The first game, released on August 10, 2002. Adapted into the 2006's anime Episodes 1-4. Tsumihoroboshi-hen provides the context for this arc.
Keiichi Maebara and his family have moved in to Hinamizawa a month ago. Keiichi has already befriended his classmates in the mixed-grade village school: Rena Ryugu, Mion Sonozaki, Satoko Houjou, Rika Furude. He has found himself inducted into their school club, the "Games Club", where they play all kinds of games, with the twist that they treat them as Serious Business.
Rena searches for cute things to salvage from the village's junkyard and Keiichi tags along. While excavating the Colonel Sanders statue, they are interrupted by a visiting freelance photographer Jirou Tomitake. While Rena resumes the digging, Tomitake bounds a bit with Keiichi over them both being outsiders to Hinamizawa and the former lets it privately slip to the latter that someone was violently murdered and dismembered in the village in an incident some years ago, with the culprit still at large.
Keiichi attempts to question Rena and Mion about the details of the case, but whenever he brings it up they claim to not know too much about the event and also are suspiciously eager to change the subject. Finding their reaction rather strange, Keiichi resolves to not bring it up again. He does some investigation on his own, however, and are able to find an old newspaper in the local landfill, giving him some insight on the event, learning that it revolved around a major publics work project, where the construction of a dam was supposed to flood the area around Hinamizawa. The villagers quickly organized against the project, with several protests and acts of civil disobedience constantly postponing the construction as tensions between the local community and the government continued to rise. This eventually culminated in the brutal murder of the construction foreman, who was beaten to death at the hands of six villagers. In the hopes of covering up their crime and pretending the others from going to the authorities, the culprits agreed to dismember the foreman's body afterwards and each take a piece with them to hide. Five of the six was overtaken by the guilt of their heinous act the very next day, however, and gave themselves up the police. The sixth perpetrator, however, kept quiet and was never found and as such, one of the victim's arms were never recovered. In the wake of the dramatic killing, the government ultimately decided to back off, with the dam project being indefinitely shelved.
Keiichi finds the macabre story quite interesting, and reasons that his classmates probably didn't want to talk about it for fear of giving him a bad impression of the village. He soon finds himself with other things on his mind, however, as the annual festival at the local shrine, the Watanagashi, is about to go down, and the Games Club are set to participate.
During the evening, Keiichi and the others get up to several hi-jinks as they participate in several games at the festival's booth. The group come across Tomitake who is taking pictures of the festival, and decide to make him an honorary member of their club. They then have him participate in a shooting gallery game with them. Keiichi ends up winning at the shooting gallery, and gifts his prize, a large teddy bear, to Rena, while Tomitake ends up in the last place, and as a "penalty" for failing, he is made to wear a t-shirt signed by the other members of the club.
Near the end of the festival Keiichi wanders off and finds Tomitake, who is now hanging out with a mysterious woman. Keiichi admits to Tomitake that he has been looking into the story about the murder at the dam project he told him about. Tomitake and his lady friend tell him that there are actually quite a bit more to the story, as they have been doing a bit of investigation of their own, and have dug up a couple of related incidents and local rumors of a curse. Intrigued, Keiichi asks them to share what they know. He is told that:
- Due to the whole dam project, the villagers have come to distrust any "outsiders" and can easily be angered.
- For the three consequent years since the incident with the construction foreman someone related to the construction has died under somewhat mysterious circumstances, but by no one's fault. The first was a villager who had publicly expressed support for the project, who fell to his death while on vacation in another town. The second was the local Shinto priest, who was a brother of the first victim and died after a short illness, while his wife apparently committed suicide by drowning herself in the bog on the same night, though her body was never found. The third was that of a local housewife, who was related to the first victim.
- The villagers have attributed these deaths as "divine punishment" by the local folklore deity Oyashiro-sama.
- Each death happened on the night of the Watanagashi.
