999 Gush Part 4: All Is Explained In The End(s)

Warning: the following article contains massive spoilers for Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors. The intended audience is a) people who have reached the True End and b) people who have no intention of ever playing 999 but want to learn more about it anyway.

This article will be broken into seven sections. The first six sections will be one for each ending, including a brief explanation as to how you attain that ending, and a summary of what happens in that ending. At the end of the article, I offer my speculation on unsolved mysteries, parts of the game’s plot open for interpretation, and potential for a sequel. Another warning… this article is 5000 words long, and I’m too lazy to intersperse pictures (credits to Aksys for the motivational spoof image). Go forward at your own risk… I tend to be wordy!

Sources include: 999 itself and Aksys Games’ Q&A with Kotaro Uchikoshi

THE SAFE/LETTER ENDING
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Numbered Door Path: 5, 8, 6

Other Conditions: When completing the first puzzle behind Door 5, be sure to examine the safe (you’ll probably examine in naturally while trying to solve the puzzle). Also, the dialogue sequence with Lotus behind Door 8 must include her explaining morphogenetic fields, and not result in you angering her by making a comment about her age. I’m not sure, but some walkthroughs suggest this requires you answer at least on question during the opening wrong (the digital root of 22 is 2 instead of 4, for example).

What happens: As you play through this path, some peculiar things occur that you should note. In the Door 5 path, you notice that Seven keeps the doors propped open. Behind Door 8, Clover has flashbacks of her experience in the previous Nonary Game. And behind Door 6, Santa claims his sister died nine years ago. You learn of Ace’s prosopagnosia behind Door 6. There’s also the matter of that gun, and June’s frequent fevers behind Door 6. In successfully completing this path, the team finds not one, but two doors labeled “9″ in the chapel. However, Clover is missing! The team goes to search for Clover, and they find her dead in the bathroom behind Door 5.

Who killed her? Junpei finds out by snooping around, alongside Seven’s help. They find a piece of paper folded up in Clover’s hand, which recites a poem. Junpei also notices that the knife carried by the 9th Man, as well as his bracelet, are missing. Eventually, using a hint from the poem, Junpei tries hitting the little knobs on his bracelet in the pattern: Left, Right, Left, Right, Left, Right. When he does this, an eight-digit code appears on his bracelet: 14383421. Using these numbers on the safe, they find that the safe opens! Inside is a letter from Zero explaining his (actually, her) true intent: to bring about justice/revenge on the people of Cradle Pharmaceutical who ran the previous game. At this point, Seven’s memory returns even more as Ace reveals that he is Gentarou Hongou, Cradle Pharmaceutical CEO. Everyone pieces together the truth, and Ace calmly reveals all he’s done, including the fact that he killed Snake. But, Ace has a “an ace up his sleeve,” in the form of weapons. He has the gun from behind Door 6, and he puts it to Lotus’ temple, taking her hostage. With her bracelet (8+1) alongside The 9th Man’s bracelet, he runs off to the Chapel and takes the smaller of the two 9 doors. Everyone else chases him, but when they get to the Chapel, things get even uglier: Santa and June disappear! Great… now what? Junpei and Seven are stuck in the chapel, and Clover is dead. But there’s a big coffin with a keypad on it, and they hear a knock. Knock. Knock.

Using the same code as on the safe, the keypad works, and the coffin opens. Inside is… Snake?! Yup, he’s alive. But now, there’s the immediate problem of telling him about Clover’s death. Junpei and Seven are too frightened to reveal it, so they just say “everyone’s gone ahead.” How will they get through the doors now? Well, it turns out they have the 0 bracelet from “Captain Zero,” which Clover was holding alongside the note (Junpei pocketed it). However, it turns out the value of the bracelet isn’t 0 at all, but 6! After trying some combinations of the remaining bracelets, the large 9 door opens when Junpei, Seven, and the 0 bracelet are scanned (5+7+x=18). x=6. Because of Snake’s prosthetic arm, his bracelet is now gone, so he’s bracelet-free. The three of them rush through some hallways and eventually reach an incinerator. Seven regains more memories here, remembering how he rescued Snake, Aoi (Santa) and others from this very incinerator 9 years ago. They enter the incinerator, and things look bad. Ace is still holding the gun to Lotus’ head.

