"Chapter 8 : journey to the golden land"
We already know pretty much everyone's reaction to the epitaph. Two things of note : first, Maria had already made contact with Beato by the time Rosa learns of it. Second, Grampa and Genji have an interesting conversation about it, which basically amounts to : "Sir, what do you intend to do with Beatrice if she shows up and solves the epitaph ?" "Look, I truly regret it all, my friend, and I really want to apologize to her, or whoever it is that represents her." And you can see the gears turning inside Genji's head... (I think that while he's not entirely sure, Grampa suspects that Genji has hidden Beatrice the Third from him.)
Meanwhile, while it's true that Beatrice is having a lot of fun creating minions with Maria (Gaap finally gets a name !), in her heart she knows that the girl's not the real "second person" she wants to create a new world with. It's been 4 years, but she still longs for Battler. And for an instant, she lets the mask slip in front of Maria : "I am not complete..." Maria takes it as a sign Beato needs her magic restored... and hey, isn't there a ceremony for this described in the epitaph ? Maria agrees to help Beato solve it.
Later, Genji brings Shannon and Kanon in front of the portrait and states that EVERYONE's free to try and solve the epitaph, wink wink nudge nudge. Oh, and did he mention that Grampa's "beloved hometown" is actually Taiwan ? * Very subtle, dude... Shannon and Kanon aren't too interested (it's mentioned George has already made his move), but Beato overheard everything, and runs to the library to find an Taiwan atlas.
There are 129 rivers in Taiwan. Which one is the "sweetfish river" ? This is silly, sweetfish are fresh water fish, so any river would be fine... Wait, there's a river actually called "Fresh Water River" (Danshui River) ? Hmmm... It takes its name from the town of Danshui, but there's nothing special about the river... Wait, what if this is only a figurative river ? Maybe it refers to the Danshui railroad line instead... "As you travel down it, you will see a village"... Is there a station with 里 (village) in it ? Yep, the Kirigan 唭里岸 station (although it's changed its name since). "Look for the shore that the two will tell you of"... Hey, that's the shore kanji (岸) in it ! And the first kanji can be read as "that is talked about". But why "the two" ? Ah, the station is named after the town Kirigan (唭哩岸), and that one has two "mouths" in it ! So the key is there, but how to split it into six ? Hum... in Chinese, the town is called "Qilian"...
I won't go into the details of the word play, but eventually Beato figures that "Qilian" must be taken out of the word "Quadrillion". And there's precisely one place on Rokkenjima where this word is engraved...
"Chapter 9 : the day the witch revived"
That place would be the chapel, a building erected at the same time as the mansion and whose access was forbidden to the family. But it's been a mystery for so long that nobody really cares anymore... Anyway, the frontispiece reads : "You will be blessed only at a probability of a quadrillion to one." Which of course plays with the theme of the riddle... And hey, only Genji was authorized to clean this relief, of course.
Beatrice climbs a ladder and starts fiddling with the letters of the word "quadrillion". You can actually remove them : there are keys sticking out of them. Hum... without "qilian" we are left with "-u-dr--l-o-". "Separate the two who are close"... Move the "r" to the right so that all the letters are evenly spaced ? "Praise my name" probably means some reshuffling of the letters... "l o r d U(shiromiya)" ? Then "gouge and kill" means turning and removing each letter from the start (head) to the end (leg)... It works ! Some mechanism was triggered !
Nothing seems to have changed at first... until Beato notices that the lion statues around have somehow rotated and now face the back of a chapel, where a secret stairway has just appeared... leading to the now familiar underground tunnel and the VIP Room with all the gold. Success ! Er, but what is Beato supposed to do now ?
Enters... Genji, who congratulates Beato for finding the gold on her own. (Yeah, right... You planned all of this, you sneaky bastard...) He gives her the witch's dress to wear, and then leads her to Grampa's study. (Kumasawa and Dr Nanjo are also there to welcome Beatrice-sama, by the way.) Grampa is kneeling on the floor, and sobs an apology while clinging to her dress. Aw-kward. Oh, and Genji finally reveals that she's the daughter of Grampa and Beatrice the Second, which Beato takes a moment to accept. Grampa then starts calling her Lion (the name he'd always wanted to give her) and says he's giving her everything... the gold, the Ushiromiya headship... and hands her down the winged-eagle ring.
And then, having left his last regrets behind himself, Grampa falls over and passes away.
Beato, of course, is more than a bit overwhelmed by all this. When Genji starts talking of proclaiming her as the new head, she declines : the responsibility scares her, Krauss can have it. The one thing she wants can't be bought by gold nor the headship, after all... So this night shall stay a secret between the four of them for now. She wants to wait, and take her time to learn about all this : for now, everything will stay as it's always been.
(And thus November 29th, 1984, ends. And so does Beato's tale.)
And so we finally have the epitaph's solution. Well, at least it's obvious I couldn't even try to solve it : not only does it involve arcane Japanese word play, but two vital clues were concealed until know (Grampa's youth in Taiwan, and the chapel's relief). No wonder it took months for Beato to solve it !
Chapter 9 is by far the funnest part of the story : the secret mechanism is ridiculously convoluted, and I loved Beato's awkwardness throughout the whole scene (really, when she's this off-balance, I can totally see Shannon).
Now, the only problem I have with this tale is that it completely fails to explain Kanon. Hopefully we'll get this later on.
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