#i might be mersault

[cxndiedvi0lets]

Maybe I never fell I love with you.

Maybe it was just the weather, and my heart kept me warm thinking about you

[mirokuna-hime]

I'm convinced one of the main reasons that Mersault happened is to get Chuuya out of Yokohama so this SSKK plot can happen, whatever it's going to be.

[cheusburger]

W corp charm designs / wips !! (finishing rn)

These are for myself however if enough people are interested i can try to sell... lemme know ! :o

[neo-shitty]

“this gifted intruder…manipulates gravity!” 🫦🫦🫦🫦🫦

[bleuflowerfields]

damn it's a .5 chapter this month? it's so over 😭😭😭

[chuuyaa-nakaharaa]

It wasn't that bad. You were just slurring a lot of words.

What do you mean? What're you planning?

*rolling on the floor, groaning.*

— @dazaii-osamuu

Not again.. Get up you idiot!

[ahli-stuff]

so im a sucker for tropes that humanize larger than life characters . Sue me!!

I know that the final showdown is about 99% almost completely canonically going to be between Atsushi and Akutagawa vs Fyodor but imagine . If u will:

Dazai and Fyodor having a Fucking Fist Fight

In this scenario:

Amenogozen is dead or occupied

Dazai is more injured and exhausted than Fyodor is.

Its destruction all around, smoke in the air, craters of stone in the ground—two men standing amongst a ruined battlefield. Dazai and Fyodor, face to face amongst the blood, sweat, and ruin that Fyodor had said he would always be above in mersault.

There’s a gun in between them, nestled in the dirt. There are no more pawns on the table, only two kings staring each other down on a wasteland checkboard. Dazai’s leg is broken. Fyodor is breathing hard.

Dazai lunges for the gun at the same time Fyodor does—in a mad scramble, he kicks out Dazai’s bad leg—Dazai screams in agony as Fyodor pins him down. The gun is kicked several feet out of reach.

But Fyodor is physically weak. The only reason why Dazai hasn’t already knocked him out cold is because of his broken leg.

Dazai elbows Fyodor in the chest so hard he breaks a rib. Fyodor chokes, his chest knocked free of air and ringing with pain as he tries to see Dazai through his rapidly blurring eyes.

He was flipped over in the scuffle, but Fyodor reaches down and grabs Dazai’s leg and digs his fingers to where he thinks the bones separate and presses. Dazai is so blinded by pain, he briefly lets go as Fyodor punches him in the face.

Dazai’s nose is bleeding, but Fyodor doesn’t have time to appreciate it as he pushes Dazai off—flips them over again—he is straddling Dazai with his weight on the former’s broken leg. His hands seize Dazai’s neck and grips with all his might.

Dazai’s hands claw at his face animalistically, scrabbling for purchase on Fyodor’s hair, eyes, anything. His eyes meet Fyodor’s—both of their swirling pairs of darkness are finally awake, alive, burning—and oh, this is what Dazai had meant, hadn’t he? In the silence of Dazai’s strangled wheezes and his nails dragging up dust, Fyodor realizes: this is what it means to be alive.

Dazai spits into Fyodor’s face. He lets go reflexively, yelping with disgust as blood-spit blinds him, while Dazai is gasping as he crawls for the gun; he’s halfway there before Fyodor blindly grabs one of Dazai’s legs. But it’s not the broken one—Dazai pivots his ankle and stomps with all of his might as Fyodor screams because several of his fingers as broken.

Dazai’s hand finds the gun.

