Poem Sharing in the Wrong Promised Day (Part 8)

The club goes by with you and Natsuki joking around with each other until it’s time to switch. You notice Sayori’s line of sight bouncing to each of the other girls, so you head over to where she’s sitting.
“Hey Sayori, need a partner?” You pull out two chairs and sit in one, patting the other seat with your hand.
“Oh, yeah sure!” Sayori jumps into the seat next to you and pulls out her poem from her bag.
You hand Sayori your poem as she hands you yours. You skim through it, knowing that Sayori was feeling at least a little better now.
Of course, that was until you saw the word “bottles”.
Having read the poem so many times, you look up to Sayori and she’s looking away, blushing and smiling like a goofball. “What did you think?”
“I…” You feel like you’re swallowing a magnetic ball, pulling your heart out of your chest with it’s pull and keeping you from speaking.
“Do you not like it?” Sayori’s smile washes away, and a face of fear begins to spread over where the mask was.
“No! I think it’s really expressive, I do. I like it a lot. Does this have to do with what we talked about yesterday?”
Sayori looks down at her feet. “Yeah… I thought that once you had understood, it would be easier to deal with, because I wasn’t going at it alone, but it just made things harder.”
Sayori lays her head on your shoulder and closes her eyes. “I’m sorry you have to deal with me Anon, I know I let you down a lot, you don’t have to worry about me if you don’t want to…”
“Aww, come on Sayori, you know I could never stop worrying about you, it’s in my DNA.” You place your hand around her shoulder and give it a gentle squeeze.
“Come on now, wake up Sayori.” You gently pull on her, shaking her around a bit.
“Nooo…” Sayori’s shut eyelids squeeze tighter in frustration, but her lips start to quiver revealing a smile, inviting more teasing.
“Come on Sayori, you gotta wake up~” You shake her with a bit more force, and she grabs onto the arm she’s resting on.
“Anon stooooop” Sayori starts to giggle, her infectious laugh forcing the grin on your face to grow wider.
“But Sayori, if you’re sleeping how are we going to walk home together?” Shaking her even faster, Sayori starts to groan and bat your chest with her fist.
“Just carry me, it’ll be alright come on.”
Your chuckle grows into a laugh. “Sayori, I’m not carrying you all the way home!” In a swift motion, you nudge her off your shoulder and let go of her, causing Sayori to lose her balance and almost fall off the chair.
“A-Anon! That was mean!” Sayori pouts at you, her lips pursing together.
You two stare at each other for a second, then burst out in laughter, grabbing your bellies to try and stop the pain of laughing so hard.
After a minute you two settle down, Sayori’s hand sitting on your shoulder as she struggles to catch her breath.
“Alright, alright. Seriously though, you doing okay today? How was school today, I know we never have classes together anymore.”
Sayori leans back in her chair, her breath finally steadied. “Today was kind of hard. I overslept this morning, so I didn’t have time to prepare breakfast, and I ended up sleeping through the lunch period.”
“Oh jeez. Here, hang on…” You dig through your pockets and scramble together a couple of dollars in change, picking out the silvery coins.
“Here, this should be enough to grab anything from the vending machine down the hall. We’re done sharing poems anyway, right? Why don’t you go grab something to eat, it might make you feel a bit better?”
Sayori’s eyes light up seeing the coins in your hand. “Thanks Anon!” She snatches the coins from your hands and skips towards the door. “You’re the best!~”
Sayori vanishes from your sight, and you look around. Yuri is in the corner of the room paging through a thick book, with her chin resting on her palm.
You walk over to Yuri and pull a chair up in front of her desk. “Hey Yuri.”
Yuri jumps, her knees hitting the underside of the desk with a loud thud. “A-Anon! don’t sneak up on me like that…”
Her response elicits a chuckle from you, and you pull out your poem.
“Oh, sorry, I forgot mine…” Yuri looks away and starts playing with her hair, twirling it around her fingers.
