Komari Kamikita/History

Visual Novel

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Happiness

 * At the beginning of her route Riki finds her in her traditional hideout: the off-limits rooftop. There she’s poring over a picture book, supposedly written by a vaguely remembered brother whose whereabouts are unknown. Riki discusses the odd story with her, as they’ve done before in Common route scenes. A chicken, born from an egg, forgets that it was an egg. The chicken lays an egg that itself forgets it was inside a chicken. The story continues in repeat. Leaving this mystery aside, Riki resolves to find Komari’s brother.


 * The next day Kyousuke proposes that Riki takes Komari out to a cafe as thanks for the pancake party. Plus treating Komari to a super ultimate sundae that Kyousuke’s hard dishwashing work paid for.


 * Later Komari tells Riki about her volunteer work at a local nursing home where she keeps old people company. Touched by her kindness, Riki decides to help her out for a day. There he meets an old man named Kojirou, who usually admits no one to see him. They speak of nothing much, but Riki’s curiosity is piqued as he observes that Kojirou, who happens to have the same surname as Komari, takes special care not to meet her.

Revealing Family

 * Riki and Komari sneak out to the rooftop at night to watch a meteor shower. They bask in the simple beauty and Riki praises Komari for having eyes that can find beautiful things. The next day he finds her napping away the afternoon on the rooftop. After waking, Komari reveals an apparently recurring dream of a bright, wide expanse with fluttering white shapes. Riki does some investigation on the nature of dreams and later concludes that the scene may be a hospital rooftop, perhaps related to Komari’s brother somehow.


 * He visits Kojirou again. Kojirou reveals that Komari’s brother did in fact stay at this very nursing home back when it was a hospital. He then leaves Riki with a warning to not get any further involved in Komari’s past.


 * Riki and Komari go boating on a lake and have a good time until the conversation returns to Komari's brother. Riki, suspecting he is dead, tells Komari that she can forget about him, and that Riki himself will be her brother from now on. After the date they volunteer at the nursing home again. Riki meets Kojirou there in an uneventful caretaking session where they both consider Komari's issue tabled.


 * It is raining on the way back from the nursing home. By the roadside Komari finds a dead kitten. She soon enters an uncontrollable fit of crying followed by an aberrant listlessness as Riki drags her back to the dorms. Komari remains empty eyed and makes no motion to return to the girls' dorms so Riki takes her to his room and enlists Kurugaya to get Komari dried and changed. He returns to find that Komari's memories of her brother have returned.

Bad Memories

 * Komari's brother Takuya had been ill since Komari was a little girl. She often visited him at the hospital, where he would read picture books to her. They also played on the hospital rooftop, among laundry drying in the sun and wind. As his condition deteriorated, he was moved to a larger branch hospital. He needed to sleep most of the time, so Komari's time with him declined as well. Despite his health, he managed to write the picture book that Komari now kept as a treasure. One night they went stargazing on the hospital rooftop. The shooting stars reminded Komari of The Little Match Girl, which Takuya read to her when she was younger. Komari worried that Takuya might one day also become a shooting star, so Takuya told her that if any such hardship occurred, she could treat it as a dream and forget it. Later that night Takuya died in his hospital bed coughing blood and holding a soundly sleeping Komari.


 * Now that she remembers Takuya, Komari flits between depression and an eerie mock-normalcy, marred by the fact that she now treats Riki as her brother. In her confusion she even brings the picture book Takuya gave her to the rooftop in the rain, drenching it while telling Riki that everything is fine because what she remembered must have been a dream. Riki is shocked and goes to Kojirou for help. Kojirou reveals that he is in fact Komari's grandfather, and that this forgetting and substituting in the face of grief occurred in his generation too. Komari's grandmother used to be in love with Kojirou's brother until that brother died. From then on she forgot all about it and replaced Kojirou's dead brother with Kojirou himself. From time to time she remembered when faced with triggers such as death or blood, but that always lapsed into dreams. Kojirou could only indulge in this escapism, and he used his health as a way to escape dealing with Komari's current problems.


 * With a clearer picture of Komari's condition, Riki resolves to help her somehow, but he doesn't quite know how. He visits the local graveyard and prays at Takuya's grave, hoping for some inspiration from Komari's dead brother. Incidentally, he sees someone who looks like Kengo while he's there. Riki gains no answers from the grave, but nevertheless sets out on a childlike path. Inspired by Takuya, Riki decides to write a picture book. It turns out technically quite poor, but Riki is undeterred. He confronts Komari on the rooftop, gives her the picture book, and urges her to accept the truth. He refers to Takuya's chicken and egg story and says that the chicken must remember in the end. Komari is still afraid of a world without her brother, but Riki reminds her that he is here, even though Takuya is gone. Riki confesses his love and promises that together they will find beauty and happiness in the world.