I was idly talking with one of my host teachers during my internship (a math teacher) about the advanced math courses she took during college and how only people at that graduate level actually deal with imaginary numbers, and she offhandedly mentioned the three dimensions plus the fourth dimension of time, but really, there's fifteen dimensions that we know of-

And I was like, WHAT?! Hold on, what do you MEAN there's fifteen dimensions!?

Anyways, apparently that's a thing in higher math. See, encounters like this are exactly why I'm constantly on the lookout for new trivia, because how could you have reasonably expected to know that everyone except math majors, apparently, are going about their lives with the naive assumption that there's only three or four piddling little dimensions in the world we know. HOW MUCH ELSE FROM SPECIALIZED FIELDS DON'T I KNOW?!

In any case, see you guys again next June! If you want more Higurashi content from me prior to that, I have a Kinktober fic on AO3 that will get some Higurashi prompts in its latest update in the next few days. And in case anyone wants to participate in this event next year, here's the prompt list for Higurashi Month 2023!

1. Answers
2. Innocence
3. Simplicity
4. Reality
5. Acceptance
6. Lesson
7. Enthusiasm
8. Game
9. Friendship
10. Endings
11. Birth
12. Embarrassment
13. Reflect
14. Hate
15. Triumph
16. Feel
17. Wrecked
18. Soft
19. Cold
20. Without
21. Inspiration
22. You
23. Confused
24. Affection
25. Joy
26. Horror
27. Acceptance
28. Sympathy
29. Holding
30. Defeated


June 30th, 2021

Rika pushed a lock of her long, smooth hair behind her ear and adjusted her glasses a little. Much as she hated to admit it, such long hours squinting at such small print would have ruined her eyes if Satoko hadn't insisted on getting these reading glasses for her.

Her long white labcoat rustled a little as the tall, elegant woman leaned back, crossing her stockinged legs. Part of Rika squirmed at following Takano's path like this, but…but there weren't that many options for her, as she aged and grew. She needed a career, but she could not leave Hinamizawa. Having Irie train her as a scientist was about the best Rika could manage, and to be fair, she could leave sometimes. The research clinic was plugging away even after its drop in fundings, still doggedly working on refining the cure for Hinamizawa Syndrome, a way to calm the villagers and release the chain that had been locked around Rika's neck from the moment she had been born.

She did not precisely resent her duty, since her presence was the only thing that kept Hinamizawa from descending into an apocalyptic bloodbath. She did resent the need for that duty, though. Rika waited with impatience for the day that Irie and his coworkers would finally find a way to eliminate this dreadful disease squirming through her brain and the brain of everyone she knew.

Her own researches had led her in different directions, however.

Since Rika had absolute confidence in Irie and his team to unpick the mysteries of Hinamizawa Syndrome, she had instead moved to study a field that was very near and dear to her heart. Irie's brow had furrowed when she had asked what she wanted, and Rika had caught many a puzzled look over the rim of his glasses or the edge of a book as she studied with him, but Irie was a man of his heart, and he had made a promise. Rika well knew the weight of the promises he carried, and maybe –maybe that, even above his sense of duty, was why Irie tutored her in her chosen science without even a murmur of question. The faint lines from her brain surgery were still there, even after all these years –hidden like a dirty secret behind the fall of her bangs.

Rika didn't mind. The surgery had been as non-invasive as it was possible to be when the surgery itself was essentially there for the purpose of peeking at her brain in search of the Queen Carrier parasite. She had recovered with no noticeable ill effects.

But there was one thing that even now, Rika was not entirely recovered from. The way that she had been trapped in an endless maze, the way that time had twisted and thrashed and coiled in around her like a dying snake as she relived the same stretch of years over and over and over again. Hanyuu had explained the side of it that she knew, the magic explanation about the half-incomprehensible feelings and sensations of a goddess seizing the fabric of reality and giving a brisk, urgent tug.

Rika wanted the scientific one.

And so she had set out on this path, of metaphysics and quantum mechanics and questioning the very building blocks of the universe around her. Rika knew that the fragments she had traveled were made from the coalesced wills of thousands of different people crashing together to form a myriad of possibilities: once she had begun her backing in science, it was easy to identify the moments of quantum superposition. The fragments were crystalized possibilities, and with Hanyuu's help, Rika had become the same as Schrödinger's cat, leaping from one possibility to another.

