Several elements of the bizarre incidents that occur within the game remain unexplained, even once the cases have been resolved. By piecing together the fragmented information discovered over the course of each scenario, however, it should be possible to get at least a step closer to the truth. Here, we will look back on the outline of each case, and examine the lingering mysteries within in place of the protagonists.
Kazami, who works in the Police Historical Archives Room, receives a tip-off from an eyewitness regarding a string of gruesome serial murders by way of a chain mail. He and his colleague, Kogure, plan to meet up with the informant.
If it is Miyuki Kawara who shows up, she claims to have witnessed a murder. She later flees, and after a pursuit, the pair discover her at an abandoned building. Miyuki turns ferocious and attacks them, but though they manage to repel her, she attempts to commit suicide by jumping from the roof of the building after regaining her senses.
During the other Miyuki Kawara route, after making contact with her, Miyuki vanishes. The following day, Kazami hears on the news that she has died of a heart attack. Kogure realises that the autograph he received from her was clearly signed by someone else, and her face in the commemorative photo he took is hideously warped.
If the informant is Nao Hayashi, she accuses Miyuki Kawara of being the serial killer. Afterwards, they head to an abandoned building, and after fending off the attacking Miyuki Kawara, Nao is nowhere to be seen. Later, Kazami and Kogure are shocked upon reading the case file, from which they discover that Nao Hayashi is listed as amongst the victims whose bodies were recovered from the abandoned building. Nao, who had worked as Miyuki Kawara's makeup artist, had already been dead for four months.
During the route in which Miyuki Kawara is the one who provides the information, she briefly leaves her seat as the three are talking at a family restaurant. When she returns, she quickly ends the conversation and vanishes. This seems to be due to the fact that Miyuki Kawara has a split personality, and her other personality begins to show itself while she is talking to Kazami and Kogure. This second personality vanishes after committing a murder, but grows in strength with each passing day, and rears its head once more after a set period of time. She seems capable of suppressing it to some extent, but once her personalities swap entirely, only the mentality of a bloodthirsty killer remains. During the route where Nao Hayashi appears, Elizabeth Bathory, a gruesome murderer from the Middle Ages, becomes closely tied to Miyuki's murderous impulses. As noted within the game, it is unclear whether Miyuki is truly a reincarnation of Bathory, but at the very least she certainly reveres her to the point of emulating her slaughter.
During the route where Miyuki Kawara dies, it seems as though a second personality exists within her, who even has different handwriting. Inspector Indo brings up spiritual entities known as "doppelgangers", which seem to fit quite closely with the events of this story. Despite only having one body, one Miyuki is a bloodthirsty killer, whereas the Miyuki who shows herself to Kazami and Kogure wants to stop her "other self" from committing any more crimes. However, the day after their meeting, Miyuki dies. This, too, matches the story of the doppelganger, which says that you will die if you meet your "other self". What happens when one personality finds the determination to stand up to the other? Only Miyuki Kawara knows for sure.
A series of suicides occur amongst the female students of Hanamine Private High School. In both cases, the blood has been almost entirely drained from the victims' bodies.
During their investigation of Hanamine High, Kazami and Kogure are shown to the kitsunezuka, or "fox mound", a burial mound behind the school, by the headmaster. Though the kitsunezuka has existed for many years, it is now dedicated to the memory of Misa Sakita, a student who died two years earlier.
Yuka Kamiyama, Keiko Yamano, and Mari Horikawa, a student who transferred to the school after Sakita's death, are found communing with kokkuri-san in a classroom. It is revealed that Kamiyama, Keiko and the two dead students were classmates two years ago, and Misa Sakita was part of their group. The following morning, Keiko Yamano commits suicide in a classroom, clawing her body to pieces with her own nails. Again, no blood is left inside the body.
