Work Text:
It had been Satoko’s idea. A celebration of sorts, just something small. Still, a tribute to their lives now, and going forwards.
As Satoko moves back and forth bringing out the food, Rika searches the shrine grounds for rocks. Earlier, they’d thrown open the cupboards and sent old blankets billowing into the air, plumes of dust filling the second floor of their shack. In the end, they’d needed three, and Rika was pinning them down now by the edges so that they wouldn’t be picked up by the evening breeze.
Satoko surveys her work as she wipes sweat from her brow. A feast and Hinamizawa as its backdrop, caught in the tones of just one of the eternal evenings Rika knew so well. The days were long, the sky cycling through every colour of dusk as the sun made its way lazily towards the horizon. As the humidity left the air, the heat remained, the perfect embrace.
She hadn’t needed to be told more than once that Satoko didn’t want her help. Hanyuu had gone out that morning to do whatever it was she did—Rika still didn’t know—when they weren’t together.
Performing my role, she’d say. Watching over the people of this village.
"And just how well has that gone in the past?" Rika had asked, then smiled at the noises she got in response, not themselves knowing whether to be angry or embarrassed. It was cruel to tease her like this still, but that was how it had always been.
Besides, nothing carried the same weight anymore, and Hanyuu had turned, sun hat clutched in her hands, to say, Enjoy your evening, Rika. Hanyuu smiled more these days.
She’d spent most of the day sitting, watching the curtains dance in the breeze, looking up at the sky, impossibly blue, and listening to Satoko clatter about the kitchen. Rika had closed her eyes, and before she knew it, the evening cicadas had arrived. There was something impossibly happy about hearing their song mix with the sound of Satoko humming under her breath as she boiled water, or making a noise of delight after taste testing something from one of the many pots she had going, or the clinking of her fetching her most treasured set of bowls—from her old house, with Satoshi—from the very top shelf of the cupboard.
These simple sounds had carried her for so many years, before she’d known peace. To know now that she needn’t fear their cessation, nor the setting of the sun, nor that this would become just one more memory lost to the haze of a thousandth final night—upon opening her eyes, she found they were damp.
“You did well, Satoko. Clap clap clap.”
The picnic was magnificent, if calling it that even did it justice. A multitude of dishes laid out on the prized china Satoko had gotten out especially and jugs of home-brewed iced beverages next to the five places laid.
“Thanks, Rika.” It’s quiet, and Satoko fidgets. She’s smiling, but her expression is a shade shy of happy, something only Rika can pick up on.
Rika turns towards the sunset now, walking up to the very edge of the grounds, the place where you can look out over the village, and addresses her friend. “Satoshi will be so happy.”
“Huh?”
“It’ll be the best meal he’s ever had.”
Satoko comes to join her. The breeze picks up the hem of Rika's dress. She places her hands on the barrier, and Satoko’s join them.
Satoko hadn’t wanted Rika’s help with the cooking that day. More than it being a meal for their group of friends, it was a promise—a resolution. One day, she would welcome her brother home the same way. Just as Rika had always loved her for, she held that belief strong in her heart, hoping and preparing for the day he came back in equal measure.
Satoko had spent the last hundred years thinking she needed to endure the same scars, waiting for her punishment to end. Now, finally, she had begun to instead dress her wounds. This is what Rika thinks, looking over her friend's work.
They turn away, backs to the setting sun. The yard basks in the warm light. Rika goes to take her seat.
“Well, I’ll probably be a much better cook than this by the time he comes back.” Satoko sits beside her and pours a drink.
Rika steals a glance in her direction. “You'll have to work hard.”
When Satoko looks at her quizzically, she only smiles quietly. She doesn’t need to explain her words. Even if Satoko doesn’t understand them, she’ll know Rika isn’t making fun of her.
There would've been six places laid if Shion hadn't dropped out of the arrangements last minute—only Rika knew she’d been called to the clinic for a sudden update.
If only Satoko knew how soon what she was wishing for would come true—but she doesn’t need Rika to tell her. Satoko had learnt this lesson much, much sooner than she had, after all. Perhaps it was why she’d always been so dazzling in Rika’s eyes, as well as exactly what she needed.
