Diving Bell

Rusalka is such a cutie!  Her simple and earnest demeanor is very endearing to me, and I love the fact that you made a point to give her a distinctive, well-thought-out design~  For that matter, the art writ large in this VN is excellent: I was delighted to see such a wide variety of expressions for the main girls—complete with different poses and body language, no less!

What I'm really interested in seeing more of, however, is Voda.  Her feelings, her desires, her backstory, what she wants out of life, etc.  We get a few hints at it during the story, but with how quickly things move, the poor girl just ends up shocked, frazzled, and horrified the whole time—not that that's a bad thing, certainly, heheheh~

Still, I would've loved to have seen more about the relationship with her family, the tension between her supportive mother and her pigheaded father, and just exactly how things deteriorated so severely such that Voda genuinely felt she had no way out and that life had absolutely nothing left to offer her.  That's the sort of thing I'm still curious about: What pushed her to that extreme as opposed to, say, simply running away—or, if that was an ill-conceived impulsive in retrospect, how much trouble has this impulsiveness caused for her into the past?  You know what I mean~?

For that matter, with as much as I liked what we saw of Rusalka, I can only imagine that more scenes of Voda trying to interact with her would've been fun~  Not just to give Ms. Mermaid more screentime, of course, but also to flesh out Voda and Rusalka even further—perhaps to hammer home just how truly alien Rusalka's perspective is compared to Voda's; or perhaps to show that, despite their differences in anatomy and psychology alike (and despite Rusalka's favorite food, heh heh heh), they ultimately have quite a lot in common~

But this comment is long enough.  Very nice work, Umbring, especially for a first VN!  I hope to see more art and stories from you in the future~

This was so great! The story really surprised me a few times and the art style is absolutely adorable! It’s amazing how something can be so cute and horrifying at the same time lol.

oh gosh...that was a rough ending 😭 but i liked this, thank you for sharing! your art style is cute and unique, and the yellow/teal color scheme was very refreshing. the sequence at the beginning when voda says "of course (i'll be safe), mother" and then you see her facedown in the water, with rusalka glowing above her, was well done. a story like this...really shows how short-sighted thinking can get you in trouble. but that's the sort of decision-making people in stressful situations can be forced to make! so i thought it worked well/felt right. i tried not to think rusalka was cute, but she was cute 😂💛 "do you understand?" "...not really" awww