"If you dare lie to Betty, you're dead."
She seemed back to normal—only the tear-tracks on her small face proved Beatrice had, in fact, just been crying. She closed the child-rearing book and turned around, feigning composure. "Betty will fetch you a few books a little girl can read. Someone like you, running off on your own, will get lured away by a stranger with a lollipop. Hmph~"
"..."
"Yimi."
Natsuki Subaru watched Beatrice go before he spoke. "Uh, what you said just now—about leaving this world—is that true?"
"It's true."
"..."
This little girl really could cross worlds whenever she pleased. Wasn't she actually the strongest being in this world? As far as he could remember, she hadn't done anything at all, and then out of nowhere she could hop between worlds.
"So… could you take me with you?" Subaru only tried asking.
He couldn't go back right now, but if he could get a clear answer, he'd probably feel a lot more settled—because things like finding your own worth and then leaving your parents behind…
"No."
"I see…"
Subaru tried not to think about what would happen if he couldn't go home, and stretched. "You know, this whole time I figured even if the sky fell, Yimi would be there to hold it up. Now that we're suddenly splitting up, I really can't get used to it. In my eyes you're basically Nobita's Doraemon."
"I wanted, to study the do-over." Yimi hugged her shoulders and scooted away from him.
Earlier, Subaru had managed to zero out all the goodwill he'd banked as a "comrade who fought Diego together."
"Because you, made the big fish-meat, into lots."
"Big fish… you're bringing that up again. Did I actually ever help you?" Subaru looked baffled. "Don't tell me there's an even bigger Return by Death sitting above me?"
"It's like, you went back, I packed away the fish-meat, and then there was extra fish-meat."
"…It's when you talk this vaguely that I start to slowly believe you really are just knee-high."
Subaru lowered his head, thinking it over. "It's super fuzzy, but somehow I actually got it. What you just said—isn't that basically an item-duplication exploit in a save-file game? Come to think of it, you're pretty special yourself. If that's how it works, then using Return by Death you could actually farm items out of thin air?"
An idea struck him. "I hear Reinhard's sword is unbelievably strong. If the two of us teamed up, couldn't we rack up all kinds of divine weapons—"
He slapped his own face at the thought.
That idea was a little terrifying. If he died again and opened his eyes to find himself back in the Royal Capital with everything along the way erased—even with Return by Death, he ought to treasure his own life.
"Feels like it's been ages. Why hasn't Emilia-tan come out yet? I'll go check on her. If the first person Emilia-tan sees when she comes out is me, she's bound to be touched, right?"
With that, Subaru hurriedly said his goodbyes to Yimi and ran off toward the Trial grounds.
Only to spot Meili suddenly ducking into the bushes.
Subaru fixed her with a dead-fish stare. "When did you sneak in here?"
Meili's eyes darted. "That's none of your business, is it, onii-san? Huh—why do you care so much about Meili, onii-san? Don't tell me you've got some weird kink? Is that why you locked Meili up? I'm going to be defiled, boo-hoo…"
"Where did that mudslinging come from?! You're being way too obviously shifty!"
Subaru glanced back at Yimi, crouched in front of Xiaobai studying a handmade tank.
As if he understood something, he gave a soft laugh and patted Meili's head. "Never mind. Onii-san will leave you kids some private time."
"?"
Once Subaru left, Meili didn't leave either—she just poked her head out a little to watch the kitten playing by herself.
Since she'd had nothing to do, Otto had told Meili a few stories, and from them she'd come up with a fine bit of revenge.
For instance: pretend to kindly offer to keep a record of Yimi's growth, lead Yimi to a stunted little sapling, and mark a line at her height. Then wait a year or so for the sapling to grow, and walk her back to the tree to measure again. "Huh? Yimi-chan, how come you haven't grown a bit this year—you've actually gotten shorter?"
