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August 28th, 2009
02:12 pm - Umineko no Naku Koro ni episode 5: End of the golden witch - PART V
Either Battler was too dense to notice the bodies or he slept right through the murders.
Part VI is going to be a huge mess of Red vs. Blue text.
This is PART V.
Day 2
October 5th, 1986
It is 7:00.
The alarm clock goes off precisely at seven, rousing Battler. The room remains dark in the morning due to the drawn window blinds. Battler gets up and turns on the light to awaken his cousins, who still seem to be sound asleep.
A horrific sight greets him...
Eva cries uncontrollably upon George's body while Hideyoshi and Rudolf try to peel her off her son. Nanjo tells them there's no hope for George.
Battler notes the pool of blood stained the bedding and that George's neck has been sliced open. On another bed, Jessica, Maria, and Rosa have suffered the same fate and will never wake again.
Battler and Kyrie cover the bodies to give the dead some dignity at least.
On the wall of the room is a magic circle painted with something red like blood.
Erika shows up, having heard of the news of the deaths (Oh my, that's a nice magic circle there, she says of the bloody drawing on the wall). Battler bars her from entering the room and notices that while her mouth is offering condolences, her eyes are laughing with amusement.
Erika asserts that she is privileged to enter the room because she's the detective.
"The detective's privilege. ...The detective has the right to examine all scenes. Please back away from there, Ushiromiya Battler. This is a proper right in the game, recognized by the human side."
Battler is flung back by an invisible force. The others submit to Erika's request and allow her to take a look at the crime scene.
"It's because I'm the detective."
Just as Bernkastel foretold, Erika has become the detective.
Mammon, Asmodeus, and Satan see the magic circle on the wall and wonder who is doing a bad imitation of Beatrice.
In the kitchen, Magical Gohda Chef is cheerfully preparing breakfast with Shannon and Kumasawa. Genji is the only servant missing, so Kanon goes to wake up him up and Kumasawa tags along.
At the bedroom door, Kanon notices a piece of duct tape stuck to the top of the door and doorframe. There's intricate writing on it and a tiny slit cut into the center, so if the door is opened the tape will tear into halves.
Kanon and Kumasawa enter the room and find Genji dead, his throat deeply slit and blood staining the bed.
Kumasawa fetches Shannon and Gohda, both of whom let out a scream upon seeing Genji.
Beelzebub, Belphegor, and Leviathan are also observing the scene. They're confused, since Battler has solved the epitaph and murders shouldn't happen anymore. They leave to report the situation to Beatrice and Natsuhi.
The ringing of a phone wakes up Natsuhi with a jolt. Lucifer greets Natsuhi and informs her that no one entered the room while she slept uncomfortably.
Natsuhi picks up the receiver. It's the mystery man again. He says that someone else wants to talk to her.
Natsuhi can hear someone struggling and yelling to be untied, but it appears that he doesn't know he's on the phone. No mistake about it, it's definitely Krauss' voice.
The man tells Natsuhi that he'll release Krauss tomorrow if she agrees to two conditions.
One, keep Krauss' imprisonment by the mystery man secret. If anyone asks during the day, she must feign ignorance.
Two, hide in the closet in the first guestroom on the first floor of the mansion at 13:00 for one hour. If she remains undiscovered by the end of the hour, she wins. If someone finds her, she loses.
(What the... I'm really hoping that I read this right)
Loud knocking on the door interrupts the phone call. Gohda and Kanon announce themselves at the door. The man has said what he wants, so the call ends.
Everyone has gathered in the same room in the mansion and they've been notified of Genji's death. Kyrie and Erika immediately figure out that someone is committing the murders by formula, which, in this case, is the epitaph, so it comes as no surprise that another person is dead.
"...Just by having the magic circle there and no more. I can only deduce so far. ...How's that, everyone?"
The only people absent from the room are Krauss and Kinzo. Natsuhi stiffens upon the mention of Kinzo. She reiterates that Kinzo doesn't want to see anyone, then takes off for her husband's room. Everyone else chases after her in fear that alone, she might be struck down, too.
Beatrice is also wondering who committed the murders. Since the number of people on the island has been declared in red, the mystery man must be someone amongst them. Beatrice, Ronove, and Gaap speak of Natsuhi as their King in chess, so she must not be taken or put into checkmate. They will focus on protecting her for now.
