ひぐらしのなく頃に礼 - Anah on Ukaran
- Maebara Keiichi -
'"I had set the gold piece down, the wind swayed the other way". Set during Saikoroshi-hen. Rika's POV through her descent into madness. Spoilers for Rei.'
A /N: The fic is a three-shot with one origin; the theme of opposites is also tied with this origin. It fits with Rika's findings in the 'perfect world' of Saikoroshi-hen. And to keep with the theme, I've been writing from the right-side of the page. But it seems FFN doesn't like that. I'm also working on touching up "Memory; Broken Fragments" with an update on the way, forgive me for not updating it for so long.
Also to keep with the usual spirit of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, I've decided to try and be clever in hiding things in this three-shot. It's a challenge set to see who can determine the starting point of this idea; the gauntlet has been thrown. Please read and review.
Chapter 1 - 「Reverse」
F U R U D E ~ R I K A
Rena's tears were getting no nearer. Mion had shot away. Satoko had drifted away. Shion had drifted away. Keiichi wasn't even here.
I had set the gold piece down, the wind swayed the other way.
This place was not the Hinamizawa I knew. The Hinamizawa I had come to despise over the years until the beacon that was Keiichi Maebara shone hope upon my tiny frame. The body that had not grown in a hundred years, perhaps longer. Too much time had passed for me to remember anymore. What this place was… it was a place I cared not for, I wanted my Hinamizawa back. Even if it were stained in the same blood it had been for the many decades and worlds that had passed me by.
This Hinamizawa resembled nothing of those worlds, those places slathered in the blood of innocent victims of what was popularly known as "Oyashiro-sama's Curse", those places with the stench of death in the air. I would give this place up just to return to a dead-end world. A place where my friends knew each other. A place we could live happily until the death of the village would come and wipe our lives from the existence. Hinamizawa in this world was Hinamizawa by name only. Faces passed me that I knew, voices poured into my ears that I had heard for decades. Yet they lacked their true identities. Satoko despised me, Rena and Mion were distant; Satoshi walked through the village in Keiichi's place. I couldn't even find Hanyuu in me anymore.
This world was worse than the dead-end worlds I had been born into, passed through and died at Takano's hands. This was a world where I was completely on my own. My ultimate nightmare. The image in which I would stand between my friends had been whipped clean; I stood alone.
There was no-one here. No Irie, No Takano. No Akasaka. No Shion. No Keiichi. I missed my friends dearly; while I could see their faces and hear their words, I was a simple priestess to them here. A priestess of a sinking village.
How could the Dam Project have been approved? Did Mion's grandmother lose her mind? The story that Rena had told me sent a chill through my body; the very beginning of the cycle which had been repeated in every world I had travelled through had altered. The rest of the events simply collapsed. The junkyard Rena would visit had been annihilated by large excavators in the frame of the dam's construction.
I said nothing aloud, my head wrapped in endless thoughts of this world in comparison to the others. My silence trek towards the Furude Shrine where I would come to meet my mother and father once again. The parents I had been living without for so long would be standing in front of me once again; something I had believed would never happened and moved on beyond the childish dreams of having them return to life. The steps to the Furude Shrine began in front of me, climbing steadily to avoid stumbling while drowning in my sea of memories.
In this world; Takano and Irie had vanished. Without the Hinamizawa Syndrome caused by what the villages believed to be Oyashiro-sama's curse. In the rain of Miyo Takano's past, tears weren't running down her cheeks. The tears that slide upwards were the sadness that never came to her. The pain she never felt. The revenge she never swore. She had no purpose in arriving in Hinamizawa. And without her, there was no Irie.
And without the Dam War, there was no kidnapping which led Mamoru Akasaka to the village. He would have been with his wife at the time she gave birth to their child.
Then there was Satoshi. He had been around before the fatal year of 1983, his disappearance in the summer of the year before had pushed Satoko to me after we banded together following the death of our parents. But without his disappearance, Satoko never came to me. And Keiichi never arrived to take Satoshi's place in caring for the girls of the club Mion had formed.
In a flash, distance had been set between me and Mion. In an instant, Satoko had drifted away enough to see me as an enemy. Shion had faded from the village in the same way. And a flash later, Keiichi had disappeared from the village. Rena wasn't crying to us; she stood back, on her own. She had no tears to spill.
