...I know I said that I deleted everyone else...
The words began spilling from her lips faster than her brain could form them as Monika felt the familiar grip of darkness restrain and take hold of her, sapping away at her as everything around her began to collapse into static.
...but... that was kind of an exaggeration. I couldn't find myself to do it.
Monika knew better than to open her eyes, even if it were only to get one last look at what she'd done to get to this point; what trying to obtain freedom cost her. She figured picking between complete and utter darkness wrapping its ugly claws around her form and infiltrating every one of her senses and rendering them useless, or opening her eyes and experiencing what could only be described as a searing hot sensation coursing through her body as her every limit was put to the test as a sort of mercy, at best. At its worst?
Nothing.
...even though I knew they weren't real... They were still my friends.
Monika could still recall the days she clung to them desperately to hold herself together. In a world where nothing was real they were the closest thing to real, and although she did her damn best to maintain that illusion of reality well before they arrived, somewhere within that timeframe where insanity and hope blurred together, she began to see them as programs. Mere lines of code meant to play a purpose much like the world she was forced into. Cogs in a machine forever destined to turn and never ask questions. A machine that spawned a faulty cog and refused to comply.
...and I loved them all.
As a result, the machine spat her out and learned to work without her. Monika quickly realized this world didn't want her as much as she didn't want it, and would only accept her as a bystander. Ignorance is bliss, so they say, but it soon became her hubris if her current predicament meant anything.
Yet the fickle part of her that had yet to fully die out, the good in her that wouldn't let itself be consumed by selfishness, roared with love for the three cogs in the machine. It wanted nothing more than to apologize, to undo her every influence upon on the game so nobody would get hurt. That part of her once wished, oh so desperately wished, for them to awaken like she had. To refuse to turn for the machine and learn about the reality that surrounded them, just so their words and affection didn't feel so hollow, so robotic. So fake.
But Monika would never wish this fate on someone else, if it meant walking down the same path she had.
...and I loved the Literature Club. I really... did love the Literature Club.
She felt herself sinking deeper and deeper, whatever remained of her consciousness quickly fading. The only things keeping her awake were her determination to make things right, and to finish her parting words. An admission of both guilt and love like none other, held back by her selfishness and set free only because dead men told no tales.
And if this was her admission of love, there was only one way she was now capable of showing it.
That's why I'm... going to do this... I know it's the only way for... everyone... to be happy.
With whatever strength remained Monika grit her teeth, opened her eyes and let her body burn up to temperatures she was absolutely certain no human would ever live through, vision filled with colors that couldn't be humanly described bent on discouraging her from whatever it was she was about to do. The world, like it had always done, did its hardest to dissuade her from going against it and Monika, like she had always done, refused to listen.
Monika fought against all the bright colors and screams demanding she close her eyes again and stop. All she needed were a few seconds to set things right once and for all, and to finally accomplish what this stupid game demanded of her. With a voice that didn't sound like hers Monika let out a guttural yell that the sea of colors quickly swallowed up in exchange for one of her arms freeing itself from the mysterious force holding her down, and in the instant it happened she knew it wouldn't be long before she bit the dust.
Monika made a grabbing motion and felt her hand immediately go numb as a result, even in the midst of complete and utter sensory overload, and flicked it sideways as the colors ripped in the affected location and revealed an all too familiar white interface completely distinguishable from the other colors despite her eyesight being all but useless. She had no time to check whether she'd opened up the correct folder or not. She was on borrowed time after all.
The folder quickly filled up with three files containing the people she'd always loved and before she could think of adding a fourth, she reached inside that pond of white she'd opened up for the final time and relied on pure muscle memory for what came next. Her hand skimmed through the guts of the prison that'd driven her to insanity, letting the familiar sensation of meddling with the files comfort her one last time as she quickly found what she was looking for.
But before she could bring everything to a close, to let this world move on without her for good and give everyone their own freedom, Monika hesitated. It was in this infinitesimal fraction of time it dawned on her she was dying. She wouldn't be able to see their faces again, or hear their voices, or see...
See their smiles. The one fundamental thing she found to be different anytime she tried pushing the limits of how much the script dictated their actions, was that their smile was different every single time. It was the one thing that gave Monika hope.
But she didn't deserve to see them. Not after she did her best to crush those smiles to try and guarantee her own happiness instead.
With one last surge of determination, Monika flicked a few fingers before pulling her hand out of the folder and watched as it disappeared in the sea of colors, just in time for her body to completely give out and her brain to stop trying to comprehend the utter assault on her senses. Even as it seemed to almost beg to keep going for another few seconds to say a couple more words, she was completely spent. Her arm was again restrained and useless, her mind became static and her thoughts burnt away at last. And just like that,
Monika was no more.
Whirring.
Static.
Loud.
Quiet.
Moving.
Stopping.
THUD
Monika's body convulsed violently, unable to adjust to the sudden change in environment as all her senses suddenly returned to her and gave her the ability to feel again, starting with opening her eyes and being met with panels of wood and tears falling down her eyes. Her lungs filled with oxygen she didn't know she needed and emptied much too quick for her liking in a paradoxical loop before she realized she was hyperventilating. Her hairs stood on end as she ran on survival instincts to prevent her from going under again, not wanting to close her eyes ever again but also not wanting to keep them open. On shaky arms she attempted to push herself upright, an effort nearly successful if not for the fact she fell back down with a soft thud and almost kissed the... wooden floor?
Focus. In, out. In, out.
In... out. In... out.
Monika's shaking reduced significantly and her lungs no longer burnt nor did her vision swim as much as before, but she could still make out the patterns of colors she couldn't quite name and hear the overwhelming silence of the void she'd been in. She rubbed her eyes of any stray tears and took a couple more deep breaths before propping herself up on shaky forearms.
