Eru no Tenbin

El’s Scales (as in a balancing scale)

This story basically tells that Abyss would go to any length, even selling his soul to the devil, for money. He is hired by a rich man who owns a grape orchid to kill someone.

It is the basic telling of how Abyss meets his end shown in Side E.

The man’s daughter had fallen into a forbidden love with a servant boy. Knowing well that they can’t be together there and that everyone would oppose them, they decide to run away.

The rich man knows of this love, and hires Abyss to kill the servant. He tells him he only wants his daughter brought back, and that he doesn’t care about what happens to the servant. He then throws a bag of gold onto the table to pay him.

The couple runs away and gets onto a boat. Abyss is the boatman and sets off with the couple. When in the river, Abyss shrouds them in shadow. He tells them not to worry about paying his return fare, that he’s already been paid well enough, and that “it’s a shame.” Presuming that here he kills the servant.

The next two lines ask whether fate would want for there to be a happy bride and good wedding, or a vanished bride and a bad wedding. Mentioning that Abyss has delivered the daughter back, and that she has run from a forced marriage. The daughter notices Abyss on the streets, this is right when he’d bought the picture book for El. The rich man’s daughter stabs Abyss, and he falls to the ground with a terrible expression. She takes a step back from him, screams something (not mentioned) and runs away from him

The next lines show that he’s losing consciousness because of his wound, and that he’s struggling to turn the key in the door to his house where El in. He knows that if he doesn’t hurry, that soon the the daughter he’d promised a book to would…(the song cuts off there; but it probably means that he won’t be able to get her the book or that she’ll die from her sickness before she can get the book)

This story about the grape vineyard’s daughter and her lover is also a manga chapter and song in the album ROMAN called “The Grade Wine of Happiness and Sadness”. This chapter can be found in English in several places. All of the songs of ROMAN have been made into manga collected into 2 volumes in Japan.