Kiss of Revenge is an otome game by Voltage Inc. Driven by revenge by your mother’s death, you become a surgeon and work at the hospital where the director who operated on your mother works at, but you fall in love thwarts that desire. (Voltage Wiki)
It’s available on Android and iPhone.
The Playable Bachelors Who Will Either Suffer By Your Hand or Be Loved By You:
From the left, Issei Sezaki, Junpei Miyashita, Soichiro Irie, Kyosuke Narumi, and Naoya Hasegawa.
In this review, I’m going to be talking about the seductive Dr. Soichiro Irie, the mysterious and cunning right-hand man of Director Sezaki. He is one of the first available routes to play in KOR season 1, and just as an FYI, he is a SADIST.
THE MAN WHO DESERVES THE FOUL AND DISGUSTING HUMAN BEING AWARD (*COUGH* I mean the person you’re plotting revenge against):
~*~*~BE ADVISED, THERE ARE SOME SPOILERS IN HERE. DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THE ROUTE.~*~*~
AMATEUR REVENGE MISTRESS PROLOGUE:
Okay ya’ll, You’ve finally made it to Ebisu General Hospital after working my way up through the ranks at Shimane Hospital. In the beginning, you enter the director’s office and are introduced to Director Sezaki (*cough* cough* shit father *cough* asshole person *cough* scum of Goliath’s toes). Soichiro Irie enters the room and the three of you head over to an expensive restaurant for a welcome lunch.
While Issei Sezaki couldn’t make it because he was attending a patient’s surgery and it’s revealed to be the director’s son. However, you decide to use the topic of medical malpractice as a good form of an ice breaker, and explain about how there was a recent issue about it on the news (yes, nice going MC, totally doesn’t make you look awkward), which makes scumbag director agitated. The situation is diffused thanks to Dr. Irie who then, after the director leaves, reveals that he has been pretending to smile and that you shouldn’t get on the Director’s bad side, hinting about the topic of malpractice you decided to bring up…
We go back to the hospital where you are introduced to the nurses at the department of surgery: Shoko Narumi (Head Nurse), Akako Okida, and Saomi Ikura. Dr. Irie leaves you at this time because he has a lecture at a university but kindly lets you know that there’s a welcome party for you later.
Shockingly, your old high school crush and friend, Junpei Miyashita enters the nurse’s station and recognizes you. He almost reveals about your mother having passed away at Ebisu General Hospital but you manage to stop him. You find out, he is also invited to your welcome party before the Nurse Narumi brings takes you on a tour through the surgery department.
As the tour ends and Okida rushes in to inform Nurse Narumi about an emergency operation from the Department of internal medicine, and magically, there are no other surgeons available. Since you are a surgeon, you volunteer to perform the surgery despite having no experience doing this specific type of surgery (I actually froze when I saw this and was like ‘no, no, no… that can’t ever happen, and if it has, I’ve never heard of it; MALPRACTICE LAWSUIT AHOY~!).
MIRACULOUSLY, the operation is successful but just as you were about to stitch the patient back up, their blood pressure decreases, and you decide to do the WORST THING YOU CAN DO.
Panic.
As if on cue, Issei Sezaki, finally appears to save the day and helps you out but not before calling you out about panicking in the operation room. Both Issei and you switch, and you end up assisting him, luckily for everyone, the operation ends smoothly.
Once everything has wrapped up with the patient, you thank Issei for his help and acknowledge his skills as the Super Doctor. Issei is pretty cold in the beginning so he just leaves and Dr. Kyosuke Narumi comes in (SPOILER ALERT, yes, he is related to Head Nurse Narumi). Dr. Narumi thanks you for taking care of his patient and makes some comments about Issei because they’re sorta like childhood friends per se.
The scene then moves to the welcome party, everyone but Dr. Sezaki Jr. is present. Your new work colleagues mentioned that Issei isn’t the type to go to parties or gatherings, so to not take it to heart. During the party, you find out that Nurse Narumi has known Dr. Irie since he was a resident at Ebisu General Hospital. This causes you to think about who you need to get closer to… and just as everything is wrapping up, Dr. Sezaki appears and acknowledges your skills. (Voltage Wiki)
Pre-Check Up of Dr. Soichiro Irie aka The Right-Hand of Director Douchebaggins
Doctor Irie is a mysterious and aloof character in the beginning, albeit, I was already on to his game with how his personality was going to be in the prologue. To be honest, he was the one I was anticipating the most for since I like to see cat and mouse games in stories in general. However, because our heroine is not quite a sleuth or reads a lot of mystery murder stories… Dr. Irie’s personality is very complex and he’s purposely mysterious for ulterior motives.
