Title: To Be Without Touch
Series: Boundless Kakera, Chapter 13
Fandom: Higurashi no Naku Koro ni
Summary: Furude Hanyuu, a goddess enduring the curse of an incorporeal body, comes to understand the importance of human touch. It is too bad that she has to suffer for it. Pre-Canon.
Posted: December 5, 2024
The centuries that pass in this journey to eternity have not been good to Furude Hanyuu.
In Hinamizawa, the village she watches over as its guardian deity, she has seen many things. She's seen trees that overlook the rural land to remind the villagers of harmony and growth. She's watched her children follow the wisdom from their ancient ancestors. Most important of all, she has bore witness to the rise of myriad generations, budding youths who serve the role of learning what they can so as to impart knowledge they have acquired to their juniors.
Common to her observations, however, is touch. From loving embraces to intertwining hands to a mere pat on one's shoulder. These cordial acts are far from rare occurrences, though they are significant in how they promote bonds between the best of companions.
Touch can also indicate one's existence. For people to do something as simple as dragging their digits through streams or along walls of wood from the houses is a bona fide blessing. Such acts are exactly how one learns whether or not they're alive and there.
Hanyuu knows all too well what it is like to be without the ability to touch, to be a deity who lacks a physical body and is doomed to remain a spirit unseen in the eyes of all. And it is maddening.
Is it not cruel that she can never pamper her descendants with hugs or head pats as she watches over them?
Should it not be considered torture for her to be forced into physical isolation, forbidden from even feeling the breeze?
How does a spirit cope with being in a place she cannot interact with, especially if said place is supposed to be her home?
To be Oyashiro-sama is nothing more than a lonely, pitiful experience. It certainly does not help matters that no one can sense her presence, either.
Her voice is a wasted gift. There's no point in talking if there is no one she can speak to. Similarly, contemplation provides little comfort in her predicament. All she can ever think about is just how upsetting it is for her to be detached from her children, the thousands of souls that reside in Hinamizawa.
And every so often Hanyuu has to inwardly remind herself that she does exist, even if she can't touch anything to prove it.
Day and night. Winter and Spring and Summer and Autumn. Years and then decades. Centuries, eventually. In her peregrination through time, she sees many more faces emerge into the world. Some are masculine, others feminine.
These faces grow for as long as fate demands, and when their time runs out, many more would take their place to do the same. All of them also live out their lives together. They frequently show their appreciation toward one another by acknowledging each others' existence, and all of them do just that through touch. Arms over the shoulders, arms linking together, handshakes, high fives, and much more.
She laments her role as an outside observer. The deity starves for the opportunity to be like her children. And it is not as if she would die from her starvation, either. Spirits can't die if they aren't alive in the first place. This fact is one that prevents her from trying to put an end to it all.
One day, a day she can't specify since there are far too many that she must go through, Hanyuu comes across a peculiar sight.
She notices a young boy who sits by himself at the steps of the Furude Shrine. To the goddess, the boy appears to barely be around the double digits in age. His black hair and glassy eyes match his melancholy all too well.
"I don't understand…" this boy weeps, "Why does nobody ever wanna play with me? Why must I be alone like this?"
His pain resonates with Hanyuu. She knows solitude a lot more than she should.
"Isn't there someone who can be my friend?" asks the boy, his question more to himself than to anyone in particular.
Unable to keep silent, she blurts out desperately, "Me! My child, I am here!"
Hanyuu reaches for the small villager's hand in an attempt to ease his sorrow. Her hand phases through the skin and bones as though they were never there to begin with. Or… is it maybe the other way around? Is it more so that her hand doesn't seem like it's there at all?
She takes a moment to remind herself that she does exist, and then she tries to take the boy's hand yet again. Persistence repeats the action several times over. Surely, this child can feel something!
Nothing changes, neither in Hanyuu's endeavors nor in the boy's gloomy disposition.
The boy sighs, "Maybe someday I'll make at least one friend. Someday…" he rises to his feet. Glancing at the Furude Shrine, he puts his hands together before praying, "Oyashiro-sama, most venerable of the elders, I pray to have a friend to play with. That is all I ask. Please, grant my wish!"
Such words from the boy instills a sharp pang in Hanyuu's soul. As she is, the goddess knows she is incapable of granting that sort of wish.
She cannot bring herself to look at the boy after his prayer.
Her ears pick up pitter patters descending the stone steps. They sound faint, so much so that it seems like the child could float up into the sky without anything from earth keeping him tethered.
It isn't long before his footsteps subside. And it takes less time for Hanyuu to feel as alone as that boy has been.
On that day, along with the subsequent days to follow, she often finds herself dragging her hand either through rivers or along the trees and houses in Hinamizawa.
Thus far, Hanyuu has yet to feel the flow of water, which she imagines as something that befits wandering adventurers, and she does not quite know the toughness of wood, which she imagines to be a quality suiting a harsh yet reliable teacher. But still she tries to feel, regardless, because what else can she do?
It's times like these when Hanyuu wishes that she could relinquish her own divinity for humanity, so she may at last escape isolation and even soothe the aching hearts of those who suffer something similar, much like that poor boy.
To be the God of Hinamizawa is to eternally be without touch, to never be able to live among others, and Furude Hanyuu can't fathom any other fate worse than that.