Title: Dawn of Understanding
Author: Shareon
Summary: "Dawn of the Golden Witch" is certainly unorthodox. It has two game masters. Both of them control the game board. Neither of them knows its content. How could such a thing have happened? This is the story behind the story. An "Umineko no Naku Koro ni" fanfiction.
As much as Ikuko's declarative statement sounded like an accusation, there was no way it could have been intended that way. That only made it worse. She had only incidentally said the worst criticism a writer could possibly receive.
"I thought it was fun," Tohya mumbled back.
"You just despise the very idea of Erika."
"As everybody should." Tohya's confident assertion contrasted sharply with his previous subdued statement. "I love Detective Fiction as much as anybody, but it has no place in the real world. Those so-called Witch Hunters have have taken the deadly serious tragedy of the Ushiromiya family and turned it into a game. A joke. It's absolutely disguising."
The recent "discovery" of "End of the Golden Witch" and its introduction of The Detective to the island had been the moment of revelation. It was at that point that Tohya had finally understood everything. Things would not just quietly disappear on their own. The only way to get it all to stop was if he himself jumped into the catbox of Rokkenjima and made it all stop. And so he did. He turned his love of mysteries to the one place he never thought he would, hypocritically doing the exact same thing he despised in others. However, his creation framed things in a positive light, exalting the deceased rather than spitting on their graves. The motive for his moral crime made all the difference.
"I understand your objective, but if you want to convince people, you will need them to read what you wrote," Ikuko said. "Nobody will waste their time with something where it turns out it was all just a prank. There is a reason Van Dyne included that in his rules for writing detective stories."
"Those are just guidelines. There a number of great stories which break them."
"Yes, but those are exceptions." Ikuko waved the manuscript in her hands as if pounding the air in front of her. "This is not."
A complicated weight smothered Tohya. He had been on the giving side of feedback enough times when he had reviewed Ikuko's work, but this was the first time she had returned the favor. The contradiction between the appreciation for her efforts and the hatred of her assessment left him confused and emotional.
After a few moments to catch his breath, he asked, "Then what do you think I should do about it?"
His first warning was the flare of mania within her eyes. He sometimes saw it when she was writing, sometimes when she was reading, and sometimes just because, but it always meant the same thing: Something had seized her interest.
"To begin with, the Epitaph is missing."
"Because it's not important."
Ikuko shook the manuscript in her hands again. "In this, no, but it should be. You should have Erika solve it."
Tohya's mind recoiled from the very thought. A flood of objections instantly manifested to justify why it was impossible to grant that grossest symbol of impertinence yet another laurel: Erika didn't have the background she needed. Erika didn't have the resources she needed. Erika didn't have the time she needed. It was beyond belief that a random stranger could instantly solve a puzzle that had confounded the Ushiromiya family for years.
However, no matter how realistic each and every one of those very practical objection were, none of them were relevant. The empirical evidence provided by "End of the Golden Witch" trumped all of them. The miracle wonder child solving the Epitaph by nature of her impossible brilliance had not only been accepted, it had been lauded. Against that, no challenge about how she couldn't possibly solve the Epitaph was allowed.
As he couldn't outright deny the idea from a technical or a mechanical perspective, he attacked it from a different direction. He asked, "So what? What if she solves the Epitaph?"
Ikuko's grin was not entirely dissimilar to that of a prowling cat. She said, "Then she could be the killer."
"What?"
"It all makes perfect sense. Erika discovers 10-tons of gold. Clearly she wants it, but just taking it is impossible. If she tries to leave with any of the heavy ingots, she is sure to be noticed and stopped. And if she waits and comes back later, who knows what the Ushiromiya family will do? From her perspective, the Epitaph is a simple puzzle. At any moment, Eva, Rosa, or somebody else could also solve it. However, if she kills them all, then that threat goes away. She can claim all of the gold at her leisure."
"But she's The Detective. If you think people hate a mystery with no deaths, then they despise a story where The Detective is the killer. Just look at Knox's commandments. He had no problem with a mystery without a corpse, but he specifically called out that The Detective must not commit the crime."
"Who said Erika was The Detective?"
"It's..." Tohya stopped. His eyes went wide. "Oh..."
"Isn't that a good twist?" Ikuko's teeth were full of cunning and malice.
