#tpn interviews

If it's characters who are alive and people can mean anyone, then the Grace Field Demon Boss might count since his fate is unknown after chapter 177. The last we hear about him is that the royal demon guard arrested him after his head was lobbed off.

I also default to Mike Ratri knowing as the head of the Ratri clan with access to the database containing all the information related to the cattle children:

(Chapter 7 | Chapter 22)

I talk about this here, too, but it seems like Krone brought a dossier with information about the plant #3 children with her in order to confirm the veracity of Ray's bait note implicating Isabella's assistance in their upcoming escape due to knowing Ray was her biological son. If Krone had access to information like that, I don't think it's out of bounds for Mike to have it as well. Even if he isn't aware of it at the time the children arrive in the human world, if he's a point of contact with the cast to help them settle into the human world initially, I wouldn't be surprised if he delved deeper into information regarding children of note like the full score trio.

If we're including characters who have died, then the list looks like this:

1. Ray 2. Isabella 3. Grandma Sarah 4. Krone 5. Jessica 6. Matilda 7. Scarlet 8. Sienna

With the ninth person being up in the air, though as of right now I settle on Mike for angst in my own silly little headcanons and AUs.

Interestingly, there's also this line from the second chapter of the mystic code book:

"The farm authorities didn't want Isabella to suspect that Ray is her biological son" makes it sound like this was common knowledge among the upper ranks of headquarters (and something I like angsting about in posts like this one. If Isabella is off limits from being eaten due to being the youngest and most capable Mom the farms have ever seen, then eating her son is theoretically the next best thing).

(Mystic Code Book Chapter 1 and Chapter 7 Q&As)

But again, I'm not sure how much of this is tied up in the translation and how much of this is Shirai being potentially contradictory after a decade of being involved with this story.

Do you think Emma and Norman would figure out this fact all by themselves later?

I appreciate how you word this because I'm of the mind there is absolutely no way in hell Ray would ever willingly reveal this information to anyone without prompting from outside forces until his very late teens/early twenties at the earliest (see here for an extremely indulgent AU of mine that incorporates a throughline they discarded in S2 where Isabella goes after the kids as an extreme version of an outside force).

(Mystic Code Book Chapter 6 Q&A)

If he has any say in the matter, he's taking this information to the grave.

However, that doesn't mean Emma and Norman can't discern things on their own. After the events of the escape arc, if a fanfic author runs with the idea that Emma and/or Norman picked up on this but remain quiet on the subject because that's Ray's secret to keep or reveal (something I've seen before), I think it's reasonable, though I think it's less likely for Emma to rediscover after losing her memories and assuming she never regains them.

I'm also someone who likes to overthink about this panel from chapter 174 and Norman's incorporation in it. It could easily just be due to knowing Ray had a unique relationship with Isabella due to being her spy for years…but why not throw more angst in with him knowing the extra layer of gravity in this exchange between the two as another reason for his knowing and somber expression? (You could also extend this to Emma, but I focus on Norman just because we can see he's looking back at Ray whereas Emma's still looking in the general direction of Isabella). He had over a year in Lambda to reflect on his time at Grace Field and pore over all the oddities he noticed between Isabella and Ray but chalked up to other things at the time…and isn't that so incredibly like Ray to keep that kind of conflict and pain to himself, either to spare others or because he loathes pity. There's a sad fondness tinging the thought.

I also like to entertain the idea of Peter and Norman interacting more because it's one of the least explored protagonist and antagonist dynamics in the series. Even if it isn't prompted by having a familial connection with Norman that I touch upon here:

This is already long but a tangentially related conversation to this eventually comes up with Peter asking about Emma and Ray. On the surface, it's to connect with Norman and learn more about his life at Grace Field, but the ulterior motive is to see if there's any information he can glean about these kids to find and capture them quicker. Norman will give it to him for having the tact not to slip and refer to them by their numbers like he's sure he wants to do, but he's still incensed at their names in his mouth. There's also the chance that Peter might reveal a crumb of information himself about their status (because Norman can't see why he would be asking unless he had something to gain from it, so that has to mean their escape was a success and they were all alive. The alternative would kill him), so he entertains the conversation. --- #also it might seem counterintuitive to kill Emma and Ray if he wants to engender love for him in Norman #but the sentiments are Norman would have eventually outgrown them anyway so it's fine and he'll get over it lol

The full score trio are kind of like celebrities among demon nobility and humans at headquarters.

(Chapter 1 | Chapter 80 | Chapter 76 | Chapter 152 | Chapter 156 | Chapter 159)

So I could see Peter asking Norman about them to gain information, and maybe one of the things he brings up is Isabella's connection with Ray, possibly bringing up the note if he somehow managed to be privy to that information (maybe Sarah told him, maybe he stumbled across the note in Sarah's office during the transfer of power from her to Isabella as Grandma since Isabella most likely came across it among the treasures Sarah collected over the years, like the embroidered map of headquarters in the second light novel/Krone's bonus chapter, lots of contrivances to work with) to both see how Norman reacts to it and as a means to evaluate how trustworthy Isabella is in her new role.

Something I imagine for that earlier mentioned Isabella Raids the Bunker AU, but I think it's transferable to other scenarios as well, is Ray divulging that secret to Norman in light of the circumstances, and Norman revealing he put the pieces together because he had a lot of time to think at Lambda, citing a few instances that made more sense to him because of it, and in an echo to their exchange in chapter 13/S1 episode 5, Ray responds with something along the lines of "I really can't get anything past you, huh."

Norman's intelligence is one of the many reasons he's fond of and cares for him, how capable and attentive it can make him, but there's bittersweetness and grief tinging those words due to the situation in general and at the thought of him having been obvious about things back at the house that all circle back around to him loathing the idea of pity directed at him when roughly sixty of his siblings at Grace Field plant #3 suffered a worse fate under Isabella's care, a few of them as a direct result of his choices.