By Nicholas A. Ferrell writing for The New Leaf Journal
I assume you found my guide for Summer, Cicadas, and the Girl from a link in my review of the short visual novel. I trust that you are reading this guide for one of the following two reasons:
If you are playing Summer, Cicadas, and the Girl and have not done your due diligence to reach the true ending, get back to work before you spoil yourself.
For those who have earned the right to the guide…
Saito, the player character in Summer, Cicadas, and the Girl spends a fun summer day with a mysterious girl named Kokonoka. At the end of their adventure, Kokonoka tells Saito that she will try to meet him at the park on the next morning to pay him back for a box of juice. However, she tells Saito that it may not work out.
Kokonoka does not appear at the park the next morning. Saito is prompted to choose where to go look for Kokonoka. Instead of offering Saito choices, the visual novel provides a text box to type the answer to the Kokonoka mystery.
There is only one correct answer to the mystery. The correct answer leads Saito to the true ending. There are six versions of the bad ending wherein Saito does not find Kokonoka. Five of the bad endings are triggered by typing specific guesses about Kokonoka’s location into the text box. The sixth bad ending is a catch-all ending that Saito receives if he types something that is not recognized by the visual novel.
Below, I will list the answers to all of the distinct endings. While I know with certainty that I found all of the endings, it is possible that there are additional paths to some of the endings that I did not account for. If you are aware of a way to reach one of the endings that I missed, I invite you to help me improve the guide by sending an email to naferrell [at] newleafjournal [dot] com.
The only way to reach the True Ending is to search for Kokonoka at the hospital.
Summer, Cicadas, and the Girl does not have specific clues relating to the hospital in the main story. The closest clues are Kokonoka’s noting she had not experienced the summer heat before and her preference for pocket-watches over cell phones. However, neither of these clues excludes a large number of other possibilities. I suppose one point in favor of the hospital is that many visual novels created in the early-to-mid 2000s featured hospitals and sickly characters.
The best clue for the hospital comes in the fifth and final harbinger episode, which can be viewed after failing to find the True Ending on five separate occasions. Saito and Kokonoka run away from a shopkeeper who mistakenly thinks that Saito stole something from his store. Kokonoka leads Saito to an unfamiliar scene (for readers of the visual novel). Attentive readers will notice that Kokonoka’s detour is through a hospital. Thus, the best clue is not textual, but instead visual.
If you type library, Saito will look for Kokonoka at the library. Saito had been planning to go to the library on the previous day before Kokonoka dragged him on an adventure. However, while Kokonoka apologized at the end of the day for scuttling Saito’s library plans, she would have had no reason to go to the library instead of meeting Saito at the park.
This is the first “bad” ending that takes Saito to a location that he does not visit in the main story. However, the library appears in several Harbinger side-stories as well as the True Ending.
If you type airport or airplane, Saito will search for Kokonoka at the airport. She did note that pocket watches are more convenient than cell phones on airplanes, so this guess does address the pocket watch clue. However, it does not address other small clues - and Kokonoka is nowhere to be found at the airport.
This is one of the two bad endings that takes Saito to an entirely unique location that does not appear in the main game or the Harbinger episodes.
If you type cicada or forest, Saito will look for Kokonoka in the forest. Why would he do such a thing? Saito convinced himself that Kokonoka is actually a cicada. Kokonoka’s being a cicada would be consistent with her early musings about the summer heat, but nothing in the visual novel suggests that magical realism is at work, much less that Kokonoka is an insect. Alas, Saito does not find that cicada, but the only way that you can see the forest backdrop in Summer, Cicadas, and the Girl is in the Cicada Ending.
If you type park, Saito will wait in the park for Kokonoka to appear. She never appears. This should be no surprise since she made clear on the previous day that she would either be at the park at the promised time or never see Saito again.
If you type shed or house, Saito will return to the shed wherein he and Kokonoka sought shelter after running away from an angry shopkeeper the day before. Unsurprisingly, Kokonoka is not there. Why would she have returned to the shed?
If you type store or shop, Saito will return to the shop where he and Kotonoka were mistaken for shoplifters. Of course, Kokonoka would have had no reason to be at the shop.
If you type field, flowers, sunflower, or sunflowers, Saito will look for Kotonoka at the sunflower field they visited on the previous day. While Kokonoka liked the sunflower field, she would have had no reason to stand Saito up to visit again.
If you guess a word that is not included in the game’s dictionary, Saito not only fails to search for Kokonoka, but also convinces himself that Kokonoka never existed.