Tohya was torn. The sweet story he had written, showing the best of the Ushiromiya family coming together to play a prank on a loathsome interloper, beckoned. It was tempting to lambaste and shame Erika, thus symbolically doing the same to all of those self-titled detectives who kept disrespecting the dead. However, Ikuko's proposal certainly had an allure as well. There was a delicious irony in casting their proxy into the very role they had so often placed upon the Ushiromiya family. The so-called Witch Hunters had literarily killed the Ushiromiya family countless times. It was entirely appropriate for their literary metaphor to do the same.
There was another advantage to Ikuko's idea as well. Everybody had rejected the idea of "Beatrice" being a culprit, but they had accepted the presence of "Erika" on the island. If Tohya could somehow make "Erika" into "Beatrice," if he could somehow transpose the guilt of the deaths to this fictitious non-Ushiromiya visitor to the island, then he would have achieved an absolute victory. Going forward, there would be no way to include "Erika" in a story of Rokkenjima without simultaneously including a viable non-Ushiromiya culprit to the island. It would be the end of the very concept of "Erika."
Checkmate.
However, that would only be possible if he was able to craft such a story, and no matter how compelling the idea was, it was also problematic.
"Yes, but Erika is just a single, young girl surrounded by strangers on an unfamiliar island. How could she possibly manage to kill anybody, let alone everybody?" Tohya asked.
"She has the gold. She could use that to buy allies."
"I don't like that at all. If she introduces the gold to somebody, that raises the risk of them claiming it for themselves," Tohya said. However, thinking about the gold did raise a different idea. "Wait, Erika isn't alone at all. If she finds the gold, then that would make her the new Head of the Ushiromiya Family. She has all of the servants. They'll obey her orders."
"That is not particularly helpful for her specifically," Ikuko said. "Erika has no love, so she is unable to see that. She would need some kind of incontrovertible proof she could trust them, and that kind of magical, unjustified proof just doesn't exist. Somebody like Maria might be able to get into a big fight and rely on Genji and Gohda to help her overpower somebody, but Erika would be too worried about the possibility of being betrayed to even consider that. From her perspective, she is still effectively all alone on the island."
"Maybe. So let's think this through. Let's assume that she is a little girl all alone on the island, just like she thinks she is," Tohya verbally mused, more to himself than to Ikuko. "She is smaller and weaker than everybody else. Her only advantage is that she is also smarter than everybody else. So she should try use that to her advantage. If she can outsmart them, if she get them alone and surprise them, she could possibly kill them all piecemeal."
Ikuko said, "That makes sense, but the question is how. It is reasonable to assume that she could trick them into separating, but she would also need some way to make sure they are actually doing what she says. If she ever gets surprised, it will be all over. Everybody on the island is stronger than her and would beat her in a fair fight."
"It would be easy if she were The Detective. The Detective knows who's reliable. People always follow The Detective's instructions."
"True, but Erika is not The Detective. Van Dyne's 4th. Knox's 7th."
"True," Tohya said, "but what if she is just playing at being The Detective for her own advantage? As long as it's clear to the reader that she is not in fact The Detective, it shouldn't be an issue. Actually, that works really well. Right now, as The Detective, Erika is already getting everybody to split up. It's just like that, only she can have a much more malicious intent in mind. The reader will know that, but from the perspective of everybody on the island, it's the same thing as before, so they should react in the same way as before."
"I suppose that makes sense so far, but there is still the problem of how she will make sure everybody stays split up. No, more than that. It is insufficient for them to merely be separated. Erika needs to know exactly where they are at all times, so she can surprise them and make sure she herself is never surprised."
"I know. I know," Tohya said. He went quiet while he quickly thought. "What if I give her that tape everybody loves so much, like she used in 'End of the Golden Witch?'"
"You already did. As I recall, it was, 'unreliable, powerless, and useless.'"
"I may have been a bit heavy handed there," Tohya said.
"Maybe a bit."
"Anyway, yes, that. What if I changed it so it was actually useful? Then Erika could use that to confirm that everybody is where she expects them to be. For example, she could have Natsuhi and Krauss lock themselves in a room 'for their own safety,' and then tape the door shut behind them. Then, as long as the tape seal is still intact, she knows exactly where they are."
"That sounds like an interesting idea. I look forward to seeing what you come up with," Ikuko said.
What followed was weeks of grueling struggle. The ideas Tohya and Ikuko had exchanged were solid enough in the abstract, but the ideas were the easy part. The real work was taking those kernels and developing them into the actualized dialogue, prose, and puzzles of an existent mystery. His previously completed manuscript was a substantial aid, but given the massive changes to the story, he still needed to discard over half of it. In the end, it was effectively an entirely new and different mystery that he presented to Ikuko.
