I truly never thought I would make another fanfic again, but temporarily checking in on the Fatal Frame fandom at BCL, I’ve gone back to researching all things about Fatal Frame IV. And then I have my own story I’ve been working on, which has the themes of religion, truth, life, death, and so much more. So the inspiration has come from the Fatal Frame series, thinking of what would happen if someone thought the ritual is false, and from a village like theirs, that would be heinous!

Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to Fatal Frame, but I will always love it.

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He was rubbing his left temple, his frost-colored bangs hanging over his pale blue eyes dazing, down at his blankets which were pooled around his lap, abjectly. Even though it was sunny outside, his room was depressingly dark, as it’s been for the past year. Another day has arrived, another day alone, another day with nothing to look forward to, another day with this freakish hair, and another day without his dear beloved, all despite the beautiful day. Yet despite the beautiful day, it was a beautiful day going on without his dear beloved, and it was a beautiful day, still going to continue on with the terrible ritual, because of his failure, his brother’s failure, their failure. And from the cause of their failure, his dear friends would soon have to face it, but Sae had told him, and would continue to say, “It’s fine. We’re fine with it. We’re just very sorry about Mutsuki. We can imagine how hard it must be, so please, don’t worry about us; don’t add more to your sadness.”

Itsuki rubbed his temple harder, an attempt to restrain his thoughts on once again crossing over the ritual, but how could he? The time of the performance was coming closer and closer, and there must be some way, some way to get away without anyone being killed. He grunted in frustration—what useless thoughts! Every day he thought this, and all he had ever ended up doing was mourn and mourn, but what could he do in such a state of melancholy, even if it’s almost been a year now? Over the months, he had thought of helping them leave the village, but Sae obviously reluctantly considered the idea, and Yae was happy of the thought, but was torn in indecision.

(“Screw being one spiritually! I can’t bear being without you, even if we did become one! Sometimes, I don’t even believe that a soul is split at birth! It’s just a belief of the village! I believe that a soul is born into two at birth! We are two souls who are the same. Doesn’t that sound much more pleasant to you? I don’t want to believe we’re two half souls! It’s like saying we’re incomplete, when we have each other, and that’s enough, right?” Yae had implored many times before.)

The white-haired boy rolled off his futon, fixing it neatly, before heading off to his closet to dress up for the day, while thinking of what Yae had said. It was true, he had agreed, it did sound much more pleasant, although he and Sae were shocked, because there was never another thing said about twins. Never heard of such a thing. Everything that was told in the village were true, and that was that—twins are one soul split into two, and the ritual was to reunite the soul, and the + (forbidden word) would be appeased. Once, Yae had even said (it was a shock!) “Sometimes I don’t even think the Hellish Abyss is real. So? Maybe you guys have seen it, but what do we really know what it is? It’s probably just a simply hole. What if we’re all crazy? What do we know? Everyone barely leaves the village. Why don’t we all just run away from it? Why do we let such a heinous-sounding thing take over us? If we all run away, maybe the Hellish Abyss won’t reach us.” Yae had such guts to ask and suggest such foul and horrible things. Even to say + right out loud!

He was adjusting his white kimono when Yae’s words about running away were playing out in his head. He lightly scoffed. He should’ve known—whatever Yae said, she would go back on her word, afraid, because that was how everyone was: afraid. She always agitated him when she would question and talk about escaping the village, and when he had finally offered to help them leave, she would hesitate, and of course, Sae was satisfied with that. Indecision, indecision, he would think, that’s how women are.

He was stepping out of the Tachibana household; had greeted little sister briefly and skipped breakfast—it was the usual morning. The only thing that changed every day was his apathy growing for the Kurosawa twins escaping. Well, rather like his sorrow was pressuring down his hope overall, with the addition that there’s the twins’ hesitation, and it was taking up time. There was barely enough time now.

Another thing that changed in the village were the outsiders that kept coming and going, all here to learn about the Minakami village, and to tell tales that the villagers of Minakami have never heard of. They were only tales though; the villagers secretly thinking how outlandish the myths and religions out there in the world are. Some were sincerely fascinated.

