Introduction
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Encore une Fois — Love is the forty-second chapter of Jun Mochizuki's The Case Study of Vanitas.
Summary[]
Snow no longer falls over Gévaudan. The World Formula Alteration Device, glass globe cracked, machinery crumbled, light inside died out, sits quietly in the rubble of the destroyed Château. The sun shines down through the trees above, a soft airy breeze flows through the forest, and like a gentle snowfall pure white flower petals fall. Noé rises up from the rubble, breathing heavily in the aftermath and clutching his burned shoulder. Like a bolt of lightning, burning electric pain engulfs his left arm where his hand had been severed. Tears well up in his eyes, the pain being many times worse than he would’ve ever expected. Dante pops up behind him, holding up his severed hand triumphantly. He asks if Noé is okay, but all Noé can do is barely hold back tears. On the verge of weeping, Noé asks Dante if they can just “stick it back on” referring to his hand. Dante is uncertain but as the hand is still intact he reassures Noé that “it should be fine.”
Noé looks around at the destroyed area. Blooming petals of pure white cover every inch of the land and float through the wind like falling snow—they are Astérisque Flowers. Noé wonders where they came from, and Dante answers with the common rumor that these flowers bloom wherever the World Formula has been interfered with heavily, though that’s just unconfirmed hearsay. Noé wonders where Chloé and Jean-Jacques are, if they’re okay. Another figure emerges from the rubble, rising on unsteady legs. Dante pales and Noé stiffens, both alarmed to see who it is.
Astolfo. Breathing heavily, covered in blood and injuries, but still rising up with a small dagger in hand. His eyes are infinitely dark, completely lost to madness, nothing more than broken mutterings to “kill Vampires” leaving his lips. Noé shudders. Marco lying nearby jumps up to his feet and races to Astolfo, begging him to stop lest he truly die. Astolfo still won’t hear him, elbowing the man out of the way as he continues to persist in his desperate, at this point near meaningless goal. Finally, Marco screams out, “Young Master Astolfo!”
Astolfo’s eyes tremble as he hears this. But he still remains unseeing, unhearing. To him, he’s no longer in Gévaudan as a Chasseur Paladin. He’s a young child. Covered in bite marks and his own blood. His little sister already stopped crying, and he felt in his hand, tightly grasping hers, the warmth leaving her form. He looked up at the grinning, hungry faces that laughed at him endlessly and swore to never forgive them, to never forget, to one day kill them all. He laid there lifelessly next to his little sister, begging, pleading, praying in his mind that someone will come save them, someone, anyone… Blood splattered. Astolfo looked up. A figure cloaked in white stood upon the body of a Vampire, the blade of his sword in their neck. The young Vampire boy whom Astolfo had saved, who had forsaken him in return, lied dead at the man’s hands. Astolfo looked up in shock. His eyes overflowed with tears of relief. The man turned to him—
Someone calls for Astolfo. Noé and Dante look on in surprise. Astolfo raises his head; before him stands Roland, looking down at the boy stoically. Astolfo starts shaking. Tear flood out of his eyes. Just like in the past, in his memories where Astolfo’s mind is still buried. “Lord Knight,” he had sobbed to Roland as the man kneeled by him and took his little hand, he is sobbing right now as he drops the knife and stumbles towards the older. He brokenly repeats the very words he’d cried out back then, begging him to save his sister, that it didn’t matter what happened to him, that all of it was his fault, his fault that all of them… Astolfo falls into Roland’s embrace. Roland cradles the boy in his arms as he falls tearfully into unconsciousness. With a solemn expression, Roland tells Astolfo that everything’s over, and it’s time for them to go home. Marco tearfully watches on. Noé looks down at Astolfo’s spear on the ground, lying among the rubble and covered in blooming flowers.
