Lovesick Girl
Chapter 11: Archival Scrolling
Friday, September 13, 2013 AF


Well. Luckily most of the attention of Doki Doki High students is away from me. I was, indeed, able to forget the whole pact with Monika while she wasn't in my eyes, and was able to talk relatively normally about Sayori's death. And I was able to convincingly say that she just had problems all this time and we simply brought them up at the last (and worst) possible minute before her sewiside, and she had been planning it all along, and it was all just an unfortunate coincidence.

Monika on the other hand wasn't faring so well. She still had the white dress and the blindfold on throughout her entire time at Doki Doki High, and once, she even rudely snapped back at a teacher, Jhonen Diamond-Vasquez teaching Literature, with something like "I will sooner learn the specialized script for the blind than take off this blindfold. I'm just too tired to actually see the world at this point." and I didn't expect anybody to humor her request but Jhonen legit walked out of the lesson and walked back in with a funny kind of book that didn't have writing with ink but only had writing with raised pips. And that kept Monika busy and not interrupting the lesson anymore but everyone knew of her reputation.

And I suppose that is confirmation that Monika's charm works with anyone, not just me, and even the teachers will do her bidding. I only bring that up because during Thursday, she once again approached me after school, correctly identifying me even though she still couldn't see anything, and we went through the details of our pact.

We brought up the list of all the clubs currently at Doki Doki High. Now I'm not going to list all of them here as I'm pretty sure that they're going to come up as we go through them but both me and Monika thought it was a fun idea to leave a certain club as our last. And of course for Monika that would be the Debate Club but for me for some reason I was really attracted towards the Band Club. So those were the ones we were going to tackle last.

And finally we agreed that none of this plan would actually be put forward until Monday. For one, Monika claimed that she still needed to think about the endeavor (even though I knew full well that she would not be changing her mind due to anything, not even an edict by Creative Emogal that clubs are now mandatory), and for two, the atmosphere just needed to cool off and start focusing on something else.

And boy did something else appear and start taking up everyone's time and conversation topics. But unfortunately that only happened on Friday and I don't think I saw Monika at all on Friday so I don't know what she thought.

Anyway. One thing at a time.

First up of course the atmosphere in Doki Doki High changed considerably. A lot of the students were not attending out of concern for their safety and others were only attending with bodyguards. I thought bodyguards were a little out of place for a high school environment where we were supposed to just enjoy clubs or something like that but I was a newcomer here and it didn't matter what I thought was out of place; if this is the new normal for Doki Doki High, then that's that, and if it was the normal all the time whenever a tragedy occurred, well, I don't have any objections regarding that either.

Of course none of this mattered to Magnolia Morgan-Chase. Even though her family is very much in the "rich" category and her death would be a regional scandal, she did not care one bit about being emotionally harmed, and did her best to talk down to anyone with bodyguards. Eventually though she got so annoying that the bodyguards kindly asked her to step away with threatening weapons and she really had no other choice but to comply.

Second up during the middle of Friday lessons the mood at Doki Doki High started changing again. Now people weren't afraid for their lives but instead were intently discussing something but I could never quite pick apart what. I think the topic was still about Sayori since "the Chocolate Factory" as a phrase got thrown around a lot but what was the matter? Did Doki Doki High suddenly come to a conclusion that Sayori was an annoying little brat who deserved death, and therefore vindicated Monika and myself? I literally was not capable of getting it without additional information.

And third up on the last lesson of Friday Flashlight Girl did manage to make it work so that we could talk via typing during the Computer Science lesson. The only problem is that her Commander PET is set up to be able to switch between programs and the ones in the Computer Science classroom are hardwired for one mode and one mode only: BASIC programs (unless you send a program in a wired way or something), so usually, she can't even tell if what I'm typing is code or text. But most of the time, she manages to tell it apart.

Anyway next time we meet on the computers there will be a special Flashlight Girl chat client installed on mine and there will be a key on the keyboard that I can use to switch between BASIC and the chat client. And once that happens then I will actually know what we talked about and will even be able to provide you with logs. But for today and its ad-hoc solution, I'll just summarize a point.

We didn't talk much about why the Chocolate Factory became such a hot topic at Doki Doki High again, but I did mention that I typed up a character study and character profile on Monika, and being the diligent collector of information that she is, Flashlight Girl asked me to head straight to the Internal History Department after class.

