Artisan
Chapter 1

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Chie-sensei was leaving. Rika watched her go.

It was an insignificant action in itself, but it set the stage: the stage she was expecting, and to some degree waiting for. A futile thing, perhaps, to wait for something set in stone because this distant relative of Keiichi's died in every timeline as well. And they were so removed from Hinamizawa that nothing she or chance did would impact that, or so she assumed.

And, from what she'd learnt from other worlds, the cause of death was entirely natural: natural and so unpreventable. And she didn't need to prevent it anyway, if she could get Keiichi to remain in Hinamizawa in at least the worlds that set him up as the black queen: just another pawn for the king, of course, but the powerful one that snatched her attention on the board.

But as much as she'd thought, as many scenarios she'd run through her mind and contingencies she'd planned for, she was doubtful. Doubtful because she failed every world so far, failed and failed and she needed a success somewhere down the line, something that would show her she could change these unchangeable fates.

Chie-sensei was leaving. Rika watched her go, and then turned behind her. Keiichi was still explaining something to Mion and Rena. Something she could probably explain herself, after hearing those words in their exact form so many times. She could, but she never did. Too hard to explain why she understood those things she shouldn't. And too unnecessary. What mattered was what would come after the explanation.

And what she did there, or fate or some smaller chance event she hadn't stumbled upon as of yet, would determine Keiichi's fate in this world.

I will save you…

Can I..?

Mion sighed suddenly, and snapped his book shut. Keiichi closed his as well and swept his things into his bag.

Rika watched. He was about to say it. About to leave.

'Mion, I'm not staying for club activities today.'

So innocent…and yet so not. Keiichi had no idea: his voice calm and a little distracted as he double-checked everything. And Mion… she had no idea either. None of them did. Nobody except her and there was still the small (or maybe infinitesimal, but she hadn't had enough words yet to know for sure) chance that Keiichi would not wind up with the Hinamizawa syndrome through leaving her presence over the weekend – but she could not depend on that which hadn't happened yet.

Rather, she had to make those possibilities occur with her own hands, with enough control to be able to reproduce them in future worlds. Unless, of course, this was the one: the winning board. How lucky, if that was the case.

But somewhere, beyond the desperation and the need to save them all, was a part of her that thought she would be cheated out of truly earning her victory, if that proved to be the case. A ridiculous thought, when loss meant her life and the lives of her friends and even success didn't guarantee the lives of her friends and she couldn't go on endlessly. They had a long time, still, but they'd started shrinking. Showa 58 began in January, and then February and soon it would be only June, repeating again and again, and then only the Watanagashi festival and how could she save her own life in less than a week? And then…the day, perhaps. But the day varied. When would she run into a world where she'd already died? And then that would be the end: the limit of Hanyu's power because the only body to return to would be a decomposing one, buried under the wastes of a nuked town.

Sometimes, her mind flew to that conclusion. One of three. Or Hanyu would abandon her to her inevitable fate – or she'd succeed in changing it. That was the one they banked on: the one that made them rewind her life again and again so that she could struggle in each of those worlds and possibilities anew. But it was the thought of being trapped in a dead body, in a dead town, after endless attempts and thinking that, just maybe, there had been a world after all where the possibility of her survival had existed but the odds simply hadn't been in her favour to lead her there.

And that was too cruel a thought. Too cruel.

The scraping of a chair snatched her attention back and she blinked frantically. Mion was still sitting with her back towards them – her and Satoko – but Keiichi was standing up.

She flew out of her own chair and almost fell on desk by Mion's elbow. 'Do you have to go?' she asked pleadingly, fighting the weight of worlds past and future on her back and trying to sound like the innocent ten year old she was supposed to be.

The window of opportunity for plan A had almost slipped her past. But she had it now, in her flimsy grasp.

It's not going to work…but please let it.

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Keiichi had been standing up at the time, and over Mion's head, he had a perfect view of Rika ricocheting out of her seat and almost into his desk. And he blinked in surprise. 'What's the fire?' he asked.

