Obviously, as an American, I have no clue what constitutes Japanese horror pop culture, but our slasher movie archetypes don't seem to show up much except as parodies and I'm willing to bet that that's because the idea of summoning anything for a joke, especially something dangerous, is patently "are you fucking stupid?" levels of absurd in Japan. To the best of my limited experience, the instigating incident in Japanese horror even when it verges into slasher bloodfest is usually "the heroes came across something dangerous on accident through no fault of their own," whereas in American horror its generally "poke the bear with a stick because what's it gonna do, murder us? Lol it can't murder us if it's not real, checkmate bitch." Naturally, the metaphorical bear in that scenario is very much real and tends to rip their faces off afterwards.

Also Rena would 100% be the final girl in any horror movie ever and I will fight you on that.

June 7th, 2022

It began with a rattle outside the shed.

Keiichi, being the most inquisitive of them all –as well as the only male in a group of females– was naturally the first to leap up and announce his intention to investigate. Rena and the others had all rolled their eyes and turned back to their lantern-lit card games, giggling and nudging each other tipsily as they took turns swigging the bottles Mion had brought with from her parent's basement. It wasn't like they were all out to get drunk, and even if they were, they lived in the mountains. It was okay to get a little floaty and fun for their midnight party.

What wasn't okay was the fact that Keiichi didn't come back, not even after five, ten, fifteen minutes, which Rena realized as she turned to blink at the shrouded clock. With alcohol clouding her brain, her normally acute intuition seemed to have deserted her, and she squinted and rubbed her forehead, trying to remember if Keiichi had said he'd do anything else. No, he'd just puffed out his chest and proclaimed his desire to march outside and see what had made the noise, telling them he'd be right back.

This was not "right back."

This wasn't even "back soon."

Rena nodded to herself and pressed one hand against the packed-dirt ground, heaving herself to her feet. Gravity swayed and dipped around her, but a moment of concentration and a few deep breaths was enough to maintain her balance.

"Rena? Where're you going?" Mion asked, slouched back against one of the haybales, her cheeks rosy.

"Keiichi should have been back by now." Rena said, picking up one of the lanterns. "I'll go get him."

"Maybe he got lost." Satoko snickered, hiding her grin with one coy hand. "Or fell down drunk."

"If he's sleeping on the ground, we should get him a warm blanket." Rika added cheerfully, pointing to the old horse blankets that lay draped over some of the haybales. Rena snickered with her, and turned towards the shed doors. It took a bit more concentration to walk without swaying, but she wasn't that drunk, and was managing it fine until she put her hand against the rough wood of the door and Shion let out a shriek.

All of Rena's instincts of danger flared with that shriek, and she whirled, sobriety spiking through her as her muscles tensed. Everyone else turned to look at Shion too, and they saw that the blood had drained from her face, and she was pointing with a long, shaking finger at one of the rattling glass-paned windows at either side of the barn. Rena looked along with the others, and now it was her turn to go pale, almost losing her grip on the lantern as Rena took an involuntary step backwards, pressing herself against the wooden doors.

Outside that window, startlingly pale in the darkness, dangled an arm, hanging off the edge of the roof above and pressed against the glass. It was swaying a little in the strong wind, like a tree branch, but this was no branch. Even with the fuzz of alcohol in her brain, Rena knew that much. She knew that was an arm, and she even knew whose arm it was, because Keiichi had a habit of writing ideas on his wrist in pen and there was a pale shadow of ink smudged under the palm of this hand.

There was also a ribbon of blood creeping down this arm, glossy and red and startlingly dark.

Any alcohol, any dizziness, any fog was instantly washed from Rena's system as she gasped with horror, and Mion and Satoko leapt to their feet. Her own muscles quivered with the urge to turn and throw open the door and rush out into the night, guilt thrilling in her heart as she thought of how Keiichi must have climbed up to the roof and injured himself, somehow, and been lying there unconscious and cold while they cackled giddily beneath his feet –but then Rena felt something scrape over the wooden doors pressed against her back.