[lotus-pear]

kunizai nation is SILENT because they’re all suffering from the intense emotional wounds from this last chapter THEY CANT THINK ABOUT DAZAI USING A GUN OWNED BY KUNIKIDA TO END IT ALL AFTER HE FINDS OUT, BC THEYRE ALL TRAUMATIZED FROM KUNIKIDA BEING SLURPED UP BY THE GOD SWORD but honestly imagine a one shot where dazai finds out kunikida is dead after finally getting out of mersault, then using one of the ada’s guns (that had might as well be kunikida’s bc no one else uses them) to end it all while he’s holding kunikida’s ideals notebook, the only thing left of his beloved’s existence

i don’t think he’d ever kill himself over someone’s death (even if it IS kunikida who resembled oda so fervently in his mind, probably devastating him because he’s failed to save someone from their self sacrificial heart twice now) but what would be delicious to see is him finally carrying his own weapon, his own gun.

dazai always uses someone else’s weapon, makes someone else deliver the killing blow, never getting his own hands dirty—it makes me think of that time kunikida says that dazai never says directly what hes feeling, but rather makes others say it for him.

but kunikida’s death, his sacrifice, perhaps that will finally be what pushes dazai to realize that action is necessary to prevent tragedy. perhaps he will finally take a headstrong approach instead of scheming quietly in the shadows.

[curtwilde]

Henry vs Julian

I have been thinking about this a lot. While Henry clearly admires and models his scholar self on Julian, their essential difference is in how they perceive the Ancient Greeks.

Julian's interest in the Ancient Greeks is true interest, he admires their high and exalted values. For him, the Greeks were the highest point of human civilization, and the closer he comes to his own time the more his disdain increases - the Roman Catholic Church he holds in contempt but it's still a 'worthy enemy' not as bad as the Presbyterian Church. It isn't mentioned but he must hold modernism and it's philosophy with disdain - modernist moral vacousness being a direct contradiction of the idealist values loyalty, honor, chastity etc. that were so exalted by the Greeks. Which is why he is always cherry picks, sees only what he wants to see, and invents what he can't - both for himself (his ambiguous involvement with the Isrami government) or for his students (encouraging Richard to lie about his life in California). Since he can't time travel back to Greece himself, he must try to live that life as much as he can and believe himself a character in a Greek play. But it comes, not from a place of wanting to escape his current reality, but true admiration of the ancient Greek way of seeing and doing things.

Henry is a true modernist. The monologue about feeling dead is central to his understanding his character:

Maybe it stems from his near death experience but he sees the world as inherently meaningless, God is dead and heaven and hell have been revealed to be man-made constructs, there is no punishment for evil and since there is no moral line. I think he subconsciously realised all of this before coming to Hampden, but to truly accept it would have been soul-crushing. So he tries to escape it by immersing himself in the Greeks, I imagine the absolutist values, vague representational ideas pertaining to each god might have interested him but really, it could have been anything else, the Medieval Age or the Victorians, anything. He just needed something to be obsessed with, to give meaning to his existence which he subconsciously knew to be meaningless. So is his adoration of Julian, he admired and wanted Julian's ability to almost half-live in another time when, in his view, things mattered more (we have divinity in our midst). It also explains the Bacchanal which is otherwise so out of character for him. The appeal was to escape the soul crushing knowledge of meaninglessness - even if for a while. To worship and call on Dinosiyus with the blind belief of the Ancient Greeks, a kind of belief that simply cannot exist anymore in the postmodern, post-Neitzche world. His harebrained plans also came from the same impulse, including the poison plan, and the one way ticket to Argentina.

I suspect that what subconsciously drove him to murder bunny, aside from the obvious fear of getting caught - is the same thing that drove Mersault to murder the Arab - it's the old existentialist question, if good and bad are relative and there is no punishment for evil, how far can one go? Bunny's murder was Henry's existentialist experiment with himself. And, I think in a way it confirmed for him what he already knew, they escaped unscathed and he didn't feel any of the fear or remorse he expected to feel. While it did give him the momentary sense of power, the feeling that he could now do whatever he wanted if he can be clever enough to not get caught, since he won't be punished for it otherwise. While it gave him enough courage to go get the girl he always wanted - it did confirm for him the inherent meaninglessness of the world. Also, conversely, Camilla could have been another experiment - something must matter, was it love? Camilla was the only girl he knew and he was fond of her - he may not even have thought of her romantically before considering he never cared to act on it in all the time he had known her. But either way, Julian's abandonment broke him.

