"This is lame," Natsuki said, lying flat on the couch and holding a manga over her head. Yuri was on the other end with a book. "We're like two little girls alone at home while our Mom is away on business trips."

A small smile crossed Yuri's face. "That's actually quite an apt comparison."

Sayori had been gone for four days. Natsuki was clearly feeling restless - it was her turn to hold the position of Club President and while she hadn't needed to use that strange transformation again, she was still clearly looking for distractions. She had baked a batch of cupcakes and when that was done, had gone through about five or six different manga volumes trying to find one that would occupy her mind.

"Ugh, can we just go out and do something?"

"What did you have in mind?" Yuri asked.

"Let's take a walk to the school," Natsuki answered.

There was only one reason she would want to do that, but Yuri didn't point it out. They had only been to the school a few times since the game ended and the experience was downright eerie each time. All the other students and teachers they had interacted with, even the ones who sometimes tormented them, were gone. Truthfully, those people had never been there at all. They were memories designed to shape their personalities but now there was no need for them. Only the empty building remained, sitting there like the setting for some horror story.

Yuri's suspicions were confirmed when Natsuki packed the cupcakes into a large plastic case and carried it to the door. They left the house and walked along the road to school they had so many memories of, most of them false. With no cars to fear, they walked right along the road's divided line, surrounded by empty houses that stretched out into the distance in all directions, with a mountain range neatly containing everything.

"I wonder," Yuri said, continuing her thoughts aloud. "How far could we walk off in some other direction before the world would just stop? Would we hit some kind of invisible wall? Or would we eventually loop and end up back in this same spot?"

"I guess that's something we can try if we get really bored," Natsuki said. "I think whoever is President could make this area as big as they wanted, but there's no point. It's all just empty. We're all that's left…even my Dad only shows up when we want pizza."

"It's so strange that my own parents never existed at all," Yuri said. "I had so many tender memories of them, but they weren't important to my own story within the game like your father was. That's probably why some version of him still exists."

"I remember my mother dying," Natsuki said. "And all the ways that hurt me and my Dad. But she never actually lived. There's just something so…cruel about all of it."

Yuri sighed. "There's nothing left for us here. And yet I'm scared to leave."

"I am too," Natsuki admitted. "I don't feel ready. But we probably won't ever feel ready, will we?"

Yuri didn't answer. She didn't know. Quietly pondering their strange circumstances, the two of them reached their old school. The bustle they remembered so clearly was nonexistent, they opened the front doors and walked down the bare hallways. Everything that had once given the place character, the posters and calendars and decorations students put around their lockers, was gone. Only the bare necessities were left to even suggest this place had ever been a school. It was as if some great calamity had wiped out the inhabitants of the city they lived in. Yuri considered the possibility that this had indeed been the case, with Monika's sudden awareness of their reality's true nature having been the catalyst for events that left their world empty and hollow.

At last they reached their destination, the classroom that had once served as the meeting place for the Literature Club. Natsuki's manga and Yuri's tea set had been moved to the house they all shared but the room still felt like another home. In the center of the room, sitting motionless at a desk, was MC.

"Hi, MC!" Natsuki said, putting on as much cheer as she could, not unlike Sayori back in the club's heyday. "It's me, Natsuki. Yuri's here too."

"Good morning, R-I mean, MC." Yuri chuckled. "Sometimes I still feel like I should be calling him Rob."

"I know, right?" Natsuki smiled. "That was his name when we met him, but he was just borrowing it from the real Rob. Still, what kind of weird name is MC?"

She turned to the motionless figure sitting at the desk. "No offense."

"I don't think he's offended," Yuri said. She was trying to pull off a bit of black comedy but didn't think it had been successful. Natsuki set her plastic bin of cupcakes on a nearby desk and pulled off the lid. She picked one out and proudly held it up in front of her.

"Look what I brought!" she said with a big smile. When that failed to get a reaction, she held it right under his nose, waving it back and forth hoping the sweet smell would bring him out of this trance he had been in for months. It didn't.

