Realizing he hasn’t had a chance to give Gary his backstory yet, Yosuke reveals that he moved to Inaba from a big city six months ago, just like Gary (ZOMG SOULMATES!!!111). His dad was assigned to manage this branch of Junes, so the whole family had to relocate. Chie mentions that she’s hardly visited the local shopping district since the Junes outlet opened because most of the small, family-run stores there have been driven out of business. That’s it, Junes is now Walmart.
Yosuke gets defensive, partly because Chie is blaming his dad for destroying local businesses, but mostly because he wants her to take the hint and leave him and Gary alone. As if one vagina coming between them wasn’t enough, another girl now wanders into shot. She’s wearing a Junes Walmart apron, so at least she has a good reason to be here. Spotting her, Yosuke cries “Hey…it’s Saki-senpai! Be right back.” Now, my knowledge of the Japanese honorifics system is limited at best (what do you expect from a 12 year old?) but from what I do understand, the use of “senpai” here would indicate that this girl is Yosuke’s senior classmate. In other words, completely platonic. However, this doesn’t stop Gary from getting jealous. “Is she Yosuke’s girlfriend?” he asks of Chie accusingly as Yosuke heads over to his potential love rival. “He wishes!” Chie replies. Ouch, what was that? Oh, it was just the dagger in Gary’s heart. Carry on.
Not noticing the dejected look on Gary’s face, Chie reveals that the girl, Saki Konishi, works here part-time even though her family runs a liquor store in the aforementioned shopping district. Right now, I think me and her family would get along just fine. Yosuke asks if she’s alright, as she seems beat, to which she replies that she’s just taking her break. Gary immediately notices two things about Saki; her voice is incredibly grating, and she looks like an anime-fied Taylor Swift. As if he needed any more reasons to dislike her. “What’s up, Hana-chan? Boosting the family business by bringing your friends here?” she asks. She’s kind of a bitch.
‘Just writing a new song about this guy who, like, totally dumped me, and now we are never, ever, ever getting back together, like, ever!’
“Madam, you wound me!” Yosuke replies with a wink. Is he…flirting?! Gary is the one who’s wounded, Yosuke. Taylor Konishi is still staring at her shoes, so Yosuke again asks her what’s up. She brushes him off, saying she’s just tired, but then lets slip “Why’d I leave school early yesterday…?” Hey, I wonder what happened. Hopefully she didn’t discover a dead body hanging from a TV antenna, like that unnamed other girl who left school early yesterday.
Gary is very pointedly not making eye contact with Taylor, but she insists on coming over to introduce herself anyway. “It must be nice to have someone else from the big city to talk to, huh?” she asks, glancing between Gary and Yosuke, then tells Gary that Yosuke doesn’t have too many friends. “I don’t see Hana-chan hanging out with the other guys much…” she says. Well, that’s exactly what he would be doing if it wasn’t for you two harpies, so just go away and leave him to get on with it already.
But she’s not finished assassinating Yosuke’s character yet. “He can get nosy sometimes,” she continues. “You gotta tell him right to his face when he starts to annoy you.” Does that little philosophy apply to everyone, or just Yosuke? ‘Cos Gary has a few things he’d like to say to her right now. Actually, he gets a dialogue option at this exact moment, but “Fuck off, you shrill hag” is unfortunately not one of the available choices. Instead, he chooses to defend Yosuke’s personality (how romantic!), then Taylor laughs and admits he’s actually a nice guy. “Yeah, he is. So back the fuck off”, Gary doesn’t quite reply. Thankfully for everyone involved, Taylor’s break is now over, so back to work she goes, possibly to write a faux-country ballad with terrible lyrics about that one time when Yosuke looked at her strangely and, like, totally ruined her life.
‘Yukiko and I stumbled upon it when we were looking for Bang Babes XXX!. You guys are gonna love it!’
Once Taylor has left, Yosuke sighs that she treats him like her little brother. Chie wonders why he doesn’t want her treating him like her brother, then goes “Oh, I get it. The daughter of a local family-run liquor store and the scion of the invading chain…The flame of forbidden love!” Shut up, Chie. “Wha-?! Dude, it’s not like that” Yosuke protests, blushing. Is she trying to make Gary jealous?! Chie is undeterred, claiming she knows “just the thing to cheer up [his] lovesick heart” — something called the Midnight Channel. Uh, if she’s trying to hit him up with some gay porn, I get the feeling she’s a little behind the times.
