Umineko when yasu makes me cry 3

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"......This is Beatrice's funeral.
You will confess,
......the divine Master will hear,
......and I will forgive you.
......That's supposed to be Battler's job, but he didn't make it in time.
So, you'll have to settle with me."
Willard H. Wright

-~-

Let's start with Yasu's early life, because I think it's important to understand that the way Yasu views herself is very much tied to the circumstances of her upbringing. We don't know much about her time in the Fukuin House, but as one of the servants describes her as always having been "frail and a loner; I didn't know that kid well back in the House", she doesn't seem to have been particularly comfortable there.

What we do know is that at the apparent age of six (actually nine), she was sent to work as a servant at the Rokkenjima mansion, much younger and less experienced than any servant would normally be. It's quite clear that this put a huge amount of pressure on Yasu and caused her to quickly form a lasting inferiority complex. She wasn't able to do a lot of the things that the other servants were, nor was she able to work as much as them since she had to balance work and school as well. This ended up creating a general feeling amongst the servants that Yasu was dragging them down and being given unfair special treatment, so she quickly got used to a daily reality of having to work a lot harder than anyone else to keep up and yet never having her efforts appreciated or acknowledged by her peers. Having to constantly put up with that kind of environment in one's formative years would cause serious damage to anyone's self-confidence and I think we can see the lasting effect this has had on Yasu by the way that she has such a hard time doing anything for herself, assumes that she's to blame whenever anything goes wrong, and tends to defer to other people's judgment; and it's also why her most heartfelt desire is to be loved and valued for who she is.

Another thing to note is Yasu's tendency to retreat into daydreams and fantasy to escape her lonely reality, as we see with 'Shannon' and GaapBeatrice. She quickly becomes very adept at trying to downplay her problems and pretend that they don't exist instead of actively trying to solve them - and this is hardly surprising, since she's completely right that she's powerless to actually do anything about her situation. This habit of trying to cope by reframing her perception of reality rather than working on altering the reality itself is something that we can see from the very first moment we see her in EP7 ( http:i.imgur.comJJjs1f9.png ), and I think it's safe to say that she still often slips into that habitual pattern even after she DOES get hold of the power to change things, just because it's become her reflexive response to stress by that point. The other servants' insistence that Yasu's getting special treatment that she should be grateful for (getting a room all to herself, being allowed to work as a servant even though that's usually something only the most exemplary of the Fukuin House get to do, being paid the full amount despite not doing nearly as much work, etc), accustoms her to feeling guilty for any dissatisfaction she may have, and thus her initial assumption when she feels discontent with something is that the problem is with her and it's her fault for not being happy with what she has.

The important point to take away here is that Yasu is really, REALLY good at convincing herself that she's happy even when she absolutely isn't, and if you're not conscious of that when reading her scenes then you're probably going to come away from EP7 with the impression that she didn't really have such a bad life because her narration is so filled with those "but it wasn't so bad", "but I was used to it", "but it was all okay because of Shannon" kinds of statements. It's easy to miss that right from the start, there's a great level of subconscious pain and unhappiness that lies beneath the surface layer of denial - the layer of her 'magic' which was the only way she knew to cope, but which ultimately wasn't enough.

The next part we come to is the creation of 'Beatrice'. Originally Yasu's idea of Beatrice was born from her idea that her clumsiness might be caused by a witch playing pranks on her, and her thinking about how that witch might look and the way such a being might view the world, using her imagination to turn such ordinary things as her attempts to avoid losing track of things or her trying to solve mystery novels into a battle of wits between herself and the witch. (Incidentally, it's a tangent, but I've always found it fascinating how Yasu invents characters like these and fleshes out their attitudes and ways of seeing things to the point where she can actually ask herself things like 'how would Shannon deal with this?' or 'how would the witch Beatrice look at it?' and be able to get a real new perspective on the situation just like she would from someone who actually exists. It's true that it's not a sufficient substitute for actually having a close friend, but she really did do an incredibly good job of trying to fill that gap with her own imagination, and I'm sure she would never have held out for as long as she did without that.)

This changes when Yasu pulls the prank with Berune's key. She originally did this because she noticed the new servants being careless with things like she used to be, and, knowing that she had gotten over this problem through the thought that she'd been pranked by a witch, she wanted to create that illusion for Asune and Berune in the hope that it would encourage them to improve in the same way. What she didn't account for was the sense of power and thrill she felt at managing to convince them, at watching an older girl being genuinely freaked out and puzzled by something that she'd done herself. Considering that she had been pushed around by others her whole life and was used to other people always knowing better than her, it's hardly surprising that the feeling of fooling someone else and manipulating them without them realising would be exciting to her. But on a deeper level, Yasu also realised that in doing this, she herself had taken on the role of the prankster witch 'Beatrice' she had imagined. In other words, the witch Beatrice, who had previously only existed in her imagination, was now able to take action in the real world through Yasu, just as we saw in the fantasy scene where Beatrice controls Yasu's body to use magic. This is where Yasu ceases to view 'Beatrice' as a separate, imaginary existence and starts to see her as a hidden part of herself, a part that she can't show to anyone but through which she can act without people knowing it's her. Pulling pranks as Beatrice acts as a secret outlet through which she can express the parts of her personality that don't fit with her normal self-image as a meek and timid girl, but it also helps her to escape from her dull and powerless existence by creating a confident and powerful character inside her head. Doing things that make people believe in Beatrice, therefore, works as a way for her to try and have people acknowledge the self that she keeps hidden, the self that she wants to be. Every time someone acts like they're convinced that the witch actually exists, it serves as validation for Yasu that the imaginary persona she's created is actually real, and that there's more to her than her 'pitiful self', as she puts it.

