AN: To tell the truth, I wasn't sure if this story needed an epilogue or not, since some people like ambiguous endings where they're left to wonder what happened to the main character after the story's events concluded. Your satisfaction with this final chapter may vary depending on how you normally like stories to end, but I'm providing it for those of us who prefer to see loose ends tied up. Hope you enjoy it.
Epilogue: Lost in Time
Modern Japan passed before Ryokan's eyes as he trekked north toward his destination in the Himuro mountains. It was a time of upheaval, an era characterized by the removal of the feudal system that Ryokan had once known and expected from the people surrounding his former village. Seemed he wasn't the only one who could embrace change. Unfortunately, the political tremors also sowed fear that led people to adorn their businesses and homes with Shinto talismans that Ryokan, being a cursed spirit, could not cross. Every time he neared one, his vision would blur, his legs tensing to prevent him from stepping forward as a debilitating sickness crippled his body and mind. Trying to charge past them only made the pain worse; to him, the air around these talismans was blisteringly hot.
Begrudging the people of Japan their privacy, Ryokan was forced to walk around them, adding extra miles of length to his long odyssey. A minor setback for someone who still had over a decade to reach Himuro Mansion, which the dead man finally did in the winter of 1876. He had followed the legends overheard from farmers in the region, leading him to a lonely building whose architecture, wards, and sheer size were unmistakable. This place had a single goal: fighting the same Malice that Ryokan had banished from his own village. Ryokan entered the ancient edifice proudly and took up a station in the building's foyer room. He was ready to warn anyone who tried to live here, confident that the Malice had been destroyed for good in the battle that concluded so many years ago.
This was a fatal mistake. What Ryokan interpreted as the Malice's permanent end had merely been its banishment from one part of the world with the sealing of the Hellish Abyss. It was alive and well here, and it had been watching the mansion's entrance for him, knowing that he would eventually arrive on his own. It knew why he had come, having been the one who warned him about Yae's demise in the first place, and stopping him from saving her would be the perfect revenge.
Months passed without incident as the Malice bided its time, watching silently as Ryokan kept his eyes glued to the double doors leading into the building. Eager to help others, he was unprepared to defend himself when Kirie Himuro, the indomitable wraith that patrolled the halls of the manor, ambushed him on a cold night in December 1877. Ryokan found out the hard way that battling hostile spirits was much harder without the Camera Obscura in hand; he was no match for Kirie's strength. Seized by the many arms that protruded from her back, she dragged him shouting and cursing down to the Hell Gate at the bottom of the shrine. The moment Kirie reached the ominous stone doors leading into the void that the Malice called home, she threw him inside, sealing the entrance behind him.
The Malice, however, had really begun to hate Ryokan after its defeat in All Gods, and keeping him imprisoned with it wasn't satisfying enough. Instead, the Malice tore open the entrance to another shrine and flung him back out, offering no explanation as it set him free.
Feeling naively hopeful for a moment, Ryokan examined his new surroundings, not minding the softly humming portal he had been thrown out of. Hieroglyphs adorned the walls, remnants of a language that Ryokan didn't recognize. Pillars and towering ceilings were constructed from a type of limestone that he had never seen before. Everywhere he looked, a thick layer of desert sand covered the ground. Not even the deities depicted on the walls were familiar: anthropomorphous beings with the heads of animals. That is, until Ryokan finally found one that he did recognize – a beautiful woman with no animal head and an ornate crown shaped like a throne. He remembered it from the beginning of his tenure as Ceremony Master, when an outsider book was confiscated from a villager and ended up in his library. He remembered the being's name...
"Isis," Ryokan uttered with horror as a fresh sense of urgency gripped his body. In the mere minutes it had taken for the Malice to regurgitate Ryokan from the depths of Hell, it had transported him to a temple lost in the remote deserts of Egypt, thousands of miles from home. Stricken with panic, Ryokan tried to re-enter the demonic doorway only to find that it had closed behind him. The mission that had seemed reasonable was now hopeless, lost more than a continent away from him.
Spurred on by his sleepless nature, Ryokan refused to give up and leave Yae in peril. Each morning, he followed the rising sun and trekked East, changing direction only when a body of water impeded his progress. The empty desert gave way to strange cities and landscapes that no villager had ever seen before, but Ryokan pressed on, determined to find his daughter again. In the interim, Yae grew up under Ryozo's care, never knowing what became of her father.
Months passed...years...decades. Ryokan never gave up, walking farther and farther east with each passing day, never resting and always moving. History passed before his eyes as societies and technologies changed around him, but he didn't explore them as much as he would've liked to. He was too weary to care about anything except his simple objective: keep walking...keep moving east...before it's too late. Unfortunately, the target year of 1887 came and went while Ryokan was still navigating the mountains of China. Yae and Ryozo, now married with a young child, moved into Himuro Mansion just as Ryokan had been foretold. Surrounded by malevolent spirits that she was only slightly aware of, Yae's sixth sense drove her mad. Eventually, one of the spirits grew bold, and three years after they moved in, Yae's daughter was dragged away by unseen assailants, never to be heard from again. It was the final straw for a person whose life had never gone right, and the broken woman took her own life not long after.
