For as long as she could remember, the girl had fought.

To what end, you may ask?

So far it's all been for naught.

This hopeless, insurmountable task.

To be able to live is all she would want.

She wished to spend time with those she held dear.

But instead she struggles, haggard and gaunt.

For now, the girl lives in fear.

Out of thin air, the two children came.

From whence did they come?

There's new pieces in this game.

May they fare better than some.

The girl yearned for a miracle, defeated and dejected.

But what she would receive was something completely unexpected.

Frederika Bernkastel

Chapter 1: Arrival

As I slowly started to wake up, I noticed two things. The first was that I was outside, as I could feel the sun's heat coming down on me. Although thankfully the slight breeze made it more bearable.

The second was that I was being held in someone's arms.

My eyes shot open. I had expected to see whoever it was that nearly strangled me back when I was inside Sans's machine, but what I saw instead made my heart skip a beat. Kneeling in front of me with one hand holding my head and the other my back was a girl — a human girl. She was inches away from my face, staring at me. I nearly jumped back in surprise, but as I was sitting on the ground, I tripped over a log behind me and fell over backwards.

"Ow... that hurt." I said as I brushed myself off.

"Are you okay?" I heard a voice to my side and turned. It was the girl, looking at me with concern. Now that there was some distance between us, I could see her more clearly. She was around my age, maybe 9 or 10, and a little shorter than me. What I noticed right away afterwards were her strange eyes and hair. Her eyes were purple while her hair was blue, colors I didn't know you could have. Her hair was long at the back, going down to her waist, while it stopped just above her eyes at the front with two stray locks on each side of her head stopping just below her shoulders. She was wearing a green sundress with a white bow at the front, and sandals for shoes. 'She's really pretty.' I thought to myself.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you." The girl said.

"It's okay, I just didn't expect to see you in front of me like that." I said.

"Are you hurt? That fall looked painful, sir." I looked myself over as she came up to me.

"Maybe a little bruised, but nothing serious. I've had a lot worse than this before." I said.

"That's good." The girl replied. "I was afraid that I might have caused a new friend to get hurt." I looked up as the girl stood in front of me.

"You... want to be my friend?" I asked.

"Yes. Is there a problem? Do you not want to be friends with me...?" The girl looked heartbroken as she looked into my eyes. Jeez, you'd think that her life was at stake with the way she looked at me.

"No. I-I mean I don't know. It's just that we just met each other. I don't know anything about you, and you don't know anything about me. We don't even know each other's names yet..." I said, looking off to the side.

"My name is Rika! But please, call me Rika-chan." She said, smiling. "What's your name?"

"I'm Frisk. It's nice to meet you." I said, returning her smile with mine.

"So..." Rika began, looking at the ground briefly. "Would you be my friend?" Again with those eyes... Does being my friend really mean that much to her?

"I don't see why not. Sure, I'll be your friend." Rika was beaming at me in happiness.

"Thank you. I have a few good friends at school, but only one is the same age as me. It's nice to have another person my age to talk to."

"I know how that feels," I said. "I used to have a lot of friends where I came from, but only two were kids, and we can't be around each other anymore."

With that thought, I nearly forgot something really important.

"Hey Rika-chan, have you seen another kid out here? She looks like me, but with red eyes and a green sweater?" Rika nodded in response.

"Yes. They're over there." Rika pointed to a tree behind us. Sure enough, there she was, asleep. "Are they a friend of yours?"

"I don't know." I said. Rika tilted her head in response.

"You don't know? What do you mean by that?" She asked.

"I mean I don't know. I've never met her until today, but she seemed to know me somehow. I have a few things I want to ask her, but I'll have to wait until she wakes up." I said, walking over to her and sitting down next to her.

To be honest, it was hard to tell if the person next to me was a boy or a girl, something that I can relate to given my appearance. The only reason I know that she's a girl is because of her voice, as she begged for me to stay with her back in the Underground. That brings up an interesting question: Why did she act as though she already knew me, despite the fact that I never met her? In an underground cavern filled with monsters, a human would've stuck out like a sore thumb. I was the only human alive in the Underground when I fell into it, that I know for certain. Six other kids like me fell in before I did, but they all died, their souls being kept in jars waiting to be used along with mine to break the barrier. But one detail that bothered me was the coffins in the basement of New Home, which held the bodies of the kids that died. My soul happens to be red, and when I saw a coffin with a red soul carved into it, I thought that someone had made it in advance when they intended to kill me. But when I took a closer look, I saw someone else's name on it.

