I recently finished my first readthrough of seminal 2007 murder mystery doujin visual novel Umineko: When they Cry. While I was reading I kept detailed notes on both my solutions to the murder mystery puzzles and the backstory timeline that led up to the game. I'm sure plenty of other people have gone over the solutions before but the timeline itself is likely to be interesting so I've cleaned it up for publication. This includes the following
Calculations for how we can derive dates that are never given explicitly but have enough evidence to constrain them to a narrow range (this applies to the years most of the adults were born)
Backstory events stretching out behind the catbox into the past
Post-1986 events stretching out in front of the catbox into the future
For the contents of the catbox itself you'll want to take a look at the solutions (or maybe if there's a demand for it I'll write mine up too)
Discussion
Krauss, Eva, and Natsuhi
Umineko never directly states how old Krauss, Eva, and Natsuhi are. However we have the following pieces of evidence we can use to pinpoint things
Eva mentions that Natsuhi is three years younger than her during one of the parlor scenes in Legend
Eva’s narration refers to Krauss as her older brother of two years during her flashback at the beginning of Banquet
Natsuhi was childless for 12 years before having Jessica 18 years ago, placing her marriage 30 years ago in 1956
The Ushiromiyas moved to Rokkenjima in 1952. Eva’s flashback at the beginning of Banquet takes place while she’s living on Rokkenjima and at the tail end of high school demanding to go to college (ages 15-17)
Eva’s birthday is October 21
This places limits on their possible ages in both directions. The school year in Japan begins in April and students begin elementary school at age 6. Therefore, to have been attending high school in 1952, Eva must have been born somewhere in the range 1936-1938. Since Natsuhi is three years younger than her and got married in 1956 this means she was married somewhere between age 15 and age 17. There’s nothing I would put past Kinzo but the older end of that range seems most likely so for this timeline I chose to make Krauss born in 1934, Eva born in 1936, and Natsuhi born in 1939
Rudolf, Asumu, and Kyrie
Like his siblings we’re never given Rudolf’s exact age but we can get a good estimate from the available evidence
The Ushiromiyas moved to Rokkenjima in 1952. When the siblings discuss the stories of wolves on the island in Banquet, we’re told that Rudolf was in elementary school (ages 6-11) at the time
Kinzo’s flashback in the manga version of Requiem establishes visually that Krauss, Eva, and Rudolf were all born before he enlisted in 1944
Rudolf’s birthday is September 29
Just like for Eva, this constrains the possible years Rudolf could have been born to between 1940 and 1943. Of these 1940 is the most likely because the age difference between him and Eva doesn’t seem particularly large
All we can say about Asumu and Kyrie’s ages is that they went to college with Rudolf and are therefore close in age to him. As a side note Asumu’s family name Akinaka is never given anywhere in Umineko but Ryukishi specified it on twitter in 2013 so I’ve chosen to use it here
Rosa
In a recurring pattern Rosa’s age is never stated exactly but it’s easy to infer
Rosa met the girl who was imprisoned in Kuwadorian in 1967 and was in middle school (ages 12-14) at the time
Rosa had Maria in 1977
Rosa’s birthday is June 3
The possible years she could have been born are then 1953-1955 which means she had Maria somewhere between age 22 and age 24. I’m again most inclined to pick the early date since it makes her have Maria at a slightly more reasonable age.