The group reveals to Ace that Snake is alive (by presenting him), and it’s explained that the man who died in Snake’s place was one of Ace’s friends that was part of the Cradle Pharmaceutical team! This angers Ace, but he retorts that he got his revenge by killing Snake’s sister Clover. Uh oh… “oh no you didn’t!” Snake goes absolutely stark raving mad, and lunges at Ace. Ace shoots Snake with all the bullets left in the gun, but somehow it doesn’t stop Snake (the visual presented suggests Snake has gone Super-Saiyin). Snake holds Ace down in the incinerator as the countdown starts, and everyone else escapes: but not forwards. They can only go backwards. Snake pins Ace down and they die together in the incinerator. Junpei, confused and sorrowed, hears over the loudspeaker that the 9 hours are up.

As he returns to the chapel, he finds Akane there, fevered and limp. She says that she is about to die, and uses much of the same sentimental speech you hear in the Submarine Ending. You leave, and return, to find that she is gone. Someone (Zero? Santa?) then drops another white smoke bomb and says that they have failed. Not that you (Junpei) have failed, but that they have failed. You fall asleep. The end.

THE TRUE ENDING
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Numbered Door Path: 4, 7, 1, 9

Other Conditions: You must complete the Safe/Letter Ending first, or you cannot get this ending. In place you’ll get a dummy “To Be Continued…” ending (see “Coffin Ending” below). Do not even bother pursuing this ending until you’ve first gotten the Safe/Letter ending. Furthermore, certain dialogue options must be chosen in order to get this ending. You must choose to take the 4-Leaf Clover bookmark from Santa behind Door 4. You must listen to the full conversation about [Ice-9] when locked behind the freezer. You must suggest the idea of [Ice-9] to Seven behind Door 7. You must give the bookmark to Clover behind Door 4 and talk to her about Locke’s Socks. Behind Door 1, then, you should have a conversation with Clover that reveals it couldn’t have been Snake’s body behind Door 3 (this should be prompted when examining the “I Am Zero” computer monitors). Ace talks to you about cryogenic freezeing as well. If you meet all these conditions, you are on the path to the True End.

What happens: Similar to the Safe/Letter ending, Ace takes Lotus hostage (this time with a knife) and runs off through Door 9. So, too, do Santa and June, this time with Santa holding the gun. This time, however, Clover is still alive. So Clover, Junpei, and Seven are standing in the Chapel, unsure of what to do, when the “Left Right Left Right Left Right” poem suddenly flashes into Junpei’s mind, without any rhyme or reason as to why (in truth, he’s getting a signal from the morphogenetic field). He taps on his bracelet, gets the 14383421 code, and opens the coffin to reveal… Snake! Alive! Brother and sister reunited, hurray! Together, they all go through the small 9 door, which leads to a series of puzzles. There’s a library (which features the books of Rupert Sheldrake, among others), and a room where Zero concocts all of his puzzles. In the library, while Seven and Clover investigate, Junpei pressures Snake into explaining everything he knows, including everything that happened 9 years ago. It is here that Junpei puts together that Santa is Aoi and that Akane was in the experiment, and apparently had died. So how is she still with them?

Behind the other door, they find the coffin that Alice was presumably kept in. However, when it’s opened, they don’t find her. Instead, they find a key to get out of the room and a key to head toward the incinerator. They also find a picture of Gentarou Hongou with his three other cronies (all of whom are now dead, thanks to Zero’s planning and Ace’s actions). Then they head to the incinerator, and things get crazy.

Without knowing where he’s getting all the information, Junpei just starts rattling off to Ace everything he knows: that he’s Gentarou Hongou, that he ran the Nonary Game 9 years ago, that he has prosopagnosia, that he killed all of his cohorts (some by accident, some on purpose), etc. Santa and June escape through a third door marked “9″ on the other side of the incinerator. Ace, wounded by Santa, escapes backwards out the door and sets the incinerator to fire. The remaining people in the incinerator are: Snake, Clover, Junpei, Seven, Lotus. 2 4 5 7 8 are their numbers. Doing the math, it seems 4 out of 5 of them could get through the 9 door (digital root of 2+4+5+7 is 9), and Lotus says she’s willing to sacrifice herself for them to escape. They try scanning these four bracelets, but it doesn’t work! What. The. Eff.

