It was dark in the underground cellar beneath the Sonozaki estate. The type of activity which occurred down there were not the kind which one carried out in the light of day. The room was dominated by a large wooden crucifix, to which Furude Rika was currently strapped. Unable to turn her head, she had an excellent view of the wide variety of torture instruments which adorned the cellar walls: horrific devices born from the darkest creative impulses of the human mind, a thousand unique ways to inflict pain and mutilation on a helpless victim. The ancestral inhabitants of Hinamizawa had turned torture into a public spectacle, and had lovingly crafted a broad array of tools with which to practice their art. But even though the dark history of the tools was clearly spelled out in the bloodstains on their metal teeth and blades, such that even a child of her age could not mistake their brutal purpose, Rika was strangely calm as she watched Sonozaki Shion sort through them.
"Do you think you're going to be okay?" Rika suddenly asked. "This is going to hurt you as much as it will hurt me."
"Don't fool yourself," Shion said, testing the point of one exceptionally wicked serrated blade with her fingertip. "I'm going to enjoy this. With your death, Satoshi will finally be avenged... but only after you've suffered his pain a thousand time over."
"Oh, I'd forgotten. Yes, I suppose you have gone through worse in your own time." Rika continued.
"Are you talking about my Distinction?" Shion asked, turning to face her victim. "The torture I went through so you would spare Satoshi from Oyashiro-sama's curse... the torture after which you killed him anyway? Oh, believe me, that pain was nothing compared to what you're going to experience."
"It must have been horrible, being cotton-drifted by your own daughter. But if you were able to endure that, then I will endure this. I think I'll try to avoid this particular dead-end in the Labyrinth from now on, however... for both of our sakes." Rika said.
It finally dawned on Shion that Rika was not actually addressing her with her comments, instead seeming to speak directly to the empty air of the torture chamber.
"Talking to yourself?" Shion spat. "I'd save your breath, if I were you... you're going to be needing it for screaming soon enough."
She walked up to Rika holding the serrated knife and jabbed it into the bound girl's palm. Lightly, the first time; just enough to cause a drop of blood to well up from the punctured skin. And now Rika focused her eyes on Shion's face and spoke to her directly.
"I will forgive you, Sonozaki Shion." Rika said solemnly, her voice distinctly un-childlike. "This is a terrible sin, but I know that it is not your fault... that you are a good person at heart. And someday I will find a Hinamizawa where you and Satoshi are able to live happily, along with everyone else."
Shion's face went briefly blank in shock at Rika's earnest tone, then twisted into a hideous mask of rage.
"How dare you speak Satoshi's name after what you did to him! Go join Satoko in hell!" Shion screamed.
She turned her knife on Rika again, and this time she did not hold back.
Rika jerked awake, her nightgown soaked through with cold sweat. Though her body was no longer racked with agony, the piercing fire of Shion's knife still lingered in her mind, and it took her a moment to become aware of her surroundings. She was in her home, lying on her futon. The sun was just beginning to rise and send faint beams of light through the window, illuminating the sleeping form of Houjou Satoko on the futon beside her.
As Rika calmed down, the transparent form of another young girl materialized in the room. Hanyuu was kneeling at the foot of her futon, tears streaming from her eyes, horned head hung in sorrow.
"I'm sorry, Rika." Hanyuu said. "That world was just another dead end. I thought for sure a miracle would have occurred by now, but it's only been tragedy after tragedy..."
"It's okay, Hanyuu." Rika said gently.
Rika patted herself on the back of the head. She could not touch Hanyuu directly, but both of their senses were linked, and Hanyuu would feel the comforting gesture.
"They wouldn't be called miracles if they happened often." Rika reassured Hanyuu. "I'm sure that if we keep searching, we'll eventually find a way out of this Labyrinth of tragedy."
Satoko stirred, roused by the sound of Rika's voice, and Rika instant slipped into her mask of childishness. It was a facade with which she was well practiced, an illusion of the innocence that she had long ago lost through her repeated deaths, designed to prevent any of her friends from realizing that she was no longer the sweet child they knew her as. Rika had gotten quite good at it over the years. It wasn't always enough to fool her mother, but she could at least prevent her friends from noticing the change.
