"Aa! Aaaa!"
Gross, no, I'm scared, forgive me, save me, scared, scared, scared, scared.
He didn't know what was being said to him.
The ghastliness of someone licking his eyeball, the discomfort of being stared at like that, and his urge to flee the madness of the eyes looking at him, all made his body freeze.
With his mouth gaping absently, his open eye having been licked, Subaru was asked again, "Why are you pretennnding to be crazy?"
Subaru tried to slam him with a manacled arm. The chain went taut, denying his freedom. His arm flailed in the air a little before falling back to the ground on its side.
"Guu! Auaaa! Aiii!"
"No, no, no, no, it is a very important question. Why, for what purpose, with what meaning, are you acting like you are seized with such madness?"
He mustn't listen. He mustn't let the words into his ears. He mustn't know.
He shook his head, yelling as he struggled against the manacles. His consciousness was somewhere far away. He had to blot from his ears the words of the man in front of him, for he was forbidden to listen, to know, to realize.
"The subconscious does not prepare such convenient escape routes. You consciously, and with full knowledge, wrapped yourself in such madness, yes?"
"Aaa! Gauaa! Guruaaa!"
"Your madness is too lucid. The crafty, deliberate way you seek sympathy and beg for love, it is quite rude to those who are actually insane."
Subaru raised his voice, shouting enough to tear his throat apart, trying to make the man's words go away. But the man seemed to mock his resistance, and his voice drove into Subaru's eardrum like a needle.
"Your pretense of being a madman is quite lacking. If you were truly insane, if you were drenched in lunacy in a true sense, you would never recognize the eyes of another. For you would not understand anyone exists beyond your mad self, a world of one person, trapped in the desolate wasteland of his own mind!"
"—Baa! Baaa! Baaaaaa!"
"Ahh, what a comedy, what a farce indeed! Why, why are you pretennnding to be a madman?! If you were truly a deviant, the pretense
would not fall away so quickly! I can't stop laughing!"
It hurt to breathe. He felt horrible. Something was pushing its way up inside him, trying to assert its own existence. No, it had been there from the start. He'd simply sealed it away and pretended not to look at it.
It was because he knew of its presence that he absolutely could not allow it to surface.
"Pitiable! Pathetic! You, such a lowly and deep sinner, drunk on your own pathos—I pity you from the heart! You are loved so much; why do you need to deny it?! Do you desire to remain in stagnation as the wind whittles you away, without drowning in the love you have been granted freely, without
returning their devotion?! Ahh, how can this, how can this beee!"
The gray-colored man grabbed Subaru's head and violently tossed him toward the wall. The powerful motion slammed his upper body against the rock, sending sparks scattering as his head began to bleed profusely.
"Ah, ah, ah, you…are indeed slothful!"
There was a clang, and Subaru felt like something in his head had split in two.
I don't hear you. I'm not listening. It's all the ravings of a madman. None of it hit the mark. None of it arrived at any truth. I still don't get anything. That's as it should be. That's as it ought to be. It has to be like that. If it's not, I'll—
"Ahh, that's quite far enough."
The black thing inside him reached its peak, ready to explode at any moment. Just before it did, the man pulled him back from the brink with a calm murmur, as if the previous madness was a distant memory.
Bereft of the world of thick madness, the sense of danger Subaru felt from the man redoubled, raising goose bumps on his skin. The man said to him, "Yes, backing you into a corner will cause a trifle, yes, a trifle, trifle, trifle too much trouble later. Take your time, slowly face up to the truth of your devotion, and you shall surely find your own answer."
"Aa… Uguu…!"
What was the man trying to say to him…?
From beginning to end, the words out of his mouth had been a string of insults. Subaru didn't get it. The man was acting like he understood something about him. One moment, he was like an adult kindly leading a little boy by the hand; another, he acted like a monster tempting lost people while they tried to cross a bridge.
He was a monster beyond fathom. The distance between them could stay as it was, forever.
Before he crossed the divide into the land of no return.
The man said, "Ahh, in other words… You are not a sloth. You are diligent."
5
Subaru's eyes bore a lack of understanding as the madman's perceptive words pressed upon him.
Petelgeuse folded his arms, gazing up at the heavens, murmuring as if he was praying. This was the only action that made his title of archbishop seem not to be a farce.
After praying for a while, Petelgeuse seemed to notice something and looked back.
"—Oh my?"
He was gazing at the figures emerging one after another within the cavern, the ones that had vanished and gone outside.
The black robes seemed to sprout right out of the ground, their numbers exceeding ten. They knelt in reverence to Petelgeuse, bowing their heads low as they awaited instructions.
"What is the meaning of thisss?"
"—"
"What, the girl is coming here? Ahh, that is why you have returned? That is good! That is very good! By all, all, all, all, all means, let us welcome her.
I must welcome her with my very own handsss!"
Petelgeuse was bursting with joy. The meaning of his words did not reach Subaru. However, the boy was panting as if he had a fever. Nothing trickled out of his mouth but a moaning voice, but on the inside, an inexplicable feeling was guiding something inside him to the surface.
But, "—!"
His mouth felt like some invisible object was blocking it, leaving his voice trapped within.
What he felt shutting his throat was different from fear or his other emotions. It was like something tangible, something physical was keeping his lips sealed. Subaru opened his eyes, sensing something like an unseen hand was constricting his throat. When he looked over, he saw Petelgeuse cackle.
"Now, no need to be hasty… We have plenty of time."
Petelgeuse's dry, cackling laughter reverberated throughout the cavern.
Even if the invisible gag disappeared, Subaru would have no way to stop the eerie rumble from echoing against his eardrums. Forbidden to even laugh or cry, all he could do was wait in silence.
—It was a bit under an hour when the change he waited hopefully for finally arrived.
The figures remained on their knees, keeping their silence was their custom. Between them, Petelgeuse paced around without speaking a word, leaving only his footsteps and Subaru's ragged breaths to disturb the air of the chamber.
The first figure to raise his head was the one closest to the corridor connecting to the chamber.
Following that individual's movements, the other fanatics lifted their faces one after another. Petelgeuse, noticing their movements, looked toward the cavern's entrance just as they did and laughed.
An expression of glee came over his face, wide enough to split the corners of his mouth.
"It seems she has arriiiived."
The echo of a great roar drowned out Petelgeuse's delighted murmur. An incredibly heavy-sounding explosion shattered it, and the sound of destruction sent fierce vibrations through the cavern's cold air. The successive sounds reached Subaru through the hard ground as well, and all present were able to sense that the entrance had been smashed by a most violent knock.
The figures swayed and stood up, drawing their crosses from their flanks and posing with their hands held low.
Though they were in a chamber, when ten-odd people moved together it was impossible to claim they had plenty of room. They deployed with the urgency of a school classroom fire drill, readying themselves to respond to the assailant.
There wasn't anywhere near enough space to leap and run around. It was a favorable condition for an intruder at a numerical disadvantage.
"—I've found you."
Her roaring iron ball sailed and mowed down the shadowy figures, creating several red smears against the wall. The flail, butchering three figures with the first blow, was an unstoppable murder weapon that robbed life from everything it touched. There was no option but to dodge it, but the confined cavern made that a difficult proposition.