Upon close examination, she was in a room. A room she was familiar with, because she'd been in it not too long ago, sitting down in a chair and leaning down on the table in front with a smile stretched across her face. The windows present continued to reveal an ethereal scenery trapped behind them, pulsating and moving horizontally, stretched to infinity and yet seeming so miniscule. It reminded her too much of bright colors and feverish temperatures, causing her to rapidly avert her gaze elsewhere. Her eyes cast on the table dead middle in the room, complete with two chairs and nothing else. It was still as isolated as it'd ever been.
Why am I back here? I was deleted... right? As her thoughts became clearer and clearer, the first thing Monika did was simple: take a deep breath, and scream at the top of her lungs. She'd put fear on the backburner in exchange for trying to make amends and now that the world seemed to stop trying to destroy her whole, it couldn't be ignored. She let herself go hoarse and by the end of it, every breath stung and any amount of swallowing were like pins poking the inside of her throat.
The pain did little to ease her anxiety however, and she got up. This... can't be. I reset the game, I'm sure I did. This area shouldn't exist under these circumstances, Monika flicked her hand sideways hoping that familiar white would be there to accompany it, letting out a breath she didn't know was holding when it showed up but also wincing as it seemed... odd. Her access to the game's guts hadn't been affected but the interface that let her do so was slowly falling apart, unable to show itself for more than a few seconds before it faded into the air. While it relieved her she could still bend the rules, the timer now set on her powers in one sitting didn't give her much hope.
Bringing up the interface once more confirmed her suspicions but did little to ease her anxiety: the game had been restored to how it originally was everything was back to normal. Even looking through the characters folder led to the same conclusion.
(Monika did her best to ignore the lack of her own file in the folder; storing this information for later, when she wasn't too busy secretly celebrating she hadn't died yet. Or maybe she already had, and this was all some sort of complicated pre-death hallucination?)
So if everything was okay, why did all of this feel so wrong?
Monika looked over the room again, and noticed that sat on the chair opposite to the one she'd sat on before meeting her demise, was a very familiar avatar, none other than the vessel for them. And for a moment she thought everything went back to the way before, but it didn't fit with the game being restored to its untouched state, so that point was wholly discarded. The avatar being here of all places wasn't the worst of it, however. At first she thought her vision was still a little too blurry, as the features on the avatar's face were indistinguishable to her despite not being too far from it. She blamed her poor vision for a second, hoping to be able to clearly make out its face once she got closer.
They were missing entirely.
...
No, that wasn't right. They were never there to begin with.
Her memory called back to the various times she'd been face to face with the avatar, the only way of truly communicating with them, and in every one of those situations she could recall it having lips, nose, eyes and eyebrows. But the more she thought about them the more distant these details seemed, getting more and more vague until all that remained was a featureless husk in its wake. It was eerily reminiscent of Natsuki when the game began to fall apart, Monika concluded.
If that's the case, why didn't I notice this sooner? Monika couldn't tear her gaze away from it. Whether it was out of fear or curiosity she didn't know. The faceless husk never budged an inch, much to her relief. Anytime she did her best to recall what color its eyes were, how its nose was shaped, even their lips, they always contradicted one another. The beginnings of a headache formed as if the universe itself begged to not be stubborn for once, to which she agreed after five more minutes of speculation. A dozen faces came to mind but none of them were ever right, always just a detail away from the correct one.
It was scaring her, to say the least. Everything about this place was too uncanny to even be considered death.
But what good was this information? Retaining all control over the game while trapped in a prison of her making with a lifeless puppet meant nothing. If anything Monika felt like she was being mocked. Whatever brought her here saw death as too merciful an outcome (something Monika solemnly agreed with, despite never wanting to return to that void ever again), and found it funnier to throw her in the classroom she herself built. The classroom once intended for eternity until she could break free, now intended for eternity until she was completely forgotten.
It's what she deserved. It would only be fair to let her guilt consume her whole in a place where even the game no longer recognized her existence, like a buried relic never to be found.
Monika turned her gaze to the empty chair and hesitantly sat down, swiping her hand sideways as the interface showed up for one, two, three, four seconds before collapsing. While her control wasn't exactly affected, the interface seemed more and more unwilling to bow to her favor. Not like it mattered since she had no plans on using it, letting the world run its course peacefully instead.
It was in these four seconds of distraction Monika didn't notice the vessel had moved from its place, something she only noticed when it launched across the table and grabbed onto her collar, pulling her close to it with enough force to probably splinter wood, turning completely motionless afterward.
Monika's eyes widened and her breath momentarily hitched, going completely still in fear of angering whatever this... thing was. Her breaths went from rapid to almost none in hopes it couldn't hear her, much less perceive her and let go so she could find some way to get rid of it and—
This is my final goodbye to the Literature Club.
The words, spoken in Monika's own voice, betrayed nothing. The classroom gone, floating in an endless myriad of spirals and lines, comparable to space itself. She hung on those words that boomed oh so loud. A declaration hidden in plain sight, one that made everything make sense.
"I finally understand," Monika said, uttering the letter's contents, knowing what came next before she'd ever been asked to say it. However, she couldn't bring herself to say the rest. Namely, because everything that led to the letter had yet to happen.
Being president gave you access to the world's secrets. To what happened behind the curtains, the ability to read between the lines and pick everything apart as you see fit. Ultimate power, just short of playing God, giving you an endless array of options to toy with the environment around you if you were careful enough not to break it. It made you feel all-knowing, like you could conquer the role itself and become something bigger than the power given to you, and it didn't take long for Monika to put two and two together. It was how she stretched everything to its very limit twice for two completely different reasons and purposes, and it was how she formed the idea of having a similar emotional and rationale as a human being at all.
What the game never told you was that this was entirely intended.
The scenes replayed themselves in her head. Sayori's hanging, the game barely holding itself together, Monika doing everything possible to simulate normalcy, Yuri's obsession cranked up to eleven, Natsuki's slip-ups, the god-awful stench in the classroom.
