Although Bella is my least favourite LI, she is the one major mystery in this game.
Sure, there are a lot of
outstanding questions waiting to be answered in this game, but none of them are as intriguing as Bella's background (or lack thereof). Just to recap on Bella and the mystery that surrounds her:
Bella & James:
In episode 2, when the mc first kisses her, she tells the mc she's a married woman (which may just have been a technique to fend him off), but later on even in her thoughts she later thinks of herself as a married woman:
First to the mc:
Bella: "This didn't happen."
Bella: "You're still drunk."
mc: "Are you...sure?"
Bella: "Fuckface... I'm a married woman."
mc: "Oh..."
Bella: "Go to sleep."
mc: "(Damn...)"
Then to herself:
Bella: "(Why did he...?)"
Bella: "(I don't understand...)"
Bella: "(I feel so...so...dirty...)"
Bella: "(This is not what a married woman does...)"
So Bella considers herself a married woman. But it's complicated. If we continue her thoughts from the above scene:
Bella: "(I'm so sorry...)"
Bella: "(It just caught me completely off guard...)"
Bella: "(How long has it been since a man did this to me?)"
Bella: "(Three years?)"
Bella: "(No, that can't be right...)"
Bella: "(I haven't gotten an urge to touch myself...that's all...)"
Bella: "(Until tonight...)"
So for seemingly three years she hasn't done anything sexual with anyone. Where has her husband been for that time? Because of the Burke-looking soldier in the mc's alcohol fuelled stumble through Bella's house, there is some speculation that he's in the army, but a 3-year tour of duty is kinda not likely.
In episode 3, when Bella is lashing out at students in the library, the cause for it is the sexual tension between her and the mc while at the same time she is helping to set him up with Jill. Her thoughts once again:
Bella: "(I can't lash out at students like that...)"
Bella: "(...)"
Bella: "(I did the right thing.)"
Bella: "(This was for Jill.)"
Bella: "(Married women don't fool around with young students.)"
Bella: "(...)"
Bella: "(They aren't intimate with friends either...)"
Bella: "(But that...that was different!)"
Bella: "(It doesn't matter... I've stopped it.)"
Bella: "(Please, James... Forgive me.)"
Bella: "(Please, just come home again...)"
Bella: "(It's been long enough now.)"
The first part she's talking about how she shouldn't be fooling around with the mc, but the second part, being intimate with friends, we don't know who she's talking about (but there's some speculation it's Jill based on their argument in bed when the mc's on the couch). Then she goes on to ask for James' forgiveness and for him to come home again (after 3 years as we've speculated above).
But then in episode 4 (if you stay at Bella's house), she has the following thoughts about the mc:
Bella: "(Why can't I stop thinking these dirty thoughts about him...?)"
Bella: "(All these words that I'd never dare tell him...)"
Bella: "(It's adultery...isn't it?)"
Bella: "(Can I just decide to move on?)"
Bella: "(What if James comes home?)"
Bella: "(Would he blame me if I did this?)"
Bella: "(After all this time?)"
Bella: "(I have forgiven him...)"
So she is aware that moving on is an option, she's just found it difficult. On top of that, she forgives
him. So earlier she was asking for
his forgiveness (for the mc, or for something that happened long ago) and now she's saying she forgives her husband. What went down three years ago?
Then in episode 6, the mc confronts her feelings:
mc: "We both want it. We wouldn't be here right now if it wasn't so."
Bella: "Yes, but I feel ashamed for wanting it..."
mc: "Because of that ring on your finger?"
Bella: "Yes."
mc: "I get it..."
mc: "But correct me if I'm wrong..."
mc: "I've had the feeling he's not around anymore... Am I wrong?"
Bella: "No, it's...different today."
mc: "Then, if that's the case... I don't see why you should feel ashamed."
mc: "You should be allowed to feel something else."
Of course the mc is just a horny cunt trying to convince a girl to suck his dick, but he's not wrong. Her husband is gone, and has been gone for quite some time. Their marriage is over, but Bella is struggling to come to terms with it. How Bella's situation got to this point we don't know, she and her husband could have both been unfaithful, had a big fight, and he left but she didn't want it to end at the time. Or, he died, and she's struggling to accept it. Who knows.
But two lines from that conversation strike me as weird:
mc: "I've had the feeling he's not around anymore... Am I wrong?"
Bella: "No, it's...different today."
I dunno, but I get a sense that Bella has been feeling James' presence or something, but he's gone now. "it's...different today" is like "today" (the day of that scene) specifically something had changed.
Bella & Jill:
Then we have the tension between Jill and Bella in episode 5 when they are sharing a bed:
Jill: "Is something wrong?"
Bella: "No. Nothing's wrong."