Falling to the ground, the iron ball shattered the rocky surface, and its barbs, smeared with blood and flesh, made a dull sound as they split the earth. The blue hair of the girl walking ahead of it was dyed completely black as her brilliantly glowing eyes surveyed the chamber. They landed on the boy lying on the ground. Her lips quivered as she made a shallow breath.
"Subaru. I'm so glad…"
The demon—Rem—relaxed her shoulders as she called the boy by name with relief.
Her appearance was ghastly, with the cuts all over her expressing the heroism involved in her arrival. There was not a single part of her body not drenched in blood. Her blue hair was now pitch-black; there was no visible trace of the apron dress that had been burned to a crisp. Her legs, poking out of her ripped and shredded skirt, were lacerated. Her left arm had been burned so cruelly that Subaru wanted to avert his eyes.
With her entire body covered in the perfume of blood and death, Rem smiled reassuringly toward him even so.
And with Rem looming so violently before him, Petelgeuse raised his voice in acclaim.
"Ahh—oh my, how marvelouss!"
He had forgotten that Rem had slain his subordinates before his very eyes; to the contrary, it seemed to have stirred him all the more, with his excited voice bursting with praise.
"A girl! A single girl! Bearing all these wounds yet moving forward! And for what? For this young man! You have gone to these lengths to rescue this beloved boy! You are possessed by love; you live for love!"
"You may save your sermon, devotee of the Witch…"
Petelgeuse was standing between Subaru and Rem, practically frothing at the mouth as he shouted in joy. Rem gazed coldly at his crazed state as she continued, "You are a band of fools to enter the dominion of Master Roswaal, lord of the Mathers territory, and commit illegal acts. With my
master absent, I, Rem, sentence you to death in his place."
"As tattered as you appear? You should not make promises you cannot keep. To begin with, you have come only to take this young man away from here, so enough with your convenient excuses."
Petelgeuse crouched and clutched Subaru's head, lifting it up. Enjoying himself, he grabbed Subaru by the hair, nodding it up and down against his will.
"…ch him."
"What was that?"
"I said, don't touch him!!"
Rem's face contorted in fury at Petelgeuse's antics. Seeing the demon girl lose her composure, he laughed in satisfaction.
"Yes, very good. Bare your true desires, bare your heart, bare your love! Love! Love! This is love! Love is what guided you here! To deny that love, to conceal it, to disguise it with falsehoods, all are betrayals of that love!
Insults! Ahh, and so slothful!"
"One insult after another…!"
"I am so glad for that shout. That is your true desire, devoid of all unnecessary impurities, for you rushed here purely out of your feelings for this young man!"
Rem, still enraged, was cowed into silence as Petelgeuse pressed his point. His mad eyes gazed at her with a glint of compassion; then his gaze fell upon the boy at his fingertips.
"It is deeply regrettable. A devotee of love to such an extent as thee… Why are your eyes firmly locked on one such as this? An effete, ignorant, disgraceful, shameless sight such as this… Truly the product of sloth!"
"What do you know about Subaru?! Do not speak out of turn, devotee of the Witch!"
"You are upset because you do not accept this, are you not? That this young man, the object of your love…is already finished, long lost to you."
"He isn't finished! I am here. I have not forgotten Subaru's words. I will take him by the hand and lead him away. So long as I am here, he is not finished!"
—These were not mere words of consolation. They were words conveying a firm truth inside Rem.
As Rem shouted, Petelgeuse laughed, slowly lifting up Subaru's head while leaning him against the wall.
"—"
Some kind of voice came up from inside Subaru. He didn't know what was being said or why.
Rem saw the partial change in the boy drowning in a sea of rejection. She leaped with her wounded body.
As Rem sprang into the air, the figures that had maintained their silence so far did the same in pursuit of her. Two figures kicked off the wall to approach. Their cross-shaped swords, melting into the darkness, stabbed at the small girl.
She yelled back, "Don't get between Subaru and me!!"
She swung her right arm with the chain for the iron ball wrapped around her forearm. With a high-pitched sound, she deflected the crucifixes, following through to gouge out large parts of one figure's face. Another tried to grapple with her after its blade was deflected, but the iron ball, trailing behind, easily caved in the back of its skull.
The two corpses fell to the ground as Rem landed in the center of the chamber—right in the middle of the fanatics.
Just before the blades around her were about to slice her apart, Rem spat out blood as she shouted, "—El Hyuma!"
The incantation surged cold, making the corpses at Rem's feet bounce. No —the fresh blood flowing from the corpses froze, forming sharp-tipped blades of red ice that turned on the enemies around her.
The black robes leaped in hard, but it was they who were impaled. When they came to a stop, their torsos run through, Rem's fist and flail mercilessly smashed them to pieces.
Petelgeuse exclaimed, "Splendid. Splendid indeed! It is no exaggeration to say that you are splendid! And yet, why! Ahh, why! I cannot accept love! I do not acknowledge this! I do not understand! Without the words, there is no salvation, no more than you can grasp a cloud! And yet, why is it?!"
"Do not speak such words so cheaply! I already have my salvation! After that night when I should have lost all, there is no greater than what I had that morning! That is why!"
Rem brushed aside the madman's voice, her eyes staring straight at Subaru.
"I will repay everything I have received with everything I am. I have no intention of labeling the feelings behind my actions, behind my desire to take those actions, as cheaply as you do!"
The figures in the chamber once numbered around fifteen. Already, nearly half of them had perished from Rem's attacks. The remainder seemed incapable of halting her fury. Her superiority was beyond question. The might of the demon race was very real.
And yet, why?
Petelgeuse clutched his head, letting out hot breaths as he surveyed the cruelty inflicted on his faithful.
"Aa, aa, aa…"
He didn't seem shaken by grief, fear, or anxiety. Her anxiety only grew as it became clear to her that his reaction was one of pure excitement.
At Petelgeuse's side, Subaru watched Rem's rampaging battle.
Slowly, the meaning of the scene, and the girl's reason for fighting, seeped into his brain.
He didn't understand. He didn't want to understand. He wasn't trying to understand. And yet, it reached him all the same. The sight of her bleeding, wounded, and yet continuing to fight stirred something inside his chest, bringing it to the surface.
Perhaps he had to put into words what troubled him. Yet if he did, he could no longer remain in a stupefied state. It meant facing up to what was right, what was wrong, and why he was there.
For Subaru, to fear this, to prioritize his love of himself over all else, was just—
Petelgeuse rose to his feet as he said, "My brain trembles."
The sleeves of his black habit swayed as he calmly stepped forward.
Unlike his adherents, his hands held nothing in them. Indeed, the relaxed way his open hands swung before him held not a single smidgeon of visible hostility. His body was skin and bones; his behavior betrayed no suggestion he was strong.
Noticing Petelgeuse's advance, Rem knocked down yet another of the black robes and leaped. Hanging upside down from the ceiling, she glared as Petelgeuse advanced beneath her. An instant later, she would shoot out like an arrow with an attack that would surely smash Petelgeuse's thin body to pieces.