Okay, so now they’re pretty well screwed. They’re all going to die in the incinerator. When, miracle of miracles, through all that’s happened, Junpei makes a direct connection to Akane through the morphogenetic field. But it isn’t to the Akane of the present. No, it’s the Akane of nine years ago, herself trapped inside the incinerator by Gentarou Hongou, about to die. You learn here that the reason she ended up in the incinerator is that, she would have escaped with Seven and the others, but she chose to run back down the steps to pick up the doll that Junpei gave her: a precious item that binds him to her. When she goes back, Gentarou finds her and, intent to see the experiment work, he throws her in the incinerator and locks the door. And here she is, “less than Zero,” ready to die, and crying out to anyone for help. Who does she find? Junpei… an older, wiser Junpei, in the same life-or-death situation as Akane.

A computer panel comes out of the ground for both the present Junpei and the past Akane. They sit down, and together they must solve a certain puzzle. For Akane, her puzzle is a Sudoku puzzle, and Junpei helps her solve it (it’s not timed, but it might as well be … it’s a pretty easy one). As Junpei solves the puzzle for her, special numbers appear on the other screen of your DS: 2, 4, 5, 7, 8. The puzzle is solved, and in Akane’s time, she is saved! She runs into her brother’s arms, and they escape. She lives! But what about Junpei and crew? In the final seconds of the incinerator’s countdown, they all scan their bracelets against the RED, and the door opens. The incinerator discontinues its countdown. All is well, and everyone is safe. Even Ace.

Why did this work? In the epilogue, this theory (probably true) is given. All throughout the game, you face puzzles that force you to think outside of base-10 numbers. There’s a hexidecimal puzzle in the kitchen (0-9 + A-F for 16 unique characters). For the “zero” puzzle in Door 1, you essentially work a base-36 system where “Z” would be the 36th value (26 letters + 0-9 is 36 unique values). So what if that 9 painted on the door was actually a lower-case q? q = 26 in a base-36 system, and 2+4+5+7+8 = 26. But what’s the significance of a q?

You find out as you escape. In the epilogue, you burst the doors open, expecting to find an open sea, but instead, you find an expanse of desert. That’s right! Zero’s Nonary Game took place in Building Q, not the Gigantic! Ace, tied up and presumably on his way to be handed to the authorities by your crew, is thrown in the trunk of an SUV… which has keys waiting in it. Clover takes the driver’s seat, and everyone is happy. As they drive, they continue to talk: “if we drive faster, maybe we’ll catch up to Aoi and Akane!” “I can’t believe what just happened!” “Ace, why did you set up the first experiment in the first place?” “No one understands the pain of prosopagnosia… if I could access the morphogenetic field, I could more easily recognize others.” Lots of talking. Lots of happiness and resolution. But they never catch up to Santa and June.

Instead, in the final scene, they see a naked lady standing in the desert. She looks like Lotus, but she’s not. It’s … ALICE?!

The End!

THE COFFIN ENDING
–
Numbered Door Path: 4, 7, 1

Other Conditions: This “ending” is counted for you in the icons at the top of the “new game” screen if you get the true ending, so you could just follow that. Else, you’ll get stuck with this ending if you follow all the conditions toward the True Ending but you didn’t yet get the Safe/Letter Ending.

What happens: See the first few lines of the True Ending description above. When the point is reached where Clover, Junpei and Seven are left in the chapel with the coffin, there’s a quick FMV CG scene of the camera focusing in on the coffin (this scene happens in the True Ending path as well). And as it zooms in on the coffin, you get a “To Be Continued…” message in the bottom right, and the game restarts. It’s a non-ending. Lame!

THE SUBMARINE ENDING
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Numbered Door Path: End on Door 2 (recommendation: Take 3 first, as it automatically leads to 2)

Other Conditions: None. Just be sure to go through Door 2. I highly recommend Door 3 first, because if you want all the endings, this is the only way to get one unique ending per playthrough and solve every puzzle (Door 3′s puzzle is pretty neat, too).

What happens: Behind Door 2, Junpei gets to know more about Seven and Lotus. Seven recalls his memories of being taken captive nine years prior, though the cells are slightly different, as there’s no ventilation shaft under the bed this time (note: Building Q and the Gigantic aren’t exactly the same on the interior, as this proves). Lotus talks about her kids, and shows her willingness to sacrifice herself in the creepy torture chamber. I seriously thought they were going to make me electrocute her. Fortunately, she gets out safe… there.

