June 24th, 2023

Mion showed her love in touching –a grimy arm wrapped around Rena's neck and a grin shared between the two of them, a half-mocking scruff of Kei-chan's hair as he howled about his latest punishment game outfit, scooping Satoko-chan up and holding her high like a trophy…

There were other moments, quieter ones, where she would touch a callused hand against Shion's shoulder, press her palm reassuringly against Rika-chan's back as she hesitated before picking up her practice hoe, or even just step between her friends and danger –but Mion showed her love in contact, in showing and demonstrating just how much she was there for her friends.

And she received her love in time spent with them –in basking in the presence and joy of her friends, in knowing that they wanted to spend their time with her, that they wanted to have fun together. Her daydreams of going out walking with a faceless boy –eventually not quite so faceless, as Kei-chan grew more and more into her life– featured them going out shopping together, buying little matching trinkets that they could wear as expressions of their love, and then spending their time at an amusement park or arcade. Something fun, y'know?

Something that could ease the gentle emptiness that wrapped around her heart. Something that could prove that she was still feminine, something that could feed the heart of the girl she had been before getting marked with the wrong name.

She wanted those little accessories that she and her boyfriend bought, something that could show how much she was loved, something she could wear all the time that would demonstrate to everyone –and herself– that she was beloved of someone.

Shion showed her love in her words –in the things she had never received. When she was loved, she spoke it boldly, and no one who listened to her words could doubt for a moment the depth of her feelings. She'd never heard someone tell her how much she was loved, wanted, needed, not really, not truly, and she selflessly gave those feeling back out to those that she cared for. They, at least, would never know that feeling. She would make sure of it.

She loved in fierce words and stubborn speeches, never backing down an inch. If those she loved could not protect themselves, then she would protect them, using whatever weapons came to hand. As a Sonozaki, Shion had learned words first and actions to follow, and as Shion, she had learned that there were few who would back her up or support her if she acted alone.

So she crafted her arguments with every inch of experience that she had, used words like blades to slice away the problems that threatened those she loved. She spoke to her friends, to Satoshi-kun, to Satoko-chan, to Mion, with a playful tone that never gave a hint of her troubles, or used her words to bring them up out of the gloomy clouds they had sank into.

And she received her love in reciprocal acts –there was a tiny miracle contained in someone doing something for her, only for her, solely for her, because they cared about her. Every time it happened, it was something new and wonderful, and her breath caught and her heart soared as someone did something for her, showing that they loved her in the sheer reflex of the act.

Satoshi-kun had stepped in to save her and thought nothing of it, because it came to him so naturally, and Shion's heart had stuttered in her chest. Kasai was her silent shadow, and yet his every word and act was centered around helping her, and it was second nature to him by this point. Mion was her twin, her other half, and yet she shed her name and dropped her identity in a heartbeat, if that was what Shion needed, and all she had to do was ask.

And when someone looked at her, hugged her, made her the sole recipient of an act of touch, Shion's world was rocked again. She could count how many times she had received physical acts of affection, Satoshi-kun's hair-ruffles and Mion's shoulder-pats included. It was something almost magical, and she savored each and every time it happened.

Keiichi showed his love with his actions, as befitted a man. When the club called for help, he was there, wielding a golf club in place of a bat –temporarily, at least. When one of his friends was in trouble, he was there, planting himself solidly in the thick of it and using his charisma to the utmost as he strove to undo the knots of whatever problem plagued them.

If Mion needed someone to help set up for the festival, he'd be on site, pulling on bunting and hauling lumber. If Rena saw a teddy she wanted during the festival, he would shoot down the targets and win it for her. If Satoko-chan needed a surrogate to replace her big brother, he would invite her to his house for shared meals and have her back, no matter what. If Rika-chan looked lost and afraid, murmuring about doomed fates, then he would take that fate and snap it between his hands like a fragile chopstick.

If someone he loved wanted something, Keiichi would do something about it. If they needed him, he would be there for them. It was quite that simple, and he thought nothing of showing his affections in this way. Words –however skilled he was in using them– were too bold, too much. You made a commitment with words, crossing the line to an intimacy he had never dared venture into before. Words were… frightening.

It was easier to do things, silent and unobtrusive, but persistently be there for his friends. He wouldn't turn away from them, wouldn't flinch, no matter what he had to do to make them happy. That was much easier than saying what he felt, exposed far less vulnerabilities.

But hearing someone tell him how they felt, how much they cared, was like an arrow lancing through to his heart. He didn't expose his vulnerability, and yet they struck for it all the same, piercing deep and lodging their love there as his heart fluttered and soared, his whole being welling up with new, strange, giddy feelings.

And someone giving something to him was even more so, a physical investment of their feelings that they gave to him to make him happier. Tickets to an event, food that they made, books that they found that they thought he'd enjoy. They acquired these things because they were thinking of him, and they handed them over to give him a spark of joy.

Rena showed her love in gifts. When she wanted someone to be happy, she thought about them, she studied each and every one of their facets like a gemstone that she wanted to polish into a flawless sparkling state. And then she used all that knowledge to tailor her approach; she baked treats for them, she accompanied them on walks, she honed her knowledge to its sharpest needle point to find and give the perfect gifts.