Krauss' room turns out to be empty, but there are massive bloodstains on the bed. There is no blood on the floor.
There are two keys to the room. Krauss has one, and the other is a servants' master key, which is currently missing since Genji was killed. Krauss does have a habit of locking his room, but the door was found unlocked.
Erika deduces that the culprit now possesses the master key, therefore it can't be a locked room mystery anymore. How boring, she says.
Natsuhi remembers that she hasn't even seen Jessica's face in death, so she suddenly takes off for the guesthouse. Half of her concern is genuine. The other half is a resolve to deter other people from remembering Kinzo and trying to enter the study room.
"Well then, everyone. For Natsuhi-san's sake, let's return to the guesthouse again. ...Though even if she sees her face in death, it doesn't mean that something will progress."
"...You don't have a thing called a 'heart', do you."
"A 'heart'? What's that?"
The four bodies aren't there. The cousins' room had been locked when everyone left the guesthouse.
It follows Erika's reasoning that the culprit having a master key, making her very glad.
Lambdadelta and Bernkastel discuss the murders between them. Bernkastel comes up with ideas for what happened.
"The first one to consider. In reality, the victims weren't dead. They played dead, then secretly hid somewhere. At any rate, you haven't declared anyone's death with the red truth yet."
"Certainly. This would be a worthless move that everyone comes up with. Continuing on. The second one. Krauss moved and hid the bodies. It's directed as if you abducted Krauss and he is locked up somewhere, but that just might be faked. Krauss doesn't have an alibi. Krauss hid those bodies."
"The third one. The bodies were of other people in the first place. Body doubles who looked exactly like the victims. George and the others had been hiding from the beginning, and tidied up the body doubles afterwards. Because the bodies have been dead since the beginning, they aren't counted in the number of people on the island."
Bernkastel dares Lambdadelta to use the red truth to confirm or disprove any of the blue text, but Lambdadelta refuses on the grounds that it's just so much more fun to keep guessing at the truth.
In the servants' sleeping quarters, Gaap moves Genji's body with her powers like she did with the bodies in the cousins' room.
No one can find their bodies anymore.
No one can declare their deaths anymore.
Without the bodies they are simply 'missing'. The victim can be suspected as the culprit and the culprit can be suspected as the victim, just like the unopened box in Schrödinger's cat.
Beatrice compares her game against Lambdadelta and Bernkastel to a battle royale of three sides, like that of an old Chinese legend. In that story though, all three sides lost, and a completely new group became the winner.
The people on the island have returned from the guesthouse and discovered Genji's body being missing as well. In a short time, however, their attention turns back to Kinzo and his study room.
It is now 7:46.
It is 8:04.
The family is back to knocking on the study room door with no response. Natsuhi still holds both of the keys to that room. The servants lie through their teeth about how it's common for Kinzo to not even come out for a month.
Kyrie asks who and when was the the last someone saw Kinzo. Natsuhi replies that it's her, right before being ushered out to see that Battler had found the gold last night. When asked about the two keys to the study room, Shannon says both are with Kinzo inside the room.
"A locked room. ...Good. It finally got a little interesting. ...By this, if Kinzo-san is already dead with his throat slashed in bed in the study room, that would be fairly interesting."
Erika cites the earliest detective novels that include serial murders and happily savors that with thirteen murders as written in the epitaph, they will become an even grander scheme than the books.
Battler knocks her off her high horse by mentioning a book written earlier than one that she said. Erika quietly admits that she overlooked it and shuts up.
Eva is determined to break down the door if that's what it takes to get into the room. Without Kinzo and Krauss, she the highest ranked family member in the group, so what she says goes.
They consider breaking into the room via the window. Is there a ladder long enough to reach the third floor? The servants feign ignorance...except Magical Gohda Chef, who isn't in the loop.
Believing that he just bested Kanon and the others, he joyfully reminds them about the sufficiently long ladder in the boiler room.
Gohda looks to Natsuhi for some words of praise, but she gives him the cold shoulder.
The ladder is brought out and propped for the window of the study room. Battler and Gohda hold the ladder steady while Rudolf climbs up. Kyrie, Kanon and Shannon watch on from the sidelines.
In the study room, Kinzo knows that he can't escape, since Rudolf is coming through the window and Eva is watching the door. Beatrice and Gaap reassures him that there's still a way out.