"Mii! Wake up, sleepyhead!" Rika said to Satoko, lightly shaking her friend.
"Hmm? Morning?" Satoko mumbled.
"You've got to get up and make me breakfast. I don't think I could get through the day without the taste of your cooking to start me off." Rika said.
"Alright, alright, I'm getting up." Satoko said, climbing out of her futon. "Breakfast will be ready in a few minutes, okay?"
"Nipa~!" Rika said, then added "Don't forget to take your vitamin shot!" as Satoko left te room.
As soon as Satoko was out of earshot, the bright mask of enthusiasm fell off Rika's face and she checked the calender above her bed.
"September of 1982." she told Hanyuu. "In this world, Satoshi has already disappeared, and Satoko has been living with me for several months. The loops are getting shorter."
Hanyuu blushed and hung her head.
"I'm sorry, Rika, but when you died the first time, I only expected to have to do this once," Hanyuu explained. "We've been searching for a happy world so long that my powers are starting to weaken. I'm not sure I'll be able to keep going back even this far anymore."
"I didn't realize this was taking a toll on you." Rika said.
"I can't cause miracles. I can't affect the world in any way. And now I'm losing my ability to do even this. I really am just a powerless god." Hanyuu said sadly.
She looked up at Rika.
"I think, though... if this world also turns out to be a dead end... then for the next world, I could probably go back enough for you to see your parents one more time... I could still do that much for you, at least..." Hanyuu said.
"It's okay, Hanyuu. Save your strength." Rika told her. "Seeing my parents, and knowing that there's nothing I can do to save them, knowing that I'll have to watch them die again... It's too painful for me to keep going through that. And I know it hurts my mother to see me like this, to see how the tragedies have changed me. I don't want to keep hurting her. And so... I have to move on. I have to accept their deaths, and continue to live on without them. That is the path that Fate has decided for me."
Seeing that Hanyuu was about to start crying again, Rika wrapped her arms around her friend's intangible form, a spiritual hug.
"Don't despair, Hanyuu. Someday we'll find our Perfect World." she said.
"Breakfast is ready!" Satoko called from the kitchen.
Rika immediately wiped the moisture from the corners of her eyes and settled her face back into the familiar mask of happiness, displaying all the outward appearances of a cheer and jubilance she hadn't truly felt for a very long time.
"Coming!" she called.
As she ate, Rika mentally ran over the events that would occur on this day. She'd been trapped in this labyrinth of tragedy long enough to memorize the layout of its paths. Today, she and Satoko would head up to the school early so that Satoko could set a trap for Chie-sensei. She would place one of the chalkboard erasers on top of the door so it would fall on Chie's head when she opened the door, and also pour ink on the seat of Chie's chair. The outcome of the traps actually varied a bit: there was a fifty percent chance that Chie would avoid the eraser but sit in the ink, and a fifty percent chance that Chie would be hit by the eraser but spot the ink. The labyrinth sometimes had small forks like this, tiny variations in events based on random chance; but even in such randomness, there was order. Chie would always fall for one trap or the other: never both, and never neither. It was like rolling a die: the outcome might be random in the sense that one could not always predict what it would be; but at the same time, one could always be certain that it would be a number between one and six. So too was it with the labyrinth. The path she took might vary, but the paths themselves were set in stone.
Following the class, Mion would lead the club in a game of Old Geezer. This occurred with such constancy that Rika had even memorized the order in which the cards would be dealt out. She could use this knowledge to win the game herself; if she did not, then Mion would be victorious. The punishment game would be all the losers making boxed lunches to bring to the winner the next day. Satoko would mess hers up by mixing up broccoli and cauliflower unless Rika intervened and helped her, but Mion would eat it cheerfully regardless: this was an insignificant branch in the labyrinth, one that would lead to the same outcome no matter which path she took. This evening would be cloudy, but it would not rain. She and Satoko would watch television before going to bed; the major news would be about Yasuhiro Nakasone becoming Prime Minister, but Satoko would become bored and demand that Rika change the channel if she watched that for more than twenty minutes. There were several other programs that they could watch together; Rika had memorized the episodes. The broadcasting schedule never varied in the slightest. Some things, such as Nakasone's election, were predetermined events; they would occur in all worlds, no matter what number was rolled by the dice of Fate. Rika hated predetermined events. Their very existence raised the possibility that her own inevitable death might be one as well: impossible to avoid, doomed to recur in every last world she and Hanyuu journeyed to, no matter how many thousands of years they searched.
