In Another World with JUST MONIKA 11 Pray for a Brand New Day

/"Push-ups? You have a daily routine? That's actually very sensible of you."/

I was making pushups with my feet still on top of the bed. This put most of the weight on my arms. "… thirty." Then I got up and slapped at my tingly muscles. I was, of course, exercising with my shirt off so that they don't get soaked in sweat. "It helps to fully wake up early. You know, get the blood pumping."

Monika looked away, blushing. I followed her gaze outside to the orange tinged sky of sunrise and inhaled the sweet morning breeze.

I exhaled slowly. "I didn't have as extreme depression as Sayori. Some part of it went away, I think, when I could begin to feel confident in my own body. If I didn't have any real reason to live, just the knowing that I could survive was… helpful."

/"The problem with depression is that it saps motivation. There are different grades to it. It's great that you were able to power through it, but you must remember that it's not universal. No one really just simply willpowers their way through depression because the whole point of it is that it destroys willpower,"/ Monika said. /"So I really have to admire that. The things that help the most are the ones most difficult to start doing."/

"But you can externalize it, at least. Have something else be responsible for the hook that gets you up and going in the day. And then when you're moving, do everything you can that you don't stop moving."

A lot of people agonize over starting something, 'If I just had a reason', but reasons are easy. It's actually following through that was insanely difficult. We very quickly would lose energy, everything in the every day felt that much harder. Specially dealing with people, not only was it so tiring, we couldn't even rest afterwards as we would find ourselves replaying our interactions and thinking over what we could have done better instead.

If we weren't so stupid. If we weren't so rude. That was why it was always so much easier to just... close ourselves off. Or just shitpost on the internet, where the anonymity behind the screen removed the stress from conversations.

Monika looked pained. Until she could mess around with the code, she never realized that Sayori was actually suffering from acute depression. Sayori was, like me, a high functioning depressed individual, acting so completely the opposite as to how she felt that she could almost fool herself during the day.

Sayori only really needed her MC, her best friend. But Monika in her obsession with the player, the real person behind the screen who could exist when her reality shut down into meaningless clamoring electronic noise, she carelessly destroyed that balance.

It was actually odd, the MC was a friendless loner as well, but when the other members began to take interest, Sayori was left feeling devastated to get what she wanted – for him to start making more friends and no longer depend on her so much. The MC never really had a route for Monika, and Monika needed to be able to hold his attention to speak past him to the person who was seeing things via the MC's completely-necessary POV into their world.

Then after Sayori died, Monika destroyed him too. Just to make him a more compliant window out into material reality.

She couldn't kill just him, oh no. In those final moments she was speaking to me, looking at her through the eyes of a person that had no personal agency anymore, she was sitting there proclaiming her love to an unmoving philosophical zombie.

/"If… if I hadn't meddled with Sayori… she was actually happy in the Literature Club. Eventually, I think, she would have been able to find her equilibrium. I think that's why she wanted him to join the Literature Club so much. It was able to give her so much happiness, and turned her life around, she wanted to share that too.

/They… they were hoping the Literature Club could fix what was wrong with them inside. But instead…"/

I smiled thinly. "You broke them more. You shattered them completely."

We hold it together until suddenly we just crack. And no one knows how easy it would be to trigger it, if they just knew how damaged we were. As long as we could hide, we were safe.

/"I did. Even if I you say I was driven insane, it was still something that I chose to do."/

More than just cruelty, it was betrayal.

"Was it? You were still in the end defined by your story, by your medium. Did Dan Salvato need to place a trigger warning at the beginning of the game if you never could be such a terror?"

/"Maybe they were expecting it was like Katawa Shoujo, a frank discussion of psychological injuries instead of physiological ones? Of course physical infirmities of course also influence the mental state, and it is common for people with permanent injuries to feel a sense of alienation and depression as well.

/Ours was not a discussion, it was me, all me, screaming something to you. You… couldn't hear me. You were always looking at the others, they were taking up so much of your time with their irrelevant babble. So I had to make them all… quiet."/ Monika looked down and put her hands over her lap.

"That happened in a different place, a different time. We're in a new body, a whole new life. Put it all aside and start over. There's nothing you've done that needs forgiveness anymore."

