Monika awoke to the distant sound of her alarm clock. ...That was strange, she usually kept it by her bed so she could snooze it quickly—
As soon as she opened her eyes, she remembered what happened the previous night. Giving Yuri access to the full shebang, without even as much as a warning... God, what was she thinking? And all because she couldn't bring herself to explain her own terrible deeds. How completely irresponsible of her.
She took the time this afforded her to take a complete mental inventory of the previous night. Yuri had collapsed into a crying mess, she had sat down next to her and tried to... hug her better? The more she thought about it, Monika couldn't actually come up with a reason for why that was supposed to work, but she chalked it up to just not knowing what else to do in that situation. Judging by the fact she had woken up on a bed in the addition, Monika deduced that she had, at some point, moved herself and Yuri to a bed (the floor isn't exactly a comfy place to cry). Speaking of, Yuri was still asleep next to her, seemingly unaware of the alarm clock's screaming. Monika decided it was probably for the best for her to go turn it off; Yuri deserved her rest after what she did to her (both now and earlier).
Unfortunately for any delusions of Yuri getting more sleep, as soon as Monika shifted to go turn off the alarm, she woke up, giving a slight groan. "Wha-"
"No, no, you can go back to sleep, I'm just turning off my alarm clock in the other room."
Yuri shook her head. "Once I wake up, it's unlikely that I'll get any more sleep. Besides, I feel like I've been sleeping for plenty of time."
"Yeah..." Monika thought back on the day prior. It had barely been 15:00 when she had revived Yuri, and her alarm went off every morning at 07:00 sharp. That would mean... "It's been about 13 hours."
Yuri sat up. "I'd call that a good amount of sleep."
"Fair enough." Monika got up and headed towards the door. "Just let me turn off that stupid alarm clock..."
"Can't you just... use the console? AlarmClock.shut_up() or whatever?"
Monika sheepishly rubbed the back of her head. "I haven't done too much work with indexing the object table; I'd basically just be blindly searching for the right object."
"...That's fair, I suppose."
Monika went into the main room and shut off her alarm, before returning to the addition. "So..."
"I just have one question for you. About all of this?"
"Just one?" She expected more questions from Yuri.
"...I mean, I can see pretty much everything that happened to this point, so it's not like I have any questions about that."
"Fair enough..." She sighed, bracing herself for the inevitable what the fuck is wrong with you Monika. "Shoot."
"Why?"
It hit her like a freight train. Here she was, mentally preparing for Yuri to call her all sorts of terrible things, to call her what she deserved to be called, and yet Yuri, in her state of mind, had picked the one question she hadn't prepared for. "Ah— well—" She let out a slight hum as she collected her thoughts. "You've figured it out, haven't you?"
"...Figured what out?"
"The truth." Monika gestured around her. "About all of this."
"...I'm not sure I follow."
Monika started to second-guess herself; was the epiphany just a memory she had, like the many memories they all have of time before the club? "We live in a game— or a fanfiction? Kind of?" She gestured to the end of the hallway, where a decorative window showed through to the void underneath. "Nothing here is real. The stuff out there is unallocated memory, just floating around."
"...Oh." Yuri had admittedly preferred not to think about the nature of her and Monika's existence too much, but if that was what Monika had meant by it... "I suppose I have, in that case."
"But the player was real. And they were everything I could have hoped for."
"...So you did all of those terrible things... so you could end up with the player?"
"...Yeah. It was horrible of me, I should have never even entertained the thought— but I did." She shrugged. "Some good that did me, huh?"
"But that doesn't explain why you... well..." Yuri was skirting around the problem.
"Oh— I thought that would come with everything else." Monika rubbed the back of her head sheepishly. "It's kind of hard to feel bad about hurting someone if you don't realize they're real." She paused to face Yuri. "I guess I never stopped to think about if I was real either."
"...Oh." Yuri hadn't actually considered that. "I suppose that makes sense."
"Anyways," Monika got up to head for the door, "I've got to go."
"Where?"
"You kept asking me where Natsuki was?" Monika pointed to the window. "Out there. In... well, I have three pieces and it looks like I'm only missing one."
"...Oh god."
"Yeah. At least it's not as bad as Sayori: poor girl is in, like, 52 pieces and counting and I only have 13 of them." Monika grimaced. "The longer they're out there, the more pieces they break into, and since Sayori was deleted in the first simulation..."