Some time after this, Yasu and Jessica become friends. Having a friend on the island was probably a great help for Yasu, even though Natsuhi's disapproval combined with Yasu's workload meant that they didn't get to spend as much time together as they'd have liked to. Either way, the important thing is that Jessica introduced Yasu to her cousins at the family conference. The family conferences quickly came to be something Yasu really looked forward to since it was the only time she really had a chance to play around with other kids her own age.

And, of course, this is where we come to Battler. I don't think it's particularly hard to see why Yasu would have latched on to him so much. It's the first time she's had a close relationship with someone based on a mutual interest, and Battler is a very likeable, confident, energetic kind of person - everything Yasu wishes she was, pretty much. Furthermore, it's very easy to imagine how Yasu's overactive imagination could have made her quickly come to idealise him and build up their relationship in her mind even though their actual interactions must have been infrequent. It's also clear from his narration in earlier episodes that he was prone to saying dramatic and corny things just for the sake of trying to impress her by sounding cool, and given her sheltered nature, Yasu would have naturally taken every word of that to heart and assumed that his words were as heartfelt as hers were.

I think that the effect Battler's promise had on Yasu over the next few years is pretty plain to see; this is one thing that Ryukishi presented very clearly, so there's no need to elaborate too much here. It was the only time anyone had offered her a way out of the meaningless existence she was leading, and Battler was the first person who had ever made her feel valued and special. The ways she desperately tried to convince herself for all those years that he would definitely come for her eventually, and that her own lack of faith or her failure to truly commit herself must be to blame for his absence, are laid down in EP7 in painful detail. After being slowly worn down for three years, the event with the letters is finally enough to break her and she's forced to accept that he really has forgotten about her and continuing to expect his return is only going to hurt her. Of course, even though she knows that she has to move on, it's not like she can just get rid of her deep longing for him to come and rescue her. However, she does her best to stop thinking about him and no longer allows herself to truly believe that he'll come back. This is represented by the bud of love being moved from 'Shannon' - the self which Yasu consciously acknowledges and lives her life as - to 'Beatrice', the deeper secret self that no one else is allowed to see, and the person she wishes she was. (This is, obviously, why Beatrice takes on the form of Battler's "ideal woman" at this point.) In an attempt to distract herself from the pain of finally giving up her belief in Battler coming for her, she also creates Kanon as an imaginary friend, and tries to do her best to forget about Battler and be content with the life she has. As time passes, Kanon becomes a way for Yasu to process the negative thoughts and feelings that she can't allow herself to consciously acknowledge, such as her dissatisfaction with her life and her anger towards Natsuhi and the other servants for their treatment of her.

The next major event in Yasu's life is the beginning of her relationship with George. It shouldn't be too hard to see what attracts Yasu to him; he helps her out when the family are picking on her (albeit in large part for very self-centred reasons...but Yasu doesn't know that), and he gives off an impression of being very intelligent, perceptive and understanding. Those are exactly the kinds of traits that Yasu looks for in her ideal 'savior', because I think more than anything, Yasu wants someone to understand her and to make sense of her life for her. So it's not all that surprising that, after accepting that Battler isn't coming, she might start to latch on to George as a kind of 'replacement'. We never actually see in any of the episodes how Yasu and George actually end up in a relationship, but given that Jessica quickly notices their mutual admiration for each other, it's not hard to imagine her offering to help them to get together and meet up in secret occasionally.

But Shannon isn't the only part of Yasu that's developing during this time; Beatrice is as well. Before meeting Maria, Yasu spent a lot of time over the years fleshing out the characters of Beatrice and her minions inside her head, but she couldn't show the imaginary world she had created to anyone else. After all, the whole reason Yasu created Beatrice was precisely because she wasn't able to be that kind of person in real life. In Maria, she meets someone who's a lot younger than her and who is very gullible and trusting, and this provides her with a chance she's never had before - a chance to actually try acting the part of her imaginary self to someone who will actually take her seriously. Of course, the results are extremely successful, and Maria quickly comes to adore 'Beatrice' and to respect her more than anyone. It must have been a really new experience for Yasu to have someone who looked up to her so much and took everything she said so seriously, considering that she had always been in the opposite position - and to be able to share the world she'd put so much thought into creating with such an enthusiastic audience was undoubtedly a wonderful thing for her. Furthermore, she also gets to learn about Maria's own imaginary world, which she has put just as much time into, and the two of them have a great time expanding each other's universes.

Between her relationships with George and Maria, things are getting better for Yasu, but she finds that she still isn't quite satisfied. Yes, George genuinely loves spending time with her and she loves him too, but she doesn't feel the same kind of connection she had to Battler; their mutual interest in mysteries provided a means for them to genuinely relate and connect to each other as friends, while her relationship with George doesn't have much substance beyond their mutual attraction to each other. We can see in most of the interactions George has with Shannon that their conversations mostly consist of George talking about himself and Shannon just kind of nodding along and agreeing with everything he says; while Yasu may admire George, it's probably safe to say that the kinds of engaging two-way conversations she had with Battler, where the time seemed to fly by, are pretty much absent. With Maria, she does have that same kind of powerful connection, because of their mutual fascination with each other's worlds and the endless fun they can have playing together with their imaginations - but of course, that also isn't quite the same as the way she felt with Battler, where that connection was underscored by the excitement of their romantic feelings. As she says in EP7, finding a second person who could share her universe is something to be grateful for, but she also has to acknowledge that the person she really wants to create a universe with isn't Maria. So despite Yasu's best efforts to move on, however hard she tries to bury it, her wish for Battler to come back never really goes away.

