Note to readers:
I haven't played Fatal Frame with that much sound (unfortunate for me because I know that the prime source of the game's scare factor comes from sound – or lack of it at certain parts). I played the game in a noisy (and I mean noisy) PS2 . . . arcade . . . where I had to pay 25 PHP (close to half a dollar) an hour – and that is expensive . . . I can buy lunch with that kind of money.
By the way, this fic follows the "normal" ending for the game. And also, this is, as the title implies, an epilogue of sorts, which means, there are spoilers here and there for those who haven't gone far into the game. I'll try to keep it at a minimum though.
Anyway, enjoy the fic.
GLOSSARY (for terms that I think might not be in common use credit goes to Byakko's Recon for bringing up the idea.
"Scratch lines" – those weird lines you sometimes see moving side to side in old movies. Some kung fu movies from the 60's to the 80's would be good examples (From the originals, not the digitally remastered versions)
"Sky-bridge" – bridges between buildings. (Some people don't know about these things. Trust me, the city I live in has only one overpass and one sky-bridge.)
"Barkada" – Filipino term roughly translated into a group of your close personal friends. Your gang, so to speak.
DISCLAIMER:
ALL CHARACTERS MY PROPERTY EXCEPT THE CHARACTERS PRESENT IN THE ORIGINAL GAME (MIYU, MAYU, YAE, SAE, ETC – I HAVE YET TO RECALL THE REST ).
ANY RESEMBLANCE OF MY CHARACTERS TO ANY PERSON REAL OR FICTITIOUS IS MERELY COINCIDENCE AND I AM NOT LIABLE TO BE PSYCHIC IF SAID CHARACTER/S END UP BEING EXACTLY LIKE SAID PERSON/S.
FATAL FRAME 2 FANFIC
EPILOGUE Chapter 01: SeedsYURIKO DILAG
The people back home say that dreams are like movies with big parts you can't remember.
This wasn't like a movie.
Radio . . . most likely.
"Help me!"
The voices were strange. She could still here the normal words but she could also hear what sounded like the backtrack of those voices overlapping with what she understood.
"Save me!"
There were no pictures, only darkness . . . and the voices . . . and the screams.
She didn't even think this was a dream.
It was as close to a nightmare as most.
Maybe it was.
"My eyes! My EYES!"
She was vaguely aware of the plane tilting slightly. They must be landing soon.
"So . . . dark . . . so . . . dark . . . save me . . . please . . . any . . . body."
"Yae! Why didn't you come back!"
Yae . . . that name . . .
"Yae Yae Yae yae yae yae yae . . . . . . . . . . . . . . YAE!"
She promised . . . what was it that she promised?
"It's our fault he died . . . yae . . . why didn't you come?"
Then, she heard giggling. The childlike giggling sounded out of place, but at the same time, unsettlingly fitting.
She suddenly found herself in a strange place. An old fashioned Japanese village. The buildings looked like they were from some outdated and overused samurai movie from the sixties. Which, it would seem, was exactly that. She was seeing in black and white . . . there were even scratch lines () that streaked here and there at the corners of her vision. But what was really weird was that when she looked down on herself, she was in full color.
The village was in ruins. Looking straight ahead, following the path between a destroyed house to her right and a wall to her left, the world was swallowed by the night and only a lone, flickering lantern gave the little light around it. The lantern was blood red.
Well, since she was already here, she might as well look around.
From the first step she took, she knew she was in trouble. How . . . she didn't know.
Sand crunched beneath her shoes with each step. The oppressive silence threatened to crush her from every direction. The wind caressed her face even though she knew there wasn't any wind. Her heart pounded next her to eardrums with each step she took.
With each step, she found herself more and more mesmerized by the crimson light. Like a moth to a flame. Like a butterfly to a flower.
The girl's voice was clear, not like the wordless and coherent screams earlier. It was more human, more real, and more . . . alive.
"Yae."
She spun to her right and faced a wide alley. Her hair, flipping in front of her eyes, obscured her vision of what seemed to be something that glowed white.
Brushing her hair aside, she saw that there was nothing there.
Strange. Maybe that girl ran on.
Overcome with curiosity, she moved toward the alley, checking every door she passed and found that they were all locked. One door, strangely, remained closed even though she felt the door latch come open. Maybe the hinges were jammed.
Moving on she found herself going down a large stairway. The building surrounding her started to grow large and imposing the farther she went down.
