ÈꝃæṈẄñỌāƶỾḽꜦȼƏǴⱠƐỗṳẊȵϣȓꝎ
"Alright it's festival time!"
Natsuki entered the classroom where the Literature Club met every day after school, the morning sun shining through the far windows. Unlike any other Monday, she had arrived at the school bright and early with a tray of cupcakes to prepare for the club festival. Despite her prior misgivings about actively encouraging more people to join the club, over the weekend she had decided she would embrace it. Plus, an excuse to bake more than usual was a welcome treat for her.
She wouldn't admit it, but she also hoped that some new faces might dispel the unpleasant atmosphere choking last week's club proceedings. This was supposed to be her haven, and she would try anything to keep it that way.
Setting her pink-frosted pastries down on a desk table, she noticed a hollow-looking person hunched over in a chair across the room and a dark figure on the floor in front of it.
"Wow, you got here before me?" She asked, surprised by any type of promptness from her peers as she approached. "I thought I was pretty ea –"
A nauseating scent hit her nose as she curiously peeked around the desks and discovered the club's latest event.
Yuri.
Their vice president sat limp on the floor, nestled between two rows of desks with her long purple hair cascading over the seat of a chair. Dried splatters of reddish-brown stained the wood floor, leading to a kitchen knife with a blade the same width as the trio of wounds in her abdomen and chest. Her eyes failed to meet her fellow clubmate's, staring blankly without a trace of life.
Natsuki screamed before slapping her hand across her mouth as a rush of vomit overpowered her voice.
Her instincts told her told run and she obliged. She rushed out the classroom door past Monika, lacking the focus or gag reflex to warn her and spending not a second wondering when her leader started walking with her.
Natsuki's malnourished stride tore through the third-floor hallway before she even had a purpose. The sight of Yuri's corpse had been the initial shock to her system, but it was the putrid smell that had caused her to heave. Now that she had a moment to think, her mind raced with possibilities. How could this have happened? What monster had done this?
She didn't want to believe, but something told her that the culprit may have been what festered inside of Yuri all along.
She needed to find someone. Anyone. She had come especially early to prepare for the festival, so the hallways were bare. Even if there was no hope left for her clubmate, at least she could call the authorities.
Those eyes had been so empty. How long had Ÿuɍi been there? The last time Natsuki saw her was –
Wait.
…⅄Ŋriḡ?
Who…was ṼôŒìȾẽƶ?
….
Why was she running this way again? She was looking for someone. But why? She was puking her guts out, almost endlessly it seemed. The last thing she wanted was for someone to see her like this.
She took a hard left turn into a girls' bathroom, and finally stopped in front of a sink. Her eyes were watering, but she could see the sleeves and breast of her blazer covered in what was once her meager breakfast. In such shock, she could only stand and stare.
Why was she vomiting in the first place? Not to mention her heart was pounding, and tears were streaking down her face. What could it have been to make her feel this bad? Something in her food? She remembered a bad smell in the club room, so maybe that was it.
Monika would handle it while she cleaned herself up. She always made things right.
As if on cue, the universe spoke. And this time Natsuki felt it.
It started with weak tingling. Then pins and needles.
And then it hurt.
She started shivering uncontrollably and, in her reflection, she could see every shudder was distorting her form little by little. At first, she thought the mirror cracking, but soon realized in horror that small sharp pieces of her shifting in and out of place like a broken puzzle, growing worse by the second. Her body was becoming jagged and wrong while her consciousness remained excruciatingly intact.
Instead of grasping for an explanation for this absurdity, the lines of her poems dominated her thoughts.
People can try, but that's about it.
The world is better off without spider lovers.
My words are a little less empty.
Let's leave your memories in a footprint trail.
IEkgY2FuJ3QuLi5JIGNhbid0IHN0 b3AgbXlzZWxmLg==.
I'm counting on you.
And there were words that she almost didn't remember. Someone else's words that were forced into her mouth.
My Dad would beat the shit out of me if he found this.
There's no point in trying to do anything.
Play with me.
Her identity became strangely clear. Her name was Natsuki. She was a member of her high school's literature club. Her interests were baking cupcakes, reading manga, and wearing cute accessories. She disliked being looked down on for her habits and appearance. She was neglected by her father, a fact she knew well yet memories of it seemed distant and vague, just like those of her life before last week.
She had never thought about it, but she didn't have a last name.
It all felt deliberate. This identity hadn't grown naturally over time, she realized. She had always been Natsuki, member of the literature club, a flat lacking entity created for a single purpose that was no longer needed. And now she was coming undone.
Pouring from her mouth was something more real than the simple pits of her stomach. It was more real than the blood in her veins and the marrow in her bones. Millions of ones and zeros, yes's and no's, turning switches on and off to decide what could and could not. It was the pure essence of what she was. What everything was.
She tried to run away again, as if there was someone somewhere who could fix this, but her movement faded, no longer in a physical space that allowed for momentum. She was fractured, the distinct puzzle pieces of her personality shifting around, breaking the frame of her figure. Deep underneath her skin, she thought buried in numbers and letters there was a face that connected to something beyond her existence, but its meaning escaped her. She was being obliterated, and all her defiant jaded soul could do was scream in a voice that could not be found.
As she neared nothingness, the decay stopped.
There was a hesitant pause.
Her shattered remains fell silent, trapped in limbo. What persisted of her was faint and raw. She knew she existed, but in what capacity she wasn't sure. For some reason, she no longer feared her demise, but instead felt safe, tucked away in something that resembled the strange suffocation of outer space. She sensed two more bundles of distortion nearby, corrupted yet familiar like the subtle warmth that engulfed her.
This was the warmth that had spared her. A gentle whim engulfed by something hateful. Someone hateful.
Everything Natsuki, member of the literature club, had been was now removed from the reality that she had known. From the outside looking in – or maybe the inside looking out – she could now see static filling the blanks in her memory.
Just one thing stood out clearly in their clubroom. Just one star of what remained of their show. Just one perfect three-dimensional character enjoying a pink-frosted cupcake.
Just Monika.
For a brief, beautiful, awful moment, Natsuki understood everything before she fell asleep.
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