The strange medicine that I can hardly remember was...
a capsule.
Or maybe it was an oval tablet.
It was so red... it must've been a capsule.
I can't imagine a tablet in that color.
It must've been a capsule.
I think it was a little bigger than a normal one.
...I think.
I think.
...I can't remember.
Although I can hardly remember, if I see that medicine again, it'll refresh my memory.
That medicine strips away humanity.
It takes away a human's soul, memory, emotion, and it numbs the human body.
There are no thoughts, no interests, no will to stay awake or asleep.
There's no sense of time.
Sometimes, a second can feel like an eternity, and other times I can almost see the hour hand move.
Either way, there's no emotion involved.
I can't feel any emotion.
The medicine only lets me stay in bed and look up at the ceiling...
Only the people who have taken it can understand this misery.
What's more scary is that, while I'm on the medication, I don't realize how scary it is.
I'm given the medication daily, and I keep losing all my senses.
So... when the medicine wore off by accident, I realized.
I should never take it again.
......That's right.
This isn't medicine that will heal me.
It's just going to kill me slowly.
If I continued to take this medicine, I probably wouldn't be able to tell if I was dead or alive, and I would end up losing myself forever.
......I'll keep looking up at the ceiling, without any emotions, and keep watching the clock tick forever.
If I take the medicine again, I'll lose all the senses I finally regained...
I may never be able to bring myself back again.
...Since the day I realized that, I've been pretending to take the medicine, but throwing it away instead.
"If your doctor prescribes medication, you have to finish taking it, even if your symptoms are gone."
I can hear my mother's voice.
Any time I went to the doctor's office when I was a child, my mother said that to me.
I usually got well before I finished all the medicine, so I didn't finish taking the rest. That's why my mother said that.
But this is a different type of medicine.
I don't even remember how old I was when my mother said that, but with this strange capsule in front of me, I have to try and get rid of my mother's voice from inside of my head.
I pressed down on my head with my elbows until it hurt, trying to get rid of what my mother kept telling me.
Right.
As my head clears, I start to remember the ugly side of my mother.
My mother betrayed her family.
She betrayed me and my father, who waited for her at home with dinner on the table.
She told us she was busy with work, but she was having an affair.
That was bad enough, but she asked my father for a divorce after he took such good care of her for so many years.
But there's something else I can't forgive her for.
She invited only me to meet with her new family.
Not my father, just me.
My father and I are family.
Family means being together.
Yet my mother tried to destroy the bond between my father and me. Not only had she destroyed her bond with him, she tried to destroy my bond with him, too.
When I remember, it makes me feel angry and hateful, and I can't forgive her.
The back of my eyes started to hurt, and I could feel the hatred on my face.
That overflowing animosity is aimed not only at my mother, but also the man she had an affair with.
...The man she had an affair with.
Uncle Akihito.
I didn't like him teasing me, but he gave me an allowance and tried to have fun with me.
I liked him very much.
But his niceness was all calculated.
He wanted to destroy the family bonds between my mother, my father, and me.
...That's why I shouldn't have said I liked him very much.
That's right.
I'm starting to remember and understand.
I now know my true enemy.
It was his fault that my mother started to have an affair.
Because my mother was a very good mother.
He was the one who made her a bad one.
So he's the one who deserves the blame.
When was the first time I met him?
I think it was the time when my mother and I went out and had lunch at a restaurant. She introduced him as one of her colleagues from work.
At that time...
If I think about that first meeting...
I think I felt something wasn't right with the way my mother acted around him.
That's right, I did.
I did think something was wrong.
It didn't feel right.
...I wish I'd trusted my instincts then.
...I was a fool to think he was a nice person just because he gave me a strawberry from his piece of cake.
It was not my father's fault.
Because I bet he never met Uncle Akihito.
But I have.
I've met him many times, and there were a lot of chances to realize he was my enemy.
If I had a strong enough will to protect my happiness, I could have noticed that.
I can't forget how my father looked on that day.
My father, who was so nice and gentle, grabbed his knees so tightly and cried so hard.
He asked me if I knew Uncle Akihito.
I answered yes.
Then he slapped me in the face.
...When he slapped me, I finally realized
how stupid I was for being taken in by him.
That's right, it was my fault.
I destroyed the happiness I had hoped to last forever with my own hands.
