#notebook kid

The twelve year old child sat at the base of Mount Ebott, adjusting their glasses after taking a sip from their water bottle. It was a crisp, beautiful Spring day, perfect for a barbeque or playing frisbee, but they were alone.

With a sinking feeling in their gut, the preteen checked their watch. Their friend was very late and she hadn’t returned any of their messages. They were beginning to fear something bad had happened.

Not an accident, but something far worse.

The child and their friend had been close since Kindergarten. As they grew, they bonded over searching for cryptids and reading local conspiracy theories, but something had been off ever since the latest school year began. Their friend had become fashionable and popular and… distant. The bespectacled child had begun to suspect that somehow, without mentioning it, their best friend decided they weren’t best friends anymore.

Unwilling to give up so easily, the unpopular child had invited their trendy friend to sleep overs, movies, lunches, camping, and all sorts of numerous activities, all of which she was too busy to attend. Until now. Much to their amazement, she finally agreed to come along on a very special adventure: a monster researching expedition up the dangerous and mysterious Mount Ebott. Their perseverance had finally paid off.

“I’ll meet you there,” she had said, “But keep it a secret, so no one will try to stop us.”

There was something so magical about the way she said “secret.” It had been so long since the two had conspired with each other. A week of planning over text messages had led to what should have been an enjoyable hike, but instead they were here, waiting alone for over an hour.

The child couldn’t take it any longer. With dwindling faith, they finally checked the one place they were afraid to look: social media. A few swipes on their device confirmed their fears: their friend was out shopping: laughing and smiling with her new, better, replacement friends.

Another hour passed before the child finally stood. With practiced care, they wiped the teardrops off their glasses before taking a deep, shuddering breath. Fine then. They would carry on without her. After all, the mountain path was here and with it, a hundred mysteries to unveil.

When they returned with the next world-changing discovery, she would regret abandoning them. Perhaps it would even hurt her as much as she hurt them.

perseverance: backstory // end

Since their soul is purple, we kept up with the trend and gave them purple based eyes and hair color. Clothes were still wip, but I remember we were considering giving them a quirky, independent sort of style. 

Chara painstakingly cleans up the inside of the house, leaving the bespectacled human in the front yard for Muffet’s couriers to pick up. While curious, Chara closes the curtains, worried that seeing too much of her process would only give her another reason to silence them. With the purple soul safely contained and the floors mopped clean, Chara moves on to Asriel’s bedroom. 

Fortunately, the only mess here is the human’s belongings and the torn notebook paper scattered about. With a sigh, Chara stoops down to start collecting the pages. Sketches of local plant life, notes about alleged cryptid sightings, and journal entries of human’s thoughts. All trash. 

Chara notices a torn page that settled on Asriel’s bed: it has a garish heading in large, looping letters with little flowers doodled around it: “February 6, 2056 !!” it reads, and under it, “My birthday!”

Chara pauses, and reads it again.

2056? That can’t be right.

They pick up the remains of the notebook and begin leafing through the other pages. All are dated with the same year, the most recent being March 21, 2056.

Chara sinks down onto Asriel’s bed, mind racing to make sense of the date. Did the human travel backward through time? Or perhaps, something had messed up the timeline on the surface, thrusting humans years into the future while the Underground remained stagnant.

No. Chara shakes their head to dismiss the thought. That was backwards. Something had messed up time down here, and that something had to be them. Ever since their brush with death, Chara had continually turned back the clock, ensuring a life free of mistakes, embarrassment, and regret. And while time stepped back within the Underground, it must have continued marching on, untouched, on the surface. Chara never questioned how much time they had lost over the years, but now they were facing the startling truth: nearly 30 years sacrificed to retries and fixes.

Chara feels a pang of guilt, as if they had committed some sort of abomination against the rules of the universe. They push it down. No, they haven’t done anything wrong. Quite the opposite. This is how it has to be--how it should be. With their interference, Chara can collect all the souls and ensure the monsters’ freedom within their own lifetime. They will have to be aggressive with the reloads, but considering they had already compressed 42 surface years into only 13 underground years, collecting three more souls would be easy.

Chara stands, their doubt transformed into curiosity about the surface that awaits them. They set the documents aside and stride into the kitchen, lifting the soul container to eye level.

“What do you say?” they ask, a wry smile on their face, “Should I bring you back for a short interview?”

Chara gave the soul a moment to respond, before nodding in mock agreement, “Ah yes, you are right. It would be a pity to undo all this clean up, wouldn’t it?”

They set the container back down with a sharp laugh, running a hand through their hair, “I suppose I’ll just have to save my questions for the next one.”

interlude: perseverance (bonus) // end

Note: As of October 31, 2021, the order of the chapters has been updated from release order to the original intended order: alternating between past and present.

Interlude: Perseverance (Summary)

It is Summer of 2028 in the Underground. Chara is about to head out on their daily survey of the Ruins when Asriel interrupts them, a matter weighing heavily on his mind. He asks Chara to consider giving fallen humans a chance, since they couldn’t all be as bad as the one who wounded him.

“This old argument again? Really?” Chara sighs and checks their watch. Thankfully, their last save wasn’t that long ago.

“ ‘Old argument’? I don’t remember–”

“Of course you wouldn’t. Now. Let us take it from the top.”

Chara reloads to a point before Asriel had approached them, but this time they are prepared for his confrontation. They begin to argue, and any time it seems like Asriel won’t be easily convinced, they reload and try a different tactic. Chara reloads over and over, until they finally find the right combination of words to make Asriel concede.

