Chapter Text
You really weren’t having the best day already, but now it seemed like the world was just playing a cruel joke. You’d been woken up late by your alarm somehow, and barely made it to the city bus on time, your mom already having left for work. That meant you had no breakfast at home, and thus stood in line alone for nearly an hour waiting for the school’s meager offerings. Your breakfast misadventure meant you showed up to chemistry late, having to endure the stares of the class as you sat down to bomb the test you’d forgotten to study for. All in all, it had been a terrible Friday, so getting home to unwind was the one thing you’d been looking forward to, especially since you had work early the next day. Instead, you had opened your most recent Deltarune save to find it completely frozen. Not just crashed or corrupted, which you’d had to deal with a good few times due to your less than careful mod vetting, but completely and totally stuck in one place. It was infuriating given that the other save files on your profile worked fine, it just so happened that the one you had been ACTUALLY USING was the one you managed to permanently fuck up somehow. In the 4th egg room too, no less. On your first playthrough, you’d been extremely clumsy, and missed most hidden secrets, so decided to use the infamous 3rd save slot to go back and rectify some of those mistakes without the dialogue changes that Snowgrave implied. Now, though, all you could see was the darkness of the hospital room that you’d moved Kris into, the text box describing them frantically drawing lines over a canvas. What riveting gameplay.
If that wonderful glitch hadn’t been enough to set you off, the game also decided to play possibly the most annoying audio you’d ever heard from somewhere in the files every time you had the frozen save file open. It sounded like someone breathing heavily over an obnoxious scratching noise, like nails on chalkboard or charcoal on concrete. You’d completed the other 2 save files already, so the game was essentially useless like this unless you wanted to wipe the file in question, which you guessed was probably your last option. Nothing of this caliber was described anywhere online, especially since the game’s code itself was (from what you could tell, as someone with exactly 1 year of high school coding experience) totally normal.
But, as you went to quit the game for the last time before deleting the file, the audio in the room changed. It was quite slight and hard to make out, but it seemed like someone gasped, almost in shock, behind the incessant scratching noise. Absolutely not. You could put the weird freeze down to some fault in the code you’d missed or your shitty laptop malfunctioning again, if you were reaching. You could even excuse the weird audio as some unused track being corrupted or just one of your many youtube tabs you forgot to close autoplaying some ARG, but this was too much. Dynamic audio was creepypasta shit, shit you were absolutely not prepared for. If you’d invited some demon or sentient virus into your computer, you could cope with blowing another paycheck on a new beater one if it meant avoiding some brutal, sonic.exe-esque death because you were a curious dumbass. You were done. You moved to get up out of your desk chair and grabbed the top of the laptop to shut it as fast as possible, only for your thumb to go through the screen. Ok.
Your body completely froze in playing, staring dumbfounded at your hand, the thumb of which remained halfway through the glass on your screen. Now, you liked to think of yourself as a rational person most of the time, but this simply was not a rational situation, especially as you heard the breathing audio, which had resumed, stop suddenly. You were certainly fucked, so you believed you could justify freaking out just a little bit. To you, that manifested as letting out a high-pitched wail and trying to scramble backwards towards your door. Unfortunately, your poor financial choices struck again, and the gaming chair you so cherished became your literal downfall as you stepped onto one of the wheels and ate shit on your desk, sending your hand all the way through the screen, grasping to stabilize yourself. Whatever was through the screen would definitely be easier to deal with if you weren’t splayed out on your floor with it directly on top of you. The place, wherever it was, that your arm had been sent felt cold and dry, like a cold morning. It was incredibly disconcerting to begin with, but not nearly as much as the cold fabric you gripped. It saved you from completely toppling over in the moment, but your entire arm up to your elbow was now within your laptop, which was definitely not the situation you wanted, eliciting another round of loud expletives. Mom wasn’t home, so you weren’t particularly worried about it, especially compared to the haunted realm your laptop now led to. You managed to stand back up (with considerable pain in your chin, much to your chagrin) slowly, bracing yourself on whatever apparatus or sheet you’d managed to grab while lifting your knees off the beige carpet. At least you’d finally managed to calm down, and could find a more reasonable response to your entire worldview being shat… Something cold gripped your arm, a hand that felt like the fabric you had been holding onto. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck
