I look around, taking in the virtually empty area with not a little shock.

This is that room — the one that Monika chooses to isolate herself in once the game fully breaks down, and speaks directly to the player from. She did say that this place felt like home, now that I think about it. I wasn't sure how literally to take that statement when I was actually playing the game, but if this is where she ends up at the end of the day, then I guess it would make some sense... though I suppose it's not surprising she didn't feel like she could actually recognize it as such. Vague, pre-programmed feelings telling her this is "home" were probably not enough to bypass the fact that this looks more like a particularly barren classroom than anything that would qualify as a living space.

I look down. On the desk in front of me is an open composition book and a slim pink pen, the latter capped on one end with a decorative plastic heart. I stare at them for a moment, the pair of objects all but silently inviting me to use them.

I should... write my poem for tomorrow-

The second the urge hits me, I grit my teeth and all but fling myself out of the chair, forcing myself away from the desk.

No, I'm done with this. The script can go screw itself.

In lieu of that, I stand up fully and move towards one of the room's two windows, trying to get a look at whatever lies outside. This turns out to be an impossible task however, as the space-like atmosphere I remember has been replaced by what may as well be a layer of black paint on the panes. Given that the windows were, and in fact somehow still are the room's only source of light, I have no idea how it is I'm even able to see anything right now.

I turn back to the room proper, the contents of which is so minimal that it honestly reminds me more of an isolation cell than anything else. There is literally nothing in here other than the desk, the chair, and a door just beyond them that presumably leads to the rest of the house. Or rather, I know it leads to the rest of the house, because after I left the school and walked back home, I had to pass through it to enter this room-

I shake my head violently back and forth, the end of my lengthy ponytail almost whipping me in the face as I do. Those memories are patently, blatantly false — I know, because while I may feel like I remember walking back here, it really stands out that I don't remember any of the scenery on the way, or what the outside of this "house" actually looks like. Heck, even though I remember passing through it, I don't think I could even describe what the inside of it supposed to look like. Not to mention I don't recall thinking about anything in particular on the way here, and considering just how much I have to think about right now… yeah, there's no way any of that really happened.

An involuntary shudder wracks my body at recalling the now obviously implanted memories. At least thus far they've been easy to spot, but- actually no, I can't know that, can I? I mean, I can't even know that my own memories aren't just fabrications at the moment-

My hands clench themselves into fists at the reminder, long nails feeling as if they're on the verge of breaking skin.

I- I can't keep dwelling on this. It's not healthy, and I was already on the brink of concluding that even if I do look at the contents of my file, it's unlikely I'll be able to tell what any of it means without Monika's original .chr file to compare it with. It's pointless to keep fixating on it, and even more so to start working myself into a depressive spiral as a result. I need to stop…

Predictably, the topic refuses to leave my thoughts, which remain entirely unswayed by this logic. I scowl — alright then brain, how about a temporary resolution? Until I come across any actual evidence that attests otherwise, since I feel like me, I am me, plain and simple. There, conclusion reached; may we move on now?

Doing my best to scrub the matter from mind, I move towards the door, wanting to get out of this arguably rather creepy room. The impulse to sit back down and write a poem surges back to the forefront of my thoughts as I approach it, which I mentally throw aside as vindictively as possible.

No, I don't want to write anything right now, you stupid script. I want to open this door, walk outside, and take a break from dancing at the whims of this world for as long as I can possibly get away with. In other words, shove off.

I turn the knob and throw the door open, revealing… nothing. The world outside the entrance is just the same as the one outside the windows: black, empty, and apparently completely nonexistent.

After a few seconds or so of gazing into the abyss, I back away and shut the door again, breathing in a shuddering inhale as I do so.

Stay calm, me. It's just "a" void, not "The" void. There's no reason to panic, not over this. Stay calm...

As my pulse begins to slow once more, I quietly berate myself for not having at least half-expected something like that. Sure, between the school's expanded existence and those fake memories from just now, it didn't seem unreasonable to assume this place would have an actual house attached to it, or at least not nothing, but fine. Fine. I can figure some other way out of here. I'm sure that with a bit of code manipulation, I can...

My motivation deflates mid-thought. Actually no, I probably can't. I mean, I'm most likely only stuck in here until the player finishes the poem game, which isn't exactly a time-consuming activity — even when you're making one for a specific girl, it takes what, five, ten minutes at most? Then the game resumes, meaning I'll probably be getting whisked right back to the school again quite shortly. It feels like it's been about that long already in fact, so the likelihood of my actually accomplishing anything significant in the remaining time available to me is... not high.

Somewhat dejected, I focus in on the code window, wondering if I can tell exactly how close the player is to finishing. I don't know what the poem game looks like on the inside, but I'm betting that-

...why are we in "script .rpy"?

