Hen na E - Vol. 4 Ch. 13 - An Indirect Message

[MangaDex]

 

[Tsama0]

Some notes for this upload:

• I generally try for a weekly release, but work's been hectic (hence the delay for this chapter), so I don't know if I can hold to that for now... Releases might take an extra week or two for the time being.
• Uketsu (or at least the manga illustrator) isn't one to shy away from gory details, but gotta say this whole volume kinda turns my stomach. Just a forewarning, I guess.

 

[Exkalamity]

Holy shit. This is crazy. So the guy getting beaten was the trespasser man from some chapters ago, and this women, Yuki, is the grandma?

Also gore tag? I'm usually fine with action violence, but this is pretty brutal.

 

[BalrogDeMorgoth]

Thanks for the chapter

 

[Zreth]

Thanks so much for the chapter don't have time to think about this one too deeply until later but always fun to read.

 

[reylee]

Holy shit. This is crazy. So the guy getting beaten was the trespasser man from some chapters ago, and this women, Yuki, is the grandma?

Also gore tag? I'm usually fine with action violence, but this is pretty brutal.

No, the "trespasser" seems to be the senior general affairs ex-reporter. This lady, Yuki, would be the real mother of the boy previously, it's the same kanji name. This seems to be a flashback in time, and Kameido would be her maiden family name before she married Konno and took up the family name of her husband.

There's a lot of jumping around in time in this series so far. It seems now we're being given some insight into what was the sin/crime that Yuki had committed which the husband later alluded to in the final blogpost.

edit: Let's give some chronology as to the events that happened, rather than as presented to us in chapter order..

• Story starts with some bloke attending some psychoanalysis seminar/lecture while searching for job, bloke is probably a final year student?
• His club mate and friend introduced the creepy blog to him
• They sort of deduced what the images might have intended to convey about the birth being sort of a premeditated murder that the mother sort of see coming, yet allowed to happen either because she was powerless to change it, or felt she deserved the fate
• The later part is a further deduction coming from the fact that the husband found out she was involved in something so heinous he couldn't forgive her for it even though he would continue to love her
• Story cuts (seemingly suddenly) to showing what seemed to be a single mum raising a difficult kid
• Mum had some fears about being stalked, and it seems that she has reasons to indeed fear being stalked, as if she did something guilty and feared vengeance upon her. This is further backed by her reluctance to involve the police even when her 'son' was missing (we later know it's her grandchild)
• 'Mum' was revealed to be the 3rd person living with the blogpost author and his wife at that time
• 'Mum' was actually grandma (mother of the husband who seemed to have passed away some time after the final blogpost), the real mother's name as shown on the grave was Konno Yuki (or in western name order, Yuki Konno, but i'm Asian and so are these characters so I will use Asian name order)
• Grandma shown to detest her daughter-in-law, Yuki, for some reason, and the dad knew that too so that's why he made his son promise not to bring up 'mother' in front of 'mummy'
• The 'stalker' announced his visit to the grandma at the frontdoor with proper knock (or was it doorbell), but was stabbed instead, and when the hood was off it's some old looking guy
• Story then jumped from this relevation to suddenly about the death of the art teacher being investigated at first by the same old looking guy (though looking younger here without fully white/grey hair) who we now learn is ex-reporter who got transferred after his cancer diagnosis, and later on his junior freshman colleague
• The girl student in the artclub was referred to Kameido (surname or family name) until we finally learn now that her full name is Kameido Yuki with the same kanji Yuki as the grave. This would make this whole arc of the art teacher death happening well in the past before the whole blog thing, and before she got married into the Konno family and adopted the Konno name

Going back to the graves bit, the grandma did not want Yuki to be together with the rest of the Konno family ancestral grave, further hinting at how strongly she felt against Yuki. It's like banishment from the family even in death. I wonder if by the current story timeline of the very first bloke discovering about the blogpost sinister meanings, the dark deeds of Yuki were already known/found out by the Konno family, thus the severe shunning even in death

 

[reylee]

Omg I just went back to reread some chapters to try to catch more hints, and the scene of the grave in ch 8 showing Konno Yuki's gravestone, guess which family's gravestone (with the kanji name) is shown next to it? Miura family ancestral grave. The same family name of the art teacher Miura. Of course, Miura isn't that uncommon of a surname in Japan, so this might not be the same Miura, but I don't think it's a coincidence the mangaka chose to make sure the kanji of this neighbouring gravestone is clearly shown while the rest of the gravestones aren't even shown with any scribbles of kanji

edit: i went to backread some previous comments on past chapters' threads and learnt that some have speculated that the grandma was from Miura as the wife of the late art teacher. I find that hard to believe because (other than the fact that she's going by Konno, not Miura) it was shown that the grandma had strong enough feelings against Yuki to oppose having her entombed with the Konno family ancestral grave (even mentioning that she wanted Yuki 'alone' and away from the family grave), but Yuki's gravestone was depicted neighbouring that of Miura family gravestone. If the grandma was from Miura and hated Yuki that much, she wouldn't have had Yuki's gravestone just right next door but probably be totally in a different cemetery altogether.

