21- Our Hero~...

"My feelings on the matter?.." Cal repeated to her, his face slowly shifting into neutrality. Leaning back into his chair, he tapped his fingers against the table to gather his thoughts.

"Everything I've done until now, and everything I want to do. Is in part out of selfishness, I'd feel bad if I didn't gives everyone an happy ending when I had the power to. So I tried to achieve it. It's selfish, because I speak about happy endings, while I perfectly know I have the position where my own is the most likely to happen. And I case everyone else's into it." He calmly explained to her, keeping his words simple and his gaze unwavering. She wanted his feelings, then he would gives them to her.

"Another part, is..." His face twist slightly. "That I feel lost, and alone. I mean, I was wrenched from my life suddenly, a life I wasn't really ready to say goodbuy to. Only to end up here. Giving myself a goal to cling to was an easy solution, so I did."

"At least, that's how I felt in the beginning." He stated, pausing. "Now, now I'm not so lost anymore." His lips turned upward into a smile, his eyes burning with a wild inner fire. "Now, I'm having fun. Fighting you and driving off the Script was the most alive I've ever felt, it was downright thrilling. Hell, even hanging out in the club made me feel new things that I can't quite get enough off."

Calming down, Cal averted his gaze, looking out of the lone window giving out into darkness. "I want more of that fun. But... I'm not so sure I only want that for the rest of my life."

Gazing back at Monika, he took a breath. "I don't know how much you figured out, but long story short. I was someone in the real world before I came here, kinda fusing and taking over the identity of the main character. Having finished the game and a bright flash of light is the last thing I remember before that."

Letting his words hang around for a bit, he continued. "I was young, you know? Barely started working a real job and adulthood. What I really mean to say with all that is that... I'm not ready to gives up on getting to experience living a somewhat mundane life and all it entail. I know it may sound a bit dumb, what with my current situation. But that's what I feel." Cal chuckled and smiled wrily.

"I see..." Monika let out a thoughtful hum, falling into contemplation as she disgested his words. Then after a few seconds, she seemed to realize something as a small blush rose to her face and she averted her gaze. "I get the rest, but the last thing, about living a mundane life, you say that to me?"

Getting what she refering to, his smile slowly widened into a smirk. "Come on, now. Don't play coy with me, Monika. You already know my intentions. Plus, if I'm being honest, I rather like being with you." He admitted to her without shame, all while thinking about who else he could possibly talk to about his wish but her?

"T-true, but light flirting is different. This is something on another level." She replied, her shy smile falling off a bit as she thought about something. "And I guess, when you speak of your intentions, that they have neither changed for me nor for the other girls?"

His own face becoming calm, he replied without shame, his tone pure with honesty and determination. "No, I know each of you deserve better. That's why I promise to be that better, and more, for all of you. But that's all I can promise. But right now, in this room with only the two of us, I'm making that promise to you, Monika, no one else."

Monika's expression went through a palette of emotions before she settled for a defeated sigh. "Well, that's not fair is it? How can someone be so good with words? I guess I'll just have to deal with it." A small smile came back on her face. "Still, let's not get ahead of ourself. You may have already enraptured a part of my heart, and convinced me with your sincerety, but who knows if the other girls will be as accepting?"

"I don't want to be cheeky or anything. But you said it yourself, I'm very good with words. I'd say it'd be better to smothers whatever expectations you have before its too late."

Monika looked shook, her eyes widening slightly before she squinted at him, her pursued lips not quite a pouts yet, but close. "First off, that's very cheeky. Second, let a helpless club president have dreams, will you?"

Chuckling, he apologized. "Sorry, was just making sure we were still on the same wavelength." Calming down once again, he brought the subject back on tracks. "Now, enough of that. I really got to tell you now, given matters of the heart were brought up." He let his words hung out for a bit, so that Monika could listen seriously what he was going to say next.

"Since I replaced the script, I got access to everything in the game. Including character's files. And to keep everyone from simply vanishing, I had to bring all of you under my 'care'. That allowed me to see certain things that were forced on all of you from the start, especially you, Monika." Beginning like that, he explained to her how her jealousy from her situation in the game and for the other girls as well as his love for the player, him, in this situation, were coded into her files directly.

"I didn't want to even touch what basically ammounted to a part of you. So I'm consulting you on the issue. What do you want to do?" Not keeping anything from her, he asked her sincerely and without pretension.

Monika stayed silent for a long, long time. Her face impassive yet her eyes complicated as she looked at him, then at the table, then at nothing. Finally, after minutes of contemplation, she turned her gaze back to him and asked. "My character file... Could you give me full access to it?"

Nodding, he gave her admin authority concerning her character's file, not hesitating at all. Then he made her laptop appear before her.

Looking momentarily surprised, she smiled at him sweetly. "Thank you, Cal." She proceeded to briefly busy herself with her computer.

After a while of silence, to which Cal used to train himself by letting a tiny bit of the strain of his virtual self through to his physical self. He spoke up. "So?"

