Missing Girl - Vol. 1 Ch. 5 - Where's the girl?

[MangaDex]

 

[MerlinD]

 

[GuildMasterJin]

based on the other guy's reaction I'd guess Chiaki (the girl) is a halucination of Nakayama Ryouhei (protag).

Now my next question(if the first assumption is correct) is whether she got killed by her abusive parents or by Nakayama

Also since the series is called Missing Girl that would also call into question: where is her body assuming the first is correct?

 

[justsomeguywhoreadsmanga]

based on the other guy's reaction I'd guess Chiaki (the girl) is a halucination of Nakayama Ryouhei (protag).

Now my next question(if the first assumption is correct) is whether she got killed by her abusive parents or by Nakayama

Also since the series is called Missing Girl that would also call into question: where is her body assuming the first is correct?

I don’t know about that, author is making her being an hallucination born from Ryouhei’s feeling of guilt too obvious. "He’s crazy.", the whole bulky cop sidestory visiting his house, the guy being known to talk to himself alone...

I’d like to believe author-san is baiting us to think that. He has an history with baits after all. Maybe Chiaki is a ghost or maybe she’s just not the way she appears (i.e., she’s not actually a little girl, but a fully grown adult or something).

I don’t have any story element to back up that theory, quite the opposite, but it just feels weird. We’re on chapter 5 and it’s made way too evident that MC is linked to the child’s disappearance, what would be the author’s end game? Maybe it’s meant to be a short manga but wouldn’t you usually keep that kind of revelation for later? I dunno, I might just be dumb.


Anyway, thanks for the TL! This manga is exactly what I’ve been looking for in the past. Can’t wait to read more.

 

[GuildMasterJin]

I’d like to believe author-san is baiting us to think that. He has an history with baits after all. Maybe Chiaki is a ghost or maybe she’s just not the way she appears (i.e., she’s not actually a little girl, but a fully grown adult or something).

mm tbh I can see that. I haven't read the author's previous works so you'd have more perspective in that sense. I'm also hoping that it's a red-herring because otherwise the previous chapters rather than being subtle, they'd be flawed for being too obvious.

what would be the author’s end game? Maybe it’s meant to be a short manga but wouldn’t you usually keep that kind of revelation for later?

these are also good points that I didn't think of till you mentioned them. We know Nakayama's current goal but not the author's goal(besides this manga being a mystery series).

 

[alfirizkyr]

So far, the girl had been able to operate on her own: moving things like the noose, spilling coffee over the notebook and later drenching it with water, all separately from Ryohei. There was also a whole segment about the Creep seeing his phone, where she typed into the Notes for him to see.

It was worth noting that she did not interact with people directly, though. No one also seemed to be able to see her, with the Creep calling him crazy and his landlord saying he saw Ryohei talking to himself at nights outside.

The Detective thought it's not a simple case of assault, so for now I'm leaning towards the ghost end of things. Still not sure how it all connects, though.

 

[xanketsu]

There's also the possibility of Unreliable Narrator; what is shown to us may or may not happen as is.

 

[jrocker]

I feel like she's definitely the ghost or a guilt he has, but I'm wondering if what we know about our MC and the cause of her death will be a twist. Like he actually had nothing to do but witnessed her suffer under her parents or other kids and she was killed/killed herself that causes him this sense of guilt and lead him to be insane.

Could also be a very unreliable narrator where the whole cop thing is a big red herring and the girl is actually alive and represents him in some way like the childhood he lost. Even when the cops were looking, it didn't seem they were looking for our MC but her.

 

[TwisterJR]

I'm more convinced the girl is a hallucination or smth

 

[MamaPanther]

I don't believe the girl is a simple hallucination - not unless this is an extended prologue for a different story, or the writer is a hack. There's too many signs that point to her existence.

The police officer has a picture of her; the noose wasn't where it was meant to be; the fat guy clearly walked up and responded to something while he was gone; and something ruined his book in this chapter. This is all clear evidence for her having been identifiable by people in the past, and of something other than the guy having an influence on the world around him.

