June 29th, 2021

Keiichi didn't know what he expected when he first walked into the classroom in Hinamizawa, but it certainly wasn't this.

It was a small, dinky little place, especially compared to the sleek buildings he was used to in Tokyo. He'd seen the noticeboard filled with art projects from children of every age up until high school, seen the rickey boards that were obviously years old and scrawled over by the stains of dozens of crushed bugs and dirty hands. The whole place was obviously commissioned from someone else –a rural office building that belonged to the forest services, if Keiichi remembered correctly– and the thought of it possessing air conditioning (or even, at a pinch, electricity) was laughable.

So he hadn't really known what to expect from his fellow classmates. He knew he'd be the oldest boy, and thus probably at the top of that particular social ladder, but beyond that…

Well, what? He had no experience with non-city people, except as characters in the mystery books that his mother loved. He wasn't really sure what to act like, but certainly they wouldn't be like anyone he had ever known, right? Country people were different from urban people. He did know that much, and he even knew enough about psychology that he knew the society and culture you were raised with affected your personality and behavior later in life. Since he and these other kids were the process of "being raised," he expected that their experiences would be very different from his, so they would be different from him.

How different exactly, he didn't know until he walked headfirst into one of Satoko's traps.

From there his expectations just kept getting turned upside down again and again, from Rena's cheery and by all standards, comparatively normal greeting to Rika's doll-like adorability, as picture-perfect as a character in a cartoon, to Satoko's boisterous laughter and her improbably complicated and somehow successful trap. It was a whirlwind of smiles and joy, tumbling him and disorienting him and leaving him sprawled on the ground in a cloud of dust as the girls cackled –in welcome– around him.

And then Mion.

And then Mion.

She'd strode through the dust and waved the other club members aside like a general settling her troops, grinning down at him from his upside-down perspective with teeth that practically sparkled in the sun, her joy at having life vibrating almost tangibly from her pleased expression and the strong slope of her shoulder. She'd teased him, welcoming them to Hinamizawa and "her" classroom, introducing herself and the others, and laughing loudly at his misfortune of falling into Satoko's trap.

"We'll get you shipshape in no time." she said as she helped him to his feet, before slapping him in the back hard enough to make more dust rise as Keiichi lurched forward. "Can't have a wussy city boy disgracing the Hinamizawa Branch School, after all!"

"Who's wussy?!" Keiichi had spluttered, finally straightening himself out and tugging his shirt straight as he gave her an indignant glare. "Its not like I'll screech and faint because I'll see dirt. I'm a man, after all! You can rely on me for anything!"

"Oh really?" Mion's smile was sharp, toothy, like something a shark might flash before hitting their prey. "Well, we'll just have to see if you can put your money where your mouth is –Kei-chan."

"Kei-chan?!" Keiichi spluttered, shocked that she not only knew his name, somehow, but was so unselfconscious, so bold, that she'd immediately smack him with a nickname without ever once asking permission or assuming that he might think her too forward for doing it. "Listen, Mion-san-"

"Mion." She'd waved the standard honorific aside. "It's not like we'll be strangers. After all, you walk past my house on the way to school, same as Rena. We can all walk to school and back together!"

"I look forward to learning with you, Keiichi-kun!" Rena chimed happily.

Later, Keiichi learned why and how they'd known his name, even where his house was –he was, after all, one of the very few people that had ever moved into Hinamizawa in recent history, and most of the village already knew him by sight by sheer virtue of the fact that they didn't know who he was on sight. They knew that there would be a teenage boy in the family that recently moved to the village, and thus if they saw a teenage boy they didn't recognize, it was Keiichi Maebara.

But of course, he didn't know that then, and was swept up in the whirlwind that would soon separate itself out into his dearest friends.

And most importantly, that was the moment he met his greatest rival and closest female friend, Mion Sonozaki –the moment when they first looked each other in the eye and offered a challenge, offered to ignite the spirit of competition that they both sensed in one another.

9.28 AM, USA Central Time