Artisan
Chapter 5

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Oyashiro's curse. They all knew it, but not one person - not even Furude Rika, the reincarnation of Oyashiro himself - knew the truth of it.

Takono Miyo didn't know the entirety of it either, but she knew enough for it to have become a powerful tool in her arsenal. It was her life's work, after all. She had invested far more time and blood into it than anyone else, and she would get exactly what she wanted out of it.

Once upon a time, she may have cringed at the sacrifices it demanded of her. Perhaps if she was still Tanashi Miyoko, living happily with her parents and without the knowledge of the world's cruelty, of God's cruelty and the ultimate challenge she'd encountered and succeeded - and this was her reward. The chance to destroy that God and take his place and it didn't matter what it would cost to gain that. She'd sacrificed enough before that. Her father's reputation. Her parents' lives. That time in the orphanage. The friend who'd been gourged by the chickens in the pen as punishment for their escape. And the smell and taste of urine and faeces and menstrual blood in her mouth and nose and throat as she was left there to squirm and suffer and drown until she died - except she'd made a bet with God by then and survived.

After that, the lives of the masses didn't mean much. Especially when her life changed direction, when she became Takano Miyo, the granddaughter of Takano Hifumi, and when she learned about the Hinamizawa Syndrome. A parasite that could control the mind and it made her laugh at the unfairness of it all, and the hilarity of religions around the world. This was their God? But no, the God that she had challenged and defeated was another sort of God: a god of coincidences and absolutes, who played the puppets en masse instead of controlled just the one and it was a fascinating subject. She loved it. She wanted to know the truth of it.

Others laughed at Takano Hifumi's research for an entirely different reason. They simply couldn't comprehend a parasite controlling their minds.

Humans...always thinking themselves superior.

So she had to surpass them.

And here, at the end of June of Showa 58, would be the cultivation of all she had achieved.

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'You're in danger, Takano-san,' said Rika gravely. Nurse Takano had a needle in her vein, drawing out blood, and Satoko and Doctor Irie were in the other room for the former's checkup.

'Danger?' asked the woman lightly, pulling the needle out and dabbing at the spot of red that appeared. No blood appeared on the cotton wool, so she hummed in approval and stuck a band-aid there instead. Rika didn't twitch at all throughout. She'd had a multitude of needles after all. And if these reincarnations continued, she'd one day exceed needles per day her body had been physically alive. A morbidly amusing thought, and that commenced a spiral of equally morbid and useless thoughts.

They were useless because she had to find the solution to those worlds, and she couldn't afford to sacrifice even one of them for information because who knew when Hanyu's power would run out, when her well of chances would finally run dry.

And Nurse Takano and a chance to convince her to be wary was in her hands.

'Danger,' Rika repeated solemnly. 'On the day of the Watanagushi Festival -'

She was cut off. She'd half-expected it, but it was still frustrating. Frustrating that Nurse Takano wasn't listening, wasn't understanding.

'I don't like her,' said Hanyu from behind.

Because she's an outsider? She didn't understand nor respect nor fear Oyashiro like the rest of them. Nurse Takano was the epitome of disrespect in Hanyu's eyes - but that didn't make her a bad person, and it didn't mean she deserved to die after being stuck in a barrel in a cold mountain and set alight.

Nurse Takano was still laughing. 'The curse of Oyashiro?' she asked. 'Because I'm an outsider here? Because I'm trying to find the truth to the curse?'

'Maybe.' Because Rika didn't know the reason. Nurse Takano annoyed people of the village, yes, but she also helped them. She didn't know of anyone who would want her so consistently dead. 'I don't know why - but I do know you'll vanish on the night of the Watanagushi festival - and they'll discover your body on a cold lonely mountain, stuffed into a canister and burnt.'

She'd stopped laughing at least, and regarded the other thoughtfully. 'Is this one of your predictions, priestess?'

'It is the future,' Rika replied, because it was not a prediction but what had occured in every other lifetime she had borne witness to so far.

'Really?' And Nurse Takano was still smiling as she saw her to the door. Satoko was waiting there. Doctor Irie was nowhere in sight. 'I guess i'd better start praying to your gods, then.'

Rika pursed her lips. About the same as her other conversations with the woman.

