You're getting my point backwards. I'm not starting from the idea that Nodoka is talking about Futaba's mother and then extrapolating that it must be Yuko, I'm starting from the idea that Nodoka is talking about Yuko and that Yuko and Futaba have been connected before, and then trying to interpret what Nodoka says about that connection here.
The things that Nodoka says about "she" in that passage point to Yuko more than they do to Kyoko:
- "She" has the key to the attic. In "Lavender", Kyoko keeps telling Yuko to come downstairs while the screen shows stairs and "there's something in the attic" repeated.
- "She" is the one who gets the groceries. Yuko is the one who fills the shelves with new books (so she has the ability to get physical items), and right after Kyoko tells her to "repopulate the shelves", her next sentence is telling her to put food on the table. When searching for something else, I just ran across an image from an old Apollo259 post that shows a shopping list with books and groceries signed with a Y.
Not to mention that Yuko is clearly special in some way since Pareidolia doesn't list her as one of the five named residents of the house.
At no point did I suggest that Futaba wears lavender perfume because of a conscious memory of Yuko's hair. Supernatural/symbolic parallels are very much a part of this game.
But in any case, the connection between Futaba, lavender, and the upside down house is more than just her perfume. When Sensei tries to remember her story of the upside down house, he hallucinates (thanks to Pareidolia?) lavender plants over her.
In her first sexual scene, he compares her to a lavender garden.
When Nodoka brings up the girl with lavender hair, Sensei explicitly connects her to Futaba.
There's probably more that I don't remember. Honestly I didn't think it was controversial that there is
some connection between Futaba and the girl with the lavender hair. Do you think Selebus intends it to be coincidence that two different characters are so strongly associated with lavender imagery?
It doesn't have to mean anything, but Nodoka's interest in Futaba seems to parallel Kyoko's obsession with Yuko.
I forget the event(s), but at some point Nodoka implied that she only became friends with Futaba in the first place (which was pre-resets) because there was something unusually interesting about her.
The mother possibility was just speculation based purely on the way that Nodoka worded her sentence, it was not an idea I seriously considered before this update. To me, Nodoka saying "you're special
because she was" implies more than just similarity, she thinks that there is causation involved. Heredity is just one possible cause.
After thinking about it more, it's unlikely that Yuko is her mother. At some point Futaba said she looks like her mother, which probably means that she isn't adopted and her mother doesn't have lavender hair.
Futaba confirmed that Nodoka's mother is named Kyoko in this last update, though it was already speculated since Pareidolia listed a "Kyoko Nagasawa" along with other upside down house residents.
