Like pellets, rain fell onto the old and abandoned garbage dump that Rena had made her own domain. It was her only nature of calming down, the sole escape from a world too unscrupulous. A world where she could no longer trust anyone, where trust was only a minute paradox. It twisted into something unrecognizable and broke off into a shard, where the only practicality seemed to be an alliance for a foe. Although, wouldn't that mean that those same foes would be getting treated as friends? Ridiculous. They were no friends of hers. Everyone had lied and cheated her out of a sense of pity for her family that had become so dysfunctional.

There was no one left that she could pour her heart onto, only this van that had provided all the emotional support from the previous of her days. It acted as a barrier of isolation that she crunched into a corner of the bed at, where she could now free herself from her wristbands. Taking them off revealed just how scarred those wrists had become, some dried specs of blood flaking off as she had continued to obsessively scratch at their deep marks. Their blood became mixed in with the tears that kept falling from her eyes, that continued to grow a hysteric light amidst what had once been a heart-warming color full of life.

Outside the sky seemed to grow only darker, although that was no concern in the light of this small van - where she could scream and cry without troubling anyone. Yes, to trouble other people would be unnecessary. After all, she knew they wouldn't have it in them to genuinely care in the slightest. Her problems were trifling, and that is what “her friends thought” she reasoned. It's just that…to employ such a fake aura of friendliness was all too cruel. Rena couldn't have believed it either. She didn't want to believe. That the friends she spent some of the best days of her life with could have been dressed in such disgusting shadows of collective evil. As her thoughts became more hectic, the seething paranoia that aliens had been trying to take over the world and disguised themselves as her friends grew in intensity.

“Leave! Leave me alone!”

A shout slit through the somber silence that had overtaken the inside of the van, as Rena had put her shaking hands to the side of her head. Pieces of a broken plastic container dropped from the wall, a depressive contrast to the aggressive way the entirety had collided. Voices kept haunting her mind and only seemed to have increased in volume for the past few hours. At first, only being soft whispers, she didn't attempt to entertain them very much. Although, when they had descended to shouts, she started to shout back. Her vocal cords had almost grew sore from such hectic shouting, a tiredness rising that wanted to just give in to them and let them say whatever they wanted to.

“Rena, you idiot. Did you really think I was your best friend? Who would feel nothing but pity for such a pathetic girl abandoned by her mother, and now her father. By the way, Keichii has always been mine! If only you weren't so soft and had been more direct…How did you think that dense guy would ever get a clue? Dream on!”

Mion's cackle could be heard ringing throughout her ears. A single tear slipped from her left eye.

“Ohoho, Rena, how naive you are! You fell for my greatest trap of all - thinking we were friends. Don't be silly, you were only a minute comfort in Nii-nii's absence. When Nii-nii comes back, none of us have use of you. Go away… and bring back our happy days!”
Satoko's voice descended into a hateful shout of rage and a pure loathing of the older girl.

“Give them back! Give them back! You took them! You!”

A single tear slipped from her right eye.

“Poor thing, poor thing.”
Rena could feel Rika's warm hand patting the top of her head, but the air of it this time felt much more frigid and somber. Even if it should have been a kind gesture, the Rika that Rena envisioned wore nothing but a pitying gaze that had lost all the light from her own eyes. The expression was as merciless as the darkness outside, absent of no inkling of accusation.
“Rena, we do wish you could meet with Satoshi, but that's not even possible, right? Because Rena has been a bad child and Satoshi was a good child. Mii~.”

Tears were slipping from both of her eyes.

“Rena…why?! Why did you do this…you could have talked with us!” Keiichi stood with the most hurt gaze Rena had ever seen him with.

“I'm so disappointed in you, Rena. Where did the kind and warm Rena go, that would wait for me every morning, share her lunch, and always wanted to take everything cute home?” Rena's tears had progressed to a full, whaling sob of desperate defensiveness.
“I'm still here…I'm still here, Keiichi!”

She ripped out of her miserable crouched form and thrust forward, shouting at the empty air, that felt like it could swallow her any minute. It was so oppressive, and yet only contracting further. She understood it was only a fight-or-flight response at this point, a situation that had only become a fallen bundle of straws. There was not even one last straw to hold onto, yet she had desperately fallen to her knees in an attempt to put them back together again. How miserable, how pathetic.

'If only you could look at yourself in the mirror and realize. Pity? How disgraceful. You are beyond that. Contemptible. Monstrous.'

Yet that form that should have been there had shattered to a million pieces. Getting back up, circled around her feet were only more shards. A small hand mirror had also been broken in her frustration, destroying the only and last form she could see of herself.

'If my physical form is lost also, where will I go from here? Maybe like Shion…I have also unleashed the inner demon inside me.'

