[Wakare]

Gotta keep running.

Survival was all that mattered. That's what I had to keep telling myself as I ran and ran and ran. My arms grew heavy – my right from the tainted bat I had been carrying for who even knows how long; my left from dragging her behind me as we ran. She had cried out for me to slow down, I think. But I didn't. I couldn't. I just had to keep running.

Just when did this all start? It was only minutes ago – no, maybe even a whole hour, maybe two – that everything was perfectly fine. The cicadas were noisy and annoying just as they always were. The sun had begun to set at the same time, just as it always did this unusually warm June. I had just parted ways from Rena to go home after club, and we said our goodbyes. Just as we always did.

"K-Keiichi-kun!"

Her voice shrieked and brought me back to reality. A villager had grabbed her arm and was trying viciously to tear her away from me.

"No you fucking don't!" I growled and swung the bat in my right hand with all my might. It bashed into his skull with a crack, and he stumbled a bit, enough for Rena to break free. "Come on!"

Once again, I grabbed her hand and we ran. He wheezed and staggered after us, I could hear him behind us. We were too fast for him, though, and his dry breathing grew more and more distant.

There has to be somewhere safe around here. There has to be! Shit, I don't know where anything is!

Hinamizawa, for such a small town, was really big when it was the most inconvenient time to be. Goddammit!

"Keiichi-kun, the school!"

She shifted her weight in some direction off to the side, indicating the path towards the school we attended. This time I took her lead, but only briefly. I soon began to recall the route we were taking and quickened my pace. More villagers were gathering around us, so we had to hurry out of there. Moaning, wheezing, shuffling about...what the fuck was going on?!

I swung the bat left and right to knock them away when they grew too close. Even then, they wouldn't stop coming. So we kept running.

As though it were some grace of God Himself, everything had cleared up by the time the school came into view. We decided to take a quick moment to rest. We just did a lot of running, after all. We sat in a small clearing under the moonlight and caught our breaths.

"Are you okay?" I asked after a short while, finally being able to comprehend that in the scuffle earlier, she could have gotten hurt.

"Y-Yeah...I think so..." she replied in a meek and shaky voice. Honestly, I couldn't blame her, after all the hell we just went through to get only a moment's rest. "My shoulder kind of hurts, though..."

"Sorry if I pulled something...I just didn't want you to fall behind." I looked away, kind of ashamed that her injury was my doing.

"N-No, my other one..."

Oh.

That's right.

"Are you still bleeding?" I shifted closer to her to check on her well-being.

"Yeah, but not much anymore. My arm's a little numb, but I'm sure it'll start feeling better once we find some medicine." She examined her wound that had soaked blood into the shoulder of her school uniform. She began to tear up. "I don't understand why Papa...-"

I cupped her hand in mine. "I don't understand why anybody is doing any of this. It's...it's not natural. But we'll figure it out and we'll make it out of this alive. Okay?"

She looked into my eyes and smiled weakly. "You don't have to say those things, Keiichi-kun...I already kno-"

"Please." My hands moved up to cup her plump, girlish cheeks as I pressed my forehead against hers, and closed my eyes to fight back these hot...burning, salty tears. "Please..."

"Keiichi-kun..." I felt her hands hold onto my own. We stayed like that for a few precious seconds before a familiar noise broke the silence. A footstep crushed some grass nearby, followed by a faint wheezing.

"Come on. We can't stay here." I got up onto my feet, pulling her up with me. "Where do we go from here?"

"T-The nurse's room in the school, I think. It should have some medicine. Oh, there should also be a phone in the principal's office we can use to call somebody."

"Okay." I took down the villager with the bat. It was an old lady; I think I've seen her around, maybe talking to my mom, but I wasn't too sure.

Mom...

"Sounds like a plan. Let's go." The two of us hurried over to the school. It was clear and it was quiet. The door was open and a couple of windows were broken, but it was quiet.

As we walked down the dark halls, I had this uneasy feeling that we should have been more careful in our decisions. Maybe we shouldn't have come here at all? My eyes quickly grew adjusted to this new level of darkness, and from what I could see, we were okay. Still, I gripped the bat tightly and told her to stay close to me. She clutched onto my arm and pressed her body against mine. Poor thing. She had been through more than I can ever imagine.

I didn't know what to expect when I got her phone call. Screaming...panicking...God, just what happened?

"Keiichi-kun, the nurse's office is this way," she whispered, nudging me down another hallway. We took our time with these steps, making sure they were soft and light while listening for anything else. So far, so good.

