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Introduction
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Visiteur — Footfalls of the Beast is the thirty-second 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[]
Jeanne wails her little heart out, devastated and inconsolable in every way. Chloé comforts her and invites her to come visit Gévaudan once again once she’s older with a gentle pat on the head. Ruthven urges Jeanne to properly thank Chloé and say goodbye. He then looks down in surprise. Chloé, kneeling down at eye-level with Jeanne, is holding back tears herself, clearly also devastated at having to say goodbye. Ruthven laughs and reassures Chloé that he’ll come back to visit again soon. He even ruffles her hair, causing her to stiffen in embarrassment. She snaps at him for treating her like a child, especially when he is younger than her. Ruthven just scoops up a still-crying Jeanne and runs off while laughing. Chloé watches them go off and huffs a tearful laugh herself.
Afterwards, Ruthven returned Jeanne to her parents. And Chloé would look up into the heavens colored deep blue.
“After the little storm had passed, the sky over Gévaudan seemed higher than before.”
Three years passed.
The Château hidden in the mountains that Chloé resides was for the purposes of concealing both her existence and the research the d’Apchiers were doing on the World Formula. The rest of the d’Apchier family lived in their main residence, the Château de Besques. A few times a year, Chloé would go up to the residence to spend time with the rest of her family. On one such visit, as the family eats dinner together, the then head of the d’Apchiers—her father’s great-grandchild—asks Chloé about her slipping away from her maids and going outside on her own. Chloé drops her spoon and apologizes with a pale face. She bows her head and says she knows of the instructions her father had given her so long ago but walking through the woods calms her mind. The family’s head assures her that he is not angry, only surprised, because they had always assumed she was scared of the outside world and thus sequestered herself so. He tells her that though her position is unconventional, she’s a precious part of their family, and he will do all he can in his power to make her as comfortable and welcome as possible. The children hop out of their seats excitedly at the conversation, expressing how they want to play in the woods with her, and their father gently admonishes them to settle down.
Chloé, slightly flushed, lifts her head off the table and looks down, feeling touched. The head of the family continues: he’s heard that recently Vampire hunts have been happening very frequently in the areas around Mende and Le Puy. The Church absolutely cannot find out about Chloé’s existence as a Vampire or their research on the World Formula, so he pleads her to be careful. Chloé absorbs this information, shaken, and she wonders if Ruthven and Jeanne are okay. Ruthven has a habit of not appearing for a visit for years at a time so Chloé hasn’t been too worried, but her mind wanders to the last time they parted. She looks out the window into the skies and hopes that nothing happened to them. One day as Chloé walks down a corridor in the Château, she hears the telltale sound of someone entering via popping up from the castle walls. She startles and whips around, calling to Ruthven in joy.
A bear.
It asks her, “Are you… Chloé d’Apchier?”
A bear, Chloé’s mind supplies her with. Her head is spinning in confusion. She wonders if she actually heard the bear speak just then, why this bear was in the Château at all, if bears could talk these days and she just didn’t know. The bear lifts his paw to his chest and introduces himself: Francis Varney, a Vampire just like Chloé, also known as the Marquis Machina. Chloé realizes that she can see a metal grate in the bear’s chest from which that voice is coming from. She approaches the bear which is twice her size and starts tugging at the grate incessantly, despite Marquis Machina’s protests. Despite his pleas that he’s shy and his bear-like growling, Chloé doesn’t stop, so he switches tactics; he says he’s here as Ruthven’s proxy. Chloé finally backs off and asks with relief how Ruthven and Jeanne are doing. Marquis Machina looks at Chloé silently and tells her to listen to him.