Keiichi listens to all of this and while he considers himself a level-headed person who doesn't believe in curses, he also finds it hard to dismiss all these events as mere coincidence. He thinks there must be somebody or something making these incidents occur every year. The woman says that while no one will speak of it, everyone believes the curse will strike again tonight. Tomitake, however, also reassures Keiichi that all of the deaths have perfectly rational and mundane explanations, and that police considers all of the cases solved. The culprits for the dismemberment incident had mostly confessed, the dam supporter's fall was ruled an accident, the Shinto priest's illness was likely caused by stress, his wife believed in the curse and had left a note that said she was killing herself to quell Oyashiro-sama's wrath, and in the case of the housewife, the perpetrator was arrested with their motive apparently being to perpetuate the story of the curse. Tomitake believes that the "curse" all down to superstition and that nothing will happen this year. Keiichi finds himself reassured by this.
The next morning, however, Keiichi, much to his surprise, finds himself pulled aside by the policeman Kuraudo Ooishi for questioning. Ooishi asks him if he had been speaking to someone named Tomitake the prior evening. Keiichi is a bit uncertain what to make of this question, so Ooishi prods him a bit by guessing he must have, because his signature along with those of his friends, was found on the t-shirt Tomitake was wearing. Keiichi immediately realizes that something bad must have happened to Tomitake. Ooishi admits as much and tells him that Tomitake was found dead in the small hours of the morning. He goes on tell Keiichi that the circumstances surrounding Tomitake's death are highly mysterious; the immediate cause of his death was self-inflicted, as he ripped his own throat open with his bare hands. Forensic evidence from both Tomitake's body and the crime scene, however, shows that Tomitake was in a state of high agitation at the time of his death and was involved in what appears to have been a major fight against several assailants. Ooishi's personal conclusion is that Tomitake was fighting for his life at the time of his death and someone or something made him scratch himself to death. Even stranger, his partner Miyo Takano, the woman Keiichi saw him with the previous night, is nowhere to be found.
Ooishi asks Keiichi if he knows of the story of Oyashiro-sama's curse, and Keiichi admits that Tomitake told him about it, but he is still not sure if he believes it, even with it, by all appearances, now having claimed Tomitake as another victim. Ooishi says that he doesn't believe in it either; he is, however, quite convinced that there are a more mundane conspiracy afoot amongst the villagers of Hinamizawa, one that targets perceived "enemies" of the local community as a warning of sorts for people to stay in line. What Ooishi finds most worrying is that Tomitake appears to have been targeted simply for having being an outsider, and he fears it might be a sign that the conspirators are becoming increasingly less discriminatory in who they consider an "enemy". Keiich immediately realizes the implication of this: he himself and his family only recently moved to the town and could be considered "outsiders". Ooishi goes on to say that Keiich's status as a newcomer to the community can be quite useful to his investigation; his judgement isn't clouded by local superstitions or family relations, and as such he asks Keiich to pass on anything he might overhear about the death and the curse to him. Both worried about the possibly that his family is under threat and wanting to help getting to bottom of what happened to Tomitake, Keiichi agrees to be Ooishi's spy and probe his classmates for information. Ooishi warns him to be careful, especially around Mion. She might be his friend, but her family was once of the fiercest opponents towards the dam project. Mion, does in fact, have a few misdemeanors on her record, all of being from acts of civil disobedience during the protests against the dam.
As Keiichi starts probing further into the mystery of Oyashiro-sama's curse, he feels beset by feelings of guilt and paranoia, as he feels that he is both betraying his new friends by collaborating with the police, while also being unable to entirely trust them in turn as they are obviously keeping a lot of stuff secret from him. He decides to try to confront Rena about this feeling that he has that her and the other members of the club are hiding something from him. Rena at first denies it, much in the same avoidant way she tried to dodge the subject of the dam project, but when Keiichi insist on pressing the issue, she gains Hellish Pupils and, without changing her happy tone of voice, tells him that he has been hiding things from them too, and she knows everything he's been doing, before she screams at him that he is a liar. Then without skipping a beat, she slips back in to her usual cheerful demeanour and takes her leave as she bids him a good day. Keiichi is shaken to his core by her sudden transformation, not recognizing this apparent stranger wearing Rena's face.
