Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan - Episode 12
Episode 12: Bruschetta (エピソード#12 ブルスケッタ, Episōdo #12 Burusuketta) is a one-shot manga written and illustrated by Hirohiko Araki as part of the Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan series, featuring Rohan Kishibe. The one-shot was published in Ultra Jump on April 18, 2025 in the May 2025 issue.[1]
While on vacation in Hawaii, Rohan begins hearing noises repeating themselves. As he struggles to discover the cause and find a remedy, the noises only intensify in volume. What follows is a battle for and against evolution itself.
Summary
Via video call, Kyoka Izumi questions Rohan Kishibe's apparent sudden interest in baseball, as she never saw him as someone interested in it and that Rohan once said to her that he could not write a manga about sports as the rules are someone else's ideas. Rohan interjects, clarifying that he is interested in the fact that athletes are constantly improving year after year by breaking new records and having a drastically different physique, believing that it is a form of Darwinian evolution that drives it. He reminds her that evolution is the topic he is researching for his next manga, and is surprised Kyoka forgot so quickly.
Rohan's attention is then drawn to a little girl walking in front of his car, soaking wet and with an innertube under her arms, suggesting she just came from the water. He warns the child about a nearby cliff and that she is about to trespass onto his property, asking her where her parents are. The mention of the cliff alerts Kyoka to the fact that Rohan is in an unusual car, wondering where he is at the moment. After revealing that he is at his villa on the Big Island of Hawaii, she is dismayed and reminds him that his manuscript is due the next day and considering he still draws them on paper it will be impossible to meet the deadline. Rohan says he has come to Hawai'i to observe the birds on Hualalai to study local isolated bird species undergoing evolution, and that if Kyoka wants to make sure the manuscripts are in by the deadline she should just make a roundtrip flight to pick them up in person, which she says is out of the question. As the child wanders into the trees on his property, Rohan ends the call to get back to work. Before heading back inside his villa, Rohan notices a coconut fall from a nearby palm tree; as it rolls towards his car, the palm tree creaks in the wind.
Rohan unlocks his front door and decides that before he goes back to working on the manuscript he will make himself a tomato bruschetta with avocado. While preparing the dish, he begins to hear a strange tapping sound from his kitchen island, but upon opening a drawer he finds nothing. He then goes to pick a bottle of wine to go with the bruschetta, but again hears weird noises from his wine cooler. Worried that someone disguised as a contractor may have planted a listening device in his house, noting that he was the victim of a robbery during his vacation the previous year, he begins to look through the cooler, only to begin hearing noises coming from the nearby wall instead. He begins to wonder if there is an animal trapped in the walls, noticing that it seems to be repeating the sounds he makes to try to narrow down its location. However, he soon realizes that all sounds he makes are being repeated, including bumping his elbow into a chair, wondering if he is instead dealing with a ghost. But as he heads outside to his backyard, he begins to notice that even the leaves' rustling seems to be echoing as well.
Rohan then spots the little girl from earlier in his backyard. As he asks her where her parents are, she approaches him, and he notices a strange discharge from her ears. When she reaches for his phone, he hears echoes of her tapping and realizes the sounds he has been hearing are coming from within his own body. Just as Rohan's own ears begin to have the same discharge, the little girl spots some nearby snails and becomes distraught. Realizing he is beginning to suffer from the same malady as she is, Rohan uses Heaven's Door to turn the little girl into a book. He learns that the girl is named Soa, she is only 4 years old, and she and her parents have been plagued by these deafening sounds for the past nine days. However, he notices he cannot find mention of any illness, confusing him. He then uses Heaven's Door on himself, which again says that he is perfectly healthy, but there is an unknown foreign substance in his own body.
Rohan calls 911 but as soon as the call goes through, a nearby snail's movements become unbearably loud, causing him to lose his grip on his phone. As it hits the ground, the sound becomes excruciatingly painful, causing Rohan to begin to become nauseous, as the 911 operator asks if anyone is on the other end of the phone. He begins to try to figure out what has been different since the girl's arrival, knowing that it could not have been anything he ate as all he had that day was the bruschetta and some bottled water. As he begins to feel empathy for Soa and her parents being incapacitated like this, Rohan spots a strange looking moth preying upon one of the snails in his yard, and sees more arrive. He then remembers seeing something about snails in Soa's book and goes back to her, finding a list of rules about what to do when she finds a snail which is to get back inside the house, try to keep still and make no noise, and avoid looking outside at all costs. The list then remarks that this is uncurable and not a disease.
As more and more moths descend upon Rohan's property, Rohan remembers that Hawaii has species of carnivorous moths, and realizes that these moths have been surrounding his doors and windows to ensure that he breathes in the dust that they are shedding. He deduces that this dust must somehow affect humans, making them amplify all sounds so the moths can track down their slow-moving and otherwise silent snail prey. The dust also does not kill the human victims or make them physically ill, as the moths need multiple live humans to set up a sort of relay to hunt. Rohan slowly tries to get back into his house, as every sound he makes including opening up the glass patio door and accidentally knocking over the wine glass he took out earlier makes him become more nauseous and nearly makes him pass out from the pain. Saving up his strength, he manages to get one of his dining room chairs outside so he can reach up to the ceiling of his patio to grab one of the moths. As soon as he catches one, they all begin to scatter, and in the painful din of their wings' flapping he manages to use Heaven's Door on the one he caught. He through the moth's book, looking for any sort of natural predator or weakness, and discovers that they are repelled by cineole, the primary component of eucalyptus oil. Knowing he has a Eucalyptus tree in his backyard, Rohan resolves to make a tea from the leaves to extract the oil to cure himself and Soa.
Having recovered sometime later, Rohan looks across the water and spots Soa and her family's home surrounded by a small jungle. He surmises that the moths must have evolved in the jungle surrounding the other property, particularly noting that the island is filled with "life energy". After assuring himself that the girl's parents will be cured of the condition now that he has discovered the antidote and has alerted authorities to the incident, Rohan turns his thoughts to Soa who is sat behind him eating some of the bruschetta he prepared earlier. He remarks on her resilience in managing to swim across the sea to his villa despite her age and the effect of the moths' dust on her, making her another one of the "new species" he came to Hawai'i to study. He then wonders just how she managed to reach his villa, considering that she would had to have scaled a 30-meter-tall cliffside to get to him in the first place.
Appearances
Author's Comments
Author's CommentGallery
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Announcement for Bruschetta in Ultra Jump April 2025 -
Ultra Jump April 2025 Next Issue Preview -
Ultra Jump May 2025 Cover -
Online Preview
Trivia
- While trying to identify the source of the sound in his villa Rohan remarks that on his last vacation to Hawai'i he was robbed, alluding to the events experienced by Rohan Kishibe during the story arc "The Villa on Hawaii Island" in The JOJOLands.
References
- ↑ Vish (March 17, 2025), "Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan: Episode 12, JOJO magazine, and More Releasing", JoJo's Bizarre Encyclopedia.