Unfortunately, this age doesn’t completely make sense with the stories we’re told about her childhood. Her siblings would all have been essentially full adults by the time she was old enough to spend much time interacting with them so the stories we hear about them tormenting her are reframed as adults hurting a six year old. Not exactly impossible in Umineko but it casts everything in a very different light
The Kuwadorian Girl
Requiem refers to Kinzo raping the Kuwadorian girl when she was the same age Bice was when he first met her. For the sake of intergenerational parallels across the three Beatrices, this age is almost certainly 19, placing both her birth and Bice’s death in 1948, but all we know for certain is that she was older than Rosa but not a full adult when she met her
Erika
Erika is described as a few years younger than Jessica. Her backstory sounds like it takes place in college but we should probably chalk this up to the anime tendency to pretend high schoolers are independent adults and treat it as taking place in high school. With nothing else to go on, the best we can do is fall back on Higurashi parallels - Erika is a double for Bernkastel who most closely resembles a 16 year old Rika
Ange
This one’s an actual logic error. We are given the following three pieces of evidence which cannot simultaneously be true
Ange’s birthday is June 17 and she’s six years old therefore she was born in 1980
Battler made a promise to Sayo six years ago at the 1980 family conference in early October
Asumu died, Rudolf married a pregnant Kyrie, and Battler left the Ushiromiya family after that promise
As June comes before October this situation is impossible. We could try to resolve it by saying that Ange was born six months before Asumu died but the narrative is clear that Kyrie was pregnant when she got married, not already raising an illegitimate child. Similarly we could claim that Battler actually made his promise at a non-family conference visit to Rokkenjima in early 1980 but Requiem clearly shows us the first, second, and third family conferences after Battler leaves and has Kanon be created at the third one three years ago so this throws off the entire timeline. The only remotely reasonable solution is to decide that Ange was actually born on June 17, 1981 and is just the kind of little kid who likes to say she’s six when she’s really five and a half (and then keeps doing this for the rest of her life so she calls herself eighteen when she’s really seventeen and a half)
Timeline
1900s:
Nanjo Terumasa is born (April 5)
Ronoue Genji is born (June 10)
Kumasawa Chiyo is born (July 19)
Ushiromiya Kinzo is born (August 17)
1910s:
Genji and Kinzo grow up in Taiwan together. They are both the sons of rich families and they become close friends
1923:
The great Kanto earthquake destroys the Ushiromiya family. The surviving family elders pick Kinzo (20s), a distantly related branch family member to be the new family head ostensibly because he has polydactyly but really because they want to use him as a puppet
1926:
Beatrice Castiglioni is born (September 14)
1920s:
Hideyoshi is born (November 25)
Kinzo (20s) is forced to marry a woman he does not love and spends twenty years as a living corpse, enduring life without really living. His only solace is his love for reading foreign books
1934:
Ushiromiya Krauss is born (February 26)
1936:
Ushiromiya Eva is born (October 21)
1939:
Natsuhi is born (July 30)
1940:
Krauss (6) begins elementary school
1941:
Ushiromiya Rudolf is born (September 29)
1940s:
Sumadera Kyrie is born (November 8)
Sumadera Kasumi is born (September 10)
Akinaka Asumu is born
1943:
Eva (6 going on 7) begins elementary school
1944:
Kinzo (40s) volunteers to fight in WWII. He is assigned to a secret submarine base on Rokkenjima as engineering staff. No Japanese submarines ever actually dock at the base and eventually the navy decides to store an enormous quantity of explosives on the island so it can be strategically blown up if necessary
1945:
An Italian submarine carrying ten tons of secret gold docks at the Rokkenjima base and Kinzo (40s) meets Beatrice (19) who is serving as the Italian translator. Kinzo incites a shootout over the gold which kills everyone else on the island and the two run away together as lovers. He meets Nanjo (40s) as the doctor on Nijima who treats Beatrice’s wounds
1946:
Natsuhi (6 going on 7) begins elementary school
1940s:
Kinzo begins living a double life, spending as much of his time as possible with his mistress Beatrice while maintaining appearances with his family
Kinzo forsees that Genji’s family will meet a horrible fate if they stay in Taiwan during the post-war chaos. Unfortunately he is only able to convince Genji to leave and the rest of them perish. In gratitude for saving him, Genji decides to dedicate the rest of his life to serving Kinzo as his butler
Kinzo takes a trusted business contact, the president of the Marusoo company, to see the gold. He gives him physical possession of one ton of the gold as collateral and has him take back a single ingot to be appraised. With this level of verification he is able to take out massive loans from the business community. He uses his foreign language skills to get in extremely close with the post-war occupying forces and makes vast amounts of money providing supplies for the Korean War. Finally he repays his debts and retrieves the collateral from his friend, leaving him with a single ingot as a commemorative gift