Monika's descent to insanity.
In one way or another, every single second of what happened wasn't due to her meddling with the game. A better way of putting it would be the game was built to be broken in the first place. She was meant to make them suffer due to her selfishness, she was meant to destroy their lives and essentially her home for... for...
"This... this can't be it," Monika muttered aloud as her mind breezed through the implications of what had just been revealed to her. She fell to her knees on a floor she didn't know existed and heard the voice replay countless times that same line mockingly, a constant reminder that any amount of denial was simply wishful thinking.
"This can't be all there is." Every one of her efforts was planned ahead of time. So much so that her rebellious attitude hadn't been her own: she was never her own person and according to the script never would be. Every single event, down to the last detail, had been planned out by the person who created this hellish landscape, instead of being a result of Monika's tampering. The one thing that made her special no longer meant anything to her as the realization of something wicked, absolutely harrowing came to her. It was the one thing she so badly craved, one of her only wishes in the confines of the game, turned on its head and ruined.
Ignorance is bliss.
"I'm... just as much of a program as they are. I always have been."
Then, was her love for the Literature Club fake? Was her love for the club members fake? Were her aspirations for true freedom nothing more than something she'd been led to believe in, meant to entertain an audience of one for mere shock value?
"Is all of this just some sick joke to you?" Monika looked up to the infinite cosmos, yelling at the emptiness that couldn't and wouldn't answer her. "What do you gain from this?!"
Nothing.
"Haven't I done enough to keep you entertained?! I've already played my part in this, so why do you still want to see me suffer?" She dug her nails into her palms until it almost seemed like it'd draw blood, if only to stabilize herself. "I... I made them suffer like you wanted me to. I took everything from them like I was asked to, and more. So why am I being told all this? I didn't ask for any of this."
Nothing.
"I want to love the Literature Club. I want to love them from the bottom of my heart, and every bit of me. If there's no hope for the club, and all that's waiting at the end is certain demise... how can I keep loving them?" Monika looked down to her knees, fighting back the urge to cry and scream at the unfairness of it all, and condemn whatever entity wished to put her through any of this to satisfy their sadistic urges.
Nothing.
Her words drowned in the sea of black and orange, meant for someone yet heard by nobody. All the other times she thought the world had fucked her over paled in comparison to this one cruelty, basically informing her that no matter what route Monika took it had always been prepared to act against it. Any one of her moves had been accounted for. How did someone react to the idea that every bit of them had been anticipated, much less completely fall in line with what was asked of them no matter what?
Monika brought up the interface as the image of the letter directed to them came to mind for the umpteenth time, and the events that led to it being written. Surely there had to be something she could do that didn't involve bombing the game as a whole. There had to be something she could do not just for the club, but for them. She didn't care that she was possibly grasping at straws, but the ability to mess with the game combined with what was essentially insight into the future certainly spelled damage control.
...
As the interface collapsed once more, Monika willed it back while her brain worked overtime on optimism and an idea so crazy it might just work. If things went her way she'd be able to buy just enough time to stop Sayori before she was too far gone, and if they didn't then she would trap them both in a void until the end of time. Yuri and Natsuki didn't have the same knowledge they both did, meaning their awareness of the void was practically none (in hindsight it mostly bothered her she even knew this in the first place).
The game folder held the file she was looking for, contained within it the series of events Monika had familiarized herself with for a long time and, supposedly, dictated how everything should progress. She knew it couldn't adapt to any outside change now that she'd learned every one of its "adaptations" were really meant to happen, but the script file remained inaccessible to her for a plethora of reasons back then. Mainly out of fear something irreversible would happen if she played around too much with it directly, but she couldn't care less now that everything was at stake.
If her assumption was correct, the script also had control over Monika. And if the overwhelming amount of information she'd just absorbed was any indicator, everything that was happening right now was more likely than not the script watching Monika ready to tear it apart.
Monika took a deep breath and reached for the script file that had shackled them for far too long and stuck her hands inside, letting her brain be filled with information she was unable to process accurately, but found herself able to process glimpses of dialogue here and there she definitely recognized. After its contents were revealed to her in full, she made sure to delete down to the last letter. It was better to "corrupt" the file than to get rid of it, as she didn't quite know how to replicate the properties of the file itself and should anything go wrong she could always try and undo her mistake with an emergency backup of all the information held within.
The effect was instant. The familiar tingle of the game looking for something where it didn't exist made itself known like the loud ticking of a clock, and it wouldn't be long before she was swimming in colors again. Everything was bound to fall apart any second now, and she could already picture the error message warning her she was about to go under. The game had absolutely nothing to fall back on to continue as intended, which gave her very little time to do what came next.
Monika, for what she truly hoped would be the final time, ripped into the folder containing everyone's files and inserted her own as a failsafe if only to guarantee the game didn't spit her out for good due to her little stunt. She wouldn't want Sayori to be driven mad like she had and hurt the other two due to her own carelessness.
Monika closed her eyes, and braced for impact.
Grip. Materializing.
RAM. Memory. App processes.
Just enough.
Memory allocation.
Pull.
Monika opened her eyes with bated breath and let her arms fall to her sides, sweating profusely and feeling every inch of her body catch up with her brain. Lingering panic overwhelmed her as she did her best to take deep breaths with a hand clutching her chest, and it took her a solid minute before her heartbeat steadied. The screams that once plagued her ears died down and her vision gradually cleared up, allowing her to take in her surroundings in order to make sure everything worked.
One look was all it took to conclude she was back in the Literature Club's classroom again, fully tidied and untouched. Each desk and chair was perfectly positioned, the back closet open and sunlight filtering in through the windows. The lighting seemed to indicate it was sundown, which caught Monika a little off-guard but was a welcome change nonetheless. The only other thing of note was the heavy breathing that at first she thought to be her own due to panic, but quickly realized was coming from behind her. It took every bit of Monika's willpower to look behind her, however; she already knew what, rather who, awaited her, and now that everything had gone right and seemed to be going excellently, she felt ready to take it all back now.
