June 12th, 2021

Reina Ryugu stared glassily at the landscape rolling past her window. They had set out late, so it was dark, and part of her skin prickled, waiting for the heavy presence at her shoulder, whispering down to her that she was filthy, that she had to leave, had to get back to Hinamizawa right now, or the worst would happen.

The worst.

Hah.

The worst had already happened, and she was filthy, filthy with a taint and corruption that no amount of itching and scratching at her corrupted veins could cleanse-

Reina closed her eyes and took several long, deep breaths, nails digging into her palms, trying to remember what the doctors had told her, trying to calm down and bring herself back. She was going to be okay, because she'd finally been released from the hospital and she and her dad were going back home. They were sorry, they had repented, and they were going right back to where they belonged, to Hinamizawa, where she wouldn't be filthy anymore. Reina was looking forward to the next Cotton Drifting, where she could formally send her apologies back to Oyashiro-sama, where she could cleanse and renew herself and promise that this time, she'd be obedient and never, ever leave.

Reina…

Unhappiness twisted her mouth as Reina thought of her name, which inevitably brought her to think of her mother. Her wicked, evil, diseased mother, who was gone now, swanned off with that man and leaving only divorce papers behind. Reina had smashed everything else her mother had dared to leave, smashed her paneled mirror and her music box and her clothing drawers and spat in them because that was she thought of her so-called mother, of a woman who was so selfish and cowardly as to insist they move and then cheat on Reina's father, cheat and lie and manipulate Reina and then leave them both behind without a backwards glance, like they didn't even matter, like she didn't even care.

Her father had asked, begged to see his wife, not with rage but with plaintive grey eyes, trying to understand why he had been left, like an abandoned puppy, but the lawyer had put a barrier of formality between them that could only have been commanded by that woman.

"My client refuses to see you, sir." was what the lawyer said, like it was her father's fault, like he'd done something wrong to make his wife avoid him, like there was some reason for Reina's mother to run away beyond her being a coward.

Reina's mother had disappeared from their lives, and Reina reveled in that, but even then, even now, even when they were going back to Hinamizawa as was right and proper, her name was like a collar around her neck, chaining her to that woman and all the impurities she brought with her. Reina's mother had been the one to come up with this name –she thought it was chic, elegant, exotic even, the perfect match for her dreams of high-ended fashion design and affluence in the big city. Reina meant "queen" in Spanish, and it tied her to her mother on every level possible.

Reina loathed her name.

It was dark and there were barely any streetlamps anywhere, so she couldn't see when they pulled into Hinamizawa, but something in her recognized it, something deep inside her bones. Her thin shoulders relaxed under her shirt, like there was a voice just behind her ear was whispering safe now, you're safe now.

Her father didn't notice, but he'd been driving for hours as he pulled into the drive of their new/old house and stopped the car. Reina got out with him in a daze, bringing her futon, nodding blankly when he flashed her a token smile and told her to get some rest, and they'd unpack tomorrow. She could feel his eyes on her, between her shoulderblades, as they shuffled into the house, but that was okay. It was a warm look of concern, because he was afraid to leave her alone, and Reina could tolerate that a lot easier than she could the ghostly stare of Oyashiro-sama, or whatever else it was that stood at her bedside.

Relaxed as she was, though, swathed in the humming buzz of crickets and cicadas, she still couldn't fall asleep as her father did, snoring softly on the floor of what would probably eventually become their living room. She was restless, disturbed, and for once not because there was someone standing beside her pillow, telling her to go home, go home, go home, go home now. The very absence of that presence, whatever it was, should've been enough to ease her into sleep, but Reina couldn't sleep, staring at the ceiling as her thoughts gnawed at her mind.

At last, she slipped out of the house, sliding the door to the backyard aside and taking in a deep breath of the free summer air, smelling all the forgotten scents of Hinamizawa and its mountainside forest. You could taste the air out here –or at least, when you did, it wasn't of the greasy leftovers of the nearest fast food shop, or the trash left outside in bins. This was a rich, green, growing scent, and she'd missed it like she missed the soft earth under her feet.

Reina crouched down in that dirt, wiggling her toes and smiling for the first time in days, a soft ghost of the brighter smile she had once shown to her father and mother both. Bracing one hand on the dirt, she began to write, drawing out her hated name in the dirt and then considering it. This was Hinamizawa, and citizen cards and public identification were the stuff of whispered legend. Nobody needed them, in a village where everyone knew everyone and no one had moved in or out for years. If she wanted, she could cast off her old name like a cicada with its skin, and nobody would ever know any different.

She'd keep her family's name, her father's name. But what her mother had chosen for her –that had to go, everything that was a vestige of that woman had to go.

Swiping out her first name, Reina drew fresh characters in the dirt. Reina was an exotic name, a foreign name, even though it sounded Japanese. If she just took away a letter…an icky letter, a single extra vowel where none should be, she could have an entirely new name for an entirely new life.

Rena Ryugu.

"Rena." she said aloud, a soft whisper to the dirt and to the gentle blackness of night around her, testing her new name on her tongue. "My name is Rena Ryugu."

Her fragile smile growing, Rena nodded once to herself and patted the dirt down, erasing the new characters of her new name. With this, with moving back to Hinamizawa and casting off her old name, she was starting anew, cleansing herself of her mother and everything her mother had left behind, all the black moldy splotches that clung to Rena's old life. She had renewed herself, wiped the slate clean.

Tomorrow, she would start her new life.

9.48 AM, USA Central Time