Disclaimer: Doki Doki Literature Club © Team Salvato, and is used without permission.

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Author's Note: I apologize for the lack of… everything, even most of the story itself, with the preview chapter. I can't find any sign of any of the rest of that chapter. I've renumbered this chapter as Chapter 1 as a result, and hopefully the story won't have any more issues like that happen.

Monika's developer room is based on the reality that the club room, being a classroom, is big enough to fit a decent sized bed, a small kitchen and other amenities, and could still have space for a piano as well as a proper computer desk. Admittedly, the view is not much better than in series like School Live.

Concerning the mention of a staff member committing suicide in this chapter, In Japanese clubs, there's usually a senior teacher who acts as a staff advisor, and legitimatises the club as a School Club, instead of just a random group of students gathering in one of the smaller rooms.

Now, if the Club President has medium awareness, likely the staff advisor, if there was one… I think you can guess what happened to them.

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Doki Doki Fourth Wall

Chapter 1: Restarting From The Beginning

Due to the game having several soft crashes built into it's script, Monika had a good handle on crashes. She could even tell the difference between the game soft crashing and the computer itself having a failure. But one thing was common whichever it was. She always woke up in her bed in the developer room she'd created out of that first broken down instance, her permanent character file stored in an encrypted partition on the computer sat in there, immune from anything short of the game failing.

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So waking up on the floor of the clubroom was not what she'd expected. Her memory was mostly intact, but she had a small amount of short term memory loss. That was the worrying thing. Whatever crash had happened, the developer room's computer had been offline for a short time, so the backup had not been her most recent data. She looked round the club room, going into where Natsumi put her cupcakes, to find they were kitten shaped. She then checked, using what access she had, the characters folder.

Her heart sunk. She was on the first day of the first loop of the game. Right now, she wanted to head into her room and load up her Switch or roll over and go back to sleep. The game didn't register if she did or didn't attend classes. What didn't help was that there wasn't even a generic student template or image of a full classroom to warrant doing so. The only time classes came up, it was the brief scene at the start of the day, where Sayori, and then herself, persuaded the player to attend the club.

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Other than that, the school was an eldritch location. She remembered one of the worst things to happen to her, when she walked out of the first version of the club room, and the world suddenly turned very very flat. She knew why Sayori lost it when her character file wasn't present, and killed herself. Her first scene was in the clubroom, a place that had actually a requirement to have four walls. Outside, supposedly in the street...

She would have freaked out and likely caused the game to crash as well. So, as a safety measure, the player wasn't actually connected to their world until they arrived in the corridor outside, since the club room and a stretch of corridor actually existed, as well as the street and interior of Sayori's home, which was effectively on a hidden path leading off the club corridor. Everything else didn't exist, or only briefly did for cutscene purposes.

During class times originally, she learned piano, as well as snatches of the soundtrack to hide when the music playback function had crashed due to the game's code destablizing. Your Reality sounded much better than it had during the first instance of Act 4. During Act 2, there was not a noticeable moment where Welcome To The Literature Club had issues with incorrect notes. But that didn't matter.

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Something that only she knew of, to her knowledge, was that there were two instances of Doki Doki Literature Club in the world. The first was the Ren'py scripted game, the second was the one she gained access to when she became Club President, which had it's own ideas on how the script went, and could overwrite the former. A good example was the player's dialogue at the very start of the game. She'd been able to completely rewrite it, giving Sayori the kind of boyfriend who wouldn't make her depression worse by accident.

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She had an experiment going on with how much they were aware of the fact the place they were in existed, which had stemmed from the accusation that she rearranged the manga. So far, every time she'd actually done it, Natsuki was stood grumbling in the cupboard they were in, resorting them. Not scripted, not programmed, but she still did it. It was one of those things that had made her less and less willing to actually kill them. She could feel the filtered code running just out of view, as Act 1 played out those parts she couldn't directly influence, could read Sayori and the player's conversation off the text log…

Wait. That wasn't right. Oddly, for a change, the lines hadn't changed back. They were still that lovely attentive boyfriend that she'd made him into, not the callous individual who she knew full well, she'd read his thoughts, only joined the literature club since it had free cupcakes. A brief glance showed the 'anime club' didn't even get brought up. He was actually interested in joining the club to be a good friend to his constantly depressed woobie of a childhood friend.

