The actions were too like the Subaru Natsuki that Emilia knew—
“Why…?”
Her murmur was tinged with incomprehension and sorrow. The emotions welling into her violet eyes made them faintly tremble.
If this was all the result of Subaru’s actions, they had changed little from before—far too little. She’d hurt him, pushed him away, and yet, even so, Subaru had stayed the same.
“I hurt him that much, and put that sad a face on him… Why did Subaru come again to…?”
She didn’t know why he’d tried to save her.
She’d tossed the question his way after Subaru was deeply wounded in both body and heart at the royal selection conference and the training square. At the time Subaru had not given her an answer. And so Emilia still didn’t know.
Even though she’d given up, breaking the relationship between them, bringing it to an end without ever knowing…
“Why…?!”
“That’s obvious…!”
Emilia spoke, her voice breaking and on the verge of tears; it was the wild voice of a red-faced Petra that answered.
The reaction, which made it sound like the girl knew the answer to the question she harbored, made Emilia look at her, hanging on her words.
But before the two could open their mouths any farther, the dragon carriage was assaulted by the largest jolt to that point.
“—?!”
The dragon carriage wended its way forward with incredible force, flinging around the bodies of Emilia and the children within. Instantly Emilia grasped hold of the wagon, stretching her arms and wrapping them around the children to the greatest possible extent.
However, the dragon carriage continued wending its way, not leaving her a single moment to calm down; the movement was as if they were fleeing from something. Simultaneously, a voice echoed inside Emilia’s brain.
“Lia, someone’s coming from the rear at incredible speed—”
Prompted by Puck’s warning, Emilia shifted her eyes toward the dragon carriage’s rear. Beyond the curtain flapping in the wind, she caught a glimpse of the cause of the dragon carriage’s meandering movements: Something was chasing them…and drawing nearer.
“I’ll…!”
I have to face this, thought Emilia, instantly trying to move.
But when she tried to stand up, her body was held back by light weights, unable to move. When she lowered her gaze, she saw them: the children grabbing her arms and clothes, not letting her go for anything.
“We won’t let go!” “You can’t go!” “We promised!”
Emilia, firmly grasped by the children, could not escape.
They were bonds she could have shaken loose, but Emilia did not move. When Emilia hesitated, Petra glared sharply at her face, shouting with a tearful look, “Are you going to make Subaru cry this time?!”
“—?!”
The girl’s shout sent a ferocious tremor—both through the meandering carriage and through Emilia’s heart.
The dragon carriage braked all of a sudden, and centrifugal force struck, sending Emilia, still linked to the children, flying into the air. Reflexively, she oriented herself onto the blankets, safely protecting everyone from the impact.
Swallowed by the rocking and the blankets, Emilia somehow managed to shake her head loose and sit up.
“Just now, what was th—?”
“Lia, it’s right behind us!”
Puck materialized beside her head, pointing behind the tilting dragon carriage.
Heeding Puck’s voice and motion, Emilia swiftly rose up, shielding the children behind her. At the same time, she unleashed her magical energy, and cold air dropped the temperature inside the carriage with incredible force.
Just as Puck had said, someone had caught up to the dragon carriage. The next moment, someone raised the dragon carriage’s curtain.
Then, when she saw who was standing there, Emilia was dumbstruck.
“Why…?”
With ragged breaths, his shoulders heaving up and down, a lone young man climbed into the dragon carriage.
The sight made Emilia’s eyes shake fiercely in bewilderment.
Her lips trembled. Emilia forgot the circumstances, and with a frail, minute voice, she spoke his name.
“—Subaru.”
She spoke his name.
8
When Subaru thought back, it was a horrible way to meet someone.
It hadn’t even been an hour since Subaru had been summoned to another world, adrift and unable to tell left from right.
In that state, he’d walked into an alley, and according to script, he’d been surrounded and half-killed by punks. His trip to another world was about to end in death within the first few hours.
Subaru remembered every little thing from that time: her words, her demeanor, her grandeur.
He’d never, never, never, never forgotten.
It was because of her that Subaru Natsuki could live in that world, standing on his own two feet.
“Mr. Natsuki, that’s—!!”
Having dispatched Petelgeuse’s delusions earlier, the dragon carriage had been racing down the Liphas Highway when Otto, watching the horizon from the driver’s seat, shouted to Subaru as he caught sight of their target.
When Subaru followed his gaze, spotting the wriggling silhouette at the edge of the horizon, he too shouted.
“There!! Otto, give it everything you’ve got!!”
“I’ve been giving it everything this whole time!!”
With a powerful flick of the reins, the two land dragons picked up speed.
The jet-black land dragon stared straight ahead, wringing everything out of her spirit as she raced to fulfill Subaru’s wish.
—After she saved him in that first encounter, he learned about her as he forced his way into her life.
He knew she was stubborn, she was obstinate, she put on a strong front, and she was kind.
