scene where he led her into an alleyway??? Like, what was he doing?? I can’t remember if it was ever explained.
Otome Adventures 