I left Zou to her own in the simulated world; I can only hope she does the right thing after all she went through. I think my words got through her. I'll visit her again after week.

For now, I was in my own room, sitting on my bed with my eyes closed as I was analyzing scraps of data from Taiyo. It wasn't much since I didn't expect Zou to actually… Well, some things never go as planned. And because I only have very few samples, getting useful information about Taiyo became such a pain. I wanted to know where he came from. No human was capable of what he did there. There was a high chance that he wasn't human; in fact, he might be in the same vein as me. The main hypothesis was that he's an AI and the data was already showing lots of evidence but I have to keep looking into it to see where he was from or how he was made. I might only have little for research but with enough time, I can get the information I needed. As long as there is nothing stopping or distracting me from—

A loud knocking on door boomed into existence. Why?

"Hey! Creuset! Open the fucking door!"

I think we all know who that is.

"The door's always open, Luce," I said out loud.

"Oh."

I hear the door open. When I opened my eyes, I say Luce walking in with an annoyed face. Okay, what did I do now?

"Creuset! You didn't tell me you're back!"

"Luce, I'm back."

"Fuck you." Luce then sat beside me then started rubbing her temples. "You said you were going to go get Zou back, right?"

I let out a sigh. "No, I said I'll go see her."

Luce then looked at me straight in the face. "And why the hell would you not bring her back? She's like you! She belongs in this world!"

I stared right back at her. "You do realize I created her and then placed her in the simulated world, right?"

"So?"

"So she spent most of her life in that simulation."

"And so!?"

It was my turn to rub my forehead with my index and thumb. "Would you like it if I pulled you out of your home and force you to live at a different house?"

"No, but that's not the point!"

"What, why?"

"BECAUSE. That world, as you said, is simulated. IT'S ALL FAKE."

Looks like I'll have to keep rubbing my forehead. "Luce, it may be a simulation but it is far different from any other simulations."

"How?"

"That simulation is realistic. Even the people it created are as real as Zou herself. Each person there is capable of coming to this world if I choose to. Zou is among her peers. So when you said that it's all fake, you just insulted Zou's friends and people."

Luce made a confused face. "You're saying that we can basically bring the entire population of AIs from that world into ours if we had enough spare bodies for them to move in?"

"Yes but they're fine being in their own world because it is their home. Same for Zou."

"But Zou already came to ours once! That makes her different!"

"Are you really going to make her pick which world to stay in? Or worse, pick which group of people mattered to her most?"

Luce was about to say something but then stopped. She looked away then stood up, shoving her hands into her pocket. "Shit."

"I rest my case."

"Still, Holly misses her." Luce pulled out her vape mod and started puffing. "Hell, everyone misses her. Yuri, Sayori… I kinda miss her."

"She still has a lot to deal by herself. One day I'll visit her again and see if she's feeling better. Maybe she'll visit when that happens."

"Fine." Luce let out a large amount of vapour. "She better or I'll go her place."

"You know that you can't right?"

"I have you." Luce turned to me and smiled. "You'll come up with something and then I'll teach her a lesson or two about making your friends worried."

Luce may be brash but at least I know her heart's in the right place. Maybe too brash… I went back to analyzing data.

Luce went home after talking about how to get to Zou's world. While it was an interesting topic, I don't think I'll be tackling that for a while. After a few minutes or so, I noticed a disturbing pattern on Taiyo's data. The way he was programmed… It was too familiar. At first, I wasn't sure where I had seen it before and that made me compare it to so many things. Various softwares and programs didn't match which really irritated me because I knew I had seen that way of coding. In a way, the way a program's built or programmed will always have the programmer's style or preference; from the way they end a line or even how they arrange the whole thing. You can say it's like DNA for programmers.

Frustrated, I tossed my back onto the bed behind me. Even I am made of programs and codes. Out of boredom, I looked at my programming and—

That can't be. How can Taiyo have similar, if not same, coding as I do!? I sat upright as I just stared at the codes before my eyes. These codes are similar. Way too similar. It wouldn't be a stretch if I said someone copied and pasted it. Was Taiyo a clone of mine? Who would do such a thing? But there was only one person who had access to me back then.