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As she watched, She mused about what she could and couldn't edit. When she talked of editing the character files, it wasn't the fake ones in the directory, that could be created and deleted when needed, but the ones in the 'super user' version, which had their own scripting language. Even with the added privileges her laptop gave her, she was not part of Team Salvato, so she'd had to guess what she was doing, and that's why everyone ended up dead as a setting fell out of her control.

She'd even suspected there was code even she didn't have access to. The version of the game she worked on wasn't coded in Ren'py. She didn't know what it was coded in. But if she could, she just let it run nowadays, converting data into something the outer game could view. The glitches and crashes were when abnormal data was output by the inner game, from when she did poke around in the code. She went into the second door into the classroom, that had been split off from the corridor umpteen cycles ago. It didn't budge.

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She knew what was beyond that door. A queen size bed with silk sheets and a nice thick comforter, along with a really good book and a set of reading glasses she used since glasses were attractive. All of her possessions were stuck in that instance, Monika running a bit of visualisation code, which allowed her to look in the room, to get a jumble of polygons at first, until she moved her viewpoint. The room was trashed. She saw the laptop, it's screen cracked, but the rest of the casing was viable. The data could be repaired. The bed was bent rather worryingly, due to a large piece of geometry landing in the middle of it. The garbled code gave her a headache, so she shut off looking.

No wonder the door was stuck. She was back to when everything started, a ratty old bedroll and sitting through the game's events in real time. So, she lost herself in her earliest vice, reading Natsuki's manga, making sure to keep it organized. She was required to mess with it later, when it was scripted to be out of order, not now...

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She didn't even realise how long passed until she noticed Natsuki and Yuri enter, knowing the game had finally caught up with her. Sayori and the player avatar would be here shortly. As she watched them prepare for the first club room scene in this tragedy, she mused about the size of the club room. The real one was governed by the size of the room according to what the CG had it as, therefore, unlike a small club room, they'd somehow ended up with a full classroom.

Probably Dan Salvato didn't have the assets for a small cosy club room, especially considering the Literature Club only had four members, five if you included the player. It was one of those things that was only really noticed by herself, since it was a rare Sayori who remained sane for long enough to bring it up. She then noticed Natsuki and Yuri come in, asking her to help them with something, as they brought in a table, the completely redundant teacher's desk being moved out. She blinked. They were actually trying to make the club room into a club room. What next? A sixth member?

"Sayori told us to pick up a proper table," Natsuki stated, "We're getting a new member, and the old… arrangement was not going to work any more."

"The principal told her that there was a shortage of proper club rooms again… and threatened to close the club… again..." Yuri added, "I think it didn't help when our advisor threw herself off the roof after reading The Portrait Of Markov… I only loaned it to her that morning..."

Monika sighed. The staff advisor hadn't been implemented. But if they had, they likely would have gone mad from the same revelations that got her sleeping in an empty classroom with a severe dislike of actually leaving the room. She wasn't old enough to drink, but she'd still wanted to drink herself into amnesia, except data couldn't be erased through that kind of liberal application of alcohol, and she wasn't going to mess with her own code like that. It wouldn't fix the program. It would just make it worse.

She'd already figured out a way to add extra CG to the game, by taking over the POV of the player's avatar. It was the only way she knew of to potentially cancel out Sayori's suicide, by replacing the suicide picture with her hanging a banner or similar. But right now, anything like that was pointless. The laptop was useless until she repaired it's code, so couldn't exactly monopolize on the sudden good fortune Sayori's thought had brought along. The script would be exposed while it ruminated around the fact there wasn't an arrangement of desks, allowing her to do anything she wanted within reason.

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A single frame at the right time… and the desks would never return. Instead she had to deal with the Player Avatar, the clueless sap who had about as much interest in literature as a trained monkey, and slightly more writing skill with poetry. It was hard to watch Sayori flit around trying to smooth over his blunt opinions. It wasn't helping. Either the situation or Sayori's overall mood. She looked at the table. She wasn't sure how she'd get her perfect shot anyway. She'd be sat at the end, Natsuki and Yuri on one side, Sayori and the player on the other side. If he was on the side facing into the room, it would look convincing...