They enter a room in which they can speak privately and Marquis Machina tells her—Ruthven is dead. Chloé is in shock. She’s pale and shaking and can’t comprehend what she’s just been told. She stumbles backwards, her foot catching on a tin on the floor, and leans back against a table to support herself, all the while muttering to herself how it must be a lie. Marquis Machina admits he’s lying. Chloé snaps out of her stupor and yells at him angrily. Marquis Machina sits himself on a chair and says that Ruthven might as well be dead. Ruthven had been what was called a “moderate” meaning everything he ran around doing and accomplishing was for the sake of humans and Vampires reconciling and coexisting in peace. Ruthven put everything he had into his work until he eventually managed to organize peaceful talks between Vampires and humans. However, at said talks, his own students betrayed him. Jeanne’s parents had colluded with humans and plotted to eliminate the Vampiric aristocracy who approved of the peace. Chloé is horrified to hear this.
The traitors were punished; both Vampires having been beheaded and their heads held up on stakes with Jeanne bound in chains being forced to look on. Marquis Machina says their daughter will be allowed to live, but only as a Bourreau, as a tool to be used by the Vampire hierarchy who’d killed her parents. Chloé is aghast and asks why Ruthven didn’t put a stop to this. Marquis Machina answers that Ruthven was seriously wounded and is in no shape to act. In particular there seems to be no hope for recovery for his right eye. In his feverish delirium, Ruthven worried over Chloé over and over, so Marquis Machina came to see her to ease his concerns. Marquis Machina rises up from the chair, only to find it suck to his bear behind. He continues to explain: the fighting between humans and Vampires is only going to get worse, until eventually it will spread like a wildfire to reach the lands of Gévaudan.
Marquis Machina asks Chloé: will she come with him? Chloé stares at him in shock. Marquis Machina asks if she will leave the human world behind to live among Vampires like herself. Chloé thinks of her family, of the d’Apchiers, and holds back her hand with a tight and conflicted expression. Marquis Machina lowers his outstretched hand with understanding and drops the chair to the ground. He says he’ll stop by to visit her again if he feels the urge, and bids her goodbye. Chloé now left alone thinks about her beloved friends, how despite the pain she knew they were going through, she couldn’t even come see them. She’s filled with guilt of how awful she is. Still, she can’t bring herself to abandon this place no matter what happens. Chloé kneels tiredly, leaning her forehead against the glowing globe residing deep within the Château, and thinks about how she can only live here, alongside the d’Apchiers.
A voice with a twisted smile asks her: “Even though they might abandon you?”
Chloé whips around. There’s only a faint black haze left behind and she looks around herself in alarm, not knowing what she just heard. Then someone else’s voice steps in and calls her name. Chloé looks to the entrance and there stands Ruthven, bandages wrapped around his form. She’s overjoyed and relieved and runs to old Vampire friend. She asks if he’s alright and notes how his bandaged eye seems to be bleeding—Ruthven stares at Chloé with a dead expression. Chloé stares back up at him with unease. Ruthven takes a step forward and asks Chloé about the d’Apchiers’ research, if the World Formula Alteration Device they made was complete. Ruthven lurches and drops to his knees.
Ruthven’s countenance is impossibly dark and grows more and more twisted the further lost her gets in his own swirling thoughts. He grips his right eye with his hand and mutters deliriously, half-coherently, and rabidly: he was wrong. He was a fool who took for granted that humans and Vampires could understand one another. He was wrong from the start, completely, fundamentally, irrevocably wrong—and he needs to set things right. Chloé watches Ruthven slowly and surely lose his mind right before her eyes with growing alarm. Ruthven then begs Chloé to give him the d’Apchiers’ research and reaches out his hand to her. Chloé rips herself away and says that she can’t do that. Ruthven rises up from the floor. His hand grabs Chloé by her face. Chloé is lifted off the ground.
Ruthven sinks his teeth into Chloé’s neck.
Characters[]
- Chloé d'Apchier*
- Jeanne*
- August Ruthven*
- Marquis Machina*
- Éric (Mentioned only)
- Louise (Mentioned only)
- Naenia*
(*) - Denotes that the character did not appear physically, but as a part of another character's memories.
Terms[]
Trivia[]
- Visiteur is literally translated as "visitor" from French.
References[]
[]
| 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 |