Memory 10

[itsalluseless]

Memory: Turn of the witch [ep2] (Trivial Negative)
Game: Mother's punishment game
Day: 181
Form: A scrap of burlap in your team's color. Tie it around your wrist to get your memory, infinite uses.

The second game is in its early stages. As a dramatic change from the first, Beatrice herself appears as a character on the game board. She fixes Maria's broken candy with magic right in front of Rosa and is then briefly witnessed by Kyrie before going on to bully Shannon and Kanon in the VIP room.

Meanwhile, the Ushiromiyas have finished lunch. Battler is feeling sleepy after all the excitement of the morning, so he falls asleep on the couch. When Jessica teases him about sleeping on such a big day, he replies that it's "not his turn yet". She finds such passivity annoying, wondering whose turn he thinks it is. Meanwhile, in the meta world:

BATTLER: .........Can't you just do what you want already? ...What is this? ......It's all screwed up...!!

BEATRICE: *cackle*cackle*cackle*cackle*...! It's because your argument regarding 18 or 19 people, which you are using as a basis to deny me, is truly humorous. So much so that I tried changing my move. ...The greatest basis upon which you deny me is simply because I was not laid out as a piece on the game board. So doing this is nothing more than showing you the queen first, isn't it? ...Isn't opening the road for the queen in the first move one of the short-cuts in chess?

BATTLER: .........Q, ...quit playing around... There's no way, ...I can accept something like this, right?! A witch came in, walking right through the entrance hall, you say?! Don't mess with me!!

BEATRICE: What's this...? In the last game, I let you make your moves terribly freely, right...? This time, I am doing nothing more than matching your moves and moving the pieces. .........Will you give in already after the first move...?

BATTLER: ......Y, ........you bastard... Don't mess with me! Who's gonna give in! Great move, why don't you just move however you like? I see, so your turn is far from over. ...Move however you like! Form a huge battle formation while you can. I will definitely defy you. I'll definitely corner you!! Come at me as best you can, I don't want you to have any excuses. ......This much isn't even close to enough to make me accept something like a witch. ...That's right, just now, it looked like Maria's candy was fixed with magic, but you might have actually had another one of the same candy hidden in your pocket, and switched them with that little show, making it only look like you had fixed it with magic! Yeah, that's right, that has to be it, it's useless, it's all useless...!

BEATRICE: ......Hohoh? Rosa saw the moment when the candy split into butterflies, right?

BATTLER: I don't know about that!! That was a hallucination or a trick, ...otherwise, she just saw it wrong!! That isn't a big problem!!

BEATRICE: *cackle*cackle*cackle*cackle*! So you throw out the part you can't explain as trivial? ......I see, is that your move in response to mine...? *cackle*cackle*cackle*cackle*..., you've really put your foot in it. ...Ushiromiya Battler... Fuhahahahahahahahahahaha...!! It still isn't your turn yet. Allow me to make my move for a little longer. It has barely begun, the Turn of the Witch!

Later, at dinner, the adults discuss the mystery guest. Is she really Beatrice? Why is she in the mansion, and why won't she join the family for dinner? It devolves into a heated argument about the inheritance, and eventually the children are chased out to the guest house. After they've finished their dessert, they talk about the legends surrounding Beatrice.

Beatrice was a name which referred to the being in that fairy tale about the Rokkenjima witch. Because the family and the servants publicly accepted the image of the witch of Kinzo's delusions to keep him in a good mood, the Rokkenjima fairy tale, or maybe a ghost story, was formed...

To the family members who knew those details, the fairy tale of the Golden Witch was only a vague thing. ...However, in front of Kinzo, they hadn't been able to say that.

So to those who didn't know the details...like young Maria, for example, it definitely wasn't vague, ...but a real legend of the witch.

So Maria believed in the legend of the witch. She swallowed the story. ...That was natural for an imaginative girl who believed in witches.

So no one said anything to believe her dream. ...On the contrary, they had arranged things beforehand to get her excited about her dreams.

GEORGE: ...So even though Maria-chan was showing off to us that candy which she said the witch gave her, ...I thought that somebody had probably slipped a candy into Maria-chan's handbag.

NANJO: .........I have also acted in such a way two or three times, long ago, secretly placing sweets somewhere. ...Probably, Kumasawa-san too, no, all of the servants and all of the Ushiromiya family have done it once or twice.

BATTLER: ......So, if it will make a small, innocent kid happy, you sometimes plan it beforehand and place some sweets somewhere. ......Come to think of it, I'll bet you do that kind of thing all the time, right, George-aniki?

GEORGE: ............Who knows.

Admitting that would probably be unrefined. George admitted it while being extremely wary that Maria didn't find out.

BATTLER: In other words, ......it's kinda like Santa Claus. To protect a kid's dreams, the parents plot together and lie, setting presents at the bedside of a child fast asleep.

They dismiss the idea of Beatrice the witch existing regardless of what they let Maria believe, but begin considering the possibility of Beatrice the human. Perhaps she's the daughter of Kinzo's rumoured mistress? Nanjo admits that the mistress did indeed exist, but died a long time ago. So while it is indeed possible that Beatrice is indeed this daughter, she might as well be someone impersonating her in an attempt to get her hands on the inheritance.

Maria suddenly cuts in, mocking Battler's insistence that Beatrice cannot really be a witch. He admits that he can't prove that witches don't exist, but also that he won't believe in them unless he sees undeniable proof of magic. In an ominous tone, Maria promises that proof will indeed be shown. She compares the argument with a game of chess - but one where the witch side can use strange, unpredictable moves Battler is completely unprepared for.

What he learned:
+This is the second game
+The adults are being really unpleasant about the inheritance :(
+Wow I'm really devoted to denying witches, aren't I?
+Also getting a brief glimpse of how the game works...
+and how much better Beatrice seems to be doing at it
+...No one except Maria really believes in Beatrice, but they act like they do to spare her feelings. That seems weirdly important
+Who is Beatrice, really? Is there more to her identity than just being the witch of legend?