If I hadn't been that stupid, my father wouldn't have had to cry like that, and my mother would have stayed good.
If I wasn't that stupid...!
It was my fault!!
I can't forgive my mother and Uncle Akihito.
Even when I hate him this much, I still call him 'Uncle' and I can't forgive myself for that!!
It was my fault, everything was my fault!
I was too stupid and foolish, and that's why this happened!!
I hate her! I'm sad! I'm frustrated! I can't stop being angry!
If my mother ever came back to this house, I would rip her apart with my hands!!
But she never came back.
My anger turned towards everything that my mother left in the house.
I destroyed every relic my mother left behind, one after another.
I threw and smashed everything.
But that still didn't calm me down.
Even after I turned the whole house upside down, I still couldn't calm my anger.
Where does my anger gather?
It starts from inside of me, goes through my arms, to my finger tips, and spurts from my nails.
Where else can it go?
...So my nails aim at my own body.
My body is the filthiest and most disgusting thing of all.
I am the one to be blamed.
No, no, no, I'm not to blame.
My mother's most at fault.
My mother's the most corrupt!
My body and soul feel filthy!
I wanted to stain myself black and slice the remaining flesh into pieces!!
And, one day, I finally realized.
There are tons of maggots in my blood.
I am rotten.
I am rotten from the inside.
Come on, rot more...!!
But it is indescribably itchy.
It is itchy,
itchy,
itchy,
itchy!
I stabbed my thigh with a razor blade in the bathroom.
The blood flowed out.
Reddish-black maggots spilled out.
I forced myself to open my blood vessels with my thumbs.
The maggots spilled out.
Squirm, squirm,
squirm, squirm,
squirm, squirm, squirm,
squirm, squirm, squirm...!!
So many maggots spilled out from my left thigh.
There are probably just as many in my right thigh.
Maybe my calves, too.
My arms,
abdomen,
chest,
no, no, no,
how many maggots are there in the blood vessels in my neck?
Strangely, although I've become rather insane, there is still a part of me that is calm.
If I keep ripping myself apart like this, I'll end up dead.
But everything is my fault, and I'm the one to be blamed.
Even if I blame my mother, the only way I can disgrace her is with my own body.
...Ohh, I get it now.
That's the best means for quelling my anger.
...I feel like I'm thinking incredibly rationally now.
In order to forgive myself,
...I need someone else to blame.
It has to be someone else's fault.
But no such person exists.
No matter how much I think about it, or how I twist the logic, my own body is my only outlet to vent this anger.
So long as there's no one else to blame, I'll be forced to rip open every blood vessel in my body.
Just like no matter how much I scratch, it still itches, no matter how much I rip apart my own body, it's not enough.
The blood is all over the bathroom, and I'm sure it makes for quite the gruesome scene.
Although I'm trying to stay calm, I can't ignore the sharp pain that runs through my body.
Maybe because I've lost so much blood, or maybe because I'm naked in the bathroom, I feel freezing cold.
My whole body is throbbing, and my heart is beating so fast.
I'm cold and hot at the same time, and I'm also sad, angry, and in pain...
...I want to find something that lets me forgive myself.
Then...
it came.
It came in a heavenly light.
It was mysterious and unreal, like something out of this world.
It apologized.
It kept apologizing.
Why is it apologizing...?
You apologize when you're at fault.
...So this thing I just met for the first time was admitting to wronging me.
That means...
I'm not at fault.
...It's at fault, not me.
Aha,
ahahahahahahahaha......?
I dropped the razor blade.
It fell into the puddle of blood.
The pain is taking over my body.
The pain of ripping apart my own body is taking over me.
I've been telling myself this pain is the punishment for what I've done.
But I'm not at fault. It is. So I don't need to accept this pain as a punishment...
...So I don't need to defile my body anymore.
She continued apologizing to me over and over as I stood there covered in fresh blood.
She apologized everytime I wanted to blame myself, constantly, constantly whispering that it wasn't my fault.
Oyashiro-sama exists.
She is always following me.
Pit, pat,
pit, pat.
And every time I can't endure the guilt, she apologizes and tells me I am not at fault.
Everything is caused by the curse of Oyashiro-sama.
Things started to go wrong when I broke the rule that I wasn't supposed to leave Hinamizawa.
I finally remember.
When I moved from Hinamizawa, one of my neighbors gave me a charm.
