Preface: this review may be a controversial take and most possibly a huge stretch trying to make sense of this game ><

Unsaid desires

I love Seiji. If I had to pick the person I cared about the most in my short life so far, it would be Seiji.
That was the one thing I couldn’t let myself forget.

Throughout the game, it feels as if Daichi is trying to convince himself that Seiji is just a friend—yet his feelings verge on obsession that can certainly not be described as friendly. His constant inner monologue is filled of praises for Seiji:

This bookishly handsome, bespectacled fellow […]
With those nice broad shoulders and some decent pecs and back muscles that make you wonder if he lifts. And those long legs.
He looked almost offensively attractive sipping his fancy coffee […]
and so on…

It seems like he deeply admires Seiji, but also desires him, though he never confronts this truth. They seem to both consider each other as friends, but their bond looks hollow even if they have known each other since childhood. Something between them remains incomplete and unspoken, but they both prefer to nurture this empty friendship.

Then the experiment takes place, something in Daichi seems to shift.

I had a feeling I could have had sex with Seiji normally in that moment.

Seiji had a positive influence on Daichi. He’s the one who motivated him to study hard enough, to keep going when he had no parental figures to rely on. But by openly displaying his desire, Daichi takes the risk of shattering their dynamic as friends. While he successfuly stayed in good terms with his girlfriends after hooking up with them, this could not apply to Seiji who’s so much more important and dear to him. He’s his guardian, his inspiration. Almost a god figure since he can’t even fathom to see flaws in him. Seiji is the most important person in his life, the one who has consistently stayed by his side. He never had caring parents to begin with, and his relationships are a fling. Lust has a way to break relationships—so what would happen if it interferes with him and Seiij? And how would Seiji react if he knows that this desire was awakened during this fucked-up experiment?

But as they slowly go through the tasks, Daichi begins to notice how Seiji seems to find pleasure in their new dynamic, where roles are reversed. This new discovery makes him feel uneasy. He thinks that it’s his fault, that he violated Seiji’s mind. Yet it’s never adressed if Seiji himself might have conceal this side of him to protect Daichi from this troubling truth.

…Each time we did this it polluted our memories of each other.

–

But the person sitting in front of me wasn’t Seiji anymore.
Not the Seiji I knew. He was broken. I had broken him.

The experiment

In the Room No.9, there is only the present moment, the tasks, Daichi and Seiji. They are oblivious to the passage of time, to what is happening in the outside world and to what their relationship shape to be after the experiment. For now, it’s just the two of them, together. Almost like an alternate reality—a detached moment from the mundane with no apparent consequences.

Both the masterminds, researchers and test subjects are Daichi and Seiji themselves. They are the one who get to choose which task to perform, noticing and taking mental notes of the effects of the experiments. Even as players of a visual novel where choices are everything, we have less power than the characters who are the one driving the story forward. Our choices are negligible (taking Seiji’s glasses off, saying I’m sorry or remaining silent…) compared to theirs.

Even though they were both forced into this situation, I began to notice how much more at ease Seiji seemed to be compared to Daichi. Yes, he has a serious demeanor. But he also appeared strangely open to the idea of the experiment, despite how crude it was and what role he would have to endorse in it. He didn’t try to soften up the tasks and use tricks to make them easier to deal with. He was always the one to suggest the sexual acts. He demotivated Daichi to investigate further about the experiment and how to escape. He even refused to use their point to get access to adult channels on the TV—something that might have helped them proceed with the tasks with more detachment. There was something eery about him that made me even more uncomfortable than the setting and the tasks.

Then I had an off-puting realization: what if Seiji was the one who created the experiment?

This doesn’t make any sense. But those points made me question it:

• Everything is possible with money, and Seiji comes from an influential familly ;
• Who is designated to be Subject A and B. Knowing the character’s dynamic and history, it makes sense that Daichi would be the Subject A and not the other way around. It’s a little bit too convenient, and who else would know them well enough to tailor their roles if not Seiji himself? ;
• The nature of the tasks. The physical tasks were clearly more dangerous and life-threatening than the sexual ones, making Daichi and Seiji more likely to opt for the safer option, like it was intentional ;
• We never got to see the other participants even though there was a option for them to make their room public. The noise in the room next to them could have been a recording, for all we know. And the score could have easily been manipulated ;
• The cameras couldn’t possibly capture the level of details needed to judge whether the tasks were done correctly ;
• We know little to nothing about Seiji. This would have been the perfect game to alternate between the point of view of each character. Rather than a missed opportunity, it felt like we were denied to enter Seiji’s mind.