Nonetheless, Keiich persists in his sleuthing into the village's mysteries. What he manages to learn are:
- Whenever the "curse" strikes, there are always two victims; usually a man and a woman. But the body of the second victim is never found, and sometimes the authorities even remain unaware of the existence of the second victim. This second victim said to have been taken away by a demon.
- Mion definitely knows something more about Oyashiro-sama's "curse" and the construction.
- From talking to Ooishi he manages to learns a bit of local history, namely that Hinamizawa has always been associated with mystical and demonic activity in local folklore. Apparently, the village's history starts centuries ago from swamp Onigafuchi, which was surrounded by rumors of curses.
- Ooishi also tells him that due to the strange circumstances of Tomitake's death, the police suspects that the most plausible explanation is that he had been drugged with some kind of hallucinogenic just prior to his death. But while it does seem like the most promising lead, no one involved with the investigation can think of a drug that would induce such a violent reaction in such a short time span and no traces of drugs where found during the autopsy of Tomitake's body.
- Miyo Takano turns out to be a nurse working at the local hospital, and her co-workers have no idea of her whereabouts.
- Everyone in the Games Club ire closely connected to the local deaths and disappearances in some strange way.
- Mion had several encounters with the foreman prior to his death, to the point where a police report was filed.
- Rika is the daughter of the Shinto priest and his wife.
- Satoko is the daughter of the housewife. She has an older brother named Satoshi, who was also a member of the Games Club prior to Keiichi's arrival in Hinamizawa, and he is one of the people who went missing last year.
- Rena is a Hinamizawa native, and had to return from the city due to Hearing Voices and her violent behavior there. The doctor who examined her noticed that she had dissociative episodes, during which she mentioned "Oyashiro-sama".
- Much to his disquiet, he realizes that Rena has been covertly tailing and eavesdropping on him for a while.
Keiichi's parents have to leave for a couple of days and Keiichi, due to a combination of mental and emotional fatigue from the recent events and feeling genuinely ill decides to call in sick for school. Expressing concern for his well-being, Rena and Mion come over to visit him and bring him some mochi "for recovery". They also give a bit of homework: guess which mochi was made by Rena. As the visit progresses, however, both Mion and Rena suddenly start acting weirdly out of character as their friendly tones suddenly turns overtly threatening as they both imply that they are aware that Keiichi has been talking to Ooishi and that something bad might happen to him if he should say something "unnecessary", before once again ominously bidding him goodbye as if nothing is wrong.
On edge from this and the previous experience with Rena, Keiichi attempts to ponder if there could be a rational and less sinister explanation for why his friends would suddenly act like this, and starts to consider if maybe the these strange incidents could just be a of result of paranoia, emotional stress, and Ooishi's stories messing with his imagination. In a moment of strangely intense anger he even curses his own curiosity and Ooishi for making him this feverishly distrustful of his own friends. But his misgivings are not made any better when he sits down to eat the mochi Rena and Mion brought for him and finds a needle in it. This convinces Keiichi that he has become a target of the village conspiracy.
Getting increasingly obsessed with the idea that his classmates and most of the village are out for his blood, Keiichi starts writing a journal in case something happens to him and considers arming himself with a weapon. He resolves to wake up early to walk to school alone, in order to avoid Rena and Mion's questions, but as he does this he is almost hit by a white van. Further rattled by this experience, he finds a metal baseball bat at school, which he takes for self-defense, reasoning that if anyone asks why carries it around, he can pass it off as merely being for practicing his swing. He finds himself wondering at times if he is really just imagining things and jumping at shadows, but he quickly squashes these doubts; the people who are out to get him are waiting for his guard to go down so they can dispose of him, so he cannot allow himself to relax.
