Artisan
Chapter 10

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There were more ramen cups than she was happy with, and less actual groceries, but things really couldn't be helped. She didn't feel comfortable in leaving Keiichi alone in Hinamizawa, but she didn't feel comfortable in taking him away either. He was carefree, happy, finding his place…and –

No-one ever leaves Hinamizawa. Ever.

She shivered as she put away the rest of the groceries. That would be for when they returned. If they returned. Aren't I going too fast? The rational part of her mind knew she was, but there was something else gripping her heart that wouldn't let go. Some fear that if she left town, or Ichiro did, then they'd never see Keiichi again – but she couldn't, not at all, drag him along. Not now. Not like this.

But Ichiro had to go. His work demanded it and could they afford to cut themselves off entirely from the outside world? Not yet. Not before they made arrangements for such things. Not if they couldn't manage it. Art lived in the city, ultimately. Inspiration came from quaint country towns with bloody folklore and demons that seemed to hover all too close, but they weren't alive until there were hundreds of people watching and looking and reading, hundreds of people adding their own interpretations of the tale.

And Hinamizawa was a good expression of that. Folklore impeding into modern times but few people outside Hinamizawa, if anyone, knew about it. It wasn't the sort of folklore that buried itself into a university course. It wasn't the sort of folklore anyone could look up if they looked up demon tales on a library catalogue. It wasn't the sort of folklore she'd imagined was at the root of this town – and couldn't they have found a town that wasn't steeped in blood like this one? That was the downside of being so far cut off from the world. They'd walked right into demon infested waters and now they had to live there, survive there, stay there…

But it wasn't feasible to stay. Not right then. Not when if they both stopped the extra things that came with their jobs, they'd run out of funds too quick. But they'd have to talk. Sort things out.

And that wasn't the only thing they had to talk about and sort out. Her cheek itched. She scratched at it, and it hurt but she scratched at it anyway and it came away with blood.

Keiichi's finger curled around her wrist. 'It's not good to scratch infections,' he scolded. They spread.

She supressed the snort. It was their job to protect him, not the other way around.

She had to get her act together. And so did Ichirou.

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The food was sorted out. Rika had volunteered her house for dinner on Saturday as well (which meant Satoko was cooking, Keiichi informed her) so that was all fine. And Keicihi knew to lock up, be careful of who he let in (though with a small town like Hinamizawa, they knew everyone by then and then some).

Keiichi settled onto the dining table and worked on his homework. She moved on to the packing. Her stuff first because then she could put off asking Ichiro what he'd prefer, put off seeing him – and what kind of woman was she, to want to avoid her husband? What sort of husband was he to hit her for no reason at all? Unless there was a reason, and then what was it? Was the problem in him or her or this place or just the world always eager to rip someone apart?

She packed slowly, carefully. Fought to keep her hands steady and every unnecessary crease out of her clothes. It was methodological. Boring. Calming. Almost lulling.

Until the footsteps on the stairs almost scared the life out of her. 'Honey?' Nobody. No reply. 'Keiichi?' No reply to that as well.

She swallowed and peeked out the door. Nobody. Nobody on the stairs or the upper landing at all.

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Something was stirring. Something inside of him that made him want to move. Maybe it was the finished painting before him that had swallowed him like kindling for a flame and was now dying down. And there was something somewhere else. Evidence. Like he knew the truth and all that was left was the undeniable truths.

His mind hummed. His body vibrated. He stood, stumbled a little, and started for the door.

The light from the first floor burned his eyes, but he continued anyway. It wasn't strong enough to make him blind. Just strong enough to let him see. See the figure on the dining table, not even looking up when he passed and he wasn't quiet, not at all. Never quiet, never unnoticeable and yet the figure didn't turn his way at all.

He left him there. That wasn't what was calling him. Something else. Higher up, like a Siren's song bursting out of the waves. Up the stairs, and his footsteps were so loud, so echoing, that he couldn't help but wonder if somebody else wasn't following him, matching every step.

He didn't check. There'd been too many cases of him looking and finding no-one there for him to check. He continued up instead.

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Footsteps again. Footsteps when she'd been carefully folding her suit and a few dress shirts and pants. Footsteps now when she's up to the undergarments and she hopes it's not Keiichi because he's at the age where it could be pretty embarrassing, watching his mother pack her underwear. But it's not Keiichi. It's not nobody again this time either, even though she was restraining herself from turning around to check because she'd just spook herself more (and she could go red in piece if it was Keiichi's amused tone that greeted her).

But it was neither of those things. Instead, it was Ichiro suddenly knocking her suitcase away from her and she started, because she hadn't seen him coming at all, hadn't seen him at all –

'What are you doing?' he hissed.

'Packing,' she replied, shaking a little. 'For –'

'You're leaving.' He sunk onto their bed, shaking his head. 'You're actually leaving. I didn't think –'

Part of her thought there was a misunderstanding there. After all, they were leaving and for the weekend. Another part of her latched on to the implication instead. That he wanted her gone. Or he didn't want her gone. 'Don't you care?' she whispered. Probably the wrong question. Definitely the wrong question.

They're hearing two entirely different conversations, and it was impossible to get anything meaningful out of it.

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Keiichi jumped at the thud from upstairs. His mother had been packing. Had she dropped something? Her suitcase? A lamp?

