Hanyuu has already grown used to being around us.

Since Rika-chan and Satoko are her age, she's become especially close with them.

Of course, Rena and Mion are looking after her too.

Rena told me something the day Hanyuu joined the class.

She said that Hanyuu has been close to us for a long time, and that she's been watching us play. That she always wanted to join us.

I still can't remember seeing her before.

But somehow, I can believe it.

Hanyuu has accepted all the things that surprised me at first as if she knew about them all along.

She knows everything about us...

and it seems she's truly excited about finally being able to join in.

"...Hanyuu's definitely part of our group now."

"She sure is.

It almost feels like she's been one of us this whole time.

That can't be true, though."

"......No, it is.

She's been by our side all this time."

"Huh? Are you saying that now too?

...Rena told me that a couple days ago.

Is it just that I didn't notice?"

"......It's because you're dense, Keiichi.

Meep~☆."

"Tch.

Fine, so what if I'm dense!"

"Au au au.

Why are you two sitting down?

Are you tired?"

"...You never feel tired, Hanyuu.

Meanwhile, we're exhausted."

"It's because I've waited so long to be able to play with you all. This isn't nearly enough.

I want to play more and more!

Au au au☆."

"Ha ha ha, you're full of energy.

...By the way, those things on your head,

don't they fall off when you play?"

"......Au?"

Hanyuu has horns on her head.

I thought that it was a hair accessory of sorts, so I didn't want her to lose it while playing. I was going to offer to hold it for her while she ran around.

But Hanyuu's face clouded over, and she apologetically held onto the horns.

"......Keiichi.

Hanyuu can't take them off."

"Eh?

Ah, I see...

Ahaha, sorry about that."

"...Au...

Is it

strange

to have horns?"

"Ahahahaha, no, not at all. I think it's cute!"

"Yeah!

Kei-chan even has a horn between his legs, don't you?

Though it's hard and curves backw--

Bwuh?!"

"H-Hau!!

What kind of horn is between his legs? What kind?"

"...Rena-san's punch is still the one thing I can't follow.

Are you quite alright, Mion-san?

There's a depression in your face."

Everyone laughed except Hanyuu, who didn't seem to get it.

I shouldn't have said anything.

I bet she doesn't like to talk about her horns.

But if I try to apologize, I think things will get even more complicated.

As I thought about what to say, Rena took the girls over to the shrine gate.

"......Don't worry about it, Keiichi.

...Hanyuu tries not to let it bother her, but she hasn't had enough training.

Meep~."

"So she doesn't like to talk about them, huh?

Sorry, I'll be more careful."

"......Hanyuu came to Hinamizawa a very long time ago."

"She did?

No wonder she knows so much about the village."

"......I don't know where she lived before she came here."

I asked her once, but... all she said was it was a place I wouldn't understand.

Hanyuu said that she--

or rather, Hanyuu's people--couldn't live there anymore.

They looked for a new place to live for a long time.

They traveled a very long way before arriving in Hinamizawa.

There was a beautiful swamp in the area, and that was exactly what Hanyuu's people were looking for.

But there was a village nearby where people lived.

To show respect to the original inhabitants of an area was law among wandering people like Hanyuu's.

Her clan decided to live peacefully and coexist with the villagers.

However...

their attempts to coexist didn't go so well.

The villagers were too childish and immature to accept these newcomers.

...They strongly, strongly rejected them...

...and caused a terrible, tragic disaster.

Hanyuu said she took their form and descended upon this land in order to subdue the disaster.

However, she just couldn't hide her horns.

The forbidden ancient documents say that Hanyuu descended into the Furude Shrine, appearing as she does today. It also states the following:

Hanyuu's people can't live anywhere other than this village.

They can also only live by coexisting with the villagers.

The Furude Shrine's priest once rejected them, claiming that coexistence was impossible if mixing with the wandering people's blood caused the villagers to become demons.

But the young heir of the Furude Shrine fell in love with Hanyuu, and when their child was born, the priest had to reconsider.

"O wandering people who cannot hide your horns, if you wish to settle in this land, if you wish to settle with our blood, then I shall consider granting your wish."

However, as the demon's blood mixed with the villagers', it became hard to tell who was human and who was demon.

The villagers began to cast suspicion on one another, haunted by that paranoia.

Unless all of that was resolved, coexistence would be impossible.

"...For you and us to coexist, we must lay down several laws for us to follow.

They will be very strict, I am very, very sorry for imposing these upon you who have lived in peace until now.

However, as long as those rules are followed, the village will be free from demonic disaster."

"Very well. The rules will be followed.

...But much blood has already been shed in the village.

