Chapter Text
Monika sat back, watching the bizarre scene unfold in her literature club.
"Why do you think you don't have a boyfriend yet?" Her newest member, Em, asked his childhood friend (and the club's vice president) as he fussed over her disheveled uniform. Well, technically his name was Emas, apparently coming from Indonesia where his family originated, but everyone called him Em, and he seemed to like it that way.
"Eh?? That's super mean!" whined Sayori, the target of his berating.
"Sorry, but you'll thank me later... Once you see how much better it looks, you'll change your mind," the new boy replied, fastening the buttons of her blazer.
Should I put a stop to this? I know they've been friends forever, but is this, like, sexual harassment or something?
Monika pondered her course of action as the pair continued to bicker. She could see Yuri sneaking furtive glances at Sayori and blushing as Em struggled to button the highest button. The shy girl seemed to have been paying a lot of attention to the vice president recently.
Monika really ought to have stepped in to stop the boy, but the idea of calling him out sent a chill down her spine. Totally, absolutely, definitely not procrastinating this duty, Monika's eyes wandered over to Natsuki, sitting in the back-corner desk with her manga. The low-hanging sun shone through the window and made her spot look so warm and inviting. It highlighted Natsuki's soft pink hair with a glow that was like a fucking angelic Halo, and—
Monika caught herself staring and brought her attention back to Sayori, listening closely.
"So if I keep it unbuttoned, then I won't get a boyfriend, right?" Sayori asked, oddly bashful for once.
Ha, I knew she had a crush on him. He seems oblivious though… or is he not interested? Ooh and there's maybe a love triangle with Yuri— Spicy!
"What kind of logic is that? And why are you saying that like it's a good thing?" Em sassed, before his expression puzzlingly changed to one far more serious. Eyes suddenly full of anxious hope, he whispered, "W-wait, Sayori… A-are you gay too?"
HOOOO THE PLOT THICKENS! The spice INTENSIFIES! I never expected this kind of shit to happen in my tiny club!
Nothing about this guy had seemed particularly effeminate or flamboyant to Monika... She sighed, chiding herself for thinking along the lines of such silly stereotypes. As a proud pansexual herself, she thought she ought to know better, right?
"W-what? Em… you're gay ?!?" Sayori asked a little too loudly. Now everyone was staring at her, and her shocked expression broke. Her mouth was still caught between a grimace and a forced smile, but tears were spilling out of her eyes. "I-I uh- I gotta go to the bathroom!" She announced, rushing out the door.
Monika, along with the other two girls, stared slack-jawed for a few moments. Her stupor broke when she noticed Em's shoulders starting to shake. The boy sat down at the nearest desk, burying his face in his hands as he tried (and failed) to suppress his sobs.
Okay, she definitely had to do something now, so Monika slowly made her way to the desk beside him and took a seat. Yuri and Natsuki both acted as if they were reading, but Monika was keenly aware that they were listening in.
"Hey. Uh... it's okay. I know having someone yell it out like that is tough, but we're not gonna judge you, or think less of you or anything. I'm pan myself so…"
"A-are you kidding?!? D-did you n-not just see that?!? She couldn't even l-look me in the eyes when I told her. S-Sayori's my only real f-friend and n-now she-" the poor boy couldn't finish his sentence.
Okay, maybe I just need to be real with him, because he's definitely misunderstanding.
Monika took a deep breath and swallowed. "Listen, Em, don't panic. I think you have the wrong idea here. Sayori's definitely not homophobic, and I don't really think she's totally straight either. If you heard how she talks about her favorite actresses... well that's beside the point. She was upset because she has feelings for you."
"Wh-what?" The dense boy looked back at her as if her head had turned into a cantaloupe.
Monika felt kinda bad for revealing Sayori's crush like that, but she reasoned that the other girl had sorta earned it with the way she handled that situation. She couldn't have just left him crying like that, could she?
"It's true," Monika continued. "She's been talking about you in the club for ages— about how helpful and patient and funny you are with her. And the point she was getting at about not wanting a boyfriend… if she had a boyfriend it would be a lot harder for her to stay so close with you. You've gotta admit the way you were just acting with her is a little weird. Would any boyfriend of hers who didn't know you were gay be okay with that?"
"I...I-I" he stammered.
Monika exhaled, looking at the door, then back at Em. "I don't know if I'm the person you should be talking to right now, though. Why don't you go find her?"
Em nodded and sniffled as he stood up. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve before he exited the clubroom. Well that was an unexpected turn of events, Monika thought to herself.
