Author's Note: I should have said this much earlier, but better late than never. Dialogue for this story is adapted from both the English and Japanese versions of Higurashi. At times, lines are directly quoted, while in other places, a more fitting translation is provided. I do not own any content, let alone the scripts, of Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni. Paraphrases of the scripts are used to improve this novelization and thus encourage readers to re-watch the real Higurashi with a deeper understanding.

"Sorry, Shion—what did you just say?"

"I heard that Miss Takano and Mr. Tomitake died," Haruka repeated, calling from the apartment in Okinomiya. She had ordered all Sonozaki agents to take the day off, and Kasai would be spending the night in his own home, so there was no danger in sneaking back to the apartment once. "I heard this morning," we went on. "I overheard my father telling someone on the phone about it."

"The local news didn't mention any deaths," Keiichi said, trying not to sound panicked.

"Well of course it's not going to make the news," we said honestly enough. "Whenever there's a death linked to Oyashiro's Curse, the Sonozaki family does everything possible to keep the police quiet."

"You're kidding," he protested, growing more fearful by the minute.

"Keiichi, I think I've told you this before. It's entirely possible that the villagers are involved in carrying out Oyashiro's curse. Let me make this clear. If someone's death is said to be the result of Oyashiro's Curse, nobody in Hinamizawa is ever going to care."

"That's absurd, Shion! First of all, why would someone keep committing these crimes?"

"My guess is that it's someone trying to carry out the will of my heinous grandmother," we replied, again, honestly enough. "Any disasters on Watanagashi can just be blamed on the village religion's god."

"Ok, then what are you going to do about it?" exclaimed Keiichi, breaking his cool. His voice grew louder and harsher. "I didn't want to go into the shed, but you talked me into it! This is your fault! How are you going to get us out of this mess? How are you going to take responsibility? Are you listen—"

Haruka hung up. Damn, that Keiichi could be annoying. Haruka returned to eating her blue Popsicle contentedly, as if she was not guilty of the slightest lie, let alone the murder of Oryo Sonozaki. With a sigh, she picked up the phone again and this time dialed the Kimiyoshi house. Toji Kimiyoshi picked up and we, as Mion, asked him if he had found old man Kiichiro Kimiyoshi yet. He answered in the negative and told me not to worry, but Haruka deceitfully insisted.

"Grandma and I talked about it," we stated. "She had the idea of gathering the Youth Corps to search for Mr. Kimiyoshi. Although he's only been missing a couple of hours, folks like Grandpa Kimiyoshi can't be too careful in this terrible heat. Plus we're worried about his back and neck pain."

"A search party at this hour of the night?" Toji asked hesitantly.

"Well, the village leader went missing right after Watanagashi," Haruka said, licking her Popsicle. "Grandma said we should take it seriously because of that."

"Um… Ms. Oryo personally said that?" the young man asked. "Well, alright, let's do it. If we search through the night and still don't find him, we'll call the police in the morning."

"That sounds wise," Haruka agreed, privately praising herself for this strategy, which exonerated her from any suspicion. "I'll come help the search, too, tomorrow. Alright then, see you later."

Hanging up, Haruka giggled. This was all a game to her. The pale blue Popsicle she licked seemed far more important to her than the wellbeing of Kiichiro Kimiyoshi. On that note, I will try my best to piece together the memories I have of what I did to old man Kimiyoshi. Haruka ruled my consciousness, and as a result, my memory is incomplete. However, a few things I recall with relative clarity. I saw events unfolding, but I still couldn't find the power to assert control over myself.

We slept for a few hours at the apartment and then went to assist the Youth Corps in searching for old man Kimiyoshi. I had to put in an appearance to make sure nobody would become suspicious of me. After that, I returned to the Sonozaki estate in the small hours of the morning. Haruka would be tormenting and frightening her prisoners here until the time came for school.

***Kimiyoshi Speaks***

In the same room where I had torn out my fingernails, old man Kimiyoshi stood fastened to one of the torture mechanisms found so abundantly here. His hands were bound behind his back. Around his throat was a thick, wide strip of strong leather. This collar was hooked to a chain, which went up to the roof, over a rafter, and descended from there to coil around and around a wheel-like device. When the handle on this was turned, the wheel turned as well, pulling the chain back to it link by link. As the chain was pulled, the pressure on the leather collar—and the victim's throat—increased. One could turn the wheel enough to pull the victim off his feet and leave him suspended in the air, hanging by the collar around his neck.

If the victim of this contraption was pulled up off his feet, he would choke to death in only one or two minutes. However, Haruka had no intention of killing Kimiyoshi so simply. She was playing with him. She—we—cranked the wheel so that the old man could only stand on his tiptoes, struggling for breath as the chain pulled against his collar. We sat down on the edge of a raised platform, smiling as the old man suffered. There was just enough pressure on his neck to keep him from getting a good breath. He might, at this level, remain painfully conscious for several minutes.

"The whole village is going crazy right now, looking for you, 'Granpa'," Haruka remarked. "Oh, you look uncomfortable. Would it help if I loosened the chain a bit? Tell you what. Each time you answer one of my questions, I'll reward you by dropping the chain one more inch. I bet just three inches would make a world of difference to your comfort level right now."