'I don't like her,' said Hanyu again, as Rika took Satoko's hand and went with her down the stairs.

At times like this, she agreed silently, I don't like her either.

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How to stop Takano and Tomitake from being killed was a whole lot more complicated than trying to keep Keiichi in Hinamizawa. Her first few ideas were pathetic. A ten year old could hardly overpower two adults - especially with one of them as muscular as Tomitake. Worse, on the night of the Watanagushi festival, the pair were together. So if she was going to incapacitate them, it would be far easier to do it earlier.

But how could she do that and prevent their attending the festival? And would that even prevent his death? Takano's might be plain murder (because how else did a body wind up stuffed in a canister on a cold mountain far away from home and charred) but Tomitake's looked more like Hinamizawa Syndrome. Scratched out his own throat and bled to death, or so Ooishi had told her a few times. Scratching out one's throat was something she'd seen a few times, all as a result of achieving level 5 of the syndrome.

So how to stop that? He said he was already on prophylaxis, and that he'd keep an eye out. Better than Nurse Takano, but he'd said that in other worlds as well and still wound up dead. It couldn't be just the Hinamizawa syndrome, then. The constant occurrence proved it was deliberate. Someone wanted Tomitake Jiro dead. So they were mimicking the appearance of level five Hinamizawa Syndrome to mask the murder trial.

Because the villagers wouldn't allow any further investigation if they thought he died from the curse.

Especially if he did something to invoke, at least from the perspective of the villagers, the wrath of Oyashiro.

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She didn't discover it until Keiichi mentioned it in one world, and she'd confirmed it for herself in the next few. But Tomitake and Takano had a tendency to sneak into the ritual tool shrine the Furudes guarded. Hanyu was fairly sure that wasn't what invited the curse of Oyashiro on them and Rika was inclined to agree - particularly as she was the guardian of the shrine and wasn't exactly going around dishing out their punishment.

Also, it didn't happen in every timeline. But Tomitake and Takano were always dead. And breaking the pattern as well. The other years, one died and the other was spirited away by the demon and the ones who disappeared were different in every world. Sometimes, they didn't disappear at all. But it didn't matter. She'd die before the curse fell apart. And with the queen carrier gone, madness would descend upon the inhabitants of Hinamizawa. And she'd be reincarnated in a new world, with a slightly different setup, attempting to save her life once more and to do that, she needed to prevent the curse from taking root.

One thing led to another. It was a cascade effect, and she was struggling to find the right place to put the stopper in it. Preventing the curse from manifesting in any of her friends had no relating to Tomitake's and Takano's deaths - or none that she could see. The curse manifested seemingly at random, though she thought she had the pattern down. Tomitake's and Takano's deaths on the other hand were fixed. Someone's will was making them happen - which, really, meant they should be more preventable. People were easier to trifle with than chance...but she didn't know the mastermind, the puppeteer. So she had to do something about the pawns.

Which led her back to attempting to prevent their disappearance during the Watanagushi festival. And she couldn't watch them, being on stage at the time. The dance she'd practised so hard for that first year, but could perform in her sleep without revision now. Still, she pretended to make mistakes. It would be too strange otherwise. The less eyes on her, the better to move in the shadows...but she was the priestess of Hinamizawa, the head of one of the three great families and the reincarnation of Oyashiro. There was no hiding in the shadows with a spotlight like that on her head.

And someone begrudged her enough to kill her in each and every one of those worlds.

Why? Why kill her? Why kill Tomitake and Takano? What was she still missing?

And how could she stop it?

'Are you sure you haven't had enough?' asked Hanyu.

'No,' Rika snapped at her. 'I haven't. I'll find the answer. I'll live past June of Showa 58.'

'Hmm..' She didn't rebuke the claim, nor did she accept it. Hypocritical of her, seeing as she was the one who'd first given her hope and whisked her away from her one true death. 'This world is lost, though.'

'Why?' Rika asked. She still didn't know. She hadn't tried to stop Tomitake and Takano yet. There was still time.

'Because I know you - ' Hanyu shook her head, and vanished. 'You'll see, eventually.'

'Hanyu!' Rika snapped.

But Hanyu did not respond.