But when you get out of Door 2, bad things start to happen. People split up; Junpei and June find a room with a submarine, and they think maybe they can escape! June stays there to watch over the sub, while Junpei goes to let the others know. But when he returns to the main deck, he finds: corpses! People are dead. Stabbed, actually. As he heads back to the sub, he finds more bodies: Lotus is dead just outside the sub room (her bracelet is missing, too). When he enters the sub room, he finds Akane, also stabbed, and dying. She says how much she wanted to be with you, to experience more of life with you, and then dies. Junpei enters a state of despair and apathy, paces around a bit, and then heads toward the sub. As he goes to lift the door, he, too, is stabbed by a shadowy figure.

(Some people were never sure who stabbed him: it was Ace. Though he’s one of the corpses in the main deck, it seems he hid himself as a fake corpse among the dead bodies, perhaps using a small dose of Soporil to add to the realism. The knife he’s using to kill everyone he got from The 9th Man.)

THE AXE ENDING
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Numbered Door Path: End on Door 1 (you can still take 4-7-1 if you choose the wrong dialogue options)

Other Conditions: None. Just make sure not to head toward the True / Coffin ending.

What happens: Behind Door 1, you aren’t able to console Clover over her brother’s death. She believes that someone did it (mathematically, she thinks it’s Santa and Seven who did it, as 3+7+2 = 12 = digital root 3). After Captain Zero is found murdered by the hatchet, Clover stuffs “some things” from that corpse in her pockets, but she doesn’t tell you what she took as you escape Door 1. Your friends inform you that they’ve found the Chapel with Door 9, but before you can go, Ace says to Lotus “hey I have something to show you,” and they casually walk off together, leaving Junpei alone. Behind him, coming out of the elevator, is Clover. She’s holding a bloody hatchet, and she has a wild look in her eyes. She confesses that she’s already gotten revenge on those who killed her brother, and then she says that, thanks to the 0 bracelet she has, she can get out of the 9 door with your help. She even shows you the bracelets of the dearly departed: 3, 7, and 6 (she killed June too, because June tried to stop her from killing Santa and Seven). But she doesn’t give you the option of going with her alive. She attacks you with the hatchet. You’ve been axed. You’re dead. She goes off without you. The end.

THE KNIFE ENDING
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Numbered Door Path: End on Door 6 (you can still take 5-8-6 if you choose the wrong dialogue options, but if you want to guarantee this ending, do 4-7-6 or some other permutation)

Other Conditions: Just be sure not to follow the exact path and dialogue options for the Safe/Letter Ending, and you’ll get this one.

What happens: After the events behind Door 6, everyone regroups, there’s talk of heading to the chapel with the two 9 doors. But as you go down the elevator, when you get off, you find Lotus’ corpse (bracelet missing, again). Then you get stabbed in the back with a knife. This is probably the least interesting of the endings: you die pretty early, and you don’t even know who did it (of course, it was Ace).

SPECULATION, INTERPRETATION, AND HOPE FOR A SEQUEL
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The first thing I want to point out is the eight digit code: 14383421. What’s the deal with this number, and what does it tell us? Uchikoshi tells us in his Q&A to try multiplying that number by nine. Okaaay … and the new value is … 129450789. OH EM GEE! Do you not see it? Even in the Q&A, Uchikoshi dodges the question about what “true values” are behind Santa and June’s bracelets. The characters in the game theorize that Santa’s is 0 (and that he is zero) and that June’s is 9. In fact, it’s the other way around. Your big hint is that the value for Captain Zero’s bracelet is 6, despite displaying as 0. That, combined with this new mathematical symbol, suggests that the true values are indeed: 1 for Ace, 2 for Snake, 9 for Santa, 4 for Clover, 5 for Junpei, 0 for June, 7 for Seven, 8 for Lotus, 9 for the Ninth Man, and 6 on the “Captain Zero” bracelet. No bracelets had a true value of 3. Ever.

You’ll note that, no matter what doors you choose, Santa and June always go together. Together, they make 9, so no one can know the difference. Also, the two of them could separate and secretly add themselves to any other grouping (and it’s theorized, by some fnas, that June’s bracelet might have been able to naturally open any door at any time).

Now then, let’s get into the hardest topic: the whole “did Akane really die?” scenario.