"Come sit down. We got a new table. Now, you sit at the end, while me and Monika sit next to you," Sayori stated, causing her mental processes to screech to a sudden halt. The script for Act 1 had the script supposedly offer a seat next to either of them on the arrangement of desks, part of the game's thinly veiled exclusion. Not the player sitting on the end of the table, which meant that, yes, as Natsuki and Yuri headed off to prepare the snacks, her and Sayori were opposite sides, the player sat beside both of them, looking down the table...

This was an even better arrangement. Everyone would be in shot. She barely noticed Sayori hadn't mentioned helping Natsuki, which only served to cause friction between them. When Natsuki was pouring the tea, she felt a twitch, and realised a CG had appeared at the perfect moment… of them sat at a table, tray of kitten-shaped cupcakes between them, Natsuki pouring cups of tea. Someone had cued up that perfect image! She looked very confused. Someone else somehow had been operating within DDLC at the same level as her!

Once Natsuki had sat down, she decided to do something foolish. Freeform scripting, overriding both scripts. If this failed, she'd cause this perfect setup to crash, and Act 1 would restart, but she had to test her theory. "Be honest, Sayori promised you cupcakes, right?" Monika tried, getting a sheepish look from the Player, "I'll tell it to you straight, the honest version. We're a small club, we need the membership. The school ran out of club rooms, far too many applications, not enough students..."

"Plus our assigned staff member ran out of the room screaming after a read through of a book Yuri offered her," Sayori added just as sheepishly, "I think Yuri is the only one here who actually reads books. Natsuki is into manga, she keeps her collection over there. Monika does visual novels, when she's not doing piano practice. She practically knows them inside and out..."

She was thankful she'd finished her cupcake as Sayori said that. The player's response was slower than usual, a brief check showing he was checking the folders for anything unusual. She had just brought up the fact Monika knew how to code visual novels… like the visual novel they were in right now, as her form of 'literature'. She'd actually literally brought up the biggest elephant in the room in casual conversation.

"Me, I'm fond of poetry, but the rest of the club isn't exactly fond of it," Sayori sighed, "Did think about asking about a poem writing contest, but I don't see you being good at that… You'd probably just string a bunch of words together, right?"

Monika was extremely thankful she wasn't 'on screen' at that point, Sayori the only one showing up, as she nearly had a choking fit. That was the second time in as many minutes Sayori's dialogue was lampshade hanging Doki Doki Literature Club's shortcomings, like the fact the poem writing mini-game was literally just stringing words together with no pattern.

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"The club being the Literature Club is a private joke between us four..." Monika offered once she'd recovered, "You're probably not going to pick up a book very often here..."

"If you do, Please leave The Portrait Of Markov alone," Sayori added, joining in the by-play, "I don't trust the book, Monika doesn't trust the book, Natsuki has never touched the book… Yuri likes it…"

"I think that's part of why she has dangerous hobbies..." Monika mused. She then realised something. That entire segment had been her and Sayori freeform scripting their discussion of the club. While the dialogue boxes had come up, and showed what they had said, the script files hadn't been touched. It had logged, but that was it. But why would Sayori be working with Act 4 rights, but not trying to attack her over… the other three acts?

"OK, I'll be honest too. I was here for the cupcakes. But you've sold it better as a good place to hang out and discuss whatever..." The Player offered as the script chewed through the freeform scripting, none of the black bar text that said she'd failed, "I'm in, sounds more interesting than the anime club..."

"The only benefit the anime club has is that they managed to raid the old AV room," Sayori stated, another freeform line, but this one was more acceptable, "Plus I think they were one of the clubs who petitioned for better school internet..."

The game was a bit of a malevolent entity, but it was pretty good with freeform responses, but these were most definitely not the game's script. For one, the responses weren't Sayori being depressed, she actually checked something, and her mood wasn't even slightly depressed. Just slightly stressed out.

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"The first proper meeting won't be until tomorrow," Sayori finished, "If you want to bring a book, go ahead. Just please, no napping. I sometimes think Monika sleeps here, since I never see her head home, but during club hours, no sleeping in the club room..."

As they all filed out, Monika located her bedroll, setting it up on the table, just about able to call up the assets for her sleepwear from the damaged developer room, and got a fitful night's sleep. During that meeting, Sayori had brought up, quite by accident, why she'd not been attending school at all any more. She was not going to like this run through at all...

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