At Mion's side, the rain lashed down without forgiveness. She would have been soaked were it not for the car. Beside her and in front of her, the rain fell and fell and even with the windscreen wipers working overtime, the rain was all you could see through the glass. Though the headlights blared at the road in front, the rain blared back, a thousand droplets all at once, a thousand lines of graylead scribbling out the world like it was a mistake.
Under his breath, Kasai cursed, and Mion gently rested a hand on his knee. She gave him a reassuring squeeze.
"I'm really sorry about this," she said, and she meant it, she really did. "But you driving me all the way back here after all these years… you know, it means a lot to me."
With barely a day's notice, he'd driven all the way out to pick her up and was now driving her all the way home - to the place that had once been her home. She'd wanted to forget. She'd thought she would. Weren't memories supposed to wither away with time? But hers… well. It had been years, and in those years her memories had grown like ivy. Never mind the great deal of distance she had put between herself and Hinamizawa - it haunted her more and more with each day that passed.
One thing haunted her more than anything else, however. It was why she had called Kasai, almost begging him to drive her back here. She had to come back for what she'd left behind. She had to find her.
The rain continued to sleet down sideways, and the car pushed steadily through. Steadily - the roads around here looped and twisted, and were slippery as ribbons in heavy rain like this was. One tick too fast and the car would dive muzzle-first into almost certain death. A morbid thought, but Hinamizawa had always inspired those kinds of thoughts from her. Mion felt the flare of the tattoo on her skin, the demon, and continued to focus on the road.
She could hardly see anything for the rain and the fog. It was summer, but if there had ever been any sun in the sky, it had long since been swallowed by the downpour.
It was humid, though, and the air-con was blasting in the way the radio might have been, had you been able to pick up a signal around here in this weather. Irreverently Mion thought that Ooishi would be proud, and then she corrected herself - he couldn't be proud, he was dead. He had to be. It had been so long since those days and he'd been so old back then that surely he'd kicked over the ashtray by now. Surely.
There weren't any other cars on the road, as far as Mion could see through the haze of mist and rain. And no other sound than the loud hiss of the rain all around. She thought of a television being tuned, but the picture of Hinamizawa never came into view, not even when she parked the car on the edge of town and stepped out to confront it directly.
The car door opened to a wall of rain. Had they packed an umbrella? A hand over her head (like that would help keep the rain away, but what else could she do?) Mion hurried around to the trunk of the car and booted it open. No umbrella, but a flashlight had been rolling around in there. Maybe she'd have something in her suitcase… if she'd brought one, which she hadn't, since she hadn't planned on staying here overnight. All she had was the car and everything in it, and there wasn't anything in the car aside from the flashlight, a book of directions, and the other useless junk a car usually held.
Mion frowned and took the flashlight, hoping it was loaded with batteries but not bothering to twist it open and check. A flick of the switch would tell her everything she needed to know , and it did - a circle of yellow light beamed out and bobbed up and down as she moved the flashlight around, before switching it off again. She shut the trunk and locked up the car, then pushed the keys into her left pocket, the one that didn't have her wallet in it.
The rain continued to flood down and it really wasn't long before she lowered her hand from her head and gave in to the cascade. Her legs were already shiny with rainwater and her shirt was so soaked it clung to her skin. Her hair, too, was plastered wetly to the back of her neck. She could have stayed in the car and waited for the rain, rain, to go away, but who knew how long that would take? She didn't want to spend more time out here than she had to. She'd come all the way out here without a suitcase for a reason.
Sucking in a breath through her rain-flecked nose, Mion put the parked car behind her and walked across the wet, puddly grass at the edge of HInamizawa on to the gravel road leading in. She had to walk the rest of the way - she couldn't have parked any closer - if you didn't live in Hinamizawa, there wasn't anywhere for you to park your car - and she no longer lived here. She hadn't lived here since long, long ago.
Long ago as that had been, however, she got this feeling, as she trailed the gravel road into town alone, Mion got this feeling of deja vu, like she'd been here before, in this way, trailed wet gravel that led into the town she no longer lived in. She should have asked Kasai to keep her company, but he was back in their apartment in Okonomiya, wasn't he? Besides, he wouldn't've been able to join her anyway - it was bad enough that she'd returned. The family would be furious if they discovered that he'd been the one to drive her here.