So, I did, and there, I learned stuff.

First I gave Flashlight Girl the Monika profile. And I did mention other things like how she constantly ties her eyes up shut so she doesn't want to see the world, to which Flashlight Girl (of course) had a convenient answer: turns out, Monika was born blind, but she wouldn't be accepted to elementary school with the condition, so she had a very inexpensive injection to her eyes and that made her able to see. Only the side effect is that her eyes turned from a pale, almost white blue to this very vibrant emerald color that I had memorized at this point. And after that it might just be a psychological effect that sometimes she wishes she were still blind and ties her eyes up.

But regarding the succinct profile herself, Flashlight Girl thought it was absolutely brilliant and needed to be the new standard for student profiles. The only problem is that collecting profiles like this for everyone would require Flashlight Girl to have a deep network of informants, and right now, she only had me (if I even counted, given that it had only been today when I started supplying Flashlight Girl with information and I still hadn't taken her up on the offer of typing up the existing paper documentation). But if I managed to get succinct profiles like this on everyone, and keep them updated for when, for example, Monika does rejoin the Debate Club, that would be the pinnacle of everything that Flashlight Girl ever strived to achieve, outside of recognition when a controversy arises at Doki Doki High.

"Doesn't Sayori's sewiside count, though?" I asked and Flashlight Girl "I mean kind of but the conclusion that The Samsung Times reaches will probably be that she was continuously depressed throughout school, and everyone knows how Riley is so depressed that she doesn't even speak during public events" and I "Wait, that's the truth? It's hereditary? And Monika just thought she could fix it with her charm?" and Flashlight Girl "Were you two conspiring to do something about it? Because you couldn't and now look what you've gotten yourself into. At least a substantial portion of the Doki Doki High student populace sees you as comparable to murderers. You know, it's surprising that people would start coming in with this information to me, after they dismissed every single other effort I ever had on compiling a Doki Doki High history."

This was rather depressing I didn't want to lose Flashlight Girl as a friend because she still wanted to be my ally. And since Monika wasn't there and her charm didn't work on me I explained "Okay look what we two have done has a very real chance of being considered irredeemable but I'm just an accomplice. You do know how her charm works, right?" and Flashlight Girl nodded to herself. She then "I don't write history. I only collect information that can be used to write a history."

That though was when I noticed that in front of her own Commander PET, there was a newspaper, named The Samsung Times much as I expected, with a big headline announcing that Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory is planning on a tour to pick a new heir or heiress. And there was a statement included by, well. Why don't we read together?

We, Charlie Bucket and Riley Andersen, are once again opening the gates of Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory to five lucky children on October 1, 2013 AF. Five Golden Tickets have been hidden underneath the wrapping paper of five Wonka bars, so that is the incentive to buy Wonka bars and not any other competitors'. Four of the children, after the tour, will also receive a lifetime supply of Wonka chocolate and one of the children will receive an unimaginable prize actually you know what we've been through this.

I think you can clearly see through this announcement and it is just like the one back in 1980 AF when Willy Wonka announced his tour and five lucky children attended the factory and one of them became the heir of the factory. And that one lucky child is me (Riley isn't really writing this let's be honest). And we had an heiress but then she committed sewiside so we need a new heir. It's a contest to pick a new heir, okay? The world's attention is turned.

Peace out.

"Wait a minute." I said once I had finished reading. "That is the big news? Everyone's just excited to step in Sayori's shoes?" and Flashlight Girl "Of course the tour is big news you didn't realize before? Surely not even gossip had come to you?" and I "No? And also another sus thing. Why don't Charlie and Riley even refer to Sayori by name? Do they really think she's replaceable just like that?"

Flashlight Girl stood up and started searching through her files. "Okay regarding Charlie and Riley the most I know is that both of them graduated from Samsung Group Adolescent Education Facility in 1989 AF. That's it. Information on these older people who were students earlier on is kind of hard to acquire. And even this 1980 AF tour is news to me." She then, soon thereafter, gave up, slammed the file drawers shut and got dressed in an overcoat like a detective.