The anger, sins, and corruption people bear cannot be cleansed.

The one law of the human world is that sins are atoned for with life."

"I see.

If you say it's your way to let someone take on all responsibility and bury the sins with him, then we'll do that.

However, wouldn't people end up pushing responsibility on each other, because nobody wants to die?"

"...Exactly.

That's the ugly demon in the world of man.

...No one will accept their own sins, but only foist them onto each other.

Since they can only clear the balance with their lives, everyone refuses to pay, and the sins just keep adding up.

Without cleansing them, they stagnate, and people cast them upon each other forever, doubting each other and passing them around."

"I see. If that is the unopposable law of this world, and you yourselves are troubled by this law, then in exchange for coexisting with us, I shall grant you a world where people do not blame their sins on each other.

What kind of world is it?"

"So long as mankind exists, they will commit sins and give rise to corruption.

How could that all be erased without foisting it onto someone else?"

"Let me bear all the sins and corruption born from man.

And purify my soul.

Let all sins rest not with man.

If they are borne upon myself, then man will not need to force them on each other."

"What are you saying?

...Are you really going to make yourself into a sacrifice?"

"Someone has to take on the sins, otherwise they won't be cleansed. That's the law of your world, isn't it?"

...A different ancient document also states the following:

...Of course, it's a forbidden one too.

...Only the head of the Furude family is allowed to read it. Nobody else. Not even the other heads of the Three Families.

It tells that unrest grew in people's minds, that the villagers' evil hearts collected in the swamp and gave rise to demons.

The Furude Shrine's priest explained that the root of all evil is the demon god of the swamp, and led the young villagers there.

By the swamp, they found a demon mocking the unrest in people's hearts.

The young villagers fought bravely, captured the demon, and dragged it to the Furude Shrine.

The priest cleansed the demon god,

opened her abdomen, and dragged out her organs.

He chopped them up and washed them down the stream,

then threw the body in the swamp.

Then people regained their sanity.

Those who had been suspicious of each other became friendly, and they all shared in the joy of peace again.

......If these forbidden ancient documents are real,

then the object of the villagers' worship, Oyashiro-sama...

...was captured by the villagers, forced to bear all their sins, and torn to death.

Plus, it's clearly written that the demons appeared after unrest grew in people's hearts.

In other words... the demons were forced to bear the sin of discord that rested with man long before they arrived.

Oyashiro-sama was a god who took on people's sins to mend conflicts between them.

People eventually came to honor her, and it's said that became the foundation of faith in Oyashiro-sama.

I don't understand exactly what that means,

but I know one thing.

When none of us humans would draw the losing straw, she offered to draw it in our stead.

To prove it, we cleanse our filth by letting cotton absorb it and drift it down the stream during the Watanagashi festival.

There's no shame or shifting of responsibility involved.

Until that system was created, we were simply demons who pushed our filth and our responsibility on each other.

We could only cleanse our own sins by blaming someone else and sacrificing him by cutting open his abdomen.

And Hanyuu took on that job.

A purification ceremony without a human life.

A system that forgives people for their sins.

That is the origin of the cult of Oyashiro-sama, which blames not people for their sins, but the curse.

Those documents were sealed away.

If they weren't, people would find out that the object of their own faith was falsely blamed and killed by their own ancestors.

...Hanyuu apologizes.

She takes in people's sins and keeps apologizing.

When people can't deal with their own sins anymore, she accepts them.

When Hanyuu takes over, people are cleansed, and they are allowed to keep living.

Demons take on sins by becoming cotton to absorb them.

They are exterminated and washed down the stream, and then the village is forgiven.

They are forgiven for their sins.

If that's all true...

then Hanyuu,

or rather, Oyashiro-sama, is such a tragic existence.

I've asked Hanyuu about this before.

Then she told me the following story.

Four people are stuck in a snowy mountain cabin. They play a game where each sit in one of the four corners. It's a fairly well-known story.

It's in the middle of winter.

They're all getting sleepy.

If they fall asleep, they'll die.

So one of them comes up with an idea.

They're sitting in the four corners of the room, so someone just has to walk clockwise to the next corner and wake up the person sitting in that corner.

The one who just walked will sit in that corner and the one who just woke up will get up, walk to the next corner, and wake up the person sitting there.

If they keep doing that, nobody will fall asleep.

People who know this story won't need an explanation,

but this doesn't work with four people.

When the first person gets up, their corner becomes empty.

So after everyone takes turns, the fourth person goes to the next corner, which is an empty one.

They sit down and fall asleep, so the game is over right there, and everyone freezes to death.

In other words, to play this game, you need more than four people.

You need one more person in order to be saved.