When I first got the True Ending, my interpretation was that Akane really did die, and the Akane we all saw on the ship was being forced into our minds via the morphogenetic field by young Akane to set this all up. And, yes, Zero herself was just something of a holographic projection. Of course, that wouldn’t allow for her to physicall show up in rooms and kidnap people (though that could have been Zero’s helpers, including Santa/Aoi). This “vision” of her exists to allow her to survive in an alternate timeline. So when you do save her, you’ve saved her in another existence, and you will never again find her in this universe.

But that doesn’t seem to be the interpretation scenario writer Kotaro Uchikoshi gives in his Q&A with Aksys. About a dozen questions all linger around Akane’s existence, multiple timelines, etc. And he brushes off most of them by seeing “see previous answer(s).” But he does give a detailed answer in two occasions, and based on what he said, the best I can piece together is this:

Akane never died. There is only one “past” timeline, and in it, Akane gets out. After she gets out, she and Santa begin to form an underground organization to get revenge and she takes on the identity of “Zero.” It’s possible that Snake is in this organization, as Snake also attested to the fact that Akane died. That Seven thought she died could have either been memory manipulation (remember the amnesia?), or else he too was “in on it” (this seems unlikely to me).

How did Akane get out? Well, she made a connection with the Junpei nine years in the future, in the same life-or-death situation she’s in, and with that she’s able to solve the puzzle and get out. As time passes, she knows that she has to make sure those events take place, or her existence will be a paradox and she’ll disappear. So she has a 9 year time limit to set up the most elaborate puzzle that puts nine individuals in the same frame of mind that those kids were in 9 years ago.

Her organization, detailed by Uchikoshi in the Q&A, had many members (potentially, many of the kids from Cradle Pharmaceutical’s experiment were a part of the group). They were funded by investing early in Cradle’s stock, so money was not an object. After Cradle abandons Building Q, they take up Building Q as their headquarters and use the next 9 years to put together their elaborate plan. In total, they have to kidnap the 9 individuals of the new Nonary game (excluding Santa and June themselves, and possibly Snake), as well as the two members of the four-person Nonary Experiment that wouldn’t be participating (Kagechika Musashidou and Nagisa Nijisaki). The real trick is to pick the right people, and to set up the paths in such a way that they will inevitably lead to Ace killing off his cohorts, everyone else surviving, and Junpei being stuck in the incinerator with Snake, Clover, Seven and Lotus.

Akane’s fevers, thus, are her experiencing a “flux” between existence and non-existence. Think of Marle when she disappears in Chrono Trigger because her lineage is cut off. Here, Akane’s fevers suggest that she is walking a tightrope, and if anything goes off balance, she will disappear.

The craziest part of all is that you need to experience the Safe/Letter Ending to get the True Ending. Why is this? The best I can figure is that, while there is one fixed timeline in the past (that is, multiple pasts don’t feed into one present), from any point being experienced as the “present” there are many futures. In that incinerator 9 years ago, Akane accesses the memories of Junpei in the Safe/Letter path and gives those memories back to Junpei in the True Ending (a diagram that vaguely suggests such a possibility is shown during the True Ending path). But, indeed, Akane never died… she just had to ensure her survival by making the future she “accessed” the true future.

Next point: does danger have to be real or only perceived to open a path to the morphogenetic field? Remember, it’s epiphany plus danger/crisis that seems to allow people to access it best. But, in truth, the only people that had bombs implanted in them were Ace, The 9th Man, and “Guy X” (who is donned in Snake’s clothes). The rest of the participants, had they gone through a RED in the wrong order, wouldn’t have died. It would’ve broken the illusion. Hence, Zero seems to “set it up,” knowing Ace would use The 9th Man as a test piece to see just how “real” this Nonary Game was. This is all it takes to convince the others (most importantly, Ace and Junpei needed to see this happen). But Junpei doesn’t have a bomb in him. Everyone was fine all along! Well, the innocents were fine, at any rate.

What’s the deal with Alice? Is she really a priestess from ancient Egypt, or did she die more recently and her body was being transported from Britain to America when the Titanic sunk? And why is she standing in the desert? What’s her role in all this? In my opinion, at this point she exists as a red herring: the thing that can never be explained. But she also exists as a way of saying “hey, there’s a LOT more to learn.”