“Satoshi will be home soon.” It slips out all the same, and for a moment Rika wonders whether she should say things she doesn’t entirely know to be true.
But then Satoko turns to her, smiling that smile that nothing in the world knew how to break, answering in the affirmative, then doing a final round of taste tests, fetching something excitedly from each bowl and plate in turn—just like that.
Hope wouldn’t be hope if it had firm ground to stand on.
After everything, Satoko had said it to her, far too many times: I'm sorry—sorry I wasn’t there for you, sorry I never realised, sorry for everything.
If only she knew. But how could she?
Hanyuu had told her about the previous world. It had brought her so much joy to hear that story, even with its ending. They had saved her. She had saved Satoko. She had repaid her debt, at last. That was what it had felt like.
If only she knew. She looks at Satoko for the thousandth time that week, forever at a loss as to which words could communicate any of this. How could she possibly die before she’d found those?
So, once again, she hugs her. She hugs Satoko fiercely, buries her face in her hair, and breathes in the smell of home—the thing that had always anchored her. A miracle, you could say, if you didn’t believe they were meant to find each other.
“Rika! You made me drop my food!”
“Not interrupting anything, are we?” And at last the chorus is complete, three sets of footsteps coming up the path, and Rika spends a few more seconds squeezing Satoko before she turns to see her friends, haloed by the erupting sunset.
“Absolutely, please go back home, everyone.” She beams.
Mion lets out a low whistle. “Sorry for crashing the date, but you’re gonna need some help with that cartload of food. It looks great, Satoko!”
“Satoko-chan, you did all this?” Rena clasps her hands together in glee.
“Every last bit. She wouldn’t let me or Hanyuu in the kitchen all day, so you’d better all enjoy it. I do still have the power to incite Oyashiro-sama’s wrath!”
***
An hour later, most of them are sprawled across the floor, either from food, or else thanks to Satoko’s kick in the side if you were Keiichi and had tried to steal the last of Rika’s favourite snacks. There’s silence for a few seconds, and they watch the last few clouds drift to their resting place before Rena speaks up.
“It’s really funny. I’m pretty sure we’ve never done this before. Not since Keiichi-kun moved here—but it feels so familiar.” She laughs. “I don’t know what I’m saying. I think it happened in one of my dreams.”
Mion props herself up on an elbow. “I was thinking the same thing, actually.” A pause. “This was even more fun than the one in my dream though.”
Rika smiles, closing her eyes. “It definitely was.”
***
Everyone else is bringing in the dishes, and Rika is collecting up the blankets with Keiichi, folding them. He’s been quiet for a while.
“Are you okay, Keiichi…?”
“Me?” He stops what he’s doing, turns to her. “I was thinking about you, actually.”
She’s been quiet too. But that’s just Rika.
“Mii~ What’s there to think about?” She peers up at him, but the crease in his brow only deepens.
“Well… Are you really okay? After… like… everything?”
“I’m more okay than I’ve ever been, Keiichi.” She’s surprised to hear herself say it, more so to realise it’s true, but it is. She's far from perfect, the fractured thing her mind is will never be that again, but that only makes her equal to every one of her friends, and every other human on this slowly turning planet. That was the price of living. It was one she was willing to pay, now that she’d gotten her end of the deal.
Perfect, she wasn’t. But okay?
The sun is lava, melting, melding with the horizon. The whole village is aglow. It had been the same all those nights she’d stood there scissors in hand, before embarking on her task. Of course, by the time she and Akasaka made it back, the sky was ashen. The moon had always shone so brightly that night. The more the years went by, the more mocking it had felt.
“Let’s go, Rika-chan.” She turns back, and Keiichi’s folded up the last of the blankets and wrestled them under one arm. His other hand is extended out to her.
In the burning light of the end of day, Keiichi’s fingers are within her grasp, and grasp them she does. She marvels at the simple warmth, lets it ground her, and when they reach the cool shack and Keiichi places the blankets in a heap on the ground, she can’t resist grabbing his other hand the second it's free and dancing round and round and round, until he's gone from confused to laughing, and everybody is watching on, understanding yet not. When she stops and collapses in a heap, she looks up through her dizziness to see each of her friends’ faces, and for every line of worry or sorrow, they’re all here, bodies and beating hearts and everything they could ever need to overcome whatever lies ahead.