Contrary to what its name might imply, apparently the Midnight Channel is a local urban legend. Supposedly, if a person looks into a switched-off TV at midnight on a rainy night, their soulmate will appear on the screen. “What? For a second, I thought you were actually going to say something useful,” Yosuke snarks as payback for all the teasing Chie’s given him today. She gets all huffy because he doesn’t believe in the legend and then suggests that they all try it tonight to see who’s right. “Wait, you haven’t even tried it yourself?!” Yosuke laughs, making Chie fume. Because we haven’t had a conversation about yesterday’s murder for around half an hour, he brings it up again, wondering if the killer is still at large. Chie yells at him not to joke about things like that, then, just before the screen blacks out, she tells him and Gary they’d better try the Midnight Channel ritual tonight. I’m sure this is going to end well.
Later, Gary has yet another TV dinner with Nanako. Well, this hardly compares to the meaty buffet he was promised by Yosuke, but at least he’s giving the poor girl some company. Amazingly, though, Hot Uncle actually decides to come home at a decent hour. For once, Nanako yells at him for being late back (sounding creepily like his wife) and his only excuse is that he had a busy day in work. Yeah, really busy. I bet he had Adachi take a whole lot of dictation. Flopping down on the couch, he asks Nanako “Can you put the news on for me?” because apparently he’s so fucking exhausted he can’t even pick up the remote. As coincidence would have it, Nanako turns on the news just in time to hear the announcer recount, for the benefit of those of us who’ve been asleep for the past few hours, the entire sorry MYS. I feel like I’ve heard this story more times than I’ve heard my own name by now, but that doesn’t stop the game designers from repeating it yet again. I love this game to death, but it really needs to stop treating its players like idiots with the attention span of a gnat.
*beats self to death*
It gets even worse. As though slyly waiting for the chance to pounce, the Invisible Narrator stays silent until the newscaster has finished his spiel, then instantly hits Gary with yet another reminder of Mayumi Fucking Yamano’s colourful private life: “When Ms Yamano, the TV announcer, was alive, she was having an affair with a councilman’s secretary…the man’s wife seems to be Misuzu Hiiragi, an enka singer…” NO! I don’t think my heart can take these shocking plot twists! “Could the incident be tied to their lover’s quarrel…?” the IN finishes, obviously referring to Mayumi’s body turning up. I’m getting to the point where I feel like hanging myself from the nearest TV antenna — maybe then the game would repeat the details of my life and death to Gary for all eternity, too.
I was ranting so much that I missed the next part of the news broadcast, but apparently the reporter managed to snag an interview with the girl who found Mayumi’s corpse. This is so unexpected, guys. You’ll never guess who it is.
A blurry picture of the witness appears on the screen as the reporter asks her, a little too eagerly, “Could you tell she was dead? Did you see her face?” The girl’s voice and face are distorted to protect her identity, but her wavy blonde hair is very familiar to Gary. “You feel like you’ve seen her somewhere before…” coaxes the IN Yeah, like five minutes ago. Taylor — sorry, I mean the unidentified witness — doesn’t seem to have much to say, which is just as well, because the reporter doesn’t give her much of a chance to speak. “Don’t you think it’s scary that someone was killed on a foggy day?” he asks, because this whole situation would clearly have been less scary if Mayumi had been killed, say, in the blazing sunshine. Seriously, WTF is that question all about?
“Huh? She was killed?” the witness dumbasses, making Gary roll his eyes. Probably. The Invisible Narrator then draws attention to the resemblance between this girl and Taylor, taking this sorry scenario to a new level. I mean, Gary would have to be blind not to notice that the girl on the screen is Taylor; even I can tell it’s her, in spite of the tiny picture on the screen and the blurred vision from all the vodka. The two news announcers continue to spew sensationalist bullshit at each other for a few moments, theorizing that Mayumi’s murder was “a warning or omen” from the killer. Or, you know, maybe someone just didn’t like her very much. I didn’t even know the woman, and I’d be tempted to acquit her killer at this rate.
