Lovesick Girl
Chapter 5: A Gathering for Poetry
Wednesday, September 4, 2013 AF
Alright play time is over. All the previous days since I ran away were about acquainting myself with the place but today is the day I start making friends. And I didn't necessarily plan for today to be the day that I start making friends but something happened at the end of the lessons. But of course before the end of the lessons happened, well, you can probably guess what.
And one lesson I would like to highlight today is Grammar taught by Jan Misali. As usual with lessons this early in the school year, they were just introducing the curriculum, in a significantly more excited way that I already noted that all the Doki Doki High teachers other than Mr. Samsung share, but then, they went on:
"I will teach you the origins of the letter A, and the letter B, and the letter C..." and they listed all the letters in order, just like that. And then, a student interrupted Jan Misali: "What about the letter thorn?"
"Well, I'm very surprised that you even know of the letter thorn, Yuri Markova, but sadly that's not on the Grammar curriculum for Doki Doki High. I'm afraid you'll have to go to university for that one, if you don't already know everything about it, given that you were so insistent to bring it up in the first place." and then I glanced at Yuri Markova and she had brilliant long purple hair and held up some of it to her mouth because she had spoken too much. Also, what is up with everyone having strange hair colors? At Baldur's Gate, I could only ever see exactly one hair color: as black as outer space.
But anyway I was very curious as to why there were DLC letters that not even the strangest of schools Doki Doki High was going to teach me about. So I asked Jan Misali if we could schedule a meeting after school hours so that I could teach about the letter thorn and perhaps some others like the letter dagger or something like that. And Jan Misali only laughed: "Well, Madeline Myers, there's no such thing as the letter dagger, but I can assure you that thorn isn't the only DLC letter, and if you're not going to study linguistics like I did, I can teach you all about them." And that was an agreement and me and Yuri and everyone else let the lesson content continue.
But anyway that was the Grammar lesson and no other lesson carried anything important and my maid doll café job didn't take kindly to anyone who was going to be late so I headed straight out of school once the last bell rang. But once again, I was stopped in the tracks by the bouncy blue-haired annoyance Principal Creative Emogal. And she "Oh by the way I received a call from your maid doll café job and they are going to be closed for repairs today so you don't need to go to your job today!" and I frowned. But then I realized that this is an opportunity to make friends and in normal circumstances that would make me smile but I also realized, in the nick of time, that I don't ever want to smile in this school, so I just nodded and turned back to see what is up with Doki Doki High and its clubs.
At the front antechamber of Doki Doki High there were of course posters for all sorts of clubs. Of course I had explored all of the clubrooms beforehand so there was nothing new to be learned about the clubs, but the problem is that none of the clubs interested me enough for me to just, like, pick. But of course you can trust Creative Emogal to have taken care of this occasion as well, and right by the wall where all the club posters were, on the floor there was a circle made with writing that went "Stand here if you want to be recruited for a club!" so I stepped in and I stood like an idiot for a couple of minutes, reading what's on the club posters again and again and deciding, again and again, that I'll just let in-person advertising do the job.
And once that couple of minutes passed, I was greeted by a girl who I could have sworn wore the exact same type of clothing as Yuri Markova from earlier. It was really weird because I had already seen how Doki Doki High students dress and there obviously wasn't a uniform that they all wore, but for some reason at least some group of students (perhaps a club) did coordinate their manner of dress after all. But not entirely because this girl's hair was short and coral peach and decorated with a red bow. "Oh hello! Didn't expect that someone would use the Recruiting Circle after all! My name is Sayori Bucket-Andersen and I'm the Vice-President and lead recruiter for the Doki Doki Literature Club! Would you be interested? We do both reading of books and writing of poetry!"
Sayori Bucket-Andersen's undying enthusiasm was quite a sight to behold almost as much as that of Principal Creative Emogal and if I were anyone else, I would have been infected with it immediately, but of course I'm Madeline Myers and I'm above that sort of thing. So I simply "Yes. Please lead the way." and we with Sayori took off for the dedicated room of the Doki Doki Literature Club. Then Sayori swung the door open and everyone else in the clubroom recoiled as though she was going to hit them even though they were clearly nowhere near the door.
And of course all my suspicions were confirmed and the Doki Doki Literature Club members did coordinate their manner of dress. Of course I could spot Yuri Markova the thorn girl reading some sort of book with an eye on its cover but there was also a pink-haired girl with quite the attitude and a coral brown-haired girl with the most beautiful white bow that tied up her hair and flowed down like a river of the most delicious kind of milk.
And so Sayori began. "So this is us! Our President is Monika Salvato over here" she said pointing to the beautiful bow girl, "and the other members are Natsuki Tatou" the girl with an attitude "and Yuri Markova!" who I already knew and definitely was going to approach first.
