June 8th, 2021
One thing that Rika hated so very much about dying was the associations.
Here she was, a mere child of ten (who had not been that blissfully innocent in so, so achingly long) and here she was in her childhood classroom, and here were all her friends. By any stretch of logic, they should be laughing, happy, relaxed, painting an idyllic scene of childhood fun in the halcyon days of June.
Instead, her fellow classmates were cringing, curled in on themselves, whimpering against blows that never came as Rena paced and seethed at the front of the classroom. As if to underline the perverse normalcy-horror of the scene, the cords that bound her and all the others were bright plastic jump-ropes, smudged with the dirt of a thousand carefree recesses as they snaked around ankles and wrists and chests. Keiichi was the only one free, standing with horror-struck eyes to the side as he looked at them, at Rena, frozen in place like a soldier cast out of time. Rika knew that feeling all too well: the looming helplessness, the fear, the despair, the burning need to do something and the paralyzing terror at knowing that there was nothing one could do.
The room stank of gasoline. Rika hated that more than anything else, hated the spike of fear and flesh-crawling aversion that came from merely crossing a road, now, when she smelled the fumes of the cars and remembered this. She hated how that, after this scene, she would walk into their bright, happy classroom in the next world and cringe, shudder for just a moment with the urge to run away. Rena would look at her with sunny blue eyes unclouded by madness, and Rika had to fight not to flee.
That was her friend that she feared. This was her place, that she wanted to flee from.
But not anymore, no. Caught up in her sick visions, Rena had twisted and tangled the threads of this world, of the way that things should be. The classroom was no longer a mundane place of peace, it was a battleground of horror, with flashing emergency lights scraping across the curtains and the urgent chatter of police outside as Rena paced, paced, paced, fraught with a tense energy that was painful to watch. It was brittle, sharp, and every soul in here dreaded the moment when she would snap.
Rika made a morose game of guessing how this one would end. She never quite remembered, of course: mercifully, the time just before and as she died was always blurred in her memory, indistinct and slipping away into nothing. No matter how much it hurt, she'd never remember, never truly feel it.
The first time was always the worst, of course. Rika remembered it distantly, the time when she had been as afraid as any of the others, when she had been weeping harder than any of them because she understood, how she knew that she had failed again for the first out of too-many-times. That time, the sting of death and the horror of her friends' madness had still been new and raw, and she was still trying to plead with them when Hinamizawa Syndrome took their minds, still thinking that they could be reasoned with, that there was a chance of talking someone down when they had gone this far.
Rena hadn't listened. Rika didn't know if she had tried to tackle Rena in a desperate gambit to at least let the others get away, or if she had only contemplated it: her life had ended too soon afterwards to accurately remember.
The second time that Rena had begun acting erratically after murdering Teppei and Rina, Rika was ready, or so she thought. This had been about the time when she had swiped some of Irie's C-120, and she knew that if she could just get it into her friends, their symptoms would be suppressed for a while. It had taken a while of wandering around after Rena had disappeared, but she eventually tracked her back to the trash heap, where Rena was curled, sleeping the exhausted sleep of the wrought-out victim of Hinamizawa Syndrome, in her hollowed-out camper. Rika had quietly climbed in and uncapped the needle, but when she leaned over and grabbed an arm to administer it, Rena's blue eyes had snapped open. Rika's last memory of that world was of a windshield breaking against her face as Rena knocked her aside, seeing the icy spiderweb of broken glass spread outwards under her own eye. She still isn't sure if that was enough to kill her, or if Rena had finished the job some other way –perhaps by strangling her or stabbing her with the shards of broken glass.
The third time, Rika had tried to tell Chie-sensei not to go when Rena called the school office, figuring that Rena's attempts to take the class hostage would be foiled by an adult –why else would Rena go to the effort of luring Chie away?
Rena solved that problem by splitting Chie-sensei's skull open with her nata, and then taking the rest of the class hostage with a blood-spattered visage and a smiling face. Rika's memory whited out soon after Keiichi returned from speaking with the police: he had said something about them giving him a wiretap and pepper spray, so Rika supposed that he had tried to use the latter at an inopportune moment and Rena had set off the explosion in the ensuing struggle.