Now, some of these things could have a mundane explanation. Perhaps the noose doesn't exist either, perhaps the fat guy was just thinking of stealing his phone, and perhaps he ruined the book himself and had another mini-breakdown while his broken mind concocted another explanation for what happened. But those go beyond a simple Sixth-Sense "actually something else was going on the whole time!" twist, and straight into "The author was actively lying to you while wasting multiple chapters doing nothing but distract you from the obvious conclusion" territory. Simply put, there would be no reason to explain these points if the author hadn't chosen to include them, and there are much more subtle situations one could use if he was simply meant to be crazy.

Especially since we actually saw things from her perspective for a brief period. That would be a massive violation of author-reader trust if she straight-up didn't exist, since that couldn't be explained as him hallucinating. That would be the author just directly writing an exchange that never happened.

That said, it does seem clear that she's not corporeally there. Her existence in the car at all doesn't make any sense if that were so - it breaks credulity that, as he ran off pursued by co-workers, that she could or would follow and hop into the car without him noticing. Similarly, playing hide-and-seek with the cops, or the way fatso never tried to justify himself or ask for her help in explaining things... She could just have a bad case of Manic Pixie Dream Girl going on while nobody else bothers to talk to a kid, but it's pretty unnatural if that's so. Plus; the diary.

Which leads me to my own personal conclusion; she's some kind of malevolent supernatural entity. The guy has a sudden, severe deterioration in his mental condition, as he ends up involved with a girl that nobody else interacts with... Combined with the drawing in his journal of a girl with a horrifying face, drawn on a field of black. That sounds consistent with her eating his SAN points to me. I mean, what kind of person just hauls off and assaults their boss before running off to kill themselves instead of just... Quitting? Just not showing up for work one day? I mean, he wouldn't have to worry about the cops interrupting his pitiful little bucket list ("go to the beach and reread your favorite book"? Really? The guy certainly aims low... "Learn to play the guitar" was the only thing on that list that wouldn't fit into a lazy weekend) if he just hadn't punched his boss. And nothing else on his list seems consistent with that kind of violent assault.

It's possible that this relationship is reversed, granted; perhaps he witnessed something terrible happen to her (or did something horrible), and that's her lying in anguish on a pool of blood... But he never saw her outside his breaks. When would he have heard about her murder? And would that really have led to this kind of slow breakdown instead of acting as the breaking point on his already stressed life? Unless, of course, he did stalk and murder her himself, and this is him breaking down from lack of relief... But, well, it doesn't seem consistent with almost any of the rest of his personality. His unnecessarily violent outburst, perhaps, the fact that he can't remember how he started talking to the girl could suggest he's suppressing other things, and the clear difference between him and how the witnesses perceive him... But it seems too early to suggest that he could be a murderer.

But if she isn't at least (in either direction) a ghost on the sliding scale of "real to not real", then I'll admit to being a bit disappointed and confused by some of the writing decisions.

 

[justsomeguywhoreadsmanga]

I don't believe the girl is a simple hallucination - not unless this is an extended prologue for a different story, or the writer is a hack. There's too many signs that point to her existence.

The police officer has a picture of her; the noose wasn't where it was meant to be; the fat guy clearly walked up and responded to something while he was gone; and something ruined his book in this chapter. This is all clear evidence for her having been identifiable by people in the past, and of something other than the guy having an influence on the world around him.

Now, some of these things could have a mundane explanation. Perhaps the noose doesn't exist either, perhaps the fat guy was just thinking of stealing his phone, and perhaps he ruined the book himself and had another mini-breakdown while his broken mind concocted another explanation for what happened. But those go beyond a simple Sixth-Sense "actually something else was going on the whole time!" twist, and straight into "The author was actively lying to you while wasting multiple chapters doing nothing but distract you from the obvious conclusion" territory. Simply put, there would be no reason to explain these points if the author hadn't chosen to include them, and there are much more subtle situations one could use if he was simply meant to be crazy.