After that, all he could do was wait for her judgment.
That judgment was heralded by a door opening.
"Why did Erika leave Battler's body alone?"
Tohya tried to stay calm as the blood froze in his veins. It was very possible that Ikuko's question was a simple misunderstanding. It could have been that she had missed a detail and everything was still fine. A question that pointed didn't necessarily need to be the precursor to a lethal stab.
"Where?" Tohya asked. He needed to orient himself to the specific situation she was asking about in order to have any hope of meeting her challenge.
"At the start, right after she discovered his supposed death."
The inclusion of the word "supposed" told Tohya everything he needed to know. Ikuko had definitely seen through the trick. Still, he tried to play coy.
"What else could she do with a corpse?"
Ikuko leveled a skeptical gaze at him.
Tohya gave up trying to maintain the illusion of Battler's death. He instead thought fast, trying to figure out why Erika might have done nothing against the risk of a living Battler messing up her plans.
"She's doing it to trick everybody else? It's just like her playing The Detective. It's much easier to trick somebody when they think they are tricking you." His tentative voice gained confidence as the random ideas he hastily assembled actually fit together cohesively. "It's the same reason why she didn't examine his body herself. She doesn't want to let everybody else know that she knew he was alive. It's so she has a better chance of tricking them while they think they are tricking her."
"That is entirely unbelievable. Remember that if she gets caught, she loses everything. Kinzo might take that kind of huge gamble, but Erika would never do something so risky. She would want to make sure everybody is accounted for at all times, including Battler. And it would be so easy for her to seal the room. All she needs to do is say something like, 'the room should be left undisturbed for when the police arrive,' like they did in 'Legend of the Golden Witch.'"
Tohya tower of defense collapsed as quickly as a dike which had just been punctured. He could find no fault in Ikuko's reasoning. It had always felt like a big contrivance to have Erika leaving Battler alone, but he had ignored that in favor of making progress. It had only been laziness which had left the door to Battler's supposed grave open.
"So you want to close the lid on this coffin of mine."
Tohya reclaimed the manuscript, both literally and figuratively, and went back to work. His previous solution, with Battler sneaking out to plant the letter, obviously couldn't work anymore. The seal of tape Erika should and would place on the door to the Guest Room prohibited it. In a drama it might have been acceptable for Battler to break it and telegraph the fact that he was still alive, but for a mystery, it was anathema. It would ruin the puzzle of the letter just as much as Erika failing to seal the Cousin's Room and the room next to it would have. Worse, like a missing keystone, once it became obvious that Battler was still alive, all the other mysteries would collapse into banal simplicity as well.
He needed to find another solution.
One came to him in the realization that all six of the victims of the first twilight were nearly identical. Any one of them could have planted the letter just as easily as Battler had. Even better, aside from Erika and her new tape seal, nothing else he had written thus far would need to change. That was particularly amusing. Naturally any alteration to the manuscript would be a highlight to the solution of the puzzle, and while that wouldn't matter for the average reader who would only receive the completed story in final form, for his personal repartee with Ikuko, it was particularly deft to extract the golden butterfly of magic from the unchanging darkness of the page.
He wrote the two needed sentences noting how Erika sealed the Guest Room and how the room was still sealed upon returning to it, highlighted them, and then handed the updated manuscript to Ikuko.
Given the small nature of the change, he remained in the room while Ikuko read them.
It only took a few seconds for Ikuko to complete her scan. She then put the pages down and said, "I see. I assume those are the only two changes, and there is no other secret alteration you are hiding from me somewhere else."
Tohya nodded.
"Then Battler's body is still missing. I am impressed," Ikuko said.
The gentleness of Ikuko's words set Tohya on edge. He felt like a duck who had just been gifted a leek. Her gesture was kind enough on the surface, but it was just as likely to be the precursor of a butchery.
Ikuko continued, "I assume you had Battler hiding in the closet, and he sneaked out while Erika was busy in the bathroom."
Tohya smirked. He asked, "Should I change it so Erika checks the closet first after she walks into the room?"
Ikuko visibly flinched and frowned. After a few seconds, her face cleared up again.
"Don't bother. You'll just have Battler hide under the bed first in that case."
Tohya's smirk gained a decisively conspiratorial edge, but he didn't say anything back.
"That kind of presumption technically works, but Battler is taking a huge risk here."