This time, you didn’t hesitate, and pulled back as fast as possible, only to find yourself nearly dragged further into the screen. Whatever had you was as heavy as one of the juvenile apple trees you’d been moving at work last week, which meant you could barely move your arm back a few inches before it became nearly impossible. Drastic times called for drastic measures, you supposed, and, grimacing, you plunged your other arm into the screen, moving both hands as rapidly as possible to grab whatever had you and pull back. You figured that if you could surprise it or move it through the portal, it’d either disappear or let go, which meant you could escape. In hindsight, it was basically the worst plan you could’ve executed at the moment, but it happened nonetheless, and you soon found yourself gripping… someone’s arm? It was somehow even more unpleasant than the fabric at first, soft with a fine coating of hair and exceptionally dry (you didn’t want to think about the implications of the demon in your computer having a poor skincare routine), but it quickly turned the whole thing very awkward. Instead of valiantly attacking a monster to save your life, you and whoever this was had just grabbed each other through space and time. Regardless of how red your face grew at the thought, you did actually manage to seize the element of surprise, and pulled hard through the laptop, using the sides of your desk to brace your legs. At first, not much actually happened, as you got maybe an inch further out, but then you felt another hand grab you, and you found that you could pull much more freely. It was risky, but you seemed to be able to make progress now, so you fully committed and put both feet against the desk. You were lifted up slightly as your arms continued to emerge from the black void that occupied what had been your laptop, taking your unknown passenger with you. You felt a terrible anxiety wash over you as you realized that their hands would soon be visible if you kept pulling at the same pace you had been for the last few seconds, so you braced yourself and narrowed your eyes. The first arm came out terribly slowly, the apprehension you had felt before multiplying by the second. But, instead of some monstrous claw or armored fist, you saw a pretty small, strangely yellow, but unmistakably human hand. The nails, painted black at one point but now heavily chipped, were decently long, enough to dig into your skin, which elicited a grunt of pain as you suddenly felt their grip much more vividly.
Your mind wanted to panic again, but you quickly shut it up, rationalizing that you could be saving someone from the same hell you might’ve been sucked into had you not narrowly avoided a fall. The rest of the process was slow and painful, mostly because you were pulling a full human through a $200 work laptop, but you progressed, and were soon assisted by the person themself, whose other arm gripped the side of your desk and pulled them up. Despite this, no face actually emerged until the end, when your foot moved a bit too low to the ground and you were both sent flying back onto the floor next to your bed. Your head was throbbing from the impact, and you heard your companion groan on the floor next to you. You guessed you weren’t the only one who had a rough landing. You sat up, catching sight of your laptop on the floor. It was closed, thank goodness, but you weren’t sure it would ever actually recover from whatever the fuck had just happened. Either way, you had just pulled an entire person through to your bedroom, so you have a few bigger priorities than the state of your computer.
You pick yourself up off the floor again and gaze down at the person who is still flat on your floor, red eyes staring up at the ceiling and breathing shallowly. You’re tall, unusually so, but this person is short even by traditional standards, under 5 '7 just from your estimate. Their brown hair spills down just above their shoulders, a darker olive skin tone tinted yellow framing strangely red eyes. They had black earrings in, but that was barely noticeable compared to the thick braces and scattered acne around their face, which had now contorted into absolute panic. Your mind is getting closer and closer to the same place, your stunned silence turning to shock as you glimpse their sweater. Green with a yellow stripe, a plain black shirt underneath. You honestly didn’t know what to expect from a haunted computer, but it never would have been this. If you were worried about this before, you were going to scream again now. Involuntarily, the question you’d had in your mind slipped out.
“Kris?” Your voice was low and shaky, but it had a clear effect. Their eyes focused on you for a second, going wide with fear. They burst up, faster than you could’ve imagined a human could go, and burst out of the room, nearly running into the sliding door that separated your bathroom from the kitchen before making for the stairs. This was perhaps the worst outcome you could imagine, especially if this was Kris. Them avoiding pictures of other humans came rushing back into your mind as you composed yourself as well as you could and ran out the door, desperately pulling out your phone to text your mom that you had brought a friend over. It was a terrible excuse, but one you should’ve made as soon as possible in case she got off work early. You eventually caught up to the person you were now convinced was Kris as they attempted to burst out the front door, the circular lock preventing them from efficiently escaping. You’d have to take back every complaint you made to your mom about getting a fancy Polish door after today. They did get the door open, but you were right behind them, and managed to grab their shoulder right before they stepped out onto the road, narrowly avoiding a passing car going well over the speed limit. That was what you’d been scared of, especially since your street had terrible sidewalks and was less than 30 minutes from downtown. If Kris got lost, you doubted they’d be safe, much less make their way back. They stepped back in shock as your neighbor, out mowing his lawn, shot you a concerned look, his young son playing with a toy car in the open garage. Kris, struggled against your arm, but you figured it was better to bring the hammer down now, so stayed firm and tried to face them.
“Hey, I know this is… crazy, but let me talk to you. You can’t go out alone, trust me,” They looked as petrified as they had before at first, but then a look of what you could only describe as hate passed over their face. You guessed you’d said something wrong, which could only mean trouble.
“Where.... Is... This?”