Unease bit into her with each crunching step she took. She wrapped her arms around herself and kept on walking despite her nervousness. She was here now. Shion could be here. Shion, who had gone missing on that night, all those years ago. Shion, whose face haunted her nightmares. Shion, who she sometimes saw when she looked in the mirror, a half of her that had gone missing, a half of her she'd lost.
Lost and missing were the words she'd been clinging to all these years. Lost and missing meant Shion could still be found. Mion was the only one who could find her. Their family despised Shion, always had. Years had passed since Shion's disappearance and had anyone found her? Had anyone gone looking for her? They'd probably let themselves forget her. It would have been a relief for them, a huge relief, not to have to care anymore about the girl they never wanted to care about anyway.
But Mion hadn't forgotten. How could she, anyway, when those nightmares stalked her every night, reminding her how bitterly she regretted what had happened back then? She hadn't kept Shion safe. Back then, she'd told herself the only thing that mattered was escaping Hinamizawa alive. She'd been so selfish. What about Shion? What about her sister? She'd left without her sister, left her behind, alone.
She was punished for it. The nightmares, the feeling she was being watched, being judged, a prickling sensation of the back of her neck that prickled like a weed every time she was alone, the feeling that she was never really alone. Shion's eyes were boring into her from where she had been lost to, silently screaming for her to come home, come back to Hinamizawa, sis, come home, sis, help, help…
The crunching beneath Mion's feet stopped as the silhouette of the town took shape before her, still foggy in the rain, but very much there. Here. Shion had been begging her to come back, come home, and, well, here she was, now. …Home.
It didn't feel like a homecoming. She thought it would, but maybe it didn't feel like home because it didn't look like the HInamizawa she remembered, not in this rain. It felt empty. Houses and the doors that opened into them passed Mion by as she walked through the town in the vague direction of the main house - and while nothing was boarded up, while nothing was rotting from the outside or broken into, Mion had this sickening feeling that if she were to open the doors to any of these houses, there'd be nothing inside them. Before, she'd rummaged through the car for an umbrella she didn't have, only to see that there wasn't anything in the car aside from the seats, the pedals, steering wheel, dashboard…
These houses would be a different kind of empty than the car. There wouldn't be anything inside them - at all - those doors would open to pitch black darkness with nothing, not a thing, existing beyond.
The thought dissolved as she broke into a shiver. She blinked out of the trance she had fallen into. Where had all that come from? It was just rainy, that was all. The town was still the town. It might be drenched in rain rather than sunlight, but Hinamizawa was still Hinamizawa.
Mion shook her head, sending droplets of water flying from her silvery green bangs. She had no reason to be paranoid. Everything was fine. Her neck was a little itchy, but that was about it.
Her fingernails were halfway down her neck when the rain fell silent. It didn't stop falling. It fell silently. The droplets that had been lashing torrentially down made no noise now as they hit the ground. Not a sound. Everything was silent, the static dead. You couldn't even hear the air. When Mion turned around in bewilderment, feet walking her around in a circle, no sound was made between her shoes and the ground - the crunching from before was gone. For a long, unsettling moment, Mion couldn't hear her own breaths.
All was so silent that Mion didn't notice the ringing in the distance until it was behind her. The cry of the higurashi moved like a heatwave across the road, ringing louder and louder as it came closer and closer. It was closing in on her.
Mion snapped her head back to the road and began to run. At the same time, the droplets of rain collectively remembered how to fall noisily and all fell down upon her face, in her eyes, pelting her as she pelted down the street. The cry of the higurashi was chasing her. They were coming for her. She ran without wondering why and she did not stop running.
By the time she'd reached the gates of the Sonozaki main house - why here? She could have sworn she was running blindly - had the higurashi chased her here? The sound had crawled into her ears, ringing, ringing like a telephone. She climbed up the wall surrounding the estate but the climb back down never happened, for she slipped at the top and ended up falling shoulder-first over to the other side.
Somewhere between the fall and the ground, the phone in her ear stopped ringing. Someone had picked it up.
Mion was in tears. She wished he had given it to her, she said, her words clipped by her sobs here and there. She didn't understand why he had given it to Rena instead. Rena already had one.
Shion coiled the telephone cord around her finger thoughtfully. "Maybe he's just stupid," she said compassionately.
No, Mion went on to insist, Kei-chan was a smart boy, a clever boy. Shion was wrong about him.