Having finished breakfast and dressed, the girls prepared to head to school.
"Hey, Rika," Satoko said as Rika opened the front door, "You forgot your umbrella."
"I won't need it." Rika assured her. "It's not going to rain today."
"The weatherman said it would rain." Satoko told her. "What makes you so sure it won't?"
"It won't because it won't." Rika said; then, with regret, "This has already been decided."
Satoko shrugged and stuffed her own umbrella into her backpack, then followed Rika out the door. The girls began the walk to school, Rika holding Satoko's hand with one of her own and maintaining the best semblance of grasping Hanyuu's incorporeal hand as she could with the other.
Once at the classroom, Satoko quickly set about arranging her traps. All of the other students arrived before she was complete; given Satoko's propensity for setting snares, they had long since learned that it was best to arrive before the teacher if they didn't want to get caught in the crossfire. The students freely chatted amongst themselves as Satako emptied a bottle of ink on the seat of Chie's chair and wedged a chalk eraser at the top of the door, unconcerned by their classmate's behavior. Rika knew from her long journey through the labyrinth that Satoko's behavior was a desperate cry for attention, a yearning to be acknowledged born from the shunning the Houjou family had received in the wake of the Dam War, but everyone else dismissed it as childish precociousness. This was something she intended to correct, once she reached the Perfect World, but it was a relatively minor issue compared to the other trials contained with the Eternal June.
An expectant silence fell over the class as Chie's footsteps became audible moving down the hallway towards the classroom. The students watched eagerly as the door slid open, dislodging the erased wedged above; it fell from the air amidst a cascade of chalk dust...
...Into Chie's outstretched hand.
"Still setting traps, I see." Chie said, returning the eraser to its proper place at the base of the blackboard. "But I've wised up to your tricks. You're going to have to come up with some new ones if you hope to catch me off guard."
Chie sat down at her desk, then let out a yelp and jumped out of her chair as she felt the ink seeping through her clothes. The class immediately burst out into laughter as Chie figured out the prank.
"The same as always. The same predetermined path." Rika muttered under her breath.
Hanyuu hung her head and said nothing.
Rika went through the motions of learning in class. Chie assigned the same problems as always, which Rika could answer from memory without even having to solve; she assisted Satoko, Rena, and Mion in their assignments instead. Any questions about how she was able to so easily solve problems several grade levels above her own were all too easily deflected with a sweetly-intoned "I just happen to be good at this sort of thing". Follow it up with a "Mii" or a "Nipa~", and everyone would laugh and forget all about it. It worried Rika, sometimes, how easy it was for her to pass as normal. She wasn't the Rika that the people of "this Hinamizawa" knew; she had matured immeasurably over the course of her looping journey through the Labyrinth. And yet, despite that, hardly anyone noticed the change. Only her mother, who was tormented by anxiety over the strange changes suddenly undergoing her young daughter; and Rika was unable to comfort her or ease her worry. She had tried many, many times to avert her mother's death; perhaps sometimes even harder than she worked to prevent her own, because she knew that dying would return her to the beginning of the labyrinth and give her another chance at saving her mother. But no matter how much she tried, no matter how much she struggled, it seemed that her mother's death was a predetermined event. Every single path she took through the labyrinth included it, no matter how direct or circuitous her attempts to change things. And so she had come to the decision that she had to accept it. Every child had to separate from their parents eventually, and Rika was already mentally older than her mother. She needed to let go. For the final loop, she had done her very best to act completely normal all the time, giving no indication that she was anything but a cheerful child. On the night of the Cotton Drifting Festival, she had kissed her mother and cheek and told her that she'd see her after the ceremony, knowing that she would be dead by then. Rika cried a lot that night, cried far more than a woman of her age should; it was the first time in years that her expression of grief was not part of a facade of childhood, but rather a window into her soul. Even though she was mentally an old woman herself, she could not help but feel like a child who had lost her mother. The next day, Rika had instructed Hanyuu that any subsequent loops should start on this day: no sooner. Her parents would be permanently behind her.