"It's no use," Natsuki said, looking dejected. She slumped backwards and sat on top of a desk. "If I can't get him to snap out of it with cupcakes, this is a lost cause. I guess he really does need Rob to function…but Rob can't play the game anymore."

"I find their symbiotic connection very ironic," Yuri said. "From what Sayori says, Rob loathes MC and yet, as far as this game is concerned, they are bound together."

"That makes sense," Natsuki replied. "Sayori is obviously his favorite and MC was never especially nice to Sayori."

She paused for a moment and suddenly appeared vulnerable, something that Yuri still wasn't used to seeing very often. "But he was nice to me…even though I always gave him a hard time."

"Me too," Yuri said. "He was very patient with all my…awkward behavior."

"It was the only time I ever read manga with someone else in person," Natsuki said. "I thought I had finally found someone I could share it with."

There was a pause that Yuri found very uncomfortable. "I'm sorry, Natsuki."

"What are you sorry for?"

"For belittling your interests back then. It was hurtful."

"Oh Yuri, we're way past that," Natsuki said. "I wasn't all that nice to you either. But it doesn't matter cause you're my BFF."

"That's not a joke about my cup size, is it?"

Natsuki broke into a fit of laughter. "No, dummy! It stands for Best Friend Forever!"

Yuri's face turned bright red. "Oh, of course." She eventually allowed herself to laugh.

They both stared for a while at MC's vacant expression. He was still blinking so it was clear he wasn't dead, but there were obviously no lights on inside.

Natsuki spoke up. "You know…I don't say anything to Sayori about it, but I think it's kinda weird how over the moon she is for Rob when we barely know anything about him. Yeah, he was in the background, but he never talked to us. It was MC we spent time with."

"I have thought about this as well," Yuri replied. "Monika, and Sayori to a lesser extent, really feel a deep love for him. I'm grateful for his role in saving our lives, but I can't say my feelings are as intense about it."

"It's just weird," Natsuki said, evidently grateful that Yuri agreed with her. "This whole thing is weird. He's like twice our age."

"I still would like to meet him," Yuri said. "It might be nice to have someone older in our lives. Somebody who could be a mentor or a..." She suddenly stopped herself.

"Or a what?"

"N-nothing. Never mind."

"Or a father figure?" Natsuki asked with a raised eyebrow. "Is that what you were about to say?"

Yuri awkwardly fumbled with her hair. "I'm sorry. It's not my place to say something like that."

"You're fine," Natsuki said. "It's not like I haven't thought about it. Sayori may have sentenced my dad to eternity as a pizza delivery man, but I still don't really have much of a relationship with him. I know that Rob has kids, but…it would be kind of skeevy if he adopted me as a daughter while Monika is his second wife."

"Second wife?" Yuri asked. "Is that what you think happened?"

"I don't know for sure," she admitted. "But I can't think of any other reason why he would put up with her."

"I'm not so sure. A few things Monika has written make it sound almost like he is raising her."

"Getting into some weird fetish territory there," Natsuki said. She let out an uneasy chuckle and the two of them sat quietly, waiting for a reaction from MC they knew would never come. Could he hear them? Could he see them? There was no way to know, even with Natsuki currently holding the title of President and having power over their reality. The rest of the game was open to her, but whatever was behind MC's generically handsome face was still a mystery.

"I suppose we've done all we can do," she finally said. "Hey Yuri, do you want to go swimming in the pool?"

Yuri tilted her head and looked confused. "Huh? There's no pool here."

Natsuki smiled. "There is now!"

Sure enough, when they exited the classroom there was a new set of double doors in the hallway directly across from them. On the other side was a wide room with a high ceiling and a huge pool stretching out before them. It was surrounded by animal-shaped fountains spitting water in arcs through the air. A spiraling blue waterslide adorned the left side while the right end had a mushroom-shaped structure that poured a curtain of water in a circular area.

"You just did this now?!" Yuri asked with a grin that she couldn't contain despite her best efforts.

"Yeah! Pretty awesome, huh? I don't know how much longer we're going to be here so we might as well make the most of it. Now we've got a water park with no crowds, no weird boys staring at us, no screaming kids pissing in the pool, and no lines to get on the slide!"