Shion had to explain herself. "No, I mean, he probably wasn't thinking when he did it. Don't you know how boys can be like that?"
But, Mion said, sniffing, he said there's no way she'd want the doll, since she was too boyish to like dolls. But she wanted it, and she - and she wanted him to give it to her.
"Well, did you ask him for it?" Shion asked. "Did you say you wanted to have a doll of your own, too?"
Another sniffle, on the other end of the line, and Shion could almost hear Mion shake her head. N-No, said Mion, trying to catch her breath. She didn't. But–
"But he should have known anyway," said Shion, finishing Mion's sentence for her and agreeing with it. "He should have known you wanted one, too."
She gripped the receiver, angry, so angry, on her sister's behalf. Mion liked him, and he'd hurt her feelings. Mion really liked him, and Shion would make him pay.
Mion opened her eyes, then immediately shut them - it was still raining.
Blindly, she came to her other senses and found that she was lying on her back on a patch of soggy grass. Pressing her fingers into the wet soil, she pushed herself up to a seated position and tried rubbing the water from her eyes before she opened them again.
When she could look around, she saw the wall she'd climbed over on her left. After falling from it, she must have been knocked out on impact with the ground. She couldn't see where the flashlight had gone to, but it was gone.
Making sure her arms and legs were okay, and they were, Mion rose back to her feet and let out a huff. …She had really wanted that doll, hadn't she. She had really wanted Kei-chan to give it to her. That tearful call she'd had with her sister… she hadn't thought about it in years, but it burned at the back of her throat now, like it was fresh, like she had just gotten off the phone a moment ago. Shion had promised to teach Keiichi a lesson - and had she done that? Was that why Shion had gone missing?
The screeching of the higurashi's cry had ended when Mion came to, and all she heard now was the squish of her feet over soggy grass as she headed away from the wall. She was at the door before she was aware she'd been walking in this direction, toward the house. The rooftop extending over the walls of the house offered her shelter from the rain, and under its cover, the door was completely dry.
The rains of today weren't all that hadn't touched it, however. Time seemed to have left it alone, too. The door hadn't changed a bit since the last time Mion was here. Those hinges were ruddishly rusted, but they had always been that way. The wood was still unsunken, still firm, still deeply mahogany. That weird feeling Mion had had before, the thought where all the doors she'd passed by opened only to nothingness - that feeling wasn't present here, as she stared at the door to the Sonozaki main house. This house felt deeply, deeply lived in… maybe Shion really was here, in this house where Mion had last seen her before she'd disappeared. Maybe, unlike her sister, she had never left.
Mion knew from years upon years of lived experiences what lay beyond these doors. If she was going to search for Shion anywhere in Hinamizawa, she would begin here, the place she knew best of all. Hoping the doors weren't bolted, Mion reached for the iron-wrought handles and tugged.
The doors split apart in two perfect halves, reminding Mion of… something… and she hoped she'd find her sister soon. She hoped she'd find her here. With a deep breath, Mion braced herself and went in.
She was about to shut the doors behind her when she was met abruptly by the stench of dust. Coughing, she batted a hand in front of her, then felt around on the wall until she found the light switch. With a flick, the ceiling, the walls, and the floor of the entryway were brought into view.
With the way the door had looked, she'd expected nothing to have changed inside the house, either. But in here, at least in the entryway, dust had draped itself in layers upon layers over the furniture, its motes sifting through the air, making it taste thick, and old. Underneath the cloth of dust, the furniture was the same - but where there had once been a dozen pairs of shoes in different sizes by the door, where you were supposed to take them off before entering - there was only one pair now. A pair of boots, repeatedly worn, the stitching broken around the heel and half the grommets chipped or broken. This was odd. Those were her shoes - Mion's shoes. She stared at them. She hadn't seen them in years - but - those were her shoes. They had been worn recently. There wasn't a thread of dust on them.
"Shion….?" Mion called out. The set of doors ahead were shut. Behind her, through the front doors left open, the rain continued to fall. No other sound answered her call. Mion swallowed.
After a pause, she knelt herself down and took off her own shoes, set them beside the pair of boots - her pair of boots - but not so close they were touching. She didn't trust them, and didn't want to find out what would happen if she touched them. She hadn't worn them since she was a teenager. And yet. Here they were now, the very same pair, looking not as good as new but not affected by the years, either - a complete contrast to the rest of the room, the house, the town.
