June 23rd, 2021

Hanyuu was happy playing with her friends.

She was happy being a part of their circle, happy being someone that people could see, happy that after all this time watching over all these people, she could actually be a tangible part of their lives again. She was happy, even though she was weak, because she had never been all that strong to begin with, and she was learning the human way of things again, learning how to weave miracles together rather than alone. It was nice. She liked it, like the feelings bursting through her when everyone came together to form a miraculous event, rather than the cold and deadly sensation she got when she warped reality on her own to achieve that same end.

But of course, nothing lasted forever. Hanyuu knew that better than anyone.

First it was Mion, going away to high school in Okinomiya and leaving Keiichi as club leader in her place. Then it was him and Rena going away to the same place, and finally her, Satoko, and Rika. Hanyuu had felt herself growing up, becoming tall and teenager for the first time since- since-

Even her memory couldn't trace the exact when, couldn't trace however many years it had been since she last took physical form and her daughter struck her down.

But here she was, nonetheless, with Rika and Satoko, and even as they celebrated their aging, Hanyuu was sad inside, because she knew they would soon leave for high school, and then perhaps college, and then leave her behind. She couldn't leave Hinamizawa, after all, even in this body that was real and physical –on the contrary, it was because she had a real and physical body that she couldn't leave. In Hinamizawa, a place where everything wasn't carefully written down, recorded, and watched by the children of men, Hanyuu could insinuate herself, wiggle into the fabric of reality and bloom into an existence without the harsh effects of reality corroding her. In this place that the modern world had more or less left behind, Hanyuu could come into existence without people worrying about her lack of family, lack of birth certificates, lack of any official documentation.

But in the real, wider world?

Hanyuu became nothing more than a ghost once again, a phantom existence that nobody had ever witnessed, and applying for a government school, for a place with records, while she had none of her own –well, they wouldn't let her, now would they? They'd pry and they'd poke and they'd peer into the darkened corners of her past, trying to discern her legal identity and documentation, trying to pick apart her so-called relation to Rika. Were they even actual blood relatives in this body? Hanyuu didn't know. In Hinamizawa, no one bothered to check.

So as Rika and her beloved friends frisked towards the future, Hanyuu found herself withdrawing, still proud, still happy, still part of them, but –not with them. Not anymore. She would stay in Hinamizawa, stay in the tiny little shack the three of them had shared, stay and wait until her friends returned to her. She had faith that they would –and faith was what made miracles.

And indeed, every summer, every break they could manage it, the club came flocking back, cramming into the tiny room that served as both bedroom and dining room for Hanyuu and for the others when they had lived here, a space that was once spacious and cozy but now, as they years marched onwards and the adults all crammed together, became a space of laughing claustrophobia, of being squished together like sardines as they reminisced and playfully jabbed one another like their various separations had never happened, like these adult bodies were a lie that they could shed like a second skin, like nothing had ever changed and they were all still schoolchildren, laughing together on the floor as a meal was served.

Changes crept in, duties and obligations that needed to be performed, ties that needed to be maintained, but at the core, they were all still the same people, the same club that had been through so much and fought so fiercely together. Even as these outer facets changed, shifted, encroached inwards, they were still the same club at bottom, and Hanyuu reveled in it every time they came home.

But of course, there was one more future for Hanyuu to find, and it was one she dreaded perhaps more than anything, even being left behind. It was the future when Rika's blue hair turned grey, then white, where Satoko's face wrinkled, where Keiichi's back bent and fragile Mion took up residence on a futon, reigning from it like her grandmother before her. It was the future that was inevitable, as time ate away at them all, slowly sapping their youth, their vitality, their presence in the world.

What would happen, when five new graves decorated the hills of Hinamizawa? When all her friends died, stripping off their flesh and becoming something else? Would Hanyuu be alone again? For how long would she be alone? Would dying like this, not as a sacrifice, not as a demon, not as a goddess, would that free her too? Would she, too, no longer be bound to Hinamizawa, and fly free to the afterlife with them? If she lived nearly human, if her horns were the only remnant of her people, would she, too, do as humans did when they died?

That was a question for the future, and even though she feared it, Hanyuu knew that the best thing she could do in the meantime was be happy with her friends, savor what little time they had together for as long as she could.

And so she was.

9.54 AM, USA Central Time