And yet, why?
Why was a terrible feeling clawing at her heart even so?
"Get away from Suba—"
Rem's voice cut off. The rest of his name never reached Subaru's ears.
But the echo of her voice delivered a decisive tremor to Subaru's heart.
Rem herself had surely not intended any such thing. But the girl's repeated, earnest cries thawed Subaru's frozen heart.
"—m."
He made a faint sound from the back of his throat and crawled.
It was a meaningless fragment of a word, carrying not even an iota of the feelings he wished to convey. And yet, as he gasped for breath, Subaru lifted his face and put all his emotions into one short word…
"…Rem."
His voice was as frail as a whisper. He didn't know how long it had been since he had spoken that name on his lips. And yet his voice was so weak, threatening to disappear completely.
"—Ah."
His feeble voice seemed to die on the wind. He wondered if she could even hear it.
As the blood-drenched girl grasped the ceiling, a faintly soft look came over her face. Her lips slackened just a little, her eyes radiating with joy as they beheld Subaru.
"Subaru—"
As the boy returned from stupefaction to reality, he clearly heard Rem call out his name.
And then…
—In an instant, her entire body was torn to pieces that audibly fell onto the cold, hard floor.
Subaru lost his voice as he beheld the blood spreading from Rem's fallen body.
"…aa?"
Her corpse, fallen to the ground, had been cruelly destroyed for all to see.
When she had intruded into the cavern, she was wounded all over yet lovely. Now, each of her limbs was bent in a different direction; the wounds to her front and back looked as if the fingertips of a giant had gouged out her
torso. And what had wreaked such violence upon her body was…
"The authority of 'Sloth'—"
As Petelgeuse murmured, Rem's body, limbs destroyed, floated up before his eyes. There was no visible sign of magical interference, yet neither had anyone lifted her up. Even so, Rem's body hovered. It was as if hands had stretched up from beneath her to raise her overhead.
"—Unseen Hands."
Petelgeuse looked back, raising both hands before his own face while Rem's body floated behind him. There was no one in her vicinity with hands to place on her. No one was touching her.
It was a bizarre spectacle.
"The power to reach places the hand cannot and do anything without moving one's body. Utmost diligence while being a sloth of the flesh— Ahh, such slothful feelings make…my… brain…shiver."
Subaru watched Rem's final moments, dumbfounded. She would never move again. His voice wouldn't come out. His eyes widened as he forgot to breathe and his grip on the world around him felt less real, slipping into stupefaction once more. His mind was wrapped in darkness, as if he were falling and falling down a bottomless pit—
As he tried to flee from reality, Petelgeuse stopped him, roughly grabbing hold of his bangs and using them to lift his head.
"You are not permitted to run from this."
The shock of the pain made Subaru grimace as he thrashed around, trying to thrust Petelgeuse back. Petelgeuse did not allow him to do any such thing, though the boy stretched his chains to their limit. The metallic bonds tore at Subaru's flesh to the point of drawing blood, but Subaru's eyes were forced to face forward.
"Look. Go ahead, look. Look, please. The girl is dead. She died for love. She fought while injured, struggled against her fears as she stepped forward, and died with her desires unfulfilled."
"Ua, aa…"
"Look, please. Look at her burns. This is the result of your actions."
"—aa?"
Rem's body floated as Subaru's head was thrust forward as far as the chains around him would permit. Even so, Subaru writhed and stomped on the ground as a pair of hands held him in place.
The madman's putrid breath washed over him; Subaru panted with the bloodstained Rem before his eyes.
"It is the result of your actions. You were slothful and did nothing. And because of that, she is dead! Because you killed her!"
"…You."
"It was by my hand! It was by my fingers! It was by my flesh! But it was you, you, you, you, you, you who, who, who…killed her, yes!"
Petelgeuse's abnormal power toyed with Rem's body as he chirped, almost like he was singing.
Rem's body, lying down in midair, shifted like a marionette on a string as her arms and legs dangled. Her twisted limbs danced according to the madman's whims.
"…op it."
There came a scrish of something ripping apart.
Unable to handle the manipulation, Rem's body broke…and so did something within Subaru.
"Owww, ow it hurts, it hurts, the pain, the pain, save me, save me… Ahh,
Subaru?"
It was a cheap taunt, the lowest of base humor. The madman violated Rem with his antics. With easy enjoyment, he debased the girl Subaru revered directly in front of him.
That spectacle was so ugly that he dearly wanted to avert his eyes and make himself forget it.
"—Petelgeuuuuuse!!"
Subaru was afraid of seeing reality, but the rotting stench hovering around him had been enough to pull him back to his senses. He stretched his neck, trying to bite at the windpipe that was tantalizingly close. But the manacles intervened and his canines fell just a little short. He stumbled forward, tumbling hard onto his face.
His nose was bleeding and he had chipped a front tooth. Petelgeuse laughed in delight as he looked down at Subaru.
"I'll kill you, I'll kill you…kill, kill, I'll kill you. I'll kill you. I'll kill you! Kill, kill…die, I'll have you killed, die, die, dieeeee!"
"To hate another so that you may live, that fierce passion toward others is the opposite side of the coin of love! Ahh, how splendidly warped this is! This spurs both my fingers and me to greater heights of diligence!"
"Kill… I'll kill you. You…killed…Rem. I'll…kill, kill, kill. I'll have you killed. Yeah! I'll kill you! Kill, kill! Die, damn you! Damn you, aah! Die, damn you!"
He spewed saliva as he spat out curses and raised a resentful howl.
He didn't care if his arms tore off. He didn't care if his legs tore off. If he could get free of those manacles and kill the man before his eyes then and there, it was enough. He hated, hated, hated the man to no end. The man had to die. He could not be suffered to live.
He had to make very sure that the man died then, that moment, that very instant.
Subaru thrashed his entire body around in rage as Petelgeuse stood beside him. Abruptly, the latter's crazed laughter faded, and he murmured, "This has
been a rather untidy affair, but it is finally time that we must part."
With a hand, he assembled the surviving figures together and pointed toward the cavern's wrecked entrance.
"We shall abandon this place. You will disregard the number of fingers remaining, continue the role of the left hand, and join with the other five fingers— The ordeal shall be conducted as planned."
"Die! Die, damn you! Die, die, dieeee!"
Having issued his brief orders, Petelgeuse clapped his hands. On that signal, the black robes vanished, melting into the gloomy darkness of the cavern. And one by one, all trace of life vanished from the hollow, with Petelgeuse himself finally departing, walking leisurely toward the entrance.
The loud clicks of his shoes echoed off the rock walls of the cavern, with Subaru howling, cursing him with death over and over as his back grew distant.
"Wait, you piece of shit! Kill! I'll kill you! Die here! Die here, now! Die right now! Die! Die! Die!!"
"Ohh, I forgot one thing, it would seem."
Even with the bloodthirsty shouts directed at him, the madman stopped and called back as lighthearted as ever. As Subaru glared at Petelgeuse, the latter looked back, nodded to the former, and crossed both hands over his own chest.
"You truly do not understand your position. In spite of this, I would have you make a decision here and now."
