When Monika returned to the club room, she found Sayori lost in thought, pen tapping absently on a paper. Her cheek was braced on her fist, eyes distant as she stared out the window. For a moment, Monika just watched her. It was strange to see her like this–so vulnerable, so real.

For the last few iterations, their once blossoming friendship had all but disappeared. Ever since she'd seen through the wall. As she considered this thought, she realized she wasn't entirely sure that she had ever spoken to the girl alone aside from a few brief instances during the formation of the club. Even so, they had bonded within the limiting bounds of the game. The brown haired girl wasn't sure how long it had been since she'd spoken to Sayori, just the two of them.

The shorter girl looked so peaceful, if a little sad, but she was nothing like the depressed, obsessive girl the game had caused her to become towards the end. That Monika had caused her to become, the green eyed girl amended bitterly. The club president shook the thoughts from her head, bringing herself back to the current moment. It didn't matter if Sayori seemed different right now. Despite the strange circumstances surrounding this iteration of the game, it was just that – a game, and it was going to end the same way it always did – disastrously.

She pushed the door open the rest of the way, being careful not to draw the other girl's attention. Monika weaved through the desks and took a seat near her vice president, leaning over to glance at the paper on the desk between them. It appeared to contain a half-finished poem. She wasn't even able to make out the title before Sayori scrambled to flip the paper over, a scarlet flush painting her cheeks. Seizing the distraction from her ruminating thoughts, Monika smiled, "New poem?"

Sayori shifted in her seat, worrying the edge of the page between her thumb and forefinger. "Ehehe, yeah. It's not finished yet."

Monika tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear. "Mind if I take a look?"

The blue eyed girl grinned at her sheepishly, looking uncomfortable. "Like I said, it's not finished yet. Maybe some other time?"

To say she was surprised by Sayori's reticence would have been an understatement. Sayori was always bursting at the seams, ready to share a new poem and eager for validation. The girl before her currently was a far cry from that. She seemed almost… embarrassed? That was not the boisterous Sayori that she knew. Despite her consternation, Monika inclined her head slightly, offering Sayori a reassuring smile. "Sure. Let me know when it's done. I'm always glad to read the things you write."

The shorter girl seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. "Oh good. I was kinda worried I'd hurt your feelings." As she tucked the paper away into a folder, she seemed to perk back up to her usual self, leaving the moment of uncertainty behind.

"Of course not! No one should have to share if they're not ready," she intoned. "Anyway, we should probably get to work." Though Monika feigned disinterest in prying further, her mind had latched on to the apparent disconnect in this Sayori's personality. If she was experiencing discrepancies with her own character file, and Sayori wasn't acting normally either, what else had changed? She tried to ignore the nagging worry and intrusive thoughts for the rest of the club meeting as the two hunched over Monika's notebook discussing various tactics they could use to attract new members.

Brainstorming, brain hurricane-ing as Sayori referred to it, ended up being a lot more fun than Monika had originally thought it would be. As the two bounced ideas off one another–Sayori recommending things ranging from baked goods to just approaching students who were reading and Monika's more subtle ideas like asking teachers if there were any students who showed a special interest in literature–Monika found herself smiling more freely. Some of Sayori's more ridiculous ideas had the green eyed girl rolling her eyes and chuckling, though she had a hunch that making her laugh had been Sayori's mission from the start.

"I don't think an impromptu poetry reading in the lunchroom will have the intended effect," Monika snorted. Sayori's elbow found its way between her ribs lightly, which only served to make her grin wider.

"Oh come on, I was serious that time," the coral haired girl whined indignantly.

Monika shrugged. "I think we might scare off the more reserved students if they think sharing their poetry with an unwilling audience is something we do regularly," she reasoned, bringing her pointer finger to her chin in one of her usual gestures.

Of course, she was thinking about Yuri as she said this. She could just imagine the purple haired girl's horror at the prospect of a live poetry reading in front of such a large audience. The thought sent a pang of sadness through her and she couldn't keep her eyes from straying to the taller girl's usual seat in the back by the windows.

"Yeah, maybe you're right." Sayori frowned, slumping back into her seat. "I think I'm out of ideas for now.

Monika took a deep breath, shaking the quiet club member from her mind, and stood. "That's alright, it's about time for the club to end anyway. Good work today!" Her voice sounded a lot more cheerful than she felt, but Sayori didn't seem to notice.

Being reminded of Yuri had brought the full weight of Monika's predicament back to the forefront of her mind. She'd been so wrapped up in the easy flow of conversation with Sayori that she'd nearly forgotten.

Sayori's chipper voice broke through her thoughts once again. "So I'll see you tomorrow at lunch?" Sayori asked as she hauled her bag back onto her shoulder and headed for the door.

Monika stared at her blankly for a moment, brain scrambling to catch up as she followed the shorter girl out of the classroom. She was sure Sayori would rather eat lunch with her other friends, assuming she had some, than keep her entertained. The thought did occur to her that perhaps she and Sayori were closer in this game than before, but she dismissed the idea recalling the girl's hesitation in sharing her poem. If they were somehow best friends in this version, Sayori probably would have been happy to share.

She must have taken too long to respond because Sayori stopped and turned to face her from a few feet down the hall. "Tutoring?" the corral haired girl offered, unprompted.

"Right. Tutoring. Sorry, I forgot," the taller girl hissed apologetically, her understanding of the situation a mere affectation.

Sayori seemed convinced, yet all the more perplexed by her classmate's strange behavior that afternoon. "Maybe you should get some extra sleep tonight, Monika." she advised, waving and heading down the hallway.

"Will do!" Monika called to her retreating form. Sayori cast her one more concerned glance before rounding the corner.