When a single, not-so-well-read boy had joined her all-female club the previous day, she had questioned his intentions.
I guess he really did just want to be supportive of Sayori and help us get official recognition, though...
She turned around to address the remaining two club members. "Okay, guys, I think... they're gonna be a while. Why don't we just go ahead with the poetry exchange without them?
Nats rolled her eyes, reluctantly fishing out a notebook, while Yuri gulped and reached into her bag. Monika thought it was pretty cute how nervous they both were about it. Oh, I should've gotten my own poem out first— I'm in charge of this thing and I'm the least prepared… whatever, I guess they can share with each other first. What's the worst that could happen?
"Uh, you two get started, okay?"
Monika stood up after flashing an encouraging smile to Natsuki and Yuri. She walked to the front of the classroom where she'd left her bag, and retrieved her composition journal.
Flipping through her poems, she found the one she'd written first. It was called "lava cake," and mimicked the style of the poem Natsuki had forgotten at her desk the other day. In what was definitely just a general metaphor, totally not referring to any specific person, it described a dessert with a hard shell of an exterior, appearing as a solid hunk of chocolate, when in fact, it was not solid at all inside, but gooey and vulnerable. But these two parts alone did not define the dish— it was all being supported by a strong foundation of cake that was both solid and soft at the same time.
Flustered by the very idea of sharing this first poem, she turned the page to a much more avant-garde, abstract poem that would keep most anyone guessing as to its meaning. This'll do. Don't want to give anyone the wrong idea...
When Monika looked up and saw the other twos' faces, she was hit with an uneasy feeling.
"What's with this language?" Nats muttered to herself.
Yuri looked up from the page she was reading. "Huh? D-did you say something?"
"Oh, it's nothing. I guess you could say it's fancy"
"Oh— Thanks… Yours is… cute..." Yuri replied, avoiding eye contact.
"Cute?!?" Natsuki snapped, nostrils flaring. "Did you completely miss the symbolism or something? It's clearly about the feeling of giving up. How can that be cute?"
"I-I know that! I just meant… the language, I guess… I-I was trying to say something nice."
Natsuki glared back indignantly. "Really? You mean you have to try that hard to come up with something nice to say? Thanks, but it really didn't come out nice at all!"
This is bad. This is very bad…
"Um… w-well, I do have a couple suggestions..." Yuri muttered timidly.
Natsuki scoffed. "If I was looking for advice on how to write pretentious bullshit I would have asked."
"E-excuse me?!?" For the first time ever, Monika saw anger in the eyes of her quietest club member. "Is a basic metaphor too much for you to comprehend? Should we sit in on some middle school classes together so that one of the most fundamental of literary devices doesn't seem so outlandish and pretentious to you?"
Oh no. I need to do something about this. But… fuck!
"It's not the fact that you used a metaphor, it's the way you used it," Natsuki retorted in frustration. "You're obscuring the actual message of the poem behind all the convoluted language! The meaning should jump out at the reader, not force them to have to figure it out."
Yuri shook her head. "That's such a reductive idea. Is there no nuance, or paradox, or doubt to the human experience? Is everything black and white? There's a reason we have so many deep and expressive words in our language! It's the only effective way to explore complex feelings and ideas. Avoiding them is not only unnecessarily limiting yourself...it's also a waste!"
Monika felt obligated to step in and tell them to stop before this argument got out of hand, but she was paralyzed. The thought of confronting them while they were already so heated was just- AAAAHHHH. If only Sayori was here.
She shifted where she stood, trying to will herself to say something, when Natsuki's head suddenly whipped around toward her. "Monika! You get what I'm saying right? Back me up here!"
"Don't drag her into this!" Yuri scolded.
Oh shit, they noticed me. Monika's mind began to spin out of control . I need to stay neutral as the president right? Aah, but I really don't want to make Natsuki mad— maybe I should side with her… But fuck, my poem is pretty metaphorical too, so that would make me kind of a hypocrite. My own approach is probably closer to Yuri's here, and I can't agree with Nats just because I have a crush on her. Wait… did I just admit to myself that… okay that's not important right now, fuck.
In the end Monika just stood there. She kept opening her mouth to say something and then closing it again.
"Will you tell Yuri to stop being such a stuck-up jerk?" Natsuki asked, completely ignoring the purple-haired girl's protest.
Yuri stepped closer to catch Natsuki's attention once more. "She would never! Look at her— it was your immaturity that made her upset like this in the first place!"