Mother.

Mackenzie Cadenza.

She basically raised me as her own daughter for over a year but now she's gone missing. Mother assured me that she just went to do something personal… Now I'm worried what that might be. That just brings more question. Why? What was going through Mother's head that she cloned me? Is Taiyo the only clone? If not, how many are out there?

I think the most important question was when did she clone me. It would be problematic if I was cloned when I still the presidency affliction. Taiyo might've been the way he was because of it.

There's too many questions at hand. The only way to answer them is to look for Mother and I don't think I'll be finding her soon.

TO BE CONTINUED?

AFTERWORD

May 21, 2018 was the day it was published and wow, that was last year? It's finally complete! And just the way I wanted it to! I've been wanting to finish this story for so long now and we're now at that point!

Firstly, I want to thank all the readers who stuck until the very end. I know, the updates were erratic and I tried to be consistent. For most part, I think I was but the final arc probably was where I dropped the ball. Sorry about that. I know how hard it is to wait for a new chapter with fanfictions.

How Do You Sayori? came from a silly idea that someone very not like Sayori would take over Sayori's life and would go on from there but I knew I couldn't keep a gag as a story so I went with the current story. It was also intended to be a fanfic full of anime tropes and I think I've used a lot of them but I also think that I didn't use enough. I used Japanese names for all characters in Zou's world.

Zoe Edensworth was supposed to be actually the main character but I changed it to her clone because I didn't believe humans have the ability to transfer minds even in the far future. Okay, maybe in the far FAR future. As for Chihara Zenko A.K.A. Zou, her nickname Zou is the world for elephant in Japanese. Zoe is pronounced 'Zo' then 'e' like eagle which prompts Sawako to just shorten it to Zou. This is also why Sawako wondered if Zoe's parents liked elephants. Chihara is taken from the voice actress Chihara Minori, known for voicing Nagato Yuki from Suzumiya Haruhi series and a great singer as well. Zenko was just added later on since her nickname was Zou, I had to pick a z name. Zou was designed to be the polar opposite of Sayori but would later become her own person.

Tachibana Sawako. Her family name is quite a common name in Japan but I got it from the Kamen Rider series. In there, Tachibana is a recurring name. Sawako is taken from Kimi no Todoke's Sawako. She's supposed to be Sayori's classroom friend if Doki Doki was a fully fleshed out world. Sawako is a real anime fanatic or weeb, if you prefer. She's mainly into Gundam series and idol anime is a close second.

A lot of characters are named after my favorite characters/people such as Kasukabe Tsukasa, where Kasukabe comes from Genshiken's Kasukabe Saki and Tsukasa coming from Kadoya Tsukasa from Kamen Rider Decade. Tezuka Minori, with Tezuka from Tezuka Rin from Katawa Shoujo; Rin is a common anime name. Inoue Hanami; Inoue is also a common Japanese name while Hanami is actually not a name but a Japanese traditional custom of enjoying the transient beauty of flowers. Mr. Godai is from Kamen Rider Kuuga's Godai Yuusuke.

I initially did not plan for this story to be connected with The Awakening of Monika but with how Zou is not actually a human being, Creuset became a convenient way to explain her existence. How Do You Sayori? starts during The Awakening of Monika which sort of makes it an interquel. The Sayori story goes past the Monika story eventually.

I've been wanting to wrap up this story for months now and even thought out the ending early. A little convenient ending for Zou but I think she deserves a break.

I know I wrote TO BE CONTINUED but at this point I think I'm going to take a break from DDLC fanfiction. This means I won't be continuing The Liberation of Libitina but I'm a very fickle person when it comes to writing so maybe I might end up writing something DDLC.

SO! If you reached this part, I really, really thank you from the bottom of my heart. It's been a crazy, anime-fuelled ride and I love every single moment of the story. I hope you felt the same.

This is ZoomFlare, signing out. Happy readings, everyone.