Hideyoshi is left orphaned by the war. He decides to build a company from the ground up, starting with stealing supplies from the occupying forces. Slowly but surely he becomes a powerful businessman
1946:
Krauss (12) begins middle school
1948:
Rudolf (6 going on 7) begins elementary school
Beatrice (23) dies in childbirth. Kinzo (40s) is heartbroken and decides to treat her daughter as her reincarnation, giving her the name Ushiromiya Beatrice
1949:
Krauss (15) begins high school
Eva (12 going on 13) begins middle school
1952:
Kinzo (50s) constructs a secret mansion on Rokkenjima known as Kuwadorian and uses it to house his new daughter. At the same time he builds a secret underground VIP room to store the gold. He comes up with an elaborate riddle to hide its secret and builds a complicated mechanism to open the door. Finally, he repurposes the explosives on the island to build a special clock that will blow up the entire island at midnight if a switch is set. He uses this doomsday device to gamble his life by setting time limits for problem solving and is able to achieve short bursts of brilliant madness that drive enormous business success
Kinzo (50s) finishes construction of his new home on the other side of Rokkenjima from Kuwadorian. He moves his entire family to live there and frequently disappears for long periods of time to visit Beatrice. The two mansions are linked by a secret underground passageway left over from the island’s days as a military base
Krauss (18) begins college
Eva (15 going on 16) begins high school
Natsuhi (12 going on 13) begins middle school
1953:
Ushiromiya Rosa is born (June 3)
1950s:
Kinzo uses some of his wealth to create Fukuin House, an orphanage for children with nowhere else to go. He begins taking ambitious teenagers from the orphanage as young servants in order to give them practical experience and money to start their lives with
Kinzo violently abuses his children and constantly screams and insults them
Kinzo’s wife becomes extremely suspicious that he’s cheating on her with a blonde but is never able to find evidence
Krauss frequently beats and insults his younger siblings to compensate for his complex about not being able to live up to his father’s expectations
Eva becomes obsessed with earning her father’s respect and works as hard as possible to become a good student and achieve great things, even becoming class president when Krauss never became more than vice-president. She loathes Krauss for automatically being the successor simply because he’s a man. In order to fuel her work ethic she creates an alternate self representing her childhood dreams that lives inside her as a witch
Rudolf constantly sneaks off into the shadows for sexual liaisons with the maids
Rosa grows up extremely lonely with no friends anywhere near her age and no one who is willing to pay attention to her. She retreats into a world of playing with dolls and stuffed animals until eventually her older siblings rip up her most treasured friend U-tan the rabbit and declare that she’s dead
Natsuhi grows up in an extraordinarily strict environment, kept isolated from the world as a princess
Kinzo collects a number of Winchester rifles and practices shooting them in the woods
1954:
Rudolf (12 going on 13) begins middle school
1955:
Eva (18 going on 19) graduates high school and manages to go to college against her father’s wishes through sheer hard work
Natsuhi (15 going on 16) begins high school
1956:
Krauss (22) graduates from college
Kinzo (50s) crushes Natsuhi’s (17) family and as a prize forces her to marry Krauss (22). It is not clear whether she is given the chance to complete high school. She is unable to bear a child for a very long time despite trying
1957:
Rudolf (15 going on 16) begins high school
1959:
Eva (22 going on 23) graduates from college
1960:
Rudolf (18 going on 19) graduates high school and goes to college. While there he begins perpetrating elaborate fraud schemes and seducing women. He acquires a large harem of hangers-on but eventually ends up splitting most of his time between Kyrie who is his business partner and Asumu who provides him with emotional support
Rosa (6 going on 7) begins elementary school
1962:
Eva (26) marries Hideyoshi (40s). Due to Natsuhi’s (23) failure to bear a child she is able to have him transferred into the Ushiromiya family register
1963:
George is born to Eva (26 going on 27) and Hideyoshi (40s) (March 19)
1964:
Rudolf (22 going on 23) graduates from college and partners with Kyrie (20s) to found a new company
1966:
Rosa (12 going on 13) begins middle school
1967:
The Kuwadorian girl (19) has an incestuous child with Kinzo (60s) (May 25)
Rosa (14) runs away from home and encounters the Kuwadorian girl (19). She helps her escape but while attempting to get back to the mansion she falls off a cliff and dies. After this incident Kuwadorian is shut down for good
Kinzo (60s) gives the child he had with the Kuwadorian girl to Natsuhi (28) to raise. She treats this as an insult due to her inability to have a child and is so disgusted that she pushes the servant carrying the baby off a cliff. Kinzo is driven deeply into madness by the incident and begins to isolate himself and spend all of his time studying the occult