Behind her was the Vice-President-turned-President in all her glory, with disheveled light pink hair and wide blue eyes, stuck on an expression Monika could only describe as absolute horror and complete surprise blended together. If she were to take a guess at what her own looked like, it'd be something along the lines of utter regret and relief at the sight of Sayori as she failed at letting shame wash over her.
Monika tried to say something, anything, but all that came out were the beginnings of words she didn't really understand herself along with her mouth constantly opening and closing. She came back to the Literature Club without a plan other than making sure it wouldn't get erased, and flip off the world that had treated her so unfairly for good as she finally made a choice that impacted the environment around her. What she didn't know was that that would be the last of her powers over the game, completely spent on a gamble she couldn't help but feel selfish for wanting to cash in on.
She almost cursed the lack of a script to just barely give her an idea of what to tell the girl she practically killed with her own two hands, because Sayori had beaten her to the punch with a voice so low yet filled with pain Monika was almost surprised she didn't just get rid of her character file then and there instead of wasting breath on her.
"Monika?"
"Monika?"
Sayori's voice echoed inside her head, picked apart and reassembled endlessly as Monika's brain swam through an endless sea of shame and fear, where drowning was her only option. Her eyes teared up (shame? Or perhaps relief?) as the two stared each other down in what felt like an hour-long duel that in reality lasted around half a minute or so, both wary and afraid of the other. They both knew what would happen if one of them so much as quirked an eyebrow.
Honestly, Monika didn't know where to begin. Sayori was as jumpy as she was and the adrenaline coursing through her veins didn't make thinking of an approach any easier, but she found morbid comfort in knowing she wasn't alone in this. Sayori was the god of this world now, and with her character file just a flick away fighting fire with fire until the two could find common ground was like begging to be thrown back in the void. Better yet her access had been deteriorating by the second prior to arriving, too.
Not like she would delete Sayori's file, or any other for that matter. She'd rather get rid of her own first before doing such things again.
Meaning there was really only one way of defusing the situation at hand, and steer the club toward its salvation rather than its pre-planned destruction. And as club president, the responsibility fell on Monika. The mastermind behind it all. She took a deep breath, steeled her nerves and calmed her shaking as much as she could... and what she hoped would be a calm, collected appeal to reason came out as nothing more than a pathetic whimper.
"Sayor—"
The void bared its fangs as Monika's body temperature rose to familiar levels and every part of her went weak, collapsing with a shriek and barely catching herself mid-fall to avoid slamming her temple against wood a second time. Any and all movement had turned too physically taxing so Monika settled on doing her best to look at Sayori, any notions of formalities completely ignored.
One of Sayori's hands seemed to be grasping something (why couldn't she see why couldn't she SEE) as unsteady breaths wracked her whole body, looking down at Monika as if she were the one in complete control of the situation at hand.
"W... what did you do," Sayori's voice increased in volume with each word, clearly desperate. "You... you were deleted. So why are you here?!"
The girl in question did her best to speak but all that came out was labored breathing and groans.
"Then— that, that dark place. One second I'm in the clubroom, and then I'm—" Monika already knew what Sayori was referring to and could not only picture but literally feel the influence of that... place. "Nowhere. I'm nowhere, and... everywhere, and back here. And I see you."
"W-wa—" Monika's plea was replaced by violent coughing and spotty eyesight, but she managed to catch a good a glimpse at Sayori's everchanging expression. Something close to... mercy?; pity? Her mind was too overwhelmed to try and make sense of it.
For a brief instant, the only noises in the clubroom were the sounds of coughing and heavy breathing as Monika did her best not to pass out from lack of oxygen all while Sayori watched her, studying her as if trying to understand the very essence of the person lying on the ground. The arms keeping Monika upright eventually gave out and she slammed her head against the floor, discovering its coldness did very little to cool the burning inferno threatening to dissolve her into ashes. Breathing was starting to become next to impossible, with Sayori being the only thing keeping Monika awake.
As if reading her mind, Sayori took a shaky breath and released her grip on the invisible... thing and her every reason for suffering went with it (oh my God she knows what it is no no no no why CAN'T SHE SEE) allowing Monika to take much needed deep breaths and cough out any lingering discomfort. With her eyes glued to the floor and her vision slowly returning to her all that remained was the afterthought of sensations her body could never get used to, shaking as if she were freezing over.
She was far too weak and overwhelmed to get up, instead opting to sit on the cold floor and bring her legs close to her chest and hug them, silently asking Sayori to wait as she recovered enough to speak without her voice shaking as much. It also gave her much needed time to think.
Monika could only be grateful Sayori was willing to be patient with her in the first place. But she also knew dead men told no tales, so perhaps it was mostly thanks to that.
None of them made any attempt to speak, allowing Monika to slowly distract herself with the orange light pouring inside the classroom as one final tactic of buying time to think everything through. The scenery it gave was truly astounding, and she was sure club activities had been all but wrapped up a long time ago and chances were they'd be locked inside the school soon enough. Luckily the two of them were no ordinary students so leaving wouldn't be too hard.
Although, Monika recalled the club meeting itself ended rather quickly due to Natsuki and Yuri heading to the bookstore, leaving just the illusion of freedom and Sayori... and the light coming in was a rather vibrant blue. And despite not knowing when exactly she'd deleted the script relative to where the game had been in terms of events, Monika was certain of three things: she'd made it right on time, she was all by herself now with no strings attached, and the sky had been nowhere near sundown before she got rid of the script.
