23 22- Hidden Mastermind or Depresso Expresso, Innocent Puppy?
(A/N1: IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT, There's three polls at the end for each of you to answer to concerning the story. The option with the most votes will be immediatly relevent to the story and its direction. Please participate, it's fun and increase engagment. Do it, else I'm going to send my pet incubus after you, his name is Bernard and he's 8 feet tall. Oh, and pay particular attention to the last sentence of the end of chapter AN, it's essential.)
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~ Cal POV
Cal talked with Monika a bit more about what he wanted to do and ended up giving her some authority over her house, the school and the clubroom. It was all he could really afford as now that he was the very anchor of this world, he was the source of any would be admin's power over the code, and he was rather tight on his free processing capacity, at least for now.
As soon as he stepped back into the bathroom in the physical world, he felt it clearly, how everything was different, so crisp and real, like a veil had been lifted from his eyes.
The clothes on his skin, his own breath, the beating of his heart, even the temperature of the room and the smell of the girl next to him. Before those things were mere hallucinations, illusions of mundanity. Now they were a fact of existence. Flavours of life he had forgotten he was missing.
Throwing a look at Monika, he saw her with a small smile full of complicated feelings, her eyes meeting his, overwhelmed. "Is that how it feel to be real?"
"That's a start, but you've still not seen anything yet." Agreeing tentatively, he smirked mysteriously. "I've got plenty of things planned still. But before that... The other girls are waiting on us still." Offering her his hand with a big smile on his face, Monika gingerly took it after registering his words, giving him first a bemused expression before her lips rose into an absolutely stunning smile.
'What a man wouldn't do... For that kind of smile?..' He mused idly to himself after forcing himself to gaze away. The answer came to him immediatly, so obvious it was.
'Almost nothing. Such is the power of gratittude, I guess, or was it Love?' It was a novel experience for him, and he kinda liked it.
Lucky for him, as he still had three more of those smiles to get.
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As they arrived back in the clubroom, Monika had let go of his hand willingly. Both of them having agreed on keeping things as they were before he went looking for her as he dealt with each of the girls individually.
Speaking of the girls, as they saw him and Monika enter, they perked up.
"Finally, I was beginning to wonder if Sayori would have to become club president permanently." Natsuki spoke first, eyeeing them with annoyance and a tiny little bit of doubt, that could mayhaps be described as suspicion in another universe. "That said, it's not really like you to just go up and leave suddenly like that, Monika... Was his poem for you that bad?" She asked after thinking for a second and looking at Cal, already giving him a defiant smirk that made one of her little canine show slightly.
"Natsuki..." Yuri seemed to want to rub her temple as she reprimanded her. "That makes it a lot now, don't you think? It's only the second day, too..."
Natsuki frowned at Yuri and opened her mouth, ready to retort, but after throwing a quick look at Cal she ultimately reconsidered and simply turned her head away while crossing her arms and huffing. "He doesn't seems to mind. And he can speak up for himself if he does."
Before the argument could go on any longer, Cal spoke up calmly. "It's true, I don't mind. I find it kinda fun honestly. Still, thank you Yuri for that. If It was another newbie, maybe they would have taken Natsuki's words to heart."
"O-of course, it's natural to makes sure new members feels welcomed." Yuri stuttered and answered with a slightly embarassed expression on her face.
"That said, to answer your question, Natsuki. I just felt very touched by Cal's poem and needed a moment to compose myself. So quite the opposite of bad, I would say." Monika used the momentary lapse to gather the others girls attention, giving a smile as she took her seat at the table.
Cal tuned out the rest as Natsuki asked curiously if they could check out the text he wrote for her and Monika playfully refused and he took his seat besides Sayori, who had stayed awfully silent since they came back.
Leaning toward her side as she was lost to her thoughts, he poked her cheek. "Hey, what you thinking about?"
"Uh?" Startled out of her pseudo daze, she looked at him and shook her head while chuckling as she registered his question. "Ah, nothing important. Just stuff, you know?"
He lifted an eyebrow, unimpressed. "Stuff? What kind of stuff?"
"Eh, the club and friends, things like that. Nothing to worry about." She gave him what would otherwise appear as a perfectly normal smile for her, a free, almost careless smile as she assured him it wasn't a big deal. But being her childhood friend, he could sense the slight nervousness of her posture, the tension in her hands who were resting on her laps. She apparently really didn't want him to worry.
Frowning, Cal looked her up and down before looking into her eyes, making his poor childhood friend avert her own, unable to meet his gaze directly. Having seen enough. He leaned back slightly. "Yeah, you're coming to sleep over at my house tonight."
Sayori eyes widened. "U-Uh?"
"It's not négociable, by divine decree."
...
"I-Im not really against it." Sayori answered after the surprise of his decision wore off, then she tilted her head. "But, why? It's been years since we've done a sleepover at each other house."