Kinzo’s child survives the fall but Genji (60s) sends them to Fukuin House and conceals them from Natsuhi and Kinzo. They are given the name Yasuda Sayo. Although the child was assigned male at birth, the fall severely damages their genitals and afterwards it is decided to raise them as a girl. Nanjo performs the surgery that saves their life and at the same time he amputates their polydactyly sixth toe. He ‘carelessly’ leaves a scar, ensuring that Kinzo will one day be able to recognize them
In an alternate timeline where Natsuhi (28) does not attempt to kill the child, they are given the name Ushiromiya Lion and raised as the successor to the Ushiromiya headship with the new birthday November 29
1968:
Kyrie (20s) and Asumu (20s) get pregnant at the same time. Asumu discovers the pregnancy first and convinces Rudolf to have a shotgun marriage. Their delivery dates are on the same day. Asumu miscarries, Kyrie has Ushiromiya Battler, and then while they’re both barely conscious Rudolf (26 going on 27) swaps the babies so that his legal wife will be the one who gives birth (July 15). Asumu almost certainly figures out what has happened but resolves to love Battler as her own son regardless
Kyrie (20s) manages to use Rudolf’s (27) influence to completely escape from the Sumadera family. Kasumi is forced to take on her responsibilities as the successor and marry a man she does not love
At long last Natsuhi (29) is able to bear a child and Jessica is born (August 25)
1969:
Rosa (15 going on 16) begins high school
George (6) begins elementary school
1970:
Furudo Erika is born (October 4)
1972:
Rosa (18 going on 19) graduates high school and begins college. Presumably the battle Eva fought with Kinzo to secure her own education allows Rosa to do the same as Rosa certainly doesn’t have the guts to fight for it herself
1970s:
Genji decides to fake Sayo’s age and claim that she is three years younger than she really is to avoid Natsuhi and Kinzo realizing who she really is. In order to make this work he ensures that she grows up completely isolated within the orphanage. She spends all of her time locked inside and is never allowed to make friends who might notice that she’s not the age she’s supposed to be
Rudolf and Kyrie build a powerful company together, constantly skirting the law and committing serious fraud. Many of their rivals are driven so far into debt that they commit suicide
1975:
Jessica (6 going on 7) begins elementary school
Battler (6 going on 7) begins elementary school
George (12) begins middle school
1976:
Rosa (22 going on 23) graduates college and begins creating a fashion company
Genji (70s) arranges for Sayo (9 pretending to be 6) to begin working at the mansion under the name Shannon. In order to hide her existence from Natsuhi (36) and Kinzo (70s) he claims she is three years younger than she actually is. She treats the Shannon identity as a sort of imaginary friend representing the ideal servant girl she would like to become
Lunon, Sanon, Lenon, and Leion begin working at the same time as Sayo (9 pretending to be 6). They are significantly older than her and do not treat her very well
1970s:
Sayo slowly acclimates to life as a servant. After repeatedly losing things she invents a witch who she calls Beatrice but will later call Gaap as an imaginary friend who takes her possessions. Kumasawa teaches her a series of tricks to not lose things which she frames as rituals to keep the witch at bay
Sayo breaks a vase which is particularly dear to Kinzo. Kumasawa helps her avoid punishment by claiming the vase was broken by a stray cat, teaching her the concept of magic that matches a result
Due to being thrown off a cliff when she was a baby, Sayo does not have normal hormone production and does not go through puberty, remaining waifish and androgynous. She is extremely disturbed by her boyish appearance and lack of periods and begins to hate mirrors. In order to look more feminine she begins padding her chest
Sayo learns that she shares a deep love of mystery novels with Battler and begins to fall in love with him over repeated visits. He tells her about his ideal girl with a description broadly taken from porn magazines. Asumu watches over and supports their relationship
1977:
Ushiromiya Maria is born (March 29). Her father tricks Rosa (23 going on 24) into taking out a giant loan for him and then flees the country, leaving her a single mother
Erika (6 going on 7) begins elementary school
Sayo (9 going on 10 pretending to be 6 going on 7) begins elementary school
1978:
George (15) begins high school
1979:
Lunon, Sanon, Lenon, and Leion graduate from being Ushiromiya servants. Asne, Belne, and Manon begin working as replacements
Sayo (12 pretending to be 9) trains the new servants. Belne doesn’t take the stories of the witch seriously so in order to teach her a lesson, Sayo begins conducting a series of pranks on her. She hides her master key in Belne’s locker, waits for Belne to unlock a room and put her keys down, swaps her keyring without the master key with Belne’s, and then asks Belne to lock the door. This makes it appear as though the key was moved from Belne’s ring to the locker by magic while giving Sayo a strong alibi for stealing it. After many similar experiences, Belne repents and believes in the witch
