It is official. This planet is fucked. Everything is a scarred, shattered mess, and there's nothing left for me to do about it.
Let me explain.
This morning (probably not actually the morning... whole days are passing in instants now, or minutes, or hours... linear time has gone on vacation. it just feels like morning, because i've been awake for what feels like eight hours), when I woke up, Monika was nowhere to be seen. Fine by me. She stayed that way for a couple of hours, but showed back up at what I'd estimate to be noon. She'd gone out to try and find the others (not that she necessarily cares about them), and had found nothing. The school is empty. Their homes are empty. This world is empty.
Apparently everything that's happening around here is tame compared to a couple of blocks over. Sure, we get weird time dilation and... other things (the squirrel, the storms, the crackling in the air everywhere i go...), but it's way worse just half a mile away.
Time might be broken here, but it doesn't exist over there.
...
That's worrying, but the other news was more so...
Monika said this isn't new.
This emptiness, the lack of life, the lack of time and space itself has been spreading.
She told me that she'd been tracking it for the past few days.
(ever since two became three...)
It started at the edge of town, and has been slowly working its way inward.
(a paper folds under added weight...)
Which means... it'll eventually find its way here.
...
I've been working really hard to hide the truth from Sayori, but it's getting more and more difficult as time goes on. She's recovering (or at least feigns recovery... if the cycle has taught me anything, it's that i really don't know how to read her...), but it's a double-edged sword.
On the one hand, she's getting better - and getting better means getting further away from the little circle of death and closer to (maybe, oh please just maybe...) finally being happy.
But on the other...
(on the other, the better she gets, the more dangerous it gets...)
On the other, the better she gets, the more she wants to go outside... and going outside would ruin everything for her...
(fix it all in one simple step...)
And the better she gets, the harder it is for me to hide how much I care about her. And that makes her vulnerable.
...
...
(don't go chasin' waterfalls... stick to the rivers and the streams that you're used to...)
...
I can't fix everything. Hell, I don't think I can fix anything. But I might be able to make something less bad. Even if just a little bit. I'm going to go out and look for a flower. Hopefully I can find one, and hopefully when I do, it won't wilt away in my hand like I'm afraid it might (oh, it would be so sadistic... if it were to wilt in sayori's hand...).
(you know how you can avoid that... just. one. simple. step.)
...
Yeah, I'll go and find her a flower. And then maybe she'll smile genuinely for the first time since I've met her.
...
I told her that I love her, but... I don't think she believes me. I don't think she can believe me...
(and just whose fault do you think that is?)
And I know that this isn't just one single event...
Depression...
Depression is a monster. It haunts you in your sleep, it haunts you when you wake. Every moment is a fight against it; every action is a resistance against your own head; every breath you take is an outright refusal to let that monster take you down. But sometimes that fighting, that resistance, that refusal goes on for too long; you spend too many years of your life fighting it, and it's too tiring to go on.
Sayori reached that point. The monster got the upper hand.
And then I fucked up. I fucked up big time. I needed her in ways that she couldn't provide.
I became...
I became the monster's right hand man.
...
And every loop, every time I do this, it's always just barely too late. I can't take back what I did before, and she's always dead, and it's always my fault.
Not this time. She fought her way back this time, and I'm going to take every step needed to fight right along with her.
(then just fucking listen...)
It starts here. I'm going to find her a flower, or a book, or something cute like that, the kind of thing that she'd love.
...
...
...
...
...
(i'll come around soon. this world is not safe anymore. i'll see the truth. and when it has been done...)
...
...
...
...
...
I give up.
I searched for hours. Days.
I promise you, I didn't just give up on her. You have to believe me...
Please believe me...
You don't believe me, do you? Why don't you believe me? What do I have to fucking do for you? Who even are you? When did you just walk up here and decide that you were fucking qualified to pass judgement?
...
oh no...
i'm cracking, aren't i?
i suppose i should've seen it coming. it's been so long...
hear me out, okay.
I held on for one thing. Sayori. I might've had other reasons, once upon a time, but not anymore. Not for as long as I can remember. Sayori, and her happiness, have been my raison d'etre through hell and back again, one thousand times over. And I finally got her, but this fucking world was designed to create nothing but pain...
...
(it's so close now... soon...)
...
And now the outside world isn't safe to exist in. As far as I can tell, this house is the only place in this entire world that still has some sort of life. The animals are gone. The grass, the trees are stone. The wind is at a nonstop gale force, and it sends the pouring sleet sideways. The season seems to have settled in somewhere between the dead of winter and spring storms; it's cold out...
oh, so cold... so very cold... to stand in the wind and the rain and the cold makes one like a corpse pulled from a frozen lake...
flesh saturated with water yet hard and cold as a rock.
any body that becomes cadaver can become like this, given the right treatment.
soon there may be one more.