Whoo, back again! Higurashi Month 2019, because it has become one of my lowkey life goals to keep perpetuating this until it becomes a proper tradition for all three-and-a-half people in this graveyard of a fandom. And then keep doing it anyways, because tradition. If you wish to check out the prompt list, its on my tumblr page under the same username.
June 3rd, 2019
It was not exactly the most...authentic of dance halls.
Keiichi snorted under his breath, fiddling with his black clip-on tie.
Who was he kidding, this was nowhere near realistic.
Not that there was anything even remotely wrong with that. The lights Rena had strung over the crossbeams and metal H-bars sticking out from the heaps of trash –most of them recycled lamps clipped or otherwise tied onto a thick metal cable that had probably once been inside the motor of the discarded crane– surrounding the cleared-out patch of ground lent a certain aesthetic air to the impromptu dance floor, a sort of unique flare that was integral to the Hinamizawa Club spirit. There was a tangible energy in the air, a crackling sort of excitement born from plans made outside adult influence and executed with competence and even appreciable beauty. It was a flushed, tingling sense of an adrenaline-high made tangible in the misty yellow light falling across scrap heaps that may as well have been placed and arranged there by an artist. This was a place of freedom, of glaring artificial lights against the velvet black of a Hinamizawa summer night, of the scent of rusting iron and fun, and the very quaintness itself of their surroundings gave an electric lick of energy to his veins.
"Wow, Rena, you've really outdone yourself." Shion commented, and Keiichi made sure to audibly roll his eyes and groan as he looked over to the girls. Mion's grandma had taken her closer to civilization than most of them usually got to be, here in Hinamizawa, and in between meetings with her family or whatever Mion had gotten the opportunity to sneak out to a cinema and watch some American movie called West Side Story. She had been immediately taken with it: so taken, in fact, that she bootlegged a copy, powered up the Sonozaki television set upon her return, and dragged the entire club to her mansion to watch it.
Keiichi, who had not grown up in the howling provincial wilderness like the rest of them, was not seeing anything new, but the others were all similarly enraptured, and within the week, Mion had announced her positive intentions to hold a similar dance with their club, which was met with grand at approval, and plans had moved forward to host it in the junkyard and dress in period-appropriate clothes.
For Keiichi and Satoshi, that simply met a facsimile of the colorful tuxedos worn in the film. Keiichi had an off-white, quasi-lemon-colored suit jacket with matching pants, with one of his dad's red button-up shirts layered underneath, along with a dark vest and black clip-on tie acquired from the club's cosplay locker. Satoshi, for his part, simply had a grey suit jacket, black shirt, and white tie along with his usual black school slacks.
Shion, Keiichi strongly suspected, had stolen her outfit from her intimidating butler Kasai. Likely his childhood closet, as the white shirt, black tie and jacket, and sharp-cut fedora fit her perfectly...a little too perfectly, to be honest. Keiichi expected at any moment for her to start puffing on a cigar or pull a Glock from the pocket of her slacks.
Mion, of course, had gotten far too into this. She was wearing a near-exact replica of Anita's dress from the school dance, except a bottle-green instead of soft-lavender, and tapping her foot eagerly as she waited to begin. Rena was nearly as enthusiastic, with her blue poodle-skirt and slightly mismatched grey shoulder-padded jacket, eyes shining with excitement. Rika, Hanyuu, and Satoko, of course, had limited opportunities to get creative, as their outfits in the club locker were less versatile and the other club members had fewer things lying about in their sizes. But they had given it a good try anyways: Rika had pinned up her hair in a messy bun and strung a gaudy plastic necklace of red beads around her neck, and her spare teal sundress had had a few lace ruffles sewn in around the chest and hems, courtesy of a beneficent Rena. Satoko had raided the bathrooms of several of her friends and emerged with a fluffed-up, bouffant travesty of a punch perm, as well as false earrings with dangling feathers, and had filched one of her tamer maid dresses from Irie in the dead of night, dying and altering it so it was an eye-smarting shade of red and less heavily ruffled.
Hanyuu had, very firmly, refused any such notions, and as such the entire club had pitched in to stuff her into another hastily-altered maid dress, this one peach-colored with white trim, and bedeck her with gaudy plastic jewelry and torturous hairstyling, which had eventually terminated in a messy bun. Rika herself, with a satanical leer, had administered the final slathering of obnoxiously bright crimson lipstick to her cousin to finish out the makeover.
And now they were, theoretically, ready. The small space they had cleared for their dance was set, so hopefully no one would trip over a rusty soup can mid-step (Keiichi was not making any bets) and the lights were up, the boombox ready in a secluded nook with all the other club members as Keiichi eyed the packed earth "dance floor" with misgiving.
