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Old 2009-07-06, 16:25   Link #15
Shinndou
魂を踊らすように
 
 
Join Date: May 2006
Location: London, UK
Age: 39
"The two" doesn't necessarily refer to "people" though. It's a riddle, so let's not forget that there's metaphors in it, including that sentence.

I'll post a theory/interpretation that a friend of mine and me came up with. It shouldn't be spoilerish since it doesn't really contain infos on the game's plot:

Supposing that the sentence "follow the river downstream" is actually referring to the Ushiromiya's descendence, in the bit of the riddle where it talks about finding the village (里) it's basically saying that we need to focus our attention on Maria's name (真里亞). So, keeping that in mind and going on with the following lines, we combine the kanjis 二 and 口 from the sentence "二人が口にし" (the two will tell you) and we obtain the kanji 目.
Now, following the riddle, a shore is a portion that's between land and sea. It's telling us to look for it ("岸を探せ"). Keeping in mind Maria's name as well, the kanji 目is contained in 真. So this is the "shore". In this shore (meaning in this kanji), we have to look for the "Key".

Here's the creepy curiosity about the last bit: the origin of the kanji 真. It was originally meant to indicate a corpse that lays upside down, the lower part of the kanji should depict the hair sticking out from the beheaded corpse. The story behind it says that the man who died this way became a ghost and possessed a strong spiritual force. Then the spirit of this deceased man was caged inside a sanctuary, in order to calm him and purify him.

Among the most popular meaning/uses for the kanji 真 there's "reality", "truth", "genuine", "pure" and all things related to this. Could this be a way to say "please find the truth?"

Last edited by Shinndou; 2009-07-06 at 17:22.
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