>>11609153>>11609995I actually don't mind keeping Ayame as the partner, I was mostly joking. But I feel like exploring more chuubas for partners can keep things fresh. I suppose if the story goes on for long enough, it can happen. Doesn't even necessarily mean I'd have to kill her off or anything. I know it seems like I'm really in a hurry to change partners but honestly I might end up even going through the entire story without changing once, if it fits narratively.
>>11613784The shadows are alive, not necessarily as in there are no shadows in the world and just dark creatures roaming around, it's more like those things can only stay and grow in the dark. So when Ayame forgot to use her flashlight to erase her shadow because she was in a hurry, presumably either one of the shadows that was roaming around inside the market went after her and attacked her because she was touching a shadow, or a creature popped up from her shadow itself to attack her. The second case, if given enough time (a couple of seconds, with a sufficiently big shadow) will always happen, that would result in a small, possibly rat sized shadow. They don't go after the shadows of people, they get you when you're in the shadows. They stay inside containers like trashcans and stuff when there's light around because it's dark in there, also under cars, inside buildings, anywhere where it's dark. When the sun goes out, those creatures can get out and roam the streets safely (though there will still be street lamps and the like which they won't walk into).
They don't seek people actively but let's say you're walking around and suddenly your light starts going out. Whenever you step/touch the shadows, the creatures around you start going after you like what was happening to Ayame in chapter 1. Now, I don't know about you but not touching any shadows ever is much harder than it looks, especially if you aren't one of the people who got the unfair advantage of losing their shadows, and remember that the lightening happened suddenly,without warning in a literal flash of light, which I'll go more into later. If you have only one source of light,you're still making a shadow behind you. That shadow also needs to be negated through a second light, which I should've implied more that people with shadows have to always walk around making sure not to slip up and forget about their shadows with a second light source (ex: sun and Ayame's flashlight). It's why Ayame was relaxing on top of a spotlight on chapter 2, so that she could smoke in peace without worrying about her shadow. So long as you have the proper tools for it, say, hanging lanterns or light up shoes, sure, it wouldn't be too hard, but most people don't have that and I do plan on going into that later.
Anon did choose to keep Ayame because of the assumption she had a lighter, and he didn't do it without a lighter inside the truck, in chapter 2 he took it off her as she was lying down in the bench wounded during the "you perv" moment. The fire was a small little dip of alcohol on some rags, but I can or should've mentioned probably that the truck wasn't airtight. The lighter is technically still hers and really, only morality is the thing keeping you from taking it off her and ditching her for good which again, I'll probably explore in more details later. The morality of this anon is a bit complicated, rather than being all "let her die, I don't even like her anyway", now that he's got to known her, it's hard to just let her go like that into what would be certain doom, even if she is a bitch. He doesn't see it as enough reason to let her die.
Anyway, I hope this wall of text doesn't mean I'm a bad writer, having to explain what happened after the fact. I've been focusing on dialogue mostly, which is much quicker to write than descriptions, and that may have left a few things out before I could ponder about them properly. Sometimes I just envision the scenario in my head so vividly that I forget to add the details into the writing for the readers to envision it too.
