The Tarot Café Volume 7 by Sang-Sun Park

The Demon Nebiros shows up at the Café, along with Aaron, and he offers to guide Pamela to Hell so that she can find the answers she seeks from the fiend Belial. But first Nebiros wants to know why she is being so foolish as to travel to Hell seeking answers. Pamela takes them to the hospital, where Belus's body lies in a coma. Once, she says, she wanted to know the past because she was obsessed with it, but now she wants to know for the future.

Nebiros laughs at the body, who he says is a corpse, and he takes Pamela to a castle called The Pandemonium, where a demoness named Akraisia rules a palace of pleasure. Unbeknownst to Pamela, Belial has already smoothed Pamela's way for her. But when they arrive, Nebiros shows that this mansion outside London for what it really is, and on the inside, all the lovely whores that inhabit the place are actually demons. They don't recognize either Pamela and Nebiros, and when they realize that the three can see them for what they really are, they attack them, but Nebiros slays them with a mere snap of his fingers.

Finally, Akraisia comes for them and reveals the gateway to Hell... herself. As she opens for them, they find themselves in the anteroom of Hell, where Pamela is nearly seduced by a demon in the guise of her mother. But Nebiros saves her yet again, and takes her through several levels of Hell, including near the city of Dis, and then to the river Styx, where Pamela encounters her mother for real this time, and though she cannot speak, reveals several Tarot cards to her daughter. But Pamela cannot interpret them despite her efforts.

Nebiros secures them passage across the river by stealing Charon's eyes, and promising to give them back at the end of the voyage. In the middle of the River, though, Pamela is attacked by a great scaly beast, and falls into the water, where it carries her off. She manages to fight her way free of the river and is taken by a Demon named Harlequin. But she manages to piss him off, and when he attacks her, Belus shows up to save her. Harlequin is shocked at the sight of him, but Belus cuts his head off.

When Pamela asks if it is really him, he shows her the wound/scar on his side she gave him and tells her it still hurts. Pamela is overjoyed to see him, and they spend the night together. In the morning, Belus shows up with a breakfast he cooked for her, but then Nebiros shows up, and reveals the truth, the Belus is Belial. Belus is just one of many variations of his name.

He then tells her why he wanted her so. When she was a child, she saw right through the deception he had perpetrated on the people of her village, and he decided she was just the thing to ease his boredom. Giving her immortality was just one way to prolong the pleasure of the game he was playing. But now, if she can kill Ash, she can get the last gem, which is Ash's soul, and if she collects the last gem, she can finally be restored to a normal human life and end her unchanging existence.

Before she can do anything, however, all the people she has helped during the series come back to her, freeing her from Hell and from Belial, and restoring her and Ash's soul to the mortal world.

Sixty years later, Pamela is still alive, and still telling fortunes at the Tarot Café. Nebiros comes to her to tell her that Aaron is finally dying, and would like to see her. There, Aaron says that she shouldn't hold on to hate in her heart, but that she should forgive and be happy. She realizes he is right, and hugs him one last time.

At his funeral, she and Nebiros talk, and she sees a young student at UCLA who looks just like Ash. Although he claims not to know her, he can't stop looking at her. Nebiros travels to Hell, where Belial is still sulking, and Nebiros suggests that he is upset because he really *was* in love with Pamela. As a last gift, he leaves Belial a handkerchief soaked in Pamela's tears, which Belial cannot resist picking up. It seems he never counted on the strength of human love, or his ability to love in return.

He returns to her again, and asks her to enter a new agreement with him. She laughs and says she is no longer upset with her lot, and lives her life to be happy. Why not simply say you need a friend, she asks him? And the last scene is of them sitting together, smiling and talking and sharing a meal and some cocoa.

This was a very unusual story, and I really enjoyed it. The whole interaction between Belus/Belial, Pamela and the other characters was intense, and learning Pamela's backstory through the gems of the necklace was inspired, and the ending, with Belial and Pamela apparently learning to be friends after so many years as puppetmaster and tool, was heartwarming. Of course, the other stories, of the people Pamela helped and how they return her help at the end, were some of the highlights of this series.

Though this series is more properly a manwha than a manga, it shares many of the same stylistic elements and art styles. This story is less like a Japanese manga, relying as it does on such a European occult art as Tarot, but in the end, I liked it a great deal, and found the entire series an engrossing read. This is one to pick up if you see it.