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.”