Chapter 46

**Chapter 46** is the forty-sixth chapter of the *Dead Mount Death Play* manga.

## Official Blurb

Takumi's rescuers are here...but at the cost of a few secrets being revealed!

## Synopsis

Tena Sorimura, while laying out four playing cards on Jirotarou Takanosu's desk, muses on people's attitudes toward police corruption in real life versus depictions of corruption in television serials. He compares humans' dual faces to the faces of playing cards; as he holds up the fifth card—a two-sided Joker card—he comments that some cards' fronts and backs are both wicked. Moreover, he finds that such cards tend to congregate in the same hand. He flips the other four cards to reveal they are also Jokers.

On a thin ledge near the ceiling of Kuon Higuro and Momoya Agakura's hideout, Xiaoyu Lei severs the straps binding Takumi Kuruya's wrists and legs and tells him to stay put. Both of them have questions for each other—but for now, Xiaoyu has a confrontation to resume.

Xiaoyu thus drops to the floor and lashes out at Momoya with both hands; Momoya dodges the extensions, concurrently realizing that they are Xiaoyu's fingers, and uses his bladed weapon to cleave Xiaoyu's left ring finger and little finger. He laughingly asks what "is with" Xiaoyu's hands and feet considering that his (Momoya's) oldest sister cut them off—but then again, he is already well aware of the Heilei's technologies. Immediately, Xiaoyu retorts he is no longer a Heilei—and that his legs are shaking neither from fear or excitement, but from a "panther's roaring growl."

He launches himself off the floor, rebounds off the ceiling—so swiftly that only Takumi can track the movement—and then ricochets off all surfaces, striking out at Momoya when he has the chance—and when he has another chance for a close contact blow, he hurtles toward Momoya while lashing out his left hand. Momoya has enough time to deduce the technology is not actually Heilei before the severed fingers *click*, and Xiaoyu's hand emits a white flash of light.

Blinded, Momoya thinks fast: though Xiaoyu's technology is not Heilei, his methods of confusing his opponent and harnessing his bloodlust *are*—and in the moment Xiaoyu launches himself at Higuro, Momoya seizes his ankle and hurls him into the air. He remarks that targeting Higuro, too, was in the Heilei mode; eyes still shut, he nevertheless turns his blade and killing intent toward the airborne Xiaoyu once more.

Higuro abruptly shouts Momoya's name as a second being ricochets down off the walls, but his warning is futile: Misaki Sakimiya, alive and whole, slams her heel into Momoya's neck with enough force to send him crashing into a pile of scrap against the opposite wall. As she catches Xiaoyu, he and Takumi each exclaim her name; smiling, she affirms that Xiaoyu was on their side after all. It then hits Xiaoyu that he is being cradled. He blushes furiously and demands she put him down.

Dumbfounded at the sight of Misaki alive and whole, Higuro watches on while trying to make sense of the situation. He asks himself whether Misaki might be a twin or a double, but then remembers how understated Takumi's reaction to her death had been; such calmness was not like Takumi at all. As he wonders whether Takumi knew Misaki had not died—or whether, somehow, she *would not die*—Momoya finally sits up.

Working out a crick in his neck, Momoya stands and opines that it must be the end of the world, what with one of his victims not only being alive, but stronger than ever. He finds the situation creepy but more entertaining than creepy; so saying, he uses his sword to slice through the straps of his wraparound 'skirt'—a garment that has so far restricted his legs' range of movement. Assuming a proper fighting stance for the first time, he invites Misaki and Xiaoyu to shuck their gloves and play their own trump cards in turn.

## Trivia

* The moment with Xiaoyu mid-air, and Momoya with his blade drawn, harks back to how Momoya killed Misaki in Chapter 43.