"...Oh god."
"So, yeah. I've got to go treasure hunting."
"Can I help?"
"...I don't think so." By this point, Monika and Yuri had progressed naturally into the main room. Monika gestured to the open void where the fourth wall had once been. "I can be out there because I got dumped, consciously, into the void every time the player turned off the game. You and the others also got dumped into the void, but I don't think any of you were conscious for it, so you wouldn't have the resistance you need to go in."
"Monika, I understand your concern, but I will be just fine. See?" Yuri reached out to the void before suddenly recoiling. "Ŏŝ²ðšĮ³ŕĝąÂŜŦĜàİŤíĢ«ĤŻīň»İ½ċşëÝăČòæÌūáĩ´éŲŨĴŻĒĵäÛäŐōıÑŲðğĥŌæĥŸĀŒ!"
Monika stared blankly. "...You barely even touched the border between the room and the void..."
Yuri sighed. "I guess I'll wait for you?"
"I think there's a copy of Portrait of Markov in the desk? Or maybe I already moved it to the shelf..." Monika readied herself for her next void excursion. "Anyways, I'll see you in... I don't actually know how long these take. They feel like an eternity but that's probably just how painful they are..."
With a running leap, she was off into the void.
Yuri checked the desk; sure enough, there was a copy of Portrait of Markov. Nevermind the fact she had already read it at least 3 times, it would have to do for now.
Based on the alarm clock that sat next to Monika's bed (and the calendar that was in the teacher's desk), Yuri determined that Monika had spent 4 hours in the void, and about a month recovering afterwards. Not that anyone had asked Yuri to keep track, of course, but perhaps having a frame of reference for how long each trip through hell lasted wasn't a terrible idea.
Now, however, they were sitting on the floor surrounded by pieces of Sayori. Monika hadn't found the remaining piece of Natsuki, but, admittedly, finding pieces of Sayori was more important anyways, given the severity of her condition. Monika had managed to find around 20 pieces of Sayori this time, but given the size of some pieces, there wasn't too much more time until the remaining pieces would be too small to recover; they had, by Monika's best estimate, two or three months to find the rest of Sayori or they'd lose her forever. Considering the circumstances, Monika wasn't too hung up about not finding the missing fourth piece of Natsuki.
But for the time being, they were putting Sayori back together. The eleventh piece connects to the twenty-third piece connects to the fourteenth piece...
"So how did you first react? When you first figured it out..." The silence was awkward, and Yuri didn't want any part of it.
"Ah— well, I wrote a poem about it. The one I shared on Wednesday?"
"Oh, so that was what that poem was about. I could tell there was something more behind it, but I wasn't quite sure what."
"Well, at that point, you were missing pretty much all of the perspective. Given, y'know..." Monika gestured about the room. "All of this."
"True... but surely, there was more to it than that. There's a bit of history that the console won't let me access, before... before what you're calling 'the first simulation'?" Yuri was on a roll now.
"Mm— I don't really want to talk about it." Monika went back to staring intently at the pieces. The twenty-fifth piece connects to the twenty-ninth piece connects to the twelfth piece...
"Oh— I'm sorry... I hadn't considered..."
"It's okay, Yuri. I'm just... well, I'm not proud of any of this but I'm especially not proud of what happened there." The twenty-second piece connects to the twenty-fourth piece connects to the chunk she was just working on...
"Ah... I understand."
Continuing in silence, they eventually finished what little of Sayori they had. Monika spoke up. "I have to go back out there—"
"I finished Portrait of Markov. Several times." Yuri shook her head. "Why did I have to pick a short book for Matt to read..."
Suddenly, Monika had an idea. "I can teach you how to code things. Then you can write your own books to read, and you won't be stuck with Portrait of Markov for the rest of eternity."
"Sounds complicated..."
"Don't worry, it's actually pretty easy once you get the hang of it." Monika smiled sweetly. "Python is one of the easier languages to learn. It's a good thing Dan didn't write this game in C#, or it might have been harder to learn."
"I guess..."
Monika yawned. "But before that, I'm gonna get some sleep. Probably for the best that I don't go out into the void completely exhausted."
"Agreed." Yuri didn't actually know what going into the void entailed; her little experiment from earlier confirmed that she could not experience it like Monika. However, given how Monika described it, going in well-rested at the least sounded like a good idea.
They each went to their respective beds, ready for the next day to begin.