No matter what self-reflection she sought, there was no way even rain with such strength would respond. Naturally. In such a physical world, nothing could answer something like that except silence or one's own self. Yet, Rena had just lost that self to a damaged mirror. ‘Well, it’s better this way.' she tried to reason, believing such a destruction only reflected her current state and that a mirror's purpose, after all, is to reflect the physical.

Now her eyes had darkened to the depth of an abyss, one that could only be created from the scale of such a profound misery. In a corner where her school bag had been haphazardly tossed, she picked it up once more and set out for the outside. An umbrella wasn't needed, such rain would only be a refreshment.

'Yes, let the water pour down…before I lose even this form.'

Small gales blew away the remainder of some tears, which she couldn't completely suppress even now. Village houses had almost all turned off their lights, with midnight approaching, and the shutters of many morning shops were lowered down with “Closed” signs decorating their front. There was nothing to fear in a casual Hinamizawa darkness, yet present circumstances showed to Rena that there was. Cleaver in hand, her grip didn't loosen even a bit, closely sticking to the handle as she dragged onward to the vague outline of her own house. There was no intention of going inside, of course. That disgusting woman would be there. Just the thought made even Rena want to crudely spit at the sidewalk and kick a rock far into a pond, no.. an entire boulder would need to suffice.

Her free fist clenched tightly, sweating her hands only further in this sweltering night. Weren't nights in Hinamizawa supposed to be cooler? Maybe it was a fever, but Rena had been burning up for some time and felt her whole body suffocated, as if it were from a mid-day heat. For awhile, she only stood facing her house in silence. Her gaze was completely vapid and vacant, yet simultaneously looked like it was all too ready to bore a hole through it. What had she been expecting coming back here? She would leave behind her friends, her family, the village entirely if it came down to it, and at long last this despicable last form. There was no meaning in any more sentimental partings. Such a phase had ended since a long time ago, ever since everyone had started lying to her. Trusting no one, listening to no one, her fate was in her own hands. She would surely rebuild her happiness, even if it were to take a million more years. To reclaim it, she had earnestly been ready to swim through a thousand cruel seas. If only to see her friends smile again.

No, not them. Her head tried to fervently shake away any such last naive thoughts that she'd been certain she had destroyed in her heart. No one, trust no one!

At this point, a figure with light pink hair had showed itself from the second story floor window. ‘What would have that disgusting woman still be doing up? Surely nothing ethical.’ She had met with Rena's dead gaze, and albeit the surprise unhidden from her own, she returned it competitively and with unbridled shame. So, it would seem Rina too had decided to tear away her grotesque form only to show one even more horrid. ‘Hm, then what difference is there so much between us?’ Another passing thought crossed Rena.

The woman could partially be seen descending to the first floor from another window offering view of the upstairs hallway and for all they could, Rena's eyes did not trail away from it for an instant. With a light creak, the front door had opened to let out the cool air from the conditioner and cruelly tell her of the comfort she had secluded herself away from, in this heat. An equally cruel verbal greeting had already been aimed at her and a smile full of hidden malicious intent.

“Oh, Rena~. It's already so late, where have you been loitering around? Your father was worried sick, you know. I told him I last saw you at that treasure mountain of your's and that you said you'd be home late, so if you come in quietly now-”

“No thank you.” Rena answered in a humorless and immediate manner, the deep gaze wanting to suck in Rina and tear her piece by piece. Her hostility towards the woman had long taken over, once having found out her true nature. Likewise, Rina had decided to start expressing the nature outwardly with the girl and held back no amount of toxicity from her serpentine tongue. It would show itself as sarcastic as possible, or as a honed skill of vile harassment and loose beratement. To defend from it, Rena had succumbed to avoiding the woman as much as possible, spending more of her days at the garbage dump or with her friends - anything to break away from such a dreary, oppressing hierarchy that Rina had come and placed on this small family with her arrival.

“Ahaha, are you going to stay outside? Well, frankly, I think that might be the best. You won't be needed for much longer, you know? Although, once I've gotten the rest of your father's money, feel free to come back to this pathetic, useless man. He'll be oh-so broken, he won't know what do with himself. A runaway daughter would only break his world further, wouldn't it?”

“You *. You'll pay for everything you've done to me and my father. We will reclaim our happiness.” One of Rena's conflicting inner voices had spoken out, as much as she had tried to suppress it, but alas time was becoming a thin needle, pricking at her consciousness and patience.

A boisterous guffaw tore out of Rina, full of contempt and assertive arrogance. Rena's eyes narrowed and her hand had now tightened around her cleaver, in anger. It had hardened to the point where it could have made almost anyone frightfully freeze in place, yet Rina wasn't paying it any heed from being so lost in her derisive laughter. This gave Rena leeway to turn her cleaver around to the blunt end, move behind the woman, and land it at the top of her head. In an instant, Rina was wordlessly at the ground as Rena stared with emotionless fierceness at her from above. She grabbed her by the ends of her feet and dragged her all the way to an unlit and desolate corner off of a neighboring street. Yet no action would have seemed enough to surface the rage that had pent up inside herself, at the woman who had destroyed both her and her father's life almost completely. Was everything from now on pointless then? That would be a stilled answer.