Guided by the man on the phone, Kazami discovers Misa Sakita's diary inside the Archives on the MPD B5F. The diary reveals that Kamiyama and the others were bullying Misa because Kamiyama had feelings for Shota Nozawa, Misa's childhood friend. Kazami and Kogure hurry back to the school, where they find Kamiyama, Horikawa and Nozawa by the kitsunezuka. Kamiyama demands answers from Horikawa, who convinced the group to do kokkuri-san, but she sneers at Kamiyama's feelings. Enraged, Kamiyama attacks Horikawa, but Horikawa manages to stab Kamiyama with a tree branch. Nozawa stops Horikawa, and calls her "Misa". She thanks him, and loses consciousness.
Afterwards, both Kamiyama and the ambulance transporting her to the hospital vanish without a trace. When Horikawa wakes up, she has lost her memories of the past few months. Though the case is solved, no one remains who knows the truth. One final revelation stuns Kazami, however - Horikawa once underwent a heart transplant. The donor? Misa Sakita...
Hardly any blood remains within the bodies of the three suicide victims. Where did it go? In actual fact, the first episode is paired with the hidden scenario "Ranko Indo, Exorcist". Almost all of the mysteries, including the disappearance of the blood and the talisman inside the car that attacks Kamiyama, are answered within this scenario, so play through that first.
A man on the phone guides Kazami and Kogure. His true identity is a mystery, but he says he is part of some sort of "organisation". This mysterious organisation appears multiple times throughout the game, and is involved in all sorts of cases. Some sort of influence on the behalf of this organisation also seems to be behind Kazami and Kogure's unusual reassignment to the Archives. It's not known at this point what the man on the phone and his organisation's goal is, but it is certainly one of the most noteworthy things within the game.
Yuka Kamiyama vanishes without a trace. Where did she go? During the case, Kamiyama appears to be under the influence of "kitsune-tsuki", or fox possession. From what the phone man says when he shows up later on, it seems as though his "organisation" is assembling people who have been involved in strange occurrences. Perhaps Yuka Kamiyama's fox possession led to her being taken away by this organisation?
A surprising connection ties Mari Horikawa and Misa Sakita together: a heart transplant Horikawa received in America two years earlier. It seems as though Misa Sakita wasn't actually killed in the traffic accident, but rather left in a vegetative state. It's unclear how her heart came to be transplanted into Mari Horikawa, but it is within the realm of imagination that when Horikawa received the heart, she also received Misa's soul. Unless Horikawa's memory returns, the truth will remain shrouded in mystery forever.
Going on information received from the man on the phone, Kazami becomes involved in the investigation of a kidnapping. The victim's name is Yusuke Saito. His mother, Yukari Saito, receives a nonsensical threat by telephone: "I took... your son. Pomegranate... Come alone."
According to eyewitness testimony, Yusuke Saito was kidnapped by a red-eyed female "oni" - a demon. Kazami suspects that the Saitos' unfortunate neighbour, Satoko Anzai, may have committed the crime out of jealousy. While staking out her residence, Kazami finds Anzai collapsed on the ground with blood streaming from her head. She is taken to hospital, but is discharged the following day after making a full recovery. After learning that she is a suspect, Anzai claims that Yukari Saito is the person the police should really be looking into.
Here, the episode branches into two different routes.
If you choose to suspect Yukari Saito, Kazami will search the house and discover a hidden room, but Yusuke is nowhere to be found. Based on the rumours and the "oni" that was supposedly seen, however, Kazami comes up with a suspect: Kyoko Yukimura. Kazami and Kogure search her house, where they discover signs that Yusuke Saito has been there, and decide that she is the primary suspect after reading through the diary left on her PC. Hearing Yukimura's name, Yukari Saito heads to Granada Maternity Clinic, the place indicated by the word "pomegranate". Kazami accompanies her, and locates Yusuke Saito and Kyoko Yukimura inside the ruined building. Yukari and Yukimura fight over Yusuke, who intervenes and tosses a lamp, the flame from which sets the hospital ablaze. Kyoko Yukimura vanishes, and her body is never found.