"Are you listening to yourself?!?" Natsuki pointed a finger at Yuri's face. "This is exactly why…" she hesitated for a moment before going in for the kill. "Exactly why nobody likes you! Have you ever considered that maybe there's a reason you don't have any friends?!? Like, how maybe that self-important attitude of yours is kind of fucking off-putting, and maybe nobody would pick on you if you just acted like a regular fucking person ? Or are you too fucking inept to even have that level of self-awareness?"
The wind vanished from Yuri's sails completely. There was no comeback, no defense, no reciprocated insult... Without another word, she fled, not quite walking but not quite jogging either. For minutes, Monika stared at the door, dumbfounded as she wondered how this one meeting had gone so horribly wrong. The dissonance of someone she admired saying something so mean flooded her mind.
Shifting her gaze to Natsuki, she saw the short girl back at her seat in the corner of the classroom, holding her face in her hands. Awkwardly, Monika approached and slid into an adjacent chair. "So…"
"I know." Natsuki cut her off. "I went way too far, and I need to apologize or whatever."
"Uuh… yeah." Monika's heart palpitated. She wanted Natsuki to like her, and having to admonish the girl felt dangerous; this situation was on a totally different, much more real level from just teasing her about her manga. "W-what… what was that about?"
"I don't know. I was just... really pissed and I wanted to hurt her. And I said the nastiest, deepest-cutting thing I could think of, 'cause I'm an awful bitch."
"Natsuki, don't say that. It's… it's not like you actually meant what you said, right?"
The shorter girl made eye contact, silent tears rolling down her cheeks. Christ, that's everyone now, isn't it? Monika swallowed, realizing they might not make it through this without losing a member or two.
"Did you see her face before she ran off?" Natsuki asked. "Thinking about it makes me want to throw up. Everyone knows she gets bullied a lot. This was probably the one safe place she had and I just ruined it."
Monika nodded. Yuri was a year older than the rest of them, but even the second-years (except maybe Sayori) knew that Yuri's status was quite low amongst her classmates, and that she was often the target of cruel remarks, pranks, and occasionally minor violence.
“I feel like I should leave the club so that she can feel safe here again but…” Natsuki’s quiet tears began to break into sobs, “b-but I don’t wanna give it up. I-it’s the same kind of place for me.”
After a moment of panicked indecision, Monika gently hugged the weeping girl, softly patting her on the back. Her heart felt like it was trying to break out of her ribcage with a battering ram. Not one of the modern ones that police used, but the gigantic logs armies used to break into castles in the middle ages, or at least in movies loosely set in the middle ages. Hopefully Natsuki doesn't notice that.
After what felt like several long moments of silence, but was just a few seconds in reality, Monika tried to reassure her companion. “Hey, it’s alright. You don’t have to worry. We’ll get this sorted out.”
As she said that Monika heard the scuff of someone's school slippers against the floor on the far side of the room. Her fluttering heart sank into the pit of her stomach. Please be anybody but Yuri.
Sure enough, Yuri was back, still shaken and raw-eyed from earlier, and now bearing a look of hurt and betrayal towards her.
"Y-Yuri… uh… it's not what it looks- uh, I… I'm not taking sides, I swear!"
The tall girl didn't reply. Hiding her face with one hand, she walked to her desk, hastily grabbed her things, and literally ran away.
Fuck.
Just minutes ago, Monika had imagined a fanciful love triangle between Sayori, Em, and Yuri, as if this was some cute TV drama, but suddenly the strained interpersonal relationships between her club members were threatening to dismantle the whole thing.
The day after we'd gotten enough people too…
After Natsuki had managed to calm down, she awkwardly said her goodbyes and left Monika alone in the clubroom. The green-eyed girl glanced at the yet-unclaimed bags belonging to Sayori and Em. With a resigned sigh, she pulled out her phone to text Sayori.
[Will you & Em be coming back for your bags? I can take them if not.]
Monika sat down, mind wandering to what Nats had said. 'I don't want to give it up. It's the same kind of place for me.'
Why would the club be the only place Natsuki felt safe? She had friends to eat lunch with, and while they seemed to tease her about her height, she didn't have a serious bullying problem like Yuri. And Yuri— how would she approach her to explain what had happened? She must've felt abandoned and betrayed, seeing the club president comforting the person who had just attacked her so ruthlessly.
Monika's thoughts were interrupted by the buzzing of her phone, with a reply from Sayori.