Formication is actually a real side-effect, involving the hallucinatory sensation of bugs crawling on or under your skin. It can be triggered by meth or other types of drugs, as well as some mental conditions.
June 9th, 2021
The parfait, creamy and shining and drizzled with luscious fruity syrup, shattered in her hand. The restaurant's customers halted their conversation as dozens of eyes turned her way, a low buzz of speculation starting up, but Shion could no more have paid attention to them than she could have flown. She mumbled something vaguely apologetic, her head feeling numb, and swayed her way to the breakroom. Or maybe staggered. It was hard to tell.
Her hand was a pulsing point of pain, and dully, she looked down, seeing tiny twinkling shards of glass lodged in her flesh, blood oozing over her pale hand like the raspberry syrup drizzled over the parfait. At any other time, Shion might have laughed, but now…now she wasn't sure if she could ever laugh again. All the light and joy and laughter had been sucked from the world the moment she heard the news.
It couldn't be true. It couldn't.
Moving hastily now, and with more control, she started shedding her frilly, revealing work uniform. Shion didn't care that undressing made her hand burn as the glass shards dug deeper into her skin, or how she was leaving blotchy red handprints on the custom fabric. She didn't care about it when she pulled on her street clothes, and she didn't care about the twittering of her fellow waitresses as those not occupied with a task gathered around her or hovered at the edge of the room. Someone grabbed her wrist above the bloody palm, distant words about bandages and cleaning it echoing faintly in her ears, and with a sudden flare of anger and strength Shion wrenched her arm away.
And she began to run.
She burst through the doors, weaving between confused and concerned customers and anyone who might try and make a grab for her, ducking under worrying, reaching hands. Her low heels clattered on the steps up to Angel Mort as she took them three at a time, recklessly, not caring about how it made her skirt ride up her thighs, or how high the chance was of breaking a heel and falling. If she could have flown, she would have done that, but there was no time, not even an instant, to grab a car or a bike and hotwire it. Every moment, every half-second of pause between her and her destination, was an untold agony that could not be endured. She would run until her heels gave out, then run barefoot on the dirty pavement, and when her legs finally failed her she would dig her newly-healed hands into the pavement and crawl.
Anything to get there in time to confirm this news to be a lie.
She could never have done this in the city, where cars were whizzing by on the streets and you actually had to pay attention to traffic lights. Shion only paid enough attention at each intersection to make sure she wouldn't be run over when she dashed into the street, uncaring of which color the lights had been. She ran, and she ran, and she ran, until at last she reached the police station. She smacked the door open with her injured palm, feeling the glass dig deeper like the agony biting into her heart, and surveyed the room full of startled policemen with wild eyes.
"Oishi!"
The old fat detective had actually gotten to his feet, and Shion rushed for him, grabbing his collar in her bloody hands and shaking desperately.
"It's not true!" she cried in his face. "It's a lie, right!? It has to be a lie! Satoshi-kun can't be dead!"
"Sonozaki-san –please!" Oishi grunted, levering a hand between them to try and pry her off. The others hovered around her, babbling faintly about assaulting a police officer (or was that a memory, a distant and echoing thought of how much trouble she'd be in for this), but Shion could not hear or think past the ringing in her ears, and she would not be pried away. "Calm down!"
"I won't calm down, I won't, I can't!" Tears filled her eyes. "Tell me Satoshi-kun's okay!"
There was a hint of auburn hair at the edge of her vision, the familiar white flap of a labcoat, and Shion whirled around as she felt the pinch of a needle in her skin. It jarred the device loose, but as the syringe clattered to the floor Shion saw that it was already empty, and the room was spinning around her.
"Please…" she croaked weakly, her tears spilling down her face.
And then she collapsed.
Shion's hand was neatly bandaged when she woke up again, with a faint stinging underneath that reminded her of antiseptic. She was laying on a bench in a grey room that she recognized as the police station, underneath someone's uniform coat. She pushed it aside as she sat up, her eyes searching the room for Satoshi-kun. He would be worried for her, if he'd heard she collapsed. He would want to come and see if she was okay. He was that kind of person.
A tight fist of fear closed around her heart as she saw that the area around her was empty, that there was only Doctor Irie sitting at a desk that clearly wasn't his, fiddling with a syringe case. As he restlessly flipped the lip open and shut, open and shut, Shion saw with surprise that there were two needles inside, both empty. When had he used the second one? And for what?
"Coach?" she asked, her voice raspy from fear and the dryness of her throat, and his head jerked up as he slammed the case shut, like it was a guilty secret. Kind eyes fixed on her from behind his glasses, and Doctor Irie immediately rolled his chair sideways, coming out from behind the desk.
"How do you feel, Shion-san?" he asked.