Kinzo goes to hide under the bed and Gaap will teleport him if she must.
Beatrice suddenly announces a change of plans. She tells Ronove and Gaap to leave and she will protect Kinzo. There's no changing her mind, so Ronove and Gaap obey her wishes. Kinzo melts into the darkness under the bed. Beatrice herself vanishes in a flock of golden butterflies.
What happened. ._.
Repressing acrophobia, Rudolf reaches the window and bangs on it. Silence. He smashes the window with a hammer, unlocks it, and tumbles into the room.
The coldness of the room greets him. Rudolf looks around for any sign that someone has been living there, perhaps a slightly crooked chair or unmade bedding.
But nothing. No sign of life. Rudolf calls out to the people in the courtyard to come to the third floor, then disables the autolock in the study room's door for once.
Everyone else enter the room and also see that Kinzo isn't there. Natsuhi tries to find assurance in Nanjo and Kumasawa by concocting a story about how Kinzo would often be led by dreams in the middle of the night and walk about the mansion.
People start searching through the study room, much to Natsuhi's chagrin.
There is no trace of Kinzo in the room. There's nothing out of place, either. Oblivious to the truth, the other family members surmise that Kinzo might be in the hands of the serial murderer and currently tied up somewhere.
Erika claps twice to get everyone's attention.
"Quiet, please. ...I'd like to get the situation in order. At 23 o'clock last night, Natsuhi-san, you were the one who last saw Kinzo-san in this room, right? Can anyone prove it?"
"...Prove...?"
Erika asks everyone to think back to earlier in the morning, when, Natsuhi said without pause that she was the last one to see Kinzo.
Erika wonders how Natsuhi can be so confident that no one else saw Kinzo after she did. Normally a person would say something like, "I last saw him at 23 o'clock, but I don't know if I was the last person who he saw."
Ahh, so true. In a third-rate mystery, the last witness is usually the culprit. The culprit knows that the victim can't see anyone else anymore, because he or she has already killed the victim.
Natsuhi tries to poke holes into Erika's deduction by saying that her confidence is from the fact that she saw Kinzo off to sleep, and normally people don't get up in middle of sleep to see someone.
Erika asks the group to think back to just a little while ago, when Natsuhi, Nanjo, and Kumasawa said Kinzo would unpredictably walk about the mansion in the middle of night at times. Eva chimes in, saying that she can somewhat prove Natsuhi's claim, because she was there when Natsuhi exited the study room at 23:00.
Natsuhi is becoming unnerved. Beatrice quickly reminds her to not get caught up by a detective's wordplay.
"So since when has Kinzo-san not been around...?"
The adults remember that they haven't seen Kinzo for over a year now, since he wasn't there at the previous year's family meeting, either. They also know that Natsuhi and Krauss have plenty of motives for keeping his death a secret.
Gohda tries to alleviate the situation by saying that the servants have seen and talked with Kinzo often through the year, but he admits that he hasn't seen Kinzo since he was hired, either. Natsuhi yells at him.
Erika is getting disappointed. The whole thing was a third-rate mystery after all.
In a different (meta?) world, Erika confirms with Kinzo about his mortal existence and asks him to leave the world like a good ghost.
Beatrice stops Erika, her pipe barely a paper's breadth away from Erika's face. Both of them assert that they are the stronger side.
Beatrice summons Lucifer. The blue stake gouges through Erika's right clavicle and comes out her back.
"You cannot deny the possibility that Natsuhi met with Kinzo at 23 o'clock. Afterwards, Kinzo had plenty of time to slip out of this study room, during the 6 hours plus before you people broke into the study room! Therefore, you cannot affirm that Kinzo does not exist."
Since only the red truth can defeat the blue truth, Beatrice victoriously claims checkmate over Erika.
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Comments:
...One of your screencaps really screwed up. .-.
Yeah, I know. ._. I'll fix it if I go back through that part of the game again.
Thanks for doing these!
It just keeps getting more interesting~
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| Date: | August 31st, 2009 05:26 pm (UTC) |
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What Eva says goes, huh... But, didn't Battler receive a letter designating him as the next head...?
At the same time, however...
EVAAAAAAAAA! Come into my arms! ;_;
Also, I'm calling it: Magical Gohda Chef has a crush on Natsuhi.
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