The madman's head tilted into a perfect right angle with enough force to break his neck, or so it seemed. A dark smile appeared.
"I will leave your arms and legs bound. All that awaits you is death. And yet…if you were to take up the Gospel in this place, you can still be saved."
"Go to hell! Die here, right now! I'll tear you apart! Blow you away!
Blast you to pieces!"
"You can be saved if you become one of us. If not, you are a mere stranger. It is clear and simple, yes?"
Petelgeuse, stating what seemed to him like a most wise plan, proceeded to turn his back on Subaru. He treated the foul curses flowing out of the boy's mouth like nothing more than a breeze, with his feet regarding the pool of blood like a puddle of water left by an early afternoon shower, his casual demeanor wholly unaffected.
By rights, Petelgeuse would have departed without taking any further notice of Subaru.
However, he did not, for a heavy, watery sound drew his attention to the side.
"—Aaah."
Petelgeuse looked toward the sound, nodding as he stared at the bluehaired girl who had fallen there. Having lost all interest in playing with her as a doll, he was just about to leave when he noticed her tossed by the wayside.
—It was no exaggeration to say that this, too, was treating her like a toy.
"You, too, are a devotee of love. Yes, yes. You tried very hard."
Petelgeuse stood still and corrected the posture of Rem's corpse, making a sign of the cross over her. He seemed to praise and acknowledge the girl's actions up until several minutes prior. However…
"You died for love, defying your destiny with all your might. However, you lie ruined and unfulfilled, having lost the object of your love, unable to fulfill your desire with emptiness hovering all about you…"
His acclamation turned on a dime, lamenting the futility of Rem's actions
as his cheeks twisted into a mocking smile.
"Because…you were slothful!"
There was no greater way to belittle the existence of the lone girl Rem.
"—!!"
Howls and shouts fiercely echoed throughout the cave. Subaru Natsuki raised an inhuman cry, his anger great enough to fill his entire throat, his rage enough that he couldn't form words, his regret enough to produce tears of blood.
Hearing this, Petelgeuse laughed, as if it were a shower of the highest possible praise.
He cackled and cackled.
"—"
He did not stop walking.
Of course, Subaru could hope neither to stop him from behind nor wring his neck.
He kept hearing that cackling voice for long after.
Even with Petelgeuse himself gone, even though his own curses couldn't reach the man, even though the light inside the cave dimmed all at once and left him alone with the corpse in the darkness, it wouldn't stop.
Cackle, cackle.
Cackle, cackle.
—Cackle, cackle, cackle, cackle, cackle.
6
"Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill."
Amid the darkness, dead to the world, he spewed enough bloodlust and hatred to burn a man alive.
He murmured and spat over and over, forgetting how many times it had been, yet his scorching hatred did not subside.
"—"
He had never hated anyone, not a person, not any living being, as much as he did then.
Since arriving in that world, he had experienced hatred of the formless thing called Fate several times over. He had been beaten down into the ground, with reality pitilessly thrust in his face, with that callous world making him pay for bad decisions with his life—but the times he had hated and cursed were fewer than the number of his fingers.
But to this point in his life, he had never hated another individual to that extent.
"Petelgeuse…Romanée-Conti…!"
Voicing the name on his lips, he recalled the man behind his eyes. His eardrums wallowed in his own shout. When his brain thought about that man, a fire raged inside him that made every drop of his blood boil.
—What the hell was with that man, anyway?
Subaru understood nothing about his identity. All he knew was that Petelgeuse walked far from the path of sanity, that he was a demon in human flesh who could not be reasoned with, and that he was a despicable person, the foulest of villains. He was the most awful of men who'd hurt Rem, the girl who'd sacrificed her own body in an attempt to rescue Subaru, and went on to humiliate and dishonor her life. He couldn't even imagine the damage that letting that man live would wreak.
That was why Subaru had to kill him. Subaru needed to kill him with his own hands, not letting anyone else do the deed. He had to kill Petelgeuse with his own hands. If he couldn't do that, how could he pay him back for Rem's death?
"Kill, kill, I will…kill you with my own hands…"
Subaru embraced the bloodlust pouring from his own mouth and earnestly twisted his own body, clinking his shackles.
He'd tried to force his arms out of the manacles or kick them off his legs several times over.
The manacles were clasped tightly and rather painfully on Subaru's limbs, to begin with.
He felt the pain. His fury would not permit him to forget it. But even as that discomfort clawed at his nerves, he bit it back with thoughts of what Rem had undergone.
Even if the manacles tore off his hands and wrists, he didn't really care. As long as he could escape, as long as he could move a single finger, as long as he had a single tooth left, he'd snuff out Petelgeuse's life.
—Several hours had already passed since his foe had departed the cave.
The lagmite ore had lost most of its power, so the cavern fell into darkness. Subaru wondered if it was some kind of mistake. He was inside a natural cavern, yet not even a single insect lived within it. He was the only living being there.
"—! Petelgeuse!!"
A moment before Subaru noticed the darkness and silence, he wrung the hateful man's name from his throat to keep his thoughts intact.
Within the gloom, unable to see a thing, Subaru could sense nothing beyond himself in the whole world. His ragged breaths, the beats of his heart, the sounds of the chains chafing, the drip-drops of water—isolation and solitude quickly weakened the human heart.
If he remained in this place like that much longer, with no change whatsoever…
"Woaaaaa! Petelgeuse! Petelgeuse!!"
Subaru abandoned his body to hatred, as if rejecting the image of his mental balance crumbling away.
A human mind walled off from the outside world was well on its way to decay, to collapse, to a final end.
Subaru screamed as if trying to avert his eyes from reality, trying to shake off the fear of being left behind.
As long as he could shout his hatred, he would remain sane.
As long as he was enveloped in bloodlust like a madman, he would not go mad.
To keep his sanity, Subaru needed hatred.
—Subaru did not know how many more hours passed after that.
"Hff, hff… Kuh…ll."
Subaru's consciousness hovered somewhere between alertness and unconsciousness. Fatigue, debilitation, the abrasions on his body—all these dragged down Subaru's body and spirit.
Still bound by the manacles, his limbs, abused beyond their limits, no longer accepted the brain's instructions. The metal scraped his flesh and even wore down the bones of his wrists and ankles. Just moving around sent him into convulsions from the ferocious pain.
—Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill.
In spite of that, even then, bloodlust welled up from the very bottom of his heart. That moment, with both body and head no longer listening, it was the heart alone that kept Subaru going.
It had been dozens of hours since he had been abandoned in that world of solitude. His body and spirit had reached their limits, but Subaru's consciousness had not shut down.
Archbishop of Sin. Petelgeuse of "Sloth." Witch Cult. Right hand. Left hand. Unseen Hands. Index finger. Ring finger. Little finger. Diligence. Sloth. Sloth. Sloth—
These were the keywords Subaru had gleaned from Petelgeuse's highpitched, shouted ramblings. With his head dying on him, he recalled these terms, wondering what they meant, thinking about Petelgeuse to keep his consciousness together even a little bit and to keep his hatred astir.
