Chapter 50

Chapter 50 is the fiftieth chapter of the Dead Mount Death Play manga.

Official Blurb
Distracted, the players find themselves surrounded by a silent enemy who seems to be extremely fixated on a name very familiar to the Corpse God!

Synopsis
In a parking lot, three young women keep company with a bloody corpse. The woman called "Maa-nee" by her sisters, and whose armband reads 'head of the family', tries and fails to get through to her brother Momoya Agakura on her cell phone. Where 'Maa-nee' assumes "Momo" is ignoring her and plans to punish him, one sister suggests Momoya has been killed; either she or the third sister wishes Momoya could have joined them on this job instead. "Maa-nee" says that Momoya is in Shinjuku and proposes they go fetch him.

Meanwhile in Shinjuku, Takumi Kuruya contacts Corpse God via cell phone to report that Misaki Sakimiya "saved his life," and that they and Xiaoyu Lei will be a little late in coming back. Ending the call, he looks over to where Momoya is still splayed on the floor of the hideout and votes to leave the area—but Xiaoyu does not move, sensing a crowd of people singing in the rain outside the building.

In a flashback to Jirotarou Takanosu's office, Tena Sorimura hears a ringer going off from somewhere in Jirotarou's chair. He retrieves a tiny brick of a phone from a secret compartment in the chair's armrest, claiming his 'hunch' was correct—though this only convinces Jirotarou that Sorimura had no plan—and answers the call. On the other end, the Grocer's voice filters through to ask if he has mishandled the delivery.

Jirotarou invites the Grocer to relay his information even with Sorimura listening, so Grocer reports that all of Jirotarou's requests have come in: a completed trace of the Metropolitan Police Department [MPD]'s internal phone records has produced two pieces of relevant information. The first is that Tsubaki Iwanome appears to be in contact with one Inspector Miyabi Hosorogi, a name both Jirotarou and Sorimura recognize and thus takes them aback. The Grocer says he will deliver the call log to Jirotarou at a later date. The second piece of information is that Habaki has received a number of incoming calls from a middleman in Shibuya, news that Jirotarou was expecting to hear.

Sorimura asks to purchase and is denied a direct line to the Grocer, after which he points out the scandalous implications of a superintendent general instructing a criminal to wiretap others. Unruffled, Jirotarou suggests this explains why the Grocer has had so many liberties despite being in solitary confinement. He nevertheless acknowledges this could become a liability for him should Sorimura talk to the press, and asks what Solitaire wants—if not the identity of whoever ordered him killed and whatever lies 'beyond'. Considering, Sorimura eventually asks for Iwanome's cell phone number.

Back in the present, in a dark meeting room, Iwanome recalls to Habaki that he felt something was off during their conversation about investigating the building—Habaki had changed the subject abruptly. At the same time, he felt he owed Habaki after all Habaki had done for him concerning the Hosorogi situation. Now he confronts Habaki for talking to someone called Higuro, and for invoking something known as "Sabaramond's protection"—he wants to know what that is.

Habaki claims Sabaramond "is the code name of an information channel" he hired, and that it is a coincidence they share the surname Higuro. Kōzaburō Arase naturally wants to know whom, exactly, they share the surname Higuro with; Iwanome, however, tells Habaki to come up with a better excuse. Habaki protests he is not lying, only to break off at the sight of a policeman standing behind Iwanome just outside of the doorway. Iwanome asks the man to fetch the other members of the Shinjuku team—but the man replies by singing the first line of Furusato's second verse.

Other policemen and pencil-pushers come filing down the corridor, interspersing muttered variations of "I heard him say it" and "Sabaramond" between Furusato's lyrics. As they congregate around the doorway, they concurrently point fingers at Habaki and accuse him of being Sabaramond's "bastard child." As the crowd pushes its way into the meeting room, forcing Iwanome and Arase further and further back inside, Habaki exclaims "Fire-Breathing Bug"—and when Arase and Iwanome look up, they see "This world is a buggy p[rogram]" being burned onto the ceiling.

Meanwhile in the hideout, Misaki calls Xiaoyu over to where she is standing near Momoya's body. As Xiaoyu wonders to himself if the crowd's singing is getting closer, the word "this" burns itself into the wall over Momoya's head; as the crowd outside begins singing, "I stop..." Maa-nee, the woman from earlier, approaches them and speaks the rest of the lyric: "'I stop and recall my old country home'...right?"

Just as the crowd stops singing, so to do the words stop burning themselves into the wall. Maa-nee tells them to break it up as she walks her way through the throng, having taken offense to the insinuation her brother is a bastard child. Though she takes offense, she says she will only pity them, pray for them—"for their everlasting revenge," which is spoken over images of burning children—and so she orders the umbrella-carriers to "leave this place[,] in the name of Majiri Agakura."

The crowd shuffles away; when one of her two sisters asks if Majiri is friends with them, Majiri replies in the affirmative but adds there is no use 'meddling' with the people in rain-gear—for no matter how many bugs you stamp out, there is no end to them.

In the conference room, Iwanome and Arase brace themselves as the crowd of Bugs surges forward.

Trivia

 * Illustrator Shinta Fujimoto posted a sketch of the panel in which Majiri's back is turned on July 2, 2020, a day before the Japanese release and deadline for the Tsugimanga vote.

Cultural References
 * Furusato is a Japanese children's song that was written in 1914 and continues to be taught in public schools.

Referbacks
 * The bastard children of Sabaramond were first invoked by Fire-Breathing Bug in Chapter 31.
 * Sorimura recognizes Hosorogi's name because he remembers namedropping 'Hosorogi' during his confrontation with Xiaoyu in Chapter 32.
 * Majiri's appearance in this chapter was foreshadowed in Chapter 24, the first and only other time her name has been previously mentioned. When Xiaoyu's mic is picking up background chatter from people in Shinjuku, one of the overhead snippets is as follows: "Majiri-san's apparently coming to Tokyo." The speaker's identity remains unknown.
 * To Sorimura and Jirotarou's tête-à-tête in the previous chapter.