The Kurosawa twins’ father, the Ceremony Master, in charge of the entire Crimson Ritual, disliked their tales, but he was open to outsiders and travelers, however only open to grab them and use them as ++. (It’s forbidden to say the word.) An unfair, unnecessary fate—no outsider should go through it. It was unfair for the Ceremony Master to think that no villager should take position as the ++, but decided that an outsider was perfectly fine.

Itsuki was mad, arms crossed and was walking around the village. He was angry, not for Sae’s absolute will to perform the ritual and for Yae’s wavering decisions, but for the plans of helping the Kurosawa twins escape. It might not work. His friend’s master was already imprisoned, and the friend, Ryozo, has left the village already. It was becoming unsafe. (He had been working on helping them escape, despite the twins wanted to or not. It was the pact with Mutsuki.) Ryozo had promised he’d come back, but what if he would be too late? No one was ever too sure. “Why does this have to happen?” he asked himself, or, “Why is this necessary? It isn’t! No one, not even Sae and Yae’s father’s brother had to go through this. Not any of the previous twins. Not even Mutsuki!” his thoughts were turning into Yae’s thoughts.

He remembered when he was young, oblivious to the cold Crimson rituals performed. When he did find out, it was fearful, terrifying, and it was always like that up until now. After seeing so many outsiders, telling of their religions, Minakami’s religious ritual was just one out of the many they’ve heard. So why this? Why couldn’t they just flee or abolish it? He felt like tearing his hair out.

“You young man!” A voice called out to the Itsuki, and he was thankful for being snapped out of it, out of the outrage, confusion. He searched around for the virile voice, and he spotted a young man with dark hair walking over to him, with curious yet mischievous eyes. “You, boy with white hair, can I trust you to answer a few of my questions?”

The man didn’t look familiar. Itsuki only stared back with inquiring eyes.

The man smiled, and said with a voice low, “What is your village’s secret?” The man’s voice had some sort of strange feel to it, as if the man knew something.

“Why are you asking a random villager like me?” Itsuki blinked, confused, but glad that the man was a safe distance away from the veiled priests and Sae and Yae’s father. Now that would be severe. “You are a folklorist?”

He was still smiling, disregarding the first question. “Just an outsider, young one.”

The white-haired male looked around to make sure no one was listening. He whispered, “Don’t talk to me about it.”

“White hair is unnatural. How intriguing,” the awkward outsider commented, staring at his hair intently. From the intensity of the awkward outsider’s gaze, Itsuki blushed. “I also noticed how there are many twins in this village. Shall I assume your village has superstitions about them or have rituals with them?” Aghast, the younger male backed away, afraid, cautious, and surprised. “Every twin ritual or superstition I’ve ever heard of is always, always unpleasant.” When the awkward outsider said that, that time his voice carried a hint of solemnity, as if he already knew how to get around safely, how the villagers’ behaviors were, how to not get into danger in a village like the Minakami village.

If the question could be answered so openly, it’d immediately be confirmed yes.

To get rid of the awkward outsider out of his sight, Itsuki told him, wary, “If you know this village and its rituals are not innocent, why come in and ask?”

The man’s smile was more like a smirk now. He had a small pause before he said, “Do you want to talk about this privately?”

-

“and in another place, people believe twins are a bad omen. They get separated at birth, and make sure they never meet ever after. Otherwise, if they do, something tragic will happen—to them and the entire village. There was another superstition similar only that so long as the twins were just simply existing, misfortunes happened, so twins were made to suffer, and suffer. When twins suffered, good things happened to the rest of the people. And off, to another village, very far from here, have the superstition that when twins are born, one would be a divine one, a true Child of God, and the other one, would be the Devil’s Child. That superstition was a crazy one; whenever the divine one was happy, the unholy one would be abominably miserable. And when the unholy one was happy, the divine one was unbelievably upset. Due to those circumstances, the divine child would come to hate the unholy one, because that divine child would be selfish and so used to the good fortunes that happened to him. Most of the time, the hatred was only one-sided. Sometimes, it was mutual. And this was all true, because I saw it with my own eyes.” The man sighed, seeming peaceful. (Itsuki wondered how he could talk about such subjects without talking in anger.) “It was monstrous. I witnessed how the unholy one was treated, and how the others worshipped the divine child. It took me time to find the right people to confirm this information, if it really was like this all the time, and it was. They sometimes end up killing the unholy one because of the divine one’s unhappiness. It was one of the saddest things.”