“Unforgivable. Unforgivable. Absolutely unforgivable!” All of Rena's pent up hostilities that only hid behind thin veils of a smiled “Good day, Rina.” and breaking into ‘adowable mode’ when she couldn't believe Rina was offering her a present, (Most likely, no more than a covert way to ‘shut her up’) had assailed all over the poor woman's body. Limb to limb, her lifeless body had been scratched up and shredded small areas which her clothes would have covered up. Even tear stains had ended up covering Rina's face, though she had not been the one crying. Rena sniveled in a low howl, and wiped away the mucus that had threatened to fall from her own face.

“How dare you? What did we ever do to you?!” She made fierce, successive kicks at Rina's side with unconfined fury, feeling a strength rise in her body that she did not know previously existed in her pained self. How ironic, to arise from her misery? It was ridiculous, but it had been like a beast that met with the eaves of fate. They overhung all mortality, a crowned human with a pernicious smirk looking over the ground that they reigned. Rena vaguely crossed a thought that, perhaps that human at that moment would have been Rina. ‘No. She is far too lowly. It is just another beast, with eyes of a human.’ Muddled in the fact, maybe Rena was just that also, she shrugged it away. For right now, she could not afford to question Rina's own humanity. Now it was a fact that she had gotten to a point that there was no coming back from. Her father would surely never forgive her, nor her friends. ‘I swore to myself, if I cast all of them away…I would not have to worry about losing anything.’ Everything was over. She would most likely kill this woman right now, and then die somewhere in a ditch from clawing out her own throat.

A small maggot had slowly crawled to the base of her boot, followed by three or four others at its flank. Rena let out a ghostly shriek and was quick to swipe them off, but that seemed to have only increased their numbers. Now there was a swarm of of ten or so maggots that appeared in their place, in the same continuous wriggle. Unable to stomach the foul scene that had been haunted upon her eyes anymore, her foot had set to crush them all. She repeatedly stomped at empty spots on the ground, kicked and shoved into empty air. The maggots she was seeing did not seem to die, persistent little things. If anything, she could now feel a shivering sensation upon the back of her arms. It didn't feel anything like goosebumps she would get from cold weather, but rather ones where she witnessed something horrendous, at complete odds with a daily reality that wasn't a televised horror novel. Maggots were now crawling on the surface of her arms, creating swirls atop her skin that marched like small infantry of revulsion.

“No! Get away from me!” She screamed in a wild circular swing of her body, flailing her arms in all directions, despite that it had soon given her exhaustion which made her collapse to the ground.

“Guh..” A thick liquid had pooled in front of her eyes, that housed another maggot squirming more than ever. Rena spilled into more hot tears, feeling somewhat relieved that the blurred visage the cry gave her - if only for a minute - blinded her from Rina's uglied body and the maggots that had overran the whole scene. “This is really..the end. I'm sorry, everyone. I'm sorry, Keiichii.”

Small drops had began to be felt atop her head, as her head looked up at the dark, mourning sky. She wondered if the sky had been sharing in her emotions, for it was maybe crying out. Had it also been keeping everything inside? From the hazy morning that the day had started with, and during the time she was dazedly making breakfast with the mountain vegetables that she was supposed to give the Maebara family, the forecast in the background had mentioned no sign of a thunderstorm.

A quiet overtook her body with a strength she had not known since her days in Ibaraki.

Back then, this same sort of sensation had crept on the arms of her body. What a repulsive bath it was; The amount of maggots that spilled into those waters that reflected that woman would not stop crawling out of her pores. No amount of rinsing or scrubbing would tear away the foul dirt that accumulated from that blood. And she had thought that, perhaps, this nightmare manifested itself from this tainted blood.

How foolish she now felt, to think that anything would have ever changed the fact that this was her blood. Everything that now happened was only a disaster in waiting, coupled with premonitions she only serially overlooked. No, ‘overlooked’ was not correct. They were all clearly visible even from a periphery, but she had chosen not to turn her eyes to them.

Across the completely deserted and covert sidestreet that Rena had dragged Rina out to, and facing a rusted bus stop sign, she imagined some sort of precipice that could help her from this moral prison. Naturally, there would be nothing of that sort out in the middle of such a place and her eyes would only be playing another malicious taunt, even if there had been.

“A smile will now decorate my mortal soul. For all the tears I have cried, goodbye.”


The sharp edge of her cleaver turned around to meet with her darkened pools of blue. She blinked once. Then twice. Darkness collided her vision in a slow lowering of her.

I'm sorry, but there is no way i'm going to read this.

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