***Post Trauma***
Kasai cleaned and dressed my mutilated left hand. I tried to live with the pain, but it kept me from writing, studying, working, and cooking. We couldn't go to the hospital or someone might find out that I had been tortured. If I told anyone what the Sonozaki family had done to me, I would be considered an enemy of the village and I might even be killed. Finally, Kasai somehow or other acquired a week's worth of opiate painkillers. Those pills were the only things that kept me stable for a while.
For the next few days, Kasai and I said nothing about what happened to us. I thought I would lose my mind if I dared to speak about the torture. I still didn't understand why Haruka, the personality who could tolerate pain, had not come to my rescue. I still couldn't believe Mion betrayed me and watched me being tortured. The least surprising, but still horrifying fact was that Oryo had all but proved she and her agents must have tortured and killed people in the past. Finally I understood the Curse of Oyashiro. Every year, someone within the Sonozaki clan eliminated a perceived "traitor" or "rebel." Not that I was ready to start playing detective again.
I don't think I need to state that my experience in the underground torture chamber traumatized me. From then on, I would be haunted by post-traumatic stress. I frequently relived parts of the event. When alone, I had flashbacks of bowing, begging, screaming, and seeing that torture device. Frequent nightmares of being tortured by Oryo and Mion troubled my sleep. Sometimes, random things acted as triggers that brought back my panic and hysteria suddenly. Hitting one of my fingers, seeing Kasai's pictures of the Sonozaki estate, or entering a stone room were all common triggers. In addition, I would never again be able to tolerate any kind of restraint on my body.
Staying in my apartment for seven days, I avoided situations or people that could trigger my memories. Even when I recovered enough to leave the apartment, I remained avoidant. I would refuse to ride in Kasai's car because it was just like the car that had taken me to the torture chamber. I kept out of crowds, since anybody in the village—or anybody in the prefecture—might have connections to the Sonozakis. I carried my Taser with me everywhere. I didn't talk to Mion, or anyone in my family, when I could help it.
Despite all this, I still wanted to be able to work to ease Kasai's burden and pay for my own rent. I decided that I needed to try to keep working. When Uncle Yoshirou got out of the hospital (he had a minor concussion from being struck by Sonozaki agents), he told me he would continue operating Angel Mort, refusing to be cowed by Oryo. So, just a week after experiencing real torture, I headed back to work. I decided that I would pretend to be a normal teenage girl again.
***Satoshi's Disappearance***
On my way to work, I stopped by the toy shop where Satoshi and I had reserved the stuffed bear. Staring through the display window, I saw that the toy was gone. In my mind, I congratulated Satoshi for finally buying it. I hoped to find a way to see Satoshi soon, but I wasn't sure how, yet. There would be no point in pretending to be Mion anymore, even if she would ever stoop to allow it.
Detective Oishi happened to be walking down the street. He stopped to speak to me, looking relaxed and amused as usual. The detective addressed me as Mion and asked after my health, and I informed him that I was Mion. Oishi laughed apologetically, and then looked at me more seriously.
"How are your injuries, Miss Shion?" he inquired. "Don't let them get infected, and they'll heal nicely."
My left hand was bandaged and out of sight behind my back. How did Oishi know about it?
"Anyway," the Detective said, "could I ask you a few things at the station?"
Of course, I thought as I rode with the cop to the local police station. Satoshi must still be a suspect of the murder of his aunt. I had remained hidden for a week, occupied with my trauma, but outside, this year's murder was still the talk of the town. As much as I wanted to trust Oishi, as much as I wanted to find a way to lean on him for help, he was still the man trying to arrest Satoshi. I couldn't be too friendly with him. I remained silent as we entered a small interrogation room with a metal desk. I felt anxious sitting down, but I was thankful the walls were not made of stone, and that the window in the back let in a lot of sunlight. Yes, I reminded myself, I was not underground anymore. There was nothing to fear.
"What is it you want?" I asked, not hiding my annoyance. "Do you want details about Satoshi's alibi?"
"I'm no longer interested in his alibi for the night of the murder," Oishi replied patiently. "I would like to know where he was and what he might have been doing last night, though."
"Huh? Why last night?"
Oishi explained, "Satoshi Hojo disappeared last night after going for a walk."
I stood up out of my chair in surprise. Missing? Was he hiding out somewhere because he was guilty? No, I decided. Even if he was guilty, he wouldn't leave Satoko alone for long. If he went missing, then he must have been kidnapped…or killed… by someone who saw him as an enemy.
"Oh?" said Oishi in response to the look on my face. "You didn't know?"
I lost my composure completely, screaming, "WHAT DO YOU MEAN SATOSHI IS MISSING? WHY? WHY?!"
