Whoo, back again! Higurashi Month 2019, because it has become one of my lowkey life goals to keep perpetuating this until it becomes a proper tradition for all three-and-a-half people in this graveyard of a fandom. And then keep doing it anyways, because tradition. If you wish to check out the prompt list, its on my tumblr page under the same username.

June 5th, 2019

It hurts.

Hanyuu had thought that she was beyond human hurt, beyond the emotions she felt when children of men were sacrificed on her altars, for humans had evolved and no longer treated Oyashiro-sama with the cabbalistic reverence that had so offended her.

But Hanyuu trembles as she feels an urge she has long forgotten and suppressed; the need to fly at the faces of these humans and rake them with her blunt little nails. To attack these children of man.

Because that is Keiichi they're dragging carelessly over the forest floor, Keiichi Maebara, Hinamizawa's Magician of the Mouth.

But his periwinkle eyes are unseeing and dull, and his inspirational mouth hangs open limply, uncaring and unfeeling as dirt and forest litter is smeared across his face and open lips. They don't even bother to lift him up –just drag him by an arm. Like he's trash. Like he's dirt.

They reach the road and he's flung into the dust by Rika like a rag doll; limp, motionless, broken. His eyes stare out into the world as the Yamainu go back for the next corpse; they're still shining with the hope that his friends will get away, had gotten away, as he lay there and bled slowly to death.

Hanyuu thought Rika had inured her to those who died too young, but the tranquil gleam in Keiichi's eyes proved her wrong. He should have lived. He should have lived. He was only sixteen, a boy, a child: he should be worrying about girls (Mion, Mion, how could your bravery not be enough?) about school, about sports and his angsty relationship with his parents.

Keiichi shouldn't have been a corpse with a bullet in his chest and too-hopeful eyes, tossed carelessly into the dirt road a mile away from his home.

Her edges whip and writhe with the depths of her emotion; Hanyuu is little more than a ghost now, as she walks through Hinamizawa, an eddy of mist held together by memories and pain, and her form shudders and tears apart even as she knits back together, clenching and unclenching her small pale fists as nails that are no longer there dig into flesh that may as well never have been.

Oh, she wants to use her power, wants to rend and tear and smash and hurt, emotions foreign to Hanyuu's heart and centered too deeply in the blood and pain built on her altars that she loathes, she hates so much, but if anyone's heart was to be torn open and laid still-beating at her feet, Hanyuu would give more than the flesh of her body to see Takano splayed bloody and disarrayed over her shrine, the thick threads of her intestines spooled out around the slick and shining cavity of her abdomen like a tangle of red-black yarn, like she now knows Takano has flayed Rika on the altar she has tended for centuries of lifetimes.

Oh, it is not fair, but Hanyuu knows what is fair and what is not, and this world, the world of man, has not and never will be fair, but all the same, it is agonizing to see the fate Rika had struggled for so desperately be wiped away in a maelstrom of cast lead and blood, of wicked machinations and a sneer in the dark. To see Mion, being dragged towards them, a welter of holes in her proud, strong back, as she is flung in the dust beside the boy she loved (and killed for, oh, Hanyuu remembers those worlds, the worlds where jealousy woke in Mion's heart and not her twin's), limp and unmoving as a rag doll. If one squinted in the dim light of early night, lit only by the flat uncaring glare of the van's headlights, one could imagine, barely, that they were merely resting in some place of comfort, that Mion and Keiichi, sprawled so close, could easily reach out with their cold, pale limbs and entwine their fingers, that Keiichi could pull his arm over Mion and shelter her as she dreamed of on lonely nights, or Mion could roll over him and shelter Keiichi's body with the warrior's heart, the general's spirit that pulsed within her, the spirit that would have etched her into glorious history in the days of blood and swords and samurai.

Hanyuu remembers them in the gas chamber that was once a hallowed classroom, of choking on death and frantic escape and staggering and pulling Shion as she fell and desperate tears and "C'mon, please, just a little farther, we can make it-!" all ending in slow deadly collapse, slumping against the floor and lockers once part of their dominion as light faded from the eyes of the last remaining club members.

Hanyuu wonders how Tanako managed to take Mion down in such a way, for Mion never once presented her back to an enemy, and never would now, not when the stakes were so high. She could look, perhaps, look into the fabric of Hinamizawa and see how Takano had waited until Mion was busy with her men before shooting again and again and again with her gun, callously, filling Mion's heart with lead and her lungs with blood, but Hanyuu will not look.

She cannot bear seeing Mion, strong Mion, ever-brave Mion, choke on death again. She does not want to see the struggle, the blood, the desperate pain ending in an agony of begrudging release.

It hurts too much.

Next is Rena, and she looks like a Christian angel as she is tossed down into the dirt beside her friends, gowned in white and with hair that shimmers like fire in the artificial gleam of the headlights. She is considerably less bloodied than Mion, only a single wound that poured blood onto her favorite gown, seeping out more and more as the shell of what was once a vibrant and youthful flame of humanity lay limp in the dust, darkening the fabric and leaving a wet red smear underneath her as the Yamainu waited, silent and cold, like the statues of gods far worse than herself.

Hanyuu is screaming as Takano reloads her gun, amber eyes glinting cruelly as she looks upon Shion, Satoko, and Rika, the last remnants of Hinamizawa's tragically strong and yet too-innocent club. But no one hears, no one ever can or ever shall hear, for the heartbroken screech of a god, even one as weak and powerless as she, is not meant for mortal ears.

Tears pour down a face that melts in and out of shadow, and Hanyuu howls her grief to a sky that would have shattered under her lament had she the power to manifest in the mortal world as Shion goes to join her sister in a single, sharp flare of gunfire and the cold tinkle of a spent casing. Satoko joins them a moment later, after the beat of a cruel, arbitrary "quiz", and Rika stares up, resigned and afraid, into the eyes of her enemy, knowing the fate that awaits her even as she demands to be allowed her consciousness during the event, to stare with open eyes into her death.

And for a moment, as the ten-year-old miko glares into Takano's face with tear-filled eyes, teeth gritted and locked around the gag in her mouth to stifle a scream as her organs are ripped asunder, the very stars in the sky shiver overhead, unnoticed by all, reflecting the echo of Hanyuu's screams, of the cry of grief of Oyashiro-sama.

Failure has never hurt so much.

AN: Apologies for lateness, but the wifi died a slow and horrible death today and I only found out it was fixed when I got back from my night class.

10.42 PM, USA Central Time