Usogui - Vol. 30 Ch. 322 - The Owl In The Anthill

[MangaDex]

 

[CoachBubby]

So this gamble was the gamble where usogui "used his friends life"

 

[Arsonel]

ehh I noticed a typo on page 6, "no on" should be change to "no one"

 

[KeepTheFeather]

typo page 15 should be "about to be fired"

also wtf just happened

 

[saxifraga]

Yeah, I'm pretty lost on this one. Like, what's the deal with the paint ball? I mean, it must of been to prevent Souichi from shooting himself, but who shot it exactly? Eba? But that begs the question of "when" and "how."

 

[Lithe]

If it really is the time when Usogui 'sacrificed' someone, I guess that explains why none of the other attendants knew of the real circumstances, nor of whom was sacrificed. Meanwhile Eba looked shady as fuck this entire time just 'cause character design lol (I hope there's nothing more to it than that).

His memory implantation seems pretty damn sparse, but I suppose he doesn't need much.

This is another one of those chapters where the constant time shifts are kinda annoying, but eh. Wonder how big the memory drop was this time. Did we get to see Hachina pick up the phone for Baku and take Fukurou's challenge?

 

[Qeye]

Thank you for the updates Team Duwang

 

[299792458]

Hmmm. I did think Eba would die between November 23rd 1998 and April 9th 2001, but I didn't expect him to die on the exact same date as Hal... I didn't see any hints of Eba getting shot after he appeared when the lights got turned on, but one of the goon's gun was out of the panel, so maybe it was the one that fired. Since Eba located the bullet in the darkness (somehow he did this while also headshotting three goons, and he was smart enough to foresee the situation so far that he brought a paintball gun with fake blood in case Souichi lost - or perhaps it's a famous game that Fukurou likes to play often, and we saw that room full of guns where Eba was waiting for Souichi; but still, him bringing that gun with him is very coincidental), he then waited until Hal was about to lose and thus shoot himself, and (probably secretly?) shot Hal with the fake blood instead, somehow deceiving Fukurou and his goons, who was was probably the one that spread the rumors of Usogui sacrificing his comrade later on, since he thought he ran and had sent him instead to die. Fukurou must've ordered his goons to also get rid of the bodies or took them with him, since I doubt Eba in his current condition would be able to do that by himself. Then, after having Fukurou leave, and Souichi being safe but unconscious, he mustered up the last bit of strength he had to drag himself to his private room, where he keeps all his recordings, to record that day's events for implanting Souichi's memories, and then crawl up and die...


And then, the most unfortunate (or induced?) timing for a memory loss possible occurs. Hachina wakes up, having lost his memories again, and analyzes his surroundings to piece together the situation. Then, either via clues from the Prince Bee (I assume there must be some hidden clues for Hachina within the Prince Bee, since there were seemingly no obvious hidden instructions within it, or Baku would've found them, and yet the information inside was enough for Hal to know where to go. Which means that when Eba implanted Souichi's memory about coming to meet him, they must've put together some sort of code or interpretation of the book that allowed Hachina to deduce where to go without needing specific instructions. But at the end of the day Baku figured it out anyway, since we know that he buys the whole bookstore to hijack the book ordering process in Eba's stead in the future. Or perhaps he found out in another way) or simply by following Eba's blood trail, he finds his room, where he is met with Eba's dead body or his dying moments, after which he sits down on Eba's computer and gets all the memories he lost implanted through all of Eba's recordings.

The truly sad thing is... Hal was ready to abandon his life as Hachina and Souichi (and presumably also his father, since he would die if Baku were to win against him at StL) to become Hal and be with Baku... But instead, he loses the match, loses Eba, a very important person to him, and (probably) loses all his memories of Baku... I assume Baku must've suspected that Hal wouldn't come back even though he said it wouldn't be long, and even though Hal did intend to come back, at the end of the day he couldn't...

We'll need to see the next chapter to confirm some more of the details, but this is how I understood things so far.

Edit: Oh yeah, and it seems like Kaoru did get some details wrong, and Baku did lie a bit? I mean we didn't see Hal throw Baku's Pooyan run, and the night before he didn't eat plums with eel, but he ate clams, maybe he did that offscreen. Then, Kaoru had guessed that he had gotten drugged and Hal went in his stead, but in this situation Baku didn't even set up the meeting at all. It was all Hal after figuring out where Eba was and setting up the gamble there (to make sure to have someone to protect him) using Usogui's phone and/or voice.

Edit 2: Also, the probability that Eba lied to Souichi about some of the turn of events (perhaps to avoid him unnecessary pain) is quite high in my opinion, so we should take this with a grain of salt for now. Especially since Eba said he had seen where the bullet was in the dark, despite Fukurou having said that they made sure that it was impossible to see where the bullet is just by looking at it. I mean, he could've lied, but still.

 

[DoctorMckay]

Just bingeread this masterpiece. Does anyone know if I can buy it in English somewhere?
I might just buy it in japanese if there are no oficial english versions.

 

[catx3]

@299792458
Ah, that's an interesting reason for the paintball being there. I thought it was odd that Eba brought the paintball, especially since he wasn't aware that Fukurou was going to be there to begin with. I was thinking instead that it was Usogui who did something, perhaps he had one of his men come in immediately after receiving the call about the match to save him.

The whole situation kind of reminds me of when Baku had Kaji try to lose his first gamble, in order to help him gain experience. At that time, Baku had GPS on him and was keeping watch him, and also armed him with Marco. Was that degree of setup inspired because of his failure to save Hal in the past? Or did he actually have that much preparation back then, and was actually keeping an eye on Hal? Maybe Baku knew that Hal would be pushed into wanting to prove himself as a gambler, and intended for him to lose and gain experience, but didn't intend for him to forget everything due to the sudden memory loss? I'm personally leaning towards the idea that Baku was intentionally pushing Hal to gamble, but made a mistake and lost him, and that's why he felt guilty when talking about the memory to Yukiide.

If it was indeed Eba's help, and if your speculation about Fukurou playing Russian roulette often is correct, then back in the Tower of Karma match, that detail probably helped Usogui realize that the Suteguma vs Fukurou match was fake, since they didn't play Russian roulette at that time.

The memory loss is indeed suspicious, I suspect it may have been induced as well, because the interval seemed to be way too short. The initial bookstore memory loss apparently happened on Nov 16, so it happened again in merely one week. One random & unlikely possibility is that Hal lost the game because he experienced a memory loss while playing, thought that would make mean he had a third memory loss, which seems unnatural & excessive unless it was induced somehow.

The way the author skipped over the Fukurou match is quite interesting. It feels like we're experiencing Hal's memory loss for ourselves, and as a result there are so many different possibilities to consider, and filling in the gaps feels quite impossible. It definitely feels like there are a lot of suspicious gaps and details, especially with Eba as you said. I think there is a lot of room for different twists here, but we don't have much evidence to work with. What a rough condition to have to live with.

Baku & Hal's relationship is quite tragic indeed. It feels especially sad in the present day, where he knows that Hal is technically alive, but is really dead. Combined with the fact that the current Hachina is super antagonistic towards him, since he knows that Baku's a Kakerou member, and that he's attempted StL, and that he owns the bookstore, and thus thinks that Baku is most likely trying to manipulate his memories.

 

[catx3]

@DoctorMckay
There is no English official release unfortunately.

 

[DoctorMckay]

Gonna buy the japanese manga in mandarake then.
Like, fuck man, the translation of series like this is the reason I will defend scanlations to death.
If it was for the official releases I wouldn't even know Usogui exists.

 

[Ernergeycey]

holy fuck