He needed to remember a fresher, firmer, clearer image of the man's face. He reflected along the same lines—the man's voice, his appearance, his way of walking, his manner of speaking—exactly as if thinking about one's dearly beloved. The direction of Subaru's sentiments was the only thing that had changed. He was still using it as fuel to ignite his soul and keep himself awake.
From afar, it seemed Subaru's spirit had already arrived at the dimension of madness.
Perhaps the mind would wear down and vanish first. Perhaps his body, unable to keep up with his active mind, would expire first. He was on a path where the end was nigh; it was simply a choice between one dead end or the other. Surely keeping his mind intact no longer had any meaning other than that.
Subaru continued his futile struggle, but he was truly alone in all the world.
"—aa?"
His panting within the darkness had been frail, but his breath abruptly caught when he felt that something was off.
It was troublesome to even move his head, but Subaru looked in the direction of the disturbance. Of course, his field of vision displayed nothing but the darkness of the cavern.
But he felt something from that darkness nonetheless.
Slowly, truly slowly, he felt a presence rising. It moved at only a snail's pace, bit by bit, but inexorably drew closer to Subaru.
"—"
Somehow, even within complete darkness, it seemed to know where he was.
Subaru shuddered with urgency and unease at the individual. But that feeling immediately fell away as a different feeling rose up in the back of his mind.
—Where is this feeling coming from in the first place?
He heard a sound like clothes rustling and extremely faint breath. The distance was rather close, no more than several yards away from Subaru. Having thought that far, he suddenly realized: it was at close range, not from the entrance, that the presence had abruptly appeared— No, what if she had started breathing again…?
"R-Rem…?"
He called out the name of the girl to whom the sounds and presence were likeliest to belong.
That can't be right, Subaru's logical mind denied. Though he couldn't endure looking straight at her, the last thing he had seen while the cave still had light was the horrific state of Rem's body, to the point that he thought one of her fallen foes was far more likely to rise from the dead.
She couldn't be alive. She was dead. Of course she was dead.
Yet in spite of that, he half believed that the presence in front of his own eyes was alive, and it must be Rem. And if she were dead, it was probably her just the same, coming to take him away. It had to be Rem either way.
Therefore, there was no reason to be worried about the presence at all.
"Rem, Rem…?"
"—"
He addressed her, clinging to hope, but the silence returned with a vengeance.
Even so, perhaps Subaru's voice made the other being certain of its goal, because it felt like it started crawling just a little faster. Yet it was truly only a very slight change.
Slowly, slowly, he heard something pulling closer across the cold, rocky surface of the ground.
Subaru pulled himself up, with the chains attached to his hands and feet ringing as he moved as close to her as he could. He'd advanced such a short distance, and the tormenting shame summoned tears once again, though he had thought they were dry.
He kept himself from sobbing. He didn't want Rem to hear that.
Within the darkness, only the sound of crawling continued, with the distance closing and closing. And then—
Subaru felt the struggling presence reach his body. The instant he felt something graze his upper arm, he instantly tried to take her hand and call out her name.
"Re…"
His throat froze over.
The grasp on his arm was so light, so cold, that none would think it came from a living person.
"R-Rem…?"
Rem's body lay facedown beneath the kneeling Subaru. The girl's slender arm was shaking a little, but it was as cold as could be, devoid of warmthgiving blood.
She was as icy as a corpse. She could no longer be here in this world. Yet though she should have been finished, she had dragged her body over and clung to Subaru. She touched his arms, his shoulders, his chest, his head, as if to make sure they were there; she pressed everything against him in a hug from the front.
"—"
Subaru, silently accepting the embrace of the dead, had no idea what would happen.
A breath away from each other, Subaru was certain that it was Rem hugging his body. However, her flesh felt dead to the touch, unreal, as if she were animated solely by the dying embers of her life.
But it was not unpleasant. Subaru meekly returned her continuing embrace. When he thought about it, they'd been close against each other many times, but that might have been the first time they'd touched like that.
Perhaps that was how Rem wanted the final moment of her life to be. If so, the least he could do was to respond to her wishes.
Even with Rem already dying and Subaru having already given up, perhaps his arms could transmit his feelings to her.
It was Rem who brought the continuing cold, silent embrace to an end.
"Rem?"
As Subaru hugged her, her body surrendered its strength, collapsing onto his lap. He hastily moved to support her, but the next motion made that impossible. After all… "—Uuu?!"
…Rem grabbed his outstretched arms and smashed them to the ground.
Subaru, pulled forward and down, was shocked at the sudden violence achieved with strength far beyond his imagination. Hence, he was slow to react to Rem's next action. Subaru's arms, pressed to the floor, were bathed in a large amount of liquid.
It was a cold, viscous substance with a rusty scent. The fact that Subaru had become so used to the smell made him rather slow to realize that Rem had coughed up blood.
A chill ran up his spine at the discomfort of so much of another person's blood pouring over him. But the bad feeling vanished in an instant.
"—ma."
The whisper vibrated faintly in the air as the intervention of mana achieved its result.
"—Dwaa!"
Pain, like something sharp digging into his wrists, seized Subaru. The unexpected numbing ache shot from his wrists straight through his forearms, all the way to his shoulders.
He didn't know what was going on. He shuddered at the thought that Rem was doing this, coughing blood on him, sending sudden jolts of pain through him, and proceeding to turn both arms into useless appendages. But the next moment…
—The wrist manacles, unable to bear the pressure pushing out from the inside, noisily blew apart.
"—Oh."
The destruction sent metal fragments flying, and a tinkling sound echoed throughout the cavern.
Subaru breathed raggedly as his pain radically eased, and his entire arms felt incredibly free despite the scalding sensation. He opened and closed both of his now-unfettered hands, confirming that they could still move.
Then he understood.
"Rem, you…"
Rem had used magic to freeze the blood from her mouth, utilizing the pressure to destroy the manacles from within.
Of course, both of Subaru's arms, having directly endured the effects of magic, hadn't emerged unscathed. That said, he could rotate his wrists and get his fingers to do as he asked. If he disregarded the pain, he could move them normally again.
In other words, Rem had succeeded.
"Re…?"
Subaru was about to voice his thanks when he felt a very light body bump against his chest.
Light. So very, very light. She'd lost so much blood, the last of her consciousness was a candle in the wind, ready to be snuffed out.
In other words, her life would soon expire.
"Rem…wait, Rem. Wait…don't…"
Don't leave me, he might have meant to say.
Do you hate me? he might have wanted to ask.
Subaru despaired at the true thoughts and feelings behind both.
That once again, she had protected a weak, miserable creature such as him.
She'd literally come back from the dead to save him, yet he…
"…Nn."
"Rem?"
Rem's tongue, as cold as a corpse's, tried to form words with some kind of meaning behind them.
She barely had the strength to speak a single syllable, yet she'd wrung magical energy out of her immobile body and hazy mind. She'd worked herself past the point of death to accomplish her objective, but she wanted to leave one last thing behind.
Subaru, not wanting to let such a message slip by, embraced her body and drew it close. He brought his ear near her quivering lips so that he could carve each word, each syllable, upon his very soul.