Coming back to Julian, Julian's abandonment omakes perfect sense to me - he was disgusted by the modernist moral vacousness in his students. He himself was a moral man, but his morals operated on his own standards. He based it on the Greek sense of Honour, not the more modern sense of Justice. His basic instinct was the preservation of his own purity - he couldn't possibly keep on as their teacher. But also, to turn them in would be against his sense of honour - he must have very little respect for the police and law enforcement as institutions being the kind of person he is. Not to mention it would mean his having to be in frequent contact with the police and court. From his point of view atleast, leaving is the only thing he could have done, really.

For Henry however, he sees that his obsession with the Greeks as well as his admiration for Julian as the sham that it really was, is disillusioned with the world, shattered. Except for his fondness for Camilla he didn't really have anyone he loved, he saw his friends as pawns, wasn't close to his family, didn't have any goals in life with everything in his reach with his father's money - the only person he had really loved was Julian, and there he was betrayed. His obsession with the ancient Greeks was also thus tainted with Julian's betrayal - since it wasn't true interest at all, only a disguised attempt at escapism - it wavered and fell apart, and he didn't have a reason to live anymore.

.

Side note : Richard falls between the two. Like Julian, he had a real interest in the ancient Greeks, but he didn't put them on a pedestal like Julian did. He realised that like his own time, and like all other times in history the Greek civilization too had its own good and bad aspects, and he wanted to learn about it for its own sake. But he doesn't make it his life, or use it to escape his own reality - outside of his classes he was very much rooted in his own time.

[ideasnstuff]

Theory (?)

Well here I am as promised.

He is going back to Mersault.

And why?

Because of time.

He was buying time in a way.

Let's see why.

(Among other small observations and hypotheses)

When this happened, Fyodor was in Mersault and it was obviously night according to the difference between the time.

Just like I mentioned before.

So let's see.

Fyodor wants to arrive by the time the sun sets in.

When he arrived to take Bram's body, it was already night, so he was not able to do what he wanted.

But he will be able to if he went to Mersault again.

"It's a long trip!"

That's okay, he has a lot of time to waste until then.

The trip to France takes around 9-10 hours, that's not even a day. If it's night in Japan, it's almost morning in Mersault.

Fyodor has to arrive on the next day to see the sunset and the Earth's shadow.

So, Fukuzawa joining this helped Fyodor a lot.

He has a lot of time to waste after all.

So, this means that he was expecting to buy time with this singularity and maybe take Atsushi with him.

Dazai and Chuuya will have yet to face another challenge.

Now...

I have reasons to believe that Chuuya is weakened, because of the poison he might have been injected through a blood test.

Like it happened in Stormbringer.

Since he was a vampire and all, and as much as strong he is he couldn't enter Mersault without help.

Mersault was compromised, the way they let that game happen was strange.

Chuuya entered the prison, because someone let him in.

And that means that they knew Chuuya was going to come.

However, not everyone knew that as Chuuya, when he entered the prison, started beating people up.

So it's reasonable to think that the outside guards were aware of this intruder (Chuuya) and the inside guards were not; it works perfectly.

The latter were eliminated by Chuuya right away.

So, from the beginning, it was never about Chuuya being a vampire or not.

Fyodor was always going to win.

The poison weakened Chuuya, so if Dazai and Chuuya happened to be attacked by some people, it would leave them trapped.

There was no escape.

Fyodor had this planned out from the begining.

I dare to say that his main goal was Fukuzawa's One Order.

So then, he could force it to be used to control the Mersault prisoners, and considering Chuuya's state and Dazai's desperation-

I think they are trapped.

And this would buy Fyodor a lot of time.

On the other hand, Fukuzawa could use his power to weaken Fyodor's ability and, therefore, the singularity's.