So I walked up to Yuri and immediately asked her "So, since Jan Misali refuses to be helpful unless I schedule a meeting that would take away from precious club time, can you tell me about what other DLC letters exist besides the thorn?" and she only looked at me and "You actually saw me ask that and still remember? Ugh this is so embarrassing" and she buried her face in the book further. And then Natsuki stepped up to me and "Hey, you'd better treat Yuri better than this or else!"
And I got a smile but it was a mischievous one and not something that expressed genuine excitement. "Or else what?" and Natsuki suddenly grew furious. "Hey! It's not like I genuinely care for Yuri or anything like that, dummy!" and turned away fully blushing and not even trying to hide it. So that was the full experience that I needed to gauge the personalities of Sayori, Natsuki and Yuri and that only left Monika.
But I didn't even need to step up to Monika because she stepped up to me first and she declared. "You know, today is the first day of the new school year when we get to share poems with each other! And of course, I know, this is your first visit to the Literature Club..." and one could immediately tell that Monika was searching for my name in her brain but didn't find it because I never told her. So I only "Madeline Myers." and Monika continued. "Madeline Myers, but even though you've got nothing to show us, we wouldn't mind showing our own work to you, now, would we?" and Monika looked at all the other Literature Club members and Sayori beamed but Natsuki and Yuri only nodded briefly before returning to their activities. Of course Yuri continued reading her eye book but Natsuki pulled out some comics I think I need to take a closer look at them and I don't want to get smacked by Natsuki because I looked at the wrong thing.
And then Monika subtly added "Right now, that is. You heard me! Okay, everyone, it's time for poem sharing!" and Sayori immediately pulled out a crinkled sheet of paper but Natsuki and Yuri couldn't believe that Monika set them up for an unexpected poem sharing session just like that so they resorted to their predominant emotion and I resorted to my predominant emotion as well which is curiosity with a completely blank poker face.
Alright! Poems. Apparently, that's what the Doki Doki Literature Club, like, does to engage its members to talk to each other and to any newcomers such as me as well. And that means seeing what sort of poems the others in the club write, and perhaps even delivering the Madeline Myers brand commentary that I've started doing the exact moment I started writing this diary. Which is surprisingly not that long ago but you know how I roll.
First of all Sayori's poems are very much person A went to place B stories with absolutely no intrigue whatsoever. but they also have "person A was happy for no reason" and "person A was sad for no reason even though she was happy just a few moments ago". Well that just writes commentary for itself: there is no reason to be sad, be happy or flip-flop between the two and that's why I strive to do none of these things. Also Sayori is another one non-flip-flopper because she's always happy but the commentary of her own work is lost on her.
Then Monika is really playing with the placement of words on a page and let me tell you that people do not care. People read stories out loud and words just merge into one another and no one has ever tried speaking with a precisely 10 seconds gap and no one does because it's not how it works. And my commentary would be to just write words in all the space that Monika left over and make a normal person A went to place B story. You know that could be a pretty good activity to do but that would mean needing to own the physical paper that Monika's poems are on and I asked her and she actually treasures her poems quite much and is unwilling to cooperate. So, there's that.
Then Natsuki is short and to the point (both her and her poems) and actually manages to work out quite an interesting idea. You see it's prose that's supposed to be person A went to place B and what you do for poetry, ideally, is have words be your people if you know what I mean. The right words placed in the right order, even if they don't mean anything, can mean a lot and strike an impression, and if you write an entire piece of impression-striking words, that might just make up for the lack of emotion. I hope that makes sense. The point is, Natsuki did that and she's easily the most talented of the bunch and if I write poems, I wanna emulate her style first and foremost.
And lastly Yuri did another poem and just like Sayori's it was a random "I feed the raccoon, I feed the raccoon" and then at the last moment as though it was a punchline "I feed myself". It was such a good punchline that I wanted to laugh for a bit but again I'm supposed to be better than that and I didn't laugh. But unfortunately I saw how Sayori reacted to everyone else's poems and I knew that Sayori wouldn't appreciate Yuri's poem and Yuri knew that as well so she never gave her poem to Sayori today.
And that's everyone in the Doki Doki Literature Club, presented to me as people both in the usual sense and in the unusual one of poetry as well. Now, the only question is: do I actually, like, join the club? Or rather, would I actually join the club if I didn't have my maid doll café job because it will always overlap with the club meetings. So I told exactly that to Monika and she nodded understandingly and let me go but told me that I'm always welcome at the Literature Club meetings if something changes at the job.
And that's that. Did I pick the best club that Doki Doki High has to offer, the worst one or a fair representation of a club? Pfft. Don't ask me. I never saw all of them. I never even saw so much as two of them. This is the only one, and I'm going to reserve my judgment for now. And you know what I don't want to see a second Doki Doki High club and if time allows I'll just head for the Literature Club again. And that's my school life and friend-making efforts, summarized. Phew. Good night, diary.
Yours truly, Madeline Myers.