Especially since we actually saw things from her perspective for a brief period. That would be a massive violation of author-reader trust if she straight-up didn't exist, since that couldn't be explained as him hallucinating. That would be the author just directly writing an exchange that never happened.

That said, it does seem clear that she's not corporeally there. Her existence in the car at all doesn't make any sense if that were so - it breaks credulity that, as he ran off pursued by co-workers, that she could or would follow and hop into the car without him noticing. Similarly, playing hide-and-seek with the cops, or the way fatso never tried to justify himself or ask for her help in explaining things... She could just have a bad case of Manic Pixie Dream Girl going on while nobody else bothers to talk to a kid, but it's pretty unnatural if that's so. Plus; the diary.

Which leads me to my own personal conclusion; she's some kind of malevolent supernatural entity. The guy has a sudden, severe deterioration in his mental condition, as he ends up involved with a girl that nobody else interacts with... Combined with the drawing in his journal of a girl with a horrifying face, drawn on a field of black. That sounds consistent with her eating his SAN points to me. I mean, what kind of person just hauls off and assaults their boss before running off to kill themselves instead of just... Quitting? Just not showing up for work one day? I mean, he wouldn't have to worry about the cops interrupting his pitiful little bucket list ("go to the beach and reread your favorite book"? Really? The guy certainly aims low... "Learn to play the guitar" was the only thing on that list that wouldn't fit into a lazy weekend) if he just hadn't punched his boss. And nothing else on his list seems consistent with that kind of violent assault.

It's possible that this relationship is reversed, granted; perhaps he witnessed something terrible happen to her (or did something horrible), and that's her lying in anguish on a pool of blood... But he never saw her outside his breaks. When would he have heard about her murder? And would that really have led to this kind of slow breakdown instead of acting as the breaking point on his already stressed life? Unless, of course, he did stalk and murder her himself, and this is him breaking down from lack of relief... But, well, it doesn't seem consistent with almost any of the rest of his personality. His unnecessarily violent outburst, perhaps, the fact that he can't remember how he started talking to the girl could suggest he's suppressing other things, and the clear difference between him and how the witnesses perceive him... But it seems too early to suggest that he could be a murderer.

But if she isn't at least (in either direction) a ghost on the sliding scale of "real to not real", then I'll admit to being a bit disappointed and confused by some of the writing decisions.

You wrote all that beautifully. I agree, I also believe she can’t just be a hallucination. I like your "malevolent entity" theory, hadn’t thought about it at all and it would be a pretty fun twist if she turned to be evil and all of her cutesy act was revealed to be in order to hurt Ryouhei better.

But I’ll disagree with the violence outburst thing. I don’t believe it was caused by anybody -- I take it you never worked at a factory? It’s 8 hours a day of pretty hard, manual labor and it gets especially exhausting if you happen to be a gullible guy that gets the worst tasks pushed on you by older employees in a better position than yours. Ryouhei was that guy for over a decade, no? I’ve been doing that for 2 months and I already want to murder some people I work with, so I understand him wanting to set things straight with that fat bastard. It’s true it complicates his "goal" and it’s stupid but that’s very humane behavior.

 

[diasenreds]

I think the MC accidentally killed her with his car. the clue is:
1. the drawing of the girl with pool of blood in his diary
2. in chapter 4 page 4, she said "i dont know why but the top of this car is kinda soothing, it feels like as if I've been here before" she might be accidentally rammed by the MC and she died on top of his car, as she slowly dying she finally feel free from her suffering.

 

[Yoesanera]

Bitch this escalated to every random way possible

 

[Remy88Lebeau]

She looked worried that he would do something to her. I also thought she meddled with his stuff because she knows his end goal and trying to keep him from doing it. That fat guy just made things more difficult to put down on what is reality.