TW: self-harm, cutting, blood, hospital stay, psychosis episode.

I don't know WHY in GOD'S NAME you'd be consuming any kind of Higurashi content whatsoever if self-harm, blood, and psychosis trips are triggering to you, but in consideration for the extremes in this prompt fill and the mental health of other people, I made the slightly-unusual effort to tag warnings for this chapter. Don't want to go causing problems for nobody.

June 6th, 2022

Reina did not like the hospital.

The doctors were always leering at her, poking and prodding her body with needle-sharp fingers, inserting their words into her mind like a scalpel. How are you feeling, Reina? Are you okay, Reina? We want to help you, Reina.

They would say these words through slit-mouthed smiles –lying, always lying. Reina had ears and could use them, could hear the whispers the hospital staff spoke out of the circle of lamplight at her bed, the excited did you hear what she did? Broke all the windows in her school, assaulted three boys, maniac, insane, wonder what will happen next that was spoken around corners and behind doorways.

She knew what they said, and she knew what they meant. They wanted to "help" her because it was their job, but what they really wanted to do was spectate. The wanted to watch her shred herself at the seams, wanted to see Reina claw her mind apart as they watched and recorded it for scientific review. What kind of silly, stupid girl would believe that she was haunted by a supernatural entity, in this day and age? What kind of rotten, diseased fool would have used that as her excuse to smash heads?

Part of it probably wasn't even scientific. They wanted to watch her because of sick, human curiosity. They wanted to see another tragedy unfold before their eyes, wanted something to gleefully gossip about when Reina left the hospital, be that on her own two feet, in a coffin, or in handcuffs. They wanted to see what happened to someone else when she denied her god, because it wasn't happening to them.

Reina hated them.

She hated their curiosity, the pinching and the poking and the prodding, hated the way these doctors and nurses pretended to care when she was nothing and less than nothing to them. She hated those boys for trying to grab her, hated her parents for moving away. She hated her mother, because she had betrayed them, because she had abandoned them, Reina hated that she was going through all this because of her and she hadn't even visited. Did she care at all? Or was she glad to see Reina's face on the news, knowing that she had left behind something truly worthless and filthy as she turned back to her new family?

Reina hated her.

She hated everything, but her mother, most of all.

This is your fault. You did this to me.

Reina had been happy in Hinamizawa. She hadn't wanted to leave, but that woman had insisted and brought Reina and her dad along for the ride. She hadn't wanted to break the rules, but that woman had made her. And now Reina was suffering Oyashiro-sama's curse, and there was no one who could help her. No one wanted to, either. That woman hadn't contacted either of them since the divorce, and her father was…somewhere. Reina had lost track of him, a little, but he hadn't visited her here. The doctors and nurses were probably keeping visitors away from her, which was silly, because if her father really loved her then he would shove past them and come to find Reina. If he really loved her, he wouldn't have let that woman drag them out of Hinamizawa. If he really loved her, he wouldn't have stirred the curse like this.

She probably hated her father, too.

Reina had been cursed from the moment she was born, she realized that now. With parents like these, how could she not be? Her blood was filthy, tainted with betrayal and apathy and crawling with malice. She needed to get rid of it.

It was surprisingly easy to get ahold of a knife, even in the hospital. She was, after all, in the ward where they put the people they didn't want to have any kind of weaponry, even chopsticks. Reina had to eat with these fragile little plastic things that snapped at the slightest pressure.

But the security and the nurses and the doctors, with their sneering avarice and their glee in watching people's suffering, they were looking for someone trying to get their hands on a scalpel, or a needle, or shears. Reina knew better than that. She went to the storage rooms instead, picking through stuffy cardboard boxes and drifting through shelves until she found what she needed.

A box cutter.

A blade was still a blade, even one as short as this. And it was sharp, too. If it could cut through cardboard and thick plastic wrapping, it could easily cut through soft, pliable flesh. The plastic casing told her that the box cutter had been abandoned and forgotten, the bright colors a little battered and gritty –but it would still work. She knew that, because she unsheathed the blade with a snick and a push of her thumb. There were a few speckles of rust, but the box cutter was also sharp and grey and steely.

It would do.

She hid it in the sleeve of her hospital gown, meekly shuffling back upstairs. They didn't pay attention to her, or at least, when they did, it was out of the corner of their eyes and with a nervous scuttle, moving away from her just a tad. Reina was weak, young, fragile, but her reputation followed her like a cloak.

Like Oyashiro-sama.

Reina hated that, too, hated the relentless, pounding presence just behind her shoulder or looming over her head, the eyes on her that never went away, making the hair on the back of her neck prickle. The doctors all said it was a delusion, but this delusion never left her, standing and staring with cold eyes at her bedside pillow, never blinking, never letting up. Even now, she heard the whispery flap of a second footstep behind her, and her flesh crawled as that presence patiently followed her to the common bathroom.

It never hurt her. It never did that. She could see a few smirks, behind those caring hands, a few scoffing head-shakes as she rattled and shook in her terror, feeling that presence breathe down her neck.

Reina, if it's not going to hurt you, then you don't need to worry about it, right? They'd soothe, patting her hand, her hair, like she was a toddler. Reina, you don't need to be scared. Just ignore it and wait for it to go away.