And then, she solves the epitaph. I'm sure you don't need me to recap how Kinzo lets go of his regrets and passes away, or how Yasu inherits the gold and the head's ring. Genji, Kumasawa and Nanjo promise to answer all Yasu's questions about her parents, her birth, and who she is. The answers...were definitely nothing she could have expected. Finding out that she's the product of incestuous rape, and that she's basically been used as a tool without her consent to grant forgiveness to a man who she's far from certain deserved it, could hardly have been pleasant. But what really breaks her is what she learns about her body and the wound she suffered from falling off the cliff.

https:31.media.tumblr.com67d1e9ed879b3f03ae9eb713888449catumblr_inline_mzu58qXjVH1qicumy.jpg

To really understand how much this hurts Yasu, you have to understand that she wanted to be loved more than anything else. The hope that's been keeping her going all these years is that one day, someone will be able to accept her and value her for who she is, and take her away from the lonely and disconnected life she's always led. Deep down she wanted that person to be Battler, but she was willing to settle for George if need be. But learning the truth about herself completely dashes any hope she had of being saved. It's not just that she's incapable of sexual functioning, though that is a huge blow to her, especially given George's desire for children. The fact that she was born male, that she was never really a girl in the first place, completely overturns everything she thought she knew about herself. Yasu's self-esteem was never exactly secure in the first place - even around the time Beatrice was first created, she already said she hated the sight of herself in the mirror because it reminded her of how pathetic she was - but this revelation shatters any sense of a consistent self-image that she may have had. It means that the most basic foundation of her relationships with Battler and George was a lie from the start. Neither of them would ever have been able to love her if they'd known the truth. Yasu had always felt like she was inherently inferior, and this confirms it for her beyond a doubt - she can never be allowed to fall in love like a normal person, because she's less than human. She's furniture. Yasu had probably originally heard that term in the context of the idea that 'a good servant should be like furniture', in terms of being unobtrusive and always on hand. But now the term takes on a new meaning to her; as far as she's concerned, she literally is furniture, something less than human, a pitiful existence that has done nothing but act as a tool for other people's purposes, someone who exists only to serve and will never be allowed to know love like real humans can. She's been furniture from the start; the idea that she had ever been human, that anyone could ever have loved her, was only her delusion. And that delusion is now shattered, leaving nothing but a bleak, hopeless reality.

And yet, in spite of Yasu's heart being broken and her hopes being dashed, somehow life still goes on. No one knows about what she's going through, and nobody knows that anything has changed; she continues to perform her duties as she always has done, even if she does feel dead inside. She's probably decided to break things off with George the next time she meets him, since their relationship is doomed to failure and she doesn't want to hurt him by letting it go any further. Eva was right to tell her that she wasn't worthy of George and that she should know her place. From now on she will resign herself to her role as a servant, do as she is told, and no longer allow herself to be tormented by dreams which she can never attain.

Or that's what she tells herself, anyway. But the pain quickly becomes too much to stand, and the turning point is shown near the beginning of EP2, where Shannon finally confronts 'Beatrice', the part of herself that holds the desires she can't allow herself to acknowledge:

".........I certainly am incompetent and uncultured, just as Eva-sama said.
......I am not a person. ...So maybe I have no right to love...
......But in that case, why was I given a heart which can know love?
Real furniture, ...doesn't have anything like a heart.
So they don't have to love people, right? So they don't feel pain.
......If I'm just another piece of furniture, ......why do I have a heart?
.........If it's going to be this painful and this harsh, ............I wish I hadn't been given something like a heart............!"

And Beatrice answers. There is in fact still a way that she can experience love. After all, George doesn't know the truth about her, so if Yasu doesn't say anything about it, he will continue to love her, and their relationship will keep going as if nothing had happened. It's a love built on illusions - on "magic" - but until that magic is broken, it will be indistinguishable from real love. She knows it's wrong to keep lying to him, but it's also the only hope she has of continuing to feel loved. If she breaks off that love, then how can she keep going? And so she surrenders to the witch's temptation, and allows her relationship with George to continue without saying anything. Even though she knows it's something that furniture is forbidden to experience, the alternative - for her endless meaningless and lonely days to continue forever - is just too much for her to bear.

But that magic can't last forever. What is she going to do when their relationship gets to the point where she has to show her body to him? At that moment, he'll realise that she was deceiving him, and everything will end. What can Yasu do to avoid that? The answer, it occurs to her, is quite simple - to never let their relationship get that far. She'll let it keep going as far as it can, and when it gets to the point that she can't go any further without revealing herself, then she will let herself die in a mysterious accident. She knows about the explosives hidden beneath Rokkenjima; they offer the perfect way for Yasu to kill herself without leaving a body, thus leaving no evidence that she was 'furniture'. She can go to sleep forever, in the knowledge that she was loved until the end, and nobody will ever know the truth about her. A truth with no observers quickly becomes overwritten - as far as George and the world are concerned, she was human to the very end. That is the way that through Beatrice's magic, Shannon can overcome her status as furniture, and become human - by overwriting the truth with her magic. And that is why Shannon has to break the shrine mirror to use the magic that will let her attain love despite being furniture. By testing the explosives on the shrine, Yasu can confirm that they still work, and that her magic will be successful.

At first, of course, she dismisses this idea as ridiculous, and tells herself to stop thinking about such things, as represented by Kanon coming to the rescue and driving Beatrice off. But the mark of Beatrice's golden butterfly remains on Shannon's hand. Now that Yasu has conceived this idea, she can't totally forget about it. And soon enough, in a moment of desperate determination to become human at all costs, she does indeed end up testing the explosives on the shrine - the first thing she has ever done for her own sake. She allows her relationship with George to continue, and sets herself firmly down the path of the Endless Witch.

