My contribution to Crimson Butterfly anniversary. Happy 20th!

And yes. I don't own Fatal Frame.

Mayu was dead.

Her breathless body was falling into the Hellish Abyss.

And it was her fault.

Mio didn't understand why she had listened to her sister and honored her terrible request. She should have taken her twin by the hand and led her away from this cursed village.

Instead, those hands had killed the one she had promised to always be with.

A crimson butterfly flew out of the pit. Her quiet "Thank you" cut Mio worse than the sharpest knife.

All the girl could do was sob and run after her, hoping to apologize.

For a second, the butterfly slowed down. By this point, the twin herself hadn't realized how she had left the village, ending up in the forest. The thing that had once been Mio's sister touched her hand, and then flew up again, joining the other unfortunate souls like herself.

All Mio could do was grieve and watch.

Enough.

She couldn't take it anymore.

Slowly clinging to the remnants of her sanity, Amakura walked from memory to a familiar place.

All that was left was to jump into that very ravine and be with her sister again.

A jump and in a few seconds this nightmare would be over.

As Mio was falling, for a second she thought she saw Mayu smiling wickedly at her, burning her with a cold stare.

"Well... At least your writing skills are getting a little better with every attempt!"

There were two people in the room. A girl sitting at a desk with a typewriter, and her uncle, who had finished reading a piece of paper, on a bed nearby.

"Is it that bad again?" asked Mio in a muffled voice. Kei, on the other hand, only sighed.

"At least this time you didn't try to drown yourself in the lake, which is progress compared to what you wrote a couple days ago. But the problem still remains. The doctor said that..."

"... I should try to rewrite my traumatic experience until I get rid of the negative developmental choices and can write the only positive one, I remember," muttered the twin. She knew all too well, she wanted to write a variant where everything ended well, but she couldn't. Not when the stigma around her neck was a constant reminder of her guilt.

"And you should remember then that you shouldn't expect progress right away. Given what you've been through, none of us expect you to write yourself a happy ending all at once."

"That's easy for you to say," Amakura stretched out annoyingly. "You had your problems solved back then, in those dreams." Those words left Kei with nothing to do but look away.

"It's been a year, Mio. You need to move on. But to do that, you need to finally close those gestalts that have been plaguing you so much. I'd love it if a more effective treatment method was possible, but that would require telling the truth," whereupon the man smiled awkwardly. "And for the truth, in our case, they can only send you to the madhouse. And you are not yet insane enough for such measures."

Ignoring her Uncle's silly joke, the girl only sighed, found the sheet with the still unread option and held it out to the man. "Read this one."

She didn't have time.

Sae has completely possessed her sister. And Mio didn't even have time to do anything before Mayu jumped up to her and squeezed her shoulders so tightly that the girl dropped the camera in pain. The twin's fingers slowly began to move towards her neck.

"Please let us go! It's not our fault what happened to you and your sister!" pleaded Amakura, trying in vain to reach the evil spirit.

"Let us go where, Yae? All we need to do is perform the ritual, right here..." replied the twin in a calm and contented voice. Mio's legs went under and she fell to the cold stone. Cold hands were getting closer and closer to her throat. It was getting harder and harder to breathe.

Gathering her last strength, the girl tried one last time to talk Kurosawa down. "I'll do anything, just let us go!" Mio sobbed out in a choked voice. The older twin's hands stopped. Interest appeared in her listless eyes.

"Anything at all?"

"Yes!" sobbed the poor teen, who no longer even realized what was happening.

"Then I want your eyes," uttered the possessed sister, whose words splashed Mio like cold water while finally breaking her mind. "If Yae doesn't have her eyes, then she can't leave me and then we'll always be together," the ghost explained her twisted desire. "Are you ready for that?" Mio unconsciously nodded in response. After which, Mayu's body smiled.

Her weak sister's hard fingers abruptly dug into Mio's eye sockets and began pressing on her eyeballs with inhuman strength. Mio screamed in pain. This was unbearable. She wanted it to stop. But Sae didn't listen and continued to mutilate the girl with insane laughter. Finally, Amakura began to feel like her eye began to cease to belong to her body, consciousness mercifully leaving her.

When Mio came to her senses in the hospital, she still couldn't fully believe the reality of what was happening. There was only darkness. And pain where her eyeballs had once been. The doctors didn't understand who had the power to cripple the girl like that.