The girl's last words were…
"L…ive."
"—!"
"I l…o…"
She died. That moment, Rem died.
Within Subaru's arms, her light body grew heavy. Her form, both light and so, so heavy, her frame completely bereft of her soul, burdened Subaru's entire being with its excessive weightlessness.
—In the end, haltingly, haltingly, Rem had told Subaru, "Live." —His wails resounded throughout the dark cave.
7
By the time Subaru removed his leg shackles and exited the cave, it had been several hours since Rem had died.
His hands, free from the wrist manacles, had snatched a cross sword from the nearest figure's corpse. Using that, he'd unfettered his legs over a period of long hours.
"…Light, huh."
Subaru rotated his scraped ankles. Each step sent pain running through him fierce enough to make his mind go blank. If he ignored that, not a problem. His legs were more than enough to support him while he carried Rem's remains.
He tossed the broken crucifix sword against a wall. The impact made the lagmite ore in the wall glow, bathing the cavern in pale light. Subaru felt like his eyes were burning. With Rem in his arms, he gazed at her face, not having seen it in the light for over a day.
Tears gently fell from his eyes.
—Subaru would never be able to forget the cruel state of the girl in his arms.
"Let's go, Rem."
Subaru relied on the light as he made his way through the dark cave, following the narrow corridor to the entrance. From inside the passage, the rock blocking the entrance was transparent. Subaru passed right through it.
It was probably some kind of magic trick to obstruct vision. It was probably closer to a hologram than a mirage. Subaru had neither the determination nor a compelling reason to consider the matter further.
When Subaru exited the cave, it was not the light created by lagmite ore that greeted him but the orange rays from the sun. The light pouring from the sunset scorched the world beneath it.
The sun was sinking past the horizon of the forest and hills beyond it, giving its final greeting before retiring from its daily duty and dyeing the world in the same color as its own flames.
Subaru, greeted by that scene, stood with the rock wall behind him and unfamiliar trees standing everywhere he looked. A quick glance around the area revealed no trace of a road, forest trail, or anything else that resembled a path. He should have expected as much. A group infiltrating an area would logically set up far from human habitation.
"But I'll walk…"
His destination was the same as before: Roswaal's mansion in the Mathers dominion.
Subaru was sure that Rem had been heading to the mansion with him when his mind was a hazy abyss. He rummaged through his memories of the dragon coach rocking him as he rested peacefully on Rem's lap.
Thinking of Rem made his heart tighten painfully. He wanted to thank her and tell her he was sorry.
When he remembered Petelgeuse, his body creaked with hatred, almost as if it would snap. Rage. Sadness. Hatred. Love. These supported Subaru. These kept Subaru alive.
His path was uncertain, and there was nothing to guide him. Even so, Subaru's mind rebelled, and his feet stepped forward to search for an uncertain destination.
—Perhaps it might be said that what happened to him was nothing short of a miracle. Without anyone's aid, with nothing to rely on, Subaru arrived at his destination. The one desire of his shriveled mind was granted—surely it could be called nothing else.
It was the first miracle that world had bestowed upon Subaru since his arrival. If there was indeed a deity that governed fate, that god was finally smiling upon Subaru.
And then, Subaru knew.
" Ha."
If there was a deity that governed fate, its manner of laughter was surely the same as Petelgeuse's.
—The village had been violated in exactly the same hellish manner he had seen before.
The houses had been burned down; the villagers were covered in blood. The remains of those who had futilely struggled against the theft of their lives had been carelessly gathered in the center of the community, piled into a mountain of corpses.
He looked right; he looked left. There were only smoldering embers and the stench of death. He could not hope for any survivors.
Looking over the corpses of the villagers, Subaru realized that this world held one difference from the one before it.
"Petra. Mildo. Luca. Meyna. Cain. Dyne…"
The cruel sight of the children's corpses was a part of the mountain of corpses and the river of blood.
"—"
With Rem still in his arms, Subaru's knees let go. He fell on the spot, clutching tight the cold body in his arms, and wept.
What had he been doing all that time…?
Knowing what would happen, why did he sit back and watch…?
Until he slipped through the game trail and saw the smoke rising from the direction of the village, Subaru had completely banished from his own brain the hellish sight that had shattered his mind.
No, he'd averted his eyes. He'd wrapped himself in grief over Rem's death and used it and his limitless hatred of Petelgeuse as excuses to deny his memories of that hell.
Once again, Subaru Natsuki had fled from reality due to his selfishness. The result was the sight before his eyes.
The children had died there because Rem, who would have protected the children like last time, had been unable to arrive at the village. The adults were not able to let the children escape.
The sight of their own children being murdered, as if for sport, had been burned into their eyes before they, too, died in agony.
Not a single one had been spared. Subaru had stood by and done nothing, and this tragedy was the end result, leaving only despair and resentment in its wake.
That contemptible reality ate at Subaru's heart.
I get it now. I get all of it.
—Petelgeuse.
The man who had killed the villagers, the children, and Rem.
He, the madman, had committed those unforgivable acts not once, but twice.
"—Ha."
His plan was set in stone. He knew what he needed to do.
"Petelgeuse…"
He had to kill Petelgeuse. Murder him, kill him, keep killing until the last cell of his body was burned away, his entire being erased from that world.
Nothing short of that could even begin to make up for these deaths.
His thoughts were dyed with nothing but hatred. His field of vision turned crimson red. He knew that what was left of the blood he'd lost had mostly gone to his head—it was even bleeding out of his nose. He roughly wiped away the nosebleed, re-gripped Rem so that she would not be stained, and rose to his feet. His knees shook, his ankles quivered; whether he could stand, let alone walk, was an open question.
"Kill, kill, kill, kill, I'll kill you…"
But if he could walk, if he could move forward, then he could surely tear out the man's windpipe with his teeth.
Dragged forward by his hardened, bloodlust-dyed mind, Subaru headed toward the mansion.
He'd seen the hell at the village. Next was the mansion. What was it that awaited him there?
Right before his death, right before he started things over, something had happened, but his memories were broken, unclear.
He thought that he'd arrived at the mansion and seen something that decisively cracked his psyche. He desperately lit up the neurons in his head trying to remember what it was.
He'd found Rem dead.
And this time, that experience had already run its course.
"Khah."
Spontaneously, laughter spilled out of him.
Really, really, nothing has changed at all, has it?
Only the order had been altered. Nothing had changed in terms of what had happened. Had he ever before spent his relived time in such idleness as he had then?
Before, no matter what had happened, Subaru gained something over the course of death. But trapped in his own cage, he hadn't been able to salvage anything. Now that he'd encountered the same hell once again, was there anything he could gain from it? Having wasted his Return by Death, did he have any value at all?
"—"
At some point, he'd begun to lose sight of the target of his bloodlust.
Petelgeuse. That name was all that kept Subaru going. That was a good thing. He was who Subaru wanted to kill, right? So kill him already.
After he'd been killed, "—" could die for all he cared.
Who is "—," anyway? Just kill them, too, then? Yeah, if everyone dies, all the better.
When such static began to invade Subaru's thoughts, his mind flickered on and off, over and over.