Mion rose to her feet. Her bare feet - seeing no household slippers anywhere, she had nothing to slip her toes into before she took any more steps into the house. She would have to go in on foot, and on nothing but foot.
Her first few steps were fuzzy. It was like walking over carpet - the tatami flooring was wearing layers of dust like a rug. It burrowed between her toes, and trying to scrape it off only dug it in deeper. The dust was piled on thickly everywhere. How long had it been since anyone had come this way? Since anyone had even been here? The only footprints she could see on the dusty tatami flooring were her own, walking backward from where she stood now to where the two pairs of shoes were, hers and… hers. Those boots of… hers…
Compelled to keep going, spurred on by this feeling in her gut, this almost sick feeling that Shion was here, Mion stepped further into the room until she was at the sliding doors which led into the house's main corridor. She curled a hand around the wooden handle. She hesitated a moment, but was quick to steel herself, and then she pulled the sliding door open, daring to enter the mansion proper.
What was that thudding noise? Shion spun around, eyes wide in the darkness. Was… someone… something… banging against the floorboards, where she couldn't see? She gripped Keiichi's arm hard enough to dig her fingernails in. Keiichi let out a yell, and pulled his arm back. What was it, Shion?
"D-Don't you hear that?" she whimpered, and went for his arm again.
He pulled his arm all the way away from her. Hear what?
"That– that banging sound!"
But Keiichi insisted he couldn't hear anything, and told Shion to stop messing with him. Shion bit her lip and rushed behind him, to hide. She wanted to believe he was trying to trick her but she couldn't ignore the sincerity she heard in his voice, either - like he was telling the truth, and he really couldn't hear anything. Still… couldn't he be more compassionate, help her calm down, reassuringly pat her head…? What ever did Mion see in this boy? He was nothing like her Satoshi-kun… nothing… like… him… at… all…
The whole point of dragging Keiichi in here with her was to punish him for hurting Mion's feelings. By the time they were out, however, Shion was the one who was shivering. What was that sound she'd heard? She'd definitely heard it! Why hadn't Keiichi? Why couldn't he have been the one to hear it instead of her! Furious, and scared, and determined to get her revenge, Shion pelted as far away from the ritual storeroom as she could, leaving Keiichi behind, on his own.
The next time she spoke to him was in tears over the phone, warning him that the curse of Oyashiro-sama would come for them - for him - for having trespassed in the storeroom on that night. Make him tremble in his stupid red vest, make him jump in fright at the slightest of whispers. She would do anything for her sister.
That night, she remembered, pulling on the chain that lit up the corridor, Shion had come home with bloodshot eyes and trembling hands. What had happened after that?
The corridor was lined with dust all the way down, just as the entryway had been, although it was harder to make out the print of any footsteps on the floor - the one bulb lighting the whole corridor was dim and flickering and shrouded in a layer of dust of its own.
Shion had come home that night. She remembered the encounter in this very corridor. Was that… the last time anyone had seen her? It was the last time Mion had seen her. She tried but struggled and ultimately failed to remember what happened after that. It had been years since that night and everything which followed, and for all that the memories had haunted Mion enough to bring her back here, now it was like they were clouded as if by the dust that muffled her footsteps now and clogged her lungs as she ventured further and further into the house.
All that echoed in her head were Shion's cries, her sister begging for help, begging her not to hurt him, don't hurt him, don't leave me here, stop it, Mion…!
A sound cut through the echo in her head and the battering of rain overhead and Mion froze. She waited with eyes wide to hear the sound again, but only silence stared back at her. The footstep she'd heard at the other end of the corridor stood still. Just one footstep. One footstep, and the step had been in her direction.
It was like the rain had stopped raining for how hard Mion listened for another step. The corridor was too silent without the second step.
Mion would have run, but seized by fear as she was, she couldn't move at all, just stared down the corridor eyes painfully wide in the cloudy yellow light like if she looked hard enough she could see the sound she'd heard. She had definitely heard it. But there wasn't anything there, on the other side, just a darkened corridor-end up ahead that the lightbulb couldn't reach. There was no one there. There was nothing there.
She knew what she'd heard, though - and not about to let it make a fool of her the way it had with Shion in the ritual storeroom, she braved a step forward. She'd only taken one step. Just one. So one step should have been all she'd heard. And she did hear the step she took. Then she heard one she didn't take, right behind her. She turned around.