People usually tell this as a ghost story.

They usually say that this was actually a group of five people, but one was already dead and thanks to that ghost...

they're able to continue living until the next morning.

...Hanyuu once told me that she's like that fifth person.

If she can make everything run smoothly by joining a circle of people, then...

It's very similar to how the telephone game in the mountain cabin manages to function without breaking.

Hanyuu can complete a circle that can't be realized by people alone.

...Then those people can live peacefully.

She's an existence that completes a circle.

Is she bothered by her horns because it reminds her of the time when she was called a demon and punished for the sins she took in?

Is her subconscious still tormenting her with thoughts that those who have horns ought to be persecuted?

"......She was born with those horns.

She was hated and abused because of them."

"R...Really?!

...I definitely shouldn't have said anything, huh...?"

"And... just because she has those horns, she had to take in everyone's sins

and cleanse them.

She did that, and then she was worshipped as a god."

"Huh?

A god?"

"......I was talking to myself.

Forget about it."

"...Huh???"

Nobody knows who Hanyuu really is.

Is she really a divine existence that descended from a higher place?

Or is she simply an unlucky girl who became a sacrifice just because she had a pair of horns?

Nobody knows.

But this girl's blood was blended with the Furude family's blood, and that blood has descended into me.

Our legends state that if the Furude family has a girl for their first-born child for eight generations in a row, that eighth child will be a reincarnation of Oyashiro-sama.

I don't know exactly what that means.

But I'm that eighth generation.

...Is that why I was the only person who could see Hanyuu?

Eight generations is a very long time.

Maybe that's how long it took for all the sins Hanyuu assumed to be cleared.

Eight represents infinity.

It's a very lucky number.

Often curses uttered will contain, "I'll curse you for seven generations!\

In other words, eight possesses such good fortune that it can forgive great curses and sins that spanned seven generations.

It's a number with power.

It's the time Hanyuu needed to cleanse all the sins she took in from the humans.

Hanyuu and her people simply wanted to coexist with us.

But Hanyuu had to become a sacrifice. Her stomach was cut open and its contents washed down the stream. Then she was thrown into the swamp.

And so,

the Furude family has been waiting.

They waited for a very long time for her to come back.

They kept our traditions alive, waiting forever and ever for her return.

According to legend, the name "Furude" was made by adding a horn to the character for "fortune teller".

The Furude family rose when Hanyuu's bloodline was combined with that of human beings.

Hanyuu is the ancestor of the Furude family,

as well as the mother of us all.

When I was little, Hanyuu taught me a lot more things than my mother did.

...It's no wonder.

I'm her descendant.

The curse on the clan who exorcised

and buried

their very own mother...

...was finally absolved after eight generations - what seemed like eternity.

And then she met me, her descendant, the final generation of the Furude family.

Sometimes when I think about that... I feel like there must be some important meaning to this hapless fate thrust upon me.

But what kind of meaning could the trial I face,

...the trial of breaking through the obstacles sealing my fate,

...have upon the curse that plagued Hanyuu and the Furude family for over a millennium?

A thousand years is simply too long a period to communicate thoughts and intentions correctly.

Hanyuu has become the curse we call Oyashiro-sama. Though she originally was a means of salvation, she has become a chain that binds people.

The rules about coexisting were misinterpreted as a law that binds villagers to this place, and that continued until the Meiji era.

And while the village winds once again blow toward the misunderstanding of isolation thanks to the dam conflict,

...how does that play into my meeting with Hanyuu and this motley fate we're trapped in?

I haven't lived long enough to be able to understand that...

The only thing I can say for sure is that the Furude family originated when Hanyuu's bloodline mixed with that of humans, and the line's final descendant, me, finally met with its ancestor.

The Furude bloodline bears a cursed history of placing all of man's sins onto its mother and killing her.

Now, the beginning and end of that line have met...

Hanyuu always wanted to join everyone.

Yet, she couldn't hide her horns.

Even so, she still wished to be an existence that completes a circle.

"It's a child's job to bury their parents."

"But Mother...

I've never heard that it's a child's job to kill and bury their parents."

"Don't ask, child.

I'm not human.

My horns are proof that I'm a demon. A demon's job is to take on the calamities of the human world.

Bearing the calamities of this chaotic world and cleansing the unrest in mankind's hearts is my role."

"Then Mother, why do you have to be the one?

People's sins are people's sins.

They aren't yours."

"Listen, child.

People live with their sins.

They can't live without making someone else take the blame.

Nobody wants to take the blame, so they shift that responsibility around.

That is a demon, the true demon disrupting the world of man.

By bearing it myself, man may be cleansed, and mankind can be freed from their destiny of doubt and conflict.