Subaru looked ahead of him with bloodshot eyes as he once again straddled the fence between sanity and madness. Having already decided to head to the mansion, come what may, he chose to postpone dealing with the immediate problem, like he always did. Then…
"—!!"
The instant he crested the hill, Subaru witnessed the destruction of Roswaal Manor.
A ferocious sound erupted, and smoke rose all around. The roof collapsed; the terrace fell to pieces. All at once, the glass windows cracked and shattered into glistening shards, the cracked white walls wailing like a maiden as they were rent asunder.
When he arrived, Subaru stared up at the front gate, dumbfounded at the overpowering devastation. The mansion had lost its shape in a single instant, just as if someone had demolished it with explosives.
The familiar building had lost all integrity, its meticulously arranged garden was buried in rubble, and the ruin that had once been the mansion was falling to pieces.
"Wh-what the…"
He groped through his memories. But he had no memory of this experience. Something had happened that he didn't remember. Or perhaps the shock of being on the verge of death was so vivid that he'd forgotten the destruction surrounding him as he died.
Having lost his bearings, an all-too-thin man's crazed laughter rose in the back of his trembling mind.
If the slaughter of the village had been that madman's deeds, he'd surely directed his vile actions at the mansion as well. If that was the case, was this destruction Petelgeuse's?
"What in the world is he doing…?"
Faced with a spectacle beyond his understanding, Subaru continued to carry Rem as he exhaled white breaths. Discouraged, he craved a stronger sensation within his arms, but it was cold that flowed through his hands and turned to sadness in his chest. His body shivered; he coughed at the cold pain in his lungs.
—Far too late, Subaru finally realized that his own ragged breaths looked like white clouds.
"—?!"
The moment he realized it, pain enveloped his body, stabbing at his skin. His exhalations were white, and the air he inhaled was freezing his internal organs, like he was breathing blowing snow. He felt like his body was dying from the inside out. Subaru's instincts screamed to him that his life was in jeopardy.
I…don't…know…what's…going…on.
His entire body robbed of its warmth, it became hard to even stand, and so he buckled.
He squatted down on the spot, leaning forward before he hit the ground, and fell on his side, still carrying Rem. That was his final act of resistance. His fallen body froze to the very core, his limbs no longer able to even tremble.
Unable to convey his thoughts to his limbs, Subaru knew that his mind had been severed from his body. Subaru had already experienced it several times, but he'd never get used to that feeling of desolate helplessness.
His nervous system sent commands to his entire body to resist the impending end even a little, to somewhere, anywhere that could move. Behind his closed right eyelid, his eye was barely functional.
With all his spirit, Subaru moved his eyelid, using his barely functional eye to look up at an angle, in the direction of the mansion. Once it reached that position, it would probably never move again. Before the view faded, he saw something…
"…a."
—He saw a beast standing on the wreckage of the collapsed mansion.
It was a holy beast, with gray fur all over its body, with glowing golden eyes.
The sight of it standing on all fours, calmly swaying its long, long tail, was most mysterious.
More than anything, the beast was enormous, rivaling the mansion itself.
"—"
Beholding the sight from afar, Subaru understood what had caused the mansion's collapse: the sudden appearance of that beast from inside it. Of course the building couldn't withstand the pressure of something that huge emerging from inside.
"—"
The gray beast swayed, surveying the area with its eyes. Its face most resembled that of a great feline predator. Sharp fangs poked out of its mouth; the giant being exhaled breaths like blowing white snow, repainted the world into a frozen hell with the white powder to freeze all that lived.
What was that?
As he thought about it, his vision whited out. He realized then that he'd stopped breathing. At some point, he'd stopped feeling the bitter cold. Warmth, though, he could feel.
That warmth tempted Subaru to give himself entirely to it, to forget the burning hatred, to forget sadness enough to tear his soul asunder, to forget anything and everything.
Forget, forget. Let your mind wander to oblivion and the frozen warmth within.
Just before he fell asleep, he felt like he heard someone's voice.
"Sleep…together with my daughter."
It was a low, ferocious voice. Yet it somehow sounded forlorn and sad. He didn't understand. He didn't understand. Not within the meaningless serenity.
Subaru Natsuki melted. He melted, he melted, he melted, and then disappeared.
8
—He realized that his mind was in deep, deep darkness.
His consciousness, dead to the world within the expanding, eternal darkness, shifted its gaze in search of any change. It wondered just how long the pitch-black world of the end would continue. It felt as if it had been locked away, completely beyond the world's reach.
What is this place? What am I doing here?
It was odd for him to have such questions. To begin with, he didn't understand who he was to be thinking in such a manner.
His mind was all that hung in emptiness, lacking any body to support it or receive its thoughts.
He stood. His legs were on the ground. But what he thought was beneath his feet blended with the darkness covering his vision, and so his footing was uncertain.
—Abruptly, there was a change in the vast world of nothing but darkness.
A shadow warped and flattened out, and a crack emerged in the nothingness. Without a sound, the rip in space rent apart the world of eternal darkness, connecting the interior of that void to another void.
Just after the momentary anomaly, a lone human silhouette emerged from the widening crack.
"—"
He thought that the figure was a woman.
The instant he recognized it, emotions he could not put into words nearly took over his mind.
He felt fierce, explosive emotions well up. He wanted to run to the figure, embrace her slender body, put his lips to her nape, to drive home that he was himself.
And yet, he lacked the legs with which to rush to her, the arms with which to embrace her, the lips with which to kiss her and prove that he existed.
Even though his chagrin made him want to cry, he didn't understand why these emotions manifested.
He didn't know. He didn't understand. He comprehended nothing.
But the figure seemed to understand how he felt, slowly reaching out with her arms, somehow closing the unchanging distance on her own. Those two hands gently came close enough to firmly embrace him.
As the fingertips touched him, great happiness flooded into him, as if joy was gushing from every cell in her body, filling every nook and cranny of his consciousness.
And then she said…
"—I love you."
9
The moment Subaru's consciousness went back in time and inhabited his body once more, the boy spectacularly tumbled to the ground.
Cadmon, standing behind the counter as he watched him fall onto the road without any forewarning, leaned over in a rush.
"Whoa! Wh-what's wrong, kid?!"
Subaru scowled, having fallen right over without softening the blow and earned himself meaningless injury.
"Er… I just slipped a bit."
"That 'slip' was so bad, I wondered if you'd lost a leg or something. Can you stand and walk? I can't associate with you if you don't quit all this crazy stuff."
"What do you mean, 'crazy'? You're making me sound like some sort of scoundrel with no common sense."
"A mischief-maker either way, and that goes for how you come and go without proper clothes on, too. I get the sense you're a troublesome sort who's hard to deal with, to be honest."
Having said those terrible things, Cadmon tut-tutted in a show of dissatisfaction.
And when Subaru abruptly felt a tug on his sleeve, he looked back. He couldn't help but gasp.
"Subaru, are you all right?"
He saw a girl standing there, setting her hand on his wounds.
When she began to heal him with magic, she noticed Subaru staring at her and tilted her head a little. Her pretty blue hair swayed above her shoulders. Seeing her stirred fierce emotions in Subaru's chest.