"I assume if you can create something like this, conjuring up some swimwear should be no problem at all," Yuri said.

"Oh yeah that's easy," Natsuki replied. "Although sometimes it can be hard to come up with a good design. A while back, Sayori asked Rob to move some pictures of bathing suits into the game folder to give her some ideas. To his credit, he didn't pick a bunch of thongs and string bikini tops like most boys would. Have a look!"

She summoned the tablet that Sayori typically used and let Yuri scroll through some photos of swimwear. She opted for a conservative one-piece while Natsuki picked a white two-piece with pink frills.

"Race you up the ladder!" Natsuki said, sprinting towards the slide. Yuri didn't think it was a great idea to run near a pool and that cost her the race. This was the start of hours of fun, the sort of anxiety-free experience Yuri often dreamed about but rarely got to have.

During one trip down the slide, she realized that one could make an argument that they would be fools to leave this reality when something like this was possible. As long as they could fend off the cruelty lurking in the game's programming, they would have little else to worry about.

Yuri reached the bottom of the slide and plunged into the pool feet-first, the momentum sending her several inches beneath the surface. As she rotated her body and swam back above the water, Yuri pondered the inevitable counter-argument. Even a wonderful surprise like this would get old if they did it every day. Some creativity didn't undo the static nature of this world they lived in. Even something as natural as the changing of the seasons would require a massive effort by whoever was serving as the club president. They had to get out. They had to try to find a life that had real possibilities.

After a few hours of swimming and sliding, the two friends sat in poolside lawn chairs with their legs crossed.

"You know what would hit the spot right now?" Yuri said. "Some pina coladas."

"Good thinking!" Natsuki said. Two glasses of the creamy drink appeared on a small table between the chairs. Yuri had never actually had one of these but had learned from some sort of cultural osmosis that they were meant to be paired with watery activities. It was an incredibly sweet taste, whatever alcohol was present couldn't be detected.

Natsuki reached under her chair and pulled out the plastic container with the cupcakes in it. "It would really be a shame for these to go to waste."

Yuri chuckled as she held a cupcake in one hand and the pina colada in the other. "This is positively decadent!" Natsuki said something back, but it was inaudible due to her mouth being full of cupcake.

"Thank you for this," Yuri said as Natsuki finished eating. "Truly."

"You're very welcome!" she replied with a satisfied grin. "I don't know about you, but I feel a bit too tired to walk home. Should I just move us there?"

"I think that would be wise." With that, they were back inside the house. Without the pool nearby, Yuri suddenly felt self-conscious in her bathing suit and quickly changed into her purple pajamas. Natsuki did the same and the two began reading on the couch next to one another. The sun went down outside as they were both absorbed in their books and, at some indeterminate point, Yuri fell asleep.

Later that evening, Sayori arrived just outside the house. The full moon illuminated the short path to the front door. She realized that there was a full moon every night, which she didn't think was how it was supposed to actually work. Sayori had spent the last five days wandering the bizarre realm of Rob's computer and was feeling pretty ragged. Was it really worth all this?

She opened the door and turned on the light in the entryway. Not wanting to wake her friends, she quietly gathered some snacks from the cupboards to sate her hunger after five days of no food. When she was finished, she left the dining room and was surprised to see both Yuri and Natsuki asleep on the couch.

Natsuki was on her back, resting her head on Yuri's lap and snoring, an open manga laying on her chest. Sayori walked over and shut it, knowing she would be upset if it got too creased. Yuri was sitting upright but her head was against the back of the couch, the long purple hair dangling over the other side. Her right hand rested on a hardcover book that sat to the side of her. It was truly an adorable sight, one she immortalized by summoning her tablet and taking a quick photo. She would put that in the game folder tomorrow so Rob could see it.

Sayori would take the next couple of days to recover after her long trip away. She was glad she had come home to see them like this. It was a reminder of why she was pushing herself so hard. Their happiness was all that mattered…and maybe she would eventually find a little bit of it in the process.