Jill: "If you say so."
Jill: "It's not gonna happen again."
Bella: "..."
Bella: "I thought we had an understanding."
Jill: "We do. That's what I wanted to assure you of."
Bella: "I don't need to be reassured. I need you to stop talking about it."
Jill: "Wow..."
Jill: "Fine! But I wasn't though."
Jill: "And it's not my fault, I was going to sleep on the couch."
Bella: "Can we just sleep?"
Jill: "I'll take the couch instead."
Bella: "You don't have to do that."
Jill: "..."
Bella: "..."
This whole discussion is vague, but it's brought on by the fact that they are sharing a bed (which wouldn't have happened if Jill had used the couch, which she indicated she would have done, except the mc stayed over). Something tells me this ties in with Bella's thoughts from episode 3, "(They aren't intimate with friends either...)". Jill and Bella were intimate at one point. The three lines from episode 3:
Bella: "(They aren't intimate with friends either...)"
Bella: "(But that...that was different!)"
Bella: "(It doesn't matter... I've stopped it.)"
Make it sound like it wasn't just a 1 time thing, they took their close relationship much further for a period of time. This even possibly links back to Bella's comment to the mc when she tells him not to hurt Jill in episode 2:
Bella: "Jill is...special...to me."
Her delay on the work "special" was her trying to find the word. Because Bella and Jill's relationship is complicated.
The Locked Door:
Then of course we have the entire focus on the locked door in Bella's house. The scene only ends when you try to open the door. Bella stops the mc when he first attempts to open it in his drunken state. Much later on he tries the door and finds it locked. He mentions this to Jill who chastises him, but she also later tries the door herself. Jill may know more about the situation, but her also trying the door means she also is curious about something.
The Mirror:
It's been referenced before, but there's a stool and a waist high mirror in Bella's bathroom.
I can't think of many reasons for this. Is it for trimming her pubes? Is it for waxing her legs? Or was it for a little toddler to see their reflection?
Is it possible that Bella and James had a child, and it's gone now?
The Ominous Monologue:
But most concerning of all we also have the mc's internal monologue in episode 3 when he makes out with her in the library:
mc: "At the time I couldn't understand Bella."
mc: "The attraction was there, but for her it felt so wrong."
mc: "I remember feeling bad about kissing a married woman."
mc: "I figured she felt the same since she was being unfaithful to her husband..."
mc: "...which, of course, is a very big deal."
mc: "But if I had known the real reasons to her tears..."
mc: "...and to her persona..."
mc: "I wouldn't have kissed her that night."
mc: "I would have called out for help."
There's something more to Bella's predicament, something more serious than we've yet come to understand. That monologue was not what the mc was thinking at the moment, or about what was happening at that moment, it was the mc from the future (or from the present actually), the mc who is telling the entire story, saying that he finally finds out what has made Bella the way she is, and that he should have called out for help (I don't think he means he should have started yelling for help right then and there, more that he should have looked to get Bella help).
So what the fuck is really Bella's deal:
- She runs from the library when the mc takes her there for a date. Why the fuck would she do that? She didn't like her boss, that's no reason to run in panic!
- She's asking for James' forgiveness. What did she do?
- She's telling James she forgive him. What did he do?
- She's got a suspicious locked door that the story has brought our attention to three times.
- She wears her wedding ring for three years after her contact with her husband has ended.
- There's a strangely located mirror with a stool in her bathroom.
- The mc says her persona is based on something that he should have gotten her help over.
My Theory:
I'm going with Bella & James had a child who was tragically killed in an accident. The couple drifted apart emotionally and each found solace in another partner (Bella with Jill, and James with some other woman - someone we may already know
). Both accused the other of damaging their marriage and they separated, with James leaving.
The lower mirror is for the little kid since the normal mirror is too high (I've got to admit, I've never seen this before, most people just put a step next to the sink, so a kid can brush their teeth etc.)
The locked room is the child's room; a room that Bella doesn't want to share with others, and can't bear to clean out.
Bella is asking James (in her mind) to forgive her for her affair with Jill, and she says she forgives him for his affair with the other woman.
Bella runs from the library that time on her date with the mc because there are still strong emotions surrounding her husband, their child, the marriage breakdown, and going there was forcing her to confront some things (this is a fucking stretch, I really don't know why she ran off like a maniac).
It was James that ultimately left Bella, and she never fully accepted the marriage was over, that's why she still wears the ring and wasn't looking for another relationship.
I believe that Jill knows of Bella's history that's why she's defensive when the mc starts poking around, perhaps because she knows she had a hand in it. She probably wasn't aware that the child's room has been locked all this time though (since she's typically not the kind of person to go snooping around until the mc brought it up).
