"Take me with you!"
Zabuza shook his head furiously, fighting with all his might to forget those words as he approached the Observation Deck overlooking Toluca Lake. Everywhere he looked, grey fog blanketed his surroundings, rolling off of the mirror-like lake and obscuring his vision. The atmosphere was gloomy, worsened by the dilapidated, rotten condition of the infrastructure around him.
"Talk about shitty maintenance," Zabuza muttered as he looked over the lake, to the city far away that the map in his right hand denoted as "Paleville". "This place looks even grimier than the slums back in Osaka."
The wandering ex-hitman had heard from various Americans that the town of Silent Hill was a quiet place that soothed the soul and brought peace upon all its visitors. After he had received that quaint travel brochure in his motel mailbox, from an unknown sender that the postman couldn't determine, Zabuza felt as if he was called to go there.
"If this place can't give me peace…then I don't have a damn clue what else will," he thought as he approached the stairs leading downwards, descending into the forest path that led into town. "All I want is to forget the past and let it be…heh, 'water under the bridge'. What an awful phrase that's become to me."
He walked slowly down the steps and onto the beginning of the worn forest path, the fog swirling around him. Zabuza's footsteps echoed around him as he traversed the trail.
It took him what seemed like an hour to reach the wrought-iron gates before him, which barred the entrance to a graveyard. Zabuza glimpsed between the bars and saw rows upon rows of gray stone tablets jutting out of the grass. When he pressed his hand to the gates, they swung open with an irritating screech, the metal rusted to ruin.
He walked in, unshaken by the presence of so many deceased people, only determined to continue his journey into the town. Before he allowed himself to continue walking, Zabuza paused in confusion at the sight of a purple-haired woman kneeling next to one of the graves.
"Hayate…" she whispered wearily as Zabuza quietly approached her.
"Who are you mourning?" he asked her, and the woman jumped up in shock.
"W-what the?! Who-" she stuttered, before turning around and beholding the stern man walking towards her.
"I…" she answered softer, her brown eyes drifting sadly to the grave beside her. "He was my fiancée. Gekkou Hayate. One of the brightest policeman in the history of Kyoto's department. We were slated to wed this coming autumn, when the leaves surrounding Kyoto turn that wondrous scarlet hue…but he was murdered by a violent criminal."
Zabuza did his best to hide his anxiety at the mention of that name. Captain Hayate was known throughout Japan's criminal underworld as a fearsome, cunning man able to hunt down any target using only the most basic of evidence.
"I'm sorry for your loss," he told her sheepishly, hoping that the woman wouldn't catch onto his fear. "I lost somebody precious to me too, not too long ago…"
The somber woman watched as Zabuza shook his head once more, refusing to let his repressed memories resurface. She sighed, and gave him a look of utter pity.
"Denial is so hard to get past, isn't it?" she asked. "You wish and ache for it to be nothing but a nightmare that you'll soon wake up from…but this horror is our everyday reality now."
"Right. I don't want to dwell on it for even one second, much less talk about it. And what's your name, by the way?"
"Oh, forgive me," she said, straightening up. "My name is Uzuki Yugao. I, too, was a police officer like my fiancée, in the same department as him, though I chose to resign after his untimely death. The depression prevented me from carrying out my work properly. And you?"
"Momochi Zabuza."
"Momochi…Zabuza…"
Yugao's brow furrowed bitterly, and she coldly asked him, "The lone criminal, Momochi Zabuza?"
Zabuza shuddered involuntarily at the icy contempt in her voice, and she told him, "I didn't expect to cross paths with a renegade like yourself, especially in a place like this."
"I'm no longer-" he started to say, before she cut him off with an impatient wave of her hand.
"I get it. You've left that in the past, just like I'll never be a policewoman ever again. I have no right to apprehend you, and honestly, I don't have any real desire either. After all, it looks like we're both stuck in the same boat, and here for the same reason."
Zabuza couldn't help but let out a tense breath of relief, after half-expecting her to violently attack him. Yugao rolled her eyes and turned back to the grave, frowning in desolation.
He took a closer look, and gawked in confusion at the sight of Hayate's name on the stone.
Yugao caught his glance, and said to him, "I was shocked too, when I first stumbled upon this place. Hayate was buried with full honors back in Kyoto, and as far as I knew, he never came to Silent Hill. So why, then, does this grave say otherwise? And why, for that matter, do so many of these graves have Japanese names?"
She waved her hand around them, and when Zabuza looked at the surrounding graves, he saw that she was right. All of the graves he could see were decorated with Japanese female names, an oddity that was unexpected in the small American town.
"A logical explanation is that Silent Hill has a large Japanese populace, but…," Yugao bit her lip. "I don't see that being the case. I've done my research before coming here, and I found no evidence that any Japanese community exists in the area. So what gives?"
Zabuza nodded absentmindedly, but froze up in alarm when he read the name on the gravestone to the right of Hayate's.
Yuki Haku
"Haku…" he whispered, the porcelain, beaming face of his angel flashing through his mind abruptly.
"Was she…?" Yugao hesitantly asked, and Zabuza sadly shook his head.
"He…he was…"
"Ah. I understand. It must've been tough, being with a guy in a hush-hush culture like ours."
"You…have no idea."
The two of them stood together silently, gazing down at the gravestones bearing their lovers' names, fighting back tears as distant memories ached to be remembered.
"Forgive me for asking, but what brought you here?" Zabuza quietly asked her, his weary eyes not budging from Haku's name.
