Chapter 15

**Chapter 15** is the fifteenth chapter of the *Dead Mount Death Play* manga.

## Summary

Tsubaki Iwanome complains to Kōzaburō Arase about the latest problems with Shinjuku's in-custody troublemakers: "The Grocer" is demanding an "obscene sum" of money; conversations with "Riddle Riddle" are hitting a dead end; and the surviving member of the Gator Sisters will not grant him an audience. Still, he will not give up attempting to communicate with them: a case as atypical as this latest one demands atypical methods.

With Arase in tow, Iwanome heads off to talk with yet another troublemaker—one whom he considers "closest" to the "something" he and Arase saw before. Entering a stark room, he takes a seat and remarks to the troublemaker in question—Tena Sorimura, also known as "Phantom Solitaire"—that the formidable Fire-breathing Bug is nothing compared to him. Sorimura, constrained by a straitjacket over prison clothes, mutters that Iwanome chose the moniker simply because it sounds like his real name.

Over in the Shinoyama Manor, Shinoyama patriarch Rozan Shinoyama asks his son Polka Shinoyama who he *really is*. Polka—in actuality the Corpse God possessing Polka's body—'innocently' asks if Rozan is accusing him of being a fake, inwardly wondering how Rozan could have guessed as much. Rozan persists: the impostor may have Polka's face, voice, and body, but he is not the Polka *he* knows—and when the Corpse God continues to play dumb, he unsheathes his katana and swings it, stopping an inch from "Polka's" throat.

Rozan thus warns the impostor not to underestimate his age nor take the fact that he is a parent lightly. Recalling how his parents sold him in his home world, the Corpse God drops the innocent act and comments that Rozan is unlike the parents *he* knows. At Rozan's demand to know if the real Polka is still alive, Corpse God suddenly looks away; assuming the impostor intends to flee, Rozan seizes his left arm—only to find it far colder than "Polka's" head had been when he patted it earlier. Corpse God then declares that the twins might be in danger; as he promised someone to protect them, he must leave now and explain later. At his request for Rozan to trust him, Rozan sighs and permits him to leave despite understanding nothing he has said so far.

The Corpse God dashes off with True Polka in his hood and with extraordinary speed that Rozan takes note of. An elite bodyguard hidden in the ceiling asks if Rozan wants them to let the boy go, but Rozan replies the only way they could stop him would be to kill him. Another bodyguard underneath the floorboards laughs that Rozan should have done just that, to which Rozan protests that he would have been unable to kill someone who looks identical to his son. A third bodyguard concealed outside the room finds this modest, quipping that Rozan is the sort of man who would kill his own son if necessary.

With a heavier look on his face than he had before, Rozan reminds them the impostor claimed Shizuki and Kazuki are in trouble; he orders the bodyguard in the ceiling to alert the twins' bodyguards posthaste. Just as he is noting the strange air in the mansion, a loud boom cracks through the air.

In a flashback, Suzuka Shinoyama—as seen from her first person point of view—asks a young Shizuki and Kazuki why Kazuki is crying. Her little siblings explain that Kazuki dropped her pouch when they were exploring the garden earlier, and they want to look for it but cannot as it is pitch-black outside. Patting their cheeks, Suzuka assures them to leave the pouch to their big sister before heading out to search in their stead.

In the garden, Suzuka finds the flower-patterned pouch she gifted Kazuki a long time ago, surprised and pleased to see that Kazuki and took care of it for so long. Then, she hears two voices: one belonging to the middle-aged relative from Chapter 13, and the other to a man facing him. The relative congratulates the intruder on sneaking in and inquires into the fate of "the guy that face originally belonged to"—to which the intruder answers, "I burned him. Until I'd burned away even his bones."

The intruder continues that an estate of this size will need about a year's worth of preparations, but adds it would be simpler if it were just a matter of "burning some people and making it look like an accident." He suggests 'the twins playing with fire' as one such excuse. Pausing, he then grins that he smells something "really good. Some kind of succulent meat...I'd like to cook over flames."

Suzuka races back to the manor and reaches its boiler room, desperate to warn the family and get to the twins no matter what. The boiler room abruptly explodes with her inside it.

With the flames taller than the treetops, Shinoyama servants rush about and rush to worry over Suzuka's whereabouts. As the twins hold hands and watch the blaze, the charred, bony spirit of their older sister urges them to flee for the police. Suzuka soon realizes they cannot hear her and attempts to hug them, but just as her calls fell on deaf ears, her arms fall through their bodies. Powerless to interact or intervene, Suzuka can only plea for "someday [to] save these children"—and this plea consumes her mind to become the sum of her spectral existence.

On the twins' bed, in the present, Suzuka's spirit hunches over Kazuki and Shikuzi while they continue discussing their uncle Polka. Shizuki wonders why Polka suddenly announced he was going to protect them the day before, and Kazuki reaffirms the twins' need to grow stronger on their own if they ever want to look Suzuka in the face again. In the next moment, a mustached employee bursts into their room hollering fire and instructs them to follow him. They do so with great alarm, unaware of Suzuka howling "*No!*" in protest. The servant leads them to a stairwell that he claims is an escape route to the outside, but Kazuki halts: to her knowledge, no such escape route should exist here. The employee assures her that there is—after all, *he spent a year building it*.

The glove on his right hand crackles. Suzuka lashes out an arm, but he nonetheless lunges; her siblings stumble back and fall to the ground while Suzuka wails in her impotence—and Misaki Sakimiya lands a flying kick to the man's cheek that sends him skidding against the ground. Alighting in front of the twins, she announces to the invisible spirit that the spirit can relax: she and Polka will save the children.

## Trivia

* The initial English release of this chapter wrote Sorimura's moniker as "Mystery Solitaire." Yen Press has subsequently revised his moniker as Phantom Solitaire. Though the individual English release of this chapter retains "the Mystery Solitaire," the Yen Press print and digital editions of Volume 2 reflect the latest interpretation.
* The bodyguard underneath the floorboards is Xiaoyu Lei, who will make his formal debut in Chapter 21.