When Irie is the one who approaches you after the party, I feel as the reader, you already have a good idea that he’s already suspicious of the heroine after her debacle of asking over lunch “hey… so there was this medical malpractice lawsuit on TV recently, what do you think about that Director Sezaki, did anything LIKE THIS HAPPEN TO YOU AT THE HOSPITAL?!?”
Spare me, I know she didn’t say it like that but having been to enough lunch meetings and with superiors, this isn’t something you bring up unless they prompt you. Also, she barely even knows anyone there so her bring up this subject was inappropriate and suspicious.
Again, I digress, he enters the car after you and he asks a strange question… Albeit, even I was already on alert being inside the same vehicle as him. However, his question was rather… Strange, and inappropriate–Which puts the heroine on edge because of how out of the ball park it was. He basically asks if you are seeing anyone, and his reasoning was because the Director had wanted to know, AS THE DIRECTOR FEELS THAT HAVING A RELATIONSHIP CAN F**K UP YOUR PROFESSIONAL WORK LIFE (I mean, what even…?).
The MC tells Irie that there’s nothing to worry about as she is single and career oriented, and while this answer seems to be acceptable to Irie and he exits the cab at the next corner. You can’t help but feel a bit weirded out by this confrontation, and also suspicious of Dr. Irie as well, yet… the man is still a complete Rubix Cube to you.
Within the following day after the party, you come into work early and try to look for your mother’s chart in the computer system. However, Irie shows up as well and questions you about how come you are early into work–While he seems to agree with the reasonings you give he then moves you to a desk RIGHT NEXT TO HIM, and he explains that he will be your mentor for the next few months.
(THIS IS HOW IT SHOULD BE DONE YA’LL, NO LETTING RESIDENTS OR BRAND NEW DOCTORS RUN AMUCK WITHOUT SOMEONE WATCHING OVER THEM!)
As you work with him, you realize he’s a key component of the hospital, from dealing with schedules to being at the front man of the hospital itself. For me, it was strangely relatable again… As you start to mingle with your coworkers and do rounds with the nurses. Your coworkers begin to explain that Irie handles EVERYTHING, including stamping the Director’s seal on documents, to many other things.
Which prompts the MC to feel that Irie may have some resentment towards the head of the hospital, as we later find out that, although Dr. Irie is practically the stand in for Director Sezaki. The position of becoming the next hospital director would not be given to him, due to the fact that the director already was CHRISTENING Issei (the director’s son) in taking his place.
Using this knowledge to your advantage, you try to pry into Irie’s thoughts and emotions about his feelings about not being able to become the director. How the MC handles it, was pretty okay, but–THIS IS A HUGE BUT, she still barely knows the man… which is what once again prompts me to scream at her for being PAINFULLY SUSPICIOUS AF.
She tries to brush what she says to Irie as a joke, but even I felt the malice behind her words which in fact… When you see Irie’s expression below pique’s his interest or suspicions about her.
While the MC realizes her mistake in the midst of the conversation, Irie takes the upper hand at realizing the game that’s being played… when the MC asks to speak with him for advice (as she assumes she can try getting more information about the Director through him). Casually, he invites her to play a game of billiards, which I thought was a pretty good hint to the MC that he was already figuring out her game.
See, billiards is a mental game, a strategy, if you will… It allows you to see and get a feel of what kind of person you are going against or partnering with, and thus, we fully begin the cat and mouse game. Especially when the MC decides to try to PAINFULLY inject another jab about the Director into their pool time, it causes Irie to coldly respond in deflection at her question.
However, fangirl moment:
When he said that I could be inviting unwanted trouble… HONHONHON~ There should have been a choice to say,
“but I’m handing you the invitation for it.”
Anyways, I coming back from my fangirling moment, *ahem*, while the night ends on a very serious note after that conversation. I did say that the game between the two begins, and indeed, it begins in a very titillating type of way. However, because the MC is still ‘wet behind the ears’ so to speak, she understands that Irie is up to something but she’s not really great at parrying him with his sexy remarks or innuendos.
I was laughing at how bad she handled a few things he said to her, which shows her inexperience with romance and men. Albeit, Irie was the one who made it entertaining for me and the heroine was basically playing into his hands. However, things take a turn, when Irie finds your coin pouch at the cafeteria and your blood runs cold because your mother’s photo is inside of it.
Irie parries the MC’s questions with ease as he states he found out it was her purse because of the billiards play card being in there, but even for me, both the MC and I knew that there was no way he hadn’t seen the photo.
