Wow y' all. I appreciate all of the responses, even if I spent everyone spiraling haha.
A lot of my confusion stemmed from three primary exchanges.
In Ch. 2, when
MC tells
Nami that he is going to go meet Bella, and Nami threatens to tell Noji, they both refer to Noji as "mom":
d "Depends on your point of view."
scene sba76 with dssa
n "I'll tell Mom."
scene sba77 with dssa
d "The fuck you will."
scene sba78 with dssa
n "Oh. I will."
n "If you leave the house tonight. I'll tell her!"
scene sba79 with dssa
d "Nami... please."
scene sba80 with dssr
n "No. You'll only get in trouble!"
n "I don't want that..."
scene sba81 with dssa
d "First you make me feel bad about Bella. Then you get in my way of making it up to her."
scene sba82 with dssa
n "Not like that."
scene sba83 with dssr
pause
n "I'm sorry... I can't stand the thought of you getting hurt... Leave the house and I tell her."
scene sba84 with dssa
d "By telling Mom you'll hurt me."
scene sba85 with dssa
n "No. I'm protecting you."
In Ch. 3, when Victoria is in PT and
MC and
Maja speak in the waiting room, MC draws a very distinct line between "his" parent's and Nami's parents. However, he then references Nojiko taking them in like a joint venture:
may "Do you still have your parents?"
menu:
"Tell her {color=#08CB2A}(+Maja)" if True:
$ maja +=2
scene c31 with dissolve
d "I lost my parents at the age of three... so did Nami."
d "Nojiko took care of us."
scene c32 with dissolve
may "I am sorry to hear that."
scene c31 with dissolve
d "It doesn't matter. I can't remember them anyway."
scene c32 with dissolve
may "Still, children shouldn't grow up without their parents."
scene c31 with dissolve
d "That depends on the parents."
In Ch. 4,
Zara and
MC's chat in the hot tub was the final head scratcher that led to this post. They frame the conversation as comparing Zara/Vanessa and MC/Nami as siblings. Zara asks who is older in a way that seems specifically referential to the implied question about sibling age. Most confusing though is that Zara asks how Nami is a redhead, with the heavy implication of, "because you clearly aren't":
za "Seems like you and I are in the same position."
za "A person that likes to talk about the weirdest things while you sit there like:"
scene ad956 with dssa
pause
scene ad957 with dssa
"You chuckle."
d "Yeah, pretty much."
d "But you were right... Vanessa is on another level."
scene ad958 with dssb
za "Who's older, you or Nami?"
scene ad959 with dssa
d "Nami. Around a year older."
scene ad958 with dssa
za "Why is she red?"
scene ad959 with dssa
d "Yeah, no idea how she got to be a Cheeto."
I'm grateful for everyone's answers. It seems like Ocean may have written the game initially one way, and then changed it to meet certain site's requirements. Maybe the above are lingering holdovers that were never updated.