She’s still on the floor catching her breath a while later, and everybody’s been distracted by Satoko showing off the TV they won at the festival auction—the one they’re going to watch a movie on, now—and Hanyuu’s not there, and Rika speaks the very first words she ever has just for herself.
“I’m okay.”
***
By the time they’ve set up the futons, the moths are coming out, fluttering about the light. The window is still open wide, and Hinamizawa is alive with the sounds of a summer night. And this is the thing about living in a village like this one: they can have the TV as loud as they want and not worry about disturbing a soul, and so they turn off all the lights, squeeze together and let the sound fill the room, like they're in their own little cinema suspended halfway up in the night sky. Rika finds herself watching the moon more often than the movie itself, looming just beyond the window frame as it so often had as she sat and drank alone. From here, it doesn’t seem an adversary—more like it's simply trying to peek into the room and join them, as if even the stars wanted a seat at their show.
Soon Satoko’s grabbed Hanyuu’s sweets from the fridge, is promising they’ll go and buy some more to replace them to nobody in particular, and Rika supposes they will, tomorrow, and smiles at the prospect. It’s a small room, and never has it seemed cosier than with the five of them crammed in side by side until there’s more joking and tickling going on than anything else, then play-fighting, then Rena throwing someone halfway across the room for making some comment Rika doesn’t hear.
Mion and Keiichi are still causing a racket some time later when Rena’s shhhh rings out, and for a moment everything stops, because Rena can do that—but it’s just that Satoko’s head is in her lap and she's already snoring gently, clutching the fabric of Rena's dress.
When they turn the movie off, they find the moon’s giving enough light to make the futons back up together, and for Rika to tuck Satoko in before settling beside her. It’s at this point that she explains that there’s two futons: hers and Satoko’s, and then the one her parents used to use that she's had Kimiyoshi bring from her old house especially.
The significance of this—Rika retrieving something from her parents' house for the first time since their deaths—is lost in the ensuing chaos, blanketed with a hush so as not to disturb Satoko. From Keiichi’s, “Oh, I can sleep on the floor,” to Mion’s suggestion of tops and tails, to Rena’s that they simply sleep together, to the decibel jumping considerably as she’s once again punching everyone in sight even though she’s the one guilty of the double entendre. Soon Rika’s breaking out her serious voice, the one she’s earned after hundreds of years, to tell them to shut up before they wake up Satoko, but also because what she’s learnt in that time is that she hates when people never chase what they want, and make everything more complicated than it need be.
Of course, she could also tell them there’s another futon in the cupboard—hers. But nobody’s so much as questioned that she sleeps with Satoko, and what this life has also taught her is that there are some people you’ll always have an inexhaustible affection for, who, however many times you sigh and roll your eyes at them, you'll always want to help out again in the end. And this time, when she tells them to just make do with one goddamn futon, the three chime in as one, like they’ve been given permission to say it: """Okay."""
After that Rena and Mion go to use the washroom, then Keiichi, and the gentle sounds of everyone preparing for sleep lull her, and she buries her head in Satoko’s pillow and notes through her exhaustion how she isn’t too warm even with the two of them squished together like this on a night in what had been a particularly hot June.
She’s only half-tethered to the waking world when light fills the room briefly as Keiichi comes back in and the sounds begin in a steady succession—distant conversation, some last weak protests, begrudging noises, then the rustle of sheets. At long last, the room falls silent, but for the sound of breathing.
Some indeterminate amount of time passes during which Rika realises this really is the first time they’ve done anything like this. She watches the moon through her eyelashes, then its glow on the floor—then she doesn’t understand light or dark any more, and she tunes back into the sounds of the other four lives in this single room and lets them rock her like a lullaby from before her memories began.
She’s barely there, in that world of the waking, when Rena speaks, her voice impossibly quiet, impossibly clear. “This really is the first time we’ve done this, right?”
