Chapter One: The Game

Fayt was halfway through on installing the program when the door opened. Glancing back, he saw a familiar brown-haired girl coming through the door into his room. "Fayt, Fayt, what are you doing?"

"Oh, hi, Sophia," said Fayt. "I've just been downloading some games."

"Pirating?" said Sophia. "Fayt, you're not supposed to do that."

"Relax, Sophia," said Fayt. "These games haven't been sold for years. They're ancient Earth games that were produced ages ago before we even colonized Mars.

"I'm not stealing them."

"Well, if they're old games, why would you want to play them?" asked Sophia.

"Hey come on, just because it doesn't have VR doesn't mean it isn't good," said Fayt. He had a special interest in games throughout history. "It's like playing chess. You have to use your imagination."

"Well, what are these old games doing out here anyway?" asked Sophia, looking over his shoulder. "I mean, shouldn't they not work on modern computers."

"Well yeah," said Fayt. "But some people have made it their job to convert old computer systems into modern formats. It's sort of like a museum.

"Games are a kind of art, after all."

"Well, while you're admiring art, I'm going to go outside," said Sophia, making it an invitation.

"Okay, have fun," said Fayt, who was in the mood to finish.

So out went Sophia, while Fayt began to fiddle with the settings. It took a while; his computer had some compatibility issues. But eventually, he managed to get the emulator running. From there, he began to cycle through his options.

There were a lot of great games to go through, Starcraft, God of War, Kingdom Hearts. But Fayt decided those would take a lot of work to master. He wanted something he could play quickly. "Now, what to go with?

"Well, I want to pick something easy, so I don't have to figure out a new system. Maybe a dating sim? It could be interesting to see how they did them before holograms." Then he found something innocent and cutesy with hearts and bright colors. It looked wholesome enough. "Doki Doki Literature Club? That looks pretty archetypical."

As soon as he started it up, he liked the music. Nice and catchy. Pressing start, he hit new game. The music put a smile on his face.

"Heeeeeeeeyyy!" was the first line.

Soon, Fayt found himself, or rather his character, talking with a cute pink-haired girl was tied in a bow. She was thin and actually seemed kind of generic but in a good way.

"Okay, let's see, Sayori, huh?" said Fayt to himself. "Pretty typical moe girl. I guess they hadn't developed the character archetype all that much at the time.

"Well, it's worth it for the historic value.

"Okay, so I'm her childhood friend, and she represents the girl-next-door. He'd heard it before.

"Man, this character introduction is long. They do realize this is a shallow dating sim, right? This isn't exactly catering to their audience. Still, the art assets are pretty good.

On it went, and Fayt was soon introduced to the other members of the cast. The only other members of the cast, there wasn't a single non-schoolgirl to be seen. Then came the excuse to have him with all the girls.

He read the dialogue more out of obligation than interest. "Okay, so I'm joining the literature club. Hey, this Monika girl is pretty cute. I mean, the others are shallow stereotypes, but she's pretty unique."

On and on it went and then came the poems. "Alright, so I have to match the poems to each girl. I choose words the girl I want will like. Kind of primitive, but I can dig it.

"Where's Monika?" He scanned and saw only three chibis for Sayori, Yuri, and the other pink-haired girl. The one with the tsundere attitude.

Whatever.

"Please tell me Monika wasn't cut content," said Fayt in irritation. "Let me guess; they wanted to sell her as DLC. I forgot about the Games as a Service trend. Stupid Bethesda..."

He aimed his poems at Sayori since she reminded him of a bit of Sophia. It was pretty easy to match the words up, but he did miss a few. Then more antics as the girls fought over him. It was decent, he guessed.

Then he sat up. "Oh, hey, I can choose Monika."

And then Yuri and Natsuki, right? Yuri and Natsuki shot the whole thing down. Fayt almost dropped the game there. "What?!

"Why would they give me that option if they were going to railroad me. I don't want to pick between the paper-thin tsundere, the generic childhood friend. Oh, and I guess there's the buxom shy girl.

"Right, I guess this is before they devised games capable of creating new solutions on the fly. They had to pre-program all choices, so it's only natural they'd miss a few." He sighed. "Fine, let's do this. I guess I'll pick Sayori. I don't think I'm going to do a replay on this one, to be honest."

On it went. One cutesy conversation after another and Fayt had to admit; he was getting into it. The characters had a simplistic charm, and yeah, they weren't slaying dragons. But preparing for a school festival could be good with proper storytelling.

Finally, he neared the endpoint with Sayori. As he did, he made a mental note to go with the other girls on his second playthrough. "Come on, come on," said Fayt, getting a bit sick of the buildup. "Ah, now I'm in her room. Here comes the love confession..."

Fayt stopped dead at the revelation. "What? She...

"She's got depression? Wait, so the whole constant... she was struggling with depression." Fayt sat back in his chair, feeling guilty. "Geeze, I kind of feel bad. I mean, I've been treating this like some generic dating sim, but this might be a more deep game than I thought.

"Let's see uh..." Sayori was depressed right now, and he had a choice. "Well, she wasn't my first choice, but I guess I'll confess my love. Telling her, she'll always be my dearest friend, probably gets you the bad ending anyway.

"Okay, that subplot is done."

Putting the whole depression revelation from his mind, Fayt went on. He doubted anything would come of it until the school festival. Maybe he'd actually be able to see some other NPC's.

Still, the game was getting old, and he wanted to start his next playthrough. "I guess we get the kiss after the School Festival." Fayt halted mid-playthrough as Monica talked to him about how Sayori hadn't arrived yet. "Okay, wait, she's not in school. What note?"

And then Fayt saw the note.

It was not cutesy at all. "Oh shit."

