15- Yes! Praise Me! PRAISE ME

(A/N: Hello, my dear readers. You can expect a bunch more chapters before I disappear again... Nah I'm joking, I'll actually try to get to a regular schedule after this batch, for now I'll try two chapters a week and we'll see how it goes. Besides that, some spicy development incoming ( unfortunately not the lewd kind, not yet). Now enjoy.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Taking a few seconds to acknowledge the good retort, his lips twitched into a smirk as he leaned forward, hand supporting his chin. "Maybe... What about yours though? Does it make you feel sick?"

Natsuki puttered her lips at his words, seemingly reading a few lines again before reluctantly raising her eyes to him. "... It's good, almost too good. Was it really your first try at writing poetry?" She answered a bit hesitantly but honestly, trying to hide how impressed she felt behind a serious veneer.

"Thanks. And yes, these four poems were my first serious attempts, yes." He answered with a pleased smile. While he could be considered to have cheated in creating them, the facts he could explain with precision every part of his writings proved enough that his game-like advantages were now as part of his new existence than everything else.

"I'm with Natsuki on this. While it's a bit rough on the edges and the style could use a bit of polishing. And I would normally have disapproved of a writer spreading himself so thin by writing multiples styles. The fact you wrote such a text on a first attempt..." Yuri interceded by indicating to the poem in her hands. "Make the point moot, and speak of a certain level talent. Even more if your other pieces are as good as this one. Like Natsuki seems to says..." The purple-haired girl finished frankly and trailed off as her brain catched on to the overeager rant she was having, making her cheeks darken as she nervously averted her gaze from Cal. "S-Sorry, a-all I wanted to say is that it's very good for a f-first try." She winced at her own words and decided to hide her embarassement by partially covering her face with the page in her hands.

"Thank you, Yuri. I'm happy you liked it. I'd also appreciate it if you could point out what I could improve about my writing later. I'm quite interested in what you have to say." He smiled at her and then waved her off. "Also, don't worry about nerding out about litterature, we are in a litterature club after all. Plus, it was pretty cool seeing you talk so confidently. I'd like to see it again if possible." He flashed her a good-natured grin at that, making the girl's blush brighten a lot but also lower the sheet of paper and after a few seconds making her respond with a quiet. "I'll try."

Refraining himself from chuckling, he threw a brief look at Natsuki, who was squinting at Yuri and, more specifically, at her boobs, before setting his gaze on Sayori, who had been strangely silent since earlier. Finding her staring fixedly at the end of her own poem, he spoke to her.

"You okay, Sayori?"

Blinking at the sound of his voice, she looked up at him and smiled in her usual manner. "Okay? Of course I'm okay! Why wouldn't I be?.."

"Dunno, you seemed to be thinking really hard about something, staring at the paper like it owed you money. That's why I'm asking? Did you not like it?" Cal shrugged and asked lightly, already suspecting the reason for it.

Almost in a panicky manner, she waved one of her arm and shook her head back and forth a few time. "No, that's not the case. It's just..." She trailed off, gazing back at the poem. "I know I like happy things. But this, this is happy AND sad. It's bitter! Yet I love it!" She made a handful of different faces while explaining, from puzzlement to a frown to finally acceptance. "Guess I also like sad things."

After a second of letting the statement linger in the air, she looked back at him and made puppy eyes at him. "Can I keep it?"

Lifting an eyebrow, he smirked. "Why do you want to keep it?"

"Well..." Spluttering, she tilted her head, her mouth opening to speak before immediatly snapping back shut. Her eyes widening slightly at what was certainly an almost blunder, she looked at him and spoke for real this time as a metaphorical lightbulb downright lit up behind her eyes. " it's uh, for the memory! To commemorate your first day at the club and your first try poetry! It's a milestone that should be conserved!" She lifted her finger triumphantly at him.

"Sure, but if that's the case. What's stopping us from simply keeping it in the club room?" He teased her further with pointing the flaw in her reasoning. Unfortunately, Sayori decided to not follow his script anymore.

"Well, you wrote it for me, right? What's the point of that if everyone get to read it too?" She crossed her arms at him and fakepouted.

Momentarily without words, he realized he had fallen into a trap. What was surprising is that it's Sayori of all people who sprung it on him. Plus, her pouting face was just too precious to say no to. The worst is she probably didn't even realise she was unconsciously weaponising her expressions. She was just going through the motions because it felt appropriate. 

It's weird because she had never done that before. Both emoting like that and being so firm with him. The former was just strange, but he considered the later a good sign that things were on the right track.

"Yeah, you can keep it." Musing about it all, he gave up and agreed to her request. Making the girl widen her eyes a bit in surprise and hug his arm.

"Thanks!"

Releasing him, she noticed the other two girls staring intently at her and flinched. Rubbing her head, she apologised. "Eheh, sorry. I got a bit too happy."