Walking back home alone, Keiichi happens upon Rena, who he is by now convinced is following him, despite her protestations that she lives in the same part of town as him. Not-so-subtly threatening her with the bat, he urges her to keep on walking, causing her to ask him why he is suddenly behaving like Satoshi, to the point of carrying his bat around. Keiichi then spots his name written on the the bat, confirming that it belongs to him. Rena nervously says that Satoshi also suddenly started acting weird and took up a sudden inexplicable interest in baseball prior to his disappearance. Noticing that she is suddenly speaking openly about the otherwise tabu subject of Satoshi, Keiichi demands answers as to what happen to him, but Rena, in the same odd emotionless manner as before, insists that Satoshi merely "transferred out", and threateningly adds that she hopes that Keiichi won't do the same.
That evening, Keiichi gets another phone call from Ooishi who asks him if he has any updates. Due to his parents' absence, Keiichi confesses upfront that he believes that Mion and Rena are threatening him, that someone tried to run him over, and that he is fearing for his life. He implores Ooishi to help him, saying that he doesn't want whatever happened to Satoshi to happen to him. Ooishi says that it indeed sounds concerning, and asks Keiichi if he has any evidence of what he is talking about. Keiichi, much to his own embarrassment and anger, realizes that he doesn't know what happened to the needle he found in the food, nor did he get a look of the license plate of the truck he had an encounter with that morning. Ooishi says that it is hard for him to intervene directly without any proof, and Keiichi more than ever feels resentful of the old cop, believing that he is only using him as bait to draw out his suspects, even if it means Keiichi's own corpse will be the final evidence against them. Keiichi, in turn, says that it will be very difficult to get any proof if he doesn't know what he is up against, and begs Ooishi to at least tell him a little more about Rena and her previous incident. Just then the door-bell rings...
Keiichi goes to the door to find Rena, who has brought some dinner for him, asking if she could come inside and heat it up for him. Keiichi is extremely suspicious about her timing, appearing right at a time where he is home alone and just as Ooishi was about to share some information about her. He tries to fob her off with the quick excuse that his mother is making dinner right now, so he couldn't possibly have room in his stomach to eat her food. Rena, however, seems to be aware that his parents aren't there, and as she once again slips into her weird emotionless manner of speaking, she persists in insisting that he could do better than getting cop noodles for dinner, even being able to tell the kind he was planning to eat. Keiichi is frightened by this and panics slamming the door in her face and repeatedly screams at her to go away. He notices that Rena has gotten her fingers stuck in the door, and is momentarily horrified by what he is done, but quickly steels himself; rationalizing that maybe this could finally convince her that he is not be trifled with. Rena for her part, just cries and mutters a repeated apology back at Keiichi, persisting even as she manages to get her fingers free. As Keiichi resumes the phone call with Ooishi, a rain storm suddenly breaks out. Much to his shock, Keiichi spots Rena in a flash of thunder, as she stands on his front lawn, continuing to apologize to him.
After a long and mostly sleepless night, Keiichi goes to school, guessing that it is his best bet if he want to find some kind of proof he can bring to Ooishi. To maintain his cover, he goes to pretend to practise his swings in the yard again. On the way he passes Rena, who has bandages on the hand that got stuck in his front door. She gives him a short, sad glance, but doesn't say anything to him. In the yard, he is confronted by Mion. She hesitantly, but firmly says to him that everyone is concerned and even a bit freaked out about his recent weird behavior and asks him to stop using Satoshi's bat, telling him it doesn't belong to him and it upsets people that he uses it. Keiichi, feeling defiant, in turn confronts Mion with all the stuff she and Rena hasn't told him, including the dam incident, Satoshi's disappearance and the curse.
