Note: This is going to be a largely personal and reflective piece of writing similar to my piece regarding Higurashi When They Cry’s first half - so if an intimate conversation about myself just as much as it is about this game isn’t your thing, totally valid and understandable. Oh, and this is going to talk about the “Saikoroshi” chapter of Higurashi Rei as well, as I feel it’s best discussed in tandem with the Answer Arcs here - so spoiler warning for all of Chapters 5-8 and Saikoroshi. Also, a content warning for topics of mental illness, self-harm, abuse, and all that entails. I love you and I cannot thank you enough for your time in advance. You aren’t alone.

One of the most difficult things about depression centered around traumatic episodes is that they often chip away and rob you of the things you enjoyed most around those times. It’s been a very difficult journey to reclaim some of my favorite memories, experiences and works of art over the last few years, and I've found it harder than ever to commit to projects or engage with artwork and see it to completion on my own. Anyone who knows me can tell you that’s pretty out of character; I’ve got a penchant for dropping everything to fully embibe myself in some new fascination on a seeming whim, to completely commit to a new horizon and engage with it with a sincerity and passion I’d previously considered reserved only for that which came before it. That stopped a few years ago, and like I said, it’s been a long journey back up that hill. That would’ve been an impossible task without the support group of closest friends I’ve learned to rely and count on since the recovery process began. I’m fortunate to have a friend-group in which I have been positioned to host events and discussions around media - film, music, games, literature, the works - and show up for my ardently patient, curious and brilliantly kind and courteous friends and bring my a-game each and every stream, each and every discussion, each and every day. We’re more than just a hangout group, though - we’ve weathered trauma and pain, grief and loss together. It is a castle held up by each and every stone in the wall. That’s why I was even able to force myself through Higurashi in the first place - because of my friends, because of the fact that I owed them the responsibility to be myself, to express and to feel alongside them, and not to shut myself out and isolate, to mull and wade in my own self-destruction and pity. This was and has been, as I said, a period of recovery - this was the story of my atonement and my growth. Of course, I didn’t know that Higurashi would shed itself to me, Ryukishi’s arms extended, and that I would find my own answers somewhere in this nearly three-month experience. I didn’t know that I had the single most impactful and reflective experience of my adult life with a work of art in front of me. Strange how that happens - just when it’s needed.

It is a hurdle to be a traumatized person, yet to love and to be loved. There exists some paranoia and constant state of doubt that can, like a crack of lighting, strike down any moment of peace and clarity and bring about questioning, self-talk, and confusion. To hear and comprehend that you deserve what you have but, not unlike tasting something bitter, feel your body reject the notion and spit it back out. Sometimes this coagulates into anger, or resentment, sometimes into defensiveness and a desperate clawing-out of social situations. To be hung up on your thoughts in these times, and to believe the things you tell yourself creates a tunnel-vision in which your suspicions turn to truths, your doubt becomes your sword, and your world gets smaller, and smaller, and more and more hopeless without anything actually happening. It’s hard to understand that people outside of your fucked up little maze you’ve splayed out for yourself might perceive you as something more than your illness defines. You take everything at a second meaning. It’s amazing what we can do to ourselves; or, I guess, what our heads are allowed to do to us. It’s been a hurdle to know and understand deep, intimate love, to drop the shields and let that vulnerability show even when the results typically turn out rancid. God knows I’ve got scars. I’m sure a lot of us do. You can see some of them, some you can’t - and I really hope the former never ever come back by my own hands. It’s an impossible feat to comprehend that someone could find beauty around, and yes - even in - that scarred skin, that scarred heart… but this was always a story about miracles, even before we had the means to see that. Love conquers all. Trust and love are the blade and shield of absolute truth and miraculousness. Higurashi is not a story solved with all the guns, cleavers, knives, or baseball bats in the world - it’s the warm, tender feeling of fingers wrapping around one another and the pulling of muscles to form a ring of smiles.

When I retrace the memories and allow myself to step out of the first-person and look at the majority of my adult life thus far, I realize that so much of my time has been spent in the pursuit of absolvement - both from actions, attitudes and situations I have participated or acted upon, as well as - and equally as much - ones beyond my control or centered around my self-perceived place inside them and guilt squared around them. It has taken years to be able to look at situations I’ve carried guilt about - both punishing others just as much as those where the hammer fell down on me - and be able to say with a level of confidence and assuredness “this was not me, and it was not my fault”. If anything, that’s been the harder trial I’ve had to face than to accept accountability and own up to it where it counts. I’m lucky enough to have both grown up around people whose tremendous mistakes and self-centered actions had immediate and scarring ramifications on the lives of myself and others, but to understand those mistakes as well as my own and be taught the throughline of action to consequence and be shown that I’m capable of that the same as anyone else is. Accountability and the opportunity to amend are two of my key values - integrity interloping with both of them - and they’re the foundation of all of my most trusted and intimate relationships. I have made plenty of mistakes for which I’ve paid dearly, and I’ve had actions taken upon me that have left just as many marks. But it was through a series of steps towards recovery in the aftermath of someone else’s impacting decisions that tore my life apart where I began to understand that growth and acceptance can come from anywhere. I’ve been through things I wouldn’t wish upon anyone, but I’m glad some of them happened, because they became moments of introspection where I needed to whittle everything down to the basics and build myself back up with the spotlight of my caring, earnest, and worried friends cast on me - I needed to prove myself and earn my way into a new way of life, regardless of where that situation came from or how it came about. The cycles of manipulation and abuse continued to spin my trajectory and yet, with the hands of my friends who so often reached out, I was able to pull through and see the other side. In recovery from trauma I found a new lease on my existence and equanimity for so many roads I’d taken, so many lives I’d led, so many decisions I’d made, and so many times I’d considered what the cost and point and keeping up with trying even valued. It was my wake-up call and ironically something I’m honestly kind of glad went down. The cycle broke. Despite everything. No longer on the losing end - it was a miracle forged by extended hands. Mine became a game with no losers.