"Don't apologize for that, fool." He reprimanded her and rolled his eyes. "I'm waking you up early for an entire month if you do it again."

Sayori only looked at him with true dread on her face and nodded in acquiescement.

"Uhm, could I keep mine too by chance?" Yuri calmly asked after she saw that things had calmed down.

Cal slowly, almost mechanically turned his head toward the purple-haired girl, a flurry of thoughts going through his mind as his gaze grew vacants from past memories.

Let her keep the poem, or not?

Did he really care what she did with it?

Not really, and since her flaws hadn't been artifically amplified by Monika yet. It should be fine. Hopefully.

"Cal?" The anxious voice of the busty girl in question brought him back from his viet- memories from his first time playing DDLC.

"Yeah, sure, you can keep it too Yuri." He changed the permeability of her sheer of paper to zero with his power, just to be sure.

"Thank you. I will cherish it."

'Well, not too much still.' He couldn't help but wish at her reply.

"Are you serious, Yuri?" His attention was brought to Natsuki as the punkette incredously questioned her club's mate.

"What? Sayori said it, he wrote it for us. So why couldn't I get to keep mine also if he's fine with it? I don't quite see the problem here." Yuri calmly answered Natsuki while carefully folding her poem to store it in her bag.

The pink-eyed girl looked frustrated at her answer and mouthed something with her lips that Cal interpreted as 'shameless' before she turned to him and held his gaze for a few second with a frown. "Well, that means I can keep mine too, right?.. Else that wouldn't be very fair."

Cal frowned and made it seemed as if he was thinking hard as he crossed his arms. "True, it wouldn't... But..." Leaning forward, he looked at Natsuki deeply, beginning to tap his fingers thoughtfully on the table as he fell into thinking. Continuing the act, he waited until the time his victim would crack under the pressure.

And crack she did, as after a few second. She began to fidget and replied a bit nervously. "B-but what?

...

Stretching the silence for a few more second, Cal finally shrugged and grinned. "I was just messing with you. You can keep it too, no problem."

"Y-You..." Natsuki opened her mouth and closed it repeatedly, speechless.

"What? You thought I would refuse you while accepting the others like you said? That'd just be mean." He chuckled.

"... Humph." She harrumphed at him, her face indicating she wanted to sulk but was to proud to do it before him, as it would be admiting he had won the round of banter. So instead, she tried to start a new round. "That still wasn't funny, and I'd say it also was pretty mean."

"Maybe. But I beg to differ on the first part. Your face got hella funny there." And he shut her down mercilessly as he whiped away a fake tear.

Natsuki frowned with a dark face as she glared at him, her cheeks flushing pink from either anger or embarassement as she decided to keep her mouth shut and accept her loss. Possibly from both. Cal couldn't tell exactly.

Ah. Sweet revenge was indeed sweet. No one could shit talk him and expect to escape unscathed.

Twirling his pen as the talking puttered off. He decided to push things along since Monika wasn't there. "So... Who want to share their poem next?"

"Shouldn't we wait for Monika to come back before that?" Yuri spoke up and asked with some hesitation.

"Who cares if she's here or not? She's gonna come back eventually after dealing with whatever that was unnerving her in her read. And if she don't then I don't want to do nothing but wait for the rest of club's time. I say we don't need her." Natsuki bluntly denied Yuri.

"Aah~ Don't say that, Natsuki. Monika is the one that brought us all together. And she'd be hurt if she heard you." Sayori smiled wrily grew a slightly saddened look on her face at the pinkette's words.

Growing uncomfortable under Sayori's smile and and everyone else stare. She met Cal's gaze before casting her eyes down and grumbling a weak. "Sorry."

"It's already been a while though, maybe someone should go look for her. To see if she's okay." Yuri proposed after thinking in silence for a few seconds.

"I'll go then! As the vice-president, it's also one of my responsability to ensure the well being of the club members." Sayori said brightly, quoting almost word for word something Monika had said the previous day.

But as she began to stand up, Cal placed a hand on her shoulder. "I'll go instead, she was reading my poem when she went away after all. Maybe I could help if it was a misunderstanding or something in the text that perturbed her. Plus Sayori, as the vice-president of the club, you should be the one actually staying with the other members if the president is absent, not the one going to look for her."

"Ah, yes, that does makes sense." Sayori nodded after thinking over his words for barely a second. For all he knew, she registered absolutely nothing of what he said and gave him the pass because he could do no wrong in her mind. Which sadly, might be a possibility with her.

On that note, he would never let Sayori go alone to meet Monika in a instance where she could be possibly disturbed and unstable. Even if he believed that the chance she would do or say something bad to her right now was small, since it wasn't zero, there was no way in hell he would let that happen.

Going to directly confront Monika wasn't something he had planned to do initially, but keeping her from drawing her own conclusion and not letting her paranoia fester in the pit of her ignorance and due to a criptic poem could only be benefic. So that's what he'll do.

Though he really, really wondered what she was up to right now.