Sayo (12 pretending to be 9) abandons the desire to become an ideal servant which Shannon represented and instead begins planning to become a witch. She revises her imaginary scenario so that now she is the witch Beatrice and Gaap is a demon who is her close friend. Her witchsona with long greenish-blonde hair and a white dress will later be known as Clair Vaux Bernardus
1980:
Battler (12) visits Rokkenjima for the last time before leaving the family. He promises Sayo (13 pretending to be 10) that when she’s ready to leave the island he’ll come for her on a white horse and whisk her away. He gives her until the family conference next year to decide whether to take him up on his offer
George (17) watches Battler (12) and Sayo (13 pretending to be 10) talking and gets extremely jealous
1981:
Jessica (12 going on 13) begins middle school
George (18) graduates from high school and begins college
Battler (12 going on 13) begins middle school
Kyrie (30s) gets pregnant with Ange and finally gains the certain determination to kill Asumu (30s). However before she can act Asumu dies for unrelated reasons. Rudolf (39 going on 40) marries Kyrie immediately, and Ange is born shortly afterwards (June 17). Battler (12 going on 13) is so offended by this series of events that he leaves the Ushiromiya family and goes to live with Asumu’s parents for the next six years, taking the family name Akinaka. When Sayo (14 pretending to be 11) learns that he has left the family she convinces herself that this is a trial of love and if only she waits for him while believing hard enough he will come for her next year
Battler (13) does not attend the family conference. Sayo (14 pretending to be 11) is heartbroken but tells herself that he’ll come next year
1980s:
A number of important pieces of media come out earlier in the Umineko timeline than in our world. Touhou becomes popular, and Pretty Cure style magical girl shows begin airing on TV including one that stars Bernkastel
Maria meets a priest who tells her about Jesus. This experience convinces her that she too is a child of god with magical powers and she undertakes intense occult self-study
Sayo begins meeting with Maria as her witchsona every time she visits the island. She convinces her that she is a witch by showing her small magic tricks and becomes her best friend
Battler wins a set of cheap plastic hair ornaments for Ange at a fair. They become one of her most treasured possessions
Erika goes out with a boy who is living some sort of double life. She collects circumstantial evidence and becomes convinced he’s cheating on her. It’s unprovable but the core themes of this narrative suggest that the secret is probably actually crossdressing
Rosa gives Maria a cheap department store plushie and pretends she made it herself. Maria names him Sakutaro and loves him with all her heart
Sayo begins actively building the legend of the golden witch by telling ghost stories and playing occult themed pranks on people. Through her hard work she combines the existing ghost stories about the evil spirits of Rokkenjima with the story of Kinzo’s mistress to create an environment where all unexplainable phenomena will be blamed on a witch
Sayo begins to invent more OCs, creating Ronove as a double for Genji, Virgilia as a double for Kumasawa, and the seven sisters of purgatory. Maria gives them all names. In exchange Sayo creates the Chiesters and Sakutaro for her as anthropomorphized versions of her rabbit figures and her favorite stuffed animal
Sayo becomes close friends with Jessica
Rosa rips Sakutaro apart and smashes one of Maria’s rabbits, permanently killing the corresponding furniture
The president of the Marusoo company dies and Krauss manages to obtain the ingot he was given, acquiring physical proof that the Ushiromiya gold exists
Krauss makes a series of bad business investments and is repeatedly defrauded. He attempts to turn Rokkenjima into a resort but the project falls apart leaving him with a newly built guesthouse and no visitors. In his desperation he begins to embezzle Kinzo’s money and makes shady backroom deals offering up ownership of the island itself as collateral
1982:
Asne, Belne, and Manon graduate from being Ushiromiya servants
Battler (14) does not attend the family conference. Sayo (15 pretending to be 12) begins to doubt whether he ever made her a promise at all or whether she merely misinterpreted him
1983:
Maria (6) begins elementary school
Erika (12 going on 13) begins middle school
Sayo (15 going on 16 pretending to be 12 going on 13) begins middle school
Battler (14) does not attend the family conference. He sends letters to his cousins but not to Sayo (16 pretending to be 13). She buries her grief by externalizing her feelings and pushing them onto her witch persona Beato. At the same time she begins experimenting with dressing as a boy and creates the Kanon persona with cooperation from Genji and Kumasawa. By pushing her love for Battler onto Beato and all of her negative emotions onto Kanon she is able to keep Shannon as a purely positive persona
George (20) has a marriage interview with a girl Eva (47) wants him to marry named Ayumi. Eva taunts Sayo (16 pretending to be 13) with the fact that the two of them can never be together