“All of that is beyond words to describe how condemnable that sounds,” Itsuki grimaced. He had shivers listening to the awkward outsider rambling on and on about such superstitions about the twins. But they were superstitions, not rituals. “though they were all superstitions. No rituals at all.”

“Even so, the world is not merciful enough on twins. Your ritual does seem to have a high spiritual figure involved. There have been so many rituals, all for a God, but the ritual your village performs—how brute!” he exclaimed.

“I know.” Itsuki concurred. The awkward man walking right next to him outside the village was so lively; Itsuki felt like some grumpy person being with him, even though his anger faded away.

“You say you know, but you don’t know how much. There have been rituals where they use humans as sacrifice. But in most others, they use animals as sacrifices. Sometimes, you must compare—what is that saying about twins? Your villagers must be too naïve to realize how low they talk about twins.” The man was gesticulating with his hands to show how ‘bizarre and slow’ the Minakami villagers were. Itsuki didn’t like it, but he disliked the fact more that he didn’t know that in rituals, animals were sacrificed, and hated that the awkward man has made a point that none of the Minakami villagers wouldn’t have ever known, since all of them don’t believe in what outsiders tell them.

However, because the villagers don’t believe in outsider words, Itsuki thought he shouldn’t believe in this awkward outsider. Yet again, Yae’s words, What if we’re all crazy? What do we know? Everyone barely leaves the village. echoed in his mind. The fact that the outsider was telling him all the sorts of things he heard from different places made Yae’s questioning more plausible. He had lost faith in the people of the Minakami village anyway.

“So what is the sacrifice for? Who is it for?” the awkward outsider was truly interested, his pale eyes hunger for knowledge.

Itsuki shook his head. “It is forbidden to say.”

“Oh? How unusual,” the awkward outsider’s eyebrows rose up. The Tachibana boy didn’t say anything, so the awkward outsider continued speaking, “You are not worshipping a deity? I know there are groups that do worship devils, but an entire village? I must say, that’s abnormal.”

“It’s not really worshipping.”

“Then what is it? To prevent a great misfortune?” The awkward outsider was dead on. Itsuki’s silence gave the awkward outsider the hint that he was right. He smiled, “What a sad world you live in. There are too many sad worlds—all looking up at deities or evil figures. Everyone believes in something like that so they’ll have a source of hope, but for evil figures, the fear in people overcomes them, and then they succumb to the evil forces.”

There were three things Itsuki was thinking: one, in his village, it’d be more like looking down at the ‘evil supernatural being’ that resides underneath the Kurosawa house, literally. Two, it really would be nice to have a source of hope, rather than succumbing to the +. Three, it was true; the villagers were all scared of the +. They were all literally trapped in a world of fear where they must sacrifice to the Hole of Hell. (Or perhaps the Entrance of Hell, as Itsuki had heard stories of how Heaven is up above, and Hell is down, and the + seemed to suit the role of Hell.)

“Even so,” the outsider went on, “it’s all the same thing.”

“Are you an atheist?” Itsuki asked, a little shocked. Atheists were a big thing in the Minakami village. Atheists would be kicked out because the Ceremony Master believed that it would make the + angry, for not believing in it. In addition, the Ceremony Master had said before that he must need all the help of the villagers he could—the belief in the +’s existence, for hope in the success of the Crimson Sacrifice Ritual.