She could feel it, not like a claw dragging down her spine, but rather a shuddering vibration that hummed into her skin as something on the other side of those two twin doors rasped a long, thin line across them, a line that trailed across her body as though it were cutting her torso in half. She could imagine, suddenly, in vivid clarity, the hand of something twisted and inhuman trailing a long blood-slick talon across the doors, warning her of what was without and savoring her terror.

Rena's knees shook, and she wanted nothing more than to lunge away from the door. But she couldn't. Fragile as the barrier was, it was still a barrier, a blockade between her and that something, and if she darted away from it, then…what was to stop this something from easily pushing the doors open? As long as Rena was braced against them like this, she was holding them shut, and had a modicum –the tiniest, most infinitesimal fragment– of safety.

She couldn't move.

"No!" she cried as Satoko made a scrambling, abortive move towards her, intending to push open the doors and run outside. "Th-there's something –out there."

Everyone stared at her as Satoko stopped dead, doubt mixing with determination in their eyes. Rena was the most levelheaded, the most truthful, the most intuitive out of everyone in the club. She didn't make things up, and it was all but impossible to fool her. If she said there was something out there, well, then there probably was. But something rather than someone…and Keiichi was out there too, vulnerable and bleeding. Even if she was right, their duty was clear: they needed to go out and help him.

In the hesitant silence that followed, everyone heard it. The long, scraping skrrrrrt of wood as whatever something that bulked outside the shed doors rasped a long, cruel talon over the weathered surface, slow, deliberate, menacing. It knew they could hear it, and they knew it knew they could hear it. It was savoring their terror, like a gourmet chef would salt their meat before preparation.

Rena swallowed thickly as the others began to shake.

"Come oooooout…" that long, furtive scraping seemed to hiss, macabrely playful. "Cooooome out, come out, joooooooin the fun…join the chaaaaaaaase…"

Nobody moved. Nobody dared.

Not until Mion pulled out her gun –her fake gun, the one that only shot little pellets powered by air– from its holster on her shoulder. She set her feet as firmly as she would if it were real, and held it with the ease of one who had been training to hold pistols for generations, as she faced Rena, the doors, and the thing behind them. Shion, her face pale, took several steps to stand beside her sister, withdrawing a taser from the back of her skirt and settling herself into an identical stance, as though preparing to meet the spring of that something as it burst through the doors.

"On the count of three, move." Mion said, catching and holding Rena's eyes. Her chest felt like it was throbbing with the strength of her panicked heartbeat, like if she took her sweating palms away from the door and touched over her heart she would feel it thudding against her breastbone with every pulse. She was calmed and simultaneously panicked by what Mion was saying, because if Mion was talking like this she had a plan, but her plan seemed ominously like she and Shion would take on this thing while the others fled, and that was not something Rena could countenance.

Mion flicked her eye towards the window, the one opposite to where Keiichi's blood-streaked arm still dangled.

"Get out of here, and call for help." Mion said, her eyes narrowing as Rena opened her mouth. "Don't argue. Just go."

Rena bit her lip, but firmed her legs as much as she was able. When Mion gave the signal, she needed to move, and fast. If she wasn't quick enough, she might die –they might all die– despite Mion's plan. She needed to be ready, to be already leaning away from the doors, so that when the signal came-

Rika and Satoko were already huddling away from the doors, under the window, Satoko balancing carefully atop Rika's shoulders as she ran her fingers lightly over the frame, testing where and how and when to get it open. Mion nodded significantly Rena, and started mouthing numbers.

One.

Two.

Three!

Rena shoved herself away from the doors, every nerve on a hair-trigger as she waited for the rush of cold air and the howling as they were shoved open behind her, her shoes smacking against the hay-strewn earth as she bolted for the window and Satoko wrenched it open. She threw a leg over the sill, turning to grab Rika's hand, and clumsily hauled her up with her as a streak of electricity lanced through the room. Rena didn't turn to look, couldn't bear to do it –not because she was scared, or at least, not because she was scared of that thing, but because if she looked back, she would be unable to run. If she looked back, she would turn and help her friends, and that wasn't what Mion wanted.

They hit the ground outside with a series of thuds –one, two, three– and Rena seized the other girls' smaller hands in her own, and they ran.