A cat was locked inside a box with a flask of poison, a monitor, and a radioactive source. If the monitor detected radioactive decay, the flask would be smashed, releasing the poison and killing the cat. According to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum superposition, a quantum system remained in superposition until it interacted with or was observed by the outside world. Due to the factors in the experiment, a situation was eventually induced where the cat was simultaneously alive and dead –but of course, when you opened the box, the cat was either alive or dead.

So when did the superposition collapse? When did "interacting" with the outside world occur? When someone set their hands on the box? When the lid was cracked the tiniest fraction? When your fingers slipped beneath the lid? When light crept into the sealed container? And what was the situation for the cat before the superposition collapsed, simultaneously alive and dead?

Rika, more than anyone, had an inkling of how it felt for the cat.

She wanted to know the science behind her own box, though, the reason that a quantum system had formed around herself, and what this system truly was. That had been what she studied, what she had been pushing for all these long years. And at last, now, tonight, she had found it.

And she was not celebrating.

Slowly and carefully, Rika removed her reading glasses, cleaning them with the edge of her labcoat. She had found her answers, yes, but…but knowledge had a way of getting out. What benefit was it, to be someone who lived in loops? Because people would want the benefits of her science. Rika was uniquely poised to reveal a fantastic, unbelievable truth to the world, something that would shake civilization down to its very core –proof that something very close to the supernatural existed, proof that magic and alternate realities were almost within their grasp. The possibilities spinning out from her reveal would create a universe of fragments, more prolific than the stars in the sky.

But was that necessarily a good thing?

The whole point, purpose, and benefit of being caught in the loops that Rika had found herself in was reincarnating herself, reliving the same horrible, horrible span of months over and over again in order to find the culprit that had killed her. Rika had witnessed some terrible things in her time loops, and that was only her, only a sparse population of some 2,000 people –less, usually, considering the major players on her stage. She had lived them to escape them, and what people clamoring for her power would undoubtedly forget was that they were essentially trapping themselves, not freeing themselves. Could she face being responsible for that?

And what about unscrupulous people? What about people who wanted to spend a certain span of time abusing someone or committing crimes, safe in the absolute knowledge that they would not be caught?

It wasn't just the weight of the world caught in those double-handful pages of notes, stacked neatly atop Rika's desk in front of her. It was the weight of infinite worlds, infinite choices, infinite possibilities. Did Rika want to be the one to carry it?

Easing out another slow breath, Rika smoothly replaced her glasses. She stood, her face calm and her movements unhurried as she moved to gather up her notes. Her low heels clacked sedately on the well-worn tiles of the clinic's floor, her long hair swaying behind her as Rika made her way out of her office. She passed Irie with a nod, murmured greetings to the other members of the clinic as she made her unhurried way outside.

The swampy air of Hinamizawa's summer night enfolded her with clammy arms, and Rika brushed her brief discomfort away as she click-clacked her way down the short stretch of stairs. She was calm, too, as she got in her battered old car and began to drive, her eyes focused firmly on the future ahead.

She stopped near the stairs up to the shrine, by where picnics and meetings were held. Her notes were clasped in one hand as Rika shut the car door, tucked under her elbow and held securely against her body. Perhaps there was a moment of hesitation as she held them out –perhaps her fingers trembled with reluctance for just an instant as she thought of all the years of work and study she had put into understanding what had happened to her. But that was just it: these were answers Rika had found for herself. For herself. This knowledge was something that she had found in order to satisfy her own craving for the truth.

Rika's fingers were steady as she held the tips of the pages to the small fire smoldering in the old stone braziers. She was unmoving as they caught, unblinking as she let go and watched the flames eat away at her life's work. She stood and she stared until every last page had crumbled to a grey ash, and only then did she turn, only then did she begin to make her slow and stately way up the old steps to the shrine.

The cat in the box migt be simultaneously alive and dead, but the cat in the bag, at least, was staying where it was.

10.02 AM, USA Central Time


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