"Peace, like you must be seeking, and…answers."
"Answers?"
Yugao turned to him, and when he looked into her brown eyes, Zabuza flinched at the raw malice suddenly present.
"I want answers as to who directed that bastard to kill my man!"
"What do you mean?"
"Our department desperately researched the killer, a man codenamed 'Baki', and determined that while the monster was notoriously known for being a violent murderer, he was lacking overall in intelligence. It's improbable that he hunted down Hayate on his own. There had to be somebody else working in the shadows, with the knowledge of who Hayate was, who directed Baki to accurately hunt my fiancée down and kill him!"
"Baki…that savage mongrel? I never thought he'd have the balls to go after a police officer...somebody must've paid him a large sum to get him to hunt down her fiancée. "
From the few short conversations Zabuza had shared with his fellow criminal before leaving him and all his other vicious comrades behind in Japan, he had learned that Baki was infamously known as a berserker who relished in causing his victims as much pain as humanly possible before finally silencing them. Zabuza still had nasty memories of Baki gloating over his murder methods as they sipped at cheap bottles of sake in the tunnels beneath Osaka.
"Who do you think it could've been?" he asked her, noting how her previously somber features were fully contorted with fury.
"A government official, no doubt. While I'm not typically one to obsess over conspiracy theories, it could only have been somebody with working knowledge of Hayate's authority, along with the high-key resources needed to track him down to his mere nighttime habits."
Zabuza grimaced at the accuracy of her theory, and muttered to her, "It makes unfortunate sense, even to me. None of the other criminals I knew during my own times as a renegade had the mental capacity to know how to hunt a highly intelligent target like your man was."
"Exactly. And I'm certain that by coming here, to a quiet place known to the locals as a hub for exposing hidden secrets, I'll learn who that bastard is, so I can find him and bring him to justice!"
"By 'justice', she likely means 'violent slaughter'. Well, not like I can blame her."
Yugao took a deep, long breath to recompose herself, and asked him, "But what are you looking for here, Zabuza? Besides, of course, peace over his passing?"
He looked to the corner of the enclosure, where the path continued at the opposite side of the graveyard, and told her, "Maybe it's an escape from my pain that I'm seeking here. Maybe it's something else. But I won't find out what I'm really looking for until I make myself walk into this strangely quiet town."
Yugao nodded, and said to him, "Be careful going in there, Zabuza. Even for a smaller, out-of-the-way town like this, Silent Hill is far too empty. You're the only other person I've seen since arriving here, and I have a sinking feeling that it'll be the same once you and I walk into the town itself."
"What do you think lies in the depths of this fog?" he asked her, the unnatural chill making them both shiver.
"I'm not sure myself. And I'd rather not imagine."
"Fair enough. It's been nice talking, but I need to get a move on."
She glanced at Hayate's gravestone and said to him, "Go on ahead, then. I need to stay here for a little while and…think about things. Good luck, and whomever…or whatever you find in there…stay safe."
"You too."
They parted ways, and Zabuza soon found himself walking into the east side of Silent Hill's South Vale district, not a single person in sight like Yugao had told him. Just like the Observation Deck far away, the entirety of the town, from the street to the buildings, looked like it was rotting away from disrepair. Scattered about the surrounding streets were various stationary cars, all rusted over and looking utterly unusable. It looked like nobody had taken care of the town in ages. Silent Hill was abandoned, as far as Zabuza could tell.
"Where is everybody?"
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of stifled moaning coming from down the street.
To his left, crouched next to a rundown flower shop, was a weeping figure, their hands clasped tightly in what looked like a praying stance. Zabuza walked forward hesitantly, not sure what they were doing nor who they were, the fog still messing with his vision.
"Hey, you there!" he called out. "Where the hell did everybody go?"
The figure paused, and slowly straightened up, while Zabuza paused in terror at the sight before him.
What from a distance he had mistaken for another human was a grey, scabbed creature looking even more rotten than the town itself. Where its eyes should've been were only empty sockets, with twin black streams running down each hole, as if it was weeping. Its mouth was clenched in a disturbing grimace, filled with ruined teeth that showed extreme decay. Greasy, unkempt black hair tumbled down its shoulders and in front of its face, giving it the look of a classical Japanese onryou vengeful spirit.
Zabuza stood paralyzed with fear as he watched it hobble towards him, moaning and groaning with each step. In the distance, a shadowy silhouette came bounding towards him, rapidly closing the distance.
"Help me out over here!" Zabuza shouted desperately, and the creature before him, still clasping its hands in that prayerful manner, froze up in its own terror as the fog revealed what the newcomer really was.
Towering over Zabuza and the whimpering creature was a demonic looking policeman, covered in scarlet, scaly skin and snarling with a mouth of razor-sharp fangs. Violent red eyes bored into Zabuza's face, and even the ex-criminal once called a "demon" by other convicts knew that he was likely staring at the real thing.
"What the fuck is going on?!"
Zabuza slowly backed away, and to his shock, he watched the cowering creature break its praying grasp and shoo at him desperately. The madness of the situation before him almost stopped him from realizing that the thing was telling him to flee.
Without further ado, Zabuza turned and bolted down Sanders Street, terrified at the inhuman presences appearing around him. Like insects crawling out of rotten wood, more and more of the whimpering creatures and hideous demon cops appeared everywhere Zabuza looked, emerging from every building and corner of the dilapidated town.
"This is insane!" he gasped as he fled, unsure of where to go within the town, and aching more than anything else for the comfort of Haku's gentle love.
