This isn't NOT how I would've liked Gou to go if they included the witches…ugh, it's just that one of my favorite things about the original series was how everyone banded together and were such a ride-or-die group of friends, and then Gou is just like, nope! Satoko's a yandere! Teppei Hojo is actually redeemable, and should be redeemed! Rika's friends don't mean anything to her now that she's got the life of freedom and sophistication she always wanted! YOUR DREAMS ARE DEAD AND NOTHING IN THE ORIGINAL SHOW RUN MATTERS!

Anyways Gou would be just fine as a stand-alone piece of media, but the problem is that it does connect back to the rest of the Higurashi series, and that ruins everything for me. None of the narrative decisions made in Gou are necessarily incorrect, they just fit very badly with the original message and prior character arcs.

June 9th, 2021

The air was hot, shimmering with the sultry force of the summer sun.

Rika Furude swung her bare, sandaled legs back and forth where she sat on the Sonozaki porch, thinking of nothing and waiting patiently. She remembered this porch: there were times when Shion had snapped far earlier, when Rika had not been careful at all and more desperate, when she had burst in demanding to know what had happened to Satoko. Her blood had stained these ancient boards crimson, and a few times Shion had managed to get her down into the underground torture chamber. That was truly the worst: Rika could face down death with aplomb, because she had died so many times that it was familiar, like an old friend she was meeting again for the hundredth time. But pain –no. Long, drawn-out, extended torture…that she could actually remember, and her flesh shivered to remember it.

Shion was very creative at inflicting pain.

Footsteps sounded on the bare boards behind her, but Rika did not tense as a green-haired young woman sat down beside her, swinging out jeans-clad legs and looking blankly out at the garden.

"Rika."

"Mi."

The cicadas chirped and buzzed in the ensuing silence, filling the humid air with the sound that sometimes chased Rika all the way into her dreams. At last, Mion spoke again.

"You ever think we should stop?"

Rika didn't know. The flakes of memory building up inside her friends' hearts had apotheosized long ago, and now they, too, remembered as she did as Hinamizawa ruthlessly turned and folded in on its axis, over and over and over again. When Rina came, trailing her rough talk and her flashy makeup, Rena would come to Mion with blue eyes that spoke a silent question. Rina would disappear a few days later. When Teppei Hojo came, Satoko would refuse to be dragged home with him, and when he threatened or struck her, or occasionally managed to drag her home, the rest of the club was quick with their calls to the Child Consultation Center. Shion never wavered in her belief that Satoshi would come home, doting on Satoko relentlessly and sneaking into the clinic as soon as they all managed to oust the Wild Dogs and Tokyo from their peaceful village.

Ah, that was the problem. They were too peaceful.

No tragedies stained the hot summer nights, and yet, they endured, ripped out of time and space and forced to spin endlessly on one axis –that of Hinamizawa and all it contained.

Rika had her guesses as to why and how. She had her guesses centered on a face that was and wasn't hers, twisted with a leering malice that was never hers, and her guesses were that this cruel witch was batting her and her friends around like a cat toying with mice. Everyone in the group had learned, yes, remembered all the loops as they spun and spun relentlessly, but that was not enough. Hinamizawa of 1983 still continued, and the players on the stage were Rika and all her friends. They could stop performing, but the audience didn't like that, no. They shouted and waved the hands and slammed the doors, sat sulking in their seats until the actors finally yielded and played out something suitably entertaining for their audience.

Rika remembered what her other self had found entertaining, and shuddered. Fingers that were never hers trailed, cooing, over a crystal fragment that spun and shimmered with Satoko's desolation, and a snickering apology was all she received when she blurted out the cruelty of it. She knew that there were others, other beings like that person, and that they had all wound themselves together up in the fabric of Hinamizawa, clutching it hard and waiting for Rika and her friends to amuse them. These creatures were petty, cruel, spiteful. They weren't satisfied with hard-earned victories and happy endings, they wanted torment, they wanted raw and visceral emotions as tragedy spilled red and bloody over Hinamizawa.

Rika and her friends refused to yield to that, of course, but these creatures –these witches– refused to be denied. If Rika and her friends would not comply, then Hinamizawa would spin on forever, and sooner or later, one of the players –one of the pieces– would snap. They wouldn't be able to endure being caught up in this endless summer any longer, and they would lash out with the raw desperation that the witches craved.

That was, unless they struck out at the witches first, and found a way to break out of this eternal cycle.

Rika was strong, as her friends were strong, forged in the crucible of suffering and death as they all had been. They worked seamlessly as a team, and even though they had no supernatural powers or unnatural abilities, they were united, and more importantly than that, smart. It didn't matter how many times Hinamizawa spun back to 1983, how many times they had to fight Takano, grow up, age, and then die –they refused to break, and they refused to even bend to the witches that circled around them like vultures.

Sooner or later, they'd break out of this everlasting time loop and be free.

10.16 AM, USA Central Time