Chara.

I had never heard of that name before. I figured that maybe Chara had been the only person to survive long enough to tell one of the monsters who they were before they killed them and took their soul, which would explain why only their coffin had a name on it. But after resetting the timeline to an earlier point and exploring Alphys' old lab, I learned that I was wrong, and that the truth was something completely unexpected. When I walked through Alphys' old lab, known as the True Lab for its secret experiments, I found a series of old video tapes and a tv. Unfortunately, the lens cap was on for every tape that was recorded, but thankfully the sound still worked. As it turns out, Chara had fallen into the Underground before Asgore had ordered that all humans who entered were to be killed and have their souls taken. As a result, they were adopted by Asgore, Toriel, and Asriel Dreemurr, the family leading the Underground. Chara became a symbol of hope for the monsters, a sign that humans could in fact live with monsters peacefully.

The monsters in New Home told me how Chara had suddenly gotten very sick one day, and died not long after. They didn't say how this happened, but after viewing the tapes in the True Lab, I figured it out. One day, Chara and Asriel decided to make a butterscotch pie for Asgore, and the recipe had called for cups of butter. Unfortunately, they used buttercups on accident, which turned out to be poisonous flowers that made Asgore sick. After this, Chara had come up with some kind of plan for something, and asked Asriel to gather buttercups for them. The next tape had Chara asleep with their adopted family praying for them to wake up. I connected the dots back then and came to only one conclusion.

Chara ate buttercups on purpose, despite knowing that they were poisonous, and died.

Why in the world did they do that? I'll probably never know, unless by some miracle Chara's ghost has been stalking me the entire time I was in the Underground and came with me when I left. Human souls do persist after death, and Chara's soul wasn't with the other six that Asgore had been keeping. I guess it's a possibility. But really, what are the odds?

"They're waking up!"

I was brought back to reality by Rika, who had sat down with me as I waited for our mystery person to wake up from her sleep. She started stirring for a moment before slowly opening her eyes. When they landed on me, she shot up and tackled me in a hug.

"Frisk! I thought I was going to lose you forever!" She buried her face into my shoulder and cried.

"Hey, hold on," I said, as she looked back up at me. "I don't remember meeting you. Who are you, and how do you know my name?" She took a while to calm down before she sat down and looked at me.

"Well, as for how I know you, that's a bit of a long story, one you probably won't believe." She said, twiddling her thumbs.

"Try me." I said.

"Later, when we can talk in private."

"Why?" I asked. The girl shook her head.

"It's just something I want to keep between us, that's all." I closed my eyes and sighed in resignation.

"Okay then." I reopened my eyes and stared straight at the girl. "That leaves my other question. Who are you?"

"That's easy. Even though you've never met me, you already know my name." She said, smiling.

"Really? How about you jog my memory?" I asked, skeptically. The girl stood up and curtsied as she looked down at me.

"Greetings. I am Chara."

I opened my eyes, surprised to find that I was in a completely different place than I last remembered. I was lying down on a bed, indoors. 'What happened?' I thought to myself. I sat up, looking around the room. The walls were white and spotlessly clean with a nice, fresh scent in the air. Suddenly, the door on the other side of the room opened, and a man walked in.

"Ah, so you're awake. I was beginning to wonder when you'd come to." He said, taking a seat in the chair next to me.

"Who are you, and where am I?" I asked, looking around the room some more.

"You may call me Dr. Irie. As for where you are, you're currently inside my clinic in Hinamizawa." He replied, organizing a stack of papers in his hands.

"A clinic? How did I get here?" I asked, confused.

"Well... from what I've been told, you lost consciousness and were brought here. One of my regular visitors, Furude Rika-chan and another young girl carried you through the doors and called for a doctor. My assistant nurse then placed you here in this room. I must say I'm perplexed. When I heard that you fainted, I suspected that heat stroke, dehydration, or maybe low blood sugar might have been the cause, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. If you don't mind me asking, what was the last thing you remember before waking up here?"