Against the odds, Ryokan made it back to Japan in the winter of 1904, but returning to Himuro Mansion made him long to be whisked away again. He found Yae's unresponsive spirit hanging from a cherry blossom tree, rimmed by a banal, black sky in the house's exterior atrium. Ryozo was nowhere to be found – no one was. He had returned to find the place as empty and isolated as his own village had once been, this time without the hope of ever saving it.
The Malice had taken its revenge; Ryokan had failed.
Faced with the loss of his goal, Ryokan came to understand that he couldn't leave Yae behind, even as she hung from a rope tied by her own hand. He spent the first few days mourning in one of the mansion's remotest rooms, fearful of attacks from the Malice and its apparent servant, Kirie. Days turned to weeks, and when nothing came for the dead man, he began to think that nothing was going to. Maybe the Malice hadn't expected him to make it back here and wasn't looking for him, or maybe it was just satisfied keeping him trapped here, as he grieved over the loss of his last living relative.
Entire years went by as Ryokan languished in this gilded cage, helpless to do anything except watch over his daughter's spirit. He would construct methods to keep himself occupied. He wandered the property, familiarizing himself with every last room and hallway above ground level. He loitered in the house's library, reading from the pages of books that had been left open on the ground. He expanded upon the abilities given to him by spirithood, learning to walk through walls and turn himself invisible. They came in little handy in a place abandoned by the living, but it was all Ryokan could do while he was unable to fight the Himuro curse directly. Doing that would require the ability to interact with the physical world, and Ryokan sorely lacked that in his current form. He would also have to explore the unhallowed shrines beneath the mansion proper, risking dangerous reprisals from the Malice that resided there. Without a Camera Obscura and a pair of living hands to work it, failure was an inevitable conclusion.
Years turned to decades as Ryokan sat beneath the cherry blossom tree that Yae had hung herself from. It made him feel a little less bitter to be near her. Most of the other spirits, who didn't recognize Ryokan from their previous lives, simply avoided him as they remained trapped in the routines they had been performing on the day of their failed sacrifice. Kirie was the only phantom that posed any threat, and she was easy enough to hide from when he heard the sound of her cries growing louder. He would watch them curiously, analyzing their mannerisms to glean details about how people had lived in this commune.
Occasionally, Ryokan's loneliness would be interrupted when new people tried to move into the mansion, but these times were always short-lived and very stressful for him. He knew what fate would await visitors if they stayed in the Himuro manor, so he would always run to them and shout at them to leave. Having weak sixth senses, however, they never saw or heard him, no matter how loudly he screamed. It wasn't until Kirie appeared before them and dragged them to their deaths that they finally learned of their mistake. The pain of never being able to help them took its toll on Ryokan, and after a few decades, he stopped trying altogether.
This pattern continued throughout the 20th century, the solitude pushing him to the brink of madness. It wasn't until October 3rd, 1986, that Ryokan was finally given a reason to rejoice. The evening started like any other, with Ryokan hiding from Kirie in the mansion's foyer room as she made her rounds in the house's atrium. While he was watching for her, however, Ryokan heard the lock on the entryway click as a new visitor arrived on the site. He watched the door curiously, staying in the shadows for fear of Kirie, but he entertained no aspirations of helping the poor soul.
A fan of moonlight spread itself across the dusty floor as a girl became visible, inspecting the foyer's state of disrepair with hesitation. From his position in the shadows, Ryokan examined the girl and was instantly taken aback by what he saw. She was young, as young as his own daughters had been, with light brown hair and brown, somber eyes. Despite the cold, her clothing was notably light: an unimposing white shirt with a red collar, a short brown skirt, and black boots. The getup was so casual that she probably would've been punished for it in his more conservative age. No sign of luggage burdened her form; she definitely had no plans to stay here, although that would probably change if she made the fatal mistake of stepping inside.
The girl stepped into the foyer and closed the double doors behind her, prompting Ryokan to utter a depressed sigh. He refused to endure the heartbreak of another person's demise and only wanted to wish her luck, whispering the phrase "be safe" as she started to walk past him.
Instantly, the girl jumped and spun around, frozen with fear at the words that Ryokan realized she must be cognizant of. His dull eyes widened with surprise as he struggled to comprehend her reaction.
"You can hear me?!" he asked eagerly, jumping into full view too quickly for the girl's frayed nerves to handle. She panicked, screaming as she flung herself away from him. It was too good to be true; after all this time, another person who could see him!
"Wait, come back, I can help you!" Ryokan called as Miku disappeared through the nearest door. He pursued her and wound up in the house's tattered entryway. Fortune favored him as the visitor's attempt to flee was stopped by a locked door. From across the hallway, this tiny human turned to face him, shuddering at his presence.
