This was... a strange read! Spoilers ahead for the uninitiated.
Most of the VN felt like going through the motions of a typical slice of life meet cute. I must admit, I didn't really pay close attention to the Itch page and jumped into a stream of the game pretty much blind, so I didn't see any warning to know what's in store. However, the very odd vibe of the writing and the visuals made me clock that something is wrong the moment Ren shows up, and that was the biggest strength and what I enjoyed about my read the most.
I must gush about the honey trap that is Ren first, since this VN lives and dies by that. Red flag wolf boyfriends have been a bit of a trope and meme in these circles, but it never really worked for me cause it tends to be used on a man who's usually not really my type, and the red flags are too glaring and menacing. I never find them disarming enough. Ren on the other hand...
Ren is so cute and fluffy, and perfectly weaponises the image of a cute, quirky extrovert partner who adopts the lonely, isolated man who's looking for an adventure. Perfect perpetrator, perfect victim. I like a lot of the subtle (maybe not so subtle, but still subtler than the usual play on this trope) indications that something is... wrong. The moment Ren is introduced, I felt the vibe was off. They wear just a wifebeater in a dark alleyway, they conveniently drop a wallet, the name of that flower shop is foreshadowing 101, the sunlight after the rain illuminates them as a literal red flag, they constantly hide their arms behind their back... And not to speak of the things they say. There's so many moments where they say something that is just slightly wrong, with some pretty big fumbles where the mask slips too much. Still, Ren has the charisma to convince someone who's especially vulnerable to this like Lucan, that this is all part of their eccentric charm! Honestly Ren can sell my kidney on the black market, I don't even care!
Also I find it very funny cause this is the second unhinged florist wolf from a May wolf jam. Something something two nickels.
The writing felt very disorienting and kinda floaty, but that was to its strength. It works really well with Ren as a character and Lucan as the lovestruck fool. There was some fun imagery and flourish used in the prose. The plot was intriguing because as I said, even before the intrigue fully gets revealed, you already have a mystery of trying to figure out why are the vibes so off. The one thing I really disliked was the heavy use of auto-advancing to the next line. I honestly never enjoy when a VN does that, unless they give a pretty generous pause before moving on.
I need this VN to continue and conclude! I need to see where this is going. I am invested in both characters, I want their relationship to work despite that really being a bad idea, and I'm honestly interested for any wild outcome this story could end up with.