pov: there’s something wrong with the visual novel you downloaded…
themes/warnings: yandere, horror, second person pov, x gn!reader — w.c: 2.9k
After what felt like several hours of mindlessly scrolling through an online catalogue for new visual novels to try, one finally caught your attention, although nothing about it was particularly special. The title was plain, had zero plays and comments, and the publisher was nobody you recognised.
It was just simply called, ‘There is something watching me in the dark.’ In addition, the cover in itself was plain and looked like it was put together in paint. The thumbnail and banner on its landing page produced a black background with two simply drawn wide eyes, the title of the VN beneath it, though barely visible with the dark grey text used.
You ended up clicking into it anyway, because what could possibly go wrong?
If you disliked it, at least you could just go back to browsing again, so it wasn’t as if you would be missing out on anything meaningful. Perhaps only time. Though as the page began to load, the entire power for your home, then the street, seemed to go out. You blinked once as you processed it, momentarily stunned as you sat in the dark, listening to the sound of your own breathing. For the time being, you reached for your phone, retreating back to your bed with a sigh, content to wait it out.
When the electricity finally returned—which was maybe a good hour or two later—you felt some relief, because your hands were beginning to cramp and your phone battery was almost completely depleted. One by one, on your street, the lights returned, and you sat yourself up, ready to go back to your computer.
Only to pause when you did so, because a power outage meant that your computer turned itself off, right?
So… why was it on its own, with your monitor displaying what must have been that silly game you considered, on in full screen?
Through your headphones, as well, a creepy little looping track played on repeat, though it didn’t sound like it belonged to any instrument. It sounded like a low hum that was slightly out of tune, repeating itself only after a strained breath was drawn.
As you sat back down at your desk chair, trying to make sense of what you were seeing, you otherwise didn’t see anything too striking in contrast. Just like the uneventful thumbnail and banner, the screen did very little to pull you in. It presented itself as a plain black background, save for those two crudely drawn eyes, and when you tried to escape or exit out of it, nothing happened.
This observation led you to consider the possibility that you might have downloaded something malicious by accident when you had clicked onto that link, maybe a virus that assimilated into your computer before you could get it off. Most of the games that you could play on that website were on that browser, and you hadn’t even gone through the trouble of downloading it, but maybe there was something else at play here.
And though you shouldn’t have, you put on your headphones anyway, guided by sheer curiosity, clicking the play button even if just entertaining the game at all seemed like a bad idea.
The opening was also worse than you expected, somehow, even if you weren’t anticipating anything great. It was painfully ordinary and asked for your name to be input into a text box. Just in case this was a data mining virus, you typed out a fake handle, watching with detached interest as the VN started to tell its story, written in those flat, difficult-to-read words on the screen, with the audacity to be misspelt in several places:
‘Yuo have been experieicing poor sleep lately beacause of somethign watching you as you lay in bed. You jsut coudlnt prove it because it dispeared during the day and had no shape in the night.”
A frown formed on your face as you read through the passage, though on a deeper level, unease started to settle further within you. Maybe it was the music you could apparently not toggle off, or maybe it was the fact that you were playing something that you shouldn’t be.
You carried on regardless, pressing space, prompting the text to vanish and fade into what looked like a poorly drawn out bedroom with uneven lines. Though upon leaning in closer and taking a better look, the room in itself looked almost exactly like yours. It was almost uncanny in accuracy. Through the poorly scribbled lines, it was somehow the specific details that stood out to you, from the bedding being in the exact messy heap you left it in, to the colours of the clothes you had out in a pile, that you had meant to sort from last week’s laundry, in the exact formation. Hell, even the clutter on the nightstand matched exactly what was drawn on the screen.
And as the rest of the VN went on, you found it profoundly dull, in the sense that the main character was a bit too like you, which irritated you to some extent. For the first couple of days in the game, the main character drifted through their life in the same way that you did, from one nightmare rectangle to another, be it their phone, computer or television—anything with a screen—all just to distract themselves and hopefully forget that past their escapisms, there was a life meant to be lived. The main character, however, unlike you, never looked quite relaxed in the novel; their shoulders appeared to be tight, and their entire frame was always on edge. Sometimes, a hint of what the monster could have been was hinted at early on in the game in the way that the protagonist reacted, revealing that there was something watching them, making them often turn sharply to the left, for example, or shuddering whenever they felt something watching them from behind. Oftentimes throughout their day, their eyes would flick over to the dark shadows of their home, as if something was lurking in the depths.
