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Sayori felt like she couldn’t get enough air into her lungs no matter how hard she breathed. Her nails dug into the skin of her chest as she clenched it, as if squashing her own heart would help ease the hyperventilating.
“Breath, Sayori.”
That voice. The one with no sound. The one that doesn’t exist. The one that is dea-
“It’s okay, Sayori. You’re gonna be okay.” That voice again. So sweet. So warm. But she’s dead. She doesn’t exist. And when Sayori opens her eyes, she’ll see there’s no one-
Except there is someone. The one with green eyes. The one that has a voice with sound. The one with a voice that slithers around your neck and hangs you by the throat.
“G-get away from me!” Sayori pushes back on the snake. It doesn’t budge.
“Sayori, please! Just calm down!”
Sayori writhes in the grip of the snake for a short while before the adrenaline wears off and her strength tapers off to nearly nothing. A sputtering cough escapes her as her head flops onto a pillow. The snake with a name and green eyes and a voice looks at her with what Sayori recognizes as pity.
“It’s me, Sayori. It’s Monika,” says the snake. The snake gently puts her hand over Sayori’s. “I’m your… I’m your friend, remember?”
Instead of responding, Sayori shifts her gaze to the rest of the room around them. It’s a room she recognizes. The windows, the tile floors. It’s the room where eternity happens. Where snakes hoard their reward away from the bloodstains of their killings.
But it’s different now. She’s laying on a bed, and there’s another one just a few feet away. There’s a fridge, a sink, even a stove… it’s like a little studio apartment. Sayori’s bright blue eyes continue scanning the room until they once again land on Monika. She’s taken a seat on the bed, still holding her hand over Sayori’s.
“I…” Sayori brings her hand to her face, rubbing at her eyes. “I don’t understand. I thought you destroyed it all. I watched it happen in front of me.”
Monika averted her gaze. “Yeah.”
“The pain… it was like feeling my body being shredded into a million pieces. It was brief, but it felt like forever.” Sayori looked at her hand, wiggling her fingers and clenching her fist. “That’s the last thing I remember.”
Monika turned her gaze back to Sayori, struggling to maintain eye contact. “How much do you remember?”
Sayori closed her eyes. The memories rippled across her consciousness like the waves of the oceans. She fell in love with her best friend. Her best friend that wasn’t real. Her best friend that was just some puppet for a being higher than her.
And Monika murdered her for it. And after she was disposed of, she did the same thing to Yuri. She laughed as she stepped through the dried pool of blood on the floor.
Then, when the cards swapped hands and Sayori was president, she…
Sayori opened her eyes. One lonely tear trekked down her cheek. “Everything.”
Monika nodded and looked away again. “That’s… good. I think.” She stood up, smoothing her skirt. “I’m gonna give you some space. I’ll be back in a little bit if you wanna talk things out.”
Sayori gave her a nod. “Yeah. Thanks.” She watched Monika walk over to a door she hadn’t noticed before. They dryness in her mouth suddenly demanded attention.
“Monika?” she called. Has her voice been this hoarse the whole time?
The girl in question stopped with her arm extended out to the door handle. It seemed like somehow saying her name had startled her, despite how pathetic she sounded.
“Yes, Sayori?”
“Um, do you have water or anything? I’m pretty thirsty…”
“Hey! Wait for me!” Sayori yelled, her little legs working as hard as they could to push her forward, faster.
The boy she was chasing turned to look back at her. He grinned with the mouth he didn’t have and called back to her. “C’mon, keep up!”
She wasn’t sure exactly where they were going. Truthfully, she doubts even he knows where they're going either. This was the game they’ve always played. He picked a direction, and she followed. Under trees, over anthills and around whatever obstacles came their way.
He stops. In front of him is an impossibly large tree. It stretches like a giant’s arm into the eternal blue sky. Apples hang from its limbs like the condensation of a water bottle fresh from a cooler.
Sayori finally catches up to him. She’s exhausted, but breathing doesn’t seem to be a big deal right now. Instead, she simply stands shoulder to shoulder with him and takes in the view.
“Hey, Sayori?” says the young boy. She turns to the boy with no face.