Kimiyoshi must have attempted to speak, but all he could manage was a strangled grunt.

"Oh, my bad," sighed Haruka, stepping over to the wheel. "I guess you couldn't speak right now even if you wanted to."

We turned the handle in the reverse direction. The chain grew slack at once and Kimiyoshi fell face-down on the stone floor. He lay gasping and recovering from the dizziness for a moment before trying to speak. His voice was hoarse and cracked.

"Listen, Miss Shion," he said desperately, "I really don't know anything. I would help if I could. But the truth is I don't think I have the answers you're looking for."

"How about something simple," we replied. "Like, whether Satoshi-kun is actually dead or alive. Are you ignorant about that too?"

"Yes," he rasped with a painful nod.

"Well, then. As head of the Kimiyoshi family, you must at least have an educated guess."

The old man looked away and said nothing. Maliciously, Haruka started cranking the wheel and drawing up the chain again. Kimiyoshi's was pulled up into a painful sitting position. His throat and the sides of his neck were constricted by the strong leather collar.

"Shion, I'm sorry," he managed to say in a rasping voice. "I'm doing the best I can. I promise, I'm not trying to make you angry. It's just—I've got—I've got to think about it!"

We loosened the chain once again. Fine by me, Haruka was thinking. She could torment Kimiyoshi like this all day and feel nothing. We gave the old man only a few seconds to recover his breath. Then Haruka said "Time's up" and again demanded to know if Satoshi was dead or alive.

"This won't be what you want to hear," Kimiyoshi said forlornly, "but I think it's unlikely he's still alive."

Somewhere inside me, the selves who were not Haruka cried out as if struck. We already knew Satoshi was dead, but it hurt like a fresh wound to hear a suspect in his murder confirm this fact. Still controlled by Haruka, we knelt on the floor next to old man Kimiyoshi. For a moment, silence ruled the room, and then Haruka raised her head abruptly and spoke.

"There we go: finally, the truth! See, the fact that Satoshi killed his aunt wasn't what got him wiped out by you people. No, what got him killed was just being born a member of the Hojo family!"

"But Shion," the old man dared to venture, "you've got it mixed up. The man who killed Satoshi's aunt was found. He was a lunatic committing a copy-cat crime. I also heard that he died after his arrest."

"Yes, I've heard that," Haruka smiled dismissively. "But I think that man was only a scapegoat."

"Who would set that up, and why?" Kimiyoshi pushed further.

"Why indeed," we snarled.

"Your theory just doesn't make sense, Shion. If someone wanted to Spirit Away Satoshi, then the last thing they would do is plant a scapegoat to take the blame for his aunt's murder. A scapegoat makes him seem innocent and would keep the police investigation going on for longer. She isn't that foolish."

"She?"

"I can only mean one person, Shion. Ms. Oryo might do something like this." Kimiyoshi didn't sound happy to admit this, but he kept talking. "She might try to fool the police with a scapegoat, but only if it benefited her. I'm sure by now you've heard rumors about your grandmother. There was that incident with the dam foreman's grandson. The way he was kidnapped—"

"Interesting," Haruka said as if holding a cheery conversation, "so that rumor about a kidnapping was true. I did hear something, but I was told that the grandson was Spirited Away by the Demon and later found somewhere deep in the mountains."

"Yes, well," Kimiyoshi grunted. "I think the kidnapping was done on Ms. Oryo's orders. Then, when she heard the dam plans had finally been canceled, she held up her end of the bargain and released the grandson. The members of the old alliance like me know all about these conflicts."

"That's good to know." Haruka began in a calm voice but suddenly switched to a tone of biting sarcasm. "So, it turns out I was right. My awful grandmother, the Three Great Families, and the old alliance were a powerful force after all! Ooh, how frightening! But it's time to come clean. Who, exactly, had Satoshi Spirited Away by the Demon?!"

Kimiyoshi gave a small sigh of regret. "Shion, I really don't know who got rid of the Hojo boy. There is… there is an unwritten law to never ask who actually committed the act in question."

"Then tell me," Haruka snapped, "how do you kill someone and hide the body so it's never found?!"

In answer, Kimiyoshi fully opened his tired brown eyes and glanced at the door to the dungeon behind us. At the same moment, Haruka and I remembered the last dark secret of the dungeon. We understood what the old man was getting at. He meant the old well—or bottomless pit—hidden in one of the cells. I had thrown Oryo's body down there only about thirty hours ago.

***Satoshi and the Well***

The old well served as the ideal place to get rid of corpses. The Hinamizawa police had never successfully acquired a search warrant of the Sonozaki estate, and if they ever took lengths to try, they would turn the whole village against them. Even a search of the estate would not reveal the contents of the deep well. Nobody would look there unless a special extensive search was conducted just for that purpose. By the time any bodily remains might be found, they probably would have decayed beyond recognition. Here in a small town in the early 1980s, there was no such thing as genetic analysis for identification, either. In short, any number of bodies might have been thrown into that pit.