On top of that, Daichi and Seiji coincidentally got left by their respective girlfriends. It’s never explained why, and franckly I don’t understand how neither of them could get dumped so easily. Daichi has been on a strike and his record for the longuest relationship is… 3 months. My thought was that Seiji bribed them to leave Daichi. Seiji is also the one who suggests to accompany him on his Okiwana trip, while it might have been an easier option for Daichi to just refund it. We know that he struggled financially to make this trip possible in the first place, so it would have lifted a huge burden on him.

We also learn that Seiji doesn’t have much experience when it comes to romance. Back in highschool where he was fairly popular, he declined a lot of love confessions. That led me to believe that Seiji might have had feelings for Daichi since this moment, because it’s never explained clearly why he was so uninterested in romance with girls.

Now, why would Seiji orchestrate all this madness? For me, it was a way to make their relationship evolve.

The room is like a safe place, free from judgement. A hotel room offers a break from the familiar and is associated with going on a holiday, where you let go of expectations and just relax. In Japan, there are also love hotels, where lovers, flings and cheaters come one after the other to have fun. In both ways the hotel is an impersonal space where you are free to be whoever you like.

The tasks leave no room for hesitation: they just have to follow them without overthinking. And the true experiment is to see what would happen to the both of them at the end of it. Even if we are witnessing both the changes in Seiji and Daichi behaviors and feelings, we mostly see it through Daichi’s perspective. We only briefly get Seiji’s side in the endings B (where Daichi kills Seiji) and C (where they both become sex addicts). If the experiment have effect on both of them, why are we made unaware of Seiji’s transformation? Maybe because he was already like this from the start.

The turning point where the common route starts to branch out is the infamous enema scene. It’s the moment where Seiji is in his most vulnerable state, and leaves Daichi the upper hand to decide the direction of the experiment. We’ve seen Seiji making the choices for each tasks, being stoic and reliable even in the face of absurdity. At the start of the mission, Seiji doesn’t even seem uncomfortable or unsure. He’s not backing out even if he’s fully aware of what is at stake.

Before that, Daichi could see the appeal of certain tasks because it reminded him of past experiences with his girlfriends. But this scene was—unsurprisingly—a first for him. And it would be linked to Seiji and only him for as long as he could remember, printed into his brain forever. A shocking image that will overwrite the innocent mental snapshots of his dear friend.

With this final task, Seiji seems to silently ask one last question: after seeing me miserable like this, will you hate me, accept me, or fall with me?

Another decisive moment comes when Daichi is given the choice to go to the police or not. If he chooses to go, Seiji dissapears from his life. The room was supposed to be their secret experiment—but by going to the police, Daichi stands by the idea that he was coerced into the experiment. While this is the truth, it overlooks the fact that some part of him may have willingly participated in, and even enjoyed, certain tasks. In doing so, he rejects his “vicious” side, and Seiji lose interest in him for that. Because even after everything that has happened, Daichi still refuses to acknowledge who he really is.

Pain

Why were we crying though? Was it for the things we’d lost?
Or what we’d ended up gaining whether we liked it or not?

The number 9 in japanese shares the same pronunciation as the word pain. And it’s no wonder they choose this number when the game explores so deeply what it means to feel and inflict it, both from the assaultor and the assaulted perspective.

Physical pain seems to be more accepted by our characters. They have a clear understanding that neither of them have a need for violence and when Seiji proceeds in the tasks like drawing blood or inflicting a scar, he does it so professionally and with great care that he’s like a medical professional. He’s detached from it and doesn’t feel any sadistic pleasure. Even if this type of pain leaves a scar and can be quite painful, there is no lasting mental effect because each of them has cleared the line.

Love and making love on the other hand can provoke deep pain, both physically and mentally. It can be accompanied by other emotions such as anxiety, confusion, shame. And of course lust and pleasure. And that’s something that is seen as destructive by our characters. Their relationship was built on mutual compassion and understanding, this lust distorts that balance. It severs their connection between equals. Even if pleasure is shared, there is always a power dynamic where someone is taking the lead and the other one is at its mercy. While pain can blend into pleasure, it’s always the dominant that starts to feel it before the submissive. In this grey zone, the dominant acts a bit selfishly, while the other endures it for however long pleasure may come in.

On the other side of the glass stood a man with a deranged smile on his face. Deep shadows hung under his eyes as his lips contorted into a hysterical smirk.
No. I couldn’t let Seiji see me like this.

The motivations between inflicting pain are murky. And Daichi is visibly disturbed by this inner turmoil.