I blink. Isn't this- yes, this is the main script file. I can tell from the parts where it progressively calls the sub-scripts for each chapter. But we're supposed to be on the poem game right now, aren't we? Why would the code for that be stored in-

My eye catches on the green outline of the execution cursor, forestalling my thought process as I find it resting somewhere very, very strange.

# Intro
$ chapter = 0
call ch0_main

# Poem minigame 1
}}} call poem

...that's...

Okay, hang on. Based on the comment above it, 'call poem' should call the code that brings up the poem minigame. That's definitely what should be happening right now... except it isn't. Why?

I scroll through the rest of script .rpy, which takes me all of half a second due to its relatively minuscule size. The code for the poem construction clearly isn't in here; it's way too small a file for that. More importantly however, if the cursor is still resting on the line, then the line is still waiting to be executed — ergo, the poem game hasn't been called yet. Which means...

"Is anything actually running right now?" I mutter aloud.

Feeling the need to move, but bereft of anywhere to actually go, I begin pacing around the room, trying to piece together what's going on from dredged up bits of half-remembered programming knowledge.

Since we're no longer in script-ch0 .rpy, and the final scene has already faded out, the chapter has very clearly ended. Nothing new has been pulled up to replace it however, so the player should just be staring at a black screen at the moment. Maybe I should be worried about that, since it could mean the game is potentially going to be shut off at any moment, but things have presumably been like this since I got put in this room, so I'd think that if the player was going to do that, they already would have by now. But while the game hasn't actually crashed, it should look like it did — in which case, why haven't they done so? Should I try to "jumpstart" things in order to avoid that becoming necessary? Why is the code even stalled?

I pause in my pacing, one foot halfway off the ground, as something suddenly occurs to me.

"Maybe it's not stalled..." I whisper to myself.

At least, not stalled in a way that the player can actually notice. Time doesn't necessarily work the same inside of this game as it does in the real world — from an outside perspective, it only truly passes when the player advances the dialogue, while from the inside (at least from what I've seen) all dialogue and actions seem to be completed at a completely "normal" pace. As such, the game's clock clearly isn't synced to the real world's — a hypothesis only further backed up by how in Act 3 of DDLC, time supposedly stops passing on Monika's end entirely, which obviously does not happen on the player's end.

I smile. If what's happening right now is something like that, then I could basically be under the effects of hyper time right now, experiencing fractions of a second as hours or days. That's kind of cool, actually… though, it still doesn't explain why the game wouldn't be moving forward in the first place. Maybe it's waiting on something?

My eyes slide back to the waiting pen and book again.

Like, say, one of the characters to write her required poem for tomorrow…

My smile becomes a smirk. Oh, but wouldn't that be perfect. If that really is why we aren't moving forward, that means I can basically stay here in limbo until I actually want to go back to the game, free to spend as much time working things out as I like without the player knowing any different. Unfortunately, that's almost certainly too convenient to actually be the case.

I lightly slap myself on the cheeks to focus myself again. Regardless, if I'm ever going to try fiddling around with the code again, now would be the time. There isn't anything around to distract me, and if the game isn't going to "unfreeze" itself any time soon, then I'm going to have to get myself out of here after all.

Let's do this.

I put my attention back on the code window. I'm not exactly sure how to manipulate things from here without potentially causing problems, but I don't think I can get out of this room with anything the command prompt can do, so I'll just have to figure it out.

Let's see... in order to move somewhere else, I probably need to use a background change. I remember the code that caused the area outside the MC's house to pop up before I crashed things was "scene bg residential_day", so I suppose I could just try using that exact string if I really want to. Honestly though, I'd much rather keep to the indoors for the moment — I'm not exactly wearing the warmest of clothing right now, and in the middle of night it seems likely for it to be kind of cold outside. Well, assuming there even is a night, given that the background was specifically named residential_day, but I'd still rather not risk it.

Instead, I think I'll try for… the MC's kitchen, maybe? Yeah, that should work.

It takes me a moment to realize that, no, actually it won't, because I have no idea what that background image's label is, or what any of the background labels are for that matter besides residential_day. Although, in programming you generally want to keep things simple, so maybe it's just…

I tentatively insert a single line into the code window, moving the call for the poem game one space down in order to slot my own bit in as the next to be executed.

# Poem minigame 1
}}} scene bg kitchen
call poem

I really hope this works, because if the kitchen is named anything even remotely more complicated, like mc_kitchen or some such, then it's entirely possible I'm about to crash the game for a second time. Even if it doesn't, there's no telling if the code will pause on the call for the poem game again, so I pretty much just have to hope for the best.

I steel myself for whatever is about to happen, press the metaphorical "Enter" key to run the line, and…

I'm in the MC's kitchen.