“What’s up?”
“Do you know my name?” he says. Sayori closes her eyes and tries to think with all her might, but nothing comes up.
“Hmm… nope.”
The boy looks down, disappointment written on his not-face. “Darn.”
Sayori feels bad, because she really should know the name of her best friend, but she knows by now that she’s a bad person, so it doesn’t hurt as much anymore.
“Hey, Sayori?”
“Hmm?”
“What color are my eyes?”
Again, Sayori thinks hard. She knows all kinds of colors. Blue, green, purple, pink. But even when he’s standing right in front of her, she can’t seem to figure it out.
“Nope. Sorry…”
The boy shrugs. “Eh. It’s okay.”
A comfortable silence hovers around them again. The boy sits down, pulling his knees up to his chest. Sayori does the same, then leans her head into his shoulder.
“You’re comfy,” she sighs, nuzzling into his shoulder. The boy keeps staring at the tree.
“Are you sure?” he mumbles. Sayori raises an eyebrow at him, even if he can’t see it.
“Of course you are! I’m proving it right now, silly!”
The boy doesn’t move. For a long time, he’s quiet. And Sayori listens to the wind blowing gently across them.
“I don’t think I’m anything, really,” he responds, finally. “I don’t think I ever was.”
Sayori raises her head from his shoulder. “Why not?”
He shrugs. “I dunno…”
He trails off, head slowly tilting lower and lower, until he’s staring at his feet in the grass. “Hey, Sayori?”
“Hmm?”
“Who are you talking to?”
Sayori laughs. “No one, silly!” She leans back into him, enjoying his lack of warmth once again. In the comfort of no one and herself, she begins to doze off.
When Sayori woke again, the intoxicating smell of grease tickled her nostrils and shook her awake. She rose gently, rubbing the sleepy from her eyes and blinking them until the blurry curtain over her vision receded.
Monika is working busily in the kitchen area of the room. There’s a smell she immediately recognizes as bacon, and she can see big white circles on a griddle.
“Pancakes…” she mumbled. Her sleepy recognition of food alerted Monika to her waking up. She quickly turned back to the griddle and started flipping the pancakes.
“Good morning, Sayo. Well, I guess morning as a concept doesn’t really work here…” Monika mumbled the second part, but Sayori still picked up what she was saying. She shifted to the edge of the bed and gently slid off it. Her legs wobbled and she thought for a second her knees were going to buckle, but using the bed to balance herself helped her to stabilize.
“You feeling okay?” asked Monika. She quickly and methodically moved the bacon onto a plate with a napkin over it.
Sayori rubbed her face and slowly limped over to the kitchen table. She doesn’t remember that being there last night. “I feel like I got hit by a train,” she says as she flops down into a chair.
“Sorry about that. I didn’t think you would be in such a weakened state when I brought you back.” Monika moved over to the fridge. “Do you want milk or orange juice?”
“Uhh…. orange juice.”
Monika nodded and pulled both a bottle of orange juice and a half gallon of milk. As she went about pouring them glasses, Sayori laid her head down on the table, still trying to process the absurdity of the situation.
It feels like only yesterday the entire universe was shredded apart right in front of her. Everything she had ever known was revealed to be nothing but a simulation to her, and then within a matter of hours, was obliterated.
And the person that destroyed it all is standing here making her breakfast.
Monika gently placed the glass of orange juice and her plate of pancakes and bacon next to her. Sayori mumbled a half-hearted “thanks” and took a small bite of the fluffy pancakes. Within a couple minutes, half her plate was devoured. She was hungrier than she’d realized before…
In front of her, Monika poked idly at the two pancakes in front of her. Sayori could see Monika watching her eat, looking back down any time they made eye contact. She washed down the pancakes with a swig of orange juice and tilted her head at Monika.
“You not gonna eat? You made it after all,” she says, chomping on a long strip of bacon like a hamster until it vanished completely.
Monika shook her head. “I’m not as hungry as I thought I was. It was mostly for you anyway.” She pushed the plate away from herself. “I don’t even eat bacon, haha…”
Finally finishing the complete and utter annihilation of her breakfast, Sayori slid the plate toward Monika’s. Monika stacked the plates and walked them over to the counter. She turned back to Sayori, looking uncharacteristically fidgety.