"Alright, everyone!" Mion grinned, caked in no small amount of tacky lipstick herself, gesturing forwards dramatically as the other club members hastened to take their places. "Let's mambo!"
She hit the Play button on the boombox with the heel of her foot and leaped forward, grabbing Keiichi by the wrists and spinning him into the dance as the brassy, metallic trumpeting of a blues saxophone filled the humid summer air, quickly joined by the beat of drums and the thrum of a guitar.
"Get out from that kitchen, and rattle those pots and pans, get out from that kitchen, and rattle those pots and pans,"
The words were in English and therefore halfway incomprehensible, but the beat still carried them over and swept Keiichi into the colorful, pulsing electric beat of the dance, a grin spreading traitorously across his face as he and Mion swung each other around and minced their steps in an approximate facsimile of the dances they had seen in the film.
"Well, roll my breakfast, 'cause I'm a hungry man~"
Her bottle-green dress whipped out around her like the fan of a flower as Mion spun, laughing giddily, her hand twined in his as she twirled like a cartoon princess, and Keiichi's heart swooped as he recognized a moment he would remember forever, a moment that melted seamlessly into the next part of the dance as she spun around him and he spun around her, the two twisting together as he palmed the small of her back and they swooped together into a low bend, laughing in unison with the pure joy of the moment and the adrenaline coursing through them both like a surge of electricity.
"I said, shake, rattle, and roll! I said, shake, rattle, and roll!"
"Change partners!" Mion wheezed breathlessly to the group as he brought her upright, teal eyes sparkling and gleaming with laughter, and Keiichi grinned at her as he swung her off and blindly reached for his next partner, finding Rena's small palm slip into his own as he turned to face her and saw her eyes shining with the same excited joy.
"I said, shake, rattle, and roll! I said, shake, rattle, and roll! Well, you'll never do nothing to save your doggone soul~"
He and Rena dropped their hands and minced, kicking up their heels, laughing and giggling unselfconsciously at each other's attempt at mimicking the American dances, neither any less wrong than the other, and Keiichi certainly knew he was nowhere near correct.
"Wearing those dresses, you hair done up so nice,"
The pair of them skipped around each other like a pair of goats just as the others did, grinning, caught up in the music as Keiichi forgot to drop his pretensions of dislike and just cut loose, laughing with Rena and feeling the heated flush of fun and exertion creep over his cheeks the longer they danced.
"Wearing those dresses, you hair done up so nice,"
Keiichi and Rena began to challenge each other, trying to see who could create the more ridiculously intricate foot-clicking routine and who could match the other's and add to it better, and Keiichi grinned breathlessly into Rena's face, forgetting the dated, ostentatious costumes they both wore, forgetting his exertions, only conscious of the warm light glowing outside their little ring of dancers, the music, and the matching high flush of excitement on Rena's cheeks.
"You look so warm, but your heart is cold as ice.~"
"Change!" Mion laughed above the music from behind him, and Keiichi turned and did not pause as he accepted Satoshi from Shion, only grinning at the equally-giddy blond as they both laughed at their so-called misfortune and swung into the dance again without pause.
"I said, shake, rattle, and roll! I said, shake, rattle, and roll!"
He caught a glimpse of Rika and Satoko from the corner of his eye, the two having long since given themselves over to the music and giggling childishly together as they danced in their over-the-top outfits, Rika's beads bouncing on her tiny chest as Satoko's feathers swung and fluttered with every movement of her head.
"I said, shake, rattle, and roll! I said, shake, rattle, and roll!"
For a former invalid, Satoshi wasn't that bad on his feet, and the two spun and tapped to the music almost in unison as they whirled through and around the other dancers, the entire club laughing the pure, clean laughter of innocent fun as the makeshift lights gleamed brightly around them on the trash heaps.
"Well, you'll never do nothing, to save your doggone soul~"
Satoshi and Keiichi grabbed each other's wrists and spun, using centrifugal force almost as a challenge to each other, to keep their grip and not be wrested away, and Keiichi found himself grinning and chuckling harder than he had in months as the yellow gleam of the lanterns spun and blurred around him, the music sinking down into a pulsing interlude of bars and sound.
"Go! Go! Go!"
"Change!" Mion cried again, exuberance vibrating in her every syllable, and the two boys let go of each other, stumbling a little at the sudden lack of support, and whirled to find new partners. Keiichi seized upon Hanyuu, who squeaked in breathless glee as he grabbed her wrists and spun her around as he did with Satoshi, messy bun already halfway undone and eyes shining as if, despite her protests, she was having the time of her life.
"Go! Go!"