Drained. Exhausted. Her very spirit felt rubbed harsh and raw, like a friction-burn on her skin. Her throat was sore from shouting. And most of all, cold fear pulsed along her veins like blood.
"I'm fine." she said hoarsely. "Is there any water?"
Doctor Irie got her a paper cup, and Shion sat up to drink it. She drained the cup to the bottom in one swift gulp, before setting it aside and looking at the doctor. He seemed –worried. Stressed, beyond what Shion's wild ranting and collapse could have accomplished.
She figured it was as good an opening as any.
"It's not true, right?" Shion asked, no longer screaming the words frantically, but just as desperate to believe them, to hear him say yes. "I mean, you're the only doctor around here. They would've called you in for an autopsy. It's- it's just some stupid rumor, isn't it?"
Doctor Irie did not say anything, his lips compressed into a thin line. He did not look at her. There was pain in his eyes.
"Coach?" Shion whispered, her voice sounding even more fragile than it felt.
Doctor Irie did not respond.
Oh.
So…it was true, then.
"Ah." Shion said simply, all the fight, all the energy, all the hope draining out of her as her body drooped. It felt like the gears of the world had twisted hideously out of order, grinding and meshing back together into this obscene, hurtful, impossible truth, and she couldn't do a thing to stop it. She was just a helpless girl, unable to fight against the raging currents of reality any more than a wisp of straw could hold back a hurricane.
Shion started to weep.
She was too wrapped up in her grief to notice or care where Doctor Irie went as he stood, because the bottom had gone out of her world and there was nothing, nothing, to care or hope for again. She cried until her cheeks were raw and her throat was even scratchier than before, cried until the very act of sobbing hurt, and still she had not even dropped a fragment into the ocean of her grief. She was only ruthlessly dragged back to reality when she heard the door opening, and then it was because there was a dull, deadened part of her that still dared to hope that Satoshi-kun was still somehow okay. But it was just Doctor Irie, arguing softly but furiously with Detective Oishi.
"-to give her some time, for pity's sake!" Coach was saying in an angry undertone, his gentle face harsher than Shion had ever remembered seeing it. But Oishi shouldered him aside, his bulk and training making it easy for him as he forced his way into the room. Doctor Irie watched him with a sour twist to his mouth, but Shion just stared at the old man, her swollen eyes dull and lifeless.
"Sonozaki-san." Detective Oishi said aloud after a pause as they all regarded each other without words, addressing her directly. Shion found that she didn't have the energy to care as he ponderously settled into a chair across from her. "I want to talk to you about Hojo-kun."
"He's dead." Shion choked, finally voicing the awful, awful words as two more hot tears etched their way down her sore cheeks. Detective Oishi fumbled in a pocket for his packet of cigarettes, pulling one out and lighting it. He seemed to need something to do with his hands.
"Do you know how he died?"
She shook her head.
"It was at the festival." Detective Oishi continued, holding his cigarette between two fingers and regarding the glowing ember at the end thoughtfully. "Apparently, some people heard screaming in the woods: the festival being what it is, nobody was as quick to help as they might be at another time of year. Still, nobody had time to do more than start getting worried before Tamae Hojo staggered out of the woods, covered in blood. Her own, and her nephew's. She told the crowd that she had been attacked, and her attacker was dead."
Hatred smoldered in a tight, curled coal within Shion's chest as Detective Oishi stuck the cigarette back in his mouth and took a long draw.
"We've been putting the facts together after the event. Hojo-kun quit the doctor's sports team a few weeks ago, didn't he?"
"H-he was saving money for his job." Shion quavered, knowing it for a lie.
"But he took the bat home." Detective Oishi pressed. "He then called the Sonozaki household the night before the festival, asking your sister to take Hojo-chan with her to the festival. According to Tamae Hojo, he then told her about some illegally dumped furniture in the woods that might be worth some money. When she went out to investigate, he appeared and tried to bludgeon her to death with the baseball bat he had retained from his team."
"She deserved it." Shion croaked, and admission of guilt or not, she wouldn't take those bitter words away. Detective Oishi regarded her with something almost like sympathy.
"Whether she deserved it or not, Hojo-kun still concocted an almost textbook scheme for premeditated murder." he said, and Shion swallowed her tears, her rawness, her sharp and bleeding edges and compressed them into a crystal of diamond-hard fury in her chest as she finally straightened her shoulders and looked the detective in the eye.
"So what?" she spat. "What does any of that have to do with me? He's dead."
Her voice broke on the last word, as much as she tried to keep it strong. More tears warmed her eyes, but she stubbornly clamped down on the welling grief.
"Were you an accomplice?" Oishi asked implacably, holding her gaze. Shion's eyes widened a little –of all the accusations, she had never expected that one.