The night was cold, raw, and damp, but none of them cared about the chilly dew on the branches that lashed them, or the rustling and crashing noises they made as they bolted through the underbrush. Like hunted animals, they had no thought but to run, to get as far away as fast as they could, to survive as long as they could manage.

Don't look back, don't think, don't listen.

Just run.

They made it far, much farther than Rena had expected, to be honest. They had struggled through the woods and were bolting for the bridge before something cracked Rena's head from behind and sent her facedown into the cold, damp earth. The world tilted and spun, oozing through her senses like a jar of honey, and her face felt heavy, the back of her skull hot and wet. The blow seemed to have knocked Rena right outside her body: she could feel, but it was distant, with no pain, and she wasn't sure of how long her eyes hung on the dirt below her nose, how long her breath wheezed in and out, before she realized she should try to move.

Rika and Satoko's hands were no longer in her own, and Rena weakly dragged her pale fingers through the dirt, searching, even as she tried to push herself up, her hair sticky with blood. Of course, Rika and Satoko wouldn't be there. They hadn't fallen with her. Had they?

No, they hadn't. They wouldn't. They would have kept running, tried to get away. That was what Mion had told them to do.

Her head was swimming. Rena realized, distantly and with an odd lack of concern, that she probably had a concussion. That was the reason her wits, normally as sharp and keen as needles, were spinning like straw in the wind.

The shadows under her nose made her remember, vaguely, the smudges of charcoal lines they'd made on the floor earlier in the night. Why had they done that? Just for fun? Putting so much effort into drawing such a complex art project on the bare dirt floor seemed silly. There had been a joke in there somewhere, she remembered. Something light-hearted and laughing about…calling something. The mental image of towering wizard hats and sticks that trailed bright light flashed behind her eyelids, but Rena knew that they hadn't put on anything so childish. Why, then was she thinking about it? Did something in those scrawled geometric designs remind her of Western magic?

Groggily, her skull rolling like a loose joint on her shoulders, Rena finally managed to look up. There was a wet, crumbing patch of sticky dried blood spreading on her cheek, and the world was blurry, like she was looking through a veil of rain. The night was dry, though, except the chilly dew soaking through her dress and into her knees and legs, and plastered in the form of cool wet earth against her palms and wrists. She truly must be concussed.

She could see Satoko and Rika, sort of. She saw a spray of blood painted on the grey bridge, and she saw a mop of blonde hair that wasn't attached to anything else, and something that in her foggy vision might have been a flap of skin or might have been a shred of Satoko's pink shirt hanging off of the support wires, trailing forlornly down into the water-filled gorge. Blood dripped down from the edges of it, leading a forlorn and macabre leash to what was left of Satoko's head.

Rena's arms wobbled as she pushed herself upright, and her legs shook and shifted like she was trying to walk in a funhouse tunnel as she made her slow, staggering way towards the bridge. Running was futile. Escape was futile. She might as well go and see what had become of her friends, so that she could die with the knowledge of that, at least.

She fetched up against the support struts of the bridge drunkenly, almost leaning over them as she collapsed onto the anticipated support. The bridge wobbled a little under her weight, subtly, in the way that it was wont to do even under normal circumstances. Rena paid it no mind as she looked over the edge, wondering where the rest of Satoko had gone, wondering where Rika was.

There was more pink down in the rushing waters, a fold of it curving around a large boulder under the pressure of the current. It was too bright a pink to be flesh, but Rena didn't have to squint to be sure that that was where Satoko's body had gone. Poor Satoko.

She lifted her head, swaying it weakly back and forth as she tried to figure out where Rika had gone. Something strong enough to bat her to the ground in one blow and decapitate a young girl with enough force to fling the rest of her body off a bridge would be quite strong, so…

…oh.

There she was.

Rena blinked away slow, weak tears as she saw a flash of blue and turquoise green, saw Rika's petite body flung into a tree at the edge of the ravine that the bridge crossed. Her broken body was tangled in the shattered branches, pieces of wood sticking out from bloody splotches on her dress and from trickling red streams on her bare legs. The lack of movement and the twisted position of her body made it clear that she was dead, too.

