Silent Hill f: Who is Mayumi Suzutani?

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Elena Chapella (She/Her) is a current Writer for DualShockers, formerly an award-winning journalist for local news stations and newspapers in central Indiana.

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Silent Hill f, in true Silent Hill fashion, is filled to the brim with details and lore, giving players much to chew on and even more to swallow. For a series that's notorious for foreshadowing in details, it's only natural for the series' latest entry to give fans all the more reason the replay the game again and again.

One of these little details we find at the very beginning of the game: a missing persons poster for a young girl named Mayumi Suzutani.

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While, at first, it just seems like something to build tension alongside the dark, lonely tone that permeates, the reality is something much deeper, and so much cooler. To put it simply, Mayumi plays a much larger role than we initially would think, holding up a mirror to the turmoil that we're about to endure.

That just leaves players wondering, apart from who she is exactly, what does her story mean for us?

This article will contain spoilers for Silent Hill f and its endings.

Who Exactly is Mayumi?

A Missing Girl with Missing Information

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We first learn about Mayumi Suzutani at the start of the game, right after speaking to Sakuko for the first time. Walking a little past her house and on the immediate left, there will be a board with papers on it, one of which is a Missing Person poster. This poster is for Mayumi, detailing what she was wearing last before she vanished. The exact details of her disappearance (such as who she was seen with last and what she was doing) is missing, as the rest of the paper is ripped off.

Hinako even makes a comment about this, with no idea of what this means in relation to her.

Later, when we get to the Dark Shrine for the first time, you'll find yourself wandering darkened holy lands while trying to solve the Shrine Vault puzzle. While you're running around, you'll find various documents and messages around the area, warning you about how this is the land of the dead.

One of these messages stands out, though -- a mournful apology to parents who won't even get to read it: "Mom, Dad ... I don't think I'll make it home. I just wish I could see you one last time ... —Mayumi."

Suddenly, we see that Mayumi didn't up and vanish under mysterious circumstances (to everyone else, she did, but that's not the point). Instead, she's here, at Heaven's Benediction, and we have no idea why. It doesn't spell good news for her, but we suddenly have an idea of where she went.

Then, when we get to the Dark Shrine for the second time (where Sakuko will be our boss fight), we'll stumble into a room with portraits of various women without faces, including Hinako herself. Right next to Hinako is another girl, however, wearing a white blouse, a long navy skirt, with a beige neckerchief with black polka dots -- the exact outfit that Mayumi is described to have been wearing in her Missing Person poster.

Suddenly, there's a correlation between Hinako and Mayumi, as well as countless other unnamed women that ended up in this situation that we're fighting through -- one with terrifying implications for the whole game.

What Made Mayumi Special?

An Ending Gives It Away

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While you play through the game, you keep finding sections of a document titled: A Perspective on Hierogamy, which details the marriage between gods and mortals. We don't get the full document until at least our third playthrough, however, with many players learning about the game's happenings through a different method: the endings.

Specifically, when obtaining the Ebisugaoka in Silence ending, a lore bomb is dropped: that once in a blue moon, humankind will produce a girl with extraordinary divine power. When she's born, a spell is cast upon the Tsuneki clan's successor (in this case, it's Kotoyuki, AKA Fox Mask) that completely bewitches him, making him to go seek out this girl with divine power and to make her his wife.

With this, we're able to piece together that Hinako, much like Alessa Gillespie, was born with that divine power. Similarly to Alessa, she was then preyed on by the divine, as well as by the fanatics who would stop at nothing to protect their agenda.

Other documents, such as the Messy Scrawls, seem to be written by Inari (the Fox God) himself, or a different, past heir of the Tsuneki clan. These documents make references to "the last girl" or "the previous girl," or other phrases of the same meaning, and given the context of the ending, we know exactly what he's talking about: past wives.

Suddenly, the image of all the previous women without faces pops into mind, and it's clear that Mayumi is another girl with divine power, targeted for marriage by Inari.

Inari, it seems, has a collection of these divine brides, and suddenly, the happenings in A Perspective on Hierogamy start to make more sense -- especially once it's revealed that these documents were written by Mayumi herself. Suddenly, it went from being almost a research paper to diary entries, giving Hinako a roadmap of where her future is headed.

What Does this Mean for Hinako?

Very Simply: Foreshadowing

Silent Hill f Hinako in White Beauty in Terror

The very existence of Mayumi Suzutani serves as foreshadowing for Hinako's story and why she was even in this situation in the first place. Returning to the document A Perspective on Hierogamy, Mayumi details her thoughts and questions about why she was chosen by Inari for marriage. She even wonders what would happen if marrying a god was actually a horrific ordeal, and given the themes of the game, it's an excellent nod to the horror we're facing.

Throughout the writings, we learn that it had been a few years since Mayumi had gotten married, and she can't shake the questions that's been clouding her mind. While she was initially excited for the marriage and honored to be chosen, she wondered what it was that made her so special -- that is, until her father-in-law told her that her blood was blessed by the stars.

Turns out, there exists rare, non-ABO blood types, which is indeed a real phenomenon, and it seemed that Mayumi possessed this kind of rare blood. Perhaps it's the reason for her divine power, but it also implies that Hinako has the same rare mutation. Women with this special blood are chosen for marriage in order to maintain an ongoing relationship with Inari, who is believed to be keeping the entirety of Ebisugaoka safe from the Water Dragon (the geysers spewing toxic gas). This is why, when we reject him, Ebisugaoka is gassed and residents are made to evacuate.

On the final page, Mayumi wonders who will be after her and mentions that she's willing to do whatever she can to help them transition to their new life -- cut to Hinako at the beginning of the game.

Mayumi's entire plotline is the map that Hinako is supposed to follow; whether she does or not depends on the players' actions and the different endings. While Mayumi herself isn't present anywhere in the game, she haunts the narrative like the ghost she is, and it makes the game all the more chilling because of it.