There was something hollow in her eyes when she haltingly replied. And her words – they were too light, too sparse. As though she was trying to hide the real reason she wanted him to stay, hide it behind flimsy excuses and she knew they were too flimsy and they wouldn't sway him – or his relatives, he supposed, since it didn't really matter if he was swayed or not, since that distant relative he hadn't seen since he was a kid was still dead and the funeral was still going to happen over the weekend.

'You'll miss me?' he asked. 'It won't be long. Just the weekend.'

'Maybe Rika-chan is worried Keiichi-kun will decide to stay in the city,' Rena offered, though her lips were twitching in some kind of hidden mirth. There was something in her eyes too.

Something in everyone's eyes. Why was that? Or had he crawled his way into their hearts so thoroughly in such a short amount of time, in a way he'd never managed in the city.

He laughed aloud. 'You don't have to worry about that,' he said, and he honestly meant it. The few months in HInamizawa had left him happier and freer than his years in the city. He didn't need to try. He simply was. And they simply were as well, and between them and the spontaneity of their club and the vibrant life that managed to live in the simple country village…how could he ever get bored of such a place and march on back to the city where everything was too cramped and sparse and you had to fight over every bit of attention until it was worth the dirt underfoot?

But he didn't say all that. Couldn't say all that. Maybe he didn't even need to say all that.

And maybe the dark tinge in those eyes were in fact from his own, not wanting to leave them for even that small a time. But still, family was family and it really was only for the weekend. He wouldn't even see most of the parts of the city he'd come to hate. And he wasn't going there on a vacation or to lay demons to rest or anything like that. Just a quick visit, comforting family, mourning for a guy he barely remembered, and then hopping back into the easy-going but vibrant flow of his new Hinamizawa life once more.

He smiled again, realising he hadn't even been listening to the girls but able to guess what they'd been saying. And he ruffled Rika's hair, and then Satoko's as she came to stand beside her housemate.

Satoko scowled at him. 'I won't miss you, you know.'

He'd quickly gotten used to her bratty attitude. It was endearing, in its own way. 'Good,' he grinned at her. 'You can keep the others in check, then.'

She smirked back at him. Mion copied it. 'And the penalty. Three days worth, all waiting for you on Monday.'

'Lovely.' And the groan was only partially fake, because he'd had enough penalty games to know they weren't walks in the park. Even if the constant dragging out of his comfort zone was strangely liberating in retrospect.

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Keiichi left after that, giving a general wave to their cluster and disappearing out the door. He appeared soonafter through the window, and then vanished from that view as well. Rika watched until Mion's voice and the shuffling of cards dragged her back, and she cursed herself lightly – because she'd always know that attempt, that plan A, was going to fail.

But that didn't mean she hadn't hoped it would work.

The others noticed nothing. She'd become at least passably adept at hiding thoughts of other worlds from them, and only got better with each new incarnation. She listened and gave her input and contributed to hashing out the rules of that afternoon's club activities, but her mind was at work elsewhere. About the pre-emptive measure she'd already put into place. And something else in the next cycle if he managed to dodge her trap. Because she couldn't really make someone sick on such short notice – at least not a controllable sickness, mild enough to not be dangerous but prominent enough to last for a few days. And that would take far more thinking, and perhaps even a chat with Dr. Irie…because sicknesses and stress were two things that awoke the parasite in the mind and she couldn't have that happening. Not here. Not for this.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Or out of one fire and into another – except she'd be responsible for the second flames, directly responsible instead of indirect: the situation of circumstance that found her friends suffering and dying, plagued, again and again…

She couldn't wait to get home so she could call the Maebara residence.

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He didn't think to do anything but rush once he was home. He'd been eating breakfast when his mother dropped the bombshell on him, so he hadn't packed at all. They'd only found out that morning anyway, and waking him up ten minutes before his alarm wouldn't have accomplished much.