I wonder though if she actually knew of Yuki's crime in full detail and deliberately have her entombed right next to Miura family gravestone...

further edit: Re-reading again, as well as learning some spoilers from TL's reply to me in ch. 12 comments, what the grandma actually said was that when Takeshi died, she "chose a different cemetery" instead, implying maybe it's Takeshi that's entombed separately from Yuki (and potentially Miura family grave, if indeed the Konnos were actually Miuras). So there's still a chance for the Konno = Miura theory.

 

[Wolf_Kz]

Am I pre-reading? Cuz I'm sure that I talked about this before....

 

[reylee]

Am I pre-reading? Cuz I'm sure that I talked about this before....

If you were referring to my comments, sorry I've only just binge-read the manga up to now from scratch in 1 go a couple hours ago, and went straight to this latest ch comments without looking at prior comments. If some of what I said have been covered before, well treat it as a summary/reminder for similar readers who came in after.

 

[NerimaShinjuku]

Not the most important thing but I cannot figure out what a Hanayagi lunch box is

 

[fight2live]

that's brutal

 

[Tsama0]

Also gore tag? I'm usually fine with action violence, but this is pretty brutal.

Yeah, what exactly is the threshold for a manga being considered gore? This manga already showed dismembered bodies, and now we have this chapter. It doesn't show viscera or stuff like that, but the brutality is... yikes.

Not the most important thing but I cannot figure out what a Hanayagi lunch box is

Hanayagi is just a surname, and lunch box is how I translated bento. Presumably someone named Hanayagi created those bento, or at least attached their name to it.

 

[reylee]

Yeah, what exactly is the threshold for a manga being considered gore? This manga already showed dismembered bodies, and now we have this chapter. It doesn't show viscera or stuff like that, but the brutality is... yikes.


Hanayagi is just a surname, and lunch box is how I translated bento. Presumably someone named Hanayagi created those bento, or at least attached their name to it.

Actually, Hanayagi is the name of a kind of bento set it seems, related to hanami (meaning flower-viewing, i.e. appreciation of the sakura blossom during spring). It can be googled. Several real companies sell versions of Hanayanagi bento which one can see on google searching using the kanji

 

[Tsama0]

Actually, Hanayagi is the name of a kind of bento set it seems, related to hanami (meaning flower-viewing, i.e. appreciation of the sakura blossom during spring). It can be googled. Several real companies sell versions of Hanayanagi bento which one can see on google searching using the kanji

Oh, interesting! Didn't know it was a type of bento.

 

[77BLc9JwJGpLVARkamJx]

lmao what the fuck.Got a feeling the explanation later gonna be still confusing for me

 

[reylee]

Hmm, i just realized that the scene of the grandma taking the knife to stab the 'stalker' with, the drawer from which the knife was taken also had ropes and some sort of clothes in it. One usually doesn't store knife, ropes, and clothes in the same drawer....

Here's what i think... grandma might be the actual person to murder Miura sensei the art teacher. The knife, ropes, clothes were the evidence from that murder. Then Yuki, who somehow knew about it (maybe as an accomplice, perhaps the plan was pitched to the grandma from her), used the same method to finish off Iwata who was digging into the story years after and gave away hints that he actually might be stumbling onto the real truth much more than the cops did.

In a way, senior Kumai might have sent naive junior Iwata to his death because even though he knew Iwata lacked the experience to conduct interviews with potentially dangerous people, he still let him go under the guise of 'conversation'. Sadly Iwata indeed lacked the experience to correctly interpret the body language cues from Yuki properly and thought he could trust her enough to inadvertently leak enough hint he might be onto a breakthrough, which sealed his fate...

 

[maddery]

If she is the wife in the diary, then it is understandable why the husband was angry with the secret. And why she was shunned even after her death. She have been evil since young huh.

 

[ARiceofGrain]

Absolutely insane ending scene wtf. feels bad but brother you shoulda packed up and head home instead of the staying the night after the revelation 😔

 

[Wolf_Kz]

If you were referring to my comments, sorry I've only just binge-read the manga up to now from scratch in 1 go a couple hours ago, and went straight to this latest ch comments without looking at prior comments. If some of what I said have been covered before, well treat it as a summary/reminder for similar readers who came in after.

Don't worry about it. I was referring to myself cuz on previous chapter I was talking about the art teacher can't see while he draw that picture, and something about him get murdered during the night.

 

[ChocoPies]

To think she would have gotten caught if he just shuffled very carefully down the mountain.