Ryokan hesitated to approach her and said nothing for several minutes, allowing them both a much needed chance to calm down. The girl's foggy exhalations came less rapidly as she started to realize that he didn't want to hurt her. It had been so long since he had been able to talk to anyone, though, that he found himself lacking the social confidence to speak. He buried himself in thought, trying to re-establish the art of conversation in his mind while the girl stared at him, unwilling to make the first move.
"I'm sorry if I frightened you," he uttered nervously, trying to show her some civility. "It's just been a long time since I had someone else to talk to. A very, very long time."
To his relief, the girl found humanity in Ryokan's admission of loneliness and started focusing on him as a person rather than a threatening force. She took a few nervous steps toward him and spoke back, starting small. "My name is Miku Hinasaki. What's yours?"
"Kurosawa. Ryokan Kurosawa," the former Ceremony Master replied. Now that he had her attention, he needed to do something with it. He considered merely telling her to turn around and leave this place, but before he could, he squinted down the narrow hallway and spotted something unusual.
Ryokan walked toward Miku, who moved aside to allow him room next to her. Lying on the ground and covered in a suspiciously thin layer of dust were a notebook with the name "Mafuyu" written on the front, and an oddly familiar-looking camera. Ryokan leaned down and passed his ghostly hand through it. With a spark in his mind, the memories of the Repentance in All Gods village, and everything that came after it, were clear in his memory again. Every aspect of this machine was familiar to him, the size, color, ornate symbols, and lens.
"It's a Camera Obscura," a state of bliss overcame Ryokan as he uttered the words. Imagine his luck, that the very device he needed to finally help his daughter escape this place had been left here, under his nose. It couldn't have been here long; he had explored these halls dozens of times before without seeing it. No, this camera had been left here recently, by this "Mafuyu" person – a person that Ryokan in his sleepless vigilance didn't remember seeing. Whoever he was, the Himuro curse had claimed him within hours of his arrival.
"Hey, that's my brother's diary!" Miku exclaimed, ignoring the camera in favor of the leather-bound book. Ryokan was starting to piece this girl together.
"Mafuyu is important to you, isn't he?," Ryokan asked. "That's why you came here, to find him and bring him home."
"My brother," Miku nodded solemnly, turning her gaze from the diary to Ryokan. "Ever since our mother died, he's been the only family I had left. I have to find him, before it's too late."
"I understand," Ryokan nodded, his thoughts wandering inexorably to Yae's fate. "I'm looking for someone as well. My daughter, a person that I was never able to help...until now."
Deciding that it was time to lay his cards down, Ryokan shook his head side to side a few times to resist his exhaustion and turned toward his new friend with a less casual expression. "Miku, I know that we just met each other, but both of us have lost something in this terrible place, and neither of us have the skills to recover them alone. This place is infested with the victims of a failed ritual, and most of them aren't as nice as I am. But..." Ryokan gestured toward the Camera Obscura, which Miku took notice of, "that machine is our ticket to fighting our way through this place, and you're the only one who can use it. If you help me break the curse that trapped them here, we can both be with our loved ones again."
Miku knelt down and picked up the camera, not taking her gaze off of Ryokan. She didn't even wait for him to formally ask before she answered his request for help by nodding her head firmly. Ryokan himself, however, was haunted by the idea of an innocent child risking her life and afterlife for his mistakes. It wasn't fair to ask that of her, and she needed to know the risks, even though she had her own reason for being here.
"It will be dangerous," Ryokan cautioned. "Once we press deeper into the mansion, there will be no turning back. Are you sure you're up to this?" he asked softly, placing a hand on her shoulder.
The ethereal limb chilled her on contact, causing goosebumps to rise on her arms. Ryokan gasped as he remembered the pain he had felt in life when other spirits grasped him. Without their desire to kill, however, the touch did nothing but discomfort her a little, and when Ryokan tried to pull his arm away, Miku caught it.
"For my brother," Miku shook Ryokan's hand to signify a partnership, "and your daughter."
Ryokan smiled proudly and placed his hands underneath Miku's, lifting them up until the Camera Obscura's viewfinder was in the proper position. Miku smiled back as she tucked the camera securely under her arm.
"We'd better get going," Miku said, walking toward the door that led into the rest of the mansion. "The sooner we find Mafuyu and Yae, the sooner we can get out of here."
Feeling strangely optimistic about their chances, Ryokan followed Miku further into Himuro manor, hopeful for the first time in a century that a brighter future lay ahead of him.
The End
AN: Despite what it may look like, this epilogue isn't really setting up a sequel. The ending is basically the start of Fatal Frame 1, and we already know it ends with Miku defeating the curse and freeing the spirits, which would include both Yae and Ryokan.
Thanks again to everyone who stayed with the story and put up with the lengthy delays in updating. For those of you who found my writing good enough to want more, there's an update on my profile about what I plan to do for my next story, and when it will start to be posted.
I'd love to hear how you all thought the story turned out, so be sure to drop a review if you can. Goodbye, everyone, it's been a pleasure.