She turned around and a demon with blood-red eyes and long shiny teeth stared back at her, face flickering in the light.
Something broke inside Mion. She screamed loud enough to hurt her throat and her feet clattered under her body as she fled fast as she could without shoes on down the corridor to the other end. She didn't turn once to see how close the demon was behind her, but she felt its chase, heard the extra footstep thudding close to her, any close and the thing the demon had in its hand would claw into her skin, she hadn't stayed long enough to see what it had been holding but she knew, she knew as soon as it touched her that she would be dead.
She wouldn't let herself die here. Not here, not in this house, not here, not in Hinamizawa, not here, not after all that she'd sacrificed just so she could escape.
Fleeing through an open door, she whipped around and pushed it shut behind her, held it in place expecting the demon to prise it open. The door stayed shut, however, there was no resistance from the other side. After a moment, the downpour of rain resumed overhead, washing away the silence. It took Mion a while to let go of the shut sliding door. When she did, she let out a sigh along with. She wasn't even sure where she had run into, until she pulled away from the door and turned around to face the room proper. The light was already on, just as the door had already been opened.
It was Shion's room, the one she'd stayed in when she'd stayed with Mion and their family, in June of 1983. It was almost completely empty, but then, it had never had much furniture in it to begin with, had it? This had always been the spare room the family used as a storage closet. The boxes were still piled up on one side, probably filled with rot by now. On the other side of the room, the side with the clock on the wall, lay a futon and pillow. Just like the boots, these weren't covered in any of the dust. If someone had slept in the bed recently, though, Mion couldn't tell - the bed was neatly made, barely a dimple left in even the pillow.
In the center of the made bed was a taser.
A very long time passed before Mion crouched down to pick it up.
In her hands it was heavy, bricklike. Testingly, she flicked the switch on its side. It whined with electricity it probably forgot it ever had and sputtered awake, wire tips sparking before setting into a dangerous hum. In Mion's hand, it was shaking like a ladder, because she herself was shaking. Whoever had left this here had wanted her to find it and in her stomach she knew she never wanted to find it.
If it had been a knife, it would have been stained with the blood of all its victims - but tasers never drew blood, and so this one was clean, almost as though it had never, not once ever, been used, least of all on a person. She switched it off.
Mion almost put the taser back down on the bed, but when she went back to the door, the only door leading in and out of this poor excuse from a bedroom, the taser was still in her hand.
Still shaking, and itchy again, she raised her free hand to her neck and gave it a few quick scratches, then slid the door open, and it slid with a shudder.
Overhead, the rain fell quiet again, leaving the whole world silent save for the slow tap of footsteps along floorboards… not nearby, not inside, but outside.
When Mion began to move along the corridor again, it was with ears straining to hear the footsteps outside, her own feet pressing noiselessly as she took careful, measured steps through the body of the house.
She was wired, on edge. The rain was still halted. Only one noise was coming from anywhere and it was the tap of the footsteps Mion was trying to trace, and follow. They weren't the demon's footsteps - they were a sound Mion would never be able to forget, because they followed her everywhere no matter where she was. They were the sound of Shion's footsteps, which had always sounded like her own.
After all this time, though, all these years of hearing only her feet make that sound, it was a little eerie, just a little, hearing it come from somewhere else. For every step she took, another echoed in the distance.
She wasn't counting her steps, so she couldn't have said how many she'd taken before she realized both she and Shion's footsteps were heading in the same direction - to the sliding doors that opened on to the back of the house, where the garden once flourished, where the footpath needed to be swept every day lest the fallen leaves build up, where the path then lead into an open expanse of trees and meadow which hid from view the entrance to…
The underground ritual storehouse echoed with laughter and screams.
Stop it, Mion! Don't hurt him! She had cried, her knuckles locked around the iron bars she desperately clung to. She rattled. Leave Kei-chan alone! Please don't!
"Keh heh heh heh!" Shion laughed, her grin bearing all her teeth. "You really want me to let him go that badly? Then, say you're sorry. Say it a hundred times."
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry–
Shion didn't bother to count. Nothing, not even an apology spoken a hundred times, was going to stop her. 'Kei-chan' deserved this. She readied her nails - her iron nails, and her hammer to drive them in with.