Memories, memories, memories flooded in, rushing to the back of his mind. He silently widened his eyes as he felt the raging torrent wash over his freshly returned consciousness.
What should I say? What can I say? he thought, his mouth agape as answers escaped him.
"—"
He tried instantly to call out her name, but his parched tongue wouldn't immediately form the sounds. His consciousness whirled in the air as the welling emotions weighed upon his chest enough to crush it.
Biting his tongue in his impatience, Subaru's lips quivered as he spoke the girl's name.
"Re…m…"
The word was formed so softly within his mouth and was so faint and halting, he didn't know if it reached her. Concerned she hadn't heard it, he breathed in to immediately speak her name again.
"—Yes, I am Rem."
And yet, a reply came. A moment before he repeated her name, the girl— Rem—smiled in response to Subaru's clumsy address.
He had called out to Rem, and she had answered.
"Rem."
"Subaru?"
"Rem, Rem…Rem."
Rem raised her eyebrows, looking conflicted at hearing her name so many times.
Subaru, too, thought it was strange and bizarre. Yet even knowing this, he couldn't stop the word from pouring out.
He'd called her name, and Rem had answered, right before his eyes. That was enough to make him happy. After she died so brutally, he was happy just to have her before his eyes again. He had never been that happy in his life.
"What is wrong? You are making an expression like you have just seen a ghost. I assure you, I am right here. I am your Rem, Subaru." Rem smiled pleasantly, joking for once.
It surely hurt her to see Subaru as haggard as he was. And the phrase she had used, that he had "just seen a ghost," was not one he could laugh away.
Really, truly, he couldn't laugh off those words at all.
"Rem, I… I…"
"You are a difficult audience. I think that a smile suits you far better than that dark expression, Subaru. Therefore, I thought I would make you smile, but…"
Rem lowered her eyes in disappointment. During that time, she'd finished neatly healing Subaru's wound. After a visual confirmation, she declared, "I am finished," and began withdrawing her fingertips.
"Subaru?"
As her fingers began to move, Subaru caught them with his hand to keep that warmth from slipping away.
Rem's face registered surprise at his bold action, but she immediately noticed the keen emotions thickly covering Subaru's face.
"Really, what is it? I mean… I am happy to have you be the one doing this, but it is rather sudden and took me by surprise."
"Thin. Small… Warm, huh."
He felt Rem's small fingers as they rested snugly in his own hand. That soft warmth was proof that she was alive. Her body with blood flowing through it felt so different than her stiff, bloodless flesh.
She lived. She was alive. She'd come back to life.
Such an obvious thing consoled Subaru's heart, once shattered.
"Subaru, I somewhat mind being called small, so I do not wish to hear it often, but it is fine if it's you. As for warm, that goes without saying. I am alive, after all."
That last phrase made Subaru gasp and look up at Rem. Face-to-face, their eyes met, with deep compassion in Rem's pale-blue irises.
"Are you anxious? But I am here. I will save you, Subaru, even at the cost of my life, so it's all right."
—No. She was wrong.
Subaru had let Rem die. He'd killed her. Twice. Ruthlessly. Mercilessly.
The first time, one could claim he had nothing to do with it. But the second time was different. The second time, he could make no excuses whatsoever: Rem had died for Subaru's sake.
To protect him, to save him, for his sake, she had used her life and wrung it out to the last, dying for Subaru's sake.
The Rem before his eyes didn't know this. Subaru alone knew.
"—"
Before he realized it, he was gripping Rem's small hand, bowing his face so that she would not see it.
Seeing his behavior, Rem felt her fingers tremble in anxiety, wondering if she had done something to inconvenience him. But that was only for a single moment.
"It's all right. It's all right. Everything is fine."
Rem realized through her fingers that Subaru was afraid. So she used her free hand to pat his back, gently consoling him like a child.
And this she did, stroking him, showing him affection, until Subaru raised his head. Always gentle, always loving.
10
"Sorry to interrupt your touching moment, but I can't do any business like this."
Cadmon gazed at the episode in front of his shop and waved both away as he spoke. Normally, that would have rubbed Subaru the wrong way, prompting him to say something like, "It's not like you were gonna get any business done whether we were here or not," but here, Subaru followed the lead of Rem's hand, gently departing from that place.
If Cadmon had really wanted to get in the way, he would've done something five minutes earlier. He was a fundamentally good person, and that was why he'd waited for Subaru to calm down before breaking out his capitalist spirit.
For his part, Subaru did not have any room to notice such benevolence. That moment, the inside of his chest was governed by one emotion alone.
—Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill.
Even though Return by Death had remade the world, that hatred was the one thing that had not been erased.
This time, Subaru had a mortal enemy. And that enemy had a name.
Petelgeuse Romanée-Conti.
He was the worst of all madmen and had committed the great, unforgivable crime of slaughtering Rem and the villagers.
It was Subaru's duty to use the power of Return by Death to kill that man.
As Rem led Subaru away from the front of the shop by the hand, she stopped.
"…Subaru, if you have a moment?"
When Rem looked back, Subaru replied, "What is it?" with a casual shrug of his shoulders, making light of the dark emotions inside his heart. She stared at him, making a small sound through her well-shaped nose.
"No… I might be mistaken. It is simply that…I feel like the bad odor coming from you has grown stronger."
"A bad odor, huh?"
When she pointed it out, Subaru gave his own arm a sniff, but he couldn't make out anything.
Coming from Rem, those words likely meant that she smelled the scent of the Witch. Thinking back, he felt that Petelgeuse had ranted about Subaru's nature in some capacity.
"So my Return by Death does have to do with the Witch…?"
The more he Returned by Death, the stronger the Witch's presence became around Subaru.
He'd used that to strike back at the demon beasts in the forest, and afterward, he'd been too busy to look into the matter deeply so had dropped it.
Maybe that subconscious urge to make that conclusion was part of the Witch's power.
As Subaru pondered these thoughts, Rem watched him with a look of concern. Subaru hadn't meant to cause her any trouble. He pushed those thoughts off for later.
"Don't make that face, Rem. Your lovely features will go to waste, and that would make for a dark future."
"I'm sorry. I'm quite a worrywart, really…"
As Rem babbled, Subaru thought of what he might say to put her at ease. Promptly, he lightly lifted their still-intertwined hands.
"Well, if you're worried about my running off somewhere, just keep a hold of me like this, okay?"
"Eh?"
"There's no way I can out-muscle you, so you should feel safer that way, right?"
As he made the statement, hiding the unexpected blush that came with it, Rem looked between Subaru and their joined hands.
"Yes."
With a pleasant smile, she nodded, standing neither before Subaru nor behind him but right at his side.
From there, the two walked abreast. Rem stared at the hand she was holding, firmly shut her mouth, and matched her pace to Subaru's.
As he walked with that adorable girl, smiling softly from the warmth she felt through the touch of his palm… Subaru continued to seethe with bloodlust and hatred.
Even though their hands were together, their hearts were at opposite poles.
Subaru Natsuki's heart was tempted far into that deep, deep, dark abyss—