This is the Prologue. Enjoy.

11/12/11 – Edited to look and read better.

I walked towards my family, my backpack casually slung over my shoulder. They were going to celebrate my graduation from high school. Finally. Icouldn't have been happier with myself, remembering all the studying and the headaches that I'd gone through then.

Especially with math, which was ridiculously difficult compared to archery or history, practically anything else. I wondered where they'd eat, and what clothes Mom would wear. Probably the dress with the blue trim. The same shade as her eyes, and father's. I flinched a little at this thought, but if you weren't watching carefully, you'd never notice.

There Souta and Mother were, smiling and waving. Mother's face beamed with pride, and Souta's had a sort of boyish giddiness to it, mostly because of the atmosphere. I couldn't blame him, really. He was just a kid. Five years younger than me. He was born that way, anyways. Sometimes I felt a bit like I was ten years older. He tried to help, but he was a kid. In more ways than just being born earlier.

An old soul, Mom had called me sometimes. She rarely did, not anymore. I'd gotten skilled at acting. Among other things.

After the accident, I'd learned a lot of survival stuff, like how to wield a knife properly, what plants you could eat, and just how to start a fire with wood. It was much harder than it seemed to be in the movies, by the way, but I'd finally, finally, figured it out.

And I'd exercised a lot to build up muscle. I was the crazy fitness girl, perfect at everything from math to gym but quiet to my classmates, but I don't mind the title. Much. At any rate, my life was more important than some silly nickname. Especially one that came from my from my naïve classmates.

With a false smile that didn't quite reach my eyes, though I certainly tried, I looked at my family again. I could see that grandfather was practically bursting with excitement and stifled a groan. Another weird relic, by that look. I hoped he hadn't found a way to top the weirdest gift yet, a "kappa's hand". Or so he claimed. It really just amounted to a nice chew toy for Buyo. The fat cat was dead now, though. He'd been chubby to the last.

My attention wandered again as I responded half-heartedly to them, not really paying attention. Mom could see it, sometimes, but this time she didn't mention it. I walked to the station, passed the tickets over, and smiled in all the right places in the conversation, occasionally adding "Wonderful!" or "Great!" or sometimes "Okay." when they paused. I got the gist of it, though.

Souta, for instance, was rambling about how great it was that she was an adult and would be around more, her mother was glowing with quiet pride and worry, and Grandpa was, of course, saying how she was now free to become a shrine maiden. A miko.

Of course, it was ridiculous-sounding, with his fake sutras and silly relics, but I couldn't really see anything else catching my interest. Maybe professional archery, but I could humor grandfather as well. Not as if I had a boyfriend or anything, not for lack of the boys trying at first. I didn't wish for one. And eventually my gloom turned them away.

I watched as the stairs to the house loomed in front of us, with Goshinboku. That tree. I'd spend hours starting at the smooth bark, running my hand along it, looking at the blossoms that blanketed it in spring. I'd heard her mother talking about how… The proposal had happened there, and when the sadness had blanketed me, so much I'd felt stifled, I went there. I was oddly comforted by the tree. It stood there, so strong and steady, in the midst of the rushing, unsteady paths that life took.

It was my personal anchor, moreso than mother or Souta or crazy grandfather, who each had their own bit. Unexplainable, I know, but that's the way it is. Taking calm strides, I made my way to the house, trailing over every detail. The paint, the tiles. It didn't look too different, physically, and it was perfectly serviceable, but I used to resent it emotionally.

It looked just like it had when dad had died. Maybe a new coat of paint here or a photo there, but it was too familiar, too painful a reminder. I'd yell at it in my head, pound my fists on the furniture, cry. But the irrational anger faded away to cold indifference with time. Why did it matter, anyways? He was still dead. Nothing mattered anymore, not enough. I still remembered how he would laugh at my antics, or pick me up and sling me over his shoulder, or read me a story at bedtime. I remembered the warm glow that had encased us when he held me in his lap. I didn't have that anymore.