Nobody answers. Something flutters past the window and its shadow moves across the floor, dancing through the light.
“It’s so strange. It’s just all so strange. I really can’t believe…”
And she trails off, and soft night silence fills the spaces the words have left in the air, heavy with everything.
Because what can’t she believe? That Keiichi’s only been here for a few months? That the club was only made a year ago? That she’d only moved back to Hinamizawa a little before?
As Rika lies there, she knows one thing: they’re here. And so everything was always going to be fine. Such simple truth, such obvious truth, everywhere, like light and oxygen, so that as the years passed they forgot it, even as they lived within its very embrace. If a hundred years was how long it had taken her to learn that much, then so be it.
As always, the conversation has continued without her. She can hear her friends' whispers. They’d been too busy for it, Keiichi supposed. Mion's voice becomes a little wet as she talks about how she’d never imagined one day having something like this. Keiichi remarks that it only makes sense, when she’s such a natural at bringing people together. But didn’t they all do that?—that's Rena. Didn’t they all find each other? Who were they before this, anyway? What was anything, before the five of them found one another?
And then they’re whispering about Rika having fallen asleep—Rika, that’s her—and maybe she has. Still, behind her eyelids, the moon shines, and she wonders if you can be aware you’re dreaming. She forgets her past as she falls deeper, knows only of bright things. Happiness, peace—they were out of fate’s hands, even out of hers. They had become her unshakeable reality, as certain as it was that the sun would go to rest and be replaced by the stars.
When Satoko stirs beside her, she’s pulled back for just one more moment, because Keiichi and Mion and Rena are still whispering from their futon, words heavy with sleep but persisting against the night.
“Can’t you all go to bed? You can talk tomorrow. We’ve got forever.”
Yeah. They’ve got forever.
The first thing Rika feels is the cold air of dawn on her cheeks. When she opens her eyes, the silence is a blanket, blurring the boundary between reality and dream, welcoming her gently.
The sky is clear and colourless. They’d forgotten to ever close the window the night before—it's still open wide, letting the day into the room. From where she lies, it's like a door to the sky.
Rika pulls her arms away from Satoko and stands. They fit together like two puzzle pieces, and she readjusts to her own body as she wanders to the window, stands as perhaps the single person watching Hinamizawa welcome morning. It occurs to her that she doesn’t know what time it is, and equally that it doesn’t matter. She looks into the shades of the sky to see what she can divine, but Hinamizawa doesn’t care to give answers to such unimportant questions.
When she reaches to pull the window shut and preserve the heat, she notices the goosebumps breaking out over her skin. She shivers in her nightgown. She wonders what sunrise looks like in the city. She’s lived for a hundred years, but there’s still so much to learn.
The room is full of light. When she turns to look back at the futons, she can see her friends’ sleeping faces.
Somehow Rika doesn’t think the close quarters are the only reason Keiichi, Mion and Rena lie together as they do. Keiichi is in the middle, the tangle of arms across his torso making it impossible to determine whose are whose. His lie under Rena and Mion's heads, then wrap around each of them. Not a comfortable position to sleep in surely—he would have terrible cramp later—and yet there they were, expressions utterly serene. She enjoys it all for a moment longer, then pulls down the blinds and feels her way back to her futon, and Satoko.
As dream beckons, she tells herself she'll get up soon—she simply wants to be close to Satoko, to experience the novelty of morning flowing by as she drifts in and out of sleep for a little longer. Then she realises there's no need for urgency—nowhere for her to be, nothing she needs to do, or worry about. She can’t even remember the date. Everything is okay.
It’s this realisation that that allows her to finally relax. She doesn't know when she'll wake up, only that it'll be one of her friends waking her, and so she smiles.
Within this snatch of respite amidst the chaos that made this group, the chaos Rika had fallen in love with all those years ago and always held close, there is peace. The only sound in the shack is that of air moving in and out of young lungs, unhastened. At last it becomes a home they’ll return to for years to come, then move on to remember one day, when their childhoods are only memories of laughter and warmth, the things that may not erase pain, but will always win.
Outside, Hinamizawa learns to welcome dawn.