Then, by the third night of the story, something worthy finally started to unfold. The main character entered the bed like usual, eager to escape into sleep, only for the humming to abruptly stop, the screen darkening until the room was barely visible, and plunged into an inky void, before you saw it. Something that had peeled itself away from the wall, moving over to the bed fluidly, elicited a gasp from the half-asleep character.
The text box shook as the protagonist spoke, perhaps to convey anxiety or fear, as they explained that there was a heavy weight on the end of their bed, and now on them. The screen trembled too, before snapping up to reveal a pair of eyes blinking open slowly in the dark, wide and fixed, barely visible at first and then impossible to miss.
Immediately, what got to you was that the art style of the monster did not belong with the rest of the game. It just looked… far too detailed somehow, maybe like one of those creepy, grainy photographs with something lurking in the dark. It kind of reminded you of something you would find in analogue horror media, looking nothing like those two simplistic eyes that you were otherwise expecting. No, these were different, and they had a wet, haunted look to them, staring directly at you. Around them, a shape was only partially visible, but otherwise, you could not make out what the rest of it looked like.
This, however, was more than enough to convince you to click off. You didn’t want to play a horror game. You were on the tags for #yandere and #obsessivelove for certain, and honestly, you shouldn’t have been surprised that yandere horror was even a concept, but you did not want to continue whatever this was.
Quickly, you moved your mouse over to the gear icon, ready to exit, only for it to disappear before you could click on it. Pressing escape on your keyboard also didn’t seem to work. Hitting control-alt-delete also didn’t take you anywhere, and as you slowly grew mad from having to have that thing on your screen, it slowly drifted closer, pressing itself as close as possible.
You blinked as it did, watching as it leaned against the glass, flattening its face until it looked as if it had nowhere else to go. A ragged, heavy breathing sound played, and its eyes seemed to be tracking your every movement.
Then, a voice came, sounding low, soft and barely patient, although somehow weary all the same.
“Are you trying to leave me already?” it asked.
A short scoff of a laugh broke out from you, as you had to give the game that, in which it did a good job at executing horror rather well. You heard of some games that did things like that, like maybe a pause button that did nothing, or saves being corrupted so that your choices were final. Perhaps the initial crudeness of the game was intentional, as it transitioned into real horror, where the yandere monster would try to break the fourth wall. That was incredible programming for certain, but it wasn’t for you.
Though, as you moved your hands around to try to leave again, your name—your actual name—was called out from within the game.
Not the one you entered to pretend, but the real name that you went by.
Then, when it had your attention, it spoke again:
“Are you really trying to leave me so soon?” it repeated itself.
Another laugh escaped you, though this time it was far more nervous. You tried to desperately move the cursor around the game, hoping to find a hidden escape button, but the monster in the game reacted by catching the cursor, forcing it to dissolve into the darkness around it.
Your eyes narrowed at the screen in annoyance, growing more and more frustrated by the mechanics of the VN by the second.
“What the hell kind of game is this…?” you found yourself muttering out loud, your fingers already reaching to force your computer to shut down by force. Sure, it was probably bad for it, but that hardly mattered right now.
“Game?” the voice in the VN spoke as if it had heard you. “This is real to me,” it added, repeating your name.
Something in you went very still, and as soon as you could react, you fumbled with the hardware mute switch on your headset. Then, just in case, you ripped the webcam off your monitor, unplugging it in the process. Maybe this was an invasive virus after all, and it had mapped your room through some invasive technology, which was why certain details threw you off in the beginning. Though you hadn’t given it your name, maybe it could access other things in your computer; that much wasn’t impossible, you thought.
The monster in the game, however, noticed where your fingers were going, and its voice slipped out as more of a warning that time.
“That won’t help you,” it said.
Before you could react, a hand on the screen emerged, revealing the shape of a pointed palm, detailing wisping shadows radiating from around it. Somehow, your monitor shook, and a crack started to form on the screen that looked a little too real to be a part of the game. You hesitated just once before feeling silly, reaching out to confirm that it was a part of the graphics, only to have dread surface when you could feel the split.