The outsider shook his head. “I would describe myself as one who is apathetic to rituals, superstitions and religions. I prefer philosophy over religion. I do acknowledge spirits though, however: deities and devils? Yes, I do acknowledge too, but I firmly believe they’re just like every other spirit. They must be so powerful because people believe in them. And I’m not one to add onto their spiritual power. From the village I came from, they all worship a Goddess. But in forbidden books I discovered, she’s actually a “cruel Goddess,” not even the word Devil is acceptable to describe her, otherwise, you’d be perished. She’s simply a cruel Goddess, that gave birth to Twin Sons that She raised to torture people, and the more they believed in her, the more terrible things that happened to people, all committed from her Twin Sons. But I left that place, that village. I never gave Her gratitude, and I never got hurt. If only people knew how to turn their back to these worthless spirits.”

“Wow,” was all Itsuki could say, astonished, especially at the fact that the awkward outsider basically called a goddess worthless.

“They’re real. Spirits are real. People just don’t have a strong sixth sense, but that’s fine. The more ability to ignore the damned forces. It’s a thing to think about; how death is used to overcome us, when the dead should be fearing the living.”

Hearing all of this from this strange outsider, the hope that was pressured by Itsuki’s sadness was pushing back up. This man seemed knowledgeable; he’s seen the outside and inside of a lot of things.

Hopeful and desperate, Itsuki turned to him. They stopped walking in their tracks. “Hey. I bet you’d know how to handle how to escape rituals, seeing that you’ve seen so many things from the outside.”

“To escape? That would be trouble.”

The boat of hope sank in the Tachibana boy’s heart. “But then… what about you?”

The man was quiet this time. Thinking of something to say, he went back on Itsuki’s word about escaping rituals. “Whoever’s fate you are trying to save must leave the village right now. The day of the ritual will be too late.”

“But I’ve already tried. One of them wants to perform it, even though she said she’s go along with it because it’s her sister’s will, but her sister is hesitant about it. It’s kind of conflicting for them.”

“Whoever’s fate you are trying to save must leave the village right now.” the outsider repeated. “Betray the village or not, they must leave right now. It’s all in the will. If your friends leave like that, I’m sure they’d be caught, and who knows—maybe the ritual will fail, because of the other’s will of not wanting to perform it. Rituals depend ultimately on how the sacrifices, or whoever the victims—” Victims. What a word to use to describe the individuals participating in tragic rituals. It was right on spot. “—are, feel. Feeling is incredibly important. Sometimes, there is too much love, sometimes there is not enough will, sometimes there is too much pain, and sometimes, it just simply breaks off the concentration. And truly, I swear to any deity, all Ceremony Masters must be blind. Not every ritual will be successful, of course. One day, all rituals will come to an end all because of an unnecessary corruption. They’ll always come. I can see it.”

There were goosebumps all over Itsuki’s skin. But he protested, “There have been failures. We’ve all been fine.” He was frightened by what the outsider said. “How can you be so sure?”

Again, the man was silent. It frightened Itsuki more, as if he shouldn’t be questioning him. The man’s pale eyes were swirling with knowledge. “Just because there have been failures does not mean it’ll be all right every time. Whatever evil figure your village is sacrificing for, it will become stronger every, every time, more by the second, and in no time, there won’t be enough to suffice it, because tolerance grows—from its sacrifices and its believing in it. And what’s worse, it’s certainly possible for failures to happen one after one, never a success, and then, what will happen? Nothing is ever certain. Especially with what your friends are feeling? No one knows what’s good for the future.”

Itsuki glanced downwards.

“If you get your friends willful enough before their time comes, you all make a run for it. Yes, you too. It’d be unwise if you linger in your village. There’s a high chance they’d find out. Leave without a word. To make them willful, you should probably persuade them there are other things out there other than Hell your people are probably sacrificing for. There are other worlds, other things. There are worlds in this big world. When you escape, I highly doubt you’ll ever be discovered by your people. Villagers barely leave, unless they’re folklorists. Of course, you’d want to tell them about the good gods, instead of the negative things I’ve told you. Anyway, little boy, I’ve spent too much time with you. I hope you’ll be well.” He waved to Itsuki, and walked off. Just like that. He came up, had a long time discussing about superstitions, ceremonies, and religions, and walked off.