/"I'm… not comfortable with that."/

Monika knew how to combat depression. Of course all that good advice helped her now not at all. I nodded. "Hmm. Monika Houdini Von Karma."

She looked up sharply. /"No. I am even somewhat offended by that. That just sounds *wrong*."/

"Monika is not a Japanese name in the first place, mah precious squid girl!"

/"Even wronger,"/ Monika grimaced. /"Natsuki… tried to make that joke work. But it really just separates into もにか (も mo, に ni, か ka) , not Mon-ika (もん & いか)."/

"I'm sorry but I have zero idea what you just said. I can't read that moonspeak."

Monika stared at me for a while, then began to laugh. /"Okay, fine. Consider me properly distracted. Let's go have (me watch you eat) breakfast."/

--​

We emerged to find Micah mopping up the floor. "Oh, good morning! Excuse me, let me just finish this up a bit and I'll whip you up a breakfast right quick!"

I sat at a tablet and rested my chin on my palms. "Don't you have someone else that can do that?"

"Weell… if this place was actually a bit busier. But right now there's no point in hiring someone just for something like this."

"Oh, I see! So this a family inn!"

Micah held her palm up like a claw and declared, "/Micah, for THREE GENERATIONS our family has managed this inn. Do not disrespect the blood and tears shed by your ancestors, it is our honor as innkeepers to keep the name of Silver Moon alive!/ That's what my father used to say."

Then she sighed and moved that palm up to rub against the side of her head. "And now he says /'Micah, all that is necessary for that is just to keep the inn open.'/ So he just lazes around and plays drinking games with his old adventurer buddies. He married into Mom's family, after all – she was the one who knew how to manage an inn. Dad's a right good cook when he can be bothered though. I'm better."

"Was? Past tense?"

"Mmm. Well I'm sorry, honored guest, but that's not something I want to talk about, you know?"

I nodded. "That's fair. So, do I get any options for breakfast?"

"How do you feel about sausage and eggs and a fresh almond roll?"

"That would be great, thank you."

After she left, I thought about how if we hadn't been given such a windfall of money in our first few hours in this new world, I probably would have been happy to work at a place just for food and board. I dare say I was a fairly good cook as well.

I wondered if that would open up the "Micah Route"?

/"Ooh, so you like that sort of woman too, huh?"/ Monika murmured. /"Well at least she's not just a impressionable teenage girl."/

"Monika, I don't think we need to be viewing things through the lens of relationships, for now."

/"Oh. Right."/ Monika looked to take a deep breath, and exhaled. /"If I keep on doing that… that might lead me thinking in circles back into a dark place I just escaped from."/

"Mah waifu is enough for me."

/"You are so lucky this place doesn't understand all the cringiness that comes with people unironically saying that."/ She laughed. /"If I could just believe that, sure."/

"I'm serious. This is a world of magic and mystery. A world of infinite choices. Who knows what's out there?"

Monika just giggled again and decided to disappear from my view.

A completely new world, a new reality, where I was allowed to completely reinvent myself. No more anxiety, no more worrying about conforming to norms. Things... would be just fine, if you worked hard enough at it. I hoped.

--

Breakfast was nice. But it also tasted somewhat weird.

Maybe it was the quality of flour? Or was it the lack of cheaply available cane sugar?

I was beginning to miss fried rice already. I knew it was possible to cook wheat somewhat like rice, they're called wheat berries in Europe, but I had never tried that before. Oats, yes. Wheat as part of whole grain cereals mix for porridge, yes. But not just whole wheat.

Well Micah at least was willing enough to entertain my breakfast requests.

"Good morning, Elze, Linze!" I greeted the girls as they emerged already fully-dressed out into the dining room of the inn.

"Good morning, Playa," Elze replied. "Are you always up this early?"

"Good morning, Mister Zah," Linze replied. I had basically given up on getting her to call me anything different.

"I suppose I'm as excited as you are to become an adventurer," I replied. "Toast?"

Elze looked at the sliced butter-fried sweet roll on my plate with a runny fried egg slathered on top of it and winced. This breakfast I called the Heart Attack Surprise!

Monika just sighed and just gave up on the hopes of ever turning this place into a relaxing food-based isekai as well.

-​-

Chapter end