Fayt rushed back from the school through the streets. Sometimes when he got into a game, he felt like he was there with the characters. He was terrified as he scaled up the stairs and halted before the door.

For a moment, he stood there, afraid to go forward.

Then he opened the door.

Sayori had hanged herself. Her fingers were bloodied from clawing at her rope, and she was swaying from the ceiling fan. Fayt recoiled from the screen. "NO!"

He clicked through the dialogue, seeing through a blue light.

Then he was back to the beginning. Except the menu was all screwed up. "What...

"What happened to the menu? Is this some kind of glitch?" Then Fayt halted and reminded himself it was a game. "I'll restart the game." Then he halted. "Wait a minute, why don't I just reload my earlier save?"

His save glitched out and was deleted.

"How did it get corrupted?" said Fayt, feeling creeped out now. He took a deep breath and looked out the window to see it was getting dark. How long had he been playing? Better get the golden ending quick and be done with it. "Fine, fine, I'll restart the game and try the other option."

Only the beginning was completely different. Everything was glitched, and Sayori was nowhere to be found. "...Where's Sayori.

"What happened?

"This isn't a high tech VR game that can rewrite itself to adapt to the player's actions. This is an old PC game. It can't... it can't be changing." He was breathing heavily now. "Okay, okay, calm down, Fayt.

"These aren't real people; they're pixels and code. This is a meta-narrative meant to freak me out. Just roll with it and see it to the end.

"Honestly, I'm kind of disappointed. A game that dealt with subjects like depression is a pretty good idea."

On it went, but it didn't get any worse. It just stayed at the same level of tension. "Geeze this uh, pretty creepy.

"I think it's clever how they glitch the interface to-" Fayt blinked at the next thing. He felt only a little creeped out. "Okay, Yuri's confessing her love with a knife in her hand. Yes or no, um..."

If he didn't make the right choice, Yuri might stab him! Or herself! "Yes! Yes!"

Yuri stabbed herself. The wrong choice again.

"Jesus..." said Fayt, looking at Yuri's corpse lying on the floor, the blood flowing out. This was way more hardcore than VR. Who wrote this thing? Hideo Kojima? There was enough dialogue, and there was a Silent Hillish vibe.

Only the plot wasn't advancing. He kept clicking, but the dialogue box did not disappear. "What is going on here. I keep clicking through the dialogue, but it only shows code." He hit skip and saw it fly by. Then he saw Yuri's flesh lose color as it clung to her skull. He felt bile rise in his mouth at the sight of a corpse. "Is she... decaying?

"This got dark, really fast."

Then Natsuki ran in, threw up, and ran out. Then Monika came in all smiles like always and apologized for leaving him here all this time. Oh, she apologized, that made murder all the better.

"Um, Monika," said Fayt.

Then Monika deleted Natsuki. And then came the exposition, complete with Monika getting in his face and staring. "Wait, what?!"

Fayt clicked through, feeling weirder than ever. Monika was still kind of sexy like this, but there was also a whole eldritch abomination vibe. And she was addressing him directly. "Oh, I get it. This is a deconstruction of dating sims. The idea is to show what it would be like to be a character in that. Monika was intended only to be a side character who introduces you to the real option.

"But in a universe where the only measure of success is getting the guy. She's unable to fulfill her purpose. Leading to an existential crisis that culminates in taking over the game. And of course, she's really attracted to me because the 'main character' is a shallow vehicle for me.

"Geeze, they wrote a lot of dialogue for her in this scene."

He clicked and clicked, and yet it went on. Monika had all kinds of things to say, and plenty of them were interesting. Someone had obviously put a lot of work into this. Fayt was impressed.

Sophia entered the room, all frowns. "Fayt, I'm heading home, since somebody spent the whole day playing video games."

The spell broke, and Fayt turned to her. "Oh, hey Sophia, I-"

"Hey, why is that character glaring?" asked Sophia.

Fayt turned around and saw Monika's expression was as always. "Glaring? What are you... talking about..."

Wait, it was smiling now. He knew he hadn't clicked anything. He'd been awake too long. "Hey, Sophia, I'm feeling a bit spaced out. How about I walk to school with you tomorrow, I'm sort of..."

"Making googly eyes at imaginary women, yeah, I get you," said Sophia, before storming out.

"Hey, it's not like that, Sophia," said Fayt. Then sighed; he was going to hear it from her for this later. "Geeze.

"I've had enough meta-narratives for the day."

Quickly he moved his cursor to minimize the game.

"Please don't leave the keyboard, Fayt. I like looking at you." said the text.

"Geeze, they actually programmed the game to catch when the person was going to turn it off," said Fayt. "That's some seriously impressive programming." Then he minimized it and, checking the time, went to bed.

As he lay asleep, the game kept bothering his thoughts. How did he really know they had programmed the game? Maybe the game had come alive. "What am I thinking. Artificial intelligence hasn't gone sentient in the days of the Federation. No way could some Old Earth program attain sentience.

"Not unless my thoughts warp the source code of reality or something. Whatever. It's just a game."

Fayt got to sleep, finally, and woke up the next morning feeling much refreshed. It was odd, but the colors around him seemed a bit bright. Rising up, he dressed in his uniform. A black button-up shirt and made his way out into the street without thinking.

Then he realized something. This wasn't his street. He'd seen it before, of course. But only recently, and in... a... game...

Heeeeeeeeyyy!" said a not familiar voice.

Fayt saw an annoying girl running toward him from a distance. She was waving her arms in the air like she's totally oblivious to any attention she might draw to herself. She had pink hair with a distinctive red bow.

"...Sayori," said Fayt.

What the hell was going on?

Author's Note:

So, this idea was just perfect for me.

My original idea was just to have Fayt play the game after the events of the first story and get really paranoid. But this worked out better, I think.