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She could try and stop them from going into the ritual tool shrine, but would that accomplish anything? She'd already decided that wasn't the cause of their consistent deaths, but if she had to mask her intervention as something else, the curse of Oyashiro could serve her as well as their many-time murderers.

There was still the problem of overpowering two adults: adults that would, as well, be looking very closely at the ritual tool shrine (unlike Keiichi and the stairs). So the simple oil on the steps method wasn't going to work. But she could plan traps. Maybe she could ask Satoko for ideas - or use the ideas Satoko had come up with in other worlds. Still, she couldn't tell Satoko why. Couldn't risk that. Not after getting that far.

Even if Satoko would have jumped at the chance to set traps, after being cheated out of her latest guinea pig.

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Their weekend club activity was going to Mion's uncle's game store. The site of a trigger in another world but this time Keiichi wasn't with them, unable to ride his bike or cycle that far. In those other worlds, Keiichi would win a doll as a prize and give it to Rena. Mion would be upset - because keiichi was the one thing that could tangle her tongue. And then word would get back to Shion and the fragile balance would be tipped…

But if Keiichi wasn't there, he couldn't get a prize.

Mion had no trouble winning the game that time around, and the doll went no-where. She won back the prize money she'd put out - the only world so far in which the true prize went out.

A seemingly insignificant thing, but another bullet dodged.

It was a shame that Keiichi's absence was necessary for that to happen.

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Keiichi was napping on the slope outside. Ichiro had finished his sketches and selected a few to transfer onto a canvas, and so had decided to do that in the fresh air as well. Aiko was inside, humming as she cooked. She'd promised a picnic for the three of them. A picnic on their front lawn.

Ichiro slowly sketched. The charcoal darkened his fingers and the back of his neck prickled. Are people staring? But the streets were, on the whole, empty. Just Keiichi napping there, Aiko cooking in the kitchen. She could be looking out from time to time. Or Keiichi could open his eyes, stare a while and then nod off again.

But why would either of them cause his neck to prickle like it did? Like he was the hunted, the prey, and someone in the shadows was the stalker.

Those weird footstep noises are making me angsty.

And suddenly, he could hear footsteps again. He fought the urge to turn around.

'Hello, Keiichi. Hello, Keiichi's father.'

Oh, just Rena.

'You can call me Ichiro.' He smiled at her. She was a preppy girl. Quiet and passionate. He liked her. Liked all of Keiichi's friends. A bad influence in city terms, but Keiichi needed that kind of influence.

She smiled at him, grinned a bit wider at Keiichi who had started at her sudden appearance and then scooted over to give her a spot between them. 'Watchya drawing?'

'Oyashiro's curse,' he responded without thinking.

She stiffened, still standing. 'Oyashiro's curse,' she repeated, and there was something different in her voice. Something...empty.

He lifted his eyes from his work and fixated on her. She stared back at her, her face unusually serious, before shifting to the painting again. 'Footsteps,' she surmised. 'Footsteps in the shadow...and when you turn around, there's no-one there.'

That was exactly it...but how did she know?

She looked at him again. 'Do you hear voices as well, ichiro-san? Repeating the same thing, over and over?'

Ichiro stared at her. So did Keiichi. 'Rena?'

She blinked, shook her head, and smiled. 'Rena's being silly.'

Keiichi relaxed. But even when Rena had wandered off and declined joining them for their picnic, he thought about her words.

He hadn't heard voices, but the footsteps...were they really a part of Oyashiro's curse?

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His final outline turned out a bit different to the sketch. Ichiro chalked it down to Rena's intervention. She asked Keiichi about the story, who asked Mion, who gave him the bare-boned details to feed back. Apparently, she believed she'd been inflicted with Oyashiro's curse about a year and a half ago. Was living in Ibaraki at the time and was in a bad way. Came back to Hinamizawa and had been a lot better since.

'But she said people rarely leave Hinamizawa,' Keiichi finished. 'It seems to be frowned upon.

'It's a small country town,' Ichiro shrugged, but there was a crawling sensation in his skin as he thought about it, trapped in the tiny no-where town.

But is that really bad? Keiichi and Aiko are both happy here.

'Guess it doesn't matter.' Keiichi shut his eyes again. 'Feels like I can be a kid forever, here.'

Trapped and unable to grow, just like Peter Pan in that Western tale...