But while she's not with George, Yasu is also experimenting with her gender identity in her spare time. She's found out that the accident she had from falling off the cliff has basically robbed her of boyhood, and it wouldn't be surprising for her to feel some real resentment for that. Actual cases where boys have been raised as girls have made it clear that gender identity is down to nature as well as nurture, so she may well have felt deep down that there was something wrong with her life as a girl all along, even if she couldn't pinpoint the cause of that feeling. So while she was no doubt shocked to learn about her birth, it probably also explained to her the meaning of something that had been nagging her all her life, and it would make sense that she would want to experiment with acting in a male role to see if it felt any more natural to her.

This is how Kanon finally manifests himself. It's a similar situation to Beatrice; at first, she only existed inside Yasu's head, but then just the right circumstances came about to allow her to actually act as Beatrice in the real world, because of Maria. Now Yasu wants to do the same thing with Kanon, the male persona she's created inside her head, and since she has the head's ring, she now has the power to make that happen. Genji pretty much has sole responsibility for control over the selection and scheduling of the Fukuin House graduates, so it probably wasn't as hard as you might think to introduce Kanon as a servant. Obviously he can set up the schedules so that Kanon and Shannon are very rarely assigned to the island on the same day, and on the rare occasions that they do have to be, the illusion of their separate existences is certainly possible for Genji, Kumasawa and Nanjo to maintain through the same sorts of tricks that Natsuhi used to keep Kinzo alive.

And so time continues to pass. Yasu is able to keep the pain of being furniture away for a while, since her magic is successfully preserving the illusion that she's human. Her relationship with George progresses smoothly, so smoothly that she could almost forget that it's founded on deception. But it can't last forever; before she knows it, over a year has passed, and their relationship is quickly getting serious enough that the time she foresaw, the time when she will no longer be able to keep her secret unless she disappears, appears to be drawing ever closer. Of course, she'd known from the beginning that this day would come, but that day seemed so far away when she destroyed the shrine; now that it's actually getting closer, her resolve from then is a distant memory. Back then, she couldn't have imagined just how much Shannon would come to mean to George, and after all the time they've spent together, it's painful for Yasu to imagine George having to live with her sudden death, even if it is the only way the magic can be preserved.

And then the moment of decision is finally thrust on her, when George suggests the trip to Okinawa. As they're going to be staying together overnight, there's a very good chance that her secret will be exposed. Sure, she could come up with some excuse why she couldn't go, but that's avoiding the essential problem; the fact that their relationship has progressed to the point where George feels able to make suggestions like this means that they're fast approaching the point where Yasu will no longer be able to hide the truth. In keeping with her original plans, she should destroy herself now so that her magic can never be broken. She should cast the spell that will allow her to remain 'human' forever in George's eyes.

But is that really the only way? Her relationship with George has gotten further than she could ever have imagined. George's love for her feels so genuine, and he's said so many times that he'll stay with her no matter what, that they'll always be together forever. Maybe she's doing George a disservice by thinking that he'd no longer be able to love her if he knew the truth? If he really does care so much about the person that she is, surely he'd be able to look past her body and love her anyway? Maybe there is a chance that she can overcome her nature as 'furniture' without needing to resort to magic - maybe, through his love, she can become truly human in this world, without having to go to the Golden Land? And so, even though the possibility of rejection terrifies her, she tries to trust in George, and goes on the trip with him.

While she's there with him, she tries, in her characterisically hesitant and tentative way, to drop hints that maybe there's something she hasn't told him. She tries to tell him that their present happiness is too good to be true, that it's more than she deserves. She tries to tell him that their relationship, as it is now, is only possible because of 'magic'. But he just shrugs it off and doesn't understand at all, and that greatly damages Yasu's confidence. Maybe he doesn't really understand her after all? Maybe he really does only love her because of her deception after all? Maybe it was incredibly foolish and naive of her to agree to this in the first place?

And of course, in the end, it turns out that he arranged for them to stay in separate rooms anyway. So the moment she was so terrifiedly anticipating never actually came after all, and her magic was preserved for the time being. But while part of her is incredibly relieved that she hasn't been found out, she also knows that the moment of decision has only been delayed. The time that she has to face the truth will come sooner or later. And so her doubts return in full force; could anyone really love furniture like her if they knew the truth? Perhaps she was showing unspeakable arrogance in even thinking that George could love her if he knew? Maybe her magic really is the only hope she has of becoming human after all? And so on. We can see this internal struggle going on in the beginning of EP2, represented by the contrast between 'Shannon' - who is very grateful to Beatrice for allowing her love with George to come true, and who believes that their love has become so great that it will be preserved even if she returns the butterfly brooch and no longer relies on her magic to keep their relationship going - and 'Kanon', who is hostile towards Beatrice, representing the part of Yasu which says that she's being a fool to think that the magic can last forever, and that allowing herself to indulge a futile hope for release from being furniture is only going to cause her unnecessary pain.

Then, a little while after the trip, Jessica tells Yasu how jealous she is of her relationship with George, and how she can't seem to find a boyfriend herself no matter how hard she tries. She's worried because she'd told her friends she'd definitely bring her boyfriend to the culture festival, thinking she'd surely have one by then, but she still hasn't managed to find anyone. Considering that Yasu knows all too well what it's like to feel like nobody will ever love you, she probably feels a lot of empathy for Jessica's situation...and she sees a perfect opportunity. Yasu has been periodically acting as Kanon for over a year now, but her experiments in exploring her gender identity haven't proven all that fruitful; after all, performing chores and doing a servant's duties isn't really all that different whether you're male or female. But if she could get Jessica to take Kanon to the festival as her boyfriend, then it would give her a chance to experience what it was like to be in a social situation in an explicitly male role. Of course, the thought of her male persona being exposed to such public scrutiny is probably more than a little frightening for her, but after all the time she's spent acting as him by this point, she's reasonably confident that she can pull it off. And while she may feel like it's sort of cheating on George, she can justify it by the fact that it's only a "fake" date, and she's really just helping out a friend, right? So she suggests the idea to Jessica, and they end up going to the festival together.