"You're heading out?" I asked and Flashlight Girl "No. We're heading out. Creative Emogal actually tasked me with finding out as much as I can about this 1980 AF tour. And this is your first official task as an employee of the Doki Doki Internal History Department. Help me search through the back catalog of The Samsung Times." She then took me by the hand, led me outside the Internal History Department, locked it up and we headed straight to a building right next to the library: the official Samsung Group archive.

The archive curator suddenly smiled when she first saw us and Flashlight Girl got annoyed. "Oh hello, esteemed historian! Looks like you actually took the knowledge of the past and finally applied it to get yourself a girlfriend!" and Flashlight Girl was so angry that she took out her flashlight and flashed the archive curator right in the eyes. The archive curator then briefly leaned, shook her head, and sat right back up, and said literally the exact same thing in the exact same intonation but by this time Flashlight Girl had already taken us to the back of the archive.

"What did you think you were doing?" I asked and Flashlight Girl "In-progress invention. Sometimes I wish I could erase memories of certain things from people's minds so they wouldn't annoy me with the same remarks over and over. Only works for the very few last seconds of what happened, though. Information collecting takes priority over projects like this and the other one." and I "What's the other one?"

Flashlight Girl only ominously "I won't tell you, but the newspaper will." and she swiped the big roll which had all issues of The Samsung Times linked to each other. We had started in the present day with Charlie and Riley's announcement but eventually we made it to October 5, 2007 AF wherein the headline said "Teacher's Day Promises to the World". And I started reading through the text and apparently the Science teacher of the time, Richard Flakeley, had announced to the world that Joey Claire was going to build a time machine.

"Excuse me. A time machine? To what end? And why you?" and Flashlight Girl "Why don't you continue reading? The most important part of information collection is reading, after all." and I did as she instructed and continued reading. Apparently the very girl standing right beside me was the most talented prodigy that the Samsung Group Adolescents' Science Division had ever seen and, during her junior year, had already made several inventions that made life easier at the Adolescent Education Facility, as well as some that were subsequently picked up by Samsung Group itself and started production as prototypes. And from that point forward, the only place for her to go was up.

"So why didn't you continue developing inventions?" I asked and Flashlight Girl "But I thought we just established that I did? Nothing in the text says anything about a memory eraser. That one, I only started on last year." and I "No no. Why didn't you pursue your goals at university or something? Why set up the Internal History Department in the first place?" and Flashlight Girl "Because literally nobody wants to hire anyone with the last name Claire anymore. Neither for a job nor for university. I thought we covered that too. No, even better, why don't I scroll further back and you can read the news as it happened?" and Flashlight Girl scrolled back to 2001 AF wherein the headline was "Jacob Claire Fired".

And what that article said was that, over the past few months, some of the articles written by Jacob Claire on The Samsung Times had suddenly undergone scrutiny, and basically none of the facts in any of them could be verified. So, these guys decided to conduct a search through Jacob's office, and found next to no clippings of past newspaper articles or excerpts from books. So, they concluded that he had been in the business of serially making things up, and urged readers to regard any of his past articles as pure fiction.

"Alright. Time for prep is over. Let's scroll to the point that we really want to find out about." Flashlight Girl said and continued scrolling through the archives. Suddenly, at around 1995 AF, even the newspaper title itself changed, from "The Samsung Times" to "Samsung Group Adolescents' Newspaper Division". And it was moderately shocking that The Samsung Times started out as a student project but it was nothing out of the ordinary. Later on Flashlight Girl explained to me that Samsung Group found the idea of the Newspaper Division extremely useful, and kept inviting adults to do work alongside the students, and once there weren't enough students interested who hadn't already graduated, the Newspaper Division was made into its own subsidiary company.

Anyway, Flashlight Girl made her way all the way to 1989 AF and had to stop because she saw two very familiar people on the front cover picture. The headline this time said "Another High School Love Confession" and I could kind of place the two people together but I also had to read to place them and what do you know. Charlie Bucket and Riley Andersen. And for once Riley looked like she had a genuine smile on her face. In fact looking at Riley like this kind of reminded me of Sayori but that was not the point because Flashlight Girl pointed to a text and read.