Tired but satisfied with their victory, Chara walks to the Ruins, congratulating themself for “sparing” Asriel an unpleasant argument and being such a wonderful partner to him. However, their self-important smile fades when they spy an odd sight: inside the old Dreemurr house, a small pair of boots sit neatly by the front door. Chara is not alone. 

They do a quick and silent search to find a human child in Asriel’s childhood room, asleep in his bed.

Anger flaring, Chara tears the covers off the bed, demanding the invader to get out. The child wakes up apologizing, snatching their glasses off the mattress and fumbling them onto their face. They are a female child, somewhere between grade schooler and teenager, and dressed for travel. Their backpack is sitting on the floor next to the bed, along with their coat. Chara cuts off the apology, one question ringing in their mind. They demand to know how the child made it past the traps, but the child doesn’t seem to hear and instead rambles excuses for being there. Chara’s rage begins to simmer down to annoyance as they collect themself.

“I didn’t mean to intrude or anything. You see, I’m an investigator. Or a researcher? I’m trying to prove the existence of monsters, or I was, but I got lost and fell down and now-- well some awful stuff happened, but now you’re here so--”

“Enough.” Chara interrupts with a scowl. They take a few steps to the floor lamp, switching it on. “Let us try this again.” They regard the child with an icy expression, unable to muster even a fake smile. 

“My name is Chara, the caretaker of these ruins and–” they gesture to the room, “–this dwelling. No one has made it this far without my guidance. So I ask you again. How did you get here.”

The child is quiet for a moment, a still apprehension washing over them. “It took a lot of tries. I failed but… I came back. I came back from the dead.”

Chara’s blood runs cold. “Explain.”

“I can’t. I don’t know how it works or anything, but I wrote it all down,” they crouch and unzip their backpack to retrieve a large, hardcover notebook. They start to open the cover but change their mind, instead hugging it to their chest, as if for comfort. “The first few traps were easy. I flipped switches, and I swam around the room with all the spikes on the floor. But there was one room where I fell. And I… died.”

Chara says nothing, understanding this phenomenon all too well. The child goes on to explain that after dying, they came back at an earlier spot in the Ruins. However, when attempting to cross the pitfall trap a second time, they failed again, and again, each time learning a bit more about the puzzle until they finally solved it through trial and error. 

Dread begins to weigh in Chara’s chest as they try to formulate a plan to override the child’s apparent immortality, but then the child says something odd. They explain that even when they solved the trap, the time loops continued, pulling them back to the same point. Ever tenacious, the child kept resolving the puzzle until the time loops stopped, allowing them to finally find refuge in this house.

Finding it odd the child turned back time against their will, Chara asks them when the last time loop occurred.

“Oh, uh,” the child folds back the notebook, thumbing through the lined pages and checking their small daisy-themed watch, “About... 42 minutes ago? Gosh, it feels so long ago.”

Chara matches the child’s gesture by checking their own watch. Their tense expression relaxes into a relieved smile. “So that is what is going on,” Chara chuckles, shaking their head, “And to think I was worried.”

“‘Worried’? What do you--”

“Human.” Chara interjects, as if they didn’t hear, “Thank you for cooperating. I now see that I am responsible for this confusing turn of events.” Chara draws their knife from beneath the hem of their tunic, eliciting a gasp as the child takes a half-step back into the mattress behind them. 

Chara briefly regards their reflection in the steel before fixing their eyes back on the child. “I will correct this.”

Chara swings the knife down towards the child, but they block the attack with their notebook, torn pages scattering as the force knocks it from their hands. The child runs, scrambling out of the bedroom and towards the front door. They get only three steps down the hall before Chara snatches the back of their jumper, snapping them backward. Trapped, the kid switches from flight to fight.

Pain and adrenaline shoots through the child, bringing with it a ferocity that only panic can inspire.

“Let go! Let go! Let go!” they shriek, each demand louder than the last, their fingers clawing and punching any surface within arm’s reach. Abruptly, Chara releases their collar, and the child stumbles to keep their balance as Chara backs away from them.

The child looks Chara up and down, frantically searching for the weapon. Did they drop it?

“No…” the child’s voice wavers when they see it: the knife buried into their stomach down to the handle. The pain they were biting back rushes through their body, and instinctively the child tears the blade out. They freeze, despair flashing across their face with the realization that they’ve only expedited their death. The child collapses forward onto the floor, bloody knife skittering out of their hand.

Chara’s eyes are wide and vacant. Wordlessly, they bend down to pick up the knife and step past the child to enter the kitchen. They pause to look themself over. The seam of their sleeve is torn, and blood is smeared across the hem. With a bit of annoyance, Chara rolls up both sleeves, and washes their hands, the knife, then their hands again for good measure. They splash cold water on their face, hanging over the sink for a few moments to compose themself. 

After a couple deep breaths, they dry off with a kitchen towel and open a cabinet. Four soul containers sit inside.

Returning with a soul container, Chara is surprised to see the child has dragged themself down the hall, stopping just a few feet from the front door.

“What a mess.” Chara mutters. With their free hand, they pull out their phone and browse to Muffet’s name, “Your perseverance is admirable, human. However. It will not save you.”

The child’s eyes are unfocused, tears obscuring whatever vision they have left. Their voice is little more than a whisper.

“Monster.”

interlude: perseverance // end