Jean-Jacques tightly grips Chloé by the shoulders and fusses over her, worrying if she’s okay, if she’s hurt anywhere, along with Jeanne supporting her on her other side. For a moment, Chloé doesn’t react as the two of them worry over her. Jean-Jacques gets more concerned, calling out for her. Chloé’s lip curls up. She slaps Jean-Jacques in the face. He goes flying backwards and slamming into the ground behind, his battered body flying past a spooked Jeanne. Chloé leaps to her feet and yells angrily at Jean-Jacques, still lying beaten on the ground, for getting so badly injured and even nearly dying “without her permission.” Jeanne sweats nervously at this. Jean-Jacques leaps up and throws the exact same accusation towards Chloé, yelling at her for planning to die by herself with no consideration for him being left behind. Jeanne ends up stuck in the middle of this back-and-forth, head whipping between the two of them as she tries unsuccessfully to calm them both down. Chloé get flustered and snaps to him to shut up, to stop talking back, even that she hates him. Jean-Jacques freezes and pales in shock. Chloé calls him a “witless, brainless, utter fool” and uppercuts him right in the jaw. Jean-Jacques collapses backwards totally defeated, Chloé standing as the lone victor. Jeanne on the side fusses about their quarrel. Chloé breathes heavily in her anger, but that quickly fades when she turns around and looks up.
Chloé looks up into the world. The ground under her feet, the light of the sun returning the warmth to her face, the flower petals fluttering around in a gentle whirlwind like the remnants of a last snowfall. The grass and the trees and the leaves and the mountains and the skies around her. The world that she is living in. Chloé looks at it all. Just like the first time she went outside and saw the world for what it is. The sky above, higher than it’s ever been before.
Chloé’s eyes tremble and she brings a hand to her mouth. She remembers rolling around in the flowers with Jeanne, so, so long ago. Jeanne is tending to Jean-Jacques’s bruised chin, when they both snap up in alarm. Chloé falls to her knees weeping uncontrollably. As tears spill from her eyes, she remembers. She decided to take revenge on the nightmare, and promised that after the fact she wouldn’t cry anymore. And yet… here she is. Chloé says, on that day where she looked up into the sky along with Jeanne. She thought, in complete earnestness, that if she was going to die she wanted it to be then and there. Jeanne stares at Chloé, eyes shining and welling up with emotion. But now…
Chloé sobs. She confesses—right here, right now, she wants to live.
Jean-Jacques stares at her in wonder. Chloé continues to sob; how unfair of her, how awful of her, to feel this way after everything that’s happened. Jean-Jacques simply smiles, tears falling from his eyes as well, and he assures her. It’s fine, she can be as unfair as she wants to be. He presses his forehead to hers, and promises to live together. As long as they have one another, they don’t need anything else. They sit together in the snowfall of white petals.
Jeanne watches them with a heartfelt smile, joy and relief blooming in her heart. She gasps with a realization. She looks around at the falling flowers of white and wonders, where is Vanitas?
In a bed of those white flowers, petals falling all around him. Vanitas lies motionless. He holds his right arm up into the air and stares listlessly at it. The Mark of Possession coloring his arm, as if the very flesh of his hand was shattering like glass—it has spread. Significantly so. He stares at the glowing blue fissures upon his skin, the slow and steady breaking of his very self, and recalls the words of the Vampire of the Blue Moon. The Mark engraved on him will steadily eat away at him. It’s imbued with the power of the Blue Moon, and the more he uses it, the more he himself will be rewritten. No matter what he must remember that. Vanitas sits up. To him the white petals seem more like snow than ever before. Very quietly, he says, “It’s cold.” He hugs himself in frigid, quiet agony.
Someone screams his name. Vanitas looks up and sees Jeanne emerging from the bushes nearby. He calmly rises to his feet and puts his glove back on—Jeanne races up to him and absolutely crushes him in a tight hug. Tearfully she rejoices and thanks him for saving Chloé. Vanitas winces at the tightness and reproaches her for celebrating too soon. There’s no way to know what Ruthven is after from this, but The Senate won’t just leave Chloé alone, nor will they restrain from punishing Jeanne either. Jeanne just snaps that she already knows, making Vanitas flinch. She’s happy anyways in spite of all the caveats to their victory, so happy in fact that she’s bursting with it, and Vanitas tiredly allows her to revel in her delight. Jeanne calms down and thanks Vanitas once again. It was all due to him that not only Chloé could be saved, but that Jeanne too was pulled from the depths of darkness. That she herself was also saved.