Again, my other personalities recoiled. We were picturing Satoshi thrown into the depths of the well. I left Kimiyoshi at once and headed for the pit. As I hurried there, not even pausing to look at Mion in her cell, my consciousness shifted again. For a moment, Jun managed to overpower Haruka. She was crying. She ran to the edge of the pit and turned on a flashlight. A ladder led down into the great borehole, but it looked like nobody had used it in a long time. After all, who would go down to clean or conduct maintenance on a monstrously deep "well" used for dumping dead bodies?

"Satoshi-kun!" Jun shouted into the darkness, which was only relieved by a small circle of light from the flashlight. "Satoshi-kun!"

Poor Jun, at this point, had completely broken down mentally. She was the one personality who never wished to harm a fly. The moment we found out we had accidentally slain Oryo, Jun retreated deep into my heart. The only thing that might bring her back to my consciousness was the hope of seeing Satoshi. For so very long, it seemed, she longed to know where the golden-haired hair boy went. Now we knew where he was. Could he really be nothing more than a skeleton at the bottom of this terrible hole? So Jun screamed for him like a madwoman. She no longer felt sure of her sense of reality or sanity.

When her shouts went unanswered, she fell to her knees. The flashlight rolled on the dirt floor of the cell and came to rest by our feet. In reality, the flashlight cast an image of my own shadow on the earthen wall above the pit. In Jun's head, however, the shadow that suddenly appeared could only be one thing: the spirit of Satoshi. At this point, my vague consciousness as Shion should have realized I was experiencing psychosis, but I was already too far along in the disease. Jun heard the voice of Satoshi as clear as day; she never thought it could be an auditory hallucination.

"You did it, Shion," said the shadow in a peaceful voice. "You finally found the place my body rests."

"Satoshi-kun!" Jun exclaimed, with tears welling up in our blue-green eyes. "I'm so sorry, Satoshi."

"There's nothing for you to apologize for," replied the shadow of Satoshi. "You did no wrong."

A small sob escaped Jun as she remembered that we killed Oryo. "I'm going to join you, Satoshi," we called into the darkness. "You and I can be together forever after this." We stood up once more. "I'll jump, Satoshi. All you need to do is catch me."

"No," Satoshi said simply, and it seemed that the shadow shook its head. "You must live, Shion."

"Live for what?" we all cried. "What's the point of living if I'm so alone? I only want to live with you, Satoshi-kun! I want it to last forever!"

Jun began sobbing. As she sank back down to her knees, she kicked the flashlight to the side and disrupted the image. Satoshi had vanished again. For a moment, Jun sat there sobbing piteously. Then, slowly, we walked over to Mion's cell. Perhaps it was because Jun cared enough to check on Mion, or perhaps it was just because we wanted someone—anyone—to hear about our discovery.

"I found him," Jun said to Mion in a broken voice. "I think he's at the bottom of the well. Isn't he?"

"I think so," said my sister, and, true to her sincere nature, she was crying too. "That's the only place I can think of where the body wouldn't be found. Even Onigafuchi swamp would turn up bodies if they had been put there…"

"I need to know the truth," Jun rejoined earnestly, staring into Mion's tearful eyes. "Were you around when they decided to kill Satoshi-kun?"

Mion told me "No" in a miserable voice. "If I'd been around, I would have tried to stop it," she swore. "I would have pleaded for his life, Onee. I promise you that."

If only we had been able to quiet our mind at that point, things might have turned out differently. Surely I would have had to turn myself in for killing Oryo, but I might not have harmed anyone else; I might have finally ended my quest to uncover the Sonozaki crimes, surrendering it to the police. Unfortunately, however, I still suffered from PTSD. As Mion made that promise, Jun was reminded of how Mion betrayed us a year ago, helping Oryo force us to rip out our nails. A vivid flashback took over our mind.

Jun saw it all in a flash: my wrist strapped to the iron base of the denailer, my pinky lined up with the metal prongs, my desperate trembling as I hit the device's lever and mutilated myself, and the look of cold indifference on Mion's face the entire time. Mion could not be trusted. Mion had tried to hurt me. Mion betrayed me. One could say that the self known as Jun died in that moment of anguish. For a minute, I returned to being Shion. I had no idea what was happening, but it didn't matter. Even Shion had lost her mind, by now, as the Hinamizawa Syndrome ate away at my brain. It told me I was right. It told me the Sonozaki family were demons. It told me that Mion was lying again, planning to betray me.

"YOU FILTHY LIAR!" I screamed, beating and kicking at the metal bars of Mion's cell. "It's all your fault! You could have saved him but you didn't! You could have saved him! You could have saved his life! Why is this happening? WHY?!"

Mion cowered back away from the bars. I must have seemed completely and totally insane for her to show such fear. My mind slipped away again. My guess is that Haruka took over again in Shion's weakness, and memories were lost as a result. Who knows what I might have done to Mion? And then there was the village leader. I know that I must have killed old man Kimiyoshi. However, I was never able to remember exactly when or how I did it. I have a vague memory of dragging a corpse to the well. Haruka had committed murder again, and this time it wasn't an accident. It was pure madness.