"Here it is."

I looked in the direction of her hushed voice, stepping toward her in the darkness. The two of us entered an empty room with the familiarly strange scent that could only belong to a nurse's office. Our school was tiny – no more than twenty-four students, I believed – and there was only one teacher. This office hadn't been used in a really long time, but there might have been a good chance that the old nurse left behind some antibiotics.

I shut the door behind us after one more quick glance down the hall, just to make sure it was clear. While Rena rummaged around the drawers and cupboards, I stayed by the door to listen. I had to be sure. There was just this...sinking feeling in my gut.

"Did you find anything useful?" I asked, watching her lean up against the counter. She sighed.

"Just some gauze...Other than that, there really isn't much we can use." She shifted to lean her back against the wall across from me. "Are we going to die here, Keiichi-kun...?"

"No way. Not here."

She looked up at me wordlessly. "We are, though. I'd prefer if you didn't lie to me, Keiichi-kun. At the very least, I will..." She began to choke on her words, and I could see her shaking.

"Rena..."

"So, please...don't tell me everything will be okay. I thought Papa...I thought Papa would be okay...it was just a...a scratch..." she hiccuped.

"...Hey." I moved over toward her and cupped her cheek with my hand. My thumb wiped away a tear that ran down her cheek. "It will be okay. We'll get out of here, both of us. We have to, after all we've been through tonight."

"Keiichi-kun...do you know if your parents are okay?"

No. No, I didn't know whether or not Mom or Dad were okay. They were away in the city on some business for Dad's art, so they weren't home. So while it was possible they were able to avoid this whole mess, it was even more possible that where they were was only worse. Much, much worse...

I shivered internally at the thought.

"I'm sure they're fine. I was actually going to give them a call once we were rescued. What about your mom?"

She looked away from me. "...I don't care what happens to that woman."

"You're lying. I can hear it in your voice."

"You don't know anything. Keiichi-kun."

We spent the next hour or so in that room, talking. Opening up to each other and revealing our demons. She and her family moved to Ibaraki when she was little and so her life went on a downward spiral from then on. Her mother had an affair and tried to get her involved; her mother then divorced her father and all but disowned her as her daughter. She took all that guilt, all that rage and hatred, and unleashed it onto the world around her. She hurt people. She hurt herself. And so, she returned to Hinamizawa to appease this "Oyashiro-sama".

I, on the other hand, was not so unfortunate.

I didn't fit in at school. I saw and I understood things differently from everyone else. People don't take things that are different from them very well, nor do they like seeing those differences achieve so much. So they outcast them. They outcast me. I was teased and bullied. I knew I was gifted, somehow, and so I tried to use those gifts; those same gifts made me below everyone else. Nobody was below me. So I hurt those nobodies, in turn. I...began shooting small kids with a model gun. It caused such an uproar and panic, it was...kind of fun, actually. Everything is fun, anyway, until someone loses an eye.

She did.

I felt so...so horrible. What have I done, I thought. I turned myself into the authorities, taking ownership for my childish crime. And so, my dad moved us to Hinamizawa. "Thought you could use a change in scenery," I think he said.

"...I think she went blind in that eye. I don't remember exactly what the doctors and lawyers said. Just how angry and ashamed my parents were."

"Heh. I had no idea you used to be that kind of person, Keiichi-kun." She shifted to move beside me and rested her head upon my shoulder. "But I'm glad you trust me enough to tell me. It really means a lot and I'm sure it was hard for you to open up to anybody."

"Pfft. Not nearly as hard as it was for you, I'm sure." I wrapped my arm around her and pulled her closer.

How much time did she have left?

"We should get going."

"Where would we go?" She looked up at me in the darkness as I let her go and stood up.

"The Irie Clinic. Assuming nothing's happened to it in all this bullshit, Irie-sensei must have some medicine left. If I remember correctly, it's a fair distance away so we should go while it's still clear." I held out my hand, and she took it as support as she stood up, as well.

"Keiichi-kun, you shouldn't push yourself so hard. If your arm is still tired from fighting earlier, we should wait until you're rested up-"

"We don't have TIME for that!" I shouted uncontrollably, punching the nearest wall. She let out a small squeak, scared, I'm sure. After a second or two, I calmed down. "We don't...have time to wait...Every second we spend waiting is a second you..."

Oh, no. The tears were coming back.

I quickly shook them away. "At any rate, we need to leave. Now."