And only Mayu's voice, in which there was no longer a trace of Sae, frightened her more than the entire Lost Village.

"From now on, you will never leave me again."

Sweat was running down Kei's forehead. "I don't even know what to say now. At least definitely nothing good."

Mio took a deep breath. "At least we're alive in this ending."

"Alive? Well yeah, I guess that can really be considered something good if you forget about the fact that you're going to live your whole life as a cripple" grinned Uncle. "Mio, you should write a version that ends well for both of you, not just Mayu."

"But as long as Mayu lives, that's the option that will be happy for me. Especially for such a small price as some eyes," objected the girl.

"Yeah..." stretched out Kei completely unconvinced, with his gaze still directed at the text."There's still one thing I don't understand. Why did you have Mayu start coming out so evil?"

"I wrote that it's because of Sae."

"And in the last few paragraphs you also implied that Mayu is still obsessed with Sae?"

"Yeah," Mio smiled nervously.

"And in the previous paper, it was Sae that you saw in your mind too. And in the others..."

"Okay, I don't know why that's the case!" splayed the twin's hands. "Maybe I'm hurt that she left me! Maybe I'm hurt that she was never able to trust me! Maybe I'm afraid she never believed in me! I keep writing these worksheets, but I still can't decide anything for myself!" shouted Mio across the room. "But what I'm most afraid of is that I really never understood her. I don't know what Mayu was really like anymore. The one I remember or the one that lives in these pages," pitifully lowered her voice to a girl whose eyes were starting to brim with tears. Kei felt like he should have said something, but he was afraid this wasn't the right time. So he decided to take the safest option.

"It's evening now. I think you should take a break from writing for a while."

"You just feel sorry for your paper," brushing away a tear, Amakura smiled slightly.

"Paper isn't pitiful, but your nerves are. Good night, Mio," replied Uncle softly, turning off the light in the girl's room.

But Mio wasn't going to sleep.

Instead, she turned on the desk lamp and continued writing.

For some reason, the twin felt like she should write something else today.

She didn't know where the urge was coming from. No.

An obsession.

But she knew she had to keep going. At least for a little while longer.

They must make it.

Soon they will reach the temple and leave this cursed village.

There's not much time left. There's not much time left.

But they didn't have it. The ghosts of the villagers were running at their heels and catching up with every second.

Mio could speed up. But not Mayu.

She knew what she would have to do. She didn't want to do it. She was afraid to do it.

But Mio wouldn't let Mayu down again.

Taking Camera Obscura tighter, the younger sister stopped and looked into her twin's eyes. "Run and don't stop no matter what happens! I'll be sure to catch up with you!"

It was a lie and they both knew it.

"Mio..." whispered Mayu.

"Run!" shouted Mio, starting to desperately take shots of the evil spirits as fast as she could. But how long could an ordinary girl last against an enraged mob of cursed souls? In just a couple minutes she was already being grabbed by the dead and there was nothing she could do.

The last thing Amakura saw was Mayu looking at her with a smile indifferent to her suffering, then she turned around and calmly walked away.

No!

What is she thinking!? Her sister couldn't just leave her. She always valued their promise more than Mio herself. She couldn't. She couldn't?

At that time, a cold wind blew in the room. The window was locked. And the coldness itself was...

Grave?

Mio tensed as she had the year before when they'd arrived in the village, but she didn't move from the typewriter. She knew she had to keep writing.

The rumbling grew. Hellish Abyss was about to spew darkness. The Repentance was about to come again.

"You could have been saved, had you run away by yourself," Mayu murmurs coldly. She was sitting on the edge of the pit, waiting for the inevitable end, when Mio reached her.

This is the end. They wouldn't escape. All that was left was to accept death along with her sister.

At least they'd be together at the end...

No, it won't end like this.

Mio, finding her last bit of strength, took her sister's hand. "We can still try to escape. Please come with me..."

"So you can leave me again?" said Mayu indifferently, never turning around to face her twin. But when Mio tried to pull her sister's hand, she found to her horror that she couldn't move her own hand already. Her palm was clenched so tightly that Mayu's fingernails would have dug into it to the point of bleeding. Mio's eyes widened when even from the back, the girl's unnatural smile was visible.

" Now we'll always be together..."

The Darkness enveloped everything.