Mion is clearly scared when Oyashiro-sama is mentioned, telling Keiichi that he shouldn't mention the curse so lightly. Though clearly overwhelmed by what he is telling her, she nevertheless begins to apologize to him, saying that her and Rena didn't mean to lie to him. Keiichi, angrily rebuffs her, saying that friends doesn't lie to friends. He then brings up the mochi she and Rena brought for him the other day demanding to know which of them tampered with it. Mion admits upfront that it was her. Keiichi asks how she could do that a friend, saying that she could have killed him. Mion reacts weirdly flippantly and even a bit confused at this accusation, saying she was just playing a harmless prank on him. Her strangely blasé reaction sets Keiichi off. He grabs her by her collar and tells her that she isn't his friend and should leave him alone. He also spitefully tells her that he knows of her involvement with the dam and the police is onto her. Mion starts crying at Keiichi's overt hostility, and while he feels a prang of guilt at seeing this, he still begins to walk away, leaving her like that. However, as he begins to walk Keiichi realizes that Mion is muttering to herself and smiling creepily even as she is crying. Mion says that she realizes that now that Keiichi must have learned all of this from Ooishi and that she now regrets not killing him when she had the chance, saying that she was trying to show him mercy with his retirement coming up.
For the rest of the school day, Keiichi notices that neither Mion nor Rena makes any attempt to talk to him. Satoko and Rika are also avoiding him. After school, Keiichi begins to pretend to walk home, though he is firmly settled on the idea that on this day, the curse and the conspiracy will come to an end. He will either find the evidence he needs and get to the bottom of it all, or he will die in the attempt. If nothing else, he at least wants an answer to why he, of all people, was picked out to die. Suddenly, he realizes that all of the cicada have gone conspicuously silent and he senses a presence approaching him. He quickly hides in some bushes, hoping to get the jump on whoever it is this time. Then he spots Rena. She is wearing the same creepy grin and the lifeless eyes he saw on her whenever she would threaten him, and, most concerning of all, she is armed with an axe.
Keiichi barely has time to process this, before Rena calls out for him, asking him if he trying to play hide and seek with her. Though scared, Keiichi decides that he must confront her head-on. He steps out in the open, bat in hand. He demands to know what she is doing here, to which she replies that she going home, just like him. He then demands to know what the axe is for. She turns the question back on him, asking why he is carrying a bat. Keiichi tries to insist that he is merely practising baseball, to which she replies that she is hunting for treasure, and laughs at him. Keiichi tries to calmly retreat, but quickly realizes that she is following just behind him, giving the same eerie laugh all the while. Frightened, he asks why she is following him, and she replies that they should talk, as he clearly has something he wants to ask her about. He begins to set into a run, with the situation turning into a chase. As he runs, she brings up Satoshi, telling him that Satoshi looked so sad and worried back then too. She promises him that this time, it will be different, because this time she will listen to him and try to save him.
Attempting to think up some kind of plan as he frantically tries to escape Rena, Keiichi realizes that he has run deep into the forest. He promises himself that he won't end up as Satoshi. All the while, Rena, still laughing maniacally, calls out to him, asking him talk to her and let her help him, so that they can all be friends again. Keiichi stumbles over a root, and Rena is almost on him, raising her axe over her head. Trying desperately to distract her, he asks her to tell him what happened to Satoshi. When Rena tells him once that Satoshi was "transferred". Keiichi tells her that he knows about the curse, asking her if "transferred" is some sort of code for taken by the demons. Rena replies that she has no idea what he is talking about. Despite his fear, Keiichi grows upset and directly demands to know who are behind all the deaths and disappearances in Hinamizawa. She patronizingly tells him that he must be confused, as there is no human perpetrator. She claims that all of it is Oyashiro-sama's doing. Baffled, Keiichi presses her on this, asking if she really believes the local superstition too. But she insist that is it is not a question of faith; Oyashiro-sama is actually real, and asks Keiichi if he has not heard him calling out to him too. He then tries asking her if the curse affected her, Satoshi, and now himself, what will happen to him. Rena insists that she will save him, and drawing increasingly closer to him, she repeatedly asks him to speak to her. Using the opening, Keiichi puts of all his strength into pushing her away with both hands and flees while she is on the ground.