After a moment of silence, she nodded before rummaging through the drawers to grab a scalpel she apparently found earlier. Together, hand in hand, we left the nurse's office.

Back out in the hall, we were both on edge, I'm sure. I gripped the bat tightly and kept her close. The hallway was just as dark and quiet as before, but I couldn't shake the feeling that something was...

...off.

And then we turned the corner leading to the exit.

"Shit!"

I don't know exactly why I shouted that; actually, it was really stupid, looking back on it. All of the villagers standing in the hallway turned their blank faces and agape mouths toward us. When they began shuffling toward us, I grabbed her and ran in the other direction, towards our classroom.

I shut the classroom door behind us, buying us only a few seconds of time while we broke one of the windows so we could escape. We managed to get out of there just as the door broke down – I remember hearing it behind us as we ran.

Several shadows appeared from behind the trees surrounding the school. Shit...SHIT!

"Keiichi-kun!" She cried a few feet away from me, signaling toward the tool shed.

I grabbed her and dashed off to it, knocking down any of those psychopathic pieces of shit in our way. I shut the door behind us and made sure it was locked and blocked while she fumbled around looking for the light switch. Once it was turned on...oh my God.

The faces of people we knew and people we didn't were pressed up against the windows. Their blank eyes, staring off at nothing in particular, made me nervous. Their teeth were gnashing up against the glass – honestly, I'm still surprised the windows didn't break then. We backed away from the windows, the snarls of those outside muffled from the wood and glass between us.

"K-Keiichi-kun, what do we do now...? We've got nowhere to go!" she cried, trembling in her voice.

"H-Hang on, Rena! I'll figure out a way to get us out of here, y-you'll see!" I remember my own voice cracked. My cool demeanor was beginning to break. No...! I had to keep my calm, for both of our sakes!

"..." She suddenly let out a sob and sank to the ground.

"Rena!" I rushed to her side.

"Mii-chan..."

I looked over my shoulder and immediately saw what she meant. Mion...she didn't make it.

"Keiichi-kun, I can't take it anymore! First Papa, now Mii-chan! We can't do this! I can't-Blug-Blaahhhh-!" She began to vomit violently. I wanted so badly to look away from that pathetic sight...but I couldn't bring myself to leave her like that. I was frozen in place, watching her. It was mostly dry heaving, and whatever did come out was...blood.

"...Rena..."

She was able to pause long enough to look at me. And in that moment, I knew we both understood.

"Rena...Rena, no...Please..." Those damn tears came back. This time, I didn't hold back. I no longer had the will to hold anything back. "Please, no...!"

Her injured arm hung limp at her side. She sat herself up a bit, her head rolling to her shoulder. She wheezed heavily...before her dead eyes gazed up into mine. She shifted and I jumped a little...but it was just to hand me the bat.

"Keiichi-kuuun...before...I go..."

Those outside began to pound against the wood and glass, their snarls growing louder. However, it sounded like there were fewer than there were before.

"I just...just want to say..." Her voice was growing weak. I leaned in, straining my ears to listen for even the softest whisper she could muster.

My heart broke.

I choked on my tears briefly, burying my head into her shoulder before she – weakly – pushed me away. I sniffled, grabbing the bat from her and getting back onto my feet. As I looked down at her through these hot, salty tears, I could see her smiling up at me. That smile I had grown to cherish, to look forward to each and every day...That smile I grew to adore and hold dear, twitched slightly.

Out of time.

I gripped the bat tightly and raised it above my head. As her eyes slowly closed, she whispered it again. I shut my eyes, squeezing out any tears I had left, and I screamed as I swung the bat down with all my might. Over...and over...until neither a sound nor a flinch came. I raised the bat one more time, shaking from the tears and anger I had managed to push back into the depths of my heart. With all of those emotions I kept inside...I unleashed them upon the beautiful corpse laying motionless at my feet.

I love you, too.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Hey, guys. It certainly has been a while, hasn't it? I haven't written any Higurashi fics since finishing up Kokorogoroshi-hen, and I really kind of miss the series (especially with Outbreak coming out, I'm sooooo excited!)

As before, I tried to write it as though it were in the style of the original sound novels. I'm...a bit out of practice, to say the least. Mrh.

In case it wasn't obvious, it's an AU where an outbreak does come to Hinamizawa - a zombie outbreak. Keiichi and Rena try to survive the night.

None of the above characters belong to me, I don't intend to make a profit off of them.