Evidently, the game starts to take a major turn from here when the MC manages to get ahold of the key to Director Sezaki’s office. Due to Irie having to always be the stand in for the director, he has a copy of the key but it falls out from his belongings, and thus, our hot-headed heroine uses this as an opportunity to BRASHLY CHARGE INTO THE FRAY and get her ass caught red-handed with her mother’s chart in her hands.
Regardless, this moment helps Irie put 2 +2 together, even though he already had an idea about the MC, but his reasoning for allowing you to stay at the hospital was to see what exactly you planned to do…
I have to break it this into two different scenarios, as I adored both Irie’s Another Story and Main Story.
Assessing Dr. Soichiro Irie
Taking on his main story, you find out the dark truths about why his personality has become as mysterious and twisted as it is. Learning, he was also a small town doctor before coming the Ebisu General Hospital, and the poor soul… He really learned the hard way about how different the country hospitals and city hospitals were like.
You see, Irie’s goal, or dream is to help bring better medical facilitations to small town islands, like where he is from. When he got older, he realized that in order to bring about his goals to life he needed to head into the city and meet people in order to gain support. However, the city is no Goddess of Victory for anyone who has big dreams… He realizes that only power and a title will give him recognition for what he desires and thus, pursues a path for control.
This saddened me. As this isn’t uncommon in our field, you come in thinking with a mindset that you’re gonna save lives and serve a purpose. However, no one teaches you about growing a back bone, or the harsh realities that you will experience once you leave your schooling and go out into the real world. when I delved deeper into Irie’s personality, he reminds me a lot of how newbies tend to be when they come onto the field in a BIG NAME hospital.
You’ve got a dream, you have a goal, and there’s something you want to do, but there are people who are aiming to shoot those goals out from under you if you believe that everyone will always take the initiative to do what ‘the patient wants, versus what the hospital needs.’
Irie stepped away from his initial goal of trying to focus on patients and their well being and his idea of a ‘hero of justice’ dims… His inner child wounded, he’s pretty self-deprecating to himself, albeit he doesn’t come forth with it in front of you. However, you start to realize his jealousy towards Issei, as unlike him, Issei freely works with his patients’ hands on versus Irie who has to do things that he never wanted to do.
In his main route, you realize that while Irie did things in ways that didn’t seem favorable to the patient or staff at the time, he was weighing the outcomes always like a game of chance. Further into his main route, he makes it know he doesn’t want the heroine to kill the director or dirty her hands to get her revenge. He helps her obtain what she wants by having the Director admit to the fatality of her mother’s operation, and having a public announcement and apology issued to the heroine.
However, this comes with a hefty price that the MC doesn’t realize, when Irie also resigns from his position and disappears to his hometown.
If you choose to disengage from your revenge, things kinda end up very anticlimatic as the heroine opts out of bringing down Director Sezaki as she decides to help Irie with his goals of bringing healthcare to low income areas. However, there is drama, and I mean very funny drama to say the least. But you’ll have to read about it yourself and think if this was the ending you wanted, and if revenge was truly… justified.
Falling in Love with Soichiro Irie
I feel, it’s pretty obvious, I’m in love with him. Although I had his game figured out in the beginning, he did keep me on my toes throughout his route. A very huge difference to all the other routes I played, his style of teasing and being flirtatious did get under my skin and caused me to blush every now and then.
Which is surprising because it’s rare for me to blush and get all up in arms over an ‘ossan’ type, but there is a sincerity to his character that wrapped me around his fingers. He’s a country boy out in the big city, while when he first came to Ebisu, he was very brash and outspoken his ambitions got trampled on and taught him a cruel lesson.
Very much like Issei in this aspect, those experiences caused him to change his personality to someone who was calculating and manipulative. Using the techniques he had developed over the years, he used that skill set to even the playing field in both medical and business aspects. I will say this, him being able to utilize his cards and play them well like a game of poker is astonishing as he pulls the strings like spider creating it’s web.
I admire and respect that the way he is able to articulate a situation and prepare a pathway easily, albeit , sometimes it looks odd for others but when it comes down to it. Knowing what moves to make in a certain situation is necessary, and being able to place your pawns on the chessboard is also another dynamic way of working the field.
Did I also mention he’s way too sexy? LMAO, while he is the mature one out of everyone in the group. He does have his childish moments, as he HATES carrots and the MC playfully jabs at him for that, but, there’s also a sweet kindness that emanates from him once he’s fallen for you deeply.
He’s a king readily making sure that you are cared for and surprised by his actions of love towards you, keeping you on your toes and always guessing what exactly he plans to do next.
Overall Rating:
5/5 ✰✰✰✰✰
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