The resonance of these values and the wake and rebirth of these values and this lease on existence are found ubiquitously through the dynamic with the entire group of people I shared the experience of Higurashi When They Cry with. There is emanating selflessness and kindness and humility coming off of each of these people who I’m fortunate to have spent these 160 hours with - and knowing that this story and this experience left a lasting, profound impact on the group at large is something that is said without the need for words. There aren’t many times I can think of in my life where a totally world-altering experience like this that I’ve had has been shared with and immortalized with a group of people like this before, but it’s one of the most powerful feelings - or, perhaps waves of constant feeling - I’ve ever experienced. In a voice that speaks directly from screen to screen across over fifteen years, Ryukishi broke it down and provided the most succinct measures of our progress and our being to us - ours can be a game without losers; you don’t need to go to school, and it can’t teach you art; atonement is personal and internal first and foremost; your legacy isn’t defined by immediate attention to your craft; your communities and your relationships are your proof of your worth. All of these are takeaways we collectively needed to have and sit with. It’s a set of experiences which speaks to the heart of what our purpose in engaging with artwork as a collective is, with the people we do it with, the way we choose to do it. Atonement came and passed through this group all throughout the experience and continued to be a means for us to look towards our better selves - whether these were aspirations for the future or an unclouded look at what we already were.

Sitting at the heart of this story, or maybe more aptly, surrounding this story, is a girl in need of help. Her poems, her conversations, her defense mechanisms, her sifting of the fragments in search of her answer. She sits outside the realm of the fictional work of art she seeks desperately for her reflection in, still drowning in the drink of grief and isolation. Her eyes see only apathy and destitution - as she sees it, she was born into a life of constant sorrow and she might as well take the ride the ticket she was bought offers. She couldn’t possibly the hands she might’ve had extended to her, even as she watches Rika and Hanyū harden their resolve and attend their perfect June of 1983. When the show is over, when all is said and done, and even Takano gains a second chance, Bernkastel sits alone, staring at her reflection in the pool of wine and the fractals of art, fiction and life spread out on her empty floor. There came an understanding by the time Saikoroshi was said and done - for a moment, I was her. For just a slim period of time, I sat there, draped against the floor in her lonely witch’s lair, on the vast shores of destiny and causality, searching for myself. Higurashi When They Cry stared us both back in the face. The difference lies in my surroundings - my friends. My future. My willingness to change. My responsibility. My awakening. My atonement. The accompaniment of the keys to my next summer. My answer. Tears were shared, laughs were had, hugs and thanks and stories and reflections were made. A door to a brighter future, my true route, my perfect ending, was open. A fistful of fragments containing future lifelong memories, 160+ hours of intimate joy, mystery, grief, tears, smiles, gratitude, shock, pride, sorrow, and unending, limitless, borderless, time-transcending, and yes - miraculous love in hand; I clutch in my grasp my favorite period of my adult life, my now-most treasured and beloved work of fiction, and the most incredible experience this medium has yet to offer me, and with my other hand, I begin a daisy chain of holding hands, smiling through tears, from one friend to the next, hopefully reaching all the way from here to Hinamizawa, marching forever into the next perfect summer.

“The storyteller makes no choice;
Soon, you will not hear his voice.
His job is to shed light,
And not to master.”

within a span of two months, from september to november of 2019, i lost an old friend and former lover to bone cancer at 23 years old, and my father revealed to me that he’d been diagnosed with stage 2 lung cancer. this would indicate a nearly three year journey to where i am now - a sequence of events which tested the limits of my perseverance, willpower, camaraderie, self-love, and actualization of community. my life underwent severe changes throughout this period; essentially revising my entire outlook on my relationships to patching up and mending my relationship with my dad which had resulted in some pretty catastrophic gaps gashed out pretty equally on both sides. some outside events completely reformed how i lived, the safety and love i had to provide myself for my own wellbeing, and fostering a lot of growth and evolution out of a patch where what i’d known and what i held onto were slipping through my fingers.