Hell, you could even feel its skin, the weight of its palm leaning into your own.
A slow, blissful breath of a contented sigh could be heard as it whispered, “Oh, your flesh is so warm.”
At that, you tore your headset off so quickly that when it landed on the floor, it might have just broken altogether. You didn’t care, though. Your hands were shaking, and worse yet, that thing was still there, waiting behind the screen, watching you more intently than before.
No more—
You forced the computer off, watching as it powered down with relief, only for it to blink back on.
You stood up abruptly then, so harshly that your whole chair tipped over onto the side, watching with mounting disbelief as the eyes blinked beyond the dead monitor, before pulling back, tilting its head just once.
“Are you trying to run from me now?” it asked.
You opened your mouth to reply, but no sound came out, whatever you could have possibly managed, then died down in your throat as a hand branched out and bypassed the crack as if it were an opening, forcing the glass to give way. The monitor continued to split open under the pressure, revealing an arm forcing itself out, then another, followed by broad shoulders pushing through the screen. When its head finally emerged, the overhead light on your ceiling shattered until it was nothing but a broken bulb.
At that, you tore out of your room at lightning speed, running off into the hallway as all of the lights in your home shattered the further you went. You heard the glass fall from behind you, along with what sounded like hurried footsteps, something following after you in the dark.
By the time you had reached the front door, however, desperate to get away from the nightmare you had invited, something soft and organic clamped over your shoulder, gripping firmly around your body, turning you to face whatever had finally caught up.
The breathing that you had only heard in the game before was now coming from above you, strained and rasping, as if it hurt. The thing that shouldn’t have existed at all stood over you, tall and imposing, forcing your gaze to meet with those pale, haunted eyes that were fixing on you with awful clarity.
“Please… don’t run from me again,” it almost begged, its voice softer now, sounding almost pained. “I don’t wish to do anything to you other than to keep you. Won’t you be so kind?”
Once again, you tried to speak, but every little thing you could conjure up was messy.
“I-I don’t e-even know what—” you started, only for something else to slip from you. “I-I didn’t mean to—” you tried again, then once more after clearing your throat. “I just wanted to play a game. I was bored, I’m sorry, but—”
The creature hushed you before you could overwhelm yourself any further, moving a step closer to trap you between its body and the surface of the door. Your hands hovered awkwardly in the air before you tried to push them back, met with something that felt like cloth covering skin, though you couldn’t make sense of what it must have looked like. The dark kept on shifting around it, and it didn’t seem to have a single, cohesive form.
“I just want to know everything about you,” it whispered.
Though as it spoke and tried to soothe you, a ringing noise started to build in your ears, climbing fast and harshly until your own already addled thoughts were barely there. Nausea hit you next, and an ache bloomed at your temples, causing the whole hallway to sway, with the floor no longer feeling level anymore. You could barely keep your eyes open either, though you tried to hold on, if only to confirm the very real shape of its eyes that were still fixed on yours, its lips parting slightly to reveal a row of sharp teeth, though it didn’t seem angry—not even hungry—though when it noticed your fear, its expression darkened.
“You’re not going to leave me, are you?” it asked, the words trembling as it spoke.
You tried to hold on, to reply, but everything around you started to feel like it was slipping.
And it, noticing that, tried to speak again—
“Please, don’t leave me,” it repeated itself, “don’t you dare leave me.”
Something sharper slipped through its voice, perhaps a hint of anger that it tried to keep desperately buried for your sake, but when it noticed the involuntary flinch, it seemed to calm down quickly.
It tried again, its voice lower now.
“I just want to lo—”
However, at this point, you couldn’t hear the rest, because all of the nausea, panic and pain had finally taken its hold of you, forcing your consciousness to dissolve into the very dark it had come from.
And when you woke up next—when it was daylight that filled your home instead of the inescapable night—it was no longer there, and you were back in bed.
Perhaps it was a nightmare that you had after the power outage, after falling asleep on your phone, those crudely drawn eyes imagined as something far worse in the depths of your imagination.
That much could have made sense to you.
But little did you know that just under your bed, where the shadows were still present, it was waiting for you once more, and the next time it met with you—
