Chapter 110: Chapter 109: Welcome to………
As the vehicle faded into the distance, Fang Zheng set down his travel bag and turned to look around. What he saw confirmed that he was in a rural small town in Japan. The train station before him was old and dilapidated, merely a wooden shelter built to provide cover from the rain. The station sign next to it, having been weathered by wind and rain, had begun to fade, and even the name on it was no longer visible.
“Ah, you’ve finally arrived, Fang Zheng,”
At that moment, a voice sounded from behind him. Turning around, he saw a woman with short blue hair, smiling and waving at him.
“Chie-senpai, long time no see.”
In the instant he saw the woman before him, just as in the Black Soul World, memories of her also surfaced in Fang Zheng’s mind. The woman known as Chie Rumiko had attended the same school as him. After graduating, she came to this place to teach. She was struggling due to a shortage of manpower. Thus, she thought of Fang Zheng, with whom she had a very good relationship at school, and wrote a letter inviting him to come here. This time, Fang Zheng’s role was to answer Chie’s invitation and become a “village teacher.”
“Indeed, it has been a long time. This place is quite remote; it must have been tough on you.”
Hearing Chie’s words, Fang Zheng smiled and shook his head.
“I am already very happy to be able to help my senior.”
“Ah, you’ve always been since the beginning…”
Facing Fang Zheng’s reply, Chie revealed a somewhat complicated expression. She looked at him quietly and then smiled, extending her hand.
“In any case, Fang Zheng, welcome to Hinamizawa.”
Although Fang Zheng had a premonition, when he actually heard this name from Chie’s mouth, he couldn’t help but feel a tremble in his heart. At this moment, he could finally confirm which world he had arrived in— “When the Cicadas Cry.”
Fang Zheng was very familiar with this work. It tells the story of the lives of young boys and girls in a village called Hinamizawa. If it had been made ten years later, it probably would’ve been a typical slice-of-life anime filled with cute moments. But “When the Cicadas Cry” was different, and the reason lay in Hinamizawa itself, home to an exceedingly terrifying disease—Hinamizawa Syndrome.
This was a very special pathogen, transmitted through human mucous membranes, meaning that almost any contact with the pathogen could lead to infection. This pathogen is categorized into five stages, referred to as L1—L5 in the game and anime.
L1 is the latent period, during which the infected individual exhibits no issues and is not conscious of being infected. To all appearances, an L1 patient is no different from a healthy person. In fact, most people never exhibit symptoms until they die.
However, once a patient leaves Hinamizawa, they move into the L2 phase—akin to an early warning period. During this time, the patient still doesn’t show any signs of illness, but the pathogen can be detected in their blood. If the patient returns to Hinamizawa, their condition will improve. But if they delay and do not return, they will progress to the L3 stage.
Once a patient enters the L3 stage, they begin to experience auditory hallucinations and a scratchy throat, along with mental anxiety, signaling that the patient is gradually succumbing to the illness.
But if one enters Stage L4, then the situation becomes more severe. The patient, due to prolonged hallucinations and physical discomfort, will exhibit hostility and suspicion towards everything around them, and may even experience extreme agitation and restlessness.
When they reach the terminal stage of L5, patients will experience fear, phantom visions, auditory hallucinations, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and severe anxiety. Their consciousness becomes wildly aggressive, and they possess a strong tendency to attack. Moreover, due to an unbearable itch in the throat, at the end of the outbreak, they almost invariably choose to die from excessive blood loss by tearing their throats and rupturing their carotid arteries.
In the popular online saying, “Hinamizawa Syndrome” is actually a virus that causes people to become darkened, and in the story of “When the Cicadas Cry,” nearly all of the main characters darken and run amok due to the infection of this virus, eventually turning into blood-soaked murderers.
The debut of this anime shocked many viewers because, although there were animations with dead girls at the time, the concept of cute girls turning dark and committing murder was something that only a few non-mainstream animations like “Fairy Melody” would depict. The story of “When the Cicadas Cry,” where all the main characters darken in turn, slaughter others in turn, and each death is incredibly gruesome and terrifying, really frightened many viewers.
But to tell the truth, Fang Zheng had always been doubtful about this explanation.
Although several of the main characters in “When the Cicadas Cry,” such as Maehara Keiichi, Rena Ryuuguu, Sonozaki Shion, and Satoko Hojo, had exhibited symptoms to varying degrees, whether those were really the influence of Hinamizawa Syndrome, Fang Zheng always had his own opinions. The reason is simple, because if one observes closely, one will find that those who fell ill were almost invariably under immense psychological stress.
Maehara Keiichi, the protagonist of the story, had once committed the crime of injuring children. Rena Ryuuguu’s father was defrauded in a badger game, leading to the loss of all family property, even their house, to someone else’s hands, while Shion’s beloved Satoshi disappeared without a trace, leaving his fate unknown. As for Satoko Hojo—given her abused family environment, it would be the biggest psychological issue if she didn’t have any mental problems.
The onset of Satoshi Hojo’s symptoms was also highly suspicious, as their family had been ostracized by the village for supporting the dam construction. After that, both parents died, leaving Satoshi and Satoko to rely on each other. In such circumstances, losing parental care and being ostracized by the villagers, the two young children naturally faced enormous psychological stress. Satoshi was also at the age of rebellious puberty, so it was not strange for him to do something extreme.
At the time, Fang Zheng was studying psychology at university, so out of curiosity, he analyzed the actions of these main characters and found that even without that so-called “virus,” humans under immense psychological stress would also exhibit extreme behaviors. Not to mention, those main characters were essentially high school and middle school students, whose mental maturity was not particularly sound. If there was no one to guide them, they were naturally prone to problems.
A careful observation would reveal that the characters who turned dark and committed murders all shared the common trait of bearing immense psychological stress without any channels for resolving their problems, resulting in them taking extreme measures to combat everything. There are plenty of such clinical cases in psychology, and in Fang Zheng’s view, Hinamizawa was simply a gathering of these extreme mental cases.
Of course, this was just Fang Zheng’s guess, but now he had the opportunity to verify his own theory. The reason was simple… This time his visit to Hinamizawa was not just at the invitation of Chie Rumiko, but with another identity…
“So you are Fang Zheng, welcome to Hinamizawa!”
The bald headmaster, dressed in a black suit and looking like a gang boss, stepped forward with big strides and reached out his hand to Fang Zheng.
“Welcome, I’ve heard about you from Teacher Chie, ‘concerning the psychological health of rural children’—I never thought you’d have such an idea. But it makes sense; as educators, we should focus not only on the physical health of our students but also on their psychological well-being… But to be honest, between Teacher Chie and myself, we really can’t handle it all, hahaha…”
“That’s precisely why I’m here.”
Shaking hands with the bald headmaster, Fang Zheng smiled slightly and responded. Indeed, according to the setting in the “Dimensional Codex,” Fang Zheng came to Hinamizawa this time at the invitation of Chie Rumiko, to take up a position as a teacher at the Hinamizawa branch school while also serving as a school doctor and psychological consultant. According to Chie Rumiko, it was after reading his paper on the psychological health issues of rural children that she came up with the idea and invited him here.
But can this world really address his problems?
Unlike mission worlds, the Free World does not issue missions but lets Fang Zheng find his own way. However, based on the identity “Dimensional Codex” provided to him, Fang Zheng could roughly guess what his mission in this world was.
To train his will and at the same time protect those youngsters who were supposed to face death, freeing them from their doomed fate.
In other words, he was here to crash the party!!