In the other route, Anzai remains the primary suspect. Through questioning, Kazami learns that all of Anzai's blood relatives are dead, and her only remaining family, Kyoko Yukimura, died two years ago. However, the name of the hospital Yukimura used to work at, Granada Maternity Clinic, serves as a clue: "granada" is Spanish for "pomegranate", explaining the word from the threatening phone call. After speaking with Yukari Saito, she says she is heading to Granada Maternity Clinic. There, Yusuke Saito awaits his mother. As the pair go to leave, Yukari begins to transform, her eyes glowing red and blood pouring from her head. Anzai, now completely transformed into an "oni", appears, rebuking Yukari Saito for losing her love for Yusuke. Yukari manages to halt the transformation before it takes her over, and flees with Yusuke in tow. The hospital is engulfed in the flames from a fallen lamp, and Anzai disappears into the blaze.
The rumours of an oni spreading amongst the kids bear the following three features:
Of these three, 1 and 3 match Kyoko Yukimura, and 2 and 3 match Satoko Anzai. The reason the identifying features of the oni come partly from each of the two may be because the rumours became muddled as they spread, or possibly because an oni exists within them both. In other words, Anzai and Yukimura transformed at the same time, and were witnessed by neighbourhood children on multiple occasions.
Two changes can be seen in those who transform into oni: their eyes turn red, and blood pours from their head and forehead, from which horns eventually sprout. This means that the wound Anzai sustains when she faints is a precursor to her transformation. When Kogure says that he sees Anzai's eyes glowing red, he isn't imagining it. When a person's negative emotions boil over and explode, they turn into an oni. During the route in which Anzai becomes an oni, her pent-up rage leads her to destroy the garden she has poured so much love into, and she completes her transformation.
During the route in which Anzai becomes the oni, Kyoko Yukimura is mentioned in name alone as her younger sister, but is said to have perished two years earlier. In actuality, Anzai is said to have been reunited with her sister only recently. Yusuke Saito, the kidnapped boy, claims to have befriended a woman who was like his "big sister", but Anzai, with her age and appearance, doesn't appear to match that description at all. As such, it seems as though Kyoko Yukimura is actually still alive, and was taking care of Yusuke during his confinement. But where did she go? Anzai is gone, too. Their whereabouts is a total mystery...
Invited along by Yuka, Kazami sets out to investigate "the station with no name", said to lie somewhere beneath the city. They ride the subway for a while, until finally the train comes to a stop at a station with no announcement, and the doors open. They disembark, and find themselves at the "station with no name". Kazami and Yuka head further in.
...The next thing Kazami knows, however, he has awoken in a hospital bed, and is told that he was found collapsed outside the hospital all by himself three days earlier. Kazami explores the underground in order to save Yuka, and eventually finds the tunnel leading to the station with no name. After encounters with a body missing its internal organs and a phantom train, he finally finds himself at a familiar station. The group pass through a grave site in the middle of the station and proceed further inside, where they meet Inspector Indo and an aging man. The man reveals that he is the one behind the phone calls, tells them that they should get out of there immediately, and leaves.
Kazami heads deeper in, and finally locates Yuka. Bizarre, unimaginable phenomena occur throughout the facility. Someone bangs on a door. A bucket moves by itself. Whispering voices surround them. According to Yuka, the facility was built in order to artificially control the spirits of the dead.
Here, the episode branches into two different routes.
If you choose to view events through a scientific lens, Kazami decides to look for the device causing the strange phenomena. Pursued by a ghost-like shadow, he flees into the room housing the controls for the electrical system, and destroys the device he finds within. As soon as the building loses power, the phenomena cease, but...
If you choose to believe that the phenomena are supernatural in origin, Yuka attempts to communicate with the spirit. Successful, the spirit tells her the way out, and she and Kazami gratefully flee.
Kazami is attacked by a poltergeist while helping Yuka flee, and loses consciousness. Afterwards, he is told that he was found collapsed outside of the hospital. Who carried him out of the "station with no name" and left him at the hospital? It might possibly have been Ranko Indo or the phone man, who were investigating the facility, or perhaps a ghost, but we don't know for sure. In any case, Kazami is certainly lucky to have run into a friendly presence within the facility.