"I- no." she whispered without thinking, guilt pressing on her chest like a stone. "If I was, I would have- I would have helped. He wouldn't have failed."
He wouldn't have died.
"That's enough, detective." Doctor Irie said, his voice sharp as he went to put his hand on Shion's quivering shoulders. "Shion-san does not have to stay here, and she does not have to answer your questions. I think you should be ashamed of yourself, pouncing on a grief-stricken girl like this. Come."
This last was addressed to her, and Shion stood up, unable to think of a reason why she shouldn't. She let Coach pull her out the door because she could not think of where else she could go. His grip was firm, but kind as he ushered her into his car, watching her out of the corner of his eye to make sure she was buckled in before starting it up.
Shion let her body slouch against the outside door, her very thoughts numb and unmoving. She felt oddly calmer, now, than she had been when she ran out of Angel Mort, and her thoughts were clearer.
That didn't make it any better.
In some ways, it made things worse, because the memories that played out before her eyes were shown with aching clarity –Satoshi, patting her head; Satoshi, protecting his sister; Satoshi, sounding out her real name for the first time with wonder rather than disdain on his tongue; the underground Saiguden, where she had sacrificed so much to keep them together. Gone, now. All gone, or all worthless, and more tears etched their way down her face as Coach drove quietly through the streets, weeping silently now rather than sobbing.
She didn't care where she was going. Doctor Irie could have been taking her to be dissected on a slab for all Shion cared: without Satoshi, life wasn't worth living.
As though her thoughts had stirred him, Doctor Irie began to speak. His voice was low and calm, his eyes averted, and somehow that made it easier to listen. She supposed he had practice in dealing with people deep in the throes of grief: he was a doctor, after all.
"I want you to call me if anything happens." Coach said softly. "Grief is- this is a lot to deal with, especially alone. You should talk with your sister, your friends, your parents. If you don't want to- that is, with your family situation-"
"What?" Shion croaked waspishly.
Doctor Irie drew in a long breath, his whole body expanding with it, before he let it out in a whoosh.
"Strong grief can have…adverse effects on someone." he said slowly, his eyes sliding even further away from her. "Some people even report hallucinations…formication…"
"Formication?"
"The feeling of bugs crawling on your skin when nothing's there." Doctor Irie replied gravely, his fingers shifting slightly on the driving wheel. "It'll make you want to scratch at your skin, which can cause irritations, rashes, even lesions. Promise you'll tell me if you start feeling any symptoms? I have a medicine that will help."
A medicine to help with grief. Shion coughed out a laugh at that idea, a harsh and bitter thing that crawled out of her throat like a clot of blackness. There was no medicine in the word that could help her, not any more.
Her mind dwelled on that as Doctor Irie drove her into the village, watching the familiar sights slide by with unseeing eyes. Satoshi…Satoshi-kun was dead. He was gone, and never coming back. Shion would never be able to fall in love with him, go on a date, hold his hand…so much of her life was gone.
Hojo.
Tamae Hojo.
Shion's lips drew back in a snarl as the hated name and face oozed to the forefront of her mind. That bitch had tormented Satoshi-kun, and now, now she dared to take his life away, take him away from those that needed him. Poor Satoshi-kun. He had done so much to try and protect his sister, and when he had finally been pushed so far as to try and take her tormentor's life, he had proven too frail to finish the job.
No, it wasn't his fault. He was strong. He played baseball, he was a sportsman. He had tried his best to take his sister's future into his own two hands, because he cared for her that much. That was how intensely and nobly he loved. It was Shion's fault for not protecting him better, for not offering to help on that "business" he was skipping the festival for. She would have been able to help. She should have been helping, should have helped Satoshi-kun murder his aunt as Oishi suspected her of doing.
She would.
The answer came to her in a moment of breathless clarity, and Shion almost laughed. Yes, she could still help Satoshi-kun. Why waste her time grieving when she had a whole lifetime of sorrow ahead of her? Why spend days collapsed in grief when a far more productive use of her time was revenge?
Yes, she could see the shape of it now. One to die, one to disappear, and Satoshi-kun had already filled the first place. Shion might be an outcast in her family, but she was still a Sonozaki. She could still use the underground torture chambers, could still abduct a hated enemy of the village. No one would shed a tear or bat an eye when another Hojo went missing, after all. And then, oh, then, once Shion had gotten that bitch exactly where she wanted her, trapped her in the underground Sonozaki vaults…there was nothing she could not do with her. Shion could spend days tormenting the woman who had torn out her heart, making Tamae Hojo wish for death with every breath she took.
Shion set her mind on that path as her injured hand throbbed and pulsed with an echo of pain and Doctor Irie's car whooshed past the chittering cicadas that filled Hinamizawa's rural roadside.
9.57 AM, USA Central Time
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