Tohya had learned the lesson of verifying motives from the challenge of Erika's failure to seal the room, and he was prepared for Ikuko's attack this time. He said, "Erika might not be a big risk taker, but spinning the roulette wheel and finding the one in the quadrillion is the Ushiromiya family specialty. Besides, it's not that big a risk. From Battler's perspective, this is all just a prank. If he gets caught, it isn't that important. It might even be an opportunity for him to modify the prank to be better somehow. He had a lot of time to think about it while he was hiding in the room."
"Smart. That time spent thinking also helps explain how he could manage to get out despite Erika resealing the room after she enters it."
The grin of confidence on Tohya's face melted into a mess of confusion and trepidation. He said, "Erika doesn't reseal the room."
"She should. Otherwise she could be surprised by somebody from the outside, or Battler could escape. If she gets interrupted by reinforcements for Battler or if she wastes precious minutes searching the room while he is running away, either way it would be a complete disaster for her."
Tohya turned the chessboard around, and doing so revealed the flaw in Ikuko's suggestion. He said, "That doesn't make any sense. She wouldn't bother taking the time and effort to lock the room because any of the servants could unlock it. They all have master keys, and she doesn't trust any of them."
"Which is why she uses the chain, not the lock, to seal the room."
"She can't. You forgot that Erika cut the chain in order to get into the room in the first place?" Tohya would have declared his statement more firmly, but the laughable simplicity of the oversight instead made him worry. Ikuko was better than to make a mistake like that.
Ikuko's nodded. She said, "That is correct. She would need to repair it first."
"And how could she do that? I'll accept she might have planned enough ahead to bring a spare chain with her, but there's no way she'd take the time to replace it on the door after she cuts the first one. It'd leave her too vulnerable for too long."
"She can use tape instead. That is easy and it takes almost no time at all," Ikuko said.
"What? How?" Tohya asked.
"Erika can tape the two parts of the chain together and then use that repaired chain to re-seal the room."
"You expect Erika to still have her roll of tape here, too? It was already a stretch to have her carrying the bolt cutter in addition to the gun and ammunition. She only has two hands, and her dress doesn't have any pockets."
"It would be easy enough to change that, but no need," Ikuko said. "The tape she broke through is still on the door. She can just take that off and reuse it."
Tohya grimaced. It was true that tape could be reused, and there was definitely a strip of it hanging on the door. He wasn't about to concede the point, though. He said, "Already-used tape on a tiny metal chain wouldn't stop anybody. You could just lean on the door, and it'd fall apart. That seal is just as useless as locking the door, so Erika wouldn't bother creating it."
"The point of the seal is not to physically stop people. It is to give her a warning that somebody used the door. A broken chain is just as effective as a broken strip of tape for that. No. It is more effective. Breaking it is louder when the metal clinks around, and the hanging fragments are easier to see from a distance."
Tohya fumed. He didn't at all like what Ikuko said. It entirely made sense and it completely destroyed his puzzle. In his story, Battler had set up a distraction in the bathroom and then hid, and he had subsequently simply left while she had been fussing with the shower. If Erika chained the room shut behind her, then Battler couldn't leave without breaking the seal and leaving clear evidence that he was still alive.
Still, it was clear that Ikuko had a good point. The narrative was flawed right now, maybe critically flawed. With such a simple plot hole, it was sure to be dismissed by the target audience of narrative-combers and nit-pickers. His creation needed to stand out for its excellence in order to receive enough attention to accomplish his desired outcome, not be dismiss-able as a third-rate mystery and promptly forgotten.
"Okay, you win. I'll change it," Tohya said. He once again took the manuscript back from Ikuko.
On the way to the door, though, away from the pressure of the argument and the burning desire to win no matter what, it suddenly occurred to him. The chain seal was entirely a non-issue. He already had Kyrie planting the letter for Erika to find. It would be easy for her to additionally switch places with Battler while Erika was in the bathroom. Even better, the narrative never explicitly defined where she had died for real, so having her do so didn't create any contradiction, either.
Tohya grabbed a pen on a nearby desk and hand-wrote that Erika repaired the chain with the tape and resealed the room after entering it. He would need to go back later to polish it up more, but he wanted to show off to Ikuko. Pulling off the trick of having Erika seal the room without changing the rest of the narrative was one thing, but this bit of magic was on an entirely different level.
"Here. Done."
Ikuko recoiled in surprise. She took the pages, scanned the two sentences Tohya had written, and frowned. She said, "Erika is not the rescuer."
