My Long-Forgotten, Cloistered Sleep
~by the red hero~
Summary: Kagome is gone, leaving behind the future. The deed is done, everything comes full circle—or so they thought. Wounds fester if left untended, and Rinka Seiya, hurt and somewhat scornful of the world must learn to open her shell again, lest the future be changed and everything Higurashi Kagome knows will not come to exist.
(A story told in snippets.)
It was on a sleepover during the school festival that Seiya is made the unwilling tank of their impromptu ghost-hunting expedition after their final practice session of Kaguya-hime, of which she is the titular character. The short-haired, gray-eyed girl rolls her eyes as they near the stone well at the edge of school property. Long-ago closed off and filled with dirt, ensconced by trees of varying heights on all sides.
Legend had it that a resentful lady had her husband's mistresses cut up and thrown in the well. The girls, never given a proper burial, were said to haunt the stone well, and that their cries could be heard the loudest during a full moon.
They would drag in anyone who looks into the well, never to be seen again.
It is when Mochizuki yelps and the others huddle close to the seemingly unflappable Seiya that they take notice of the eerie howling emanating from the mossy well.
"Look, it's just the wind; crevices on caves do that whenever something is partially blocking the opening." Seiya replies dryly. "The school must've put in some plywood or whatever over the mouth."
Everybody in the Drama Club looks at her skeptically.
Seiya sighs. "Look, fine. If it makes you guys sleep better, I'm checking it out." She replies, marching over to the well despite her friends' protests.
The night was cool, and as Seiya ran her hand over the smooth, moss-covered stones, she looks inside the dried-up well.
The wind tossed the two-layered kimono she wore along with her hair, causing the girl to draw the outer layer tighter around her.
Seiya peered inside the old stone structure: there was nothing in the old well; pitch black and lifeless.
She turns to look at her company with a dry smile. "No youkai here. Or disembodied soul—mmmph!"
The sound of rushing wind and then the loudness of a cacophony of numerous, indignant voices echo in her ears; Seiya hears her friends screaming as they run in her peripheral vision, and the black-haired girl feels her blood run cold when a disfigured face with rotting gums and empty eye-sockets near her, and drag her down, down and down.
And they make their appearance. Seiya glimpses white, thread-like lines, some as thick as her arm and others no thinner than a spiderweb entangle her and the cacophony of walking corpses tearing at her outer kimono and her exposed skin, beckoning her to come join us, come join us, take us back and all of us will be fine take us take us take take us
In a rare flash of anger and desperation, Seiya grabs a silvery string, no thicker than her pinky and pulls. The cocoon of dead souls come apart in an ear-piercing shriek, and Seiya, tired and scared, blacks out as she lands on cold water, deeper and deeper.
The last thing she sees is the pale visage of a full moon.
A/N: The Higurashi Well Treatement commences: this time, with a different well. Hats of to Rumiko Takahashi-sensei for the Feudal Fairytale of Inuyasha.