It hurt, and hurt deeply. My heart had ached, until I'd stopped trying to hold it in and simply cast the damned organ away. There was a void, an echoing emptiness, but it was better than enduring the pain. Much better. Even if mother looked worried sometimes, it was none of her business what I did with my emotions. I'd seal them up in a box and lock it with heavy chains and drop it in the sea if I needed to.

Entering my bedroom, I slumbered, enjoying the quiet, the honest blankness I saw in the mirror, after the false front I'd plastered on at the table. Maybe one day I'd put my heart back inside, after time had dulled the prickling pain that stabbed me to the core. Little did I know just how much further things would swing to the side of insanity before I finally started recovering. All the way to worlds of myth, legend, and general mayhem, in fact.

Weeks afterwards, I waved after Grandpa, Mom, and Souta as they left. They were going to enjoy themselves. Some spot, a place where there was yelling and laughing. I think it was one of the parks in the city, but I don't really remember. A foreboding feeling crept into my system as the day wore on and they didn't return. Grandpa, at least, should be back. He enjoyed letting me take care of the shrine, but he always rushed back to it. I think that the old place was as much a part of him as his arm.

I paced. I read. I practiced my archery, which was best, watching the center of the target and drawing a mental bead, focusing on the straining of the bow and the rush of the wind and the target. Nothing else. But the sky grew dark, the lights from the buildings grew greater, when I finally sucked it up and called the cell number.

Nothing.

I couldn't send a missing persons report until a day had passed, but I still paced and turned on the news. That might help. I listened halfheartedly to the all-too-dark talk of global warming and murders and politics. I twitched. I called the cell again.

There was no answer.

I slammed it down a little harder than necessary and watched the news, focusing on the traces of anger. I'd have words when they got back. I didn't let myself think about them not coming back until the phone rang, and I anxiously grabbed it. A voice. Not Mom's or Souta's or even Grandpa's.

"Hello, is this the Higurashi residence?" A voice asked. Calm and subdued.

"Yes. What do you want?" A feeling of dread enveloped me.

"I'm sorry to say that Aiko, Souta, and Jinko Higurashi have been found dead." Dead. Not a pause. Not hesitant or sorry. Just matter of factly.

"D-dead?" I asked, hoping desperately I'd misheard. I wasn't so lucky.

"Yes. From a shooting. Witnesses said they were attacked by a group of criminals. Someone gave them guns. We're still-"

I didn't speak after that, even though I could hear the other person on the line going on pointlessly, to fill the silence. I was still trying to process it. No. They couldn't be dead. This was all some silly little mistake. No. Not dead. Not dead. I couldn't take it if they were really dead. But eventually, a feeling of tranquility grew in my mind. I knew what I could do, rather than sitting there and taking the constricting, blinding pain. I shut off the phone, not really caring what the other person thought. It didn't matter.

Nothing mattered anymore.

Smoothing my garb, an old age replica of miko clothing that Grandpa got me, I walked to the old, somewhat creepy well-house that the shrine hosted. The Bone-Eater's Well, it was called. Well, the name was all too fitting. It would have another corpse to eat before the night was out. I stood before it, pulling apart the wooden covering. It was erratically plastered with sutras. Some were new, and some were yellowed and fading.

Either way, I supposed, it didn't matter. I was no demon, if they even worked, and it didn't stop me. Staring down into the seemingly bottomless depths, I remembered an old line from Father, when I was too young to comprehend death.

"Heaven, my dear, is where we go after death to be together."

Maybe afterwards I'd see him again. Letting the images of my family swim before my eyes, I closed them and jumped, hoping to hit my head and wake to my family.

'I wish to be whole again.' Was my sole thought and motive for the plunge.

However, unbeknownst to me, a pink light gleamed from my side, and a blue light shimmered in return. Greater forces than I'd ever imagined were at work.