Naturally, the completely chaotic and crowded atmosphere of the high school festival completely catches Yasu off guard, since she probably quit after middle school, the end of her compulsory education, to focus on her work as a servant. But she also gets to see a side of Jessica that she's never seen before. Jessica has been Yasu's best friend since childhood, after all, but seeing the way she acts at school, completely unconstrained by the obligations Natsuhi and Krauss put on her at Rokkenjima, really gives Yasu a new perspective on her, and she can't help but be amazed by the way she's managed to keep pursuing her own interests and be the person she wants to be, even despite all the incredible pressure and demands being put on her regarding how the successor to the head should act. Given how Yasu is so passive and so easily acquiesces to others' demands, it's not hard to see why she'd feel a deep admiration for Jessica's integrity and ability to be so genuinely true to herself. Yasu knows, from what Jessica has told her as Shannon, that she is infatuated with Kanon; now Yasu is in the awkward situation of realising that she might actually return those feelings. Being romantically attracted to a girl obviously isn't something Yasu would have ever really considered before, but being in her male persona and seeing Jessica like this, she feels like she could actually fall for her. And after all, Yasu knows that she was in fact born a boy. So aren't these feelings for Jessica, feelings that she has as a boy toward a girl, more authentic and real than the relationship she has with George, which is based on a lie? So maybe her hope of becoming truly human shouldn't be placed in George, but in Jessica? Wouldn't a relationship that isn't built on deception be preferable to the lie she's living right now?

So when Yasu sees Jessica the next day feeling dejected by her parents' lack of appreciation for her passion, she feels compelled to tell her how much she admires her dedication. But Jessica turns the conversation around on her, asking why Kanon is so self-deprecating and refers to himself as furniture all the time. A topic, of course, that Yasu has been agonising over and debating with herself more than Jessica could possibly know. Jessica starts trying to tell her the same things she's been trying to tell herself, that she can overcome her status as furniture and become a real person. And Yasu really, really wants to believe it. When Jessica asks Kanon his real name, Yasu seriously considers telling her everything - she's been her closest friend since childhood, so surely if anyone could understand her, if anyone could save her, it would be her?

But Yasu can't do it. Whatever Jessica says, she doesn't understand what it really means to be furniture. And it's not like Jessica can make her a 'real boy' any more than George can make her a 'real girl'; she has no idea how to act like a boy, having been raised her whole life as a girl, and even if her body was originally male, that doesn't change the fact that it's incapable of love regardless. A relationship with Jessica would surely be just as doomed to failure as her relationship to George is. As long as she doesn't reveal the truth to anyone, at least things can continue as they are. If she told Jessica the truth about herself, the friendship that they have now would be destroyed, and Yasu can't bear the thought of that. Not only that, but if Jessica knew Yasu was deceiving George, she might tell him the truth too, and that would break the magic that could be Yasu's only hope of becoming human. So Yasu forcefully rejects what Jessica is trying to say to her, getting straight to the point and telling her that Kanon can't ever love her. Jessica doesn't understand why Kanon is saying this, of course, but she does understand that she's been clearly refused, and reluctantly accepts that. Yasu, of course, feels horrible about crushing her hopes like that, and she's also really worried that she may have made the wrong choice, that she might just have rejected her hope for salvation.

But she steels herself against those feelings, and tells herself that she's done the right thing; her relationship with George is already bad enough, without her deceiving Jessica too. She shouldn't have ever tried to know love in the first place; she should have accepted her place as furniture. And so Kanon stomps on the golden butterfly brooch that represents the "magic" through which she tried to become human. She can only temporarily feel human through magic, but that magic is ultimately just fake, and soon it's going to run out. There was never any hope for her.

And so, having abandoned her naive thoughts that George or Jessica might be able to accept her, Yasu grows more and more disillusioned, finally forced to face her pitiful, hopeless, unforgiving reality for what it is. Experiencing the desire to be Jessica's boyfriend has only confirmed and brought home her deep-seated belief that she's not really a girl, and highlighted just how fake and impossible her love for George is. The magic that she used to try to make her life bearable is reaching its limit. For her whole life, she had used her imagination and her faint hopes of redemption to try to brighten up an existence that had always been lonely and sad, but she's reaching the point where she just can't do that any more.

Even her fun and innocent time with Maria has lost its wonder and beauty. The first break in Mariage Sorciere comes when Maria tries to invite Ange into the alliance. But the magical world that Yasu and Maria created together doesn't really mean anything to Ange, and she quickly gets bored of this pretend play, making fun of Maria for still playing with stuffed animals at her age. Obviously this hurts Maria a lot, since her 'magic' means so much to her and she was hoping to share that with Ange. But it hurts Yasu too, to have to confront the fact that her so-called 'magic' is something that even a six-year-old girl finds pathetic. Ange's rejection of the magic that was such an important part of both of their lives is a major blow to both of them, and no doubt both of them found it harder to immerse themselves in their imaginary world after having had the blunt and pitiless truth that it's little more than "playing with suffed animals" thrown at them.

And then comes Sakutaro's death, the ultimate denial of the magic that Maria had so depended on. Seeing how Maria has been so thoroughly broken really shocks Yasu, and forces her to fully confront how completely and utterly powerless her 'magic' ultimately is. Maria will no longer accept Yasu's excuses for why she can't resurrect Sakutaro; her attempts to console Maria by telling her that Sakutaro will always be with her if she just believes, and that her belief can become magic, suddenly seem so hollow to both of them. Mariage Sorciere's ability to ease their suffering is rapidly running out; reframing reality and trying to make a sad situation happy can work for a long time, but it can't last forever if no hope of actual change comes along, as both Yasu and Maria are learning.