Let all the sins, the filth, the karma, and the curse come to me.

Then attack me, purify me, wash me down the stream, and throw me in the swamp.

A human will not do.

So it is the fate of one not human to accept that role.

If a human were made to bear it, then mankind would not be freed from the demon of doubt."

"I don't understand.

I don't understand, Mother.

Mother, you have horns.

Are you saying that you aren't human just because you have horns?

That even if you are human, the horns make you non-human?

Even if you have horns, you're human to me."

"My child, you're the only one who's ever said that...

Even if everyone else calls me XXXX or XXXX, you'll still call me human..."

...What is passed down in the Furude's many forbidden scrolls, the ones unknown to even the heads of the Three Families, sealed in the altar in the shrine storage?

Understanding that... would probably require about as much time as I've spent repeating time.

...Yet once you understand that... perhaps you'll better understand the smile Hanyuu wears as she innocently plays with everyone.

"Ahhh!!

A-Are you okay?"

I heard Mion yell in surprise.

Something must have happened.

"What is it? What's going on?"

"Hanyuu-san tripped and tumbled down the hill over there..."

"Hanyuu-chaan!!

Are you okaaaaay?"

"She rolled beautifully, but I hope she didn't sprain her ankle or anything...

Let's go look!!"

Hanyuu had been playing on the slope and tumbled down it.

There's a road just below the slope.

Mion and the others went down the stairs to get to her.

Let's go.

I hope she isn't injured...

When I got there, I saw Tomitake-san and Takano-san. They were taking care of her.

"What happened?

We just saw her roll down the hill!"

"She did tumble beautifully, though, hee hee.

But I think she hit her head, so I'm sure she'll get a bump later.

Make sure you put some ice on it, okay?"

"...Hanyuu, Hanyuu!!"

"Can you hear us?

Look, how many fingers do you see?"

"......Au...au."

She sounded disoriented, but didn't appear to be injured.

What a relief for everyone.

I bet she's just feeling dizzy from rolling.

"Hau, I'm glad.

I'm glad you're not hurt."

"Just think, though!

How lucky of you to have a nurse waiting for you down here! What perfect timing!!"

"Well, when I'm not working, I'm a wild bird photographer.

Right, Jirou-san?"

"W-Well, yeah, I guess!

Wa ha ha ha ha!"

"A Hinamizawa kid would never get hurt from something like that!

In other words, you're already one of us, Hanyuu."

"Hanyuu-chan? Is that your name?

I've never seen you before.

Are you new around here?"

"Yes, she is.

She transferred in just last Monday."

"What... are these?

How peculiar.

Are they some kind of toy?"

Takano-san tried to poke at one of Hanyuu's horns.

...They'd be an interesting hair accessory, if they were an accessory.

"Ahahahaha, that's what's cute about Hanyuu-chan. Please don't touch them, though."

"Oh, is that so?

I don't think they're that cute, though.

...After all, they look just like a...

...don't they?"

".........!!"

Suddenly Hanyuu moaned as if suffocating.

"......Takano,

Hanyuu isn't a monster.

Don't ever say that again."

"That's right, Takano-san, that was mean."

"Hee.

Sorry, I didn't mean to be rude."

...Rika-chan said it rather firmly.

I'm sure Hanyuu doesn't want to hear that word.

Sometimes Takano-san says things in a derogatory way without realizing it herself.

But I guess there are things you can't or shouldn't say.

Hanyuu was looking at Takano-san with a complicated look on her face.

After seeing that expression, Takano-san realized she might have hurt her feelings. She apologized and left with Tomitake-san.

"......Are you okay?

Hanyuu?

You landed beautifully too, so you're not injured."

"...

...

...

...

...

...

...

Rika...

that person...

...au...

au."

"......Her?

That's Takano."

"...Takano.

......Takano..."

Hanyuu repeated Takano-san's name.

All of a sudden, I grew worried that she hit her head or something.

Hanyuu stood straight up and grabbed Rika-chan's collar.

"R... Rika!!

Au au au!!!

It's Takano, Takano!!

Takano!!!"

"......That's right. She's Takano."

"N... No, Rika!!!

Takano, Takano!!!

Don't you remember?"

"......I know.

Miyo Takano, right?

From the Irie Clinic."

"You... can't remember...?"

"...Sorry, Hanyuu.

What are you talking about?"

".........R............

Rika.........

......This can't be............"

This is the last one... the last one...

She finally imprinted herself with the true enemy's name, while enduring the pain of her stomach being cut open.

And yet she can't... remember...

Rika Furude

has failed to inherit

the memory of the Fragments.