Common Route

“	What is youth?	”
–Haruhiko Yoshino

The Common Route is the first route a player encounters in the visual novel Rewrite. The route branches out towards several routes, and also contains several choices that can be encountered the player. Depending on the choices picked, the game can lead into one of the heroine routes, or encounter a premature ending. Therefore, the common route has to be repeatedly played to go through all the heroine routes, and subsequently unlock Moon.

The common route also contains the Mappie segment and much of the quests needed to complete the Memory menu of the game. The completion of the quests unlocks the gag route.

The route was mostly collaborated by Romeo Tanaka and Yuuto Tonokawa, with some scenes written by Ryukishi07. The opening theme is Philosophyz.

Synopsis

Kotarou Tennouji continues spending his high school life in Kazamatsuri, with Kotori, his childhood friend, and Yoshino, whom he teases often. One time, he meets a girl named Chihaya, who also happens to be the transfer student he heard about in class. Due to the embarrassment from the encounter, Chihaya became angry towards him. Kotarou has also applied for a part-time job in Terra Magazine as a stringer for the upcoming Harvest Festival, and later got accepted.

He also encounters Inoue of the newspaper club, who suspected him to have illegtimately enrolled to the school. Inoue accidentally leaves a piece of paper to Kotarou, which leads him to the "school witch" of the Occult Club. Kotarou and Kotori looks for the school witch, and discovered a classroom that seemed to be a living place.

However, he begins experiencing mysterious events, which he encounters time by time: a ghost seemingly haunting him at night, an endless hallway, and seemingly dangerous large hounds glaring at him, and strange robed men. He might be prompted to use his powers when things get dangerous.

Meanwhile, at school, he meets the "moral guardian" Shizuru in the hallway, whom he eats lunch with sometimes. He also tries to get close to Chihaya to improve her opinion of him. He also meets their class representative Lucia in the cafeteria, who would beat him up due to a series of misunderstandings involving spicy foods and "plate-licking."

He visits the fancy classroom again, and notices a quiz sheet on the table. One of the questions involves him answering between "The World" and "Myself." After answering, he later receives a message telling him to go to the school at night through a series of instructions, where he meets the "school witch" Akane Senri. He is able to find help from her regarding the strange events he was experiencing. For the moment, he receives shikigamis to ward off the ghost at night.

He later meets Nishikujou, who seems to be close to Shizuru. He then meets Akane again, whom he made a deal with: if he can prove supernatural phenomena, he can grope her breasts. And so he starts becoming a member of the Occult Club.

He continues to spend his youth in the school, and also invites Kotori to the Occult Club. They then set up a blog for the Occult Club, but later receives troll messages on it. They later manage to resolve this by confronting the mastermind. One Monday, he encounters Yoshino in the school, when he was going to class forgetting that there was no class for the day to prepare for exams. They get stuck to an endless hallway, but are able to escape after a quarrel.

Exams pass. Chihaya, being Akane's acquaintance, joins the club as well. Here they begin looking into leads for the Occult Club blog, but they simply relax in the clubroom most of the time. They also invite Shizuru into the club, who agrees to join. Kotarou encounters Sakuya, apparently Chihaya's butler, in the clubroom, who doesn't seem to like him for some reasons. Lucia also joins the club, but only out of concern for her friend Shizuru, who earlier went along with his inappropriate joke.

And so the Occult Club members are complete, with Yoshino as an occasional guest in the club for Kotarou to tease him. At one night after being chased by a hound, he meets Shizuru in a ramen shop, and is pulled in to a party with a group of old men. Here he also meets a man named Esaka, who would also later give him a lead for the club.

If pursuing Kotori, Kotarou will spend time with her as she does her job as the head of the Harvest Festival Gardening Committee. If pursuing Chihaya, he will be able to see the club has his circle of friends, and will encounter the question of sacrificing his life to protect her. If pursuing Akane, the club will be inclined to spend time doing quests and investigating leads. If pursuing Shizuru, she will eventually reveal her family situation to him after he confesses about his embarrassing childhood life. If pursuing Lucia, he will find out about the sour relationship between her and Chihaya, and will try to find a way for them to reconcile.

In the Kotarou ending, all the five girls eventually disappears, and the world ends with Kotarou's wish to find life's meaning remains unfulfilled.

When approaching Lucia's route, he plans for Chihaya and Lucia to reconcile through a giant parfait. Incidentally, the employer of the shop used to be a member of the Black Spice Alliance, and tries to test Lucia's tolerance to the spice. She eats the spicy parfait without flinching, but Chihaya is unable to handle it. After attempts to explain the situation by spinning a web of lies and persuading the two to reconcile, he is able to solve the unexpected problem while the two is able to get over their differences.

In all of the scenarios except for Lucia's, he finds out about a rainbow-colored river in the forest, either from a phone call with Inoue or an Occult Club investigation in the forest. This prompts Inoue to investigate this matter, but she suddenly disappears, and the Occult Club is put to blame for the situation. Five days and she is still nowhere to be found, so the search team is stopped, and the school requests the Occult Club to disband. Kotarou, not wanting to lose the bonds he shared with the club, proposed to also try looking for Inoue in the forest.

All the members agree, and so they go to the forest in the day of November 13. Mysterious events happen one after another, and the whole group is separated from each other. Night comes, and the mysterious turns to supernatural, when Kotarou's powers manifests suddenly when he fights against a large hound. The group manages to meet together again, but a large monster suddenly attacks them, who doesn't seem to target Akane and Chihaya at all. Just when the monster is about to attack the group with Kotarou unable to stop it, Lucia and Shizuru suddenly charge towards the monster and defeat it. Kotarou is knocked unconscious after the ordeal, but not before seeing a mysterious girl.

Trivia

• There are some variations on the last scene of November 13th in several routes. In Kotori's and Akane's routes, Shizuru knocks Kotarou unconscious in the forest, with Kotori, Akane, and Chihaya showing concern. In Chihaya's route, Shizuru will still knock him unconscious, but not before she and Lucia confronting Chihaya, whom they discover to be a member of Gaia. In Shizuru's route, It's Akane and Chihaya confronting Shizuru, whom they discovered to be a member of Guardian, and Shizuru won't knock him down here.

Pop Culture References

• There was one scene in a Mappie segment involving Sukumon battles.
• Kotori's line "Okay~ Shake it now, baby now~" is a reference to The Beatles' "Twist and Shout."