PART 30
I gently open the door.
"Sayo-"
The change in pressure causes Sayori's body to sway back and forth as I enter the room, as if she were still moving a bit. Her body rotates as the rope twists and her empty eyes stare right past my face.
The door thuds against the back wall as it swings open. I'm unable to take my eyes off of her body.
"Ahaha! MC, what are you standing there for? Is she-" Monika cuts herself off as she rounds the corner and looks inside Sayori's room. She opens her mouth as if to speak again, but nothing comes out.
"Sa-Sayori..." is all I can make myself say. But for some reason, I'm not surprised by this. It's as if I expected Sayori to die.
Monika glances over at me. I finally break my stare towards Sayori to look back.
"Well, that's a shame, isn't it?" Monika smiles and holds up a finger. "I guess it can't be helped, though."
"Monika," I say accusingly. "How can you say that? How can you be calm right now?"
"My, MC, you really seemed to be attached to her." She turns to face Sayori again. "It's not like there's anything we can do about it at this point."
I can't believe how Monika is reacting to this. I even forget my shock at Sayori's death for a minute. I grab Monika's shoulder and turn her around.
"She's dead and you don't care?" I say. "You don't feel at all upset? Like you could've prevented this, or even guilty that you didn't do more to stop it?"
"What could any of us have done?" Monika takes my hand off her shoulder. "MC, you do realize how little any of this means, right?"
I stare at Monika, dumbfounded. This was not the time for a high-schooler existential crisis. "What's wrong with you?"
"I'm fine." Monika points behind me. "It's her you should be worried about."
I turn around and look at the doorway. Yuri is standing there, staring at Sayori's body. She titters nervously once, then breaks into a crazed smile and throws back her head, laughing in a voice louder than I've ever heard her produce.
I lunge forwards, but I'm not fast enough to take the knife out of her hands before she thrusts it deep into her stomach. Yuri collapses on the floor, still smiling as the knife bounces on the ground, sliding along the carpet.
I drop to my knees and grab her by the shoulders, holding Yuri's lifeless face near to mine. "Yuri! Are you okay?" I look down at the brown stain, slowly growing across her gut. I set her down and put both hands over the wound to stop the bleeding, but it's too late. "Answer me!"
I stare into her eyes and they seem to be looking past me. I hear a footstep and turn my head. Natsuki is standing over Yuri's body looking in the room.
She leans forwards as if in pain, then covers her mouth with both hands. Natsuki gags and then turns around to run away. I try to chase after her but something grabs my ankle. When I turn around to see what it is, there's nothing there. Yuri's body is still lying lifelessly on the ground beneath Sayori's feet.
I turn back around to catch Natsuki but she's gone.
"Monika!" I shout. I turn around to face her only to see her smiling slightly back at me. "What's going on!" I ask, as if she would have an answer.
I step forwards to grab her, but my fingers slide through her body and she collapses, as if made of dry sand. She falls lifelessly at my feet, leaving me alone.
Almost alone.
"You really caused me a lot of trouble, you know." Somebody steps out of the corner.
He doesn't seem to have any definite features. When I look at his face, I only see my own and a thousand others at once. His body is both tall and thin and short and fat. He slides a hand through his hair, brushing it out of his face.
"But it's over now. You don't need to grieve over them any longer."
I try to answer but find myself unable to move, speak, even to think. My thoughts become completely consumed by him.
"I'm a little impressed. Most people know in the back of their minds that, when in a situation like this, none of it really matters. That everything they're reading is just a story and everything that happens to the characters stays within the realm of fiction. Despite that all, you really seemed to grow attached to them.
"I don't really know whether to be more disgusted or impressed.
"I mean, you had to know that the 'love' between you two was all faked. I don't mean in the sense that love is an illusion or something edgy like that, I mean that she's not real. None of them are.
"When Sayori confessed her feelings to you. When Yuri felt such intense passion, she took her own life. When Natsuki spilled her true emotions on to that paper she gave you in club. When Monika fought back against her own reality to spend more time with you.
"None of that meant a damn thing.
"They weren't in love with you. You could have left them alone with the game running and they would have said the same thing. They're programmed to speak that way to anybody who meets certain requirements. And those requirements aren't hard to meet.
"You do realize that millions of people have experienced the same world that you did, right? Why is your experience any more special than theirs? Monika confessed her love to more people than you'll meet in your life, but somehow you still thought your relationship meant anything.
"To make it simple, they're characters. They're lines of code. They're text on a page. They don't love you. They can't."
At some point, I had fallen to my knees. I try to stand upright, but I have no energy left to do so. He walks around me and then squats down to pick up Yuri's knife from the floor.
"Hmmm. Pretty sharp." He says, inspecting it carefully. "This will do."
He comes back around and sits in front of me. I can barely move my eyes up to look at him. He puts a hand on my chin and holds up my head. "Anyways, this story is just about over."
He holds the knife to my chest, the blade resting on the front of my blazer. "December is almost done, and after that, I won't be needing you around any more."
He lets my head drop down and places his other hand on the handle of the knife.
"And so this is goodbye."
The blade of the knife tears through fabric before plunging into my chest.
