The third game, released on August 15, 2003. Adapted into the 2006's anime Episodes 9-13. Minagoroshi-hen provides context for this arc.
After a complaint about the smell in the drainage, a mutilated corpse with signs of tool-assisted torture is found. Later identified as "Rina" Ritsuko Mamiya, a drug dealer who's been taking money from the Sonozaki and is a mistress of Teppei Houjou.
The club compares their bento lunches. Keiichi badmouths curry and almost gets in trouble with Chie-sensei. It becomes apparent Keiichi and Satoko aren't best at cooking, so after some bickering they declare a competition. Keiichi almost set his house on fire by cooking a miso soup and Satoko and Rika just happen to come to visit and rescue him. Out of pity Satoko makes him dinner. From Rika Keiichi learns about Satoko's brother "Nii-Nii" Satoshi and their relationship, who has run away.
Over a few days Keiichi and Satoko become emotionally attached to each other and Keiichi wonders if he's seen as a Replacement Goldfish, which becomes clear when Satoko calls him "Nii-Nii" as well.
Satoko calls Keiichi about a fight, and he urges to the rescue to what turns out to be a baseball match. Keiichi bribes the Okinomiya's pitcher with a trip to Angel Mort. Keiichi gets acquainted with Irie, who is a coach, a doctor, and informally Satoko's caretaker. Shion, apparently a baseball manager, joins the conversation and Keiichi already knows much about her.
Keiichi asks Shion about Satoshi's "transfer" he's heard from Irie, and she really gets mad about it. He asks Mion and Rena about it, and while Mion clarifies Satoshi is "missing", Rena with empty eyes says he's been punished by Oyashiro-sama for trying to leave Hinamizawa and has been panicking the last time she's seen him, so Mion has to recap the curses.
Satoko doesn't come to school and Rika looks depressed. Officer Ooishi comes to school and is looking for Satoko. Keiichi decides to not tell and Ooishi outright threatens him until Irie intervenes. Irie explains that Ooishi refuses to close the case on Houjou family's deaths. Satoko comes to school and everyone learns that Teppei is staying at Satoko's house, Keiichi tries to force Mion to take care of her and gets called out.
Keiichi finds Tomitake and Takano. After a conversation with them, he figures Sonozaki are responsible for the Curse, and later asks Mion to ensure Teppei would be next, but she dismisses him. Neither Sonozaki nor the government are willing to get involved. Keiichi tries to pat Satoko, and she instead has a PTSD panic, so he decides to take matters into own hands, and blames Oyashiro-sama and Satoshi for inaction.
Before the Watanagashi Festival, Keiichi calls Mion to take Satoko with her, who comments Satoshi asked the same thing a year ago. Next day he calls Teppei and lures him to the forest where he ambushes him with Satoshi's bat. After burying him and disposing the evedience into the swamp, he stumbles on Takano who guesses what he did, but gives him a car ride home regardless. Keiichi points that there's Tomitake's bycicle in her car and she dodges the question. As he wonders if he could have killed her as well, he hears extra footsteps and goes to sleep.
Asking his friends the next day, everything is wrong. They claim to be with Keiichi at the festival in elaborate detail, and Satoko wasn't there on uncle's request and is beaten up today. But Satoshi's bat isn't in the locker. Keiichi excuses himself to the Irie's clinic and Rena insists he shows her a receipt from there afterward.
Irie brings up the Doppleganger myth. Keiichi ends up confessing what he did. Irie tries to feed him sleeping pills, as from his view Keiichi is delusional at best and have murdered a wrong man at worst. Keiichi escapes and decides to check the crime scene and is ambushed by the police. Ooishi violently makes him dig, but no body was found, so he leaves Keiichi be. Keiichi decides that if it was all a dream, he'll just have to kill Teppei again.
He barges into Houjou residence, but only finds Satoko in a boiling hot bath counting to 10000 as a punishment. In just a Modesty Towel, Keiichi delivers her to Irie Clinic. Shockingly, Irie has committed suicide and Ooishi is missing. Keiichi confesses to Satoko everything, and she doesn't take him seriously.
Satoko goes to Furude Shrine to find clothes and Keiichi discovers Rika's corpse and an axe. Satoko returns, and it really doesn't look good for Keiichi. She blames herself for sneaking into the warehouse when she was younger and runs off. Believing he's an imposter, Satoko pushes Keiichi from the rope bridge. With the last of his strength, Keiichi wishes death for the rest of Hinamizawa.
Keiichi recovers and returns to the empty village, only to be taken in by the military. Apparently while he was passed out, a volcanic gas from the swamp has erupted and killed everyone. News report that even relatives that were outside suddenly fell from illness or have committed suicide while calling Oyashiro-sama. Keiichi can't handle it and passes out from a seizure.
20 years later, a cassette interview with Keiichi is discovered. According to analysis, the gas would have filled the river where Keiichi was at first, so the reporter gets pushy. Keiichi curses him to drown, which is what happened years later, but after Keiichi dies as well. The authenticity of the victim and the tape is put into question.
Tropes:
- Accidental Pervert: Keiichi tries to get Rena out of the bucket trap, comments that he can see her underwear and gets beaten up.
- All for Nothing: Satoko goes along with the abuse for multiple reasons. Teppei threatens to destroy Satoshi's room and Satoko believes he'll return if she endures her punishment. It being illogical aside, this isn't a story where Satoshi returns.