during this time, my father set an example of how he would choose to live. he combatted cancer and heartbreak with rudiment, structure, dedication and iron will. i watched him break on more than a few occasions. but it was through his search for that light where he found his own branch of buddhism, practice of meditation, and a new outlook on his life. he began to teach me the lessons he’d taken away - both of us being that type of person with loud, constantly-spewing minds. he instilled and internalized the idea that meditation and serenity are not about clearing the mind of thought, but finding a means to acknowledge the thought and move on from it. it was only along the lines of that practice that we both began to unbox our trauma - both conjoined and individual. it was only then when we could cultivate growth, hope, and those first rays of light.

i had no access to therapy or professional help at the time. i was between jobs when i wasn't crammed into ones that abused and berated me and my time. my greatest resources for self-love, as they are now, were my loved ones and my then-cracked-yet-unbroken devotion to art. traumatic attachments kept me apart from those things i loved most, but in the process of recovering from a sequence in time in which i felt like i’d lost myself, figured it took recessing back to those works which had so clearly defined attics of my life to that point to regain shards of who i’d been, and define who i would choose to be moving forward. over the next year, i would play final fantasy vii six times to completion, twice with friends, four times on my own. the hanging threads of grief, trauma, self-actualization v. dissociation, lack of direction - these things culminated in a story which more and more i felt whispered answers directly to me, for my consumption alone. it’s in those moments where a bond is made between art and audience where the attachment becomes not just inseparable, but near essential.

final fantasy vii doesn’t hand you answers for the questions you come to it with. there isn’t a resolution to the trauma, there isn’t a solution to the pain or the grief. it is an embrace, and a hold of the hand, and a gentle call; “here is how you live with yourself. here is how you learn to be alive again.” the sociopolitical conflicts, the internal struggles, the budding seeds of affection and fraternity don’t reach a natural apex - they hum in anticipation of a deciding factor which never comes. perpetually trapped within the question, but offering you the means to provide your own answer in life. the final shot of the game isn’t a conclusion meant to be expanded upon. it’s simply a closing of the cover, the final page turned before the index of note paper before being passed to you with the command - “apply yourself. turn this into something that matters.” so i chose to.

and i found myself in midgar again, with new friends and a new outlook.

you come back to the slums of wall market and sector 7 with a new worldview and appreciation each time. there’s a different purpose, when your relationship with this game is as intimate as mine, for coming back here. i know the smog, the street life, the feeling of inescapable, walled-in urban destitution well. you grow up in any city poor enough and you get to know midgar intimately. it’s a familiar setting with a familiar social agency. the seventh heaven crew, they’re all faces i’ve known, fires in bellies i once shared, and now understand in a different light. they’re old friends i knew in my activism years as a teenager, they’re people i looked up to and lost through the years. i’ve lost a lot of people and a lot of faith over time. it might seem like a quick moment to many but the sector 7 tower fight reminds me of people and things that exist only in memories now.

the moment the world opens up and the main theme plays, while unscripted, is one of the most powerful in the game to me. i retain that this title track might be my favorite piece of video game music and such a perfect encapsulation of the game’s philosophy and emotional core. stinging synth strings meet acoustic woodwind and orchestral drones. playful countermelodies give way to massive, bombastic chords in a rocking interplay that rarely fails to inspire, intrigue and invoke. uematsu-sensei, unquestionably at the apex of his mastery here, provides his most timeless score. i think about, am inspired by, and draw from his work here intensely. the artistry pours out from every nook of final fantasy vii - the models, the cutscenes, the background renders, the gameplay systems, the story, the use of diegetic sound, the pacing, the designs - everything came together in a way that somehow evokes equal feelings of nostalgia, futurism, dread, fear, warmth, love, hope, and utter timelessness. streaming and voice-acting this entire game with my close friends was one of the best experiences of my year. hitting each turn with a decently blind audience provided both knowing and loving perspective and the unmitigated rush of first experience - in tandem, a passing of the torch, an unspeakable gift of an unbroken chain shared between loved ones. if final fantasy vii saved my life once before, this was the run which restored its meaning and direction.

i’ve been cloud, i’ve been tifa, i’ve been barret, i’ve been nanaki. i’ve been zack, i’ve been aerith. there are lives lived in the confines of final fantasy vii which i hold as pieces of my own, countless repetitions of those stories with those resolutions my own to meet, different each time. there was something magic about the ability to, a year after that painful strike of all of that anguish, that death, that loss, that fear, sit on the end screen as the series’ endless “prelude” played amongst 32-bit starfields and openly sob for a half hour surrounded by the voices and words of my loved ones. that was the day i learned to live again. it’s more than a game when you know it this intimately. it’s more than an experience when you share these scars. it’s more than art when you hold onto so dearly. there isn’t a classifier for what final fantasy vii means to me other than, “a lot”. sometimes, less is more. i don’t have a conclusion beyond that for you. the experience recalls everyone and everything i've ever loved and lost, and all that i've come to gain and hold dear. goodbye to some, hello to all the rest. true, reading this, it may have been a waste of your time, but i’m glad i was able to share this with someone. i hope this reaches at least one of you on a level you needed today, or maybe it invokes something in you about something you love so dearly. i’m here to tell you - this is how i learned to live again. if you need someone to tell you, today, that you can too, here it is. you aren’t alone. go find those answers for yourself.

please don't step on the flowers on your way.