Mion was sobbing dirtily into the prison bars by the time Shion was done. Those words, I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry, had broken down into wretched, hoarse mumbles, wrackled with huge, sharp breaths and heavy cries. Mi - on - she choked, I'm so - r - ry…
They would be here soon. There wasn't much time left. Passed out on the table, Keiichi lay with his eyes shut and his breathing inaudible. Further down the hall of cells, inside the well that dropped infinitely down from a dip in the floor, the others lay, too, some with their eyes open and some with their eyes shut, their breaths inaudible, too, because they weren't breathing at all any more.
Shion's eyes locked with Mion's and in that one, palpable moment that had a heartbeat all of its own, there was no one else in the world, nothing outside this loveless embrace of the underground chamber.
Taking the keys in one hand and the taser in the other, Shion went over and unlocked the cell. With a creak, the heavy door tilted open.
The door opened to reveal the demon, full moonlight on its shoulders, staring at her, those eyes. Her hand tightened around the edge of the sliding door, and her pulse beat in her palm, but she didn't run, the same way the demon wasn't running.
They stood there, each a reflection of the other, and for Mion the reflection was distorted by water as tears began to fill her eyes.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." A hundred times, and she was counting, this time. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm–"
The demon lifted a finger to Mion's lips, held it there until she stopped, then lowered its hand. Its arm hooked and it wanted her to take it. The gesture was so familiar. Shiny green bangs fell over Mion's eyes as she turned her face to the ground, letting her tears fall straight on to the wooden boards rather than down her cheeks.
Keeping her head down, the apology I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry still hammering at her chest, her heart, she took the demon by the arm and let herself be led down the path this time.
In the moonlight, the garden would have been ravaged by all the years that had passed it by untended, but when Mion's eyes weren't squeezed shut, they were blurred by tears. She knew, as she had always known, that she had no right and every right to cry. She didn't cry quietly. Her sobs heaved up the back of her throat, louder than Mion's had been that day, buried in the bowels of the underground.
Now, the cries rang out across the desolate estate up to the moon, but the moon remained unmoved in the sky and the demon by her side stared through unblinking yellow eyes out at the path ahead, its mouth open in a grimace of a thousand teeth sharp as nails, a very grim reminder of a past where nails had been taken and nails had been given in a cruel, undeserved cycle of suffering.
She and the demon arm-in-arm had wound halfway around the house when Mion let out another loud, ugly cry. She wiped her face with her free arm, which did nothing to help as her sleeve was already wet from all the rain before. I'm sorry, I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry –
They stopped at the edge of the house, at the edge of the garden path leading up to the underground ritual chamber, the world of the present and the world of the past. The demon stared ahead at the trees Mion knew from memory obscured the entrance to the underground ritual chamber. Her arm still linked with the demon's, her voice still ringing out deep, guttural sobs like dirty water from a dishrag, she squeezed her eyes shut again and squeezed the demon's arm, trying to pull it back, trying to pull the demon away from there.
"I don't– I can't–" She took a step back, still pulling on the demon's arm, her whole body shaking with effort and the sobs she was still shedding. Her knees knocked together. She pulled and pulled.
"I don't want to. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't want to go back there. I'm sorry, I'm sorry." She pulled now as if she could pull herself free and run back to the house, back through the down, back to her car, drive her foot into the pedal and drive away, drive far, far away.
But the demon's hold on her arm was ironclad.
"Pl - ease - …don't… t…ake… me… there…"
The demon went on staring straight ahead as Mion fell fully to her knees, her whole face open in anguish. Her arm, still linked in the demon's, hung above her. Her head swung over the rain-muddied grass, wet fronds scraping across her face.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm –"
– sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Shion scowled. "I don't want to hear your apology any more," she said. "Go down into the well and apologize to him instead. He's the one you should be saying sorry to."
Mion was just mumbling the words now, her face so pale and lifeless, the light inside her so close to going out for good.
She stepped to the edge of the well, and in a burst of electricity, the light really did leave Mion's eyes. Shion could hardly hear the thud of death at the bottom of the well but she knew full well any will to live her sister had had left had been fried in that last moment as taser met skin…
As taser met skin, the demon jolted where it stood, then collapsed backward. The sole of its bare foot, where she'd pressed the lit taser, had been wet by the rain on the ground - the shock of electricity would have been fatal.
Its arm opened as it fell, and Mion pulled herself free from it. Wiping her face with the back of her hand, she got to her feet. She turned to face the demon. Under the direct lamp of the moon, all its features were brought to light.