The fourth time, Rika accompanied Chie to Rena's proposed meeting place before Rena took over the school, hoping to perhaps learn something from the police outside. She'd learned that Rena gained her delusions from a scrapbook Takano had left behind, and that she blamed the Sonozakis for everything. She'd learned what Keiichi looked like when he cried himself numb, when he came to give Oishi the scrapbook. She'd learned what kind of scar seeing Mion's skull crushed in could leave on his heart. She'd learned what her friends' teeth looked like, glittering in charcoaled skulls and the only way anyone could pick apart human remains in the blackened crater of what had once been a school. That world ended in the usual way, with chloroform and a slide into grey sleep that left her in another fragment.
Next time, Rika remained with them. This time, it was Keiichi that died, drawn off into that trap that Rena had set to test his loyalty. Rena had dragged his corpse back to the classroom and brandished it at them like an angry dog with a bone, telling them that this was the price of betrayal. Mion had wailed. Rika doesn't remember if anything else happened before the inferno overtook her. Mercifully, she does not remember the feeling of flesh being seared from her bones.
Another time, she gathered her resources, Satoko and Keiichi, and tried to help him. She remembers that she and Satoko got free, grabbed Satoshi's bat and flung it to Keiichi. She remembers Keiichi wrestling the lighter away, and her grabbing a broom to try and fight Rena off. Her body is young, always young, tiny and fragile like a doll, but she wields the sacrificial hoe, a heavy thing comparable to a rice mallet. She can't fight well, but she can delay, and she can wield this implement better than Satoko could, at least.
She never knows whether or not Keiichi made it, in that world. Her world ended in red, with Rena's nata coming down like a thunderbolt.
Again, they tried again. They got farther with that plan, and Rika was desperate enough to feign unconsciousness when she was tossed into a wall, uncaring of whether or not Rena dealt a death blow to make sure of her. But Rena didn't, she ran off to find Keiichi, and Rika staggered to her feet and ran after her when it was safe, muscles aching, bones grinding, blood burning its way down her tiny limbs. Everything she endured could be fixed, so long as they all survive this. She pins her hope desperately on that with every cycle: broken bones, a lobotomy that sears a familiar scar across her forehead under her bangs, cuts, bruises; all of it, those are temporary things, ephemeral compared to the precious weight of a life. She can heal. They can all heal.
In that cycle, Rena caught Keiichi as he was desperately climbing out the window. Rika discovered the incomparable agony of trying to save a friend when her very arms and legs were too weak to do anything, shattered bones shrieking against each other and making her hits as fragile as dandelion seeds as she struck at Rena, clawed at her as best she could, trying to pry those terrible hands away from Keiichi's throat. They were all struggling together on the floor when that fateful timer went off and the whole school puffed away into grey smoke.
And now here she was again, with her fellow classmates crying and curling in on themselves, with desperate hope and despair glinting in Keiichi's eyes, with Rena whirling and shouting at the front of the classroom like a dervish. Mion was held by a U-lock, blood seeping down her still, pale face, and Rika could almost feel Satoko's clever mind clicking away beside her, trying to think of a way out of this trap. All of the actors are in their usual places, the scene is set as the sun sank bloody over the western sky, and all Rika had to do was wait and watch for the terrible finale. She and Satoko need to work their way free, need to whisper their knowledge to Keiichi, and then when Rena chased him down, Rika needed to follow her to buy time for Keiichi to find the timer. And then-
And then…
Well, she didn't quite know what would happen then. It was different every cycle, and she was never allowed to wear a watch when Rena took over the classroom. Rika wasn't sure she could bear it anyways, seeing time tick down to that fateful 7.00 when the whole school would be set ablaze. It happened sometimes in the storeroom, when she and Rena were dueling, and it taught her to send Keiichi off immediately, not let him linger and watch the fight. It happened sometimes when Rena caught Keiichi before he could climb to the gutter, and that taught Rika to buy as much time as she could.
How laughably horrible, that so much could happen in a mere three or so minutes, that so much agonizing struggle could be packed into such a forgettable span of time. Every second became precious, every heartbeat something to be measured and considered: and it was never enough. Rena was too quick, or too strong, or too clever, in those beginning cycles when Rika had mistakenly thought that the lighter in her hand was all they had to be worried about.
