[Honestly, Keiichi isn't sure how Hughes could help. But he's an adult with military training and someone he has come to trust a lot. He just can't see how it would hurt to trust in him.]
I have to apologize first, Hughes-san. I... Didn't take well that you hadn't mentioned your situation in your world, but that wasn't fair. After all I haven't told you much about mine either and maybe I should have.
I... Come from a small village, Hinamizawa, a bit secluded and almost forgotten, it takes a while to get there and it's really small. I'm not from that village since birth thought, but I moved there a few months before I was sent here. It's a beautiful place, very comfortable and familiar and the villagers are very welcoming and united. It may be a small and unknown village but it's villagers aren't people someone wants to mess up with.
Unfortunately, everyone in Hinamizawa is infected with a serious disease called the Hinamizawa Syndrome. It comes from a parasite that can only found in the village's area, it infects everyone living there and even if it's not contagious by itself outside of Hinamizawa, anyone moving to the village eventually gets infected. Like myself. The syndrome... Affects people's brains, you... You saw how some people got during the last week of the past month, right? The hallucinations and the paranoia...
The syndrome works similarly, but worse. It has several levels of infection per say, the lowest levels make it harmless, dormant even. One can be infected and live a long life without ever noticing it. But with stress and different triggers, like feeling that one can trust their friends or something, the level may raise. As it does hallucinations will start, at first just overlapping reality, seeing someone smile or look at you at every moment when they aren't doing that at all... But as time passes the hallucinations become more and more usual, you can end seeing people where there's no one and even touching them won't reveal them to be just your imagination because all your senses become fooled. At the end of the infection the person just... Is ready to kill, normally sure that their own life is in danger and they must kill unless they want to die. It doesn't happen always but if the person felt that they were being chased or that their friends can't be trusted and are out to get them... In the best scenario the infected person, rather than kill anyone will... Kill themselves my tearing out their own throat.
It's possible though, to get someone at the critical level back to the low levels. Be it with a medicine that was created for it or by, reaching to them and showing them that what the syndrome had made them believe wasn't true at all.
[Hughes isn't a stupid man, he may even come to connect what Keiichi is saying with his need for living with a friend and his denial to accept Hughes' own invitations the moment Elicia appeared.]
[action]
I have to apologize first, Hughes-san. I... Didn't take well that you hadn't mentioned your situation in your world, but that wasn't fair. After all I haven't told you much about mine either and maybe I should have.
I... Come from a small village, Hinamizawa, a bit secluded and almost forgotten, it takes a while to get there and it's really small. I'm not from that village since birth thought, but I moved there a few months before I was sent here. It's a beautiful place, very comfortable and familiar and the villagers are very welcoming and united. It may be a small and unknown village but it's villagers aren't people someone wants to mess up with.
Unfortunately, everyone in Hinamizawa is infected with a serious disease called the Hinamizawa Syndrome. It comes from a parasite that can only found in the village's area, it infects everyone living there and even if it's not contagious by itself outside of Hinamizawa, anyone moving to the village eventually gets infected. Like myself. The syndrome... Affects people's brains, you... You saw how some people got during the last week of the past month, right? The hallucinations and the paranoia...
The syndrome works similarly, but worse. It has several levels of infection per say, the lowest levels make it harmless, dormant even. One can be infected and live a long life without ever noticing it. But with stress and different triggers, like feeling that one can trust their friends or something, the level may raise. As it does hallucinations will start, at first just overlapping reality, seeing someone smile or look at you at every moment when they aren't doing that at all... But as time passes the hallucinations become more and more usual, you can end seeing people where there's no one and even touching them won't reveal them to be just your imagination because all your senses become fooled. At the end of the infection the person just... Is ready to kill, normally sure that their own life is in danger and they must kill unless they want to die. It doesn't happen always but if the person felt that they were being chased or that their friends can't be trusted and are out to get them... In the best scenario the infected person, rather than kill anyone will... Kill themselves my tearing out their own throat.
It's possible though, to get someone at the critical level back to the low levels. Be it with a medicine that was created for it or by, reaching to them and showing them that what the syndrome had made them believe wasn't true at all.
[Hughes isn't a stupid man, he may even come to connect what Keiichi is saying with his need for living with a friend and his denial to accept Hughes' own invitations the moment Elicia appeared.]