The horns were long and shiny, shiny green bangs on either sides of its face. Its eyes were open and they were bright blue. Its mouth hung open in an expression of horror that exactly matched the one on Mion's face now as she stared at it.
Her eyes were just as unblinking, her green bangs just as shiny. It was like looking into a mirror. Mion wasn't crying any more - her face was too dry for tears, too hot, burning. It couldn't be.
The taser fell from her fingers and she fell back to her knees, hands scrabbling at the demon. She scrabbled at the demon's white kimono, trying to open the overlap at the front. She didn't want to find what she was looking for, and she found it. The demon.
It glared through the parted curtain of kimono fabric and her hands shook on either side of its face. She gripped the fabric, fingers twisting in the cotton. No, no. She shook her head, her mouth open in a silent scream.
With a sudden, rough push, she shoved the demon away from her and yanked her hands to her own clothes and began unbuttoning her shirt, loosening her tie. The light of the moon spilled on to her hands and then through the open fabric on to the skin of her chest, the very plain, very untattooed skin of her chest. The demon was supposed to be there. It wasn't.
Mion glanced back at the… at the… at…
Shion… Mion…
…where it was…
…where it had been, on the grass before her, where she had been, but there was nothing there, now. The wet strands of the grass reached up to the moon tearfully and her sister was gone.
Shion's hands, having let go of her shirt, clutched desperately at the grass where her younger sister and the demon on her chest had lain. She was shivering, and the words, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," trembled in her mouth. Organic life snapped between her fingers as she tugged the grass out, nails digging in to the soil. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. But her younger sister, Shion… no, they'd swapped places, she was Mion now, the older sister now, she had taken Mion's place and Mion had taken hers and she was gone.
And she had been gone a long, long time.
Teeth chattering, Shion fell face-first into the field of unbodied grass and screamed without tears into the dirt. Mion had been gone a very, very long time. She was dead. Along with Keiichi, and Satoko, and Rika, and their granny, the mayor, she had been killed. Shion had - Mion had - Shion had - she had killed them, and they all lay without tombstones deep beneath this very soil, where the moonlight could never reach.
By now the face of the demon would be rotting deep in to the bones of her younger-then-older sister's ribcage. But the demon itself had always been inside her, the one born first, the one who had ultimately killed the other and was still alive now, trying to crawl into the ground. The demon had always been within her. She felt it now, talons inching through her body, up her spine. She reached up, fingers shaking, and she felt the demon creep into her chest, into her throat…
Shion scratched at her neck, and laughed in agony at the pain of nails on skin.
Shion expected to die, out there in that meadow, behind the Sonozaki main house. A part of her had hoped for death as she clawed at her throat. What else was left for her? She was the shadow of her dead sister. She might as well be a ghost.
But he still had her eyes, and they opened now to a clean set of white sheets, draped over the body she still had, tucked in to either side of the bed she awoke to. On the bed, her hands lay twisted in bandages, layers of wrapping over layers, and she held them up before her, turning them over front and back. At the slightest movement of her head, she felt a similar binding around her neck - instinctively she reached up to touch it, then realized she couldn't feel anything with fingers wrapped up. She let her hands settle back down on the bed and a sigh followed soon after.
At her side, sunlight streamed in through a window with its sash raised and the curtain before it billowed in the breeze. Outside, the cicadas were chirping. Was it morning? The curtain's edge, floating on the breeze, nudged an IV drip standing vigil at the bedside, and in the distance, or maybe on the other side of the bed, a monitor beeped periodically.
This room, her being here, none of it seemed real, and she half-expected , maybe even hoped, this illusion of peace would be sharply broken by someone, something, climbing out from under her bed, the final nail in the coffin of this nightmare, ending it, ending her.
This didn't happen. The room remained quiet save for the occasional shifting of the curtain in the breeze and Shion's own breathing. It was a long, quiet time before the door opened and someone came in.
She'd expected a doctor, a nurse, someone with a stethoscope around their neck. The person who entered had red braces slung over each shoulder and a red tie down his front. He had a jacket in his hand, and he asked her how she was holding up, but he wasn't a doctor.
He lay his jacket on the back of the visitor's seat beside the bed and lowered himself into it.
"Now," he said, "Sonozaki-san. Are you ready to tell me what happened last week?"