Ooishi's closure

Ooishi's closure is an important event in Higurashi no Naku Koro ni and serves as the final scene in Watanagashi-hen. Ooishi Kuraudo visits Keiichi Maebara in the hospital and attempts to give him some kind of closure by telling him about the status of the murder cases. Despite what the reader was previously led to believe, Mion Sonozaki is revealed to have died during her escape attempt and never met Keiichi or Shion afterwards. Furthermore, the autopsy on Miyo Takano's body revealed that Miyo had been dead for 24 hours at the time of discovery, meaning that she had been dead before the Watanagashi Festival even occurred. Interestingly, Rika Furude was found with a broken syringe on her person, despite ostensibly only going to the Sonozaki residence for soy sauce.

It is revealed in Meakashi-hen that the reason Mion appeared to have died during the escape attempt was because Shion was actually the killer and had been pretending to be Mion. Shion stabbed Keiichi and later fell to her death. Furthermore, the reason Miyo's body appeared to be dead before the Festival was because the body didn't actually belong to Miyo but an unidentified woman who had died the night before the Festival. Miyo Takano never actually died. The reason Rika was found with a syringe on her person was because she died when she was injected with said syringe.