Fleeing in a more or less blind panic, Keiichi reaches the old dam site. He considers if he could maybe should stop here and rest for a bit, but he spots two adult villagers in the distance. He is spooked to see that they both are looking straight at him and heading in his general direction. He decides to run from them. The two men start giving chase and quickly catch up to him. Keiichi attempts to ward them off with his bat, but he is still, however, just a kid against two grown men, and ends up losing the fight. The men grab him, and hold him down, and whether from the stress of the assault, exhaustion, or a combination of both, he feels his consciousness starting to fade and he eventually faints.
Keiichi is then surprised to wake up in his room. He finds Rena sitting next to him, back to her old self and very clearly worried about him. He quickly reasons that if she would nurse him back to health, she clearly isn't trying to kill him — not right now at least — so he allows himself to relax in her company. Rena tells him that she has called for a doctor, and asks him if he is feeling alright. Keiichi remembers being at the dam site and being grabbed by the two strange men, but Rena says that she found him there alone and lying on the ground. Keiichi asks her how she was able to carry him home on her own, but she tells him that he was awake enough to keep insisting that he could walk by himself and she only propped him up on her shoulder. But Keiichi doesn't recall that, he only remembers falling unconscious and then waking up here. He considers pressing the issue, but quickly thinks better of it, fearing that it will only cause Rena turn into "Scary Rena" again, and he much prefers talking to the nice one. Even so, he thinks he sees a shadow passing over her face for a moment, seeing it as an omen that it could still happen. He concludes that he should contact Ooishi. He quickly tells Rena that he needs to use the bathroom, and heads downstairs to get the house phone.
No sooner than Keiichi has gotten downstairs, the door bell rings. Believing it is the doctor Rena call for, he goes to open it, but finds Mion standing outside. Alarmed by her sudden appearance, Keiichi asks her what she is doing here, and she tells him that Rena called her over the phone and told her that he had collapsed, so she wanted to see if he was alright. Rena joins them downstairs, and the two girls express relief to see that Keiichi appears to be calm right now and feeling somewhat better, telling him that he has really scared them with his recent streak of strange behavior. Keiichi notices that their concern seems genuine enough, but he still feels that something is off about them.
The two of them insist that he should go back to bed, and Keiichi reluctantly does so. In passing, Mion asks Rena if she called the "Director", which she confirms that she did. Keiichi is alarmed by their use of that word. A place like Hinamizawa isn't exactly somewhere you'd expect to find a "director". He asks who this "Director" is and why he would have any business with him. But they only coyly reply that he is just a "director", like a director of a film or a construction site foreman, and that he would be quite interested in Keiichi's recent baseball career. After saying this, they start laughing. Keiichi find all of these vague statements and their laughter very unsettling, as the only foreman he can think of was the dam project foreman, who is supposed to be dead, and he feels the now pretty familiar sense of dread rise inside of him. Mion then asks him if he has forgotten about his homework. Keiichi is confused by the sudden question. Rena reminds him that he was supposed to guess which mochi she made for him. This only heightens Keiichi's sense of panic, as he wonders why they are bringing the mochi with the needle in it up all of a sudden. Rena points out that he didn't guess, and now he must take his penalty for failing the challenge. Then suddenly, Rena grabs him from behind and holds him still. Mion then pulls out a small syringe and tells him that what happened to Tomitake is going to happen to him now. Keiichi, quite convinced that he is going to die in the same manner as Tomitake freaks completely out as Mion brings the needle closer too him. Eventually, his panic reaches a fever-pitch and his mind goes blank.