"Yae."
She looked up to a small sky-bridge () knowing that was where the voice came from. No one was there. Maybe she was just hearing things after hearing the name "Yae" almost every five seconds. So, she kept on walking until she came upon a gate.
A hand touched her shoulder.
"Yae, you came."
The hairs at the back of her neck rose. She spun around. No one was there.
What is going on?
She stepped back, groping behind her for something to hold on to. Her hand found the wooden gate.
"Yae."
Her eyes widened in terror. The presence and the voice behind her were as real as someone breathing on her shoulder. Fear ran up and down her spine in cold waves.
"Yae."
She found herself facing a girl. She looked into pitch-black eyes fixed on an impossibly white face that looked through hers as well. Try as she might, she couldn't look away. The girl's grip on her face was terrifying. How the girl managed to hold her without her knowing it was frightful enough.
But the scream . . .
That one scream that came from all directions filled her soul with terror. It threatened to rip her apart in pain.
The world around her faded from existence in a blinding white light. But the girl's face never left her. It came closer and closer until it was the last thing she could see.
"Ma'am?" it was the flight attendant.
The white flash of light flickered reluctantly into nothing. But the young girl's face wasn't as eager to disappear. Thankfully, it slowly faded away as well.
Yuriko gasped awake, already dismissing and forgetting everything as a case of airsickness. She only put up with it because she was going to meet with her twin sister who lived with Dad in Japan. Mom didn't like the idea of her leaving the Philippines for two months every summer but she understood, even though the divorce was hard – and ugly – mom didn't like Yuriko being separated from a twin. And besides, Yuriko wasn't very fond of the April heat back home.
Mom and dad met each other in a Japanese college. Dad was majoring in Computer Science. Mom was his English teacher. It wasn't really that unusual; mom is four years younger than dad is.
Mom once told her, more than once with a smile, that Grandma almost died of a heart attack because she found out that Mom was going to be with a "yellow-skinned Hapon who was going to beat her daughter everyday".
Of course, Dad was never like that. Of the little she could remember of him from when she could remember until she was five, the time he and Mom got divorced, Dad never did anything that was anything close to what Grandma said. In fact, Yuriko knew that Mom and Dad were in love. Yuriko didn't know why Mom had to leave him, though – she never told her.
When the divorce papers were signed, Dad god Michiko, Mom got her.
It was two years before Mom was able to let Yuriko visit her sister. Well, Dad paid for everything anyway and Mom thought that she could at least let her see Michiko every summer to keep her and her sister close. Mom once said that the saddest thing she could ever see was to see twins hating each other. Yuriko never could figure out why Mom's eyes would turn sad when she said that.
"Yes?" Yuriko pulled herself away from her thoughts and answered the stewardess.
"We're landing soon, the captain just turned on the seatbelt sign," the stewardess said with a smile that matched those blue eyes and blond hair.
"Thank you," Yuriko replied while quickly strapping on the seatbelt. The stewardess was cute but was too old for her taste.
Oh crap, not again . . .
Inwardly, Yuriko groaned and repeatedly pounded the back of her head to her seat. That is what you get if most of your barkada ()are testosterone-crazy freaks more commonly known as teenage boys.
Straight! I'm straight, damn it! I'm not lesbian! . . . . . am I?
She almost howled at that last thought. Desperately, she put on her MP3 player's earphones, cranked up the volume to max, and pushed play on the first track on her list. However, the music that pounded on her ears weren't the J-pop Animé theme songs she downloaded and loved. It was one of Britney's songs.
To her horror, the images of that music video Britney had with Madonna flashed through her head. She practically yanked off the earphones from the shock.
This is Dana's MP3 player, not hers! Their players must have switched when they were rushing from the taxi to the terminal.
To her relief, the familiar squeal of the plane's tires on the tarmac saved her from any further disturbing thoughts her friends jammed into her brain.
The captain's voice on the PR thanked them all for their patronage and asked them all, in an orderly fashion to disembark after the plane has come to a full and complete stop. That last one reminded Yuriko of a fire drill. Maybe the captain was a fireman before he became a pilot.
The trip into the terminal was quite uneventful. Except for her luggage being the first down the moving line of bags, all she had to do was wait for either Michiko or Dad to pick her up.
Five minutes passed as she leaned on soda machine amidst the bustling crowds until . . .
"YURIKO!"