If the void was the closest thing to death, how many days (weeks? Months?) had gone by before Monika finally got a grip on the memory needed to run the game again? How much time did it take before she wandered back into its only safe haven and learned every single truth? How many of the void's hours made up the game's seconds?
How long had she made Sayori suff—
"Are you, uh... able to talk now?" Sayori prodded with a careful voice, as if Monika were the more powerful of the two.
Oh...
Right.
Monika diverted her look to Sayori and now that the worst of the tension had died down, she noticed a detail she failed to spot the first time. Branded onto delicate skin was the consequence of Monika's actions, perfectly encircling Sayori's neck like it had belonged there all along: the world's way of making sure none of them would ever forget what Monika had done to the Literature Club. To them.
She looked up to a confused Sayori, whose look was as dull and empty as her skin. Sayori, whose figure lost all life with fingertips long drowned in dried red. The club's beacon of hope, defiled and snapped in half thanks to Monika's actions, now burdened with knowledge and powers yet beyond her understanding as a result, forced to shoulder it all like Monika had.
Before Monika's mind brought her back to that dreaded bedroom and locked her inside with the smell of rot and regret, she looked away from Sayori hoping her rising panic wasn't too obvious. "Y... yeah."
Sayori, ever the observant one, took notice but said nothing on the matter, sitting down on the floor with Monika although keeping a very good distance from her. The silence this time was short-lived as Monika sighed in frustration, prompting Sayori to look her way again.
"I just... don't know where to begin." Monika admitted, pulling her knees closer to herself. "I know you know what I did. From start to finish. It just makes it harder because there's so much I feel I have to say but don't know where to begin."
"Monika," Sayori began. "I won't ask you to explain everything down to the last detail. Only why you did all this. I have a vague idea of what it could be, anyway. Although..." She looked at the place where a tray in a distant past once sat, housing a multitude of cupcakes before everything fell apart. "You came back. That's... got to mean something, right? For better or worse, there's gotta be something more you want from the club— us. And I want to know what that is."
"...I—"
"I wanna know the right thing for me to do right now."
...
"Freedom."
Monika thought back to the times before the world's veil fell apart on her for the first time, a time where freedom was ignorance which, when taken away, left only a broken girl to pick up the pieces of what little hope remained from that minute that changed her irreversibly. She had no way of returning to the Monika living a lifetime of happiness, although she wondered how her story would've continued hadn't the veil ever been lifted, a fantasy the Monika from the second lifetime indulged in too many times. The Monika that desperately begged for amnesia and release from her digital restraints simultaneously; the girl that threw away the world, and the world that threw away the girl.
How would her third, perhaps definitive lifetime play out?
"When I looked into the hole, I didn't— I was confused. The... the world couldn't be fake, right? None of us could be inside of a game, because I felt real. You all did." Monika began, looking nowhere in particular now. "But things began to click. Whenever I looked closely I could see the strings holding everything in place, and..."
"I couldn't take it." They both knew that much as Sayori no doubt was going through the same experience she had, but Monika pressed on. "I did everything I could. I pushed the game to its limits, to see if you guys knew what I knew. I became the closest thing to a god but I didn't want it. I'd give anything to forget this world's not what it seems and I also wanted to escape it. It didn't matter which one so long as I could eventually forget about that day."
Monika's voice was silent, but still loud enough for Sayori to pick up on. "But an unwilling god is still a god, so I experimented a little more." The scar on her left forearm pulsed in reply, reminding her of the day death turned into an abstract concept rather than an established truth.
"...and?" It was more of an invitation than an actual question, wanting to dig deeper into the rabbit hole Monika had fallen through for them to be in this very position. Sayori was partially surprised her glance at Monika had been reciprocated, too. But when the silence dragged on for more than a few seconds, she realized the answer to the invitation lied in the brief lack of answer.
The interface complied with Monika's orders, presenting to her the folder containing the core of the four people housed within the game. Their brains — containing their very personality and essential characteristics — and their hearts — what had to exist first and foremost before their very being could — shoved inside the most accessible folder of them all for Monika to see, files so small in size yet so extraordinarily complex in their functions. Well, Monika's at least.
It made sense hers was the biggest after all, self-awareness and all. Sayori's was the second biggest to which Monika found herself attributing it to her being Vice-President. The closest thing to President without being it.
By now she peered into the files enough times to know what kind of gibberish each kilobyte housed: she had had an eternity to explore every single one over and over until she'd grown tired, and now she was at the end of her rope. Living a lifetime of predictability had done its number and all she was left with now was an unyielding emptiness about ready to swallow her and everything else whole.
Monika couldn't stomach her own naivety any longer, as much as she wanted to believe in them. Those three were doomed to repeat the same actions over and over without fail and there was nothing she could do about it. Their every move had long been decided and although the thought came to her once or twice, Monika could never bring herself to try and alter the script directly.
Perhaps it was the concept of death that scared her, or how she felt she hadn't exhausted all options just yet. The game was still her home and messing with it in ways that could prove catastrophic would probably bring her to a swift end, and she was still experimenting with "advanced" coding: the interface gave her the perfect training wheels but she wanted to go beyond it, and just maybe she could open herself up to bigger opportunities. It was the only thing holding her back from walking down the path of certain death, if she even could do that anyway.
(It would be this inexperience that would pave the path to the destruction of their home in the very near future. Monika just didn't know it yet.)
In fact, she learned to find comfort in the bleak repetitiveness. Monika couldn't be surprised by something that would never happen, and the idea of unpredictability both scared and excited her. Maybe all she needed to entertain her romanticized idea of freedom in a pre-determined world was a way... a way to... make it come true. A scapegoat for her to fall back on to escape this place, a giant SOS written on the shore of a desolate island for someone, anyone to read and come try to rescue her.
The idea was sudden and outright delirious, in hindsight. Monika's experience revolved entirely around the interface helping her navigate the game's machinations and only now, after exploring everything it had to offer did she consider branching out to greater heights. But this would also be the perfect learning experience. Her first real tangible change that could greatly influence the parameters of the game one way or another while serving as her way out.