Maybe strength Atsushi's power.

As for Akutagawa's death... he is dead because Fyodor says so.

It seems to lie on Fyodor's judgment whether the person will live or die.

He is above the third dimension, he is like a writer that can erase its characters.

So, for now, I'll assume that Akutagawa and everybody else is dead.

Fyodor wants to create a world conflict.

And considering how he brought Chuuya, he could very well use him as a source for this conflict.

Arahabaki, the vessel of Arahabaki is a mass destruction weapon.

This is more about Stormbringer and some things N said, so I won't talk about this this time.

So, for now, let's just assume that Fyodor's plan is to use Chuuya as the source of conflict.

Until next time!

[ilistentogirlinred]

i have a feeling that dazai and chuuya will die together at some point. like if either of them is gonna die they're gonna go down together yk?

like that's what i thought would've happened in mersault. dazai is dead then chuuya goes corruption and everything is over. obviously that didn't happen but i feel like skk romeo and juliet bullshit is something that might happen.

maybe with the clocktower arc cause maybe shakespeare will be there and he'll be like "wow i wrote about you" or his ability would have something to do with killing fated pairs or smth idk

yeah so tragic soukoku soulmatism

[dazaiosamusbandages]

Asagiri once said that Dazai is like donut, that no one knows what's in the middle of him. Or to put it another way, nobody knows what truly lays at his core. What do you think about this?

donutzai…. donutzai… that’s something to draw later

but answering your question—i think it’s a stretch to say that nobody knows the “true” dazai. atsushi is our main protagonist, thus we mostly see the story through his point of view. so, we see the version of dazai that he does. an unreliable narrator, per se. i’m trying to think of an example to show what i’m getting at, but it’s kind of hard www

i guess the best example would be cloud in the original ff7, where we view the story through his perspective. we see the version of cloud that he wants to be, some edgy, cool, powerful SOLDIER. there are some cracks showing, sure, but we only really see the actual cloud when tifa delves into his memories in the lifestream.

the same thing could be said about dazai, that we’re only seeing him through the lense that were given and told to trust. however, this only works if we have atsushi as our only focal point. but we do see things through dazai’s perspective as well. think age 15, dark era, or mersault. while he doesn’t really seem like a different person, we do get glimpses of what atsushi doesn’t see (imo, atsushi sort of idolizes dazai because of how they met).

i would also say that fyodor knows what dazai is actually like, except he’s still surprised and intrigued by some of the things that dazai does, so i don’t think that would be an accurate statement.

chuuya would probably be closest to understanding dazai the best, because of his closeness to dazai and their partnership in the pm. they also still get along, as seen during the guild arc and even now in mersault. however, we don’t get really a chuuya pov anywhere (that i’m aware of, anyway? i also haven’t read stormbringer BUT IVE BEEN INTENDING TO I PROMISE ITS JSUT THAT P3 THE ANSWE CAME OUT RIGHT WHEN I WAS ABT TO READ IT). this lack of a pov from chuuya could be deliberate on asagiri’s part, as chuuya could potentially have the most accurate perception of dazai’s true nature.

also, if we want to loop back to the donut analogy, DONUT HOLES EXIST. they’re just completely separate from the donut. might have to go out of your way to get them, but they’re somewhere. i’d say the same thing goes for dazai, that if you don’t put the energy into learning about him as an actual person, then you’re never going to understand him. i think to really see dazai’s core, you’d need to put together all of these different views of him from different characters to see the overlaps in how he acts, and pick out what if a facade and his true beliefs.

also i have no clue how much sense any of this makes but ykyk i love talking so i love you for sending in this ask <3

[karmicpunishment]

bsd 118 spoilers and predictions for future

i knew we’d be seeing more and more ally deaths but god i wasn’t prepared for how sad they’d make me even though i know they’ll be back

kenji and tecchou fighting together is wonderful i love their combo move

lucy and kyouka are back!!! they might die next chapter (or at least kyouka) but i will enjoy seeing them while i can

so excited for the official translations of certain pieces of this chapter

atsushi is reaching new levels of devestation every chapter :-((

FYODOR AND ATSUSHI FINALLY MEET FACE TO FACE!!!! at last!!

