Slow Damage takes great pains in examining both how dark the human psyche can be, especially in how many scars can lie in a person's heart.
Warning: Spoilers Off applies to these pages. Proceed at your own risk.
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Taku's Route
Chapter 3: Nostalgia
- The chapter starts with a scene of Taku coming across his mother's corpse and breaking down at the sight. It gets worse when you replay the route since the lines become voiced by then, allowing you to hear the raw anguish in his voice when he breaks down in grief.
- Taku's Madness ending is unsettling as much as it is depressing. Fearing that he'll never be able to protect those dear to him by hanging on to his scruples, Taku hardens his resolve to protect Towa. However, he does so by becoming the very kind of person he wanted to protect Towa from. He never realizes this though; to him, what is only important is that Towa is somewhere where he's safe from everything and everyone else, and somewhere where Taku can always watch over him. Even when Towa looks into Taku's eyes to gauge his insanity, he sees nothing but the man's sorrow and love for him.Taku: As long as you're here, you'll be safe. You'll never be in danger again.Towa: What are you...?!Taku: I'll never let go. Never.
- After everything that's revealed in Fujieda's route, Towa and Taku's romance becomes a bit more somber in hindsight. There's no denying that their love is genuine, and the drama CD shows that they don't want to be with anyone but each other and they're truly happy with their life together. However, Towa will never truly know about his past, and Taku will always hide the truth from him. Depending on how one looks at it, this either doesn't matter in the long run, or will forever leave a bittersweet aftertaste in their relationship.
Rei's Route
Chapter 3: Contradiction
- Rei's situation is depressing: one day, he's suddenly informed that he's made a debtor because his father said that he could pay his large debt for him. Given that Rei and his father are on bad terms, Rei could easily refuse... except if he did, he would essentially be signing his father off his to his death, and Rei is too moral to do that in spite of the many times he wished his father would just drop dead. However, this turns out to not be the ultimatum that Rei was faced with: he was actually told that if he refused, the Takasato-gumi will let his father resume his old job of trafficking children— something that Rei would never allow either. So he ends up agreeing to pay his father's debt, and to pay it fast, he begins to participate in Moneymatches where he puts his life on the line whilst on the fighting ring for a chance of winning the large sums of money needed to pay off his father's dues.
- When Towa pays Rei a visit and coaxes him into telling him how he really feels about his predicament, Rei breaks down and vents out all his frustrations to Towa.Rei: I lived my whole life without the approval of the man I call my father. So being overpowered like that was my worst nightmare. All my past trauma came flooding back, and it destroyed me. I really hate that he's why I'm this messed up! I don't want to be around him or see his face ever again! [breaks down in tears and starts violently punching the floor] I hate him, I hate him, I hate him!
Madarame's Route
Chapter 2: Immutable
- Rei's anguished plea to Towa, even though it ultimately falls in deaf ears. Both Towa and the player can hear how sincere Rei is with every word he says, which makes it all the more painful when Towa decides that whatever Rei says won't make a difference, since too much had changed for him to return to the simpler and more peaceful life he once had.Rei: (close to tears) Is he threatening you?! Is that why you can't leave?! Just tell me! Why would you stay with him?! Just run away! You have people who care about you! I'm here for you.. We're all here for you! So just come home!
- The route ends on a bittersweet note no matter how the player looks at it, and for one simple reason: after all is said and done, Towa breaks ties with Taku and Rei and never contacts either of them again. What makes it sadder is that he doesn't do this because he despises them now; if anything, there are hints that — despite his claims that he no longer has anything left to feel for them — he actually cares for them still, and only feels that he no longer belongs with them. After getting to know Taku and Rei in their routes, seeing them permanently drift apart from Towa's life is guaranteed to be heartbreaking in some way.
Fujieda's Route
The Last Chapter: Equal
- Fujieda's breakdown in the park after he learns that Mei is as good as dead. He admits later that part of him had always seen it coming, but at the time, the confirmation alone is enough to nearly crush his spirit. But at the same time, he's also enraged that Mei's death happened because of someone's wicked whims, causing him to attack Towa and strangle him because of his relation to Maya, who was directly responsible for Mei's demise. And with Fujieda's rationale clouded by both his anger and his grief, he decides to get some form of revenge by violating Towa. Towa may have long been accustomed to being taken against his will, but it doesn't detract from how harrowing the entire scene is— the fact that one victim would vent their anger and inflict pain on another victim just goes to show how many lives Maya had ruined in her wake.
- Throughout the game, the screen will always flicker whenever the word "daijoubu" is brought up. And interestingly, Towa never says the word himself. It's only in this route that it's finally explained why: that word is what his mother would always say to him in her twisted attempt to console him as she allowed him to be tortured by her clients who wish to enact their most depraved desires. Even with his amnesia, the trauma associated with the word is rooted deep into his being that he, in his own words, would always feel a part of him die inside every time he hears it.
- Towa, of all people, crossing the Despair Event Horizon and losing the will to live after remembering his childhood and, most importantly, what happened to Mei. He felt that life wasn't worth living when it came at the cost of that of a pure soul who died for no sensible reason, and so goes into a destructive episode where he cuts himself, lets himself get brutalized and raped, before going back to his apartment and attempting to set himself ablaze. If it were not for Fujieda coming in at the very last moment...
- Every single time Towa responds to Fujieda, his voice sounds so cracked and despondent... as if he's close to tears. The player can hear in Towa's voice how the cracks in his spirit had surfaced in full, showing how broken he is inside and how full of self-loathing he is for taking after his monster of a mother without even realizing it in the first place.
- In the Madness ending, Towa fails to fight off Maya's influence and ends up becoming her in a sense, imitating how she would move, think and speak. As eerie and unsettling this is, what makes it tragic is that even though Fujieda knows that he really isn't talking to Towa, the person he's interacting with is still Towa one way or another, thus he can't find it in himself to cast Towa aside. It gets worse when, for a brief second, Towa embraces Fujieda and buries his head in his shoulder, weakly calling out for help. Fujieda sadly knows that even though he wants to help, he doesn't know how he can help nor if he can even help break Towa free from his predicament, so all he can do is be there for him as long as he can.
- When Towa reads Maya's diary and sees the last thing she wrote, he's left awash with emotion and, for the first and only time he ever does so in the entire game, sheds tears. Once the player realizes what exactly it was that Towa read, they are left thinking the many things that Towa could be thinking and feeling, and why it would be enough to make him cry. Was it because he was distraught at how knowing that if Maya could have been a good mother to him but her psychopathy made her fail to so, resulting in his harrowing childhood? Was it because he was struck with yet one more realization that he's truly not like his mother since he has people who love and cherish him for who he is, whereas Maya was at most, only feared and admired for only either her seductive beauty or her scheming nature, but never loved the way he is, and thus was left to die alone? No one but Towa can truly tell.