He knew that he was unworthy to gaze at the side of her face. The very shame of it rang shrill within his chest.
He knew that his own incorrigible foolishness had made those sweet feelings go to waste.
Back then, he’d sworn. Subaru had certainly sworn it.
“I’ll…save you.”
He’d striven to uphold that promise.
The deaths had piled up, he’d cut a hole open in Fate, and somehow making it past all that pain and suffering, Subaru had reunited with her, reforged their bonds, and earned her smiling face once more.
Subaru would never forget the flood of emotions that had struck his chest at the time.
“Wilhelm!!”
“Sir Subaru?!”
By the time they caught up with the silhouettes on the horizon, it was already a battlefield where knight and black figure clashed.
Already a number of corpses lay upon the ground. The gallant figures riding around responded to Subaru’s voice. Wilhelm blinked hard at the sight of Subaru, for the speed of the dragon carriage atop which he rode did not relent. The Sword Devil gripped a bloody blade, and the question of what Subaru was doing in that place nearly came to his lips, but—
“Where’s Emilia?!”
Subaru’s next shout, and the emotion filling his black eyes, made Wilhelm instantly cast the question aside.
Then Wilhelm pointed the tip of his sword ahead of the galloping dragon carriage and spoke.
“There! Straight ahead! Toward the Great Tree!!”
Lifting his face, Subaru set his sights on an even more distant horizon. He realized that they’d already made it halfway across the Liphas Highway, reaching as far as the Great Flugel Tree, where they’d waged the decisive battle against the White Whale.
“—”
That much having been confirmed, the dragon carriage sped through the battlefield, never lowering its speed.
He didn’t stop. He needn’t inquire about their safety. That would be an insult to the brave fighting of Wilhelm and his men, and more importantly, they were words Subaru
should have spoken when they’d parted ways.
Subaru had asked Wilhelm to put Emilia and the others’ safety on his shoulders. Wilhelm was acting in accordance with the trust Subaru had placed in him. Accordingly, there was no need for Subaru to stop, nor for Wilhelm to question why he raced forward.
Their exchange of glances was over in an instant, whereupon Subaru and Otto’s dragon carriage left Wilhelm behind. However, the Witch Cultists were not about to simply let him go. Several of the figures kept the knights busy while others kicked off the ground, chasing after the dragon carriage, when—
“I am your opponent.”
Caught by surprise from behind, a Witch Cultist was sliced in half like a tall stalk of bamboo. Bathed in blood spatter, the Sword Devil swung his treasured sword as he shot the dragon carriage a satisfied smile as it raced into the distance.
“It is a perfect opportunity to repay my debt of gratitude. And even though he did not say the words, I am pleased the one who asked it understands—indeed, I am…honored.”
With the treasured sword granted by his liege in his right hand, he accepted a cavalier’s sword tossed by one of his men in the left. The Sword Devil poised the swords crossed as his glare shot through the Witch Cultists.
“As if I would let anyone stop a man who wants to meet his woman. You and I both stink too much of blood to be present at their reunion— You will all remain here…as corpses.”
His pronouncement of their sentence of death made the Witch Cultists, purportedly shorn of emotion, tremble all over.
Amid that sense of tension pulled taut, the Sword Devil bent forward, racing onward with a smile carved onto his lips.
The expression was a complex one—both that of a happy devil bathed in blood and the strained smile of an old man reminiscing on the sins of his youth.
“Mr. Natsuki, I see them! The evacuating dragon carriages are over there!”
With the battlefield left behind them, Otto, in the driver’s seat as the dragon carriage picked up speed, raised his voice. As he pointed forward, Subaru, sitting right beside him, caught sight of the dragon carriage convoy moving off in the distance. The throbbing in his chest strengthened as Subaru clenched his fist, his emotions astir.
As they closed the distance bit by bit, the dragon carriage convoy was thrown into confusion when it sensed Subaru’s carriage catching up. The column of dragon carriages began to weave around, and Subaru earnestly raised his voice.
“Stop! It’s me! Not an enemy! Stop, please stop—!”
“—?! Mr. Natsuki?!”
“Please stop! It’s an emergency! I need to check inside the carriages!”
The knight in the driver’s seat of the leading carriage realized it was Subaru pulling alongside and shouting to him; he rushed to bring his carriage to an urgent halt. At his command, the land dragon neighed, and one by one, the dragon carriages behind him lowered their speed with such force, they nearly rolled onto their sides.
And then—
“Ia, come on out! Otto, get Patlash loose from the dragon carriage, please!”
Time was precious. Subaru didn’t even wait for the dragon carriage to stop before leaping down. He broke his fall with a pathetic-looking roll that was a far cry from a graceful landing. He instantly rose to his feet, the red quasi-spirit Ia floating right before his eyes.
“Ia, can you tell which dragon carriage is booby-trapped?”