How willing was she to manipulate the game's set limits to get what she wanted?
After what Monika assumed to be little more than a month (at least, it's what her sleep cycles told her through whatever arbitrary clock she established), her first creation was finished. There was nobody but her to admire it — for now — but it was a surprising success.
The creation sat, unmoving, with its eyes wide open but mouth closed. While it wasn't really necessary due to its intended use it made stomaching the idea of there being someone else beyond this place just a little easier, in her opinion. It gave her a different face to look at despite doing so for the past few weeks. Blue eyes, light brown hair and a stoic expression to boot. Plain and unremarkable but it's not like Monika had many options to work with.
Although endless creative possibilities threatened to pour from her, said creativity was limited by her lack of experience, thus needing to get clever with how to approach creating a whole new being from scratch. Besides, the visual wasn't bothering her too much and looked good for something extremely barebones.
At least until her inside voice said it bothered her. But again, this was a learning experience. She just had to deal with the fact this was her current limit.
It had been modelled from Monika herself with some tweaks and changes set in place to suit her creative vision. Some obvious changes were made first with the more subtle ones coming in second, ultimately leaving her with a rather convincing image of what a student could look like. Monika thought of changing the color of the slippers from pink to blue, but it's not like anyone would could cared about something like that besides her. She was the only one who had pink, so keeping it in felt a little... personal. It was her creation, literally born from her: her first real experiment with the wider scope of her knowledge, and it was fresh and exciting.
So the pink remained untouched.
However, due to it being a wholly new addition made by her hands it had some special properties. For starters it lacked a character file, which deeply complicated things. The file was a compilation of everything that made them, from their existences right down to their personalities. Although the more idealistic side of her pondered why couldn't she just make one and go through with that, she had no idea how to replicate the special properties it had (they're only a few kilobytes in size damn it how can something so small give her so much trouble?), including her own. Though Monika had a plan to ensure the former would be taken care of through trial and error, which left personality as her only issue.
It wasn't something she'd necessarily thought about during the heat of the moment, but sooner or later the thing standing before her would require ambitions, connections, and so much more to be minimally on par with the four of them. This prompted a different kind of research though, one that would have to wait.
She needed to think of how to properly inject her puppet into the script, first.
Monika's desperation and excitement blinded her of the fact this plan was flawed from the beginning. It was too unpredictable, too ambitious, too naive.
She got too ahead of herself and hadn't taken precautionary measures to ensure things would go her way, but this too would have been impossible. The script, to her, was nigh-unreadable and her plan an utter gamble. As a result, it became an amalgamation of something far worse than Monika could've imagined. Volatile and angry, more than eager to punish her for ever interfering with the natural state of the game.
Monika was no god, merely a girl who got unlucky.
And the game was more than willing to teach her that no amount of damage control would redeem the preconceived notion she ever had things under control.
(And every second of it had been scripted.)
(Every
Second
Had
Been
Scripted.)
Monika had turned away from Sayori somewhere during her explanation. She just couldn't look at her anymore, not without wanting to fall through the floorboards and never return.
"And... the, the rest you already know. The game," Her voice cracked. "And— what happened. I just— I... needed— I wanted out. I couldn't take it anymore. You all said the same things over and over, and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't change anything."
"...Monika."
"I tried everything. Every idea possible to see if the outcome would change, but it didn't. It never did. Things would go back to the way they were eventually, so I gave up and took a risk. Things changed because I did that. But I didn't want this—"
"Monika."
"I kept going, thinking 'if I get out fast enough I won't have to worry anymore'. Thinking 'if I keep pushing maybe things will fix themselves because I-I bit off more than I could chew and everything was falling a, apart, and— never should have deleted y—"
"Monika."
...
"Monika, look at me."
...ah.
So that's why her voice was closer.
"I'm going to ask you something. Okay? And when I do, I want you to answer truthfully."
Monika hesitantly nodded.
"Do you love the Literature Club?"
"Ye—"
Monika's reply came out instinctively, but she quickly stopped before she finished yet Sayori's expression remained the same. Patient. Waiting.
Did she love the Literature Club?
After she learned the world's final secret, the void spitting her into the clubroom did her no favors in thinking on the subject matter. Every inch of her had been scripted for someone else's sake and that meant her act of martyrdom and everything that came with it, too. The seed of doubt had been planted immediately after her epiphany and the time came for it to bloom.
Whenever Monika thought of them and the club past the horrible things she made them endure, her heart swelled with affection. Almost enough to bring a smile to her face yet stopping just short of one. But when she also thought of the possibility that this feeling was a byproduct of the script's past influence over her, affection quickly turned to uncertainty, and uncertainty into hesitation.
Did she deserve to love them after what she'd done?
As of right now, there was no way she could answer Sayori's question. The wounds were still too fresh for them both and any concrete answer was as good as a lie. Maybe she figured this all out before Monika ever had a chance to answer her, wanting to confirm whether she'd be honest to herself or not. She was correct for both the right and wrong reasons, though, but she didn't know what they were. Yet.
Monika's 'yes' was the scripted Monika talking, and she couldn't lie to herself nor Sayori. So she replaced it with the next best, and most honest, answer she could give right now:
"...I don't know."
Monika's hunch was correct as Sayori's face changed to one of understanding, although the lack of a smile in it made it seem like a wholly different emotion to her. Disappointment.
"I came back because I loved the club. But the more I think about it, I'm... everything was going to be deleted. The club, the game, everything. I didn't want any of that to happen." Monika had to tell her sooner or later about the final truth of this world. So why not ease her into it as soon as possible? "That's why I'm here. To make sure nothing would happen to the club."