the way he’s speaking and looking at him…its practically gentle and i hate it

i predict he’ll try to get him on his side? or maybe share more lore next month (can we find out about how fyodor knew about atsushi before everything??? please I’m begging)

for next chapter i think we’ll see another duo (maybe trio?) arrive of yosano + either jouno or tachihara or both, and then probably get slaughtered 😔 if jouno appears he’ll reunite with tecchou since he’s still alive so far

i think we’ll also check back in with aya and akutagawa next month

i don’t think we’ll see mersault until december or january at least

before we catch up to sskk vs fukuchi pt2 where the anime left off we’ll be seeing all agency members and hunting dogs die

[saraanzu]

bsd speculation: what’s up with this girl in bram’s flashback from 107.5, and what can we learn about her from dracula?

(prefacing this with some rambling… actual analysis starts after the readmore)

107.5 came out the same day as the s5 trailer and it was right after an exciting mersault chapter which is the vastly more popular pov and it was a whopping 9 pages - it was bound to be disliked. I won’t pretend a 9-page chapter isn’t disappointing (no idea why recent chapters have been so short - I hope they get a bit longer again when s5 is done airing?) and I think it’s fine to prefer the mersault storyline but I’ve also seen some god-awful takes about this chapter.

aya and bram aren’t side characters! they have been core to bsd’s plot ever since their introductions (in aya’s case, her re-introduction) and you can dislike them all you want but it’s objectively incorrect to claim they aren’t important to the story.

I also don’t agree with the take that 107.5 didn’t further the plot at all - obviously not a lot can happen in, again, 9 pages (that’s 1/3 the length of 107!) but aya deciding to remove bram’s sword and him actually encouraging her to do it even when he doesn’t believe it’s possible and previously told her not to is a huge turning point in the story! 107.5 certainly isn’t a favorite of mine but I will say we’ve had (slightly) longer chapters in recent months that had more exposition and setup with less plot.

I’ve seen some people worry that, because bram pictures someone who looks like aya in what’s presumably a wedding dress, bram and aya’s relationship is going in a creepy direction. I want to make it clear that no matter who this flashback girl is, even if she’s bram’s dead lover and/or aya in a previous life, I highly highly doubt that anything weird is going to happen between bram and aya. their relationship hasn’t been set up like that at all, in fact bram has parallels with aya’s father and he explicitly sees her as a child (more on that later) (look. bsd is not above using some Weird Tropes. in particular, the tanizakis and mori come to mind (and in mori’s case, it doesn’t even really function as a reference to the irl author - vitas sexualis has nothing to do with pedophillia!) but it’s important to mention that, while I wish those tropes weren’t in bsd at all because they’re unnecessary and add nothing of value to the characters, they are ultimately gags and nothing more. they don’t really set a precedent for how weird asagiri is willing to get when it comes to legitimately serious plot points.)

okay! got it all out of my system here’s the actual post

part 1: the dress

personally, when I first read 107.5, I didn’t think this girl was in a wedding dress. my initial assumption was “this must be bram’s daughter, she’s wearing some sort of tiara and bram was a nobleman”. but looking at it again, it does resemble one, and we should consider how bram’s backstory might reference dracula.