Before she even had time to turn to the screaming voice, she felt Michiko hit her with a full body tackle.
And the world went truly mad.
Images.
People.
Dead people. Dead people on the floor.
Twitching.
Moaning.
There was blood everywhere.
There were screams coming from everywhere.
Faces.
Faces staring at her with dead eyes.
A girl stood in the middle of a large room. Blood soaked her white kimono. Her sleeves were dripping with it. Her obe was black with blood.
She was laughing.
She was looking at her.
"Yae . . ." she called.
Yuriko slammed against the floor, knocking the breath out of her lungs. Luckily, her luggage broke most of the fall instantly forgetting the visions merely as shock."Yuriko?"
She must have hit her head on the way down to the floor. Michiko's face was a blur.
She felt her sister come off her while at the same time, offer her a hand up. Yuriko took the time to straighten herself out before taking a look at her twin sister.
Michiko looked exactly like Yuriko but by face only. The places where they grew up in allowed a few changes. While Yuriko's skin was tanned, Michiko was creamy white. While Yuriko's form was more athletic, Michiko was somewhere close to being a model.
Yuriko's hair was black, straight, and pulled back into a ponytail. Michiko had her short hair dyed a light pink streaked with white. A long pigtail started from the nape of her neck while the rest of her hair was cut short, and there was a small pink star – probably a sticker, Yuriko didn't really know – on Michiko's right cheek.
Yuriko was wearing her favorite set of clothes; a simple and comfortable green tank top and pants that covered her legs short of the ankles. Michiko, however, as always, dressed up like an animé character. Her twin sister had on a white T-shirt bordered pink on the sleeves and neckline and, unsurprisingly, a large pink star printed on the front. She wore a denim skirt that was short enough to be almost called a micro-mini. Michiko also had numerous and long strings of beads hanging from a belt hoop on her left thigh.
She had played enough PS2 to know that Michiko was trying use Yuna from FFX-2 as her "dress model" for the day. Not that she minds, Michiko is like that and Yuriko thought that it suited her sister.
Michiko sheepishly pulled back a strand of hair from her eyes. "How are you sis?" Her twin's English was pretty good – an effect of too much TV and too many books. It was a trait they both shared.
"I'm fine. The last I checked, I'm still alive . . . " Yuriko broke into a mischievous grin, " . . . well, most of me." She then hugged her sister.
They chatted with each other as they walked to the parking lot, dragging her luggage along the way. Dad got promoted on the job and was now head of the R&D department of a software company. Michiko was having trouble picking from five guys who were asking her out, not to mention that her twin sister was learning how to drive.
That Michiko would be the one to learn how to drive first didn't exactly make Yuriko jealous. It was just that liked the idea that they would learn together more.
They were both turning fifteen this April and Michiko said that Dad was going to send Mom an invitation, as always. Yuriko knew that Mom wouldn't accept it though, as always.
It was when they were in the airport's underground parking lot when . . .
"Yae . . ."
Yuriko's hair practically stood on end from the chilling feeling running up her spine. She turned this way and that looking for the source of the voice.
She tried to take in every detail when she turned her head to make sure she won't miss whoever was calling out. Cars were everywhere. She turned to her left and there was no one there, only cars. She turned to the right and there was only a van going up the ramp and into the road. She looked behind her and saw more cars and a girl in a white kimono. She looked back to the door and saw quite a large family, possibly Korean by their speech, spill out the doorway.
"Yuriko? What's wrong?" Michiko asked with a hand on Yuriko's shoulder.
Yuriko smiled, drawing some comfort from her sister's touch. "N-nothing . . . must be jetlag."
When they reached the car, they both dumped the bags into the trunk. When Yuriko was about to get inside however, that cold feeling ran up her spine once more.
A girl in a white kimono . . .
She turned around again, slowly. Her heart beat so hard that it might come through her chest. She knew that girl from somewhere. From some dream she couldn't recall.
"Yae . . ."
That name . . . that girl . . .
But when Yuriko's eyes found the spot, the girl was gone.
"I swear, Yuriko, I would be rich if I get a dollar for every time you space out at me." Michiko said with a grin but with a hint of a worried frown.
Yuriko just waved of her sister's concern while getting inside the car. "I'm fine," she said with a smile, "let's go see Dad."
Michiko's grin widened as they sped off towards the house.
Yuriko had a feeling that this summer would be a very memorable.