June 24th, 2021

When Irie first came to Hinamizawa, admittedly, he hadn't been expecting much.

Well –that was a lie. He had been expecting everything, afire with excitement and anticipation as he all but stumbled out of his car and made for the door of the clinic, thinking of nothing but the mysteries to be unraveled, the excitement of discovery, the possibilities of a new disease and the help he could do with studying it. His mind was full of thoughts of redemption, of getting back his credibility in the academic world, of showing people the truth of his life, that the brain was the person and when it was damaged, so were they.

Compared to the plans and the excitement swirling in his mind, Hinamizawa was –what? Some place in the mountains? Some odd corner of the world with a microclimate suited to the pathogen he would study?

Hinamizawa was nothing. Backdrop. Not important.

But then, as he talked with the citizens, slowly measuring them up for the Hinamizawa Syndrome that he knew slept inside their body, he found himself distracted. That was only common courtesy. He was here to administer to their ills, and although he was focused on one they were unaware of, he was still the village's only doctor. He had a responsibility to these people, as welcoming and fiercely insular as they could be at turns. They respected him, took pride in the solidarity of their community, but he was –an outsider. Not one of them. Their warm welcomes turned into cold shoulders the moment they thought they might be pushing too far, that they might make him think that he was one of them.

Irie didn't really mind. As he said, he was here to study and to learn and to heal, not to settle permanently. Oh, Hinamizawa was beautiful enough –he saw that in his grocery runs, as he was running around– but he had more important things to focus on.

Slowly, though, like vines creeping over a stone wall and eroding it, appreciation for the place around him stole into Irie's heart. The people here were staunchly loyal, whether to each other or to ideas, and more than one Irie heard himself being spoken of with pride, as Hinamizawa's doctor. He might not be one of them, but he was theirs, a fixture of their village that they were proud to display. As one of the most educated people in the area –even if he was an outsider– he found himself increasingly invited to the village council meetings, becoming someone whose opinion was worth listening to, even if he wasn't always respected. He was one of the youngest members, after all, both figuratively and literally.

Irie didn't know when it was that he started thinking of Hinamizawa as home, as himself as a permanent part of the community. He didn't know when he stopped thinking about what he would do, where he would go when the study was done, when he started thinking about being invited to lectures and academic meetings with resignation rather than enthusiasm. Hinamizawa was slowly entangling him in its roots, and clutching him deep.

He didn't mind. Like he said, Hinamizawa was a beautiful place, and the more he grew to know its people, the more Irie admired them. When he started coaching the baseball team, he felt a kind of happiness unlike any he ever remembered having before –the pride of an adult, perhaps? The pride of knowing that not only had he become a doctor, gotten a job, gotten accolades within his business, but that he was also giving back to his community, becoming a part of the people that lived here, becoming a rock that anyone could rely upon and trust?

Hinamizawa wasn't all honey, of course. The more Irie grew enamored of its people, the more fearful he grew of his research, what he was doing. He couldn't –wouldn't– forget that nightmarish night in which he had dissected a man alive, a man that they had turned into a living doll for weeks as he was experimented on again and again. The warning signs had been everywhere, but Irie was caught up entirely in the thrill of the research, the promise of knowledge.

It took the Hojos to start waking him up.

Irie felt for them, grieved for them, and when Satoko was diagnosed with Level 5, he'd sworn he would do everything he could to help her, even though Takano was lurking like a vulture, practically begging to use the dissection scalpel on a child. He felt even more misgivings then, but pushed through them, set them aside, in order to focus everything he was on helping Satoko.

He didn't know what happened the third year of the curse.

But the fourth…

By that time, Irie was firmly ensconced in Hinamizawa, in the community, in the village council, even as the head doctor of the clinic. Hinamizawa had him entirely in its clutches, and there was Satoshi, begging him for help, to look after Satoko, even as the drugs took him under. Irie knew that Satoshi was a murderer, that he had almost certainly killed his aunt –and yet, he felt no hesitation, just as he had felt none in manipulating the police years ago, hiding the terrible truth that Satoko might have been responsible for her parents' death from everyone, even herself.

In the worlds that he survived past June of 1983 –the years where Okonogi didn't smile and hand him a cup of coffee that tasted just a little off, that made him sleepier instead of more awake as he tried to puzzle out what on earth had happened to Takano, that made him lay his head down and drift away– Irie never left. Even when duties and testimonials and other things drew him away, he always came back, because he was a part of Hinamizawa now, and he had never felt better.

9.31 AM, USA Central Time