You see, in Uchikoshi’s Q&A, he gives more information about Lord Gordain, the man who started playing the Nonary Game using the Gigantic as the playing field. And he tells us that Gentarou Hongou was the sole survivor of a Nonary Game. In the context of the game, we’re led to believe that Hongou invented the Nonary Game as an experiment to “find” the morphogenetic field. But in fact, he himself learned of it by being kidnapped and forced into it when he was younger. So, villain though he is, he too has suffered abuse at the hands of others.

What does any of that have to do with Alice? Alice made Ace rich. When Cradle Pharmaceutical started, it existed primarily as a cover-up operation that allowed them to kidnap children from hospitals to set up in the Nonary Experiment… kids who, when screened, seemed to have some predisposition to ESP. Ace makes friends with like-minded people who are really into all this stuff: who read Sheldrake’s work and other works and really believe it and want to prove it. “Captain Zero” was the millionaire who funds the Nonary Experiment, because Cradle didn’t have any capital of its own. But in setting up the experiment on the ship, Ace finds something strange in Alice’s coffin (this part is explained in the epilogue of the true ending)… not Alice herself, but a root. A mandragora root. And in making an extract out of that root, Ace creates the world’s safest anaesthetic ever known, which they patent and name Soporil. This turns Cradle into an instantly-profitable company. But what was that root doing in there?

Everyone points to Ice-9 or something else about polymorphs as to how Alice’s body could’ve stayed intact. But if she were alive all this time… how? Well, the fabled mandragora root could’ve put her to sleep for 3000 years. That could’ve been it, right?

The next bit of information is pure speculation on my thought, but… why should we believe that Lord Gordain invented the Nonary Game? If he could invent it, it’s just as conceivable that Ace could have invented it. Uchikoshi skirts the question “how did Ace come up with the idea?” by saing that Gordain came up with it as a form of “survival of the fittest” gladiatorship to entertain his rich friends and bet on individuals they kidnap. But I don’t think Gordain invented it. First of all, I think Gordain had Alice’s coffin before the Titanic voyage, and that he was the one transporting it to America with him. He brought “the mummy’s curse” and is the reason the Titanic sank. I also believe he probably had a fascination with ancient Egypt, and as part of that, he uncovered some cryptic document about a game the ancient Egyptians used to play involving nine individuals running through a place filled with traps and puzzles … say, oh I don’t know … a Pyramid?!

In other words, I think Alice is explicitly tied to the concept of the Nonary Game, and that perhaps the ancient Egyptians, too, did it not for fun but to learn about the human psyche and what we are now calling morphogenetic fields.

And let me tell you what led me to all of these thoughts. Uchikoshi has stated, more than once, that he’s open to the idea of a sequel to 999. But if it happens, it won’t be a direct sequel. It wouldn’t be “Junpei is still looking for Akane.” It would be a new cast of characters going through their own Nonary Game. Sure, they could go into the future, but I far more expect a prequel. And NOT the Nonary Experiment the kids went through: there’d be no surprises to reveal. We already know what happened. They need to go further back, either to a Lord Gordain Nonary Game, or … Ancient Egypt? That, or farther into the future, seem like the only options to me. Imagine a Nonary Game where you play as Alice (she has a different name in this case), and in the True End, she saves herself by entombing herself with the mandragora root, and by doing this “fake death” sacrifice she saves someone else she loves? Think about it. It’s a great idea. I need to learn Japanese and start working with Uchikoshi-san.

Are there any other loose ends? Well, there are Lotus’ kids and the choice to include Lotus in this Nonary Game. Uchikoshi was intentionally vague in his answer, and Lotus seems not to have know how or why her kids disappeared for a week before returning to the hospital. But there has to be something special about Lotus. Including the possibility that she’s a descendant of Alice (based on appearance alone).

And then there’s the fact that Junpei didn’t know Aoi existed. That still bothers me. It’s never explained. It’s just like, “well, he was really good friends with Akane, but didn’t even knew she had an older brother.” I have a hard time swallowing that. But maybe it’s just as simple as “she never mentioned her brother.”

I invite all of you who also played through to the True End, and obsessed over this game like I did, to throw your own theories into the mix in the comments section of this article. I’ve seen plenty of speculation at Aksys’ forums, and GameFAQs forums, but nothing particularly intelligent. So lay something deep on me, people! And keep your fingers crossed for a sequel!!