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Introduction
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Avec Toi — Alone Together is the fortieth chapter of Jun Mochizuki's The Case Study of Vanitas.
This article contains plot and/or ending details for The Case Study of Vanitas.
Read at your own risk.
Summary[]
La joie venait toujours après la peine. (Delight always follows pain.)
Vanitas slaps Jean-Jacques repeatedly and impatiently while Noé protests that the man is injured. Jean-Jacques slowly rouses back to consciousness, only to get roughly grabbed by the collar by Vanitas. Ignoring a fussing Noé, Vanitas snaps at Jean-Jacques—Chloé d'Apchier’s revenge has failed. Behind him, floating above in the middle of the air, is a mass of dark, malicious, reality-breaking energy. Jean-Jacques gapes at it in horror. Vanitas says that if he wants to save Chloé, then he needs to tell where he stored the Book of Vanitas.
On the other side of the room, Johann shakes Dante awake with increasing urgency. Dante wakes up slowly, still disoriented. Johann urges that they need to escape quickly, cursing to the side about Dante being brought along at all. Johann tells Dante that he’ll take care of Marquis Machina’s order by himself, and at the very least he should escape, while Dante stares at his fellow Dhampir in a daze. He snaps and slaps Johann’s worried hands away. The sound of laughter fills his mind as Dante yells angrily about everyone around him looking down on him, on all Dhams. Johann is concerned. Dante’s memories are playing out before him, mocking and condescending gazes directed his way. Everyone telling him that he’s neither human nor Vampire, and there’s no place for those of filthy blood like him anywhere in the world. A young Dante glared, not with defiance but resignation.
Dante gasps and another memory comes to mind. A cloaked figure came to him looking for an information broker. Dante had warned him that he’s a half-breed Dham, but the figure didn’t care. He takes his hood off, revealing to be a younger Vanitas. Eyes dead and uncaring of anything, Vanitas said he hates all humans, Vampires, and Dhampirs equally. Dante had stared at him in surprise. Dante snaps back to reality and remembers: he needs to find Vanitas’s Book for him. He starts frantically looking through the piles of books strewn about him, to Johann’s concern. Dante snaps that he can’t just run and abandon Vanitas at a time like this. Vanitas from across the room yells to Dante and directs him to the bookshelves behind him, the Book of Vanitas being on the sixth shelf of the second floor. Dante whips around and gets to finding it.
Vanitas rushes to the World Formula Alteration Device and snaps if Jean-Jacques can operate it. Jean-Jacques, being held up by Noé, flinches. Vanitas explains that Chloé has started to merge with the space, thus creating that mass of black energy; it’s from Chloé’s existence writhing within that darkness. If they allow this to continue, they won’t be able to target her with an inverse operation to cure her. Jean-Jacques nervously begins working at the Device while Vanitas successfully locates the sheet music needed. Noé asks what he’ll do, and Vanitas says the same as Chloé had done to Naenia—stabilize her existence. Despite Jean-Jacques’s efforts he can’t get the Device to activate again, and he worries it’s broken. Vanitas barks if the Device operates on Astermite, and Jean-Jacques flinches a yes. But it doesn’t seem to be the common type of Astermite, as Chloé had called the “God’s Tear Stone.” Vanitas goes still.
Noé goes to help look for the Book, but a flash of light stops him in his tracks. Between himself and Dante and Johann, lashes of black lightning strike the ground and destroy the earth below. Noé whips around to the dark mass in the sky. Chloé can be seen within that pitch black now. It’s only her outline, her eyes holding no pupils or light, as if she herself has been formed from the darkness. Jean-Jacques calls out to her in alarm. Chloé mutters half-coherently, that she must break “it.” She raises a hand downwards and at her command, wolves appear at each of her side. They are different from the wolves previously seen; colored pitch black as if also created from the same darkness of Chloé, and covered in spikes as if each were frozen in ice. An entire pack of them surges down to attack the ones below at her order.
Vanitas barks at Noé to take care of them, and Noé rushes back to the Device to provide cover. In this opening, Vanitas works the Device, pressing the buttons and turning the knobs in desperation to get it once again working. In his past, a memory. His younger brother holding up the Book of Vanitas asks their “father” if the stone in the Book is also Astermite. The Vampire of the Blue Moon answers yes, but not ordinary Astermite. It has higher purity and greater power, referred to as the “Blue Tear Stone” or “Divine Tear Stone.” Vanitas bites his lip with a harsh glare. He rests his left hand on his right forearm. He makes a decision. He starts pulling at his right glove. Noé fights off the wolves with little issue. A flash of light shines behind him from the Alteration Device, having been revived. Noé turns around in surprise, then he turns to Vanitas in worry. Vanitas is doubled over on the ground. He clutches his right arm in pain, his Mark of Possession bleeding. Noé rushes to Vanitas in his worry, but Vanitas brushes it off. He flinches, and behind Noé appear three wolves posed to attack them. Noé rushes to protect Vanitas.