To Rena, this made perfect sense. She gained her enjoyment of the world through the treasure and trash she found at the dump site: to that small pop of cuteness or eccentricity that made life just a bit more interesting. Bestowing that on someone else –painstakingly researching what they would like the most, what would make them tick– was the greatest gift, the greatest show of love, that she could give them.

It wasn't enough to understand and to give, though. Rena showered the targets of her affection with joyful words and shouts of encouragement, with chatty conversations that danced like beams of sunlight through their entwined hearts. Her love was a light, floaty, happy thing, and it flowed over the people she cared about in a babbling brook. She could talk about anything and everything with the members of the club, and she loved nothing more than to tell them how amazing they were.

She received her love in knowing that her loved ones felt the same –that even if they didn't study her with such intensity, they wanted to spend time with her, to indulge her own hobbies and desires as they happily walked with her. It was enough for them to move side-by-side, hips brushing, hands –perhaps– clasped together, humming and talking. They were there, and they would not leave her.

Perhaps it was based in no little part on how that woman had left, and how her father had stayed, and done his best to be there for her. Rena had seen how the lack of someone was a severing of affection, how her mother had tried to use that quality time to drive a wedge between Rena and her father, how she had refused point-blank to see or speak to him afterwards. For Rena, as a child, the conclusion had been obvious: people who loved each other, or who tried to fake it, spent their time together.

It's why she loves her friends so dearly. Because they are together, every day, fearlessly spending their time with her without a single care, a single concern, a single wish that it would be otherwise. There is nowhere any of them would rather be than here, together, and Rena carries that love with her like a shining jewel.

Satoko showed her love in acts, in deeds, in things that she could control. She knew the pain of an empty belly or a sub-par meal, and so she cooked all her love into her food. Saying she was a skilled cook would be rather immodest, but –she could cook her food well, make it wholesome and flavorful. Wasn't that enough? Wasn't it merely good enough that she could make something warm and filling and good, and give it to those that she cared about?

She rather thought so.

Satoko did things for other people, to show her love, because her childhood had taught her that that was the greatest and most noble way to show one's love. Standing between a loved one and pain, getting up despite her shaking legs to step between an enemy and those she cared about… there was no higher act of love that she could understand. To be there for someone, to say with every breath and every moment that she cared more for them than she cared for her own safety.

She expressed her love for her friends, for Satoshi, by staying here for them, by blessing them with her presence and her visible happiness, showing them that everything was okay. She may be a Hojo, of the accursed line that no grown-up in the village liked, but she would be there for her friends, show them that she cared for them despite everything that their parents said.

And her friends gave back to her in the same way, practically smothering her in affection, sometimes, as they sought her out and piled on. Shion in particular was rather persistent, but as much as she might grumble on the outside, Satoko soaked that love up like water in the desert. She was wanted, she was cared for, she was loved, and Shion-san showed that in every moment she spent pestering to be by Satoko's side.

Their words, too, especially in some worlds –rare worlds, but worlds that some particle of Satoko's being could still never forget– when they all but shouted their love at her, refusing to give up, refusing to give in, refusing to do anything but bully the world into letting her be safe. They told her over and over again how much she meant to them, how much they cared, until Satoko slowly began to believe it.

And that desperation for affection, too, was born of her childhood, was born when the words I love you seemed strange in any mouth but her brother's, when strangers were enemies that hadn't showed their true colors yet and her life was a near-constant stream of misery. Hearing those words directed at her was a balm laid on the scars of her heart, and Satoko could never get enough.

Rika's way of showing affection was simple, all the intricacies squeezed out of her by long eons of eternally repeating the same life. Gifts bored her –she had gotten pretty much everything one could get in Hinamizawa or Okinomiya, at some point in her preternaturally long life. Acts of service meant nothing, because they had no effect on anything as her world continued to spin relentlessly back to the beginning, over and over again.

Words of affirmation meant nothing, but no matter how someone's mouth moved, no matter what platitudes they poured out onto her, Rika had heard it all before –she had been beloved by everyone she knew for as long as she could remember, and what did her friends' words mean in the end, even though she loved them so desperately? They loved her; they loved her, and they would forget all the same.

Physical touch meant very little, because she had always been far too young to be touched in that way, and she was so adorable that everyone in Hinamizawa had a tendency to treat her like a life-sized doll. Rika had lost count of the times she'd been scooped up and squeezed by Rena or one of the others, or had her head patted by random citizens.

These things did not mean nothing to her. She was not –quite– such an empty shell as that. It was just, they did not mean as much to her as they should –as they clearly did, for some of her friends. It was far, far too easy to take such constants for granted, to huff and wave them aside, knowing that more would inevitably come later.

But Rika showed her love and received it in all the same way, and that was by spending her most precious resource: time. Having so much and yet so little, her making the effort to stay with someone, to share a moment with them, was Rika's most powerful connection. She loved the club members so fiercely because her time with them was never boring: because alone, out of everything in Hinamizawa, the club had still never managed to repeat so many times as to be dull.

They almost never played the same game the same way twice, and that normalcy was something that Rika clung to and loved desperately. Her precious friends were her precious friends because she spent enough time with them that they did not seem like a mocking clockwork automaton, a mere shell of a person that repeated the same basic lines, followed the same basic script. They were wild and free and whimsical, and Rika loved them so, so much for livening up her days because of it.

9.52 AM, USA Central Time