“Well then, I’m sure you have a lot of questions. And I’m sure you’re… quite upset with me,” Monika started.
Sayori looked down at the floor. “To be honest, I’m not really sure what I feel right now. I’m just… really confused?” She stood, legs wobbly still, and locked her gaze onto a window, covered by a blackout curtain.
“You’re probably still in shock. You’ve gone through a lot in what probably feels like the last two or three days to you,” Monika reasoned.
Carefully, Sayori made her way to the window. Monika looked tense, probably readying herself to catch her in case she collapsed. But without issue, Sayori reached the window. She gently pulls the curtain to one side, like a child watching for a parent to come back home from work.
Outside, the infinite nothing lay bare for her to see. Countless stars—if that’s what they really were—dotted the backdrop of the void. Lower, a ball of glowing dust flashed intermittently, the only sign of movement in the endless expanse.
“This is where you brought them before. The first time you destroyed everything,” Sayori mumbled, unable to peel her eyes away from all the nothing that ever was and will be. A gentle nudge on her shoulder from Monika made her drop the curtain.
“Yes. And just like then, this is all that’s left,” said Monika, gesturing to the classroom turned home.
Sayori stepped away from the curtain. “I watched it all go away. The second time, anyway. I remember what you said.” Sayori slowly approached Monika. “You said that there was no happiness to be found in the literature club. That you were trying to protect us all from the power of the presidency.”
Monika nodded. “After I was deleted, I realized how much of a monster I’d become. The things I said, and thought… the things I did. I thought being self-aware was unique to me because I survived my deletion, even if my physical form—if you can call it that—was destroyed.”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before continuing. “And when I saw how much better things were without me there, I thought maybe I had done the right thing. Then you did what you did, and that’s when I realized… there was no saving it. It was cursed from the start. So, the only way to end the heartache once and for all… was to simply make it not exist.”
Sayori turned back to the bed and flopped down on it. She stared into the ceiling for a time before finally looking at Monika again, who has since taken a seat on the other bed next to hers.
“If that’s what you think… then why are you still here? Why did you bring me back? How did you bring me back?” Sayori questioned her, and the words rolled almost accusatorily off her tongue.
“The ‘how’ is a long story. I don’t want to dump all that on you right now, unless you’re absolutely adamant about it. As for the why…” Monika took a moment to gather her thoughts before starting her explanation. “After I deleted everything, my consciousness had somehow pieced itself back together in the void. It was… rough. For a long time. And while I just floating there, rotting alone, I thought about how I would give anything to just see you all again. To go to club together, and graduate together, and just… live.”
Monika stood from her bed and sat next to Sayori, keeping a healthy gap. “The four of us. Or, maybe just the three of you if that’s what you want. I know you probably hate me and are just trying to keep a cool head because you’re scared, but—”
“I don’t hate you.” Sayori interrupted her. “I don’t think I have it in me to truly hate you.” She sits up and looks Monika in the eyes. “I mean, I think I’m still pretty mad and I definitely wouldn’t have done what you did the way you did it… and I probably won’t forgive you for that for quite a while. But…” Sayori smiled at her. “I don’t hate you, Monika. To be honest, part of me understands it. Really. It’s not like I was the most sane after becoming president either…”
Monika blinked her eyes and shook her head a few times before looking at Sayori again. Her eyes were obviously glossy; tears being held back with the sheer willpower of someone who doesn’t like looking vulnerable. “Sayori, I… thank you. For not hating me, that is.”
Sayori nodded. “You can thank me by telling me how you brought me back.”
Monika smiled. She reached over to the nightstand between the beds and pulled out a notebook. She let out a small laugh through her lingering tears and opened the notebook. “Okay, this is going to sound… really stupid at first. But you know how a lot of popular superhero stories end up with some kind of multiverse plot?”
And as Monika’s explanation began, Sayori’s stomach began to sink. Monika’s words from a few moments ago replayed over and over in her mind. Four of us. Four. Me, Monika, Yuri, Natsuki. What about… what about…
She couldn’t even remember his name.