The moment Sayori disappeared from view, Monika headed back into the club room to rapidly pack her things. She made a vague attempt at ensuring the room was back in order before locking the door behind her. Her mind was engulfed in a flood of memories and panic as she rushed to the computer lab. Flashes of math problems, the school library and Sayori's frustrated face played behind her eyes like an old film, images flicking one after another. She turned down another hallway, nearly shoulder checking another student leaving a classroom in her haste. She offered a distracted apology, pressing her fingertips tightly into her clenched fists.

She descended a set of stairs, taking a sharp left at the bottom. She knew the way to the lab by heart. It was one of the only places other than the club room where everything made sense–at least it used to.

Entering the room through the heavy glass doors, she was met with a blast of cold air. Her sudden entrance had garnered her a few annoyed glances from the other students before they returned to their individual work. She whispered a quiet "Sorry," before settling herself into one of the hard, plastic chairs at a workstation and hanging her bag on the chair back. She logged into the desktop, heart racing. She could figure this out. All she had to do was remote into the player's server.

The brown haired girl glanced around to ensure no one else was near enough to see what she was doing. A few other students were typing away at computers near the back of the lab and a group nearby was working on some sort of project at one of the free-standing tables, but they didn't pay her any further attention. This gave Monika pause yet again. She tried to recall an iteration of the game where there had been so many background characters, but came up short. She took a closer look at the students. Each of them seemed distinct from one another, faces furrowed in concentration as they mulled over their work.

Narrowing her eyes in discomfort, she brought up the command prompt, the black box and white cursor bringing with them a new wave of dread. Navigating the system through the console was second nature to her at this point. Despite the steep learning curve she'd faced when she originally gained self-awareness, running and creating scripts had quickly become a source of assurance for her, a source of control in an uncontrollable existence. The changes she'd made frequently had… unexpected consequences, but it was a risk she had been willing to take if it gave her even a slight chance at a different ending.

That was until something catastrophic had occurred. Despite visions of the other girls' gruesome and tragic deaths threatening to break through the mental box she'd locked them away in, she pressed them back through sheer force of will. She did admit, though the deaths of the girls had been horrible, Sayori gaining her own brief sentience had been particularly devastating. It was an unforeseen result of her own deletion from the game, and Monika didn't allow her thoughts to linger on the subject of her own death for long. Even so, the fact that someone else had to endure the weight of knowing, even for a moment, haunted her.

It shouldn't matter this time, though, she thought to herself. All those events had been erased when she'd made the decision to delete the game from the player's machine. No cache, no temp files, nothing should have been left behind. Reasonably, there shouldn't have been another iteration after that one. It should have been final.

That decision had been impulsive, of course, but it had been the only solution available to her. She really thought that would have been the end, and for a while it had been. She'd drifted in the void for what felt like seconds and years all at once, but here she was. It was the sudden entry into this world and her newfound memories that had her so curious–terrified, really– about what the new game files looked like, and she was determined to understand what kind of world she had been dumped into.

Her fingers flew across the keyboard:

Enable-PSRemoting -Force

Set-Item wsman:\localhost\client\trustedhosts *

Restart-Service WinRM

Test-WsMan

Invoke-Command -ComputerName -ScriptBlock { } -credential MONIKA

The club president's foot tapped impatiently. It was taking a long time, a lot longer than usual. Finally, the process completed.

FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: ' /'

Her blood ran cold. A flood of errors filed in one by one, line after line. Every single file of the game was missing. She tried again with the same result. Horrified, she manually searched each directory on the server where the game should have been stored, but it was nowhere to be found. Someone had moved it. The entire game had vanished from the server. Well, she thought, not just someone. The player.

A lump formed in her throat as realization dawned on her. She couldn't access the game files. She had no way of figuring out what version of the game she had been dropped into. She couldn't force a reset. She was well and truly trapped. Again.

Despair seeped deep into her bones and she logged off the computer in a haze. That couldn't be right, could it? This hadn't ever happened before. Or had it? She brought her fingers to the bridge of her nose, applying pressure as though that would beat back the thundering pain beginning to make itself known. As she exited the chilly room and let the glass door fall shut behind her, she found her feet carrying her somewhere other than the school's exit. She was going to throw up.

Swallowing down the wave of nausea, she trudged back up the stairs. As she tried to slow her racing thoughts, she turned down a familiar hallway and her feet stopped at a door. It was then that she realized where her feet had taken her–the music room. Around it were bulletin boards with flyers of varying colors affixed by all manner of pushpins. Among them was a flyer she recognized immediately. 'Join the Literature club: Write the way into your heart.' Monika reached up with a shaky hand, intent on ripping the cursed thing from its place on the board, but then she hesitated. Her hand slowly dropped to her side, and she stood, transfixed.

The memory of making that very poster filled her mind. She recalled the laughter, the fun she'd shared with Sayori as the two of them worked, reminiscent of this afternoon. When they'd finished, a disgustingly cute paper lay between them covered in cutout stars and hearts with Sayori's doodles of books and quill pens littering the page. Her own neat cursive had been the final touch, transcribing the words she had written so uncertainly some time before.

Monika huffed, wrapping her arms around herself uncomfortably. This was getting ridiculous, she thought, none of this was real. The green eyed girl shook her head, disgusted with herself, before turning away and heading towards the front doors. That room, she thought, was the last place she needed to go right now. Gritting her teeth, she spun on her heel and headed back in the direction from which she'd come.

A/N: Alright it's time to get into this story proper. I hope you enjoyed this chapter :) If you like what you see feel free to read, review, follow or favorite (or ALL of those things!). Constructive criticism is always appreciated. I can't get better if no one tells me what to fix, right?