But just as she was about to go through with it, she saw Beatrice clutching Yimi and wailing, and caught faint words like "leaving this world"—too far away to hear clearly.
Come to think of it, all along this journey she'd kept seeing that Great Spirit fret over the little brat's health. Could she have caught some illness and be dying?
That would be fine, too. The one who killed Elsa, and also the one who saved her from "Mother's" hands—Meili couldn't bring herself to do it, so leaving it to sickness might be the best ending for her.
That would settle things, wouldn't it?
Meili peeked out from behind the tree again. Yimi and Xiaobai were already gone.
She hurried out to look for Yimi, but the kitten was nowhere to be seen.
* * *
"Damn it!"
Garfiel swiped his claws in fury at the scene before him, only to watch his own hands pass straight through it.
The First Trial, Face Your Past. He'd meant to come here and destroy everything, but somehow he'd been dragged into the Trial along with it. Dragged in again—because back when he was still a small child, he'd come here once and seen the moment his mother, when he was still a baby, left him and his older sister and departed alone. As a pure-blooded human, his mother could freely leave the Sanctuary.
The child he'd been then couldn't accept it, and had rammed his own forehead in self-punishment—the source of the scar.
But it wasn't the sight of Mother leaving them that he couldn't accept. Quite the opposite—Mother had loved them dearly. Leaving wasn't abandoning them; she'd gone to search for the father who had left them behind. And yet, the moment that unfortunate woman stepped out of the Sanctuary, she was caught in a flash flood and buried whole.
This was what he'd seen in the Sanctuary's Trial. That was why he couldn't accept it. Harder still to bear was that he still remembered his mother had loved him. Being abandoned by a cold, heartless woman was one thing—but a loving mother meeting sudden ruin in the blink of an eye was a far heavier blow. So he'd wanted to destroy the Trial and flee from all of it.
Instead, once the Trial grounds were wrecked, he lost his sense of distance and, before he knew it, walked straight into the Trial's spellwork.
The vision of the "past" was blurred and unclear—it had taken a Mana Burst from Yimi head-on, and since their mana came from entirely different sources, a malfunction was only to be expected.
The very thing he'd wanted to run from played out before him once again.
Garfiel watched, in agony, as his mother was swallowed by the flood.
But this time the image didn't stop. It kept going—until some kind-faced, clearly good-hearted middle-aged man rushed over and dug his mother out.
"Are you all right? What's your name?"
"Na… me?" The woman's mind wasn't clear.
Because she'd lost her memory—that was why she never returned to the Sanctuary for so long, why she'd forgotten she still had two children waiting for her.
Garfiel stared, dumbstruck.
"Mother… is alive?"
* * *
In front of Crusch's manor.
"Not here either?" Reinhard sighed. He'd only just come from Roswaal Manor, where the situation had been an utter disaster.
"That Subaru-san who was lodging here ran off a couple days ago. She's not here—but that child is Crusch-sama's honored guest, nya. What business do you have with her?" Felix asked, curious.
"I only wished to see her. Nothing's the matter, I should think." Reinhard's purpose truly was as simple as he said—he wanted to meet the child who had made the Dragon Sword Reid leave its sheath on its own.
Felix took a step back. "Then we'll have to be on our guard, nya—your side's making moves that look suspiciously like forming an alliance."
"It really is only a private matter."
Reinhard turned to go. "Though Felt-sama and Emilia-sama are on rather good terms in private, so such a thing may well become possible down the line. Consider that harmless little piece of intel my compensation for disturbing you at this hour."
"Honestly…"
"Reinhard."
Just as Reinhard was about to leave, Wilhelm called out to him.
Reinhard stopped, faintly startled, and looked at the close kin he hadn't spoken with properly in over ten years.
"Won't you come in for a cup of tea first?"
"..."
The sudden change of heart left Reinhard a little puzzled, but he had never been one to tie himself up in trivial matters.
"Then I'll take you up on that, Ojii-sama."