The wolves are torn away, slashed to bits in one fell swoop. Vanitas from behind Noé’s cover watches in surprise as a figure forcibly travels their way up the walls of the broken room into the air. Jeanne, wielding her Crimson Gauntlet, having thrown herself into the air to intercept where Chloé floats. Jeanne screams for Chloé as she rushes in. A shockwave bursts outwards as Jeanne impacts against Chloé’s mass of darkness. Noé calls to Jeanne in concern. Chloé starts to laugh, her voice dripping with madness as her power surges once again. Lashes of black electricity strike the walls and the ground, barely missing Dante in their wake. The space in the sky above the room starts to crack like glass. Chloé brokenly cries to break, “Break…!” Jeanne tears and slashes at the dark, shadowy energy seeping through the air with her Gauntlet. Chloé appears like a ghost behind her, and Jeanne can barely blink before Chloé strikes her and sends her crashing into the opposite wall.
Jean-Jacques stumbles towards Chloé, calling for her. Noé assures him that Jeanne has no intent to kill anymore. Jean-Jacques is still distressed however, wondering why this all happened. He remembers how Chloé said she’d be “free” once this was all over, and Jean-Jacques thought she wouldn’t have to suffer any longer after this. Vanitas listens to Jean-Jacques say this as he looks over the sheet music. A grim expression comes over him. He says—after her revenge, Chloé most likely intended to die. Jean-Jacques turns to Vanitas in surprise. Vanitas recalls “that face” that Chloé made which he saw, which told him what her true intentions were. A smile, serene, satisfied, self-absorbed. In Vanitas’s words, “the face of someone who’d made the arbitrary decision to die alone.” Vanitas clenches the sheets of paper in his hand, which is being overtaken by the tendrils of his spreading Mark. It makes him sick.
Jean-Jacques takes this in. He mutters to himself in denial, that Chloé wouldn’t… Noé grabs Jean-Jacques by the shoulders. He looks into Jean-Jacques’s eyes and tells him emphatically to speak with Chloé properly. No matter how close they may be, no matter how much he wants to protect her, she won’t know it. Noé remembers himself and Louis. Noé, face full of emotion, tells Jean-Jacques to put it into words and tell Chloé before it’s too late. Jean-Jacques stares at Noé, stricken.
Jean-Jacques’s back is slashed open. He drops out of Noé’s arms, blood spilling everywhere. Noé stares in shock. Astolfo behind him wields his spear and smiles thinly with satisfaction. Noé’s eyes glow red and his fangs bare as he screams at Astolfo in rage. Marco is still in darkness, muttering for his “young master” and “young mistress” in his delirium. His hands wander and come across a pair of syringes on the ground. He snaps to awareness and looks up in alarm. He calls out, at first to his “young master” but he cuts himself off and screams for Astolfo. Astolfo doesn’t hear, he only continues to attack Noé ruthlessly and relentlessly. Noé is unnerved, his opponent’s speed and strength having increased significantly. Astolfo grips his spear and growls out that he will kill every single last Vampire. His eyes are filled with tears of rage. Noé glares angrily in return and fights back just as fiercely.
Vanitas, now seated at the Alteration Device, calls to Jean-Jacques if he’s still alive, that wounds like that wouldn’t kill a Vampire so easily. Vanitas turns back to the Device. He takes a deep breath in, preparing himself. Then he starts to play. “Begin calculation.” His fingers fly over the keys. The sheet music turns. The machinery whirs and turns in its machinating. Chloé turns towards him and sends another wolf to attack Vanitas. Chloé’s attack is intercepted and batted away, and Jeanne flies into the line of her sight, claws of the Gauntlet ripping into the dark mass. Jeanne looks at Chloé. She remembers the last time they had met, Chloé dropping off that cliff for her sake. If she had the chance to do it over again—if she could’ve stretched out her hand without hesitation and saved Chloé… Jeanne yells as she charges at Chloé once again, and once again is sent crashing into the opposite wall. Vanitas is dripping with sweat from the exertion of operating the Device. “Analysis complete. Coordinates set.” Dante climbs further upwards in pursuit of the Book.
In the midst of all this happening all at once around him, Jean-Jacques kneels on the ground. He pants heavily, clutching at his shoulder from the injury on his back. He starts remembering. When he and Chloé first found Noé in the snow, and Jean-Jacques told Chloé he wanted to save Noé. Chloé had smiled and said that once everything was finished, he would need a friend. Jean-Jacques realized then that throughout all this time, Chloé never spoke about her own future. He realized it on some level, but he was too afraid to ask her anything directly. Jean-Jacques notices a broken automaton on the ground nearby. He stares at it. He remembers when they were first built. He questioned if the automatons really needed their own weaponry, as he would protect Chloé no matter what. He also asked why they were given the names of the d’Apchiers. Chloé smiled cryptically. She said that the automatons were substitutes for “those children,” the deceased d’Apchiers. Chloé had patted the chest of the automaton clad in a noblewoman’s dress, and said they would have their revenge together. Chloé’s for Chloé, theirs for them. He remembers when one of the last surviving d’Apchiers attacked Chloé with a knife, screaming she’d never forgive her.