Sayo (16 pretending to be 13) accidentally spills soup on herself while serving Kinzo (80s) and removes her kneesock in front of him. He sees the scar from the amputation of her polydactyly and realizes that she is his child who survived the fall after all. Afterwards he begins to try to get closer to her and teaches her to shoot his guns
1984:
Jessica (15 going on 16) begins high school
Battler (15 going on 16) begins high school
Kinzo hangs a portrait of Beatrice with the witch’s epitaph in the main hall of the mansion in April. Sayo (16 going on 7 pretending to be 13 going on 14) revises her witchsona so that it is now a blond haired beauty matching both the woman in the portrait and Battler’s image of an ideal girl
George (21) and Sayo (17 pretending to be 14) begin to get closer and go on a few outings together. They are not quite dating yet but the possibility of romance is there
Jessica (16) becomes disturbed by the way Maria (7) talks about Beatrice and starts to investigate. Sayo (17 pretending to be 14) tells her a ghost story about the golden witch appearing in the VIP room at 2 in the morning. She then places a creepy doll on the bedside table in the room, gives instructions to Genji and Kumasawa to act as accomplices, and hides under the bed in the dark waiting. At 2 am when Jessica enters the VIP room an accomplice places a phone call to the room and plays a recording of Maria singing. Afterwards another accomplice in the basement shuts off the lights on the circuit breaker. Under the cover of darkness Sayo climbs out from under the bed, grabs the doll, cackles loudly, and leaves the room. After this experience Jessica decides to stop investigating
Genji gives Sayo (17 pretending to be 14) a hint regarding the epitaph by telling her that Kinzo’s beloved hometown is in Taiwan. Over the course of many months she works her way through the entire riddle and eventually on November 29 she finds the hidden gold. Genji dresses her in the witch dress, takes her to Kinzo, and finally tells him the truth about their relationship. Kinzo apologizes for everything, gives her the head’s ring and keels over dead. Afterwards Sayo orders Genji, Kumasawa, and Nanjo to keep these events secret and decides to continue working as a servant while waiting for Battler’s return
Sayo (17 pretending to be 14) is utterly horrified at learning the truth about herself. Her incestuous heritage, her body that cannot bear children, the bloodstained wealth of the Ushiromiyas seized with betrayal and murder, and her unwitting romantic relationships with her blood relatives all drive her to despair
Natsuhi (45) discovers that Kinzo is dead. Krauss (50) confesses to embezzling his father’s wealth and tells her that he may face criminal charges for it. She decides to maintain the illusion that he is alive until Krauss can fix their financial situation
1985:
George (22) graduates from college. He begins working at his father’s company to gain business experience
Gohda is dismissed from his job working at a high end hotel due to a dispute between the staff and the management and his involvement in an affair. He has difficulty finding work in the restaurant industry and decides to apply to work for the Ushiromiyas. Natsuhi (46) hires him
Gohda tells Sayo (18 pretending to be 15) that witches do not exist. In order to force him to believe she sets up a situation where he and Genji are the only two people on the island. After Gohda finishes cleaning the kitchen and leaves, Genji creates an occult sculpture using paint and kitchen supplies then summons Gohda, pretends to have discovered it, and asks for help cleaning it up. Afterwards Gohda does not disrespect the witch out loud again
Jessica (17) asks Sayo (18 pretending to be 15) whether Kanon is single. Sayo is simultaneously overjoyed to be loved and disgusted at the incestuous nature of that love. Despite herself she begins to fall in love with Jessica as Kanon
Maria (8) attempts to teach Ange (4) about magic but Ange rejects her, driving her further into isolation
Natsuhi (46) manages to get through the family conference without anyone noticing that Kinzo is dead with the help of Genji (80s), Nanjo (80s), Kumasawa (80s), Sayo (18 pretending to be 15), and Krauss (51)
1986:
Sayo (18 going on 19 pretending to be 15 going on 16) completes middle school. In her complete despair she does not bother advancing to high school and chooses to drop out
Erika (15 going on 16) begins high school
Jessica (17 going on 18) runs for class president at her mother’s insistence and wins the election. She does not enjoy the position
George (23) takes Sayo (19 pretending to be 16) on a trip to Okinawa. She hopes that the trip will give her an opportunity to confess the truth to him but he doesn’t so much as touch her and the right moment to confess never arrives. He tells her that he plans to propose to her at the next family conference, completely driving her into a corner and leaving her with an unavoidable deadline coming up
Sayo (19 pretending to be 16) sets herself up on a culture festival date with Jessica (18). Afterwards Jessica confesses to her and Sayo rejects her. This is extraordinarily painful for her because she is in love with Jessica but she is convinced that the romance is doomed and too scared to try
