This didn’t quite do it for me. Stopping right before whet seems to be the core of the story certainly doesn’t help. This does a fine job introducing the characters, but the whole umbrella scene feels out of place. It’s a pretty long discussion before we even got to anything from the main plot. It might make more sense when it’s complete, though. There are some horror stuff happening played quite straight, and then the talking cat appears and is all very casual about the witch thing, it’s a bit goofy. In the end, I don’t really know what mood the VN was going for. (by the way, I vote on Seiji being the witch. The sensation they got from the book was like a manifestation of their latent power or something) The writing suffers a bit in multiple places from mistakes and weird phrasing.
The presentation is alright. The sprites are good but lack in expressions. The backgrounds work, but I’m not sure about the walking “animation” in the dark hallway where we don’t show any sprites. The music and sound effects are used pretty effectively.
The folklore theme isn’t really present besides magic and witches existing. I don’t think this mimics any particular urban legend?
Overall, this is hard to rate, as this is missing a huge part of the story. But I think this could become something good. Keep at it!