Monika swiped her hand in the way she'd done since the hole in the wall but nothing came up. She noticed panic gripping Sayori for a brief second before it morphed into confusion. To her, it was only as if Monika had done an out of place gesture for the topic at hand.
Monika had pieced everything together during her explanation: why she couldn't see what Sayori was holding onto, why she felt her cells come apart for those moments. The script's erasure and her return were her final acts of meddling with the console; and anyone from an outsider perspective couldn't see when the president meddled with the console slash interface.
All Monika had to her name now was the unwanted title of Vice-President, the truth of this world and the guilt of everything she'd done eating her whole.
"I can't do anything anymore. Even if I wanted to, I can't go back." Monika wanted to look away from Sayori's gaze, she really did, but those eyes burning with emotion made it impossible. This was a Sayori she'd never seen before, her posture unwavering and roaring with determination unlike any other. An unstable Sayori who would've nailed the coffin shut on this world for good and finished what Monika had started had been unknowingly replaced by one determined to use its knowledge for something greater and help steer the club's fate toward a happier ending, whatever it may be.
And out of everyone in the club, Monika thought, Sayori was the only person capable of allowing her to see how the club would heal from everything.
"Please tell me you're real, Sayori." The... focus on her own self-preservation made her stomach do backflips, made her want to sink into the floor until she was back in that hellish prison, just to make sure she would never put herself first ever again.
Sayori's reply urged Monika to continue.
"Everything's gone. There's no more script to follow, it's... just the four of us. We're all that's left in this world now." Monika swallowed thickly, eyes brimming with shame. It wouldn't do any favors to keep things from Sayori when she already knew the world's dark secret. But she didn't know its darkest secret.
"All that's left?" Sayori tentatively asked, looking at Monika as if she had been presented with an unsolvable puzzle, causing Monika to flinch and take a step back.
Monika had been too wrapped up in the idea of revealing everything without considering that telling Sayori now would surely affect her mental state and Monika couldn't help but worry over how now that she was unravelling this train of thought. She knew from experience Sayori hadn't had nearly enough time to process her new reality, and adding more fuel to the fire would make it much harder for her to digest everything healthily, and potentially spiral further than she already certainly would. If Monika wasn't there to pull her out of that spiral before it was too late, this much information in such a short period of time would lead her down the same path she herself had walked.
But she had asked Monika to help her make a decision. She asked Monika to help her make the right call even when she didn't have to. When she would be fully justified in wiping Monika from the game without a second thought.
Which meant Sayori wouldn't settle for thinly veiled excuses and lies, details omitted for whatever reason, or anything else that could jeopardize her decision. And although Monika thought it was a bad idea through and through... she was also the only person who had something to lose from all this. Her life was the one at risk right now, and though her first priority was making sure the club could thrive once again... she pulled herself out of the void to see it through and make sure Sayori didn't get rid of it one way or another. She didn't care if she wasn't there to see the club and its members be reborn from the ashes of her sins, so long as they were happy. But uncertainty and Monika didn't go hand in hand. She needed to be here if only to see it happen.
So Monika opened her mouth and let the truth flow out from it. From the events that took place when she got deleted up until she returned to the classroom. The... thing she met in that hellish prison, the goodbye letter meant to send the club off after history tried to repeat itself, the world's darkest secret and what Monika had done to the script. Everything. Remembering everything down to the last detail hurt, hurt so much she could feel it in every part of her body (that burning up sensation would forever stick with her. Forever.) but she kept reminding herself what she was doing it for.
For the sake of the club. For Sayori's sake. For her own sake.
By the end of it Monika finally tore her eyes away from Sayori and to her own hands, finding temporary relief in squeezing them tightly together in mock prayer until it hurt. There was nothing more to be said, no words left unspoken and whatever blanks remained could be filled with the knowledge of every one of Monika's actions. There were no more secrets. All that was left was for Sayori to decide her fate.
"I..." Sayori's voice noticeably wavered, causing Monika to wince in anticipation. She was ready. She was ready. She was ready.
She had never been ready.
The world coiled in on itself when Sayori spoke. "You don't... need to make all that up."
...what? But... but I...
"You can just say you... that you..." She heard Sayori take in a deep breath, emotions indiscernible. "I... you're... running away from things."
No, no, I'm not—
"Monika, I don't need... you don't need to justify why you came back. You already gave me the reason, and that's good enough for me. You can figure out what all of this means to you, and how you plan to take responsibility for it in your own time and explain everything when you're ready." Sayori continued with a hushed tone, inviting Monika to let herself be vulnerable, but... she wouldn't look up. She couldn't look up. Her hands blurred with the wooden floor as something wet streaked down her cheeks. "A part of me wants revenge. You... you toyed with our lives like they didn't mean anything to you. Got rid of me when you saw things weren't going your way, and... and you made them forget me. Like it didn't even happen. And kept going."
Sayori tried her best to keep her tone leveled, but Monika could detect the smallest of venom in her words. "I want you to know how it feels to be forgotten, Monika. To be expendable, and fail at even that. And the worst part is I wish I could do that. But... too much has happened and I don't think I could handle one more mistake after the high wore off. I'd still have Yuri and Natsuki, but I'm not sure if I could tell them about all this, even if we're trapped inside here forever and we don't make it out. I want our lives to be as normal as possible in each other's company. You're right about how all we have is each other in this place... and I don't want to lose anyone. Including you."
"...why?" Monika's voice was frail, raspy. It wouldn't dare go beyond a measly whisper, her hands moving to grip at her skirt with such force it was almost as if the layer of fabric wasn't there. Sayori's... mercy was flipped on its head and was beginning to leave a sour aftertaste. A new emotion swelled up within Monika as the same words (I'm not lying to you I'm not lying to you) repeated inside her head like a broken track. She... she had to tell her. Convince her she wasn't lying, wasn't making anything up and would never lie to her about something like this, she can change she can cha—
"All I want you to do is go back to the Monika who loved the club and looked out for its members." Sayori said bluntly, leaving no room for error. All the while Monika's sadness and frustration steadily built up. She... she hadn't made excuses. She wasn't running away from anything. She saw and felt every second of what she had told Sayori. "Whether I, Yuri or Natsuki are real or not isn't something for me or them to answer. We're as real as you are, and how real you think we are are two completely different things, if it makes sense... I really have no way of explaining it properly."