Krauss (52) manages to put together an actually profitable real estate deal for once. He becomes convinced that if he can just hold on a little longer he will be able to repay all his debts and hide his criminal embezzlement
Hideyoshi (60s) attempts to list his company publicly. He fails to secure a majority stake and is attacked in a hostile takeover attempt, pushing him into a position where he needs to acquire an enormous amount of money to defend against it
Rudolf (45) attempts to expand his business overseas. He accidentally violates another major company’s intellectual property rights and enters a position where he needs to acquire an enormous amount of money to settle with them
Rosa’s (33) debt comes due, placing her in a position where she needs to acquire an enormous amount of money to pay it off
Battler (18) returns to the Ushiromiya family after Asumu’s parents die
Sayo (19 pretending to be 16) learns that Battler (18) will return and is driven completely mad by her hopeless situation and the combined weight of the family’s sins. She writes out countless murder suicide plans, creating fragment world after fragment world and transcends humanity, becoming a witch. Metafictionally, she becomes a miko of Lambdadelta who guarantees her power as long as her plan continues to have absolute certainty
Sayo (19 pretending to be 16) begins making extensive preparations for her murder game. She tests explosives from the stockpile under the island by blowing up the Rokkenjima shrine and practices firing guns extensively. She converts a billion yen worth of the gold to cash and sets up a series of postcards which will be sent to the families of the victims leading them to some of the money. Shortly before the family conference she places her murder fic in wine bottles and hurls it into the sea
The following people gather for the Ushiromiya family conference:
Ange (5 and a half but likes to say she’s 6) stays at home
Kinzo (80s) who has been dead for over a year but is kept alive as a ghost by Natsuhi’s efforts
Krauss (52), Natsuhi (47), and Jessica (18)
Eva (49 going on 50), Hideyoshi (60s), and George (23)
Rudolf (45), Kyrie (40s), and Battler (18)
Rosa (33), and Maria (9)
Nanjo (80s), Genji (80s), Kumasawa (80s), and Gohda (?)
Sayo (19 pretending to be 16)
Erika (16) falls off a boat near Rokkenjima. With the help of a miracle she could have drifted to the island
The family conference occurs and its events are locked away in a catbox forever when the mansion is destroyed in an explosion
Within the catbox the adults solve the epitaph and reach the room of the gold before Sayo can carry out her murder plans. A gunfight breaks out and Kyrie and Rudolf decide to slaughter everyone on the island, blow it all up, and run away with the bank card with a billion yen. Eva manages to stop them but is unable to save anyone to save anyone but herself and decides to blow the island up anyway to hide the truth. She escapes to Kuwadorian and survives the explosion
In the alternate timeline where Natsuhi raised Sayo as Lion, Kinzo is still alive and he holds a funeral for the two Beatrices in the morning. In the evening during the family conference his children argue with him over Lion becoming the head until he decides to give them the witch’s epitaph and tell them that if they can solve it they can have the headship. His children find the gold and the same events play out with the addition that Kyrie also kills Kinzo and Lion
Sayo survives the gunfight, changes her mind about committing murder suicide, rescues Battler, and confesses almost everything to him. The two of them escape through the secret tunnel to the submarine base and attempt to take a motorboat away from the island. Sayo jumps into the water to drown herself using a gold ingot as a weight and Battler leaps in after her. She dies, and he almost drowns
After pulling himself out of the water in a haze Battler is hit by a car and temporarily loses his memories. He’s saved by Hachijou Ikuko who gives him the new name Hachijou Tohya and functionally kidnaps him. Metafictionally Ushiromiya Battler and Yasuda Sayo drown together and become trapped in purgatory. Sayo decides to begin tormenting him with her witch games until he eventually remembers the truth
In a popular alternate interpretation Sayo survives the suicide attempt, adopts the identity of Hachijou Ikuko, and resolves to live with Battler for the rest of her life without ever revealing the truth to him
1987:
Ange (5 going on 6) begins elementary school
Eva (50s) becomes the Ushiromiya family head and is tormented by police investigations and media attacks. Everyone believes her to be the true culprit. However the police are never able to find any evidence and the massacre is formally ruled an accident
After the massacre, the families of the victims receive the mysterious postcards Sayo mailed out. None of them claim the money
Two of the message bottles containing Legend and Turn wash up and are found by the police. This causes the crime to be regarded as the work of a witch in the public eye. A large majority of the message bottles are lost at sea and never found