Just as suddenly as he passed out, Keiichi comes back to himself. He is confused at first, feeling as though time has passed, and he believes that what just happened must have been some kind of dream or hallucination. He chides himself for ever thinking that Rena and Mion would kill him. But then he first realizes that he for some inexplicable reason is feeling extremely sad, and then that his room is a bloody mess. Then he spots Rena and Mion, clearly injured and unmoving, lying in unnatural poses in pools of their own blood. He then realizes that he is holding Satoshi's bat in his hand and it is stained with blood. The horrible truth hits him all at once; he did this. He killed Rena and Mion. Freaking out, he tries to make sense of it all and calm himself down. He might be horrified at what he has just done, but reasons that if nothing else he did it in self-defense. After all, Mion had a syringe and was going to inject with him the drug that killed Tomitake. He even starts to consider that though he will probably, and justifiably, face some kind of punishment for killing two of his classmates, this event might be the thing that finally exposes the conspiracy, once Mion and Rena's involvement with it becomes clear to the police. In the end, he has ultimately made it out of the ordeal alive and once the doctor Rena called for arrives at the house, he will confess everything that happened to him, and then everything will be resolved.
But something gives Keiichi pause. That "director" that Rena and Mion also mentioned. He hears someone outside the house, and peaks out the window to the front lawn. He spots four adults, and notices that two of them resemble the men who attacked him at the dam. There is also one in a white coat, but Keiichi is immediately convinced that he must one of "them" and is only disguised as a doctor. He also sees the white van that tried to run him over parked outside. He decides that he cannot stay in the house; he has to flee and find some way to contact Ooishi. He takes a look back at Rena and Mion's bodies and wonders if they were ever really his friends. The truth, however, is clear to him and he starts to cry at the thought. Fact is, they were his friends and he killed them. Even if he thinks he had no choice to but to strike them both down in self-defense, he also doesn't believe that they were trying to hurt him out of their own volition. Someone made them do it. He concludes that has to survive and expose the conspiracy behind the curse, for their sake too. He quickly jots down a few extra lines in his journal, hoping to explain the reasons behind his burst of deadly violence, and includes the syringe as evidence, asking the police to analyse it. With that he quickly slips out the back door. Keiichi hear the men spot him and rise the alarm as he exits the door. He makes a run for it and heads towards the forest. Evening begins to fall and he keeps running...
Elsewhere, at the police station, Ooishi sits in the cafeteria, passing the time by playing mahjong with Kumagai. He is told that there is a call for him from a payphone. He greets the person on the other end, and hears that it is Keiichi, who sounds clearly distressed. Ooishi notices that it is first time Keiichi has called him instead of the other way around and asks what he wants to talk about. Keiichi stammers out an incoherent reply, clearly not knowing where to begin. Ooishi tries to calm him down and explain himself slowly, telling him that he will see to it that a couple of officers come around to pick him up. Keiichi replies that it doesn't he think it is going to be possible, and stammers something once again. Ooishi is told by one of his colleagues that there is only one public phone booth in Hinamizawa. He quickly orders as many available officers over there as quickly as possible and prepares to head out himself, not knowing what kind of trouble Keiichi is in.
Ooishi suddenly hears Keiichi coughing and vomiting on the other end. He tries to ask Keiichi about the identity of the culprit and how many they they are. Keiichi starts replying that he though he was dealing with a human culprit, but now he is convinced that Oyashiro-sama is indeed behind it all, and now he is here with him. No matter where he went or how fast he ran, in the end Oyashiro-sama was always just one step behind him. He suddenly hears Keiichi making a horrifying sound and he stops talking. Ooishi hears Keiichi dropping the receiver as the awful sound continues and Keiichi whispers something incoherent to himself. The line goes dead. It is first afterwards that Ooishi realizes that the thing he was whispering was "I'm sorry," over and over again.
