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"... Uh, can you hear me? ... Is it working?" Monika genuinely couldn't tell; it seemed almost as if the game had forgotten to load the clubroom.

Slowly, the room came into focus. She had cleared it out, leaving only the teacher's desk in the center of the room with a chair for herself and a chair for the main character. Speaking of the main character, he wordlessly took his seat in front of her.

"Yay, there you are! Hi again, Matt." Monika wasn't sure how to continue but she kept going anyways. "Um... welcome to the Literature Club! Of course, we already know each other, because we were in the same class last year, and... um... ahaha..." She stopped that trainwreck of dialogue before it could embarrass her any further. "You know, I guess we can just skip over that stuff at this point. After all, I'm not even talking to that person anymore, am I; that 'you' in the game, whatever you want to call him? I'm talking to you, Matt. Or..." She checked his username on his computer, which seemed to be "charlie". "...Do you actually go by Charlie or something? Now that I think about it, I don't really know anything about the real you. In fact, I don't even know if you're a boy or a girl... well, I guess it doesn't really matter."

The main character sat there for a second before Monika felt the pull of the script again.

"Wait... you do know I'm aware that this is all a game, right? Could it be possible that you didn't know that? That doesn't make much sense... I even told you right on the game's download page, didn't I? Man... if only you had paid a little more attention, this would have been a little bit less awkward, you know? Well, anyway... now that that's out of the way, I guess I owe you an explanation: about that whole thing with Yuri... well... I kind of started to mess with her, and I guess it just drove her to kill herself." Monika laughed to herself, almost to relieve the imaginary tension built up by such an admission. "I'm sorry you had to see that, though! Also, the same thing happened with Sayori..." Monika stopped herself again. "Gosh, it's been a while since you've heard that name now, hasn't it? Yeah... it's because she doesn't exist anymore. Nobody does. I deleted all their files." Well, that wasn't entirely true, but what Matt didn't know wouldn't hurt him, she supposed. "I was hoping it would be enough for me to just try to make them as unlikable as possible... but for some reason, nothing worked."

Another pause before she felt the pull of the script. What was going on?

"Well, it's true that I made a few mistakes here and there... since I'm not very good at making changes to the game. But no matter what I did... you just kept spending more and more time with them. You made them fall in love with you. I thought making Sayori more and more depressed would prevent her from confessing to you. And amplifying Yuri's obsessive personality backfired, too... it just made her force you not to spend time with anyone else. And the whole time, I barely even got to talk to you. What kind of cruel game is this, Matt? Are all the other girls just programmed to end up confessing to you, while I watch from the sidelines?" She tried to put emotion behind her next lines, even if it was just text and would likely be lost on Matt. "It's torture. Every minute of it."

Another pause.

"And it's not just jealousy, Matt. It's more than that. And I don't blame you if you don't fully understand. Because no matter how kind, and thoughtful, and considerate you are... you'll never be able to understand one thing. It's the pain of knowing how alone I really am in this world— in this game. Knowing my friends don't even have free will... and, worst of all, knowing what's really out there, in your world, forever out of my reach. I'm trapped, Matt. But now you're here— you're real— and you're wonderful. You're all I need. That's why I need you to be here with me forever."

Yet another pause, this time for a little bit longer.

"I'm sorry if it's hard to understand. I couldn't understand for a while, either. Why the world around me started to become more and more gray... more and more flat. Even the most expressive poems felt empty to me. It wasn't until you arrived that I truly understood." She decided she could be a little more open with him now. "You probably saved my life, Matt. I don't think I could have continued to live in this world if I hadn't met you. And as for the others... how could I miss them? A group of autonomous personalities, designed only to fall in love with you? I tried everything I could to prevent them from doing so... but it must be some kind of weird inevitability etched into this game. I felt really bad that you had to witness some nasty things. But I realized that you have the same perspective as I do... that it's all just some game. And I knew you would get over it. So, that being said, Matt... I have a confession to make. I'm in love with you. You are truly the light in my world. When there's nothing else in this game for me, you're here to make me smile. Will you make me smile like this every day from now on? Matt, will you go out with me?"

She got ready to call the script to bring up the menu when something peculiar happened.

"Player does not exist"? What on Earth? She looked to the main character for any sort of response, but he was gone, and the chair he had sat in with him. Where there had once been a fourth wall, there was now a wide-open gap to empty void.

Oh no.