The Kidnap is perhaps Chilla’s Art’s saddest story yet. It’s a slow-burn thriller that focuses on themes of neglect, child abuse, and responsibility. It’s fitting then that the endings would bundle up these themes and double down on them. In this article, I’ll recap the endings, how to get them, and what they mean in the context of the story.

The Kidnap Ending 1: Stay

All endings in The Kidnap begin the same. Renya wakes up after having been kidnapped. His sister, Sakiko, comes into his room and explains that she was the one who thought up the scheme of being kidnapped, in order to regain their mother’s affection. Surely she’d come to their rescue after learning they’d gone missing, right?

Renya, eager to please, chooses to listen to his big sister and go along with the plan, rather than escape and search for help. Several days pass and Sakiko is preparing dinner for Renya and their kidnapper, who she refers to as Mister. As Renya comes downstairs to help his sister cook, there comes a knock at the door.

It’s the police. They’ve come looking for the missing kids and after seeing Renya as he opens the door, apprehend the kidnapper and take the kids to the police department. There, their mother is contacted, and she comes to pick them up.

They share a brief moment in the car together, where the kids share in their joy to be reunited with their parent, before arriving home. Once home, she begins to verbally attack the kids, just as she did in the beginning of the game before leaving them.

She turns and storms out of the house, as Sakiko reaches for her, wondering why she’s doing this.

How to Get This Ending

This is an easy one to get. When first waking up in the kidnapper’s house, simply choose to go along with Sakiko’s plan. Listen to your sister.

What Does it Mean?

This ending feels like a full-circle moment for the story. Renya, always eager to please, decided to go along with his sister’s plan. He needs her, and after having lost the affection and care of his mother, is terrified of doing so with his sister as well. Similar to how he was unable to speak up to his mother in the beginning of the game, like when he wet the bed, he also can’t confront Sakiko about her terrible plan. He’s afraid of being alone, but that fear is only going to take him right back to where he started.

It should be noted that it was not, in fact, their mother who rescued them, it was the police. When taken back to the station, their mother refers to the whole situation as an “inconvenience” and takes the kids home, deadly silent in the car on the way there. But the abuse begins again the moment they arrive home, with their mother reiterating how much she despises them.

The ending seems to focus more on Sakiko rather than Renya. We get to see the culmination of her plan and get a close-up shot of her reaction right before the end. It seems that she still does not understand why their mother does not love them and is confused as to why her plan didn’t work.

It’s terribly sad and highlights the deep consequences of neglect. Rather than seek help, or even resent her mother for leaving them, Sakiko comes up with a dangerous and childish scheme to win back her mother’s love. In a painful twist, however, it just furthers her resentment.

The Kidnap Ending 2: Kohime’s House—Renya Smiles

The setup to this ending is the same. Renya wakes up and is informed by his sister about the kidnapping plan. When presented with this information, however, the player chooses to reject this idea and escape. After sneaking around the house and setting up some distractions for Sakiko and Mister, Renya steals his keys and bolts out of the door.

After Mister pursues him in his van, Renya chooses to run to Kohime’s house, a friend of his from school.

Her mother takes Renya in and listens to his story. Oddly, rather than getting the police involved, she confronts Mister directly and removes Sakiko from the home. They’re then placed in foster care.

Some time passes, and they seem happy. One day Renya returns to the foster home after school and finds Sakiko hanging out in the yard with the other foster kids. They share a moment where they talk about everything that’s happened, but how they’re happy with where they’re at. Sakiko makes a comment that Renya was always afraid of their mother, just as we see her approach in the background.

Their mother quickly picks them up and takes them home. On the way, she demands they explain how all of this happened. Sakiko sheepishly explains her plan to have them kidnapped, in hopes she would rescue them. Their mother, furious, decides to go to Mister’s house.

There, the family finds Mister working on the garden outside his home. The kids’ mother, irate, screams at Mister for getting involved in their lives. In the confrontation, she shoves him. Mister, holding a gardening tool, strikes back, killing her.

Sakiko screams as their mother lands at Renya’s feet. Blood begins to pool around her, and Mister runs away. The camera then pans up to Renya, who is grinning from ear to ear.

How to Get This Ending

You need to escape the house to get this ending. The key difference is when you’re being pursued by Mister; you must choose to go to Kohime’s house. Going to Masahiro’s or Keiji’s will result in the same ending as if you stayed at Mister’s house and went along with Sakiko’s plan.

What Does it Mean?

Oh boy, there’s a lot to unpack here, and the Kidnap does not make it easy.

This ending is great and terrible for a few reasons. First, we get a glimpse of life outside of the abusive home the kids grew up in. Safely within foster care, Sakiko seems clear-headed and bright, as she welcomes Renya back and has a moment of introspection about their lives.

She says, “Come to think of it, you were always afraid of mom.” It’s a quick comment but it implies that Sakiko is finally removed enough from her abusive relationship with her mother to clearly see that Renya was suffering too.

This is reinforced by the dynamic in the car ride home, Sakiko is quiet and defensive when yelled at by her mother, even going so far as to defend their kidnapper.

When Mister kills their mother, it seems like more of an overreaction of self-defense, rather than murder. Earlier in the game, you can find a note written by Mister’s mother, who was also abusive towards him. We learn that Mister killed his mother and hid her body in the attic, which Renya seems to have a vision of after discovering her remains.

This felt to me like a trigger of abuse. Mister panics after being accosted by the kids’ mother, just like his own used to do, and lashes back, accidentally killing her. This action creates a full-circle moment. It highlights the lifelong consequence of abuse and what can manifest from repressed trauma, these are all themes that the Kidnap has touched on up until this point.

This scene effectively wraps up three separate stories of abuse, Sakiko’s, Mister’s, and Renya’s. Speaking of Renya, the biggest question comes next—what does it mean when Renya smiles after seeing his mother presumably die?

There are a couple of ways to look at it. One could be that he finally feels free of his mother’s abuse. Throughout the entire story of The Kidnap, Renya has been focused on others. Focused on maintaining the peace, relying on Sakiko to get by. He comes across as meek and eager to please.

Seeing his mother die might be the first moment he feels any sense of peace. Earlier in the ending, while Kohime’s mother took them in, Renya comments that “it was nice being given the choice” to go into foster care. It’s a quick comment, but from this, we can infer that Renya never felt a sense of autonomy, constantly living under the thumb of his mother.

With her dead, he and Sakiko can finally live a peaceful life.

That is a hopeful take on a pretty bleak ending. There’s another much darker take. Renya has snapped.

Having gone through some immense trauma over the events of the game, Renya finally loses it when he watches Mister kill his mother. If you pick through the story beats of the game, Renya has gone through a lot: Abused by his mother, lived alone while his sister was missing, suffering nightmares of the rumored clown, being abducted, and finding human remains in the attic. And of course, not to mention escaping and being chased by Mister in his car.

Now, do I think having witnessed this, Renya turns into a murderous kid? No. But it does paint a bleak picture for his future, one where he comes out changed for the worse from his experiences. Seeing his reaction, you can observe Mister’s story as almost a glimpse into the future for Renya.