Soon enough, the class ended and the club game began. Mion declared the game and the penalty; Rika feigned enthusiasm and took her seat beside Satoko as Mion passed out the cards. Rika knew without having to look what cards she had been dealt, and barely glanced at them to confirm her memory. They were indeed the same cards that had been ingrained into her memory over countless repetitions: the course of the labyrinth held strong.
Rika played through the game rather heartlessly. It was hard for her to enjoy a predetermined event. She could have easily won, but there was really no point to it; past experience told her that events would play out the same way regardless. She instead let Mion take the game.
It did not escape Hanyuu's attention that Rika was playing listlessly. She fidgeted uncomfortably throughout the game, as though she wished to say something but was too nervous. Finally, as the game was coming to a close, she spoke up.
"Rika..." Hanyuu said hesitantly. "I know it's been really hard on you, having to live through these days over and over again, having to suffer tragedy time after time... And so... if it's too painful... I could let you die permanently, and not bring you back."
Hanyuu looked at the floor and bit her lip.
"It would be really sad having to live without you. You're the first friend I've had in a long time, and I truly wish we could have a happy future. But I won't force you to keep going through this, if you don't want to. That would be selfish. I only want you to be happy. And if you wish to escape this labyrinth even at the cost of death... then I will grant your wish."
For several moments, Rika said nothing. Finally, she replied, whispering under her breath and holding her cards in front of her mouth so her friends wouldn't notice:
"Don't despair, Hanyuu. Don't ever despair." Rika said. "Somewhere out there, the Perfect World is waiting for us. And when we find it, we will find it together. A happy life, with you by side: that is my future, and I will settle for nothing less. No matter how many times I must walk this labyrinth of tragedy, no matter how many deaths I must suffer through. When I have lived a long and happily life, then you can let me die a final death. But until then, you must keep bringing me back as many times as it takes for us to reach our Perfect World."
Hanyuu was noticeably relieved by Rika's response. She had been afraid the Rika might actually accept, might want to die rather continue to face the tortures lying in wait in the labyrinth: the deaths of her parents, the insanity of a club member, and being either tortured to death under the Sonozaki estate or else eviscerated alive at the Shrine of Oyashiro-sama. In truth, Rika did at times lose hope. Sometimes she didn't even bother trying to escape the night of her death, getting drunk on expensive Bernkastel-vintage wine as the heavy footsteps came up her stairs. She knew she couldn't keep it up forever; though her body remained as young as ever, her mind was in danger of breaking entirely. But whenever she really considered it, whenever she was actually ready to ask Hanyuu not to bring her back, she thought about what that would do to Hanyuu.
Hanyuu was a goddess, older by far than even Rika... but she was still also, in many important ways, just a young girl. She had spent thousands of years as an intangible ghost: unable to talk to people, unable to interact with them; only able to watch powerlessly. She never got a chance to emotionally mature. Rika was the first person in a long time who was able to see Hanyuu; to befriend her, play with her, love her. If Rika died now, Hanyuu would be left all alone in the world again. There was a distinct possibly that she might never again to encounter another person capable of interacting with her; that she would be doomed to spent the rest of eternity as nothing more than an unnoticed ghost.
Rika was determined: she would continue for Hanyuu's sake. She had nearly given up the will to fight in the face of her repeated failures and the fresh new horrors that lay down each new unexplored path of the labyrinth; but because of Hanyuu, she would fight on. She would walk the corridors of the labyrinth for a million years, if necessary, and die in agony under the fury of Shion's knives as many times as took; but she and Hanyuu would always be together.
With Mion's victory, the club meeting came to a close. Mion put away the cards, and the group headed outside to walk home. They had just left the school when the clouds above split open and began pouring rain. The other club members quickly pulled out umbrellas, but Rika was left standing dumbstruck in the downpour.
"Geez, Rika, I told you it was going to rain today." Satoko scolded her. "You should've brought an umbrella."
Rika burst out laughing. She laughed, despite the cold rain lashing at her frail form, despite the bewilderment of her friends, despite Hanyuu's obvious consternation.
There were still paths in the labyrinth which had not been explored. Her fate was not set in stone. And for the first time in years, Rika felt confident that if she continued to roll the dice of Fate, then eventually they would come up with the number of a miracle.