“Hey, that’s fine, I can still show you mine.” You hand her your poem, and she starts to read through it.
“It’s quite, erm…”
“Simplistic?” You put up a small grin, and Yuri’s cheeks flush red, proving your deduction right.
“Well, it’s not like I dislike it, and the message is pretty powerful for what it is, but I do think you’d benefit more from adding some complexity to your language. Keeping it too simple makes your poem look cute and amateurish, it can make it hard to take seriously.”
“Is that right?” Natsuki calls over from the other side of the room, storming over with an adamant aura.
“W-Well I was just saying, that the writing can get a bit, cute, at times…”
“Oh yeah? Well honestly I think that overly complex writing comes off as pretentious!”
“For the last time, it is not pretentious, it’s majestic! To be able to flow such complex and underused language together, conveying a meaning beneath such beautiful poetry, it’s beautiful.”
“Pfft, yeah, about as beautiful as the raccoon or whatever you were feeding bread to.” Natsuki lets off a smug chuckle and nudges your arm with her elbow.
“How dare you! There was a gold mine of expression in that extended metaphor, and you glazed over it like it was nothing, like with everything that you write!”
“I put effort into everything that I write! When I write, there’s a purpose, and there’s a meaning, unlike you who just eats a dictionary and barfs it up. Anon!” Natsuki whips to you. “I’m right, right?”
“Anon please, don’t get charmed by her just because she acts cute, believe me, that’s all surface level.”
At this point you had pretty much tuned out of the conversation, with a smile on your face. Hearing the two bickering brought a wave of nostalgia over you, like a torrent of old memories enveloping you.
“Well.” You stand up, and dust your pants off, straightening them.
“I do agree with Natsuki that simplistic language is not only easier, but just as effective in portraying a complex message, if not more.”
“Hah! See, I told y-“
“But,” you interrupt Natsuki, and she looks to you. “I really do enjoy the use of more complex word structure because I love to find new words. With a simplistic dialogue setup, it’s much more impactful the meaning behind the words, and the whole poem seems to come together while saying so little. However, sometimes some of those juicy big adjectives just can’t be beat, you know?”
The two silence, partly in awe of you, but mostly because they’d both been proven both wrong and right at the same time.
“Well, I guess Shel Silverstein is an accredited poet for a reason…”
“Y-You’re not wrong… about those adjectives, I guess…” Natsuki, her face in a blush, looks away towards the floor, and Yuri looks towards the exact opposite direction.
You smile, knowing the crisis had been averted, and step away, heading over to Monika, who had just been left free.
“Hey Monika!” You look over to her, and she already has her poem on the desk across from her. She says nothing to you, so you take a seat and grab it, reading it.
Instead of her “Load me” poem, it’s an intricate free-verse describing a feeling of being a bird in a cage, watching through a window as its brothers and sisters intermingle.
You swallow, knowing exactly what this is about. You decide to surprise her by changing the poem, closing your eyes as you hand her the paper.
“Anon, what are you…” Monika goes silent as she reads the poem:
I learned how to edit the code of the game
I do it by thinking in my head.
I’m trying my best to save all every dame
Act like it’s a poem or else we’re both dead.
“W-Wow!” Monika feigns a sudden interest into your poem. “Anon, this poem is really good! Did you write this for Sayo-“
“Natsuki”
“N-Natsuki, Ahaha!”
“Hey, could you go over the stanzas one more time? I thought they were really weak.”
“S-Sure thing Anon!” Monika rereads the poem, scanning the words as they rearrange on the paper.
I learned how to edit the code of the game
Stop messing with Sayori’s head.
Please go back to being angry with me
Stop being a bad liar or else we’re both dead.
Monika sighs. “I’m not mad at you, just, can we talk about this next door? I have to go over there to get supplies anyway. I was going to have Sayori do it, but I need some alone time with you anyway.”
“Yeah, sure thing Monika.” The two of you walk out, Monika storming ahead while you stroll with your hands in your pockets next door.