[G]
SPOILERS FOLLOW!
DON'T READ UNTIL YOU'VE FINISHED THE GAME!
Kirie was the last Rope Miko to be torn apart by the Strangling Ritual. She was chosen at the age of maybe 8 or 9 years, and was utterly cut off from the outside world for the next ten years. She was kept in a small room in the attic with a single window looking out over the Cherry Atrium. The word used for her attic cell in Japanese is ~S - zashikirou, an Edo-period room for confining criminals and lunatics. o.o;;; The only people she saw were members of the Himuro household, and probably not for very long, so that she wouldn't become attached to them, and was only allowed outside on certain days. The four priests seem to have been responsible for her proper upbringing.
Shortly before the Strangling Ritual was to have taken place (the spring before, judging from all the cherry trees in bloom), a visitor came to the Himuro household. The young man saw Kirie looking out at him from her attic cell and waved to her, and after that they started spending a lot of time together. Kirie became very fond of him, so much so that the Master and the priests noticed and began to worry that she would lose her ability to be the Rope Miko. If Kirie didn't want to fulfill her duty by dying as a Rope Miko, the ritual would fail and the Calamity would occur. So they had the young man killed and his body tossed in the Abyss, and told Kirie that he had gone home.
Kirie eventually figured out what had happened to the man she loved, and became extremely depressed and anxious. As the Master had feared, she didn't want to die anymore and felt miserable that she had caused the death of an innocent man. The Strangling Ritual occured on the appropriate day (more about the Strangling Ritual), but the conflict in Kirie's soul caused her to reject her duty to hold the Hell Mouth closed, and Malice escaped, corrupting her soul and killing thousands of people. Ever since that day (December 13, 1837), Kirie wandered the mansion, angry and miserable, "tainting everything she touched."
People who strayed into Himuro mansion were cursed and torn limb from limb by Kirie, who wished to make everyone suffer the way she had suffered. Visitors reported seeing the shadow of a woman in a white kimono reflected in mirrors and seen through screens, and ropemarks would appear on their wrists, ankles, and neck. When the final ropemark appeared, Kirie would strangle them with the ropes and leave their dismembered corpse for others to find. One of her nicer tricks was the ability to appear in mirrors and then step right out of the mirror!
When Mafuyu entered the mansion on September 24, 1986, Kirie attacked him as usual, but was stopped by Mafuyu's resemblance to the man she had loved so long ago. She wished to keep him with her forever, so she spared his life and trapped him in a time loop inside the mansion, keeping him separated in time from his sister Miku, who was searching for him. Her attempts to kill Miku were constantly thwarted by the ghost of a small girl in a white kimono...
click on the image for a larger version
The ghostly girl that appears to Miku at several points in the story is also Kirie - but her younger self, who hasn't been warped by the Malice or indecision. Her goal is to break the curse and stop her older self from killing more people, since she realizes the importance of her duty as the Rope Miko and is saddened by the deaths she caused. She's probably tried to help every person who's entered the mansion - Hirasaka Tomoe saw her, as did Munakata Yae and Mikoto - but only Mafuyu and Miku were able to successfully break the curse. She points out clues to the mystery, and tries to help Miku escape the Calamity. Unlike the Calamity - Kirie's older self - the girl in the kimono doesn't seem to be able to physically interact with the world; all she can do is silently point - until the very end, when Miku is able to hear her voice. Her presence is usually signalled by the chiming of small bells, just like Calamity.
(see secrets for more information about the two endings to the game - regular and nightmare.)
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