She had been the one to speak to me about everything. She had offered a hand where I would reach out of her desperately to prevent her past from catching up with her and driving her to the brink of insanity. She had been the one to tell me of everything; Satoko's parents, the damn, my father, her family. Even if she was the same person, she wasn't even Rena Ryuuguu. She had returned to her birth name of Reina Ryuuguu. Nothing made sense anymore, nothing was as I remembered or held dear.
I wasn't rushing across the open water towards Rena; the distance between us was growing. An unbearable place where I had given up. My tiny foot had risen from the water. I didn't run; I didn't create the ripples that would expand from my skin piercing the surface of the water.
Hanyuu… Where were you? Were you missing because no-one feared you? Because they promised you a shrine in their new home? Without Takano, she had nothing against her name; I had no need for her to send me through other worlds. Even with that choice, I would deny a trip through these worlds of loneliness. I wanted to cry, cry like the child I physically was. But I threw away tears in the final worlds when we were able to live beyond the Watanagashi in our true world. Were Hanyuu and Keiichi waiting for me at the exit of this single-layered maze in the real Hinamizawa? The maze that Hanyuu and I had walked together for endless years that this world had left me alone in. I was growing, a girl without Hanyuu to hold my hand. Was that what this world had determined for me?
How could I leave a world where death no longer hung ever-present in Hinamizawa?
Until I would find that answer, I would close my eyes from everything; ask questions, take in answers, try to unite my friends. Wait for the world I knew, for Hanyuu to wake me hanging over my shoulder.
The sight of the Furude Shrine was a sight I felt a faint sense of relief to see the structure still standing in this place. I approached, waiting when I would lay eyes on my mother and father for the first time in years. What could I say to them? The last thing I needed was them thinking I was going mad or my head in a mess after being hit by the ball Satoko had thrown. I pressed a small palm against my head, the memory of the truck speeding towards me in the world I could call home.
Satoko's voice. "RIKA!!"
Why didn't I listen? Was my presence in this world a punishment for being so careless? I had searched for so long in the hopes of living in the world where my friends and I could live past the June of 1983. We had finally come across that world, only for me to get cocky. Had I died in the world I had been seeking all because of a freak accident? Now I was alone.
I had never felt so willing to die. Just to move into another world, just to see my friends together; playing, laughing; united. What were they doing in that far off world?
The memory of the world in which Keiichi had beaten Mion and Rena to death before clawing his throat out returned to me. Seeing Satoko so devastated, my heart sank; were they experiencing the same despair through what had happened to me? Was there anyone asking if they could have done more? Was anyone blaming themselves?
Only I was to blame. I had stopped running over the lake and fallen beneath the surface. Like the words of a song played backwards, the world with a smooth flow had suddenly been cut into pieces, the scratching sounds between each few seconds that sounded the distortion of this world. If only the others could hear it.
The faces of the people I had held close in the true world I belonged appeared in the water before me like reflections of each standing over me. Ripples from my fall distorted their faces, emerging as other people. Different lives, different backgrounds, different families.
I stepped behind the shrine, treading the soul I rarely touched. The soft sound of a woman's humming reached my ears. My head rose slightly in surprise, I hadn't expected to hear a voice until I had been seen. My mother's voice was so pure, so beautiful. I resisted the urge to rush ahead, based on what I had heard, she would only wrap me in her arms - despite wanting that after such a tempestuous day - and grow over me, shielding me like an overprotective tree; concealing my existence in her shadow to avoid anyone inflicting pain upon me. I took a breath before setting one foot in front of the other, moving steadily like a current swept through a river in the opposite direction to the one I was heading. Vengeance of a rough body against my tiny frame, forcing me back from my destination. To the other I could seek deliverance. Where Rena had stood in the past, another would be around the corner.
My feet quickened to the turn, despite what I dreaded, it didn't matter if I could feel at least someone in the way I had seen and known them. My mother of all people would comfort me in the subtle way she knew. She would ease the invisible pain inflicted upon my heart.
The heart that had long been scared by the chaos that had ensued within Hinamizawa.
The chaos that had never existed here.
This was not where I wanted to be.
I did not belong here.
A K I R ~ E D U R U F