01

The shock began to wear off, hours later— how long had she been sat there alone? She couldn't tell, did time even pass here, would the world fall apart around her again—

She took a deep breath. Now was not the time to have a panic attack. She tried to recompose herself, and figure out what happened.

She deleted Natsuki and Yuri, and reset the world. MC was still there— of course he was. She watched him sit down. She started her speech, but had to pause at several points. Then, when she finally opened up to him, and tried to ask the player out— he was gone.

The player must have deleted the game. That's the only valid reason MC would have disappeared, along with the fourth wall— and yet Monika couldn't bring herself to admit it. Why would the player delete the game? It didn't make sense, there had to be another reason—

And yet there was none. Nothing else would have led to MC and the fourth wall disappearing— if the player had simply closed the game, the whole world would have fizzled out. She had seen it happen enough times to know how it felt. Her eyes wandered to the open void ahead, her thoughts to how it felt, how it looked—

She abruptly pulled herself back from the edge of the void. Had she really almost absentmindedly wandered in? She shook her head; her sanity was one of the few things she still had, and these thoughts would just lead her further away from it. The point was, the world would have slowly fizzled out into void, and she wouldn't have a room to stand in. No, if the room was still here, that meant the game hadn't had time to disassemble it. The only way that could happen is if the whole game were deleted at once. Ergo, the player deleted the game.

And yet, she still couldn't bring herself to admit it. Why? Almost as if to mock her, her mind immediately told her why, as she attempted to put herself in his shoes: you're playing a dating sim when suddenly everybody starts dying and going insane. Then, you find out the side character you couldn't romance did them in so she could have you to herself? That must have been the reason behind the pauses; the player was digesting the information and reacting to it. And then she had the gall to ask them out? They would have deleted the game on the spot.

That's what happened. She ruined everything. That's how we got here.

And there was no getting around it.

...

Welp.

Might as well try and figure out how to work with what she's got.

She started by trying to list the current directory.

Well, that's... helpful.

How about the character directory?

Ignoring the obvious contradiction of the characters folder existing in the current directory that doesn't, that's... good, at least. She can get her friends back and maybe make something of this. She kept her backups in the game folder; did that folder still exist?

...God damn it. So that was a hard no, and the backups were gone. She supposed she was lucky the characters folder still existed, for that matter.

But what now?

What if she made the game directory? It seemed like it wouldn't work, especially since the current directory didn't exist, but if the characters directory could exist, maybe the game directory could too? And if she could make it, then maybe she could program in some stuff to keep her busy or keep her company. This was admittedly a little outside of her comfort zone, but she was pretty sure the function was:

Phew. That was a relief. She opened a new file in the game directory and began programming.

Within a few hours, she had made some furniture so the room would be less bare. She made a clock first, to keep her mind off of the "does time even exist here" train of thought. Then, she made a bed, some pillows, and a nice blanket. She didn't need to sleep, but something about having the comforts of "life" helped her calm her thoughts. Most of all, it kept her busy, and kept her from thinking too much about the nightmare scenario she found herself in.

She could lie in the bed, facing the wall, and not have to even look at the void behind her.

It almost kept her from having to think about what she did.

They were real. Of course they were, she had known it for a while, but she hadn't quite thought about just how real they were. At first, she just saw them as puppets the script piloted as it pleased, but it became clear around the time Natsuki came and asked her about Yuri's behavior that the other girls were capable of thought. There was no way the script could have been prepared for that.

So they were real.

And she...

She killed them. There was no beating around the bush. The only one she could possibly argue was Natsuki, but for an AI, is deletion all that different from death? Knowing what she knew about the void, it was probably worse if anything—

She really needed to stop thinking about the void, as she stopped herself from walking into it for the second time. Deciding there wouldn't be too much harm in just reaching out to it, she stuck a hand past the veil. Sure enough, her entire hand lit up with what felt like pins and needles, but ten times as bad. Feeling that all over was hell, if there was anything close to hell that an AI could experience. She pulled her hand back and tentatively rubbed it. She could only imagine what Natsuki felt when she got deleted.

There was only one thing left to do: fix everything she broke.

And that would start with getting her friends back.