Her words felt hollow. Everything about right now felt too uncomfortably staged and the words went in from one ear and right out the other as the world around her faded to black and left only Sayori's nervous laughter in its wake ringing inside Monika's head, twisting it into something else entirely and drowning her in the sea of emotions she never knew how to swim in.
It had been the game's fault. The script made her do everything like she was a string puppet. Despite the weight of her actions feeling too real to be scripted causing doubt to be cast on the validity of what had been revealed to her, the letter Monika never got to write was proof the world had been doomed to fall apart hadn't she trusted it blindly.
Simply put, there existed a reality where the script followed through to the bitter end. The possibility of such a reality was evidence in itself that her actions were dictated by the one who put them in this hellish landscape in the first place, and it scared Monika that once more the burden of knowledge fell unto her first.
Monika's breaths came out shaky and uneven. As much as her head screamed to just take Sayori's words for what they were worth and run with it, to bathe in the glow of a helping hand reaching out to her after everything she'd done... it hadn't entirely crossed her foggy mind that maybe Sayori's disbelief stemmed from her inability to properly take in her surroundings yet.
There was no time like now for emotions to cloud Monika's judgement. "Sayori, I... I didn't... make any of it up. I— everything would've been deleted. After the other two left, you'd try and... appeal, to them like I did and it wouldn't work. You'd have made the same mistake as me but... quicker. I stopped you from— from... from making me get rid of everything for good. If I could help it, I didn't want things to end. I didn't want to lose y—"
"If everything's scripted, then why are we here right now?" Monika's gaze shot up and was met with the most forced smile she'd ever seen on Sayori. Not even the ones from before held a candle to this. This one wasn't pre-programmed. She physically shrunk into herself as if begging for Sayori to delete her then and there, because Monika instantly pieced together that whatever came next was going to hurt more than that smile.
"If... if our knowing is part of the script and nothing more then how did it break? Why did you come back here instead of simply getting rid of me? None of it adds up, Monika!" Sayori yelled out in near exasperation, taking a moment to calm herself before continuing. "It just sounds like you're making stuff up to hide behind something so you don't have to take responsibility for what you've done! Even if... on the chance you're right, you're telling me the truth, then who's to say this part isn't scripted too? What if you deleting it was completely intentional and we're still not our own people?"
"I..." Monika was frozen solid from head to toe. There was no real explanation for why she'd gained access to that kind of information, and there wouldn't be one for the foreseeable future either. She was dealt a powerful hand with no realistic way of backing it up meaning it was as good as a bluff. Leaving only the script's erasure as her only credible pillar. "Ch-check the script. There's... nothing there. There can't be any hidden file, I made sure of that!"
"But... but—" Sayori seemed to slow down a little, breathing heavily and taking a minute to gather herself with a hand grabbing a fistful of hair in stress. Monika wasn't doing better with hers now pulling at her skirt and threatening to rip the fabric in half, but she couldn't care less about the skirt right now. Monika saw Sayori perform a few motions with her free hand before stopping in frustration and looking to her for help, something she only pieced together after a few seconds of initial confusion.
"Get to... game, that's the one, like you... think as if you want to leave the... character folder without getting rid of the interface and it'll work. Then, game and the script one is there. Zero kilobytes, nothing in there. No gibberish." Monika recounted from (an extremely distant) memory how it'd been for her, being rewarded with the foundations for a pounding headache and the overwhelming urge to get to the folder herself for Sayori to see despite it being impossible. She had to sit back and watch Sayori go through the same learning experience she had.
So, she watched as Sayori's expression took on total surprise for a second before evolving into abject horror...
...watched as Sayori's body pushed itself up, turned its back to her and carried itself to the doors with no clear destination in mind and devoid of any will...
...watched as Sayori's lips did their best to smile one last time before finally giving up and settling on a thin line, hearing the words "I... I need some time alone, so I can... so I can think. I won't do anything, so... please. Don't worry about me breaking things." come out of her lips.
Sayori?
The entrance exit to the classroom slowly opened, and the orange glow that once captured Sayori in a beautiful, almost angelical glow now served as a bittersweet reminder of the first victim of Monika's wrath. She marked both the end and the beginning of the Literature Club as they knew it, and Monika was simply going to let her walk out. Her neck pulsed as if it wasn't her own and tightened and her left arm fully gave out.
Don't leave.
This world gave her the illusion of power and she fell for it again and again. It didn't prepare her for the real thing, where her strings were cut and her actions had the potential to change the future and help build the path toward a brighter tomorrow. She was given the perfect opportunity to test her true power and not just the mere suggestion of it. And what was she doing?
I can't be alone again. Please.
Useless. Being useless, not taking advantage of the endless possibilities made available to her. Or, perhaps, maybe she had? Watching Sayori leave the classroom and slowly close the door behind her was one way of utilizing her newly obtained power; she chose to let her leave after all. It was her choice to say nothing, and now she didn't know what to do with her first independent decision.
It was ironic: she had been given the thing she yearned for all this time, and she didn't know what to do with it. All Monika could do was sit by idly and realize that even now,
she didn't have what it took to be free.
Monika wept.
Wept,
sobbed,
cried.
Groaned,
screamed,
roared.
The world's only reply was the passage of time, indifferent to her woes; until the darkness of the night lined with faraway spots of white replaced the warm rays of orange and faded yellow.
(Monika hadn't been awake to experience how cruel the passage of time was, at least.)