Kazami finds a body with a tattoo reading "1103" inside the tunnel leading to the station with no name. If the gravestone reading "1103" in Japanese characters in the underground graveyard does indeed belong to him, that would place his year of death as Showa 23 (1948). Why has the body not mummified more than half a century later? What if the body itself is a corporeal ghost? Whatever the case may be, it seems clear that he was a victim of demonic experimentation...
The man on the phone finally makes his appearance. He seems to be an old friend of Ranko Indo's, but does not appear to have sworn a vow of absolute loyalty to the "organisation" he works for. Destroying the facility clearly runs against the interests of the organisation, who were attempting to revive the experiments. As he says himself, he is a renegade who is seemingly attempting to foil the organisation's plans. His real name is never revealed, but the 200th entry in the F.O.A.F file, titled "F.O.A.F", added after clearing "Ranko Indo, Exorcist", appears to have been written by him. At the end of the file, it is signed with the initials "D.K". Doesn't one of the game's characters share those same initials...?
One summer's day, Suimei Kirisaki, during his middle school days, plays a game called "Satoru-kun" at a public phone in the park with his friends, Atsuko Shiina, Miku Harada, and Kenjiro Taino. Supposedly, this mysterious "Satoru-kun" will tell you your future. The first of the group to try calling him is Miku, who says she hears nothing on the other end. That night, however, someone beats Miku to death at the park. The next day, Suimei calls Satoru-kun himself. Through the receiver, he hears a woman's voice repeating what seems to be an answering machine message: "Don't look at me... Don't look!"
Confused by the nonsensical words, Suimei hangs up. The following day, Taino drags Suimei and Atsuko along with him into the forest within the park. He leaves the other two behind, rushing further on ahead. Finally, deep in the forest, he sees "it": Miku's corpse, hanging upside down from a large tree... Her body had vanished following the funeral. Suimei is suspicious of Taino, but decides to instead listen to Atsuko, who says there is something she needs to tell him. She says that on the evening of Miku's death, she too called Satoru-kun.
At that moment, Suimei feels a pair of eyes watching him. He catches sight of a boy staring at him from the window of a vacant house. He goes inside the house, where he finds his father, Domei Kirisaki, who has been pursuing the boy along with a female colleague. He tells Suimei that Satoru-kun's goal is to gather up people's "imina", or true name. Satoru-kun has learned Atsuko's true name.
Suimei realises that the phone number purportedly belonging to Satoru-kun actually belongs to their class' teacher, Kyoko Nagasaki. He tells this to Domei, and he and the woman hurry off somewhere. Atsuko asks Suimei if he will accompany her to the park, where they are attacked by Kyoko. She beats them with a stick, and Suimei and Atsuko collapse. Domei rushes to their rescue in the nick of time, saving the pair.
Atsuko remains comatose for some time, and when she finally awakens, something is clearly strange about her. She later moves away without telling anyone where she is going, and they fall out of contact. A few months after the "Satoru-kun" incident, Domei and his wife are killed after becoming embroiled in a different case. The now-orphaned Suimei is passed from relative to relative, before finally being taken in by the family of Junya Kazami.
Kyoko is responsible for Miku's murder. She is troubled by the prank calls for "Satoru-kun" she keeps receiving, and isn't sure what to do. This, combined with the fact that she suffers from scopophobia, seems to have caused her extreme stress. Furthermore, it was Miku who wrote Kyoko's number on the flyer posted inside the phone box. Kyoko likely knew that the nuisance calls were Miku's fault, witnessed Miku making a prank call, and eventually murdered her. Her scopophobia appears to be quite severe, and she seemingly chooses to ultimately blind herself in order to be set free from her fear of being watched. "Satoru-kun" was indeed using the nuisance calls to Kyoko as a way of collecting people's true names, but it seems to have been unrelated to the murder.
