June 22nd, 2021

Keiichi stared at the dull grey ceiling of his room, thinking thoughts that were just as dull, just as grey. His cheek ached, a persistent throbbing pain that matched the darkened bruise spreading across the side of his face. Ordinarily, he would've been shocked, hurt, betrayed that his father struck him –his goofy dad, who was never anything but a passionate artist– but now…now all he felt was drained, dispirited, like all the energy that had sustained him until now was gone.

He remembered his father and mother sitting on either side of him, like they were trying to trap him, as they all rode to the police station. He remembered the pounding fear, the anxiety, the terror and guilt of being caught, but far worse still the memory of what he'd done. He- he hadn't-

He hadn't meant to hurt anyone?

Hadn't meant to go that far?

What had he meant, then?

What could he have possibly meant, in shooting young girls with an airsoft gun?

I was just blowing off steam.

The words curdled in his mouth, even as a thought. He'd hurt people for his own sake of perverse amusement? Because he thought he was better than everyone, because he was smart?

Keiichi had been soaring on a high of his own making, filled with smug arrogance and a bitter, apathetic hatred against the world, born from ever-increasing stress and pressure, and it had fed the seething sense of rebellion that burst out of him when he saw the Do Nots on the list of instructions for his airsoft gun. He'd picked quiet side streets and good hiding spots, and showered tiny children with those hard little pellets, enjoying their shrieks as they ran away. He never shot at boys or older children, because he knew they might fight back.

It the back of his head, there had been the constant muttering that this was fine, they were just kids, and he wasn't actually hurting them, just scaring them a little. And anyways, he was one of the top students in the school. He was smart, brilliant, better than everyone else around him. So what if he scared a few kids? So what if they got a few welts and stings on their way home from school?

And then there was that girl that turned, and then there was the blood as he hit her eye.

It was like Keiichi really had been high, like in all those stupid infomercials they played on the battered old television set in school, all those warnings about drugs and altered states of consciousness and losing track, and that exact moment was when he sobered up, when a cold shock of reality slammed into him like a hurricane.

What was he doing?

The little girl was screaming, crying, bleeding, clutching her eye so that he couldn't even see how much damage he'd done, and he'd done that to her. He'd hurt her. Why? How could he have possibly thought that doing that was okay? He didn't know who this girl even was, and full of his own self-importance, he'd gone out and targeted her for his bit of fun-

Keiichi fled from her screams, bile in his mouth. He'd confessed that very night, been taken to the police, seen his dad fork over the money to keep this out of court. Now he was lying on his back in the empty remains of his room, everything else but his futon packed away downstairs, ready for their move.

From the adrenaline, the terror, the self-hated, the fear, everything of that night –he'd finally gone to dead-eyed apathy, a passive observer watching his own memories circle around and around in his head as he stared up listlessly at the ceiling. Keiichi felt gutted, hollow, scoured-out and empty. All his pride in his own accomplishments, his arrogance in being the best in class, he'd torn that away from himself, shying away from those thoughts like they were poison. They were poison.

But having built his identity on that arrogance, that selfishness, that intelligence for so long, who was he now?

Just some kid.

Just some bastard that went around hurting children.

Keiichi didn't want to be that person.

When he got to this new place –this Hinamizawa– he wasn't going to be that person anymore. Keiichi swore it. Maybe he didn't want to go to some hick town in the middle of the mountains, but he knew the enormity of a second chance that he was getting here, and he wasn't going to mess it up. He was going to become a better person, become someone who could wipe away all the mistakes of the Keiichi that had lived here.

He was going to be kind, going to help anyone who needed it in the class he found himself in, not sneer down at them. He was going to find the least academic person in the entire class and become best friends with them, no matter what anyone else said. He was going to go outside –so far out in the mountains, wouldn't their outside be full of nature? Nothing like the dull grey steel and concrete of Tokyo, that was for sure. There'd be a forest, wouldn't there? Maybe he could play in it, once he felt that he'd erased enough of his sins.

Maybe he actually could find friends there, find a better life there.

Well, only one way to find out. Let's see how this whole moving idea of yours works out, dad.

10.18 AM, USA Central Time