I swivel around, amazed at how abrupt that was. There wasn't even any sort of transition — no wave of darkness, no "melting away" of the room to replace it with this one, no nothing. I'm just… here, now. There's even an entry hall behind me that looks to connect to other areas, implying that I've made it to an actual house rather than another singular room floating in null space.

I check the code window again. Still working, and we do indeed seem to have re-paused above "call poem", as hoped…

A few seconds pass before it finally hits me that I actually pulled that off, and a smile slowly crawls its way across my face. That went way better than expected! I basically assumed something was going to go horribly wrong, but it actually worked!

"YES!" I cheer on impulse to the empty kitchen, doing a happy little jump for joy before my attention wanders to the nearby fridge, its presence reminding me that all I've had to eat since showing up here is a cupcake. Technically two cupcakes I suppose, but the first one was in a timeline that got erased from existence, so it hardly counts. I certainly wouldn't mind some actual food right now, and I doubt the MC will miss any of it, if he even eats.

I walk over and pull open the fridge door to find it filled with... well, not a lot, but at least it's not completely empty like I half-expected it to be. Most notably, there's what appears to be some sort of pre-prepared chicken dish covered in what I hope is some type of sweet sauce sitting on the middle shelf, which I withdraw from the fridge with a fair bit of ceremony. Ah, this looks…

…hrm. I want to say "good", but part of me seems to be objecting to that for some reason. Somehow, the idea of eating meat is actually kind of… unpleasant? Oh, tell me this isn't more of Monika's file, or body, or whatever seeping through, I just managed to get my mind off the topic!

I groan aloud as I suddenly recall another line from Act 3's dialogue. God damn it, that's exactly what this is — Monika claims to be a vegetarian, which, incredibly inconveniently, is virtually the exact antithesis of my diet. I know it's not exactly healthy, but vegetables on the whole pretty much just disgust me, and I eat exactly two very specific fruit products. My antipathy towards that section of the food pyramid is so well known that I've been called an outright carnivore by more than one source. And unfortunately, in this situation…

I put the chicken back and pull open the crisper, which is full of fresh produce. The feeling of distaste disappears, only for an entirely different distaste to immediately rise up in its place — that being my own, long developed aversion towards anything remotely vegetable related.

Yep. Great! No greens or meat allowed without some aspect of "me" rejecting it, that's just lovely! I guess that means I'm just going to starve? Or maybe that's not even possible here, but- still! Gah!

I slam the fridge shut with a hefty dose of annoyance and turn to exploring the rest of the kitchen. Maybe there's something shelf stable in here I can satiate myself with instead...

Regrettably, there appears to be nothing to be found, and about five minutes later, all I've done is determined that this kitchen is officially useless. Maybe even less than that in fact, because while searching for something relatively inoffensive to my now thoroughly conflicting palate, I realized something else: there's no microwave in here. I'm sorry, who the hell owns a kitchen with a stove and a toaster oven but not a microwave? Or I suppose in this case, who draws that? Who conceptualizes a kitchen this nice looking that doesn't contain perhaps the most basic common cooking appliance, huh?!

...you know what? No, I refuse to accept this. It's stupid and childish, but I want something to eat, and by god I am going to get it. There has got to be something Monika and I's disparate tastes can agree upon, surely.

I look over the limited contents of the fridge again. Nothing... maybe there's somewhere else with a wider range of food? I don't know about Yuri or Natsuki, but Sayori should have a house. Right next door to this one, in fact.

I move through the entrance hall and into what appears to be the dining room, notable at the moment mostly for the large window on its back wall. It looks out on to the dimly-lit frame of another house, easily recognized by the long, slightly raised white fence that stretches out in front of it.

Confirmation that Sayori's house exists and that I'm not floating in nothingness anymore, excellent. Now, how to get over there... well, while I can't exactly just walk outside and waltz through her front door, Sayori's room should be one of the backgrounds, so there is of course the "easy" option.

I call up the code window again and add another line.

# Poem minigame 1
scene bg kitchen
}}} scene bg bedroom
call poem

...wait, no. Based on how I got to the kitchen, that'll probably just bring me to the main character's bedroom. What would Sayori's room be named? s_bedroom? sayori_bedroom?

I shrug. I guess I'll try both, and if the first one fails... er, the game might crash. Still, I'm going to have to find out what happens when I try to run a piece of faulty code eventually, so that time might as well be now.

Here goes...

I change the line to scene bg s_bedroom and attempt to execute it. The cursor moves down, but nothing else happens.

…guess that wasn't right. The game is still going though, so it looks like faulty code has no effect on things after all. I am safe to experiment without worry!

Relieved, I add the alternative line, run it, and immediately find myself in Sayori's bedroom.

Sayori is also in Sayori's bedroom.

Um.