The quasi-spirit did not reply. But she asserted her existence with an increase of heat, rushing ahead of Subaru toward the column of dragon carriages, and flew circles above a carriage with a canopy.
From Ia’s reaction, Subaru rushed to the dragon carriage without the slightest doubt in his mind. He violently stripped away the curtain covering the wagon, squinting as he peered into the poorly lit interior, and—
“—Subaru.”
When he realized a voice, clear as a bell, had called his name, Subaru was struck by a wave of anxiety that threatened to make him break down then and there.
Inside the wagon was a beautiful girl with silver hair and violet eyes, staring dumbfounded at Subaru.
It was the sight of the girl he had pursued over and over, hoped for over and over, bent and broken himself over and over in the process, yet even so, he had never once managed to give up.
He was overflowing with emotion. Irresistible urges welled up within him.
However, Subaru gritted his teeth, instantly cutting his indecision away.
“Ia! Where is it?!”
Trailing behind Subaru, the quasi-spirit emerged within the wagon, flying around inside like an illusion. Scattering her mana like tiny specks of fire, the red quasi-spirit strongly illuminated one of the wagon’s corners.
“Puck! Can you let me strip only this part off without setting off what’s behind it?!”
“An unexpected reunion, and already you’re making dema…… Mnggh, so that’s how it is?”
Puck, eyes wide at Subaru’s presumptuous call, realized something was wrong under the floor. The little cat narrowed his eyes at the area indicated by the quasi-spirit, swishing his tail as he made use of his power. Gathering his mana, he froze the floorboards, whereupon Subaru violently stomped on them, shattering them. Then he thrust an arm into the hole thus created; when he felt his fingertips wrap around it, he yanked it out.
“—Found it!!”
With a shout, what emerged from under the floor was a sack made of unusual material with complex symbols written upon it. It seemed to be made of some creature’s hide, but the repulsiveness of the feel of it instinctively made him ill.
“A sack of demon beast hide—”
As Puck put into words the cause of his distaste, Subaru opened the sack. The inside was jam-packed with glowing magic crystals, corroborating Otto’s testimony.
But that very moment, the magic crystals grew hotter, like they’d just begun a countdown sequence.
“What timing…! Puck, can you stop this?!”
“I don’t think I can. I can contain the blast, though.”
Puck looked at Emilia as he shook his head, seemingly offering a glimpse of his final trump card. The gesture made Subaru realize that it probably meant Puck manifesting in his true form, overcoming the problem by brute force.
It was a crude measure, but certainly it was possible for Puck to minimize the damage. It was possible, but…
“No, you can’t!”
Subaru turned that plan down.
Certainly that method would do to keep everyone safe. But it would come at the cost of revealing Puck’s form as a Great Spirit, and awe at the sheer enormity of that power made the rupture of Emilia’s relationship with the villagers inevitable—Subaru couldn’t even stop himself from shuddering as he protested.
After all, just then, Emilia and the villagers were finally on the same stage, coming closer together bit by bit—
It wasn’t like at the royal selection conference. Showing her power off like she had there would only be a hindrance to her relationship with the villagers. That was why he could rely on Puck like that only if it was truly the only way, the most final of final resorts.
“Think. Think, think, think…!”
If the magic crystals he’d retrieved lived up to their billing, they’d turn the entire prairie into a sea of flame when they exploded. There was practically no time left until they exploded. It would be difficult to toss them somewhere far away. But if he relied on Puck, it would leave a dark shadow over Emilia’s prospects in the royal selection. He wrung all his cunning to think of something before he’d have to redo things at the cost of his life. This time, there had to be something he could do for Emilia—
“—That’s…it.”
He let out a murmur. Exactly one way had come to mind.
It was a ridiculous, laughable conclusion. He wasn’t sure he could actually pull it off. However, within the current limitations, it was the one possibility he could think of that had miraculous prospects of victory.
; The instant he thought of it, Subaru’s body practically leaped into motion.
With difficulty he picked up the heavy sack, his arms and chest scorched by the incandescent magic stones. Subaru ignored the pain and leaped out of the dragon carriage. And behind him—
“Wait…!”
In a shaking voice, Emilia called for Subaru to stop.
His legs, which had no time to stop, stopped. His body, which had no time to turn around, did. He stared straight at the eyes into which he could not look. They did not have the time to exchange words, yet exchange words they did.
“Subaru, why…?!”
This why included the various whys apart from that moment.
There was the why of that instant, when he had come aboard the dragon carriage; there was the why toward his creation of this situation; and from long, long before…
She was likely repeating the question she had posed in that room in the royal palace, too.
At the time, Subaru had been unable to give Emilia an answer to her question.
At the time, numerous emotions had surged within him that he had yet to sort out. Taken individually and separately, it was not that they were mistaken…but they were not correct, either.
It was the place where he had been given only one chance to reach out to her, and he’d let it slip through his fingers.
That place was the one chance he had earