Doki Doki: My Life With Monika

Chapter 7: Nathan Does Some Digging

The rest of the week was fairly uneventful. No more ink synths showed up. Monika kept making advances towards me, and I continually rejected them. I was hoping it would dissuade her from believing she and I were "meant to be", but I guess I was only fooling myself. Then on Saturday, while Monika was making lunch and I was doing some homework, there was a knock on my door. Monika looked at me worriedly, and I knew immediately what she was nervous about: Could whoever's at the door be more synths? I crept up to the door, put a hand on the baseball bat I'd set there, just in case, and stared out the peephole. Thankfully, it was just Nathan. I opened the door and let him in.

"Nathan, what's going on?" I asked him curiously. "You haven't dropped by to visit in a-" Nathan cut me off right there.

"Abe, I don't want to sound crazy, but several things have happened to me since last Sunday that I need to talk to you about." A quick note: Whenever Nathan says he doesn't want to sound crazy, he usually then tells me something that sounds crazy. But since I just 3D printed a living, breathing girl, I figured that whatever he had to say couldn't be any less ridiculous.

"Okay, what's up?" I asked him. He looked into my house. He saw Monika at the top of the stairs, who was busy humming some little ditty as she washed the dishes from lunch. He pointed at her.

"Okay, first of all, I know that's Monika from Doki Doki Literature Club." I was too stunned to react.

"How did-"

"Come on, Abe, she looks JUST LIKE her. That game isn't so old, it's still got a large fan base. Although I am a bit surprised to see her alive and breathing."

"Well Nathan, if I told you why she is this way, you wouldn't believe me." Nathan nodded.

"I'm sure of that. Second, it turns out Craig is running for mayor in Post Falls."

"I know, I say one of his pep rallies at the mall." Before Nathan could continue, Monika appeared at the top of the stairs."

"Abe, who is this?" she asked me, a note of concern in her voice. "Can he be trusted?" I nodded.

"And that brings me to the third order of business: I go to the police station to see if anyone turned in my wallet, and I find out you've been attacked by two guys with ink for blood?!"

"Well, really they were more like robots," I mumbled.

"Whatever. But here's the thing: I think Craig and the ink men might be connected." I looked at Nathan in surprise. I was lost for words. Thankfully, Monika asked what I was going to for me.

"How do you figure?"

"Well, I still have his page on instagram, and one of his posts was about his favorite video games, and do you know what his #1 was?" I shook my head.

"Bendy and the Ink Machine!"

"Nathan, that doesn't mean anything."

"I thought you'd say that, which is why I'm also telling you this: The place he's set up his office used to be a warehouse they stored endoskeletons for the mascots at Chuck E. Cheese."

"Okay, you've convinced me." I paused for a second. "How did you find all this out."

"I've been doing some investigating," he told me. "My results are still inconclusive, but I have feeling the two thugs who broke into your house a couple days ago weren't one of a kind. I'm going to do some more investigating."

"We can't ask you to do that for us, Nathan," Monika said. Nathan shrugged.

"I'm not. I just want to get to the bottom of this." Then he turned and ran off down the street. I turned to Monika.

"Excitable, isn't he?"

"Abe-y, I don't feel super safe," she told me. "And I don't want your friend risking your neck for us."

"Don't worry, Monika. Nathan won't do anything to brash. He'll be just fine." More inaccurate words have never been spoken.