More wild speculation from the newscasters. One of them wonders why nobody has come forward to claim responsibility for the killing yet. Uh, maybe because he or she doesn’t want to get caught? Hot Uncle mutters that the police station has received dozens of prank calls, however. I bet it really pisses him off to have to interrupt…whatever he and Adachi are doing in order to answer the phone. The newscasters continue their endless babbling, moving on to the subject of how incompetent the Inaba police force is, but luckily Hot Uncle has fallen asleep by this point. I feel like I won’t be far behind him. After the traditional Nanako singalong to the Walmart jingle, Gary finally escapes and heads to his room.
We switch to anime mode as Gary stares into his tiny TV, hoping to prove Chie wrong over the whole Midnight Channel thing — although a part of him is hoping that Yosuke will appear, since the viewer is supposed to see their soulmate and all. Whaddaya know — the image of a person does appear on the screen at the stroke of midnight, but sadly it isn’t Yosuke. Much like the blurred, indistinct image of Taylor on the news report, Gary can’t quite make out the individual’s identity, but he or she seems to have long, wavy hair and is standing in front of some backlit chiller cabinets, not unlike those found at a liquor store. Hmm, I’ve tried, but I can’t seem to fit these puzzle pieces together. Help me out here, guys?
Like the vision Gary previously had of Mayumi Fucking Yamano, the person on the TV seems to be engaged in some kind of struggle. Given what happened to Mayumi the following day, this doesn’t bode well for Tayl–uh, the mystery person on the screen. Gary suddenly clutches his forehead and falls to his knees, suffering from another of his mysterious headaches (you should really see a doctor about that, Gary). Once he’s recovered, he approaches the TV, which is now showing a blank screen, and reaches out to touch it. To his surprise, though, his arm goes right through the screen. No, I don’t mean he’s a little over-zealous and smashes the glass; his hand actually passes through the screen as if it’s a pool of water. Switch back to regular gameplay mode. A black-and-white ripple effect spreads out across the screen as Gary is drawn closer, until his head is inside the screen, too. Now he’s freaked out, so tries to withdraw, but something from the other side appears to be pulling him in. Eventually he does manage to free himself, falling backward and bashing the back of his head against a table. That’ll be yet another headache, then.
‘You can now turn the TV back on and retrieve your wanking sock from under the bed!’
Apparently the crash was loud enough to wake Nanako, who asks if he’s OK. Having said that, there’s a high probability she was still up ironing her dad’s shirt for tomorrow, so Gary doesn’t feel quite so guilty about making so much noise. Still trying to comprehend what just happened, he decides to discuss it with Chie and Yosuke tomorrow.
‘I also use healing crystals and believe I’m the reincarnation of Queen Nefertiti! I’m so different and interesting!!!’
Before that, though, time to meet another of Yasogami High’s…unique faculty members! Ms Sofue is Gary’s new History teacher, and for some ungodly reason she’s dressed as an ancient Egyptian. Is this what they call “method teaching”? Proclaiming herself “an expert on world history”, Ms Sofue picks on Gary for her first question of the lecture. Correctly answering that A.D. began when Jesus was born, even though he’s totally agnostic at heart, Gary once again learns that his Knowledge has increased. And that’s it for this school day. God, I wish I’d gone to Yasogami High — students only seem to spend about ten minutes a day in class.
Once class is dismissed, the students resume their now-usual routine of gossiping about Mayumi Fucking Yamano’s death. Jesus, don’t they have any other interests? One random girl declares that it’s “messed up” that the body was hanging upside down, causing her friend to wonder if the killer was trying to mimic an execution. Ah, yes, that method of execution long since lost to antiquity, “hanging upside down from a television antenna”. And I thought the brazen bull was barbaric! Yosuke approaches Gary and starts to tell him about something he saw on the TV last night, but then changes his mind and says it doesn’t matter. We all know damn-well he saw exactly the same thing Gary did, so I won’t insult you by trying to pretend otherwise. Let’s see how long the game keeps it up for, shall we?