After I managed to regain composure, Oishi explained further. He suspected Satoshi of killing his aunt. Although Satoko thought she saw him last night, Satoshi had probably been missing since the day before. He had gone out to buy a stuffed animal for his sister, but he never returned. So he hadn't bought that bear after all. Oishi thought the boy's disappearance was sudden, almost like a kidnapping—there had been no evidence that he planned to run away that day. It was possible he had been captured by whoever was behind this "Curse of Oyashiro." It was also possible that Satoshi, being acutely depressed, had decided to suddenly kill himself. There was still chance he was alive, though, Oishi thought. He had wondered whether Satoshi might seek shelter with me. I had to tell the optimistic detective that I hadn't laid eyes on Satoshi in a week.
Kasai was waiting for me in the kitchen when I got home. He had been welcomed back as a Sonozaki agent after I had "distinguished myself," and he suffered nothing more than a bruise on the head and a demotion. That day, he said he learned some news that might be of interest to me. The murderer who killed Satoshi's aunt had been found, Kasai reported. The murderer admitted to trying to copy the mysterious deaths of the past three years. Although he didn't confess to killing the aunt, the drug-addicted suspect was found carrying baseball bat stained with the blood of Satoshi's aunt. He would almost certainly be found guilty of the crime.
As my nerves crumbled, I tried to think over the implications of this. If that drug addict was really the murderer, then Satoshi had nothing at all do with it. And if Satoshi had nothing to do with, then he never would have tried to run away or go into hiding. Besides, he loved Satoko more than life itself. It seemed like kidnapping was the only possible reason for his disappearance. And only time would tell whether the boy would reemerge with a few torture wounds, or remain indefinitely missing. If the latter, I could only assume the Sonozaki and Kimiyoshi families had decided to secretly kill him.
The village leaders lied about not hurting anyone else, and they robbed the boy I loved from me.
***Miyo Takano***
A week passed and Satoshi did not reappear.
Due to the emotional turmoil of being tortured and losing Satoshi, I began to see an increase in dissociative symptoms. The passive influence of my alters became more pronounced. Often, I found myself saying things I didn't intend to say. (Example, Mari calling Kasai a drug dealer.) I sometimes had powerful thoughts out of nowhere, and they weren't mine. (Example: thinking about killing Mion.) My mind underwent intense internal struggle, and sometimes I could hear our voices arguing. I occasionally encountered startling amnesia, forgetting where I was or what I had just been doing. Then I started experiencing gaps in my everyday memory. In particular, I had no memory of work or my private project.
Concerning work, I asked Uncle Yoshirou how I seemed. He said that I acted like a different person at work compared to how he remembered me growing up. At Angel Mort, I always behaved in an endearing, respectful, and caring fashion. My submissive behavior made me a favorite of the guests of the maid café. I figured, then, that Jun must be taking over my mind and body at work. After all, Jun was the most girlish of us, and the one most likely to try to please customers.
Kasai filled me in on my memory gaps or personality changes at home. One day he told me that I spent at least an hour a day compiling some kind of "Detective's Casebook." Though I had no memory of doing this, I found the notebook and supplies in my desk drawer. I figured that must be private project belonging to Mari. She was a "lion of justice" and the one most interested in joining the police someday.
As for Haruka, the personality that felt no pain but inflicted it on others, she still did not appear. Sometimes I felt her thoughts or heard her voice faintly in my head, but she wasn't strong enough to take control of my consciousness. I could tell, however, Haruka was building her strength. When she finally surfaced, I was going to have a devil of a time controlling her.
As I worked at Angel Mort, I decided Mari had the right idea and I went back to "playing detective." This time, I was not simply playing. I had a reason to want to uncover the truth. I requested to meet with Oishi, and the good-humored detective agreed. He told me more about the recent cases. The junkie who was found with the murder weapon had killed himself in jail without ever confessing he killed Satoshi's aunt. Still, he was considered the culprit. As for Satoshi's disappearance, the only development was that villagers had started blaming Oyashiro's Curse again. When questioned, the villagers would say the boy had been "spirited away by a demon."
How ridiculous. I left the police station in frustration. It seemed unbelievable that, in this day and age, the village unanimously blamed supernatural phenomena for something that was obviously a criminal case. Almost just as annoying was the fact that Oishi treated this year's mysterious deaths as separate from those of previous years. Well then, I needed to show the village as well as Oishi that all these instances were connected, and that the likely culprits were staring them in the face.
I went to the library to work on me and Mari's "Casebook." Here, I wrote down all the facts I knew about the mysterious deaths in Hinamizawa as well as the case of the missing boy. I attached newspaper clippings and photos to back things up. I wrote notes and speculations about how these crimes could have been planned, quoting books about crime, publicized police reports, and media. Furthermore, I looked up dozens of criminal cases where crimes once thought to be unrelated had actually turned out to be connected. I even created suspect pages for Oryo Sonozaki and Kiichirou Kimiyoshi.