The Tachibana Remaining was definitely sure to take his word and keep it in the front of his mind.

-

He was restless that night, tossing and turning and his grey blankets were twisted around his body. All sorts of things were passing through his mind.

“It (+) definitely exists. I saw it with my own eyes. That guy even acknowledged they exist too. He said all spirits are like every other. But…it’s…it’s like the whole ground. It causes earthquakes and ruins our harvests. Why didn’t I tell him that? Then he’d understand why we sacrifice for it. I wonder what he’d say to that.” (“Even so, it’s all the same thing.” The awkward outsider’s voice sliced through his thoughts.) “And it’s the ground… the ground! It’s something physical!” (“They must be so powerful because people believe in them.”) “….”

In the middle of his troubled thoughts, the door to his room slid open. There were the chimes of small bells.

“Chitose?” he spoke out.

There was a gasp.

“Is that you?”

“I’m…I’m sorry. D-Did I wake you?” Chitose’s voice was quivering.

“No, I’ve been awake.” Itsuki sat up and beckoned. It was dark but the outline of Chitose’s figure was visible, and so was Chitose’s kimono, dimly red. “Are you afraid again? Come, lay here with me.”

She did as she was told. Her eager footsteps brought her over next to Itsuki, bells chiming softly from her wrist, and climbed into bed with him, shivering with fright.

He didn’t bother asking why she was shaking so much; he knew why. She was still scared of what was going on, because she didn’t know what was going on. Where was Mutsuki? Why was her brother’s hair white? Why was he so dolorous, becoming more so each day? He was so sad each day he might have as well called himself Itsuki the Sorrowful. And Chitose was afraid of his sorrow, and of lacking knowledge.

He turned over to face her and hugged his dear sister. Here and now, he was thinking, maybe he should tell Chitose that they will escape this sad world of earthquakes (caused by the +) and rituals, rituals of murder—it truly was murder. Murder was such a big thing everywhere, and here, and all those other villages like the one with the divine child and unholy child superstition, no one stopped to think of it; no one stopped to cease the ceremonies. Yae had been right; why couldn’t they all just run away?

He hugged his sister tighter—it was amazing how he had thought Yae was going crazy for dare enquiring that question, but now, his opinion changed: “Am I going crazy?”

He felt his sister’s head shift upwards at him. Apparently, he spoke it out loud, but he was tired; too tired from wondering to feel embarrassed about saying his thoughts out loud. “Why would you say that?” He felt her light eyes strongly on him, unmoving.

“Nothing, Chitose,” He sighed softly, somnolent. “go to sleep.”

“Y’know…” the young girl started, steering off topic, “I got another reason to be scared. I had a dream, just before. It was of Mutsuki.” She whispered to her brother’s face. His eyes were closed already. “He looked lost,” she continued, “and fearful. I couldn’t see where he was. It was too dark to tell. But I was able to see him clearly. He was like the light in my dream, but it seemed that he couldn’t see anything around him either. He was panicking, I think, and he said, ‘It’s too dark to see anything. Where am I? Tell me where I am.’ What does that mean, Itsuki?”

Expectantly, he had already fallen asleep, but his ears had heard her dream.

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This was long, so I stopped here. In all my previous fanfics, I’ve never stopped at the end of page five in Microsoft, so I hope people won’t get bored and give up on this. But I liked writing it though. I proofread it through once, so I’m sure there are more errors in here. Let me know, and thanks for reading this chapter, if you did! Also, notes:

1. The + is the Hellish Abyss. If you played the second game and read Sae and Yae’s diaries, they mention the Hellish Abyss with a asterisk symbol (but asterisk does not work in fanfiction’s format or whatever)

2. The ++ is the Kusabi. You’d know if you played the game and read Sae and Yae’s diaries. It’s like this because both the terms are forbidden to be talked about.

3. What are Chitose’s eye colors? Lmao because I can’t tell, even through screenshots. They looked grey or light brown, but how could I know? She’s a ghost, so I just put down light-colored eyes. xD