"Of course not. She has no reason to let him out."
"Or do something silly like set the chain after he leaves."
"I respect her more than that."
Ikuko frowned more and stared at the pages. After about a minute, she said, "Then I give up. You win. Tell me how Battler got out of the room."
Tohya basked in the glory of his success.
"The trick is Erika's other victims. They didn't die right away. It could have been any of them, but I'm saying it was Kyrie who survived Erika's attack. She drops the letter for Erika to find, and she rescues Battler. While Erika is fussing in the bathroom, Battler opens the door, lets her in, and leaves. Kyrie then chains the room shut behind him and hides in the closet, creating the illusion of a closed room."
Tohya took a moment to savor Ikuko's stunned silence at his amazing solution.
"That is impossible."
Tohya instantly plunged from the height of success to the purgatory of worry.
"That is wrong on so many levels. Kyrie has been injured to the point of looking like she is dead. Continuing the prank would be the last thing on her mind. No, wait, more importantly, Kyrie should be dead for real if Erika ambushed her, not just injured."
"People make mistakes all the time," Tohya said. "Erika just botched the job."
"Erika is smart enough to figure out the Epitaph and that everybody is faking their deaths. There is no way that she would be so dumb as to not be able to successfully kill Kyrie."
"Then it can be Natsuhi, or Eva, or Rosa, or even Maria. Erika is going through a lot of people and she is no longer The Detective. It wouldn't be impossible for her to get sloppy and make a mistake. It wouldn't take much, either. People survive weird and unexpected things all the time. Just think about Ushiromiya-san and what she said she went through."
"That is true, which is why Erika would choose to kill in a way that cannot be mistaken. For example, she could cut off their heads. Nobody could survive that."
"That's horrible!"
"That makes it even better. You can really demonize her this way. Imagine how gruesome you can make the deaths. And for a climax, you have Rosa and Maria in the same room together. You can have an obedient Maria forced to stay still and witness everything as Erika butchers her mother before turning upon her. Imagine how much you can tarnish the image of Erika with this."
"I guess."
"Or not. You are not required to change anything. You can publish this rubbish if you want," Ikuko handed the manuscript back to Tohya, "but not under Hachijo's name. Hachijo does not write such low quality work."
Tohya visibly slumped. No other reply was possible. Ikuko was right. She knew it, and he knew it. The only question was what he could do about it.
The fastest and simplest option would be to change the story to remove the problem entirely. It was as easy as having Battler break Erika's seal by just leaving. It was as easy as telegraphing that Battler was still alive and running around the island causing mischief. It was as easy as consigning the would-be mystery to the category of drama.
Tohya's pride wouldn't allow that. Even before Ikuko had observed the problem with Erika leaving the Guest Room door alone, he wouldn't have lowered himself to such debased act, and now that she had weighed in, he was personally vested in her challenge. He wanted to show off to Ikuko as well as show her up.
Another option was to have Battler remain in the room throughout Erika's inspection. That would also remove the problem entirely. However, it replaced it with numerous other problems equally fatal. Most importantly, such a situation would necessarily lead to a decisive confrontation between Erika and Battler. Either she would successfully murder him or he would overpower her. Regardless of which of the two outcomes occurred, it entirely ruined the rest of the narrative, once again consigning the work into a banal drama.
Tohya dismissed that option as well.
Visions of a chained-shut Guest Room filled Tohya's imagination as he mentally poked and prodded every nook and cranny within it, trying to maintain the illusion of the closed room while somehow breaking it. There were no hidden passages, no tools which would allow closing the chain after he left, or anything else.
It was impossible.
He was stuck.
There was only one answer he could think of. Somebody had to let Battler escape and then set the chain after he had left.
That realization changed everything. He had been looking at the problem backwards. The question wasn't how Battler escaped. That was easy. The problem was how anybody else escaped.
With newfound energy, Tohya returned back to the descriptions of the Cousin's Room and the room next to it. He inspected them in the same painstaking detail that he had considered the Guest Room, considering hidden areas, useful tools, timings of entries and exits, and everything else.
It was all to no avail. Both the Cousin's Room and the room next to it were sealed as tightly as the Guest Room was, and the presence of all the people was personally witnessed by Erika herself. They were as trapped as Battler was.
Until he found it.
Tohya rushed to Ikuko's room and pounded on the door. It was 2 AM, but he had to let her know immediately. She would understand. No, she would condemn him if he did not wake her up. She was just as big a mystery enthusiast as he was.