He had to be more careful with Hanyuu as a dance partner, not to whirl her into the air or step on her tiny feet, nor crowd her too much and drag her behind him with his longer stride, but it was just as fun to twirl with her in place like she was a princess and he the prince, dip her to the swings in the music, and laugh as Hanyuu stubbornly attempted to return the treatment.
"I'm like a one-eyed cat, peeping in a sea food store,"
"Hauhau, no fair! Keiichi, I should be able to swing you too!" the lilac-haired girl wailed petulantly, waving her arms and pouting at him fiercely. Keiichi made sure to roll his eyes as obviously as he could before crouching and bending backwards, arching his spine as much as he could while still balancing upright, even freeing one hand to support himself in the dirt as he assumed the pose he would, had Hanyuu the reach to dip him in her turn, lifting up one arm. Her eyes sparkled with joy, and she grinned as she grabbed his offered wrist in both her small hands and hauled, pulling him upright again.
"I'm like a one-eyed cat, peeping in a sea food store,"
They spun around each other quickly, Keiichi making sure to mind his steps, his cheeks beginning to ache from the sheer size of the grin he had been wearing for the past several minutes, absorbing the jazzy beat of music from the old boombox like desert sand as he seamlessly transmuted it into the Hinamizawa Club's own, unique, interpretation on the American swing steps.
"I can look at you, 'til you don't love me no more."
"Change!" Mion giggled, and Keiichi spun again to accept Shion's hand, yelping as she immediately grinned and took the opportunity to avenge Hanyuu, cupping his back as she swooped like an eagle, forcing him into an exaggerated form of the princess-like dip he had preformed on Mion and Hanyuu earlier, and acted out for the latter.
"I believe you're doing me wrong, and now I know,"
Shion pulled him back upright as he grinned at her in threat of future vengeance of his own, feeling now as if they were all expressing their emotions through an increase or subtle change in the joy they partook of, never lessening, the stretch of his giddy, flushed smile now permanently screwed onto his face, and that of all his other friends.
"I believe you're doing me wrong, and now I know,"
The two of them whirled and danced together, the pace getting more frenetic now, the dampness of heated sweat cooling in the roots of his hair, face flushed, heart pounding faster than ever as the bright lights of the trash yard gleamed around him and the others, crickets and cicadas and other irrelevant night creatures making a faint, vague, constant song of their own around the edges of his hearing, everything caught up in the music blaring from the rattling speakers as Shion laughed and doffed her fedora, scrunching it back down on his head in a way as playful as it was patronizing.
"The more I work, the faster my money goes~"
Faster now, even faster, the emotions and the dance and the energy spiraling upwards into a tighter and tight spiral, caught up in the sound that did not rise or quicken but they knew must end, even as they, caught up in the timeless beat like a string of yellow bubbles dancing upon the surface of a pulsing red sea, did not want it to end, not ever, wanted to keep dancing and enjoying for all the rest of time, like mortals caught in the net of a yōkai troupe.
"Change!" Mion cried for the last time, and Keiichi met Rika's hands as they wound themselves into the final strand of the dance's thread.
"I said, shake, rattle, and roll! I said, shake, rattle, and roll!"
He would find mosquito bites on his neck later, attracted, no doubt, by the damp gleam of sweat and the scent it released to the hungry bloodsuckers, and there would be a bruise on his knee from where he went home with the others and tripped over a branch, but Keiichi wouldn't trade those marks for the world, for they, in their own way, solidified the memory into something eternal and yet human, something he could cup in his soul forever and savor, the remembrance of him and his greatest friends dancing with wild, clumsy, pure childish abandon to American blues in the Hinamizawa trash heap, late at night, with only fireflies and lamplight for company.
"I said, shake, rattle, and roll! I said, shake, rattle, and roll!"
Keiichi licked his dry lips without a thought, still grinning as Rika beamed up into his face, eyes shining like stars, hoop-earrings that they had glued onto her ears with the school glue swinging as he spun her and they lurched and minced together, tapping their heels and kicking up their feet with all the careless exuberance of children who knew nothing of the steps they were imitating.
"Well, you'll never do nothing, to save your doggone soul~"
It was a special night, within a host of many such special nights, and they formed the jewels of his childhood.
"Shake, rattle, and roll!"
AN: Yes, Keiichi is cosplaying as Battler from Umineko. Yes, Shion sees your gender roles and spits on them. Also, I have no notion of how Japanese movie theaters worked in the 1980s, but for the purposes of this fic we'll say that they replayed like one American blockbuster on a constant loop because of lingering effects of our whole occupation thing after WWII, and that it's a twenty-year old movie replaying now because it takes a while for things to percolate across the Pacific. Also, the 1961 West Side Story is fuckin' amazing.
11.50 AM, USA Central Time