Idiots. Reina was scared of it because it hadn't hurt her. Hurt was logical. If something was following her, haunting her every step, then it made sense for it to want to hurt her. But this presence had not done that. It might want to help her, instead, but it hadn't done that either. It had neither helped her nor hurt her, just…hovered. Persistently. Patiently. How could anyone not find that kind of inscrutable presence terrifying?

She was scared because no matter where she ran or what she did, there would always, always be that second step. She'd almost forget it in the rush and bustle of the wards, but then, eventually, inevitably, things would get quiet for a moment or two, and it would drop into that moment of silence like a ripple in a pond.

Step.

Right behind her, right at her heels, there it was. The conviction that she wasn't alone. The dread that coiled like a noose around her neck as that presence waited, for things she didn't dare guess at. Reina knew it was waiting, just as surely as she knew it was standing there behind her. She was always too frightened to turn around. What would she see? And worse, what wouldn't she see? She knew that someone was there, knew it in the sound of their pattering footsteps and the ghostly whisper of their breath. So if she turned around and they weren't there, then who was it?

Reina knew exactly who they were, and what they were waiting for. She just didn't like to admit it.

Oyashiro-sama was waiting for her. Waiting for her to admit what she had done wrong, waiting for her to apologize, to make restitution.

Well, that was what she would try to do now.

Reina stared with her dull, dead eyes at her reflection. The nothingness behind her waited, expectantly, as she looked at where her pale skin peeped out from the turquoise gown. Reina's blood was filthy, always seething and itching in her veins, so she was going to purify it. It was okay. She was in a hospital, so once she'd bled out all her blood, they'd be able to replace it with some that was new. That was clean.

She didn't know where the right veins were, so Reina picked a spot where the itching was greatest, between the softness of her throat and the hard projection of her clavicle. Her blood seemed to writhe under the blade as she jabbed it home, piercing the softness of her skin and making a burst of heat crawl down her chest. The itching worsened, intensified, and Reina clenched her teeth as she drew the knife out in an arc across that soft space under her throat, trying to cut out that sensation as the knife burned its way towards her shoulder.

The slash gaped open, blood running like tears down her skin, and Reina's eyes dilated in the mirror as that red ruin over her skin –wiggled.

There was something in her blood.

Reina's breathing grew quick and heavy, almost frantic, as she wrenched the knife out and stared. Crawling, squirming, twisting white lumps writhed their way out of her flesh, stained and blotched with her blood, and her stomach lurched. Her body was- she was- she was filled with maggots. Reina had thought that she was filthy before, but she'd never realized just how filthy. She was still alive, but her body was rotting from the inside out…and it was starting with her blood.

She needed to get it out.

She needed to get it out!

Reina screamed and jabbed the knife in again, wildly, seeking for nothing short than to rid her body of this pestilence. Her skin itched and seethed, and Reina's stomach churned in disgust as she now realized what that itching sensation in her blood meant. She could feel the maggots wiggling about inside her, and she needed to get them out!

"What the-?"

"Ryugu-san!"

Yes, those doctors and nurses and orderlies should well be horrified. Maggots in her blood! What freak accident could cause this? What kind of surgery could possibly remove these squirming things?

Reina was shuddering in disgust as she wrenched the box cutter out of her flesh again, her eyes finding the pale skin of her unblemished wrists –and she shifted her grip on the weapon and gouged down into them. She needed to get these disgusting things out of her. Get them out!

Blood speckled with lumps of squirming, shifting matter sprayed out against the mirror, the porcelain sinks, and Reina realized that there were hands on her, now. They were trying to take the box cutter away! They were trying to stop her from doing this!

"No!" she cried, struggling frantically. "Stop it! Let go!"

The makeshift knife plunged through the air, Reina slicing wildly as she tried to force them back. She felt dizzy and sick, but that didn't matter, because the more blood that was pumped out of her, the more the maggots were expelled. Oyashiro-sama help her, she would get these wretched things out! She would purify herself, if she had to kill herself to do it! Who could live, even if they could survive, with rotten, wriggling things in their body, filling up their veins with filth?

Reina's cries were echoing off the tiles walls as she struggled with the orderlies, making the room roar with sound as they grappled with her. Everything was slick and hot with blood, and bile rose in Reina's throat as she felt the squirming patter of maggots crushed against her skin by those groping hands.

Someone grabbed her free wrist, above the slashes, and wrenched her arm out. A needle jabbed into the crook of her elbow, a spike of cold in her frantic itching heat, and Reina swayed, betrayed and appalled. Why…? Why were these doctors trying to stop her from fixing herself? They had said they were trying to help her, and maybe they had lied, but why were they throwing that facade so easily? How could anyone possibly believe that maggots in the blood was a good thing? What deception were they trying to trick her with?

As her head swam and her body numbed, sinking back into the eager embrace of a dozen gloved hands, Reina saw it for the first time. She saw Oyashiro-sama.

It was a small grey figure –so small!– and it looked like a smudge on the lens of her eyes, or a young shadow that had gotten lost playing hide and seek and wandered into the hospital bathroom, but it's eyes burned into and through Reina, even as she sagged and the world went dim.

Go back. It said with those huge, piercing eyes. Go back to Hinamizawa, and this will all be over.

Reina was still desperately trying to acknowledge her willingness to obey when the world went black.

9.39 AM, USA Central Time

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