And so Yasu watches Maria, who had managed to survive for so long by telling herself that her mother loved her deep down, sobbing and screaming in anger, saying that she wants her mother to die for what she's done, that she wants to smash her into little bits and make her meet the same end as Sakutaro did, that she wants revenge; all the underlying frustrations and anger that she didn't allow herself to acknowledge before, that she had used Sakutaro to distract herself from, finally pouring out. And Yasu just watches this, watches Maria reaching the same level of despair that she's reaching, the point where her magic can't save her any longer, the point where she needs someone real to save her but the one person who could have done that has betrayed her in the worst possible way...And for the first time, she allows herself to feel real, harsh, bitter anger at the world that did this to both of them. It's okay if it's just her, she's furniture, she's worthless, she deserves it - but her beloved disciple who's never done anything wrong and who's tried so hard to cope, who's shown so much love and devotion to her mother long past the time that she still deserved it...Right at that moment, she agrees with Maria; Rosa deserves to pay for what she's done. It's not the kind of thing that Yasu would ever normally allow herself to feel, and it's not the kind of thought that Mariage Sorciere would normally condone either, but right now she just doesn't care. And so...

 "........................Very well. I shall give you that power.
......For tearing you and your beautiful heart apart......for giving you that pain, it is fitting that your heartless mother be torn apart considerably.
............I shall teach it to you.
......I shall teach you of the depths of the magic world's abyss, where no light reaches......"

And from that moment on, Mariage Sorciere turns to 'black magic', and everything spirals downhill from there. As Ange describes in EP4, it stops being an alliance made to bring happiness to the world through magic, and becomes more and more dark and twisted. Maria's friendly band of rabbits become professional snipers whose arrows pierce through their enemies' hearts without fail. Beatrice's fun-loving minions become tools used for gouging sacrifices in dark ceremonies. No longer able to find solace through pretending that the world is beautiful, Maria and Yasu instead come to use their imaginary world as an outlet for all the bitterness and hatred that they've been suppressing and denying for so long. Of course, now that the pressure valve on Yasu's pent-up resentment and despair has finally been released, there's no suppressing it any longer. She finally allows herself to fully feel the emotions she wouldn't allow herself to before. She hates Natsuhi for throwing her off the cliff and for being so strict and cruel to her when she doesn't deserve it. She hates Genji and Nanjo and Kumasawa for using her as a tool to make Kinzo feel like he was forgiven and completely screwing up her life in the process. She hates Rosa for so cruelly rejecting her daughter's desperate efforts to gain her affection. And she expresses all of this through her her new world of magic, the magic of hatred that lets her attempt to relieve her frustrations by pushing her pain on to others. She imagines carrying out the directions of the epitaph in their literal form, the way Maria always interpreted them, as an occult ceremony offering human sacrifices to the witch. She directs her anger everywhere it can possibly go, experiencing how it feels to let herself blame other people for once; to feel, if only for a moment, like her problems are their fault and their responsibility instead of hers.

But of course, Yasu can't keep up such intense hatred toward others for long, and inevitably every time she engages in her dark fantasies she's back to hating herself for having such cruel thoughts, all the more convinced that she's just a horrible, irredeemable person. Because, deep down, she knows that none of the people she might want to blame are actually the inhuman demons she'd like to see them as; they're sad, pitiable human beings, just like she is, and that's part of what makes the whole situation so horrible. And so, once the initial wave of passionate anger has subsided, she's left feeling more drained and apathetic than anything. She's just been through too much, with no one to confide in, no one knowing anything about what she's going through, no one knowing how much she has to struggle to get through each day, no one able to understand her or even to realise that there's anything to understand, and by this point she's just incredibly tired and disillusioned with everything. So she keeps on going through the motions, acting the parts she knows she's supposed to play, almost completely dead inside at this point, because caring has become too exhausting. George tells her that he's going to give her an engagement ring, that he wants them to be married, and all Yasu can do in response is to weakly protest that she's furniture, knowing that it's useless and that the illusion she created is finally about to disappear. Let it end, she thinks; let my pitiful form be exposed, it doesn't matter any more. She already knows just how useless her magic is anyway.

And then, the unthinkable happens. She hears that Battler is coming back. Her prince. The only person who could save her. The person she had thought had gone forever. Of all the things she could have predicted, this wasn't one of them, and it revives all kinds of feelings, all kinds of hopes and dreams, that she'd thought had been buried long ago. Because all this time, even through everything that she had gone through, some part of her still held on to that promise, the only promise of salvation she had ever been offered, the one faint hope that she had never quite been able to let go of. Somehow, a ray of hope manages to pierce her haze of despair - could she really be saved after all? Did Battler finally remember? Is he coming back for her sake? Is someone finally going to save her from her eternal prison?

But Yasu isn't the naive girl she was a few years ago who might have been able to believe that. The rational part of her tells her that there's no way Battler is coming back for her sake; if he had remembered, why wouldn't he have gotten in contact before now? And besides, even if he did still love her, what about George? He's going to propose to her on the day of the family conference; he thinks he's met the person he wants to spend the rest of his life with. Could she really betray him for someone she hasn't seen for six years? And besides which, isn't it impossible for her to love Battler anyway, being furniture? Wouldn't he feel just as disgusted by the truth of her existence as George or Jessica would?