Just as I finished writing, headlining my thoughts with the phrase "Oyashiro's Curse," a blond woman came to my study desk. She leaned over and scanned my open notebook with her sleepy brown eyes. When I saw her, I drew back with an audible gasp. She had come out of nowhere!
"I'm sorry," the lady said, taking a step backward and laughing good-naturedly. "Did I startle you? Oh and just out of curiosity, are you Shion Sonozaki?"
I picked up the notebook and held it to my chest defensively. "Are you a friend of Mion?" I demanded.
"Something like that," said the young woman with a hazy smile. She looked totally out of it. "But Mion doesn't wear such sexy outfits, or take such good care of her hair. Haha, excuse me. I am Miyo Takano. You can call me Miyo if you want, Shion-chan."
Aggravated, I stood up to leave. This woman may seem as high as a pothead, I thought, but she could be dangerous. After all, she sneaked a look at my secret notebook. Even if she wasn't dangerous, the blond simply annoyed me. I mean, where did she get off calling me chan?!
"Are you mad?" asked Takano, fixing a button on her sage-green, button-up blouse. "Mm, that's too bad. I was hoping we could be friends."
"Look, forget what you saw!" I snapped at her, hugging the notebook. "This is… like a fantasy of mine."
Takano folded her arms and stood by the library window. She began speaking abruptly, but kept that spacey tone in her dainty voice. "The string of freak deaths known as 'The Curse of Oyashiro'… they may seem separate, but they were definitely committed by the same will. Each year, someone dies via the Curse of Oyashiro. A second person disappears, offered as a sacrifice. The guardian god of the village is said to be the type that demands sacrifices. There are many people here who still believe in Oyashiro-sama." Suddenly, she sounded like an expert on the history of Hinamizawa.
"I know someone dies every year," I considered, "but why would they need someone to disappear?"
When she turned to me, Takano still looked a bit zoned out, but she was smiling like she was talking about a favorite naughty habit. "Well," she told me, "they need the same number of sacrifices as the number of deaths. That's part of the old folklore."
***Sacrificial Victims***
At worst, Takano could be an agent operating on orders to silence me. At best, she could be a curious foreigner who would help me in my quest for the truth. Most realistically, she seemed like a social scientist or a historian—the type that gets so excited over their research, they come off as distant and creepy to other people. I decided it would be worth a try to get more information from her, so I rediscovered my manners and formally introduced myself with a bow. Then I offered to walk with Takano back to her car, since she was preparing to leave anyway. Right outside the library, though, she hesitated. I sat on a brick border of some hedges, waiting for her to speak.
"I'm researching the secret history of Hinamizawa," Takano said at last. "It's a dark history. Before the Meiji Era, this village used to be called Onigafuchi, meaning Demon Abyss or Demon Depths. You might have an idea of what I'm talking about when I say 'dark history.' I mean the history of those claiming to be descendants of man-eating monsters called demons or ogres."
I remembered Oryo talking about demon blood in our family. "I know some of the folklore," I remarked.
"Do you know the legends about the half-ogre, half-humans? They would sometimes descend from the mountains to kidnap and feast on the humans of the village. Their history is intertwined with that of the god Oyashiro. The legends are very specific about how humans should be eaten and how sacrifices should be killed. The half-ogres strapped the victims down and pulled out their intestines as if gutting a fish. They washed those guts in the river before eating them."
Wait a minute, I thought. Tearing up a victim. Sending impurities afloat in the river. This was familiar.
"That's where the festival of Watanagashi comes from," Takano continued. "Did you know, some old villagers use this character, 腸, for 'wata' instead of the correct 'wata' character, 綿. Even though they sound the same, the older 'wata' means 'innards' while the newer character means 'cotton.'"
Takano produced a dark, thick, but medium-sized notebook. "These are some of my research papers," she stated. "I'll let you borrow it if you like. I hope you take notice of my paper about the Onigafuchi Swamp just north of town. The sacrificial ceremony for Oyashiro-sama requires drowning the victim in the Onigafuchi Swamp." She looked at me knowingly. "They say that swamp is bottomless. Who knows what someone could hide there?"
I realized the implication at once, and a feeling of cold terror crept over me. Takano was interested in the mysterious deaths as well as the history of Hinamizawa. Furthermore, she had given me a hint about her own theories. The bodies of the vanished victims could be rotting at the bottom of the Onigafuchi Swamp. I wondered if Satoshi's body was there too. Hot rage replaced the icy fear.
Thanking her for the borrowed research, I said goodbye to Miyo Takano. I headed home right away to read the woman's research and figure out what to do next. Just as I settled down to start reading, however, the door alarm rang.
"Is that you, Kasai?" I asked, approaching the apartment door.
"No. It's me." It was Mion's voice.