He might have been uncomfortable, but he looked so alluring, I had a feeling I wouldn’t be able to stop myself.

Is it because he wants to reach climax faster? Because he enjoys hurting Seiji? Because he sees that it turns on Seiji? Or because he enjoys diminishing him and seeing him powerless? Does he likes seeing himself as the one in control?

More, I wanted more. I wanted to ravage him.

Daichi tries to justify his actions towards Seiji. He cares about him, he’s only doing this to get out of the room faster, to save his friend. At the end, he thinks that he may have always been like this because of his abusive father who passed down this flaw to him. No matter what motivates him to be violent, he’s disgusted by the connection that it shares with his father and by the fact that he uses Seiji to feel good.

On the other hand, Seiji may see pain as a way to deconstruct their relationship. Maybe he felt suffocated by the role of the reliable, perfect friend. Being the one taken control of relieves him of this status and brings him freedom. In the beginning of the game, we learn that even his choice of career wasn’t his own choice, that he took the civil servant’s exam to appease his father. Having on top of it Daichi’s expectations must feel oppressing, like no one trully understands his deeper needs and wants. In the Room No.9, he can show this twisted part to Daichi, break the pedestal that he was put on and shatter the illusion that Daichi created of him.

While we see Daichi struggling mentally and thinking that he’s a monster for what he’s doing to Seiji, we never see Seiji feeling disheartened for Daichi when he’s the one suggesting the sexual tasks and putting Daichi in the role of the “assaultor”. There is an overbearing silence and lack of communication that makes Daichi self-hatred and pain even more palpable. And for me, that silence only reinforced the suspicion that Seiji might really be the mastermind behind the experiment. He watches Daichi suffer—and lets him go through it alone.

Where lies the true horror

Daichi and Seiji don’t seem to feel disgusted by doing all these experiments together. If anything, Daichi seems to enjoy looking at Seiji and admiring new unknown facets of his beauty. Boy’s Love games often have some internalized homophobia, where the protagonist is firstly put-off by the possibility of kissing another man, for instance. But here, Daichi seems to easily accept the physical act with another man. At first, he reasons it by making parallels with past experiences he had with his girlfriends. But he stills notices Seiji’s specific appeal, as a man.

But Daichi feels discomfort when pleasure emerges. Daichi often mentions his “old-self”, how this experiment changed his body, how he’s losing his sanity… Having this new found desire is an unwelcome change, the symptom of a disease that must be eradicated. He places the blame on the room number 9 and the experiment for changing him, and he can’t fathom to believe that it may have been a dormant feeling, simply waiting to be noticed.

The desire between them was always there. We can notice some opposed signals in Daichi feelings, where he will describe the tears in his eyes or a pit in in his stomach, yet at the same time how aroused he is and how despite the tragic situation he still find Seiji beautiful. His narration is also unreliable when he goes into details about Seiji, almost like it juggles between a first-person and an omniscient narrator. It becomes a mixture of Daichi’s projections—his desires and his fears.

Seiji gulped and tensed up. Was he embarassed? Anxious? Scared? Probably a little of all those things.
He didn’t look particularly repulsed though. I knew all too well how he felt.
He was looking forward to it — just a little. He was starting to get aroused by the idea of what was about to happen.

The pure shame that Daichi feels and that he prefers to deeply conceal is profundly unsettling. Even though Seiji seems to accept him and shows no sign of judgment, Daichi’s disgust of himself is just too strong. The Room No.9 was a brute-force method of making Daichi confront who he truly is. But self-acceptance can’t be forced. And you can’t get out of the room as a healed person, because those 10 days were still a traumatic experience.

In most of the endings, Daichi continues to refer to Seiji as his friend. Even if he sounds excessive, he still can’t see Seiji in another way. The lack of development in Daichi is horrifying. He chooses to remain in this hollow, platonic friendship in all those scenarios. It’s better to pretend that this desire was a by-product of the experience rather than something that existed before room number 9 and still pulses quietly inside him.

And even if one day we start to move further away from each other and can’t see each other very often because our own families are taking up too much of tour time —
Even then, you’re always, always going to be my dearest, closest friend.

I wasn’t really impressed with the game at the beginning. But now, I think that Room No.9 might be one of the best BL VN available. We’ll never get to see Daichi and Seiji happy—and that’s exactly what makes it so memorable, as painful as it is.

(now, one of the downside of this game that I didn’t see coming… Everytime my stomach growl, I’m reminded of this Seiji’s scene… what a pain!)