The world falls away. Jean-Jacques comes to a realization.
Once all of this was over, Chloé was going to have the automatons kill her. Tears fall from Jean-Jacques’s eyes as he finally comes to understand.
Vanitas continues to work the Device, playing ceaselessly and with every ounce of energy he has. “Definition interference. Phenomenon alteration.” Even as the energy of the Mark grows and spreads through his hand, he continues to play. Finally, Vanitas reaches the zenith and he announces: “Existence stabilized.” The Alteration Device activates. With a clang that resonates through the entire space, Chloé in her mass of pitch darkness is pinned in place, slowly being brought back to physical form. Chloé screams in pain. Darkness seeps out of the wolves under her command, and they become frozen shapes of ice suspended in the air, now totally harmless. Dante, propped up by Johann, manages to find the Book of Vanitas atop a shelf. He yells as such to Vanitas and tosses the Book down to where the human doctor stands. As he throws it, the walls of the space start to break and splinter and fall to pieces.
Vanitas reaches out to catch the Book just as the world falls apart under his feet.
Vanitas stares in shock at the oncoming mass of debris and rubble headed towards him. Johann pulls Dante away from the destruction, who watches with a pale face as Vanitas nearly gets buried alive. Jeanne screams to Vanitas and she rushes towards him. Noé and Astolfo are still locked in combat, but a huge boom catches their attention and the ground nearby falls apart as well. Noé flinches away in alarm. Then his eyes catch on something—someone, climbing upwards using the frozen icy tendrils shaped like wolves and stretching out like branches from high above.
Jean-Jacques breathes heavily as he continues climbing up. He thinks to himself. In this closed world in which he’s lived for so long where winter is eternal and snow falls forever, everyone comes to kill Chloé. Dragoons, villagers, Chasseurs, Bourreaus. No matter how many times he killed them, they would reappear over and over without fail, and once again come for Chloé’s head. And so, Jean-Jacques would kill them again and again, over and over, with seemingly no end in sight for the cycle. Hundreds and thousands of times over. All to protect Chloé. But now, now that he knows, he wonders if that was what Chloé wanted too.
Jean-Jacques finally reaches Chloé. He perches on the branch of ice nearest to where her form is pinned in place, black energy still radiating around her like a danger sign. Chloé brokenly screams, and she mutters to herself. She has to break it, quickly, this pathetic world… and Chloé along with it. Jean-Jacques is devastated as he hears this. Tears fill Chloé’s eyes even in her pitch-black form as she begs mindlessly—she must set Jean-Jacques free. Jean-Jacques tears up himself with this. He bows his head down and laughs, calling Chloé muddle-headed, even stupid. He clenches his fist angrily, that she doesn’t know a thing about him. He snaps, there’s no point in him gaining freedom all by himself. If she asked, he would fall into hell with her. He would go anywhere, do anything, anything… But the one thing he can’t take is her no longer being with him.
Jean-Jacques reaches out and wipes away Chloé’s tears. He tells her that he can’t imagine ever being happy without her. Along with the tears wiped away goes the darkness surrounding her. Jean-Jacques begs her to not run away anymore, to stop running away from him. Chloé’s eyes finally open back up again. Jean-Jacques sobs and begs Chloé—“Please… don’t leave me alone!”
Jean-Jacques hugs Chloé. Chloé’s eyes fill with tears.
From the ground shooting up like a bullet, like a rocket taking flight, Jeanne with her Crimson Gauntlet alongside Vanitas. Dante yells to them in relief. Astolfo and Noé pause their fighting in surprise. Noé calls out to them both. Vanitas and Jeanne stay suspended in the air for a moment together. Vanitas holds out the Book of Vanitas, and it shines with a brilliant blue light.
Characters[]
(*) - Denotes that the character did not appear physically, but as a part of another character's memories.
Terms[]
Trivia[]
- Avec Toi is literally translated as "with you" from French.
References[]
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| v - e - t | The Case Study of Vanitas Chapters |
|---|---|
| Parisian Excursion Arc | 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 |
| Bal Masqué Arc | 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 |
| Hunters of the Dark Arc | 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19 • 20 • 21 |
| The Beast of Gévaudan Arc | 22 • 23 • 24 • 25 • 26 • 27 • 28 • 29 • 30 • 31 • 32 • 33 • 34 • 34.5 • 35 • 36 • 37 • 38 • 38.5 • 39 • 40 • 41 • 42 • 43 |
| Amusement Park Arc | 44 • 45 • 46 • 47 • 48 • 49 • 50 • 51 • 52 • 53 • 54 • 54.5 • 55 • 55.5 • 56 |
| Miel Incident Arc | 57 • 58 • 59 • 60 • 61 • 61.5 • 62 • 62.5 • 63 • 64 • 65 |
| Intermissions | 15.5 • 46.5 • 51.5 • 60.5 |
| Volumes | 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 |
| Omake | Vanitashu no Karute • Romance is a✰LOVE MISSION • Confessional Counseling Office |
| Other | Author's Notes |