Eva takes guardianship of Ange. She desperately wants to love her and become her mother but the two of them are both deeply broken from grief and Ange is unable to trust Eva which slowly poisons their relationship. After a series of episodes where Eva screams and hits her for so long that she forgets why she was originally angry, Eva realizes that she’s going to destroy Ange’s life and decides to send her away rather than hurt her anymore. When Ange attempts to run away and go back to her grandfather’s house, Eva uses it as an excuse to send her to a boarding school
1980s:
Eva writes a secret diary describing the true events of the catbox
The true crime community around Rokkenjima becomes a large community of dedicated witch hunters. People begin forging message bottles to write fan fiction
Tohya slowly adjusts to his new life living with Ikuko and the two of them begin publishing mystery novels together. To celebrate completing their first book, Ikuko shares a third message bottle which she found on the beach containing Sayo’s full confession with him. He remembers his past as Battler but is unable to accept it as his own memories and resolves to continue his life as Tohya. In the alternate interpretation where Ikuko is Sayo she simply writes out her confession and claims to have found it in a message bottle
Tohya and Ikuko begin writing forgeries, continuing the metafictional narrative that began in Sayo’s two surviving games. Tohya falsely believes Eva to be the true culprit and begins his forgeries by writing Banquet, a narrative in which she murders everyone and survives. After reading his work, Eva realizes who he is, pays him a visit, and tells him the truth. She leaves the key to her diary with him in the hope that he might one day share it with Ange if she makes her way to him too
Tohya writes Alliance, End, and Dawn completing his metarrative and laying Sayo to rest. It’s not clear whether Requiem and Twilight are ever written in the real world at all and if so they’re certainly never published
1993:
Ange (11 going on 12) begins middle school
1990s:
Eva (50s) amasses an enormous fortune, surviving the collapse of the Japanese economy in the early 90s and becoming even richer than Kinzo once was. This is made even more impressive by the fact that she started with a small fraction of the capital he did
The witch hunter community unearths Rudolf and Kyrie’s criminal past and begins to accuse them of being the true culprits
Ange is utterly miserable and alone at boarding school where she is constantly bullied. She has Maria’s diary and begins to use it to retreat into delusions, summoning Maria’s ghost, Sakutaro, and the stakes as imaginary friends. Eventually she is attacked in a bullying incident so bad that it makes her want to kill everyone present and she is forced to abandon this coping mechanism when she realizes it provides her no power to affect reality
Eva, alone and dying of grief, becomes extremely sick and begins accusing people of poisoning her
1996:
Ange (14 going on 15) begins high school
1998:
Eva (62) dies, leaving her wealth to Ange (17 and a half but she likes to say she’s 18)
Ikuko acquires Eva’s diary and holds a witch hunter convention to unveil it. At the last minute she refuses to show it and walks out. This permanently defuses the enthusiasm around the Rokkenjima mystery by reminding the would-be witch hunters that what they are doing is nothing more than desecrating the memories of the dead
Ange (17 and a half but she likes to say she’s 18) attempts to contact Tohya (30). Tohya is too scared to see her directly but she meets with Ikuko who gives her the key to Eva’s diary and allows her to read the truth. She is driven completely into despair and jumps off the roof of a skyscraper but survives by landing in the safety netting. Metafictionally she goes on a vision quest to reconcile herself to the truth and become a witch of resurrection
After surviving the fall, Ange (17 and a half but she likes to say she’s 18) gives up the Ushiromiya fortune and adopts the new identity Kotobuki Yukari. She spends the rest of her life writing children’s books to pass on the lessons she’s learned
In an alternate timeline after surviving the fall Ange (17 and a half but she likes to say she’s 18) travels to Rokkenjima while accompanied by Amakusa, a bodyguard given to her by President Okonogi, and hunted by Kyrie’s younger sister Sumadera Kasumi. Shortly before reaching the island she deduces that Okonogi has cut a deal with the Sumaderas and Amakusa plans to kill both her and Kasumi in the isolated location and kills him before he has the opportunity. She embraces the mantle of the witch of truth and sets off on a journey to escape her fate for good, allowing the name Ushiromiya Ange to die just like in the main timeline
Decades Later
Ange uses her wealth from her career as a novelist to reestablish Fukuin House. When remodeling the building, she recreates the main hall of the Ushiromiya family mansion from memory even getting the artist who originally painted the portrait of Beatrice to create a duplicate for her
Tohya finally overcomes his fear of meeting his sister and identifies Kotobuki Yukari as Ange. He reaches out to her and the two are reunited at last. Metafictionally, Battler and Sayo reach the golden land and are freed from purgatory, ascending to heaven
Coming up next, welcome our sixth stellar Guest Contributor, Bela ( @belazarts ) !! Their pieces are a perfect blend of sweetness and spice, so please go check out their socials —! 🌟
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