It took him a while to get up. He still had crutches he threw up as far as they'd go, and then up the rest of the way when he met them. Still had his cast which was heavy and cumbersome but protecting his far too fragile knee. Still had that image of the step sliding away from him and him falling and being oh so lucky he hadn't landed on his head again but then there are raised voices and he forces himself to forget the other stuff and just continue up.

'kaa-san and 'tou-san are fighting. Why? Whywhywhy…

He made it up, wobbled as he got his crutches under his armpits again and started off again. He was quicker now, quicker now that he didn't have to worry about the stairs.

All that speed crashed to a halt in the doorway, and he just stared blankly.

Why is there blood? Why is there – whywhywhy…

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Their questions and accusations tumble over each other. What did she did? What did he do? What were they doing? What were they going to do? They tumbled and it was nonsensical even to her muddled mind and there was something under her skin, something crawling and she dove for her suitcase and stuffed everything in and slammed it shut. But it still itched – her clothes, she realised. The ones she still wore. She tore them off as well and tried to stuff them –

And there was a sound but she didn't hear it. A sound and them something gripping her wrists and she withered and screamed and the restraint turned into pain and she still had no idea what was going on, just that nothing was making sense anymore. Part of her felt like a schoolgirl who'd been ditched by their childhood crush or first love or something equally heartbreaking but another part of her couldn't grasp Ichiro holding her wrists, Ichiro's face changing from concern to hurt to anger as he thought she wanted to be away from, thought she feared him, thought she despised him –

And as for Keiichi standing in the doorway, she didn't see him at all.

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She's leaving.

She's afraid.

She despises you.

The accusations tumble around in his brain, and the instincts tumble as well. Hold her, keep her here, lavish her with attention and kindness and love until she fell for him all over again. Push her away, cover that sneering face, those hateful eyes black and blue. Or red. Cover it all in red –

Other noises outside. Someone screams. Something cracks. Everything's painted in colour. Brown and red but maybe they'll mix black and blue with it as well. Painted in colour. Painted in madness. Painted in curse.

Yes, Oyashiro's curse, the painting that was drying in the basement though already dry. He should have painted it to look exactly like this scene.

It was a similar blur of colours. But not the same.

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Two days later, the fumes subsided and the rescue team moved in. They expected no survivors, but they also expected nothing more than two thousand dead because of the gas release.

But there were four deaths that said otherwise.

The first was Furude Rika: shrine maiden of the Furude Shrine. And naked and disembowelled on the top of said shrine, and then part-eaten by the crows. It had made for a gruesome picture, even for world-hardened men like them. But Ooishi had kept a copy of the file and those pictures, because it might've held in there the secret he'd long searched for.

Though it might remain forever buried now, unless that Shion girl and her guardians knew something. Sonozaki Shion, the only member of that accursed family still left alive but she'd been so far cut off that it mightn't have even mattered. He'd seen her, during the Hojou Satoshi incident, seen her with five nails on each hand and then missing three on one and knew the significance of that because he'd made it his personal business three years before to know everything he could about the Sonozaki family.

It was a pity any potential witnesses would have been swept up with the gas that had taken out the rest of Hinamizawa.

And then there was the Maebara family. An entirely different kettle of fish, if it was that. Dead and guttered fish. A bloody mess – though as far as blood went, not as messy as Furude Rika.

But far more clear-cut. And far more tragic. Couldn't they have waited a day and died peacefully like the rest? Even if peacefully meant choking on their own vomit, meant gagging on their swelling tongues, meant their eyes trying to roll out of their sockets as they fought for air…

But far nicer than domestic violence and suicide.

And not even the clear-cut one person beats the other and the kid got stuck in the middle, either. The old man's definitely a suicide. Scratched his throat out just like Tomitake Jiro and maybe that meant they were both on the same sort of drugs except the toxicology report for Tomitake came back clean. Wasn't anything to get out of Maebara Ichiro's toxicology report. After all, his body had still been in the town when it was gassed. Things like that messed up autopsies and who behind the government decided it was a good idea to gas an entire town anyway?

But before his sympathy for some two thousand people was his loyalty and love for his friends, his family – the old man who'd been almost a father to him and as good as, and he owed it to him, and if Hinamizawa was now buried, he had to dig everything he could out of it while the soil was still fresh.

Both the kid and the woman had died from internal injuries following head strikes. The woman's head had struck her bedside cabinet. The boy's had struck the wall. The room was in shambles around all three of them, and the two adults had other marks on them. A bruise on a cheek and fingerprints in both wrists. Swollen knuckles and broken blisters. Definitely a fight but how much of it had been a drug-induced age and how much of it had already been going on?

But that didn't matter, did it? The Maebaras were simply told the family of three had died with the rest of Hinamizawa. The public cover-up version at that. Because that was kinder: saying a volcano had gone off in the area and the toxic sulphur fumes had drifted down to the village and killed its citizens. Better than saying the government had wiped them out. Better than saying there were skeletons buried in the closet and having another man obsessed with uncovering the truth.

Not that this was going to stop him from attempting to uncover the truth. And maybe he'd search for these other truths along the way, the things that would bug him like they'd bug any good police officer and had a bit of a connection on a more personal level as well. Especially the death of Furude Rika. They couldn't explain that away at all. And the drug they couldn't find, that mightn't even exist but was now directly responsible for two deaths and indirectly for another two – or three –

Where were all the answers in the world?