“the brides of dracula” are three seductive vampire ladies who live in count dracula’s castle and attempt to feed on jonathan harker early on in the book before being stopped by dracula, who chastises them for trying to eat harker and feeds them a human baby instead.

while they are known as dracula’s brides in pop culture and are often portrayed as such in movie adaptations, they go unnamed in the original novel and their relation to dracula is unclear. from what we see of them they refer to each other as “sisters”, although perhaps not in the literal sense. two of them have dark hair and are described as having similar facial features to dracula while the third is blonde, which may imply the third is dracula’s wife and the other two are his daughters. I imagine they’re pretty vague and mysterious on purpose, they could be dracula’s wives/sisters/daughters, or even just some vampire ladies crashing at his house.

however, I don’t think we should disregard details exclusive to adaptations of dracula and only focus on the original book when thinking about bsd. film adaptations of the book are actually more influential on dracula’s perception in pop-culture than the book itself, so it’s not unlikely that asagiri would reference elements that appeared in adaptations but not the novel.

so, because of “the brides of dracula”, I think it’s quite possible this girl is indeed a bride. she does look a bit young for it, but I’ve seen others say they think she looks older than aya, so I guess that’s subjective (and people would get married younger in bram’s time I suppose).

that doesn’t mean she has to be bram’s bride - again, the “brides” in the original novel have no explicit relation to dracula and could easily be his daughters or sisters, and I really do think her being his daughter instead makes more sense thematically.

part 2: her relation to bram

I believe bram subtly parallels aya’s father in a few ways. aya’s dad is verbally and physically abusive, and he berates aya for not being good at traditionally feminine activities. he doesn’t see her for what she is, a child, and instead expects her to be a perfect traditional woman.

right before we see this flashback, bram is surprised by aya’s age, and comments that she is “too young to even use a spinning wheel” (also a traditionally feminine activity). both of them question aya’s desire/ability to be an ally of justice but for different reasons: aya’s father finds it unladylike while bram finds it too big a task for a little girl (he is also sleepy)

I didn’t understand the point of this scene’s inclusion before, but in retrospect I think it serves as foreshadowing for bram’s flashback and demonstrates how he and aya’s father both associate aya with dead people, but this causes them to treat her differently.

aya will never live up to her father’s expectations because she can’t compete with his idealized memories of the dead. her own accomplishments are irrelevant in his eyes because she isn’t enough like the wife and daughter he lost. I suspect his grief is part of the reason he’s so horrible to her in the first place.

it’s the opposite case with bram. in his eyes aya does compare to someone who he remembers fondly, and the end of 107.5 implies that’s the very reason he’s okay with aya pulling the sword out.

I don’t necessarily see bram as a father figure to aya (to me he’s more of a weird creature who’s sort of grown fond of her after being unwillingly dragged around… but hey, who says that can’t be a dad?) but I do think it’s possible that this mystery girl was bram’s daughter in the past because of how he parallels aya’s father.

(note: she has normal human ears rather than pointy ones, but bram was turned into a vampire by his ability and wasn’t bitten or born as one, so I don’t know if he’d necessarily pass down his vampirism to his children. he also may have developed his ability after becoming a father, or his daughter could even be adopted).

part 3: her relation to aya

the most common idea I’ve seen to explain the resemblance between these two is that aya is a reincarnation of this flashback girl. introducing reincarnation out of nowhere seems a bit random even for bsd, but surprisingly this theory does have some basis.

in the movie bram stoker’s dracula (1992), the character mina harker, jonathan’s fiancé, is a reincarnation of dracula’s long-dead lover, elisabeta. dracula recognizes her as a reincarnation due to their resemblance and mina agrees to assist him, still harboring feelings and memories from her past life. it’s fairly common for dracula adaptations to portray dracula and/or mina as having romantic feelings for each other, but this isn’t really the case in the novel, and elisabeta is entirely an invention of this particular movie.

so, aya being a reincarnation of a girl bram once knew could work as a reference to this. I did say previously that I think it’s possible asagiri will reference adaptations of dracula and not just the novel, but I’m not so sure he would make something specific to one particular adaptation a major part of bram’s backstory.

personally, I’m partial to the idea that aya’s ability will be introduced soon, and her resemblance to this flashback girl may have something to do with it. (the ability idea and reincarnation idea aren’t inherently contradictory, aya’s ability could very well be reincarnation)

this theory by @jo-dieeee suggests that aya’s ability is called mirror, due to the discussion of mirrors in 107.5 and the book above.