Rena sobbed, a little, but sobbing made her head throb with pain and she swayed, clutching nauseously onto the wire bridge as her vision sparkled and darkened. She didn't want to die, really, but she wasn't sure of how she could do anything else, right now. She was all alone, and everyone else was dead. This thing could track her and outrun her even when she was healthy, and Rena would probably find it hard to move any faster than a dizzy shamble right now.

She decided to move anyways, though. Rena didn't think she could stomach just standing here and waiting to for this thing to kill her, but even if she didn't get far, at least moving would give her the illusion of progress. She put her hand on the taunt, inch-thick wires that held up the bridge, and kept shuffling in that direction, almost entirely relying on the side of the bridge for support, no matter the bits of blood from Satoko that slickened her palm and fingers. At least it was something familiar, from her friend.

They had been ambushed near the start of the bridge, and Rena was barely two-thirds across when she felt it sway and bounce in the way that it did, when someone else was using it.

She stopped moving. Dully, as her pulse pounded in her skull and more blood trickled through her hair, Rena considered running, but her same arguments from before held firm. If she ran, she wouldn't do herself any good. In fact, if this thing moved and thought like a predator, running from it might just encourage it to attack her. She didn't think she had the courage to turn and face it. She didn't have the will to try and bargain with it.

So that left one option.

Rena folded her legs underneath herself and sat down, right there on the bridge, still partially leaning her upper body against the wire struts that supported it. The cold, stiff steel cable was an odd sort of support against her temple as she let her head loll sideways. She wanted to prolong living as much as she could, but if this thing was back, there wasn't much of anything that she could do, and the spark of defiance that still slept within her refused to give it the satisfaction of seeing, tasting her fear. Since she couldn't run away in a blind panic, she was going to sit here and wait for it to kill her.

There was a terrifying, grating growl behind her –sounds being pressed out through teeth that shouldn't exist as a throat that didn't belong rumbled into the real world– and Rena heard the ear-scraping skreet of a long and sharp claw being dragged over the old metal of the bridge. If she had been standing, that growl was frightening enough to have made her legs buckle, because it was so wrong. It was a sound that shouldn't exist in the world, and that blasphemy clawed the edges of already-intimidating growl into ragged tangles, a distortion that throbbed and grated in her ears.

Still, she did not move.

She felt something against her back, a something that might have been hot breath or might have simply been the baleful presence of this thing pressing close to her, but she did not move a muscle, except to close her eyes and breathe. She would not let it have the taste of her fear. This was the last, and indeed the only, defiance she could manage against this…creature. This was the only revenge she could take for it killing her friends.

Rena's mind disconnected from her body with an almost audible snap.

In the village of Hinamizawa, a series of five murders took place on the evening of XXXX. The deceased are Maebara Keiichi, Sonozaki Mion, Sonozaki Shion, Hojo Satoko, and Rika Furude. There was one survivor, Ryugu Reina. The victims were found over a stretch of one mile, with Maebara and both Sonozakis being discovered in a disused shed on Furude property. Furude, Hojo, and Ryugu were found on the bridge between the mountains.

The murderer is unknown. Ryugu Reina was later recovered alive, but has since remained unresponsive. It is conjectured that the blow to her head, given by person or persons unknown, has put her into a coma, though blood traces indicate she was mobile for a certain period of time after receiving it. It is unlikely that Ryugu is the culprit, as footprints indicate that she was fleeing from the scene of the crime alongside Hojo and Furude, and that they continued onwards when she received the blow to her head. Further footprints in the blood indicate that Ryugu came upon the bridge after Hojo and Furude's deaths.

Detective Oishi of Okinomiya, once of the first officers on the scene after the concerned parents each individually contacted the police, claims that she spoke a few sentences to paramedics before succumbing entirely to her coma, though their meaning and purpose seems unclear. Her alleged last words are reproduced below:

WE CALLED WITHOUT EXPECTING AN ANSWER. WE SUMMONED WITHOUT PLANNING TO WELCOME.

10.02 AM, USA Central Time

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