Ikuko opened the door and asked, "What is it?"
"I solved it."
"Solved what?"
"I solved how Battler got out of the Guest Room. In the story."
"That's nice. I'll read your changes in the morning," Ikuko said. She moved to close the door.
Tohya slammed his hand against it, halting its movement. He said, "No, you don't understand. I didn't change the puzzle. I solved it. I know how Battler can get out without changing anything."
"You did?" Ikuko's question came the energy of a lottery ticket winner hearing their numbers being called for the first time. The door jerked open as quickly as her eyes did. "How?"
"Shannon." Tohya spoke with all the verbal flourish of a mayor presenting a newly constructed library to the public.
Ikuko sent him a gaze which was half questioning and half accusing. It was clear she wanted to know how the rescuer had rescued Battler, not how Battler was rescued.
"She just goes out the window."
"That is impossible. The windows are sealed, just like the doors."
"Here," Tohya said. He pointed his finger at the sentence he had triple-checked just three minutes earlier. "It says that the tape on the windows was still there."
"Yes."
"That's the trick: 'the windows.' The Cousin's Room has two windows. I double-checked the description of it to be sure. The tape on 'the windows,' refers to those two, not to the windows of the Cousin's Room and the room next to it. The room next to it has no information provided, so anybody in there can get out by climbing out of its windows."
It was ironic that that same carelessness that so often mislaid keys or left typos in manuscripts had actually helped him in this case. That small gap, created entirely by mistake, had provided the solution for rescuing Battler.
"I see." Ikuko's eyes narrowed and she shook her head. "That solution is no good."
"Why not? It's perfect. The rain and the wind from the storm ruined the tape on the windows and caused them to fail. Or alternatively, it could be that Shannon broke the tape seals herself, and the storm then covered up the evidence by making them look like they naturally failed. Both ways work. It's just like 'End of the Golden Witch.'"
"I agree that that is a clever solution. My problem is that Shannon has no reason to act that way."
"Yes she does. Shannon loves Battler. It's obvious she would want to rescue him."
"That is not what I meant. I understand why Shannon would rescue Battler. What I do not accept is the way Shannon goes about the rescuing. It is very contrived to let him out and then re-chain the room behind him. It would be much easier to let Battler out and then they both run away together. Or alternatively, they could fight Erika right there and then in the Guest Room. Shannon going through all the trouble to set up the illusion of a closed room makes sense for the plot of the mystery, but 'because the plot needs it' is never a good explanation for a character's actions."
"She has an excellent reason for doing what she does: It's the only thing she can do. She wants to save Battler, but she's still bound by the orders of the Head of the Ushiromiya Family. It's the same reason she doesn't say anything to George and Hideyoshi. So she can't tell anybody anything, and she has to help Erika in a fight; but she knows Battler is in danger, and she wants him to live. The only thing she can do is let Battler escape, and her re-sealing the door behind him gives him as much of a head start as possible."
Ikuko's lips pursed. After several seconds, she nodded. "That sounds possible but unacceptable."
"Huh? Why?" Tohya asked.
"The rescuer is Kanon. It must be Kanon."
"No it doesn't. Shannon can easily rescue Battler, as could Kumasawa and Nanjo. The window of that room is wide open."
"This is not an argument about the window. It matters not that anybody in that room could rescue him. Kanon is the one to rescue Battler because that makes the puzzle much better."
It was now Tohya's turn to purse his lips. He didn't understand Ikuko's suggestion, but he did have faith in her judgment and abilities. He said, "I don't see the difference, but I can change the phrasing to make it so the window of the Cousin's Room is open instead, if you think it's better."
"No."
The abrupt negation halted Tohya's train of thought as effectively as a hand slamming against a closing door.
"Everything should be left as it currently is. As the narration stands right now, Kanon can and should be the one to rescue Battler. That is my little puzzle to you," Ikuko said. "The ability to pull a golden butterfly from the darkness does not rest with you alone."
Ikuko gazed upon Tohya with eyes which were so smug and confident that, despite his careful reading and rereading of the sections in question, he doubted what he knew he knew. Despite his already having triple-checked the careful wording, He read the crinkled pages a fourth time to reconfirm them once again.
"But that's impossible. See?" He pointed at the sections in turn. "Here's where it says all the doors and windows are taped shut... and here's where it confirms the doors, plural, are still taped shut... and here's where it confirms that the window to the Cousin's Room is also still taped shut. It's very explicit that the Cousin's Room is still completely sealed. And here, in the open room next to it, is Hideyoshi, George, Shannon, Kumasawa, and Nanjo. That's it. No Kanon."