Why is she even allowing herself to hope? Why is it that every time she thinks she's finally resigned herself to the hopelessness of her existence, something somehow comes along to make her care again? Why is she even still alive? Why didn't she just kill herself long before things reached this point? Shouldn't she have known from the moment she became furniture that there was no hope for her? So why has she continued like this for so long, torturing herself with hopes of rescue? Thinking that she might be able to find salvation in a love built on deception, or in creating an illusory magical world with a fellow witch, or in pretending that she's a boy, or in the return of a so-called saviour who's probably forgotten all about her? What was the point in struggling for so long when her fate was sealed from the start? It would have been so much easier if she'd just killed herself back when she'd learned. Or better yet, if she'd just died after she was thrown off the cliff, so that she wouldn't have had to suffer any of this. Now she's got all these lingering attachments that make it so hard for her to just die.

Won't George be so sad when the girl he was going to marry just disappears? She knows how much their relationship means to him, and how devoted he is to her; if she vanished forever, he might never get over that sudden unexpected and completely inexplicable loss. His whole life could be ruined because of her. And wouldn't Jessica be sad for Kanon, too? And what about Maria? Yasu's the only person in the world who loves her, the only one keeping her from completely giving into despair. What would she do, if the second person who she needed to maintain her universe were to disappear forever? Everything's such a mess; if Yasu had just resigned herself to her fate from the start instead of drawing things out this long, she would have been able to let herself die in peace. But knowing that so many people's hearts are going to be broken by her departure, it's so much harder. Why did she have to commit the unforgivable sin of trying to know love despite being furniture, even with the knowledge that she was furniture and that the promised day would have to come eventually, painfully breaking apart whatever attachments she may have? Now everything is such a mess. But if she doesn't kill herself, what can she do? Just reveal herself to George after all, and let what happens happen? But that would mean telling him that she had deceived him for two whole years, and she'd have to reveal her true form. Wouldn't that hurt him just as much as her death would? And wouldn't she still be left, afterwards, with an empty life where no one will ever love her and she will never have any hope? And so she goes through every choice she has, and rejects everything. George can't save her; Jessica can't save her; Battler can't save her; she can't save herself. She has reached a dead end of fate where there's no choice she can make that won't break someone's heart. And the worst part is that she's reached that dead end herself; much as other people played a part in it, her own choices inescapably led her to this point. She knew that this was where it would lead, and she walked herself down this path anyway. She has created her own hell, her own inescapable fate, and she has no options left. Everything's just such an entangled mess that nothing she can do can possibly resolve it.

She just wants everything to stop. She wants something, anything, to just put an end to her suffering, to put an end to this irredeemable mess of a world. This world where Maria is continually abused and neglected despite having tried with all her heart to make her mother happy with her, where her incredible efforts to try and find Fragments of happiness and to keep smiling despite the horrible truth of her reality go completely unacknowledged and unappreciated. This world where Rosa is unable to do anything but lash out at Maria because of the incredible pain she herself has suffered, where she continues to wait for a man who will never come back to her, where she has to shoulder the burden of being a single parent regardless of her own wishes and without anyone appreciating her, with everything Maria does reminding her what a failure of a mother she is. This world where Krauss has no choice but to risk the collapse of his entire family on an incredibly dangerous scheme, just because he was too trusting for this brutal and unforgiving reality, knowing that no one will have any mercy or pity for him if he is found out. This world where Natsuhi was taken away from everything she loved and trapped in an unfamiliar household just because of some meaningless power struggle between families, where her heroic efforts to be accepted by her new family are ignored and rejected time and time again. This world where the four siblings all hate each other and scheme behind each other's backs for the sake of money, all of them too scarred by their childhood to be able to ever open up to each other and be a true family. This world where Jessica's struggle to be herself and to follow her heart goes entirely unappreciated by her family, where she's continually berated for not being the person the world wants her to be while her great talents in other areas go unrecognised, where she and her mother are completely unable to understand each other despite both of them wanting to so badly. This world where George has been trapped by his mother and forced to be the person she wants him to be, where he thought he had finally found an opportunity to break away and become his own person, but will soon find out that it was nothing more than a deception. This world where Yasu has to live in a body incapable of love, betrayed by everything and everyone she trusted, destined to be all alone forever, trapped in a dead end of her own making. This world where so many people suffer in silence, no one knowing how often the cruel reality of the world threatens to overwhelm them, no one seeing how much effort they have to put in just to get themselves through each day, no one caring about their pain. She wants an end - any end - to her suffering, and to everyone else's. An end to everything.

Yasu has always been powerless to change anything; she's never been able to do anything but try to hide from her problems. Her magic can't help anyone; it can't solve anyone's problems; it can't do anything about the cruel existence in which the whole Ushiromiya family lives. Kinzo has left his scars on all of them, herself most of all, and those scars will never heal. But while her magic may not be able to solve anything, it can put an stop to everyone's suffering. It can bring the ending that she so longs for. It doesn't even matter what that ending is; she just wants it all to stop, one way or another. And so, Beatrice weaves her final magic. The resurrection ceremony that she and Maria talked about. A ceremony to bring everyone to a place where they will be tormented no longer, where there will no longer be any sadness or any problems or anything to worry about. A beautiful and eternal oblivion - a place where everyone can sleep peacefully forever, and no longer have to deal with the pain that comes with being alive. That is Beatrice's Golden Land - a world where everything will return to zero. The dramatic culmination of the magic that she has used for her whole life; the final, ultimate escape from sad, heartless reality.

