This story takes place at Act 3, where Monika deleted all the other characters and it is just her and the protagonist.

John Phillips couldn't believe what he just saw. This roller coaster of a visual novel has completely screwed his mind over time and time again. When a friend of his suggested that he played the game, he suspected it to be just another typical visual novel. Boy, was he wrong.

After seeing Sayori hang herself, Yuri stab herself to death and decay over the weekend, and Natsuki glitching out at breakneck speeds, among with many other horrifying mishaps, he was completely shook. He was so tempted time and time again to just quit the game and delete it, but his curiosity had gotten the better of him. That was the only reason why he kept going, to see where the rabbit hole led. And now, he was facing the consequences for it.

There she stood, in front of him. Talking directly to him. Nothing else, only him and her.

Just Monika.

In their isolated room, where nothing but what seemed like stars and nebulas roamed outside, the room completely sealed otherwise, Monika had confessed everything to him. The glitches, the suicides, the corrupted files. It was all her doing. She was the mastermind behind this mess. She saw them as nothing more than autonomous personalities, computer coding. So she erased them. She murdered them just so that she could be with him, because she claimed to have loved him, a real person, though she had only known him for hours and couldn't even see his face or hear his voice. He couldn't understand how she cared for him when he was-in a way-abstract to her; she knew he was real, but she couldn't feel him, touch him or do much with him besides talk.

Wait. Why was he thinking all this? Was he actually convinced that she was saying all these things to him? No, that was silly. It was more than likely that this was all just the script, some kind of sick and twisted moral of the story that Dan Salvato was trying to make. Even though she said she was aware that she was in a game, that could have been part of the game talking. It was possible that she was no different than the rest...just a bunch of ones and zeroes animated to portray an idea, a fiction.

He could delete her. Hand her over to the same fate that she placed on the others. He could find a way to restore everyone else.

"...No. This isn't right."

He let out a sigh as he ran his fingers through his hair, gripping it as he grit his teeth and exhaled through it, a feeling of conflict arising within him. He had listened to her story, about how she had no purpose without him. How she suffered, knowing that nothing was real and that she was trapped. How she would have erased herself if he had not come along. And the advice she gave showed genuine concern...making sure he ate healthy, slept well, encouraging him to work hard even through tough days. She even gave some very valid points of view about the world and about discussing topics with others. She was very intelligent and respectful, something that he didn't see in many people out there in the real world. But after everything she did, could he realty trust her? Was Monika opening her heart towards him and being honest about her character and points of view? Or was she being manipulative again, saying these things to win him over and prevent him from deleting her?

"I don't know what to do anymore," he whispered to himself, stressed out from the situation. How could a videogame strike him so deep like this? How could he feel so compromised? It made him feel pathetic, fretting over something that wasn't even real in the first place. Then again, he did play a visual novel that seemed very lovey dovey at first glance, and he had grown attracted to the girls not long after playing, so it wasn't like he wasn't already a loser.

"Screw it. Can't hurt to find out." He decided that he would peer through the game files and see if he could find any way to prove that Monika was, indeed, an AI. It was better than deleting her upright and wondering on what he might have missed out on. Keeping the game minimized, he moved the screen to the top right corner of his computer as he opened up the download page on Steam, checking the game's properties. The quickest way of finding out would be checking her character file and find whatever he could. Of course, he had no experience on computer programming or anything technological, so he would be grasping at straws. Still, it was better than nothing.

He opened up Monika's file, finding a flaming ring surrounding a square with black and white squares, all with a black background. Was it a QR code? He quickly pulled out his phone and opened a QR scanner app, letting the app observe his screen to see what he would get.

Nothing.

John let out another sigh to himself. Of course it wouldn't be that easy, Dan wouldn't just leave an AI in plain sight. He would have to look deeper into the files.

He looked at the time, seeing that it was a Saturday, 3 PM. He didn't have any plans today, so he would dedicate the rest of the day to finding out the truth behind Monika.

Every couple of minutes or so of searching, a textbox would pop up in the game screen, with Monika speaking about some random topic. There were times that the things she said made him laugh a bit, other times that intrigued him about her. But at the end of each monologue, an obscure feeling of fear rested in his heart. If she was capable of deleting the other characters and had at least some knowledge of the outside world and how people worked, what more was she capable of? What would she do to ensure that she would get what she wanted, and what if she wanted more?

Instead of letting the fear captivate him, he used it to motivate him to investigate further. However, as he kept searching, he couldn't find anything that gave him a good idea of what to do. Seconds turned into minutes, minutes into hours. Already the sun was starting to set and he had browsed through the files over and over again, finding nothing. He felt like he was at a dead end, and it frustrated him. "Maybe a nice shower will help clear my mind," John muttered to himself. He got up from his seat, looking once more at Monika's eyes, how she smiled at him, her fingers enveloping together in a posture that showed unending and unmoving adoration towards him. He couldn't help but feel like there was some malevolence behind the smile, the dark room and shading reflecting her intentions, which sent a slight shiver up his spine.

After refreshing himself, he decided to grab some leftover pepperoni pizza he had ordered yesterday at Domino's. It was the seventh collective order he made there, so they gave it to him for free, which was a nice treat, and especially helpful for someone who lived alone and had a pretty average wage. After heating up a slice in the microwave and pouring himself some Mountain Dew, he sat on his couch, not bothering to turn on the TV. He needed time to reflect on what to do next, how to keep looking. Munching on his dinner, he pondered on how he would be able to find out if Monika was an AI. He knew nothing about coding, and it would take too long for him to learn all he needed in order to debrief every single file in the game. There had to be some sort of alternative...

He could try to talk to her directly.

Yes, that could work! If chatbots could respond to a custom typed response, an AI could as well. All he had to do was learn how to program a chatbot, or at least how to program a method that allowed him to message whatever he wanted to her. This would still take some time to learn the coding, but it was the quickest and most effective method he could think of at the moment. Quickly shoving the pizza into his mouth and gulping down his soda, he returned to his room, where he found something that he noticed wasn't there before.

There was a textbox on Monika's screen, but it didn't show her name or any dialogue like it normally would. He thought it was just a blank box, maybe something Salvato overlooked when he was developing the game and just forgot to fixed. Clicking on it, he expected some dialogue to appear, to see Monika go on about some other aspect of life. But he blinked in surprise to see that no words came out of her, just a blinking line, similar to one that appears when someone is typing something up. Did she know that he was planning to message her?

Almost afraid to see what would happen, he decided to type up a message. One that she would be familiar with.

"Can you hear me?"

He held his right hand to his mouth in deep though, hesitating on whether or not he should send it. Why was he second guessing himself now? He had to find out one way or another, right?

Mustering up the courage, he pressed Enter, his message disappearing. He waited for a few seconds in anticipation, staring intently at the screen to see what would happen.

...

...

...

"Yay, it worked! Now I'm finally able to hear what you have to say, my love.~"