- Ambiguously Evil: Takano is not being subtle that she may be involved in Tomitake's death. His bike should be at home or with him, not with her at night, and she really doesn't want to be seen. As Keiichi fails to understand what she's getting at, she tells it's her bike that looks the same (despite driving a car) and Keiichi decides he has no right to question whatever "demonic activity" she may have accomplished.
- Arc Villain: Teppei Houjoi, Satoko's abusive uncle, is the only apparent villain in this chapter. Other deaths aren't relevant this time.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: After his Sanity Slippage, Keiichi wishes all villagers were dead. Cue the great gas outbreak.
- Book Dumb: A flashback shows that Keiichi took an intelligence test. He's not good at abstract questions, but if asked using a physical analogy, he showed analytical thinking on a level of a national prodigy.
- Crying Wolf: Child services refuse to help Satoko because she's known to be lying about the abuse before it actually happened.
- Curse: Aside Oyashiro-sama's, Keiichi believes his has some sort of power as well, as everyone he wished dead was found as such soon later.
- Death Course: The club goes through the mountain that Satoko has turned into "Soviet military training course". It's not fatal, but still humiliating.
- Doom Magnet: Ooishi is treated like Oyashiro-sama's harbinger because all Watanagashi victims were questioned by him beforehand. However the real magnet is Keiichi, as everyone he got mad at have died shortly.
- "Everybody Dies" Ending: By the end everyone except Keiichi is confirmed dead or missing, and he unsuccessfully tries to commit suicide as well. Then Keiichi dies from fever later. Interestingly, Shion is reported to have committed suicide at the evacuation hospital.
- Face Death with Dignity: The punishment for the bento competition is treated like a death sentence, since it means saying mean things about Chie's cooking. Rika lost and doesn't mind, but Keiichi and Satoko decide to join out of self-consiousness.
- Feminine Women Can Cook: Satoko's personality becomes much more mature and cheerful while she cooks, and she complains that men should never be allowed in the kitchen.
- Foreshadowing: The clinic has a security staff called Mountain Dog. Who are they gets explained in later games.
- Hate at First Sight: When Keiichi meets Ooishi for the first time, for no reason he's struck with immediate feeling of absolute disgust and decides to be uncooperative.
- Hearing Voices: Right before the murder Keiichi hears Satoshi's approval.
- Hypocrite:
- Ooishi tells Keiichi that he shouldn't be making enemies, while he was the one who comes uninvited, asks the questions without clarifying why and nearly breaks Keiichi's shoulder because he didn't get the answer he wanted.
- Keiichi asks Mion to let Satoko live in any of the Sonozaki's houses and starts badmouthing her when she can't. Rena snaps and asks Keiichi why didn't he suggest his own house first. Keiichi later realizes the legal and financial problems that would bring.
- Innocently Insensitive: During the bento competition everyone calls Keiichi's poorly made to cheer Satoko up, without knowing she was the one who cooked it for him earlier.
- Immediate Self-Contradiction: Satoko says she'd never call her Nii-Nii a "Nii-Nii". Similar slips occur a lot.
- Ironic Echo: As he thinks of murder, Mion and Rena mention that Keiichi had inhuman eyes for a bit and was like a different person. The latter showed this behavior earlier.
- I Wished You Were Dead: Keiichi curses Teppei to death before getting his hands on him himself. After the murder he starts cursing everyone for more and more minor inconveniences until he wishes the entire village was gone. Which exactly what happens.
- Lethally Stupid: Keiichi puts tons of olive oil, and gets excited to have a fire pillar, imagining himself as super chief. Satoko rescues him just in time.
- Mundanger: While the friends being involved in a conspiracy and Demonic Possession is still brought up, the main conflict this time is much more tangible and realistic: child abuse.
- Murder Is the Best Solution: Deconstructed. Even though everyone gives up on every other way, Keiichi murdering Teppei just causes even more problems down the line.
- The Perfect Crime: Keiichi discusses with his mom, who is a Mystery Fiction writer, what is a perfect crime. She can only answer that the stories with perfect crimes have no conclusion and aren't interesting, and the "ultimate perfect crime" is the one that isn't even investigated. This gives Keiichi ideas what to do with Teppei.
- Riddle for the Ages: Every death is attributed to Keiichi's Power Of Hate. Except Rika, who is murdered and cut open, but this arc doesn't have time to question it.
- Returning to the Scene: With the apparent disconnect of Keiichi's account and what everyone is saying, he decides to check on Teppei's corpse and Ooishi catches him redhanded. But the corpse has disappeared entirely, to Keiichi's further confusion.
- Sanity Slippage: Keiichi deduces that there must be some other Keiichi Maebara at the festival who made him a convinient alibi and then disappeared. The more inconsistent (aside being impossible in the first place) this theory is with everyone accounts, the less reasonable his inner thoughts get. Even before that, he keeps hearing someone walking behind him.
- Sham Supernatural: Discussed between Takano and Keiichi. If Santa Claus is a product of parents and supermarkets, then Oyashiro-sama has to be a cover for something as well.
- Sole Survivor: Keiichi is the only left alive from Hinamizawa after the gas outbreak, but some time later dies as well.
- Tempting Fate:
- Keiichi and Rena discuss that they're both afraid the fun days will suddenly stop, everyone may suddenly die one day in a catastrophe with Keiichi as Sole Survivor. Cue Teppei starting to abuse Satoko, the murders, and then the gas outbreak which Keiichi miraculously survives.
- Mion tries to assure Keiichi that Takano isn't going to get cursed this year, or anyone at all. Takano is still a Designated Victim, and a lot more people die this time.