She said that if I left Hinamizawa, I'd be cursed, so I had to take the charm.
That's right, she gave me a charm.
It had some complicated writing on it.
But I haven't seen it since I moved here.
I may have lost it.
There is nothing I can do about that.
If Hinamizawa residents leave Hinamizawa, they'll be cursed.
My mother and I, even Uncle Akihito too, may have gone insane because of the curse of Oyashiro-sama.
Nobody was at fault from the beginning.
Because everything is caused by the curse of Oyashiro-sama.
Nobody is at fault, nobody, nobody!
I am finally able to forgive everything.
The anger that I couldn't get rid of even after I destroyed everything,
including my body and soul,
is finally gone.
Father,
now I know.
The curse of Oyashiro-sama is what caused my mother to leave, and for you to be so sad.
You remember Oyashiro-sama, don't you?
The guardian deity of Hinamizawa.
That's right.
People of Hinamizawa aren't supposed to go to the outside world.
That's why mother went insane.
It's all because of the curse of Oyashiro-sama.
If we had stayed in Hinamizawa, we would have been happy.
Oyashiro-sama came to me and told me that.
Come to think of it, Oyashiro-sama has been trying to tell me that for a long time.
After mother left, I didn't know why she left or how to express my anger.
Oyashiro-sama has kept following me ever since then to let me know that.
She followed me everywhere,
the sound of her footsteps echoing behind me.
But I pretended I didn't notice her.
...Ahahahaha, I was so stupid.
I didn't hear her voice until I slashed my body all over.
If only I had listened to Oyashiro-sama's voice.
I bet she started warning me once Uncle Akihito came into my life.
If the whole family had gone back to Hinamizawa, my mother wouldn't have had an affair.
We would've been happy there.
I bet Oyashiro-sama has been trying to tell me that.
That's right, she must've been trying to warn me
ever since we left Hinamizawa.
She was always with me.
She followed me everywhere.
I was stupid, trying to pretend I didn't notice.
Everything was because of that stupidity.
If I had noticed Oyashiro-sama's voice, my family wouldn't have suffered from the curse!
It's all my fault!!
Ahh, Oyashiro-sama is apologizing. She keeps apologizing, which means this is all her fault!!
So this isn't my fault, is it?
Because this is the curse of Oyashiro-sama, right?
She's apologizing, saying "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!!"
Oyashiro-sama is apologizing repeatedly!!
So I'm sorry too! I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!!
I'm sorry that I didn't hear your voice. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!!
We are from Hinamizawa, so we have to keep hearing your voice!!
Oyashiro-sama definitely exists, exists, exists, exists!!
Can't you hear, Father? Don't you see?
Oyashiro-sama's right there apologizing, saying "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!!"
I'm sorry too,
come on, Father, let's apologize too.
Mother, you don't have to apologize.
You should die because of the curse!!
I hate you, Mother, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!!
I hate myself for being your daughter!!
These maggots are your fault. They make me itch everywhere!!
I'm sorry, I'm sorry!!
I'm sorry, I'm sorry!!
No, no, I don't want that medicine!!
My mother got it to kill me, so I don't want it, I won't take it!!
I told you I won't take it, stop, stop!!
This is a curse, so you can't fix it with medicine!
It won't get rid of the maggots, because this is a curse!!
No, I don't want a shot either, stop, stop!!
It hurts, it hurts it hurts it hurts!!!
...Everything is falling into a gray world.
The voices of my father and the doctor sound so far away.
Even what just happened seems like it happened a long time ago.
Again, I'm given the capsule, and even my memory from a minute ago is gone.
I'm back in my bed, staring at the ceiling.
In what I can see, the only thing that interests me is the hands on the clock.
Tick, tock, tick, tock.
I follow the minute hand as it goes around quickly, and the hour hand as it goes around slowly.
I see other things, too.
But they keep going through the same motions, just like the hands on the clock.
I'm sorry,
I'm sorry.
It's my fault, I'm sorry.
...Oyashiro-sama keeps apologizing.
Tick, tock,
tick, tock,
I'm sorry,
I'm sorry.
Tick, tock,
tick, tock,
I'm sorry,
I'm sorry.
...Repeating over and over, constantly, and nothing else...
The chorus of higurashi coming in through the window during the night seems louder than usual.