I will be referring to the Sensei we play as as player Sensei while the one from before the events of the game will be referred to as old Sensei for the remainder of this discussion just to make it easier to tell which I am talking about at any given point.
I thought that Sensei was the old one.
Or maybe a middle one, because they clearly have been through the loops already. I agree that it's way too early to make sense of it. But I'm still wondering if this
scarf was the first one after the.. first one.
Or does this happen every "year" during Christmas.
The Sensei we play as is not the one they knew before the events of the game, this is referenced by player Sensei himself in the opening scenes, where he is confused about who people are and what is going on, not even recognizing his own niece.
Well, that's almost my point. I see it like she either grew emotionally dumb over so many cycles or intentionally shut in, or maybe both. That doesn't change the fact the most of the time she is portrayed (or portrays herself) as unemotional. And when a person like that (who as well definitely saw a lot of weird and horrible stuff and didn't even blink an eye) suddenly breaks over something so simple. IMO, it's quite... I can't say scary or shocking, but unnerving maybe the best word to describe it. And also sad, as someone mentioned earlier.
Anyway, it's all speculations at this point of game progress, only almighty Sel knows the truth.
She isn't totally emotionless since she does seem to bear negative emotions toward player Sensei, though these emotions are not as strong as Yumi's outright hatred of player Sensei and don't seem to be truly negative, just defensively so to distance herself. She definitely shut herself off from everyone emotionally, but why is what we still have to figure out. To make someone do something that drastic, it takes A LOT. The human spirit isn't so easily broken, so it must have been something horrific that caused her to do this. The loss of a loved one in an accident or murder, perhaps, which is where old Sensei comes in. We see in the opening that something happens to Sensei at one point, but we don't know who witnessed it or who caused it if anyone other than him was involved. This leaves open the possibility that old Sensei either killed himself for yet another unknown reason or that he was murdered and this took place essentially right in front of Maya, not with the perpetrator in view, but most definitely with Sensei in view. By the time she could have gotten help, he would be dead. By the time she could have rushed to the site of the incident, he would be dead. By the time she got to where he, and the potential murderer, was, he would be dead. This would lead to utter despair, a feeling of hopelessness so great that the mind has to do something to protect her, it has to shut off her emotions so it cannt happen again. If it does, she's going to break and break hard. We're talking totally unresponsive, off in her own little world permanently, maybe mumbling utter nonsense. She remains in this 'protected' state even through the resets since she is apparently immune to them like player Sensei is, by which I mean they both have full memory of the things that happened before and during, but the others do not have any memory from before the point the reset brought them back to. In other words, what we see from Maya isn't truly an inability to show emotion or lack of emotion, but an act, a facade to keep her distance so she doesn't have to bear that pain again. When she
sees the scarf, it could have
broken that facade for a bit. With enough emotion welling up, not even the best actress on the planet can hide it.