Monika looked up from the screen and tapped her cheek. "It's hard to say. I tried to temporarily disable the settings entirely, and I didn't feel any different. Only when I manually lowered or upped them did I feel a difference."

Frowning, Cal leaned on the table and brought his hands together. "So they're really a part of you, the last degree of them is the basis of how you feel naturally. You'd have to manually set them to zero for them to become irrelevent. But that's, the same as artificially killing a part of yourself. No better than the setting already existing with a value in the first place."

Nodding, she agreed with him. "It seems to be the case."

Lifting an eyebrows, Cal gestured with his hand toward her. "How do you want to proceed, then?"

"I'm keeping them." Closing her laptop, she sighed and smiled at him. "But I decided to lower the jealousy quite a bit. It's already not a feeling who do any good in normal circumstance. And in our cases, it is simply detrimental." She logically explained her reasoning, her expression perfectly neutral.

"You-" Stopping in his track, Cal gathered his thoughts for a bit before deciding to fuck it and just tell her how he felt about it. "You didn't have to."

Making sweet eyes at him, she smiled softly. "True. But that's what I want. If my jealousy serve no other purpose than getting in the way of my and my friends happiness. Then, naturally, most of it has to go. Don't feel bad, Cal. To be honest, as selfish and greedy you proclaim yourself to be, the simple truth is that we are lucky to have you and not anybody else standing in your place." Her smile became more enigmatic as she leaned back, looked down and began to play 'thoughtfully' with the first button of her uniform as she softly continued. "It's true, you know? Think about it, what would we have becomes without you?"

Cal closed his eyes, keeping himself from reflexively denying her, as he knew anything he could comes up with right now would only sound hollow. He also closed his eyes for another reason, to reflect on and mostly, control himself.

'Why the hell is she fidgeting her button like that? In addition to her face and voice... Is she really— NO! STOP! BAD THOUGHT! Breath, and don't get fucking a boner, Cal. Now's too early for any of that. Plus it's not like Monika is like that. Right? Right.'

As a last logical stopgap, he kept reminding himself that he wasn't an hentai protagonist as if he wanted to be one, he wouldn't have changed his appearance. Though he was increasingly tempted to just erase his face and be done with it by the second.

Wanting to confirm that his self-imposed delusion of his club president wasn't, in fact, a delusion, he tentatively opened his eyes. And made himself violence to keep his face perfectly blank while he inwardly cursed his foolishness as he saw Monika intently looking at him and smirk slyly as she met his eyes.

"Thanks, I'll try to keep that in mind." With the self-control of an hermit sage, he didn't give her anything. His pride wouldn't allow him. 

It still didn't keep one his eye, however from twitching as Monika lost her smile and rolled her eyes at him, if she had clicked her tongue right there and then, he would have probably lost it.

'Who would have thought, uh?' He didn't, until now. But who know, maybe it was all posturing?

Realistically, he could only see two reasons as to why she would be edging him on. Because let's be honest, that's clearly what she was doing. He knew it, she knew it, if the script was here even he would know too. Firstly, it could be a sort of plan or agenda to cement her place as first in his heart or something of the sort. And second, simply because she wanted to. Maybe she already was all in their offically non-stated relationship and didn't really mind skipping a few step because of one thing or another, like believing he wouldn't just reduce their possible dynamic to one of pleasure only... Hell, maybe it was a simple revenge against his earlier cheekyness and as he thought, she was just posturing and teasing him.

Or again... Maybe... Maybe she was really curious about getting it on. A prospect that now that he thought about it, was viable. After all, in normal circumstances, being physically intimate was something she could never even dream off, something that only real people of the real world did. Not something a self-aware AI in a virtual reality would ever get to consider in the first place. But now, with him here, it very much changed, didn't it?..

...

That or he was really thinking too much, and was letting the horny takes over his mind. Sadly, he had to reluctantly admit it just made too much sense for him to totally let go of the possibility entirely.

Monika, after all. From not only her character in the game, but also what he'd seen himself, was very much a girl who just went for what she wanted. Oh yeah, she very much liked her little game and theatrics, but when it came to what she desired, she wasn't shy at all, and was quite literally to do anything to get them.

For now, he'd see which of those was the right answer and where it led them. He also knew that whatever her game was, he wouldn't just let her win that easily.

Not only would that be a slippery slope in itself, since he knew himself, but also because it simply wouldn't be as sweet if he gave in right away than if he let her frustrations build up until it exploded. The same could be said from his pent up 'feelings' as he restrain himself. Working for something always felt better, after all, no?

Unnecessary, perhaps? But it was more fun that way.

Still, all of that said, godamn did he hope the third case was the correct one.

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(A/N: Last chapter from my backup, from now on I'll be pumping them two per weeks at least. All of you are free to make some suggestions for future worlds since I'd see them before writing the chapters about them. Also, please drop stones my way if you like the story, It really help with motivation.)