"Hello?"

"Hello hello, good afternoon.

...Oh, who are you?"

"Ah, sorry.

We just moved in next door.

We're here to introduce ourselves.

Pleased to meet you."

"Oh my, oh my!

Someone as young as you moved here?

I see, I see, welcome!!

Mom!!

Our new neighbor is here to say hello!!"

"Don't yell like that!

Thank you for taking time to come over."

"They're the Ryuugu family.

They just moved into the empty house next door."

"......Aaahhhh!!

You're Reina-chan, aren't you?

My, how you've grown!"

"Ah, ahahahaha.

Yes, I'm Reina.

Thank you for remembering, hauu..."

"Mom, do you know her?!"

"Of course I do!

You were living in Okinomiya then, so you probably don't remember.

But they used to live next door.

So, you came back huh?

This village is better than the big city, is it?"

"I don't remember much because I was so small when we lived here...

but I feel this is where I belong."

"Then you'll fit right in!

If there's anything we can do for you, let us know!

There's no need to hesitate. Being unreserved is the rule here, after all."

"Ah, yes!

Thank you very much."

I thought I'd remember things if I walked around the village, but I still don't remember much.

I do recall, however, the vivid breeze, as well as the brilliant greenery.

I don't remember the village, but I remember that this is my hometown.

...Red scars still remain on my body.

They're hardly visible, and I can't even feel them.

I'm sure they'll disappear soon.

Now that I'm back in Hinamizawa, sometimes I wonder who I was back in Ibaraki.

In fact, I think I wasn't myself from the moment I left.

And now, by coming back here, I've finally regained my true self.

I can hardly remember what I was like back in Ibaraki.

...Well, that's probably because of the red medicine.

The medicine erased all of my painful memories.

Maybe... that was for the best.

I just wanted to be forgiven back then.

I couldn't forgive my mother,

I couldn't forgive Uncle Akihito,

and more than anybody, I couldn't forgive myself.

I wanted someone to acknowledge that I wasn't at fault.

I wanted to be forgiven.

...So Oyashiro-sama apologized.

She told me I wasn't at fault, because it was the curse of Oyashiro-sama.

That's how I was able to forgive myself.

I didn't have to die by tearing my blood vessels out of my body.

...I think people have to die because they become corrupted.

That's why people try their hardest not to dirty themselves all their lives.

But I'm still living, despite how dirty I am.

I've been allowed to live.

Is there still some filth left on me?

Or am I all clean?

I don't know.

The only thing I know is that the me who lived in Ibaraki and the me who's here right now are two different people.

I no longer feel the need to take responsibility by ripping myself apart because of the filth.

After arranging some furniture and unpacking some boxes, we finally had dinner.

Although I hardly remember Hinamizawa, my father remembers things very clearly.

"Although it was around when we lived here before, the Watanagashi festival has grown huge these days.

It's held at the end of June."

"Watanagashi?"

"I've never seen it myself, so I don't know too much about it. But supposedly people let cotton absorb the filth on their bodies and drift it down the stream."

Absorb

the filth.

"You can wash your filth down the stream, huh?"

"Aha ha ha ha, of course.

Humans are sinners.

As we live every day, filth piles up on our bodies, supposedly.

And once a year, we get rid of the filth by letting the cotton absorb it."

People become burdened with filth and sin by doing something bad.

Court sentences can settle your crimes legally,

but that doesn't mean the burden of sin, of the filth, will just go away.

In other words, human hands can't erase human filth in this human world.

The filth is something humans can't get rid of

and that's why we need a god from a different world to do that.

...That's what I thought.

But... I'm surprised to learn about Watanagashi.

Human hands erasing human filth in the human world.

Letting the cotton absorb the filth and drifting it down the stream.

That means it's okay to live in this world.

I tried to commit suicide because I couldn't forgive myself.

Oyashiro-sama apologized to me and told me to come back to Hinamizawa.

And now, here in Hinamizawa, there's this Watanagashi, a ceremony to get rid of filth.

This isn't just a coincidence.

Hinamizawa is

a place to wash away your filth.

It forgives sins.

It is a place of forgiveness.

"It's called a purification ceremony."

"...Ah,

I've heard of those before."

"Japanese culture is very strict about filth.

You aren't allowed to remain in the spotlight if you accumulate too much.

See, that's the reason why politicians and company presidents resign immediately once people find out about their dirty deeds.

You must leave the spotlight if you're filthy.

To put it in a bad way, the filth is basically pushed onto someone else, and they are held responsible for it."

Sins and filth must be removed.

That's why people push them onto someone else and then try to get rid of the filth by sacrificing that person.

But if that's the case, every time that filth is created, people will try to pass around responsibility for it.

That's awfully hideous. It's almost like seeing demons in the human world.

That's why they came up with the idea of letting the cotton absorb all the filth.

By doing so, people can live without making someone else take on all the responsibility, sins, and filth.

Putting everyone's sins onto someone and then killing that person makes that person a sacrifice.

Who wants to be a sacrifice?

That's why they desperately push their sins around.

A purification ceremony is about replacing the human sacrifice with a nonhuman one.

The purification ceremony dramatically changed Japanese culture. Before then, people always believed someone had to become a sacrifice.

In other words,

even with filth, everyone can live without blaming someone else.

Filth can be forgiven by a method other than death.

Only an existence higher than humans can forgive them.

I was forgiven by Oyashiro-sama and came back to this place.

To Watanagashi, the purification ceremony that exists here.

Letting cotton absorb the filth and drifting it away.

There's no need for a sacrifice.

That's why I've been allowed to live.

The filthy me has drifted away,

so the me that remains is no longer Reina Ryuugu.

If I'm not Reina,

then

who am I?

If I'm without filth, without all the icky things, who am I?

...A name vaguely appeared in my head.

My new name, that only removes one of the letters from 'Reina',

but I think it's a cute name.

All the 'i'-cky things are erased and forgiven with the removal of that one letter.

So my name is no longer Reina.

My name is...