And so she writes the message bottles, planning out every detail of the ceremony, planning out her final farewell to the world that broke her. It's an incredibly painful process for her, and she almost loses her resolve many times, as we can see in the parts of her stories where Shannon and Kanon rise up against Beatrice, trying to persuade her to stop...but her determination wins out regardless, because she just can't see any other choice, any other way out of her dead end of fate. We can see how her attitude towards what she's doing shifts back and forth as she goes. There are times where she sees herself as being the family's saviour, the one who will finally bring to them the peace and rest that they deserve; in her first message bottle, the witch Beatrice remains a mysterious figure hidden in the shadows, with nothing that suggests that she's a particularly cruel or sadistic person, and she's even to some extent portrayed as benevolent. It's said that she doesn't cause harm to people who respect her, and the ceremony is said to bring everyone to the Golden Land, where they will be happy. At the end, Battler, George and Jessica - the three people she cares about the most - all submit to her and beg her to take them to the Golden Land, affirming her choice in the most dramatic way possible. But there are other times where she admits to herself that what she's doing is wrong and absolutely hates herself for it, but keeps going anyway - as we see in the second message bottle, where Beatrice is portrayed as a cruel and despicable witch who manipulatively sows seeds of love between humans and furniture even though they will inevitably be forced apart, and who brutally toys with the lives of humans for her own pleasure. But whatever she may think about what she's doing, she still continues down the path she's chosen - it's all that's left to her now.

And yet, even at this stage, even in the depths of her despair and her determination to bring an end to everything...there's still a part of her that wants to be saved; a part of her that still wants to believe that there's hope, that there might be some kind of redemption for her. By this point it's far too weak to be able to change her decision...possibly too weak for her to even notice or acknowledge. But it's there; even while she's writing the message bottles, even when she finally spins her demon's roulette and puts her magic into practice, there's still something in her that's crying out to be stopped. Whether she realises it or not, that's why she leaves so many ways out, why she puts so many restrictive rules on herself - because deep down, she's hoping that someone will tell her that she's wrong, that someone will tell her that there is hope in the world, that she might still be saved. She doesn't believe that there's any hope, but she still wishes more than anything that someone will prove her wrong. It's why she promises to stop her plan if the epitaph is solved - partly as a way to avoid responsibility, under the reasoning that if they can't manage to solve the epitaph and save themselves, then it's their own fault; but also because she's subconsciously desperate for someone to give her an excuse not to go through with this, and she wants to provide every opportunity possible for someone to stop her. It's why she performs the ceremony as a 'plotline murder' in a way that looks so similar to the murder mysteries that she and Battler used to discuss - because part of her hopes that Battler will see the similarities and remember the time they spent together, that he'll see her hand in this and that he'll try to understand her heart in the same way he always talked about understanding the culprits' motives in the books they used to read. She'll keep going with her plan, she's completely resolved and determined to put an end to everything and bring everyone to the Golden Land - but paradoxically, she's simultaneously crying out for help with all her might, praying for someone to stop her before it's too late.

-~-

Like the ceremony in which I inherited everything from the previous Head, ......I decided to abandon myself to the fate known as a miracle.

It may be more accurate to say that I abandoned myself to the choice of the roulette.
I...we...could not even decide our own fate, so we let fate decide everything for us.

Perhaps one of us will find what they seek.
Or, perhaps all will be joined and released.
Or, perhaps someone will put a stop to this folly.

......No matter which fate the roulette chose, I planned to obey its ruling.
I will not resist fate.  ......After all, whenever I have tried in the past, fate has always been heartless to me.........

-~-

Humans will carelessly say that people have infinite possibilities.
However, the Endless Witch......knows how limited those possibilities really are.

So, out of her limited fate, she tried to create the infinite.
By entrusting her fate to God, she tried to create the infinite.

However, this did not mean that she was resigned to her fate.
She spun the roulette of fate with an unshakable and certain will.

A certain fate, where absolutely no one could escape if the epitaph was not solved.
And all of it sealed up on the island.  Clair as well.

October 4th and 5th, 1986, were sealed away by an absolute and certain will, ......and she abandoned herself to that short span of time and the many fates that could be chosen on that island.

"......And now, my confession is over.  ......This should be enough to find the motive for the crime.
......If you still do not know, I will say no more.  It's not as though anyone could understand my heart anyway."

-~-

People are riddles.
They want someone else to solve their riddle.
They live life wanting someone to solve the riddle that they are, the most difficult riddle in the world.

They want someone to look at the riddle they are.
And they want that person to solve it.

For her, that wish has been granted......

......Her soul will wander no longer.

Sleep in endless peace, in your cat box coffin......

-~-

As a result of Lady Beatrice's death, I am releasing this incomplete tale in accordance with her will.

In reading this work, I was reminded of her long years of sadness, and couldn't hold back my tears.
But at the same time, I felt pity for her.

Although she was searching for someone who had love, I am sad to say that ironically, her heart was filled with anger at those who did not.
She once told me that it was fine if her story reached only one person in a thousand.

However, that was wrong.
Out of those thousand people, she wished her story would reach even one more person.
If you asked her, she would surely laugh and deny it.
But those were without question her true feelings.

In the beginning, I was uncertain about releasing this manuscript. I thought that I should hide it, so as to preserve her mystery for the one-in-a-thousand savior she spoke so often about. But as I read and reread it... I began to realize that the manuscript was a message with no destination address.

It was a wish that even she never realized she had.
But now I understand it, and I think it should be granted.
That is the reason I decided to release this incomplete manuscript.

After you read this, it doesn't matter whether your feelings toward the woman named Beatrice are love or anger.

But if you can, try to reach her feelings, buried in the deepest part of the story.
She said that she wrote two stories and revealed one.
However, that was also wrong.
She wrote three stories and revealed one.
By reading this incomplete manuscript, you will know two of those stories.
I would like you to reach the third and final one with your own power.
As another woman, I strongly wish that of those reading this work.

Without love, it can't be seen.

They are her words.
But I shall repeat them.

Love exists in everyone's hearts.

Her true tragedy was that she couldn't see it.

My deepest thanks go out to everyone who helped with the compilation of this book.
Especially my assistant, アン ズー.
-- Dlanor A. Knox

-END-