章 9: 8 - Always A Bigger Fish

Overall, it was very clear he was playing with forces he didn't understand. Of course he was. He'd been here only for a day and suddenly got weird reality altering powers. What was he supposed to do? Not mess with them? Pfft, as if.

Still didn't mean he was suicidal though. So he resisted the desire of checking if he could create an inventory to store his poems in and obediently tucked them in his school bag, who was utterly... Empty.

"Uh." Scratching his chin and tilting his head, he wondered if when he had come to have one. He faintly remember coming back from school with something on his back and throwing it down, but he didn't remember going to school with anything at all. Another weird ass stunt that was somehow or someway his fault probably.

Shaking his head, he hesitated as his mind went through the motions of what should be done in a normal morning, but then came to an impasse as he realized they weren't neccessary anymore.

"Urgh, fuck it. I'm still doing it." No way he wasn't going to eat, drink or take hot showers anymore, that'd just be sad. Plus, sleeping, or passing out in this case, did seems to refresh and energize him in a way.

Why, exactly, would sleeping work if he had indeed become a digital being? He frankly had no idea other than believing it may have something to do with his perception of himself and what should be happening to him. But that was the kind of thoughts that would have to be shoved back to a corner of his mind until he was in the mood and knew how to actually test it.

Right now, was the time to explore... After eating a healthy breakfast and doing his morning routine, of course.

—————

His morning routine went okay, well, if you ignore the fact he had to will a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste into existence as well as running water for his house to both brush his teeth and take a shower. It felt a bit pointless given his new peerly white and his as clean as could be body. But the taste of mint in his mouth and letting the hot water run down his back did wonder for his mind.

Now, breakfast was a whole other kind of ordeal. Firstly, because his fridge was empty. A disapointement he rectified by closing its door and reopening it. Letting him in on the magnificient view of bacons, eggs, butter and all kind of fruits. All ready to be made into the perfect breakfast. That is, until he realised that he had no pan, nor any plate, and that only the oven itself actually worked, not the heaters on top.

What happened after that was kinda a blur, but he was almost a 100% sure he went into some kind of rageful crusade against all the disabled furnitures in his house. And when he came back to himself he was sitting at the table with a plate full of food before him and a fork in hand, as well as a bleeding nose and tiny headache. So of course, resuming most of his experiences until now, he simply shrugged it off and went with the flow. Which in this case meant finally eating those fucking bacon and eggs, which tasted like... Bacon and Eggs. And certainly not like what he imagined what 1 and 0 would taste like. So that was a win in his book.

After that, he did a quick perusing of what he had fixed. And, sure enough, his drawers and cupboards were now filled with all kinds of ustensils, glasses, tools and spices instead of being embarassingly empty like before.

Checking the living room, he even found a fucking PHONE laying quietly on the low table before the couch. Checking it out, he found it was exactly the same model he had back in the real world. So with that, he was pretty sure he knew exactly what he had done. He had no real memory of it, but it was probable he simply wished for this house to be normal or some variant of that. To which normal in this case also probably SPECIFICALLY meant both his appartment and when he still lived with his parents, or something... He wasn't sure, he was not yet familiar with the way the dao of creation or whatever the heck he was doing worked yet.

Point is, he always threw his phone on the nearest couch or table when he went to eat. Else he'd get distracted and take an hour eating and his food would end up cold and he would have to reheat it and... Yeah, habit.

Oh yeah, did he mention that TV? It was working again! Well, not exactly. It was showing a no signal screen. But it was better than eery static.

After this, he checked the time on the clock on the oven and noticed way too late to be justifiable that time was frozen at 7:00 AM and didn't seem to be moving at all for some reason. Which brought up the fact he didn't even have any idea what time it was when he woke up. Meaning he could only assume time hadn't moved since he had and stayed the same until now.

Like most other things in this world, it puzzled him. But he found a possible answer that made sense soon enough.

Time in a video game like Doki Doki only passed when you actually played it. If you didn't progress the story, the world remained frozen and stagnant. Like now.

Now the true question was if it was frozen because he wanted to do other things or because he hadn't wished to progress the story.

Either way, it was conveniant. And only reinforced the idea that he was really the player in this situation. Though if he could do it infinitely had still to be seen...

With another tidbit of this world's particularity added to his repertoire. Cal set out to the outside. His bright golden-green eyes somewhat weary yet full of intrigues as he pursued his lips and surveyed his surrounding, to the houses and the sky to the sun and the winding streets. Seeing and aknowledging them what they were, decorations, as he set out in a random direction, the song of birds and the buzz of insects slowly but surely coming alive and becoming more evident around him each time he took a step.

—————

"Not surprising, but still disappointing." The teenage boy said, his face set into a frown as his right hand seemingly rested flat against the air in front of him.

During his little adventure, which may have lasted a couple of hours — he couldn't really tell — he had explored pretty much everynook and cranny there were to explore except for the school and what he thought may have been where Monika lived.

Because yes, the girls each had homes, or rather, places where they 'lived'. He was afraid to think what they were actually doing when time was frozen like that or when they were not on screen. Anyway, probably because it was mentioned or by the simple fact that Sayori had one. They had houses. And they really weren't far from his own either.

Each time, he could tell because he would have an intense compulsion (AKA mind weight) to not go there and because well... Their houses were the only one with a single shred of life to them, the ones neighboring them being nothing more than a vague blurry outline that he could see through if he tried enough. Which was the case for almost every streets and houses who weren't on his own who led to school and directly around that same school.

This was a state of affair that was pretty depressing already, but nowhere near what he had in front of him.

"This is just bullshit, I'm pretty sure my computer could render plenty more still!" He yelled in indignation as he tried pushing through the invisible wall in front of him in vain.

"Well, if physical force isn't gonna move you, I guess a bit of mind juice will have to do." Rolling up his mental sleeves, Cal did what he was rapidly becoming accustomed to and reached out with his will to the world...

And struck an unbreakable wall. No, not a wall, nothingness, a blank infinite scape of void and emptyness... Just the feeling alone made a part of his mind recoils in disgust and primal fear. Yet, he couldn't turn away. As what he perceived just on the edge, or the horizon, of this void drew his mind eye unnaturally. Focusing on it, he saw a shifting, rolling mass of 'something' of a scale and mass he couldn't wrap his mind around, no, that wasn't quite right, there was a part of it still that felt a sort of familiarity toward the thing...

In all evidence, what he was witnessing was not from the game, it was outside of it. This meant it wasn't what he had fought yesterday to write the poems, this was something else. It was... A program?

It noticed him.

He don't know how, but It did something, and this something reached him. And his mind was immediatly struck with visions of truth, of an eye peering through a keyhole to the other side. Of a world beyond world. Of the nature of his presumed existence. All those ideas and concept crashing through his head all at once, vying for his attention.

They didn't take hold, nor did they phase him.

Because they were wrong about one thing.

The presumption that he didn't already know about all of that.

He would have loved to say that he withstood the eldritch assault like a badass and didn't even flinch. But it turned out that some small part of him still couldn't handle it, making him come back to his senses and fall on his ass as a result due to a bout of physical dizziness.

Welp, seems like there really always was a bigger fish in the end.

Lucky for him, he was pretty sure he wasn't a fish in the first place.