June 27th, 2020
Long, long ago, years beyond the count of time, Rika had enjoyed Watanagashi. What felt like eons ago, when she did not know of the horrors that would be visited upon her friends and Keiichi was still strange and new and not just one more actor, she had laughed and played with her friends, eaten the caramel apples and cotton candy free of worry or care, played the club games with a smile that was genuine rather than hollow.
She knew she had. She just didn't remember it, didn't feel it.
The only thing she felt every June was encroaching dread, the slow ominous creep of madness as it overtook one or more of her friends and plunged them into murder and despair. Watanagashi was her litmus paper, both the needle in an indicator and the moment when that needle flicked and quavered over from yellow to red and DANGER blared throughout her system.
Perhaps it would be Keiichi, perhaps Rena, perhaps Mion or Shion, but every Watanagashi brought death, despair, and bloody tragedy. Why should she look forward to it? Why should she find a particle of enjoyment in mechanically dancing a dance she could do backwards and blindfolded, of scampering throughout games she had played a thousand times before and always, always having to remember to keep a smile pasted on her face, blank and cheerful as a mask, as she tried not to ruin the last few moments of peace her friends would have in this world.
Watanagashi was a symbol of her failure, her despair, her death, and her resignation.
But in one blessed, glittering world, as brief and sudden as a spark of light in a mica-embedded rock, as small and fragile and hard to grasp as that single mote of light winking in one fraction of a moment, in one world neither her friends nor her circumstances were fraught with dread.
And yes, she played with them, played with new heart as she saw the cold villagers smiling and gently patting Satoko on the head, offering her sweets and treats that wouldn't jar the cotton padding taped over her jaw, cooing and fretting with sympathy over the bandaids stuck over her skin, laughing and teasing Keiichi who had revitalized a legendary movement of their immediate past, Rika had not truly forgotten. True, her friends were safe, but what of her? What of her inescapable, inevitable fate?
She shrugged those thoughts aside and forged onwards, and that Watanagashi, for the first time in Rika's memory, she did manage to enjoy, if just a little.
But the last one –ah, the last Watanagashi of 1983. That was a celebration, and a celebration born from the first carefree joy Rika had truly experienced in her long, long life. She had laughed and played and danced with the electric, floating joy that could only come from pure relief, had played as a child for the first time in hundreds of years, had played and enjoyed it, safely, knowing she would never have to worry about such things again.
She had danced her offering dance, as befitted the shrine maiden, and for once Hanyuu was not floating above the altar, watching her with eyes that encouraged and despaired at the same time, a flickering mask of encouragement for her dance sliding aside to reveal the worry and fear for the others beneath, whichever teetered on the verge of madness that cycle.
No, Hanyuu was in the crowd, smiling and cheering with the others, and Rika danced all the harder for it, smiled all the brighter. Her friends were together, and safe, and she was safe, safe to play and live and learn and grow as an ordinary girl for the first time in over a hundred years.
You're lost
You're found
You're hard to pin down
I never know if you'll come through
Then you appear
Together we're here
And that's all that matters, somehow
–All That Matters, RWBY Volume 5 Soundtrack
11.54 AM, USA Central Time