Dear You

Synopsis

Your life has always felt like an old, grainy film stuck on repeat. Same routine, same scenes, same ending you see coming from miles away.... the ending which you wrote yourself. But then The Yearbook Project happens. It’s a detour you never saw coming. Five strangers, each navigating their own broken roads, are thrown into your life: a prodigy trapped by perfection, a cynic weighed down by guilt, a rebel fighting to belong, a quiet heart hiding behind screens, and an optimist racing against time. 

And now, all of you are stuck with one impossible task—take a portrait of every senior in the school before graduation. On top of that, there are rules. (1). Each student must approve their photo and sign off on it. No forgeries. No shortcuts. (2). You have to work together. If one of you fails, you all fail. 

As the project unfolds, the lens reveals more than you expect—not just the cracks in their facades, but your own reflection staring back. Through every scene, every captured memory, you’re faced with a choice: to let the reel run its grim course or rewrite it into something else entirely.

Features

Dear You is a slice-of-life, coming-of-age interactive fiction inspired by Japanese manga and visual novels. As the protagonist, you can:

• Customize your name, gender, pronouns and more
• Pursue a romance with one of the five love interests (one male, one nonbinary, two female and one gender-selectable)
• Dive into your friends' individual arc to uncover hidden struggles and personal secrets
• Shape how your own backstory unfolds and decide whether to face what haunts you.
• Explore the ups, downs, and emotional depth of teenage friendships
• Choose how it all goes: is this the end of a beginning, or the beginning of the end?

Characters

You

An outsider looking in at life, at friendships, at the future. You’ve spent most of your time trying to blend into the background, but The Yearbook Project forces you into the center of something new, something unfamiliar. Whether you embrace it or push it away is up to you.

Kurose Sora - Genderless

Age: 19

Height: At 5’8” (172 cm) 

Kurose Sora doesn’t let people in. They don’t trust easily, don’t care for small talk, and certainly don’t waste time on surface-level. Despite crossing paths with them more times than you can count, you don’t actually know much about them, aside from their wheelchair and the fact that they belong to a photography club no one at school seems to care about.

Aoyama Akari - Gender-selectable

Age: 18

Height: Akari (F): 167 cm (5’6”) / Akari (M): 178 cm (5’10”)

The perfect child, the ART prodigy, the top student, the popular kid, Akari is all of that, at least to everyone else. To you, they were something far more complicated. Once upon a time, they were your sun, your solace, the one person who made the world feel a little less cruel. But that was before everything changed. Now, to the rest of the world, you’re just their outcast step-sibling.

Sasaki Rie - Female

Age: 17

Height: 4’11” (150 cm) 

Sasaki Rie hates your guts due to a certain incident that was absolutely your fault, and even you wouldn’t deny it. According to her, she got dragged into this mess because of you, not because her father, the art teacher who orchestrated this whole thing, had no mercy for her violent tendencies.

Miyazaki Suzu - Female

Age: 17

Height: 160 cm (5’3”)

The timid doll, whom you—like everyone else—have always walked past without a second glance… but little did you know, she was someone closer than you thought. Suzu, the quiet shadow, has always been there, watching, listening and noticing the things others don’t. Perhaps she is not as harmless as she appears to be.

Kagawa Aoi - Male 

Age: 18

Height: 180 cm (5’11”)

The reckless optimist. Aoi never sits still, always laughing, always chasing the next thrill, like he's running out of time. He makes life look easy, brushing past problems with a joke and a grin. You don’t know much about him beside the fact that he’s Akari’s close friend.

Content Warnings

This story explores heavy and potentially distressing topics. Please read the content warnings carefully before proceeding.

• Child Abuse and Neglect
• Bullying
• Mental Health Struggle
• Self-Harm and Suicide
• Chronic Illness and Disability
• Trauma and PTSD
• Violence and Emotional Manipulation
• Grief and Guilt
• Addiction and Substance Abuse

Author note: This project is a major work-in-progress. I tend to second-guess myself (and the code which I have no experiences with...) often, so the structure or certain plot points may change over time. Thank you for your patience as I refine the story.

**Please note that dark mode is not yet fully implemented and may cause issues with text visibility, UI alignment, and background contrast.**