"Acknowledged," Ikuko said. "And yet I am sure that Beatrice would have solved this problem quite easily."
The remaining hours of the night were spent very differently than Tohya had expected them to be. He had thought he would get a some sleep while swaddled in the satisfaction of success. Instead he spent them wrestling with the excruciating ecstasy of a new puzzle. That struggle continued into the morning, when instead of transcribing his handwritten notes into formal text and expounding on the monstrous acts of Erika, he was instead plagued by the question of how Kanon could escape from the perfectly sealed room. And it continued throughout the whole day. And the next day. And the next day. And the next day. And the next day. And so forth with no progress and no end in sight.
As was always the case with a mystery, there was the temptation to surrender and have The Detective walk through the entire sequence of events from start to end. It would be so easy. All Tohya had to do was admit to Ikuko that he didn't know how Kanon could rescue Battler, that he couldn't solve the problem she had put forward. He was sure that she would gleefully demonstrate her superiority by telling him the solution. However, two things stopped him. The first was his joy and the second was his pride.
Tohya found puzzle creation fun enough, but the thing he really loved was the solving. Frustration was not only a natural part of the process, it directly correlated with the feelings of triumph upon success. It would be a shame to waste such a delightful toy by smashing it open. Moreover, his pride as a mystery connoisseur and seeker of truth refused to let him surrender. If Ikuko had created a puzzle, then Tohya could solve it. It was as simple as that.
Given Ikuko's declaration that it was Kanon who had rescued Battler, there only remained two fundamental questions Tohya needed to solve: the how and the why. Unfortunately, he could make no headway with either of them. The Cousin's Room was completely sealed, and while it would be easy to rewrite the story to break that seal, Ikuko had been adamant that such a thing was not necessary. And even if he did do that minor rewrite, that only answered one of the questions. The question of Kanon's motivations would still be there no matter how easy it was for him to act.
Shannon was much easier to justify, which was why Tohya had selected her to begin with. It had taken far too long, but he had eventually learned of Shannon's love for Battler. That made for an obvious and intuitive explanation as to why she would risk everything and defy the will, if not the commands, of the Head of the Ushiromiya Family in order to save him. However, Tohya could think of no similar motivation for Kanon. Of everybody on the island, Kanon was the least close to Battler, both being unrelated to him and having known him for the shortest length of time. Kanon was uniquely positioned as being the one least likely to rescue Battler.
So Tohya remained trapped in the agony and the ecstasy of the mystery. The only thing he got in return for his long suffering was the occasional glance from Ikuko, which itself was yet another mystery. A look of shared joy, or even smug glee, would have been entirely understandable. Less scrutable was her looks of compassionate pity.
Fundamentally it made no sense how she could have stumped him. It was true that she was an avid connoisseur of mystery, but he was better. It was true that she had spent years delving into the secrets of Rokkenjima, but he had superior knowledge. All of the advantages should have been his.
Except for one thing.
There was one clear advantage that Ikuko had over him. On her writing desk, secured a bottle wiped clean of seawater, was a genuine message from Beatrice. He had never read it. Technically he may have seen the pages before, but he had no recollection of what had been written on them. That had been the moment of his first major incident, and the terror of that event had warded him away ever since.
That message simply had to have the solution to the puzzle. Ikuko had even said that Beatrice would have been able to solve this problem easily. There was no other explanation. That message had to be the key.
Tohya was stuck on the horns of a dilemma. He could continue to thrash at the puzzle Ikuko had posed, clawing away at the locked room in the hopes of a new insight which all his past clawing had failed to reveal. He could confess to Ikuko that he was stuck, surrendering his pride as a seeker of truth. Or he could face the letter, risking oblivion in the face of a terrible ghost of the past.
Or maybe that was the point. Maybe Ikuko was intentionally forcing Tohya to confront that letter. That could have been why she had posed the mystery to him. That could have been why she had mentioned Beatrice specifically.
Tohya wasn't sure what he wanted to do, though. He faced the terror oblivion every night, dreading each time he closed his eyes would be the last, but that paled in comparison to the loaded gun of the message. Could he, should he, face the trigger directly. Was it better to forever live in purgatory than to face oblivion? Was it better to face oblivion than to forever live in purgatory?