"The site of confession, conventionally named 'the site of a mythical battle', was set up by Loreta Diamond, another Adolescent Education Facility student who has appeared on the Newspaper Division previously in an interview, claiming that the mythical battle in question was never factual, and instead was thought up in a bout of insomnia preceding Diamond's own confession to Violet Beauregarde earlier this school year. Wait, the site of a mythical battle goes back to even before Creative Emogal? I thought it was part of her own Doki Doki High conversion! And who's Loreta Diamond? Is she related to the former Doki Doki Band Club president Caroline Diamond? What is going on?" Flashlight Girl had so many questions but luckily, this time, I had at least one answer. "You know Monika told me that Caroline was 'the diamond in Creative Emogal's eye' but I never thought that was a reference to her actual last name." and Flashlight Girl "Of course! Maybe Creative Emogal took over as Caroline's legal guardian after Loreta's death or something! But yeah that demands further research."

Finally, Flashlight Girl scrolled back one last time. The publications of the Newspaper Division were a lot less frequent than those of The Samsung Times, and it took us no time to go back all the way to the time period that Creative Emogal originally insisted that we research: 1980 AF. And this time we spent a lot more time reading through the relevant newspaper articles but could only find evidence of a tour in one article, titled "Beauregarde Family Seeks Compensation", which of course caught my eye because I had just encountered that last name in that previous article. Oh and of course I know who Skepness Man Beauregarde is who do you take me for? Some forgetful girl that forgets everything? My diary literally contains transcripts of entire conversations. That part, I think, is also settled.

And that one basically mentioned one thing: the Violet Beauregarde from previously had attended the 1980 AF tour that we were researching, was given a piece of experimental chewing gum that gives you a three-course meal, and instead ended up blowing up into a blueberry-like sphere. Even after "juicing", she continued to be purple, and would forever face ridicule at her school, and that's why the Beauregarde family wanted compensation from the Chocolate Factory. And it also mentioned the other attendants of the tour, or synonymously the Golden Ticket winners, who went by Augustus Gloop, Veruca Salt and Mike Teavee (obviously excluding both Violet, the subject of this article, and Charlie, the winner of the tour), who did not seek compensation in any way, at least up to this point.

And that was it. This particular archive just didn't have enough Newspaper Division issues. Clearly the Newspaper Division let us know that they diligently covered the tour throughout the entire "media craze", including a detailed report of the entire tour events on the February 4, 1980 AF issue, but there was no such issue in the archive. So, unless someone else had it, we were lost.

"Ugh! This always happens! A Newspaper Division issue is not archived, I have to search for it through other people's connections, and then I give it straight to the archive! In fact I'm pretty sure I supplied the archive with the majority of the Newspaper Division articles that it has. But luckily we have at least a few suspects. As soon as possible, I'll track down Caroline Diamond and see if she can let me know what happened to Loreta Diamond, and you'll track down Skepness Man Beauregarde and see if he can get you in touch with Violet Beauregarde. Oh and by the way: Skepness Man is a member of the Doki Doki Goth Emo Club."

"A Doki Doki Goth Emo Club?" I asked and Flashlight Girl "Yeah I think it's a bunch of misfits who didn't fit in with the Band Club. They declared that they do music, but every time I passed by their club room, I never heard music, so I don't know what's up with that. You can find that out on the side. Focus topic first, though. The 1980 AF Chocolate Factory tour. And with that, searching through the archives is a partial success. I'll take care of all the information, including your Monika profile, from this point forward. It's getting late and I don't want to bother you." Flashlight Girl said. And then she said something else that I can't remember, before flashing me with her memory eraser thing.

I wonder what.

Anyway one last interesting thing. The path from the archive back to my home actually took me by a point where I could see the hexafield arena of Doki Doki High, and right by it, the site of a mythical battle. And two people were actually on the site of a mythical battle. And it was exciting that there was yet another love confession so I headed straight for them, only to realize that those were Charlie Bucket and Riley Andersen, who had decided to visit Doki Doki High for some reason. Weird. But at least it put me back to reality what with Riley doing a stare into infinity (but not the Sbiis Samsung kind of stare into infinity) and not saying a thing.

And that's that. I have a mission, and maybe I can even integrate it with Monika's mission and make the Doki Doki Goth Emo Club disintegrate or something. Or maybe I'll just encounter Skepness Man Beauregarde on the business owners meeting or something, and that will allow me to continue piecing the story together. But failing that, I still have a plan.

Yours truly, Madeline Myers.