"Well, I've decided it was high time to change that. Let's say it's a celebration for joining the club and writing my first poems. Alright?"
Sayori began to look excited, her eyes brightening up. "Yeah! Great Idea! But..." She trailed off. "If it's a celebration about the club, shouldn't you also invite the other members too?"
'Bruh. Seriously, that's like the densest thing someone could have said. Sadly, I can't say I'm surprised.' The urge to both laugh and facepalm was strong at the thought. But since it would be simply inhumane to do that to a literal ray of sunshine and buttercup ( Buttershine ray?) such as Sayori, he abstained.
'Or is it?' Then, a millisecond later, grace of his significantly more powerful brain power, he ravised himself. What if she didn't want to overshadow her friends and their possible happiness? A very possible possibility given her self-sacrificing and self-loathing tendencies. In her mind, she probably thought she wasn't worth worrying over since she'd rather have her presence bring only happy feelings to her friends, she absolutely didn't want to be burden. By the same logic, the happiness of her friends was more important than her own, because if her friends were happy, they would naturally never leave her since she wouldn't be a burden.
He very much wanted to utterly destroy this sort of mindset. But it would irrevocably change his childhood friend. More than that, the thought of simply switching off a setting to fix her inherently disgusted him, it made him feel as if all her feelings, all the suffering she had to go through were irrelevent, and ultimately never real. Which he was very much aware, was ironic. Since she technically wasn't yet. But what about when he awakened her? Wouldn't it turn the ultimately fake into reality then? By all means, it would.
He knew it was wrong, even utterly selfish, but those feelings made him very reluctant to even ask her when she was more in the known if she wanted him to turn her depression and mental issues off.
He'd see where the current led him, for now, he would not artificially change Sayori.
Coming back to the real world after reaching that conclusion, a process that only took a fraction of a second. Cal shook his head. "No, you're the one who made me join the club. And now that I think about it, it's been too long since I last bashed your face in with a pillow, I miss it."
Sayori made a funny face looking at him. "Y-you miss bashing my face in?"
"With a pillow." He quickly added the rather important clarification.
She smiled and chuckled at his answer, then she blinked and hesitated. "Uh, Cal... Didn't I never lose those fights?"
He didn't exactly know what to answer to that. "Well, I'm pretty sure I still got some good hits in here there... Right?"
"..." Sayori squirmed and said nothing, averting her gaze from him, as if she herself ashamed of the humilation she had put upon him the past.
Cal grew a glassy stare as he quickly reviewed the memories of his MC self, and what he found was absolutely astounding.
His DDLC self was been kind of a wimp, that, and young Sayori was kind of cracked at beating people (with pillows). Those discoveries made him conclude two things.
First, he would obviously have to get his revenge to get back his honor. And second, if he ever found the script again, he would transform it and lock it into a lewd figurine and put it in a jar. For no reason in particular.
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(A/N: Hey, kind of a unwinding and tying lose end chapter. But to be honest, I'm a bit lost on how to proceed. Initially, I wanted to do individual date scenes for the other three girls where they blab a lot, Cal's flavored of course, and then he convert them and blab some more. But I realised that it would take too long, knowing myself, minimum 3-4 chapter, and if we are realist, at least double that, and be kind of boring.
So instead I'm leaning toward short adventures in other worlds (any world i'll find a way to include them in our digitilazed era) with each of the girl, that would of course mean a mini arc of sort for each girl. Where all the same things named about above would happen, (yapping) but basically better and with considerably more action.
Now here's a poll for the rough number of chapters those mini adventure would be
ITS A POLL COMMENT WITH NAH FOR THE CHOSEN OPTION.
3-
6-
9-
12-
NOW HERE'S A POLL FOR THE GIRL YOU WANT ON THE FIRST ADVENTURE, MONIKA IS INCLUDED BECAUSE WHY NOT HERS WOULD BE MORE TO DEVELOP THE RELATIONSHIP. COMMENT NAH TO VOTE
SAYORI-
NATSUKI-
YURI-
MONIKA-
NOW IS THE WORLD OF THE AVENTURE, YOU CAN MAKE A CUSTOM DEMAND WITH A WORLD, IF THERE'S ENOUGH LIKE I'LL CONSIDER IT. COMMENT NAH COUNT AS VOTE, AGAIN.
Cyberpunk -
Overlord (May we stay strong my brothers) -
Terraria? -
Genshin impact (I'm really playing with fire uh?)-
Custom -
The worlds above aren't neccessarily a one time thing, they can' be subject to longer arc later in the story.
PS: If you mfs don't drop stones I'm dropping Sayori into warhammer 40k... I'm serious guys, please have mercy on those poor tyrannids, she's so depressed if she comes into contact with the hivemind it's gonna kill itself.
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