Jeanne looks up at Vanitas. Vanitas, slightly puzzled, looks back at her. Suddenly, Jeanne’s face is overcome with a bright red blush. Her heart races, her breath quickens, her fangs come out, all of which confusing her greatly. Jeanne grabs Vanitas by the shoulders and shoves him to the ground. She bites his neck. Vanitas shudders in surprise and tries to protest at the suddenness—Jeanne drinks his blood. Vanitas flinches and goes silent. For the entire duration that she drinks his blood, all Vanitas can do is lie there and allow her to do so, face flushed and breath panting from the sensation. Jeanne finally releases her fangs from Vanitas’s neck, kneeling atop him as he goes red and flustered, covering his face behind his hands. Fumbling for something, anything to say, Vanitas scolds her with a shaking voice to not drink his blood so suddenly and without warning. Jeanne doesn’t say anything. She swallows the last of the blood. She seems to make a decision. Jeanne grabs Vanitas by the collar and yanks him upward, bewildering the human—
Jeanne kisses Vanitas on the cheek.
Vanitas’s eyes are wide. Jeanne reminds him of what he’d said, what he’d promised to her. If there ever comes a day where she becomes something no longer herself… Jeanne tells Vanitas: “If that ever happens, as you promised… make sure you kill me, okay?” Jeanne jumps off of Vanitas. Vanitas sits up in surprise and calls out to her as she runs off. Jeanne stops and starts to turn around. Just like when she was a child, with exuberance and radiance and joy enough to light up the world—
Jeanne smiles.
Vanitas stares at brilliant smile. He remembers, in the past, when it was truly snowing. A call of his name, his real name and not “Vanitas,” and he scowled. As his little brother played in the snow, the Vampire of the Blue Moon tells him: everyone is alone. Whether they’re human or Vampire, this fact doesn’t change for anyone. It’s impossible to understand another person completely, just as much as it is to understand oneself completely. But because of that, people will nestle close to one another to share their warmth and stave off the cold. They embrace Vanitas from behind. And someday, even after they are gone, they hope Vanitas may have someone to be close to just like this. They are sure it will happen, as long as he doesn’t close off his heart.
Vanitas sits in the blooming flowers, holding his cheek where he’d been kissed. His heart starts racing. Vanitas blushes a bright red.
“If you avoid that, then I know… even when you’re along, you won’t be.”
Noé comes out of the brush, looking around, searching.
“Just as the two of you are here for me…”
Vanitas, his little brother, and the Vampire of the Blue Moon all embrace one another.
Noé calls out to Vanitas, if he’s alright, and Vanitas clutches at his chest and his beating heart with bewilderment.
“Even you, the one who’s forever cold, will meet someone who will keep you warm.”
As Noé approaches, Vanitas lets out a distressed and confused scream.
Characters[]
- Noé Archiviste
- Dante
- Astolfo Granatum
- Marco
- Astolfo Granatum's Younger Sister
- Roland Fortis
- Chloé d'Apchier
- Jean-Jacques Chastel
- Jeanne
- Vanitas
- August Ruthven (Mentioned only)
- Mikhail*
- Vanitas of the Blue Moon*
(*) - Denotes that the character did not appear physically, but as a part of another character's memories.
Terms[]
Trivia[]
- Encore une Fois is literally translated as "once again" from French.
- This chapter's alternate title, Love, is the exact same as the alternate title for Mémoire 4: Femme Fatale.
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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 |
Intermissions | 15.5 • 46.5 • 51.5 • 60.5 |
Volumes | 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 |
Omake | Romance is a✰LOVE MISSION |
Other | Vanitashu no Karute • Author's Notes |