Chara. The girl said that was her name. I just sat there in shock and stared at her until for some reason everything went black. 'I was so surprised that I forgot to breathe.' I thought. Great, I probably scared Rika. I had questions for that mystery girl before, now I'll have to ask her why she shares her name with a dead kid. That's the reasonable thing to do, right? Ghosts aren't real. Well, there was Napstablook... No, ghosts are real. There is a real possibility that the girl I met in the woods is the real Chara, who somehow knows me and came back from the dead. But her coffin in New Home was empty with nothing but rags in it, so how did she get her body back? I guess I'll just have to ask her and hope I don't sound crazy.

"Are you alright?" I looked up and saw Dr. Irie looking at me with slight concern.

"Oh, sorry. I was just thinking about what happened before I woke up here. I must've spaced out." I said.

"It's okay, take as much time as you need." He replied.

"Well, I was out in the woods exploring when I met Rika. The other girl she was with was a long lost friend of mine, and I was so excited to see her again that I guess I forgot to breathe." Irie chuckled.

"That would explain why I couldn't find anything wrong with you during the examinations. But may I ask a question?" I nodded.

"Why didn't you use honorifics when you referred to Rika-chan by name?" Irie asked.

"Is that something that you do for everyone? Sorry, I'm not from around here, so I don't really know how things work here." I said, looking down.

"Well, here in Japan, not using honorifics when referring to or speaking to another person can not only be rude, but it can send the wrong messages to other people. The fact that it was a girl you were speaking about would certainly raise a lot of eyebrows." That got my attention.

"Why is that?" I asked.

"When a boy and girl are on a first name basis with each other and don't use honorifics, it usually means that they are in a relationship. At the very least, that is how others will see it." Oh...

"So do you think I have a crush on her?" I asked. Irie smiled in response.

"Do you?" I choked on my own spit at that, and it suddenly got very hot for some reason. Irie held a hand in front of his face as he laughed.

"My apologies, I was only teasing you. Though it seems my question has received an answer." Clever, very clever. That's exactly the kind of thing Flowey would've done in this situation. I should be careful where I steer conversations from now on, or I might embarrass myself again.

"She is beautiful, isn't she?" I looked up to see Irie with a smile. But it looked... sad?

"If Rika-chan returns your feelings... please, take care of her. She has suffered much during the past few years, and even though she has adjusted well to the events, I find myself wondering from time to time just how much she might be hurting beneath the surface. Her friends have been very supportive of her, but perhaps she needs someone who is... more than just a friend?" The humor in Irie's voice disappeared, so I knew that he was being serious about this. This sounded less like a request and more like a plea for help.

"I promise." I said. Irie smiled again, for real this time.

"Thank you."

*knock* *knock* *knock*

"It seems you have visitors." Irie said. "Are you feeling well enough to say hello?" Judging by the fact that he was smirking, the humor is back. Why do I get the feeling that this isn't a question? Sure enough, before I could say anything Irie opened the door, causing 6 different people to walk in. Rika and Chara were the only ones I recognized, with a new girl with orange-brown hair running up to me and wrapping me in a hug.

"Hauu! So cute! I wanna take you home with me!"

What have I gotten myself into?

A/N: When I began writing this story, I took a very big risk, one that experienced writers would probably hound me to death for. You see I had this great idea that absolutely would not get out of my head, something which all writers can relate to, so I started writing it down. The problem was, even as I started publishing the prologue, I did so without knowing for sure what direction the plot would take. Before I finally decided on where to go story-wise, there were at least 3 different concepts that I thought about using, not only for this chapter but for the entire story as a whole, each radically different from the last. The good news is that I finally have a solid idea for what's going to happen. The idea of what it would be like to see a first-person story (like Higurashi) from the POV of another character has always intrigued me, so I've decided to do it here. The story will follow Higurashi canon for the most part, but because it's going to be from Frisk's perspective, the only things the story will follow are what HE sees and hears. This way it won't be as simple as Frisk merely being inserted into the pre-existing storyline.

See you soon!