The story is closed out by a police report about the case written one year later. Keiichi was found unconscious near the phone booth he made the call from, with a heavy injury to his throat, believed to be self-inflicted. He died in the hospital 24 hours later, without ever regaining consciousness. Keiichi is the main suspect of the murder of Rena and Mion, but the case remains unresolved, mostly due to how the police cannot entirely determine whether Keiichi's act was impulsive or premeditated, due to him showing several signs of clear mental instability in the days prior to the killings. Due to Keiichi's death closely resembling Tomitake's, the cases are being investigated as clearly connected, but out of respect to the community of Hinamizawa and the whole tragedy surrounding it, the investigation has been kept confidential. Keiichi's journal was recovered in the aftermath, but it appears that someone who was not Keiichi has tampered with it and removed a couple of lines (unbeknownst to the police, but clear to the player, the lines mentioning the dam foreman and the syringe was removed and so was the syringe itself). Ooishi, who was the first police officer to arrive at the crime scene at the Maebara residence, has voluntarily agreed to undergo interrogation in connection to the case, but he has denied having any forehand knowledge about the journal and the tampering with it.
Tropes:
- Absurd Phobia: Keiichi mentions once reading a manga where needles were mixed into food, which makes him a bit apprehensive about accepting food from others. It's not a common phobia, but he appears to be Properly Paranoid when he finds a needle in the ohagi that Rena and Mion give him.
- Accidental Innuendo: Invoked. In the VN and manga, during the festival the club members try finding something cute to bring to Rena. Keiichi goes somewhere else to show her his, and she comes back all dizzy and blushing. She then comments on the cuteness of Keiichi's "little fur seal"; cue Mion and Satoko's violent retaliation on Keiichi. He showed her a seal-shaped key holder he made himself when he was a child. This scene was cut from the anime.
- Arc Villain: As far as Keiichi is concerned, Rena is out there to get him. Mion joins her near the end.
- Ax-Crazy:
- Rena stops being cute at mid-way point and walks with near constant Death Glare, and later chases Keiichi around with the hatchet while laughing maniacally.
- Mion doesn't show hostility often, but gets a similar unreasonable attitude as Rena when it happens.
- Keiichi's own sanity is clearly beginning to falter pretty badly as the story progresses.
- Berserker Tears: When Keiichi kills Rena and Mion, he is crying his eyes out in a mix of this and Tears of Fear.
- Curiosity Killed the Cast: Keiichi keeps asking about the Hinamizawa Dam incident, despite Rena and Mion making it very clear it's a sensitive subject and also a secret. One question too much, and he's past the point of forgiveness.
- Downer Ending: Keiichi opens his throat in the phone booth and passes away in the hospital.
- Idiots Cannot Catch Colds: When Keiichi stays home with the excuse of a cold, Mion asks if the club members can visit him. He says he doesn't want them to catch his cold, but Mion remarks that they're all too stupid to catch colds.
- Hypocrite: Keiichi is offended by Rena finding his suspicions unnatural, despite being clearly Locked Out of the Loop. Conversely, Rena points out that Keiichi is blaming his classmates from keeping secrets while he's conspiring with officer Ooishi behind their backs.
- Razor Apples: How lovely, Rena and Mion deliver the latter's grandma's ohagi for Keiichi out of concern for him, and one of them is one Rena made herself, and Keiichi has to tell which one was it tomorrow. Wait, why are there sewing needles in one of them?
- Stalker without a Crush: Rena has gathered a lot of information about Keiichi's private life by hiding behind him without him noticing.
- Shoo Out the Clowns: Satoko and Rika, who were present for many of the wackier scenes in the beginning of the story gradually stop appearing as it grows more serious and increasingly does a Genre Shift into a murder mystery with strong Folk Horror trappings during its second half. By the last fourth, though Keiichi occasionally mentions them, they have no more lines.
- Take Up My Sword: As he takes Satoshi's bat for self-defence Keiichi imagines himself carrying on his will.
- That Was Not a Dream: In the VN and manga, where near the end, Mion and Rena both attack Keiichi with a syringe, then he blacks out. When he wakes up in his room, he begins assuming the whole thing was just a dream, then he notices all the blood and Rena and Mion's bodies and fills in most of the blanks. The anime skips this.