He came to a decision. However, that made it no easier. After he reached Ikuko's writing desk, his hand still hovered next to the bottle with all the trepidation of an agoraphobic at the threshold of an airplane and with all the dread of an employee holding a resignation letter at the threshold of their manager's office.
Tohya held his breath, picked up the top sheet of paper, and began reading the message from the Beatrice.
He tried to brace himself against the torrent that surrounded him, only to find out that he didn't need to. He tried to embrace the maelstrom, but that was likewise proved impossible due to its absence. Feelings and memories of a different person filled him. Visions of what had been and what could have been snapped into existence like so many ghostly crystals on the sea of fragments. More than that, visions of what should have been came to mind, both of the distant events of Rokkenjima and of the more recent events regarding its survivors.
Chaos buffeted him of an entirely different nature than he had been prepared for. He had been scared when Eva had called, and he had been terrified when Ange had called, but now that emotion was replaced. A regret deep enough to drown within engulfed him, and like a shipwrecked sailor clinging to sanity, he fixated on the concrete things before him.
It had been at an awesome price of majestic terror, but he had accomplished everything he had wanted. He still existed. He had not been destroyed by some black magic from beyond the grave. And with a beneficence borne from Beatrice, suddenly everything made sense.
He finally understood the truth in all its terrible glory.
"What a terrible trick."
"No, it was a legitimate trick. People without love cannot see it."
"That's right."
Author's Notes:
This story began with some substantial discussions with some other people on the nature of Episode 6. In particular, there was a seemingly simple question which few people even stop to consider:
"Why did Piece-Kanon rescue Piece-Battler that way? What functional difference does it make for Kanon to be in the room and Battler out, rather than the reverse? Or for that matter, why not escape together, or do something else?"
This expanded to other questions, such as, "Why did Piece-Erika tape the Guest Room shut behind her?"
Umineko does a huge trick which few people recognize by conflating the game boards, the metaverse, and the "real world." As such, it masks lots of questions by providing apparently easy answers. "Of course Meta-Kanon wants to save Meta-Battler, and the only way to do so is by having Piece-Kanon act this way." "Of course Meta-Erika wants to defeat Meta-Battler, so that's why she had Piece-Erika seal the room, in order to create a logic error." Those explanations ignore the fact that the game board, the metaverse, and the "real world" should all be internally consistent without any reference to any "higher" layer. (By analogy, consider a novel. The spoken dialogue should make sense on its own. Prose explaining what characters are thinking can add context and justification, but no matter how much of it is there, a character's verbal response still needs to make sense relative to the last thing said or done.)
From that substantial analysis, we came up with the basics of the above understanding. After that point, I took it further and started wondering what was the deal with Episode 6 in general. In terms of metaverse, everything is obvious as to why there are two game masters; it's because Bernkastel said so. However, in terms of the "real world," how could there be two game masters?
This is the answer I came up with.
In writing this, I have a new understanding and sympathy for Meta-Battler in the end of Episode 5 and the beginning of Episode 6. I likewise thought I had fully understood the whole of the truth of "Umineko no Naku Koro ni." I had thought so several times. I had thought so once I discovered the nature of the Golden Land. I had thought so once I had discovered the nature of Sayo. I had thought so once I realized why "0171129" existed. I've lost count of the number of times I come to understand the whole truth only to realize there was another truth I hadn't known.
That applies to this story as well. Over the course of writing this, there are several things I noticed or discovered. For example, what Gaap represents and the significance of Gaap specifically being the one to challenge Dnalor in regard to the window being open. Likewise it recontextualized the idea of Cornelia's failure to seal the study in Episode 5 and Erika's punishment of her thereafter, and it caused me to consider exactly how Battler's win over Erika was supposed to entirely eliminate her.
I find there is a substantial difference between a person doing analysis of a subject and a person writing fanfiction on a subject. I've noticed this before with things like Harry Potter how difficult it is to write Dumbledore as being a "good" person. When trying to write things in a cohesive and consistent world, it creates a lot of focus on details which casts things in a new light. As applied to the question of mystery solving, in writing this, I realized there was a way for Piece-Battler to rescue himself from the Guest Room completely on his own. It's very plausible that he could have untaped the chain, walked out, and then taped the two chain-halves together from outside the room. The chain itself is easy to access in the gap in the door, and tape is reusable. I did a quick skim of the Red Truths and I think this solution meets all the requirements, but it's possible I missed something. Regardless of the restrictions on the meta-verse, in terms of game board, I think this solution works and at least should be considered.
Last Updated: February 16, 2023