Still, he wished his mother had thought to pack for him while he'd been at school. Or kept him home so he could do it himself. Instead, she'd been packing her and her husband's things – including a rather bulky painting Ichiro had been in the middle of and simply could not abandon (because who knew when he'd be able to get into the right "zone" again) and Ichiro himself had been trying to organise transport on the short notice. People usually travelled away from train stations on Friday after noons, not towards them.

Still, surely that didn't take all day. But Keiichi arrived home to have his mother throw a few bags at him – a duffle and a backpack – and calling for him to hurry and pack because they were leaving in an hour and he could have a snack while they were en route.

So he raced up the stairs with the bags, because an hour really wasn't much time at all.

And why would he think there'd been something spilled on the stairs? He raced up and down them quite frequently and there was a strict "no food upstairs" rule in play. No reason why anything – not even a cup of water since there was a bathroom and individual cups for each of them.

Still, he slipped on the way back down: slipped and landed hard on one knee, because his arms were full. At least they'd cushioned his head. And he was grateful for that, once he could think past the shooting pain. But that took a while. Because first he screamed. And then choked and cried because the pain of a fractured bone was sharp and he'd landed with all his weight on that knee, enough to apparently shatter his patella.

Things were a frantic blur after that. His father carried him to the clinic, with him twitching and gasping and in pain from his half-straightened knee the entire way, while his mother raced ahead, panicking herself and explaining what had happened and how much pain he was in and entirely forgetting they had a train to catch in a few hours.

Luckily, the morphine took the edge off the pain, and he remembered the trip.

His parents simply stared at him. 'We can't leave you here like this,' Aiko answered, finally. 'Your leg might be broken!'

'Patella,' the clinic physician, Doctor Irie, confirmed. 'That's the small bone in the kneecap. And there's a bit of cracking on the tibia as well, but that will heal with time. And the patella will heal as well. Good news is that the pieces haven't moved around, so we won't need to do surgery on it.'

That was very good news, because surgery meant somehow getting to the city because a small village clinic simply did not have the resources.

Of course, there was bad news as well.

'We'll put a cast on your knee – a half cast at the moment, and a full one once the swelling resolves, and arrange some crutches for you. You won't be able to put any weight on your knee until the bone's completely healed – so that's at least six weeks.'

Six weeks without being able to play sports or ride his bike. Six weeks of dragging an extra weight around on one leg. Oh boy…

How did he manage to fall down the stairs like that, anyway?

But that thought was pushed away. Doctor Irie had led his parents off and Keiichi called after them: 'at least Dad should go, you know!' and hopefully they'd consider it, because family was family, after all, and important, and Ichiro knew his cousin pretty well before he'd moved away from the city even if Keiichi had been pretty young when that had happened.

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Nobody picked up at the Maebara residence. Rika had to keep on stopping herself from gnawing through her bottom lip – or even trying the phone often enough to make Satoko suspicious. But then, a couple of hours later, Mion rang.

'Keiichi managed to fall down the stairs,' she supplied, and laughed forcefully. Buried under that laugh was her worry, because falling down stairs wasn't as innocent as it sounded and she knew that. Perhaps even better than most, due to the well one world had found her at the bottom of. How many more times would that tragedy repeat, she wondered? As of yet, she had no clue what caused it – and therefore no clue how to stop it.

But right now, there was a different tragedy to put a stopper on, and a different plan. 'Fall down the stairs?' she echoed. 'Silly Keiichi.'

'Silly,' Mion agreed. 'Clean broke his kneecap. Doctor Irie had to put him in a cast. In any case, he and his mum didn't wind up going to the city.'

And there it is. The news she was waiting for. And she allows the silly grin to spread across her face because Satoko's cooking dinner and won't see it to question her, and Hanyu can understand what it means. See. I changed things after all.

Hanyu frowned at her. She disbelieved. Things can still easily go wrong.

But there's still an extra spring in her step as she hopped off to the pantry to set the table for dinner. 'Satoko? Did you make spare? Maybe we should take some for Keiichi-kun and his mother.'

Satoko laughed in the same forceful way that Mion had, worry in the undertone. There was something subtly different there, but Rika hadn't gone through enough worlds yet to work out what it was.