The other children didn't know, but she knew, as the clock ticked over to 6.50. She knew, and she saw Keiichi tense as he understood it too. Everything began to fall into its old, terrible pattern, and Rika felt her small muscles tensing as she began to subtly work at her jump-rope, Satoko whispering urgently to Keiichi. It was time. All the old urgency came back to her, the desperation that came from hoping that she might be able to break this cycle, urgency that slacked away during every other endless, repetitive day of the fragments.
Keiichi "heard" the noise. Rena sent him to investigate, and with a curt, wide-eyed threat, filled with malice, warned the class to remain still and quiet as she went to follow him. Satoko repeated that order of quietness, but the group was far from still as she and Rika slipped their bonds and began feverishly working on freeing the others. Rika did not help with this latter task, only pausing to let Satoko know of her destination before she ran for the door, going so hastily that the end of her jump-rope flicked away from her ankle as she went, not having fully fallen from her body.
Her heart ached in her chest as she ran silent and swift down the familiar corridors. How long was it? How many minutes did they have? Why, oh why, did she never dare to look at the clocks? There was only the one in the classroom, anyways, and Rika never returned there, not in these fragments, this cycle of the world where Rena went mad.
She found the two in the storeroom. She tackled Rena away before the nata could come down on a defenseless Keiichi's head. Keiichi took the lighter, and Rika told him, ordered him to run and take care of the rest. She would handle Rena.
Rena laughed. Of course she laughed. Rika was tiny, petite, with thin arms and legs, and Rena was more than Rena, right now, with adrenaline and aggression coursing thicker than blood through her veins. With crazed blue eyes, Rena wouldn't hesitate on bringing her blade down on the body of her friend.
Rika knew that and was unafraid. She grabbed the nearby broom and prepared to do battle, to delay Rena as long as she could, even at the cost of her own life.
Fate was perverse, this time. Though Rika fought as hard as she could, Rena easily knocked her aside like a ping-pong ball. Rika was too distracted with parrying and striking to count the seconds, but she knew she had perhaps only delayed Rena a minute or so at most. She knew that a minute might not be enough to save Keiichi, to save them all. It was amazing how agonizingly seconds could crawl by when one thought of how long it took to cross a hall, leave a room. Each step sucked up precious time, ticking down the moments until the world was washed with flames.
Rika found herself sprawled over the cold wooden floor, feeling the dampness of her skin against its porous smoothness. Her head spun, and she felt blood leaking over her, staining her pristine turquoise smock like it had a thousand times before. Only one thought rose in her mind, one purpose to her existence: she had to delay Rena. She had to get up.
The world tipped and sloshed and spun as Rika climbed to her feet, feeling the weight of the blood pounding through her temples as her head hung down. She clutched the wall for balance, and even though every step made her feel nauseous, every breath hurt, she managed to stumble forward into a run. She ran, and she ran, and she ran, through the hallways that seemed to stretch away under her feet. She heard cheers from outside, and knew that the others must've made it out. She heard the clanging of metal overhead, and her heart leapt. Keiichi had made it onto the roof. He had never made it onto the roof before.
Now every second forged new paths, new clues and routes to victory, and her wavering attention sharpened as she pelted through the school.
Ah, but alas –too late.
The explosion was almost dreamlike, as it always was. The reek of gasoline had become a part of her, a part of all of them, so the first indication of the gas explosion was the heat, muffling her like a blanket, a sharp smack of changing temperature like plunging into cold water, but in reverse. The thick, stupefying heat swamped her skin, her mind, her brain, making everything seem slow and sluggish, one step removed from reality as the flames followed not even a heartbeat later, dancing merrily along the walls as they raced forward to engulf her. There was a moment of disconnect as the impact of the explosion struck Rika, so abrupt that for a moment it felt like she was weightless as she ran forward, moving from the mundane, gas-soaked school into an inferno between one step and the next. Her legs still pedaled blankly as she floated through that dreamlike vista, dashing intangibly forward into the afterlife as the gas explosion tore apart the school and burned her, Keiichi, and Rena all to cinders.
Rika never knew if being incinerated hurt.
It was always over too quickly for her to remember.
11.04 AM, USA Central Time