mirror: the fiction and essays of koda aya isn’t actually a book written by irl koda, nor is it just a collection of her stories. it was written by ann sherif and discusses koda’s life and works, including some translations of her short stories in the second part. however, the existence of this book and aya emphasizing mirrors in 107.5 is quite an interesting coincidence! whether or not it’s called mirror, I’m fairly confident an ability reveal is coming up.

it’s also worth bringing up that aya’s resemblance to this mystery firl might not have a supernatural explanation at all. it could easily be an artistic choice simply made to indicate that bram is reminiscing about someone who aya reminds him of. I’m not too into the reincarnation idea myself.

[starlightshadowsworld]

So I agree that the Agency should've listened to Ranpo when he said don't take the job. Because... It's Ranpo, you listen to Ranpo.

But, thinking on it... Would it have made a difference?

Either way Fukuchi has the page. The world is still going to believe that the Agency are terrorists. And all law enforcement aren't going to believe their innocence.

They wouldn't be taking the job but the Agency would still be investigating. To figure out who's trying to trap them and how.

I don't believe for a second they'd get the chainsaw video and not act. It's just in this case they know going in that it's a trap.

What might change is who goes in. And that they'd probably have an escape route planned out.

Fukuzawa and Ranpo might be able to put it together the Hunting Dogs might go after them. And know while tensions are high they can't negotiate their way out.

So counter measures could be put in place to get them off the scent. And get everyone to a safe point where they can use Lucy's ability as a base.

Which means they might not need the Port Mafia to rescue them. I can imagine Mori calling like "I see there's a bounty for your head Fukuzawa. Mind convincing me not to take it?"

Because criminal mastermind he may be but he's also a petty bitch. I doubt he'd actually take it though, because ew working with the government.

But he'd still end up telling them where Dazai is. Mersault basically goes as canon with Chuuya showing up and all that.

Sky casino shit still goes down, Ranpo figured out it was made 8 days ago rather than 3 years ago. The Agency split up and a team is sent up there, and the pages location is given.

The scene with Ranpo talking to Fukuchi is instead Ranpo and Fukuzawa going to talk to Fukuchi.

Atsushi's there too as back up incase things so south... Which they do. Kamui's identity is revealed, Ranpo goes into the book to avoid a sword strike and sends a smoke signal.

Which means the fight begins as Fukuzawa and Atsushi against Fukuchi. Fukuzawa does tell Atsushi to escape, as did Ranpo. But Fukuchi won't allow that.

Fukuzawa is confused, hurt and angry. Fukuchi ain't telling him nothing, crept "you know nothing because you didn't go to war."

As he does.

Atsushi's on the ground waiting for his leg to return. And Fukuzawa is struggling, he's really hurt but he's still fighting.

Atsushi wishes they had help, someone... Anyone. A sword slice is aimed at him... And is blocked by Rashomon. Akutagawa makes his entrance and joins the fight.

Fukuzawa manages to get Fukuchi's sword away from him. To which he laughs and summons Amenogozen.

3 against 1 it may be but Fukuchi is clearly winning. Because his sword is the literal worst. It ends with Fukuzawa going down, succumbing to his injuries.

Atsushi and Akutugawa using their combined attacks and getting foiled. Because that sword is the worst. Akutugawa gets Atsushi and the President to safety and is killed and subsequently vampire.

Atsushi carries Fukuzawa's injured body and Poe's book. Yosano heals him and Atsushi is apologetic and so upset he failed him. Fukuzawa hugs him and reassures him.

"Gen'ichiro took me off guard... I will not falter when I face him" says Fukuzawa.

And from there, canon kinda just carries on I guess.

Though I say all this without menuoning that the Agency taking the job regardless of the warning, could have been written into the page.

Because Nikolai was there, he heard Mushitaro tell Ranpo not to take the job.

... So who knows.