No, it's not how it's supposed to be. That's not it either!

The typewriter made an unpleasant creaking sound and the desk lamp went out abruptly. Attempts to turn the light back on were unsuccessful, which meant that the chandelier would have to be turned on...

At that moment, Mio flinched.

Someone was behind her. And that someone was burning her with a dead stare. Amakura could feel it even from behind. But she was too afraid to turn around. It was even more likely that she couldn't turn around.

But she still had to write. She had to do it right . On this last attempt, she would definitely succeed!

Mio picked up a notebook sheet and a pen and set to work again...

She made it. This nightmare was over. Sae and Yae's spirits had saved the village and now they were free.

"I made it... I made it..." whispered Mio, hugging Mayu as crimson butterflies flew out around them. Everything was fine now. "Mayu, we can go home!"

"But I don't want to leave."

Those words startled Mio as her twin began to look at her with a blank stare.

"Back home there... We'll have to live separately one day. And then die. I don't want that to happen. I want to become one with Mio."

Those words made the girl angry.

"Mayu... Don't talk nonsense!" replied Mio more sharply than she would have liked. "I'm not going to do that ritu..." before she could finish, her sister grabbed her arms and started pushing her towards the Abyss. "Mayu, stop it!" yelled Mio, trying to get out of her sister's death grip.

But soon her legs stopped feeling the support beneath her feet and she began to fall.

Alone.

And all the while, Mayu watched her with a cold smile.

No! That's even worse! She would never get mad at Maya! That's not true! It's...

At that moment, pale, ghostly hands gripped Mio's throat.

"Didn't we always promise each other...that we would always be together...?"

That voice... Was it her?

But before Mio could turn around...

"Well... At least your writing skills are getting a little better with every attempt!"

There were two people in the room. A girl sitting at a desk with a typewriter, and her twin, who had finished reading a piece of paper, on a bed nearby.

"Is it that bad again?" asked Mayu in a muffled voice, trying to resist the urge to turn around to her sister and stubbornly staring at the desk. Mio, on the other hand, despite waiting for an answer, happily collapsed on the pillow.

"Yeah. I mean, it's still not as weird and creepy as the one where you painted on my head in the Doll Stand Room," Mio began cheerfully, making the older twin want to move closer to the table so her sister wouldn't notice how red her cheeks were, "but you're still stepping on the same rake." Mio turned her head to her sister. "By the way, how did you even come up with that?"

"You know it yourself," Mayu whispered, covering her face with her hands in shame.

"I know that, but I want to hear it from you."

The older twin took a deep breath. Then did it again and turned to Mio after all.

"I was still thinking about what would have happened if we had done the ritual back then. What would have happened if you had survived Tattooed Curse. You'd still have to live with guilt that wasn't your fault. And you'd probably have to write those stories too, just like me. But even from that perspective, I couldn't write anything good," the girl smiled bitterly. She had been at it for months, and there was no use. "Apparently I'm completely hopeless."

"Stop it. You're talking down on yourself again," Mio sat down at the edge of the bed and took her sister's hands. "Everything that happened back then wasn't your fault. Not in the village, not in falling. You just think too badly of yourself. Just look, in every job you do, you're always trying to make yourself some kind of monster. Or make yourself suffer, or make others think badly of you. Or all of the above together," twins looked into each other's eyes. "It's not right."

"I know," Mayu whispered. "But I can't help it. I'll never have as much strength as you do. It's so difficult,"

Mio let go of her sister and picked up a pen and a piece of paper. "Then let's try it together. You don't have to do it alone,"

Amakura stared at her sister in shock. Her solution had always been by her side.

After which Mayu smiled happily.

"Yes."

It was back when they had only just become elementary school students. The two, who had been playing by the same mountain stream as always, were running down the twilit mountain path, hurrying home. Mio, halfway down the path from the slow-footed Mayu, occasionally turns back and calls out to her.

"If you don't hurry up I'll leave you behind! You'll be all alone!"

Haunted by the fear of being left behind, Mayu runs desperately, but her foot leaves the narrow mountain path. She's about to slide down!

At that moment, Mayu's hand was grabbed and she held on to the path. She was held by Mio with a frightened expression on her face.

"Sis... I'm sorry. I was so fool. I won't leave you again."

At that moment, Mayu realized that everything would be fine from now on.

Together...Forever...