0- Doki Doki!

Cal cracks his fingers after finishing his latest job, if he said so himself, finishing within 1 min of the deadline was good enough. Even more when he didn't ask for it to be pushed back even once.

Sending the files to his client, he sighs and lay back on his chair, proceeding to stare at the ceiling fan. It was just one of these days in his life, where literally nothing was happening. After a few minutes of contemplating his life he finally decide to do something 'productive' by opening steam and starting up Doki Doki litterature club.

That particular game was a little nugget he had heard about a long time ago already, but only came around to play now. it'd been hard as hell to avoid spoilers on the web, but somehow, he did it and there he was.

After playing it for a bit, Cal had to admit the game certainly wasn't for everyone. Making you go through a prologue where you think you're in a dating sim, meet and learn about cute girls, then only to see them be utterly destroyed later in terribles ways before your eyes was one hell of an experience. At least for those who cared a bit.

That's not even speaking about the deeper story and themes of DDLC. Monika was, well yes... Terrifying, but more than that. He found her fascinating. All the characters in the game were, in his opinion, but Monika was just out there in term of existential dread and madness... Totally up there on the hot crazy scale.

~Hours later

"Seriously, that's it?" Cal stare incredulously as the 'good ending' of the game, ending where you had spent time with everygirl in the same playthrough unravel before him.

"That's fucked! Man. Can't even stop Sayori from killing herself besides restarting and stopping to play." He clench his fists, restraining himself from banging his desk with it.

"Whatever, man. It's just a game, breath, it's just a game..." He remind himself and follow his own advice. Breathing in and out a few times.

"Seriously, get a fucking grip." Cal sighed. Since he was young, he had the tendency of empathising too much with other people or overeacting to their pains. Be them real or fictional. People would call him emotional, or unstable when they'd see him become genuinely mad or deeply sad for someone in a movie or a game.

After all, what's the deal. They're not real. So what's there to be hung up about?

Honestly, he'd tend to agree. Fortunately, he had learned long ago to control his 'empathy'. Meditation, breathing exercises, yoga, you call it, he tried them all. However, only downright dissociation obtained from focusing only on his breathing pattern seemed to work. Which came with its own set of problems.

Now people call him indifferent.

Anyway, enough about this. Personally, Cal would say the game was very bittersweet, with it leaning more toward the former. Cause of course the experience would become less meaningfull if there was an happy ending somewhere. But not giving one at all is just a cheap tactic to make an impact on the player, no matter how well it was done.

Well, that was his opinion. After all. He was a programmer and yet he nevee made any games as successful as DDLC.

"Well, now that I've finished the game. Let's see what the fandom is all about." Saying that, he searched up game theories and videos on Yurtub.

"Third eye? That's pretty sick, also kinda terrifying. Cool concept at least." Scratching his chin, Cal couldn't help but think about what would realistically happen if such a thing was to be granted to someone in real life.

However, his musing was brought short by a heavy groaning sound coming from behind him. It sounded like his entire house was splintering and cracking at the seem.

So loud and sudden was the phenomena that Cal jumped to his feet and cried out a scream that was less than manly. "What the fu-" He couldn't finish his sentence as what he saw left him agape.

The rest of his room was no more, just a dizzying array of color shifting over each other and squirming.

Squirming, ever so slowly. Toward him.

Idly, he noticed how the world seems to stretch and slow around him. He noticed that besides the rainbow of colors present in the light coming toward him, there was a distinct blue and green part that looked like something that didn't fit in the narrative, the narrative of the light itself, and the narrative of this very world.

Then, the next instant, he was engulfed by the 'light'. Or more like, pushed back and fusioning with it at the same time.

Cal never heard the booming of thunder that shattered the world like glass that came just after that. And he never saw how his reality was simply reset to normal immediatly after the passing of this unfathomable bolt of lightning. Lives, the Earth, the universe, everything just went back to normal, as if this shattering had never happened in the first place.

Everything, well, except him.

In his room, the only thing hinting at where he had gone one of the screen of one the monitor of his computer glitching and opening a tab by itself. Making a catchy song resound through the empty room for a couple of seconds.

"Doki Doki~!"

Then the tab closed by itself. And the entire computer faded in and out of reality for a second, weird green and black squares like shapes emanating from the phenomena, only to afterward pop like silent bubbles.

From now on, nothing would be able to alter its existence. Nothing from the outside, at least.