Shikabane Kaigo - Vol. 3 Ch. 16 - Final Night - Taboo ⑤

[Serverclosed]

Meh end. If only these people had half brain, they could had saved and fixed everything.

 

[haidink]

Page 24 ch14
So she wasnt lying

 

[kasuma9999]

SPOILER ALERT
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For anyone who got confused at the ending: My interpretation is that the Nurse- MC is the delusional one and she image all these stuffs up her self just to justify her having the boy to replace her lost child. The reason i believe so is because of so many inconsistent things around the "Oni" or "the evil people":
1. The reason why she got hired: the bathroom spy scene is a self-reasoning story of her own to explain why: Fresh face from "Out-side"?
2. The "power" fluctuation of the "Oni": they either strangely weak and can be subdued easily just like normal weak human: the old woman that got stabbed and over powered by her then simply bled to death, the 2 "employees" that got sneak attack by the fat tsundere and passout, the weirdly screepy pregnant woman that show no actual threat even at the very end that got overwhelmed by the zombie mother (that MC previously was able to shook off no problem), then the "Evil smiling nurse" that is not death despite having her eyes falling out of her sockets and spine exposed.
3. The inconsistent of the "evil forces": there are so many jumps between the "evil mastermind" here: "Oni" old woman and pregnant daughter, then suddenly the "Devil" possessed smiling nurse. Both of which never actually caused any actual harm nor showing any superpower/ natural ability at all.
4. The sudden introduction of new "faces": Story begin with her being hired due to lack of man power, story ended with the company having several "in family" employees at the ready to take care of things.
5. The sign-language study that go no where: most of the thing results from her teaching the kid was her being recognized that she is the only one who truly care for him. The child never able to learn any from that yet, all "communication" between him and her was in writing (and from her guesswork on random pieces of papers the the child has write long before, probably unrelated to her at all)
6. The tsundere was also probally only her own invented persona - reading the part where she monologing and self-explainaing about how burning the mansion down and trash talking people is "so like me" -> the actions MC did was attributed to an imagine persona to make her own delusion more believable.
7. The fear of the child at the end is his instinct telling him that the MC is actually the same with the "Monster" in his drawing: possessive for her own selfishness only, not her true love for the child at all.
=> MC has an affair in her old workplace, has a miscarriage, develops mental problem then got fired. She is obsessive with having her child and has been looking around for work. She then got accepted for the role, hiding her mental problem but because of the mental problem she got paranoia and image crazy things on her own, it start as a scary corpse caring delusion at first, until she meets the boy, then her delusion changes into reasoning out a story about how the boy was a victim and food ration for "oni". The sick patient in reality is just having a disability and look quite normal, but MC create her own narrative about "not looking at her face" to reason for her careless about how the patient actually looks like/ who they are at all.
MC then got scared by her own delusion and steal the car to get away but then got caught by the old woman so she attack and killed her, MC then get back to the mansion, set fire to the building, kill the others nurses, took the boy, got extremely happy that she now has her own kid -> story end

 

[dogmeister238]

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this story. I’ve also read the novel this was based from, and I’ve been thinking a lot about the differences.

One thing the novel explains is that there are actually 2 different types of injection fluids used on the caregivers. One is what happened to Hikita, essentially making her complicit and causing her to act against her own will. The other is what happened to Kiwako, turning her into a breeding vessel. This also explains Kumakawa’s situation better. She intentionally gained weight and wore those bands to stop the injection from properly reaching her system. So no wonder she managed to keep serving there for so long without becoming like Hikita or Kiwako - she had been taking precautions the whole time.

Another detail is the scene in Chapter 8 where Akane sees someone walking and limping around at night. That wasn’t Kiwako - it was Hikita, who was still limping because of the leg injury she had during the attack. Also, the monster in Hiroto’s creepy drawing wasn’t Kiwako - it was actually Kanbara.

The ending also feels different between the 2 versions. In the novel, Akane’s ending is much clearer and more human. She regrets everything, apologizes to Hiroto, realizes the oni may still be out there, and swears to protect him. The final feeling is more like: “I’ll run with him. I’ll survive. I’ll protect him.”

By contrast, manga!Akane feels much more ominous. Her “motherly protection” comes across as something more unsettling, almost as if she has been changed by the oni’s influence and their intense protectiveness toward their children.

Edit: I've posted the translation of the novel's ending in my discord comm.

Was there a clearer explanation for why they needed to feed Kiwano human flesh? And when they said they should’ve kept it in the family, did that mean they previously didn’t use the workers and instead just kidnapped people? Also, were the two workers that later showed up also oni/bugs?