During the funeral, Miku's body vanishes. When it is next discovered, it is by Taino, who finds it hanging upside down from a tree in the forest. According to Domei, however, she got up and walked into the forest by herself. It was probably by the power of "Satoru-kun" that the dead Miku came back to life. Is it possible that Miku's own wish was to head into the forest in the park, a place filled with memories, and give herself up to death there? Perhaps, her body partially taken over by Satoru-kun, Miku chose death of her own volition. From Atsuko's final line - "I won't let anyone kill me this time..." - you can tell that Satoru-kun failed to take Miku over completely, and had his body "killed" by its owner.
When Suimei calls "Satoru-kun", he is put through to Kyoko's answering machine. Miku and Atsuko, on the other hand, appear to have got through to Satoru-kun. This is because they knew their true names, which Satoru-kun needed. From his perspective, Suimei, who didn't know his own true name, was of no use. It seems as though whenever a person who did know their true name called, Satoru-kun would hypnotise them to get them to reveal it. This would explain why Miku and Atsuko's memories of the call are so hazy.
A critical patient is brought to Kamone University Hospital, where Hitomi works. The patient is Terumitsu Kaburagi, an extremely famous model. His right arm is partially melted. Hitomi and a senior doctor she respects, Kozo Takada, operate on the victim, but are unable to save his life. A newspaper reporter by the name of Ochiai has been staking out the hospital, trying to catch Kaburagi in a scandal. He asks for permission to speak to Atsufumi Fukuoka, an inpatient at the hospital. When he visits the boy's hospital room, he excites him with the tale of "Reiko Kashima", a ghost said to steal people's legs.
The following day, when Hitomi arrives at work, she finds that Takada has a visitor. The woman is Hisako Mareki, Kaburagi's fiancee. According to her, while Kaburagi was in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, he kept deliriously muttering "Reiko Kashima" over and over.
Hitomi encounters Ochiai in Atsufumi Fukuoka's room once more, and he shows her a newspaper clipping. The article is from 13 years ago, and talks about a girl who sustained serious injuries in a train accident in Hokkaido, accompanied by the headline: "Resurgence of Reiko Kashima Rumours". Hitomi asks Takada about his relationship with Hisako. He reveals that she is a former patient of his, and also the girl mentioned in the newspaper article given to her by Ochiai.
Hitomi visits Mareki's home and shows her the article. She admits that it is about her, that she and Kaburagi are former classmates, and that he began bullying her severely following its publication. She also confesses to having poured sulphuric acid on his right arm to exact her revenge for his actions 13 years earlier. Hitomi tells Mareki she should turn herself in and leaves.
But the case doesn't end there. Later, Kozo Takada and Atsufumi Fukuoka vanish from the hospital. Takada had been administering a new drug, whose existence Ochiai had hinted at, to Fukuoka. Fukuoka possesses a strange power, which the drug is supposedly meant to draw out. Now that they are gone, the truth is out of reach.
Kozo Takada and Atsufumi Fukuoka vanish, leaving barely a trace. Where did they go? Without a doubt, Takada was secretly working for the "organisation". It seems safe to assume that they got rid of him after Ochiai almost found damning evidence on him. Atsufumi Fukuoka, a valuable subject, was most likely transferred to another hospital under the organisation's control. However, his body was weakened by the side effects of the drug. As cruel as it is to consider, his young life may be nearing its end. It also appears as though Takada was administering this novel drug to Mareki, too. Perhaps she becomes emotionally unstable as a side effect of the medication, and this is why she flies into a rage, unable to control her emotions.
Ochiai has amassed a sizeable stack of evidence regarding the "organisation"'s unlawful experimental drug. He has likely tried to make this information public many times in the past, but does not appear to have yet been successful, probably due to the organisation twisting arms. Despite his ssometimes self-derisory remarks, Ochiai takes his responsibility as a journalist seriously. No doubt, he is still following the case, waiting for the chance to go public.
The incident begins with a comment by Tomoko Sakura, a senior of Yuka's in the drama club: "I'm going to see the body of the student preserved in formalin." Yuka's close friend, Kaoru Haguro, ends up accompanying them. On the day they set out, Miki Shimohashi, a member of the newspaper club, is forced to join them, making their exploratory party four strong. Despite being hassled by the heavy snowfall, they successfully manage to sneak into the school building. Upon entering the science prep room and investigating it, however, Kaoru loses consciousness and collapses. The girls head to the night duty room in order to take care of her, but Tomoko orders Yuka to explore the school. Yuka goes into the bathroom, where she is attacked by what looks like a green-faced tengu, and passes out.
When she awakes, Yuka is back in the night duty room, but beside her lies Kaoru, cold and face down with blood pouring from her head. Panicked, she runs outside, where she is reunited with Miki. Apparently, Tomoko has ventured out into the blizzard, heading towards the village, in order to call for help. Upon returing to the night duty room, they find that in the short time she was gone, Kaoru has vanished. Curious, Yuka drags Miki back to the hallway with her, but a mysterious shadow suddenly appears and attacks. Somehow, they manage to locate the door in the darkness and escape outside. When they return a while later, the shadow is gone.
Figuring that the killer's goal is to hide the body, she heads for a waterfall known as the "tengu hokora" beyond the school - the perfect place to throw a body into. On the way there, however, she finds the path blocked by a black shadow with gigantic wings. Yuka tries to flee, but loses her footing and tumbles from the cliff.
When she comes to, Yuka finds herself at the village hospital. Apparently, Miki alerted the villagers and called for help. Kaoru's body could not be located. Tomoko has suffered a mental break. Kosugi, a teacher at Inuyama School for Girls who appears to have been conspiring with Tomoko, has vanished. The incident may be over, but mysteries remain. Was the huge black shadow Yuka saw really a tengu after all...?
The basis for the "spiriting aways" lies in the past, with a disappearance case that took place 40 years earlier. The tragedy begins with a Haguro and a Tatara, two locally respected rival families, falling in love. Ryoji Haguro, the science teacher at Inuyama School for Girls, and Isami Tatara, a student at the school, lamenting their forbidden romance, decide to run away together and throw themselves into the waterfall. Ryoji Haguro, however, survives. The Haguro family covers up the truth, telling everyone that Isami Tatara was spirited away by a tengu. The rumours that a member of the family had been spirited away by the very tengu they worshipped sullied the Tataras' name and ruined their reputation. The spiriting away of a female high school student was widely reported in the newspapers at the time, but the disapperance of the science teacher was hardly mentioned at all, most likely a result of the Haguros' interventions. Ryoji returned to the village, married a woman from another family, and had a child. That child is Kaoru Haguro, who seems to have heard the story from her father and known of the whole thing. Mr. Kosugi is the younger brother of Isami Tatara. He most likely plotted to kill Kaoru, having a particularly intense fixation with her due to her status as Ryoji's daughter, in order to avenge his sister's death. The old woman the girls meet at the bus stop is Sachi Tatara, Isami and Kosugi's mother.
Eerie, winged beings fly about the school building. A huge black shadow appears before Yuka on her way to the tengu hokora. Do tengu really exist after all? The green tengu mask Yuka witnesses in the bathroom seems to match the one Tomoko has later on, but there's no explanation for the red-faced person Miki sees in the night duty room. Also of interest is the fact that, after being saved, Tomoko keeps mentioning the word "tengu". As Kazami states in his observations following inference logic, Kosugi appears to have carried Kaoru's body to the tengu hokora. On the way, he is attacked by a huge black shadow, and witnessing the scene, Tomoko has a breakdown. According to Yuka's eyewitness testimony, the black shadow is approximately three metres tall and has gigantic wings. Due to the events that occur during the game over route, it seems as though the huge shadow spreads its wings out and wraps them around its prey, absorbing them into its body. Perhaps this is the truth behind the spiriting away, and the giant shadow really is a tengu.