I love my outfit when I become Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly protagonist Mio, as I play Koei Tecmo's 2026 remake of the PS2 horror game. I'm wearing black cotton leggings that end in lacy, cupcake frills, and little pleather ballet flats. My layered white skirt has the dull, diamond shine of clean satin, and it remains spotless — uselessly — even when I fall on my ass in the forest, tossed aside by an enemy ghost with something better to do. 

On top, I wear a black cotton camisole with delicate lace, but my favorite part is the butterfly-shaped blouse I wear over it, tied in the middle with a strawberry jelly-red ribbon. This is the outfit Koei Tecmo has lent Silent Hill f protagonist Hinako for a newly released, free DLC and collaboration with developer Konami, who gave Fatal Frame 2 twins Mio and Mayu Hinako's torn schoolgirl uniform in another free costume DLC this spring. The crossover event is unexpected evidence of developers acknowledging the fact that women love horror games; Koei Tecmo and Konami are cherishing a cute and thoughtful outfit, as opposed to the jarringly vulnerable swimsuits survival horror traditionally rewards players with as cosmetics. 

But I can spread butterflies with Mio's lovely mauve outfit. 

I feel them fluttering in my chest when I play Fatal Frame 2, and when I haven't slept all night, but the rude sunrise insists on turning the sky into unignorable shades of mango, slipping over my dresser, and my closet…. The overripe crimson butterfly suggested in Mio's blouse, ribbons, and bows is also stretching its wings, then. It's landing on milkweed, and on our noses. 

The nature of girls sharing clothes usually involves this kind of casual, butterfly kiss kinship, which spreads in snow (when you need a jacket) or blinding sun (when you left your parasol at the library and want to borrow a baseball cap).

Ann Brashares' The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants described it well in 2001, as its four high school protagonists pass around a pair of seemingly enchanted, universally flattering, thrifted jeans: "They will keep us together when we are apart." Sharing clothes is an unspoken bond. It's also an opportunity to quietly emulate the girl you most admire. Fatal Frame 2's Mio, for example, is graceful in her top and skirt even while being haunted. She exudes afternoon tea elegance while being cursed, even as poltergeists blast her with their rotten apple breath.  

I'm glad Hinako gets to adopt some of that unconquerable butterfly nature when I put her in Mio's clothes, she could really use a wardrobe refresh and ditch her tattered schoolgirl skirt… but, if I'm honest, what I really mean is, I'm glad that I get to keep trying on Mio's outfit across multiple games. 

Even at 3AM when all the ghosts are awake, I feel safe among pretty things, which I believe are capable of uniting all women. Whether it's butterflies, short skirts, or flower patterns in lace, the prettiest things are both perfect and easy to destroy, ideal representations of internal conflict, which I have so much of. I want to understand myself through pretty things… and yet I am not one of them. 

Thinking about this brings the end of Elizabeth Bishop's poem "A Miracle for Breakfast" to mind: 

My crumb 
my mansion, made for me by a miracle, 
through ages, by insects, birds, and the river 
working the stone. Every day, in the sun, 
at breakfast time I sit on my balcony
with my feet up, and drink gallons of coffee. 

We licked up the crumb and swallowed the coffee. 
A window across the river caught the sun 
as if the miracle were working, on the wrong balcony.

The shining crimson butterfly that guides me to important locations in Fatal Frame 2 is a wrong, pretty miracle, too. The game ultimately reveals that the starlight creature is an acknowledgement of death, which forms when one twin in Minakami Village strangles their sibling in a homicidal local ritual. 

The butterfly escapes from the sacrificed twin's crushed throat, where their sibling's thumbs would have left an angry, red imprint. Though, I forget the spookiness of this entirely when I turn to Hinako and appreciate the chic way she wears Mio's clothes in her new Silent Hill f DLC.

The fabric of Mio's shirt looks a little big on Hinako, but its droopiness lets it twinkle more boldly, like a lake swarmed by fireflies. It's mesmerizing in a casual way, like noticing someone's dimple. I realize there's a white embroidered butterfly on a second bow tied between her shoulderblades, and I think about this daydream I have, where I turn into a flower and get to live at the top of a magnolia tree. 

The closest I ever get to true transformation is inside my overstuffed armoire, where stiff petticoats, vintage polyester, and a night sky's worth of black velvet threaten to burst through the doors. Sometimes I rifle through layers of ruffle and silk and find a cheetah print top to put on, or my mom's old mink scarf, or a cocktail dress with a pattern like Bambi's fur to feel like I belong somewhere by embodying slinky, safari confidence for the cheetah, roadkill innocence for the fawn. 

Out of the same impulse, the more I play Fatal Frame 2 and Silent Hill f, the more I want to join Mio and Hinako in wearing their shared gold shimmer top, tiered angel cake skirt, and simple berry ballet flats with a butterfly-shaped bow. I know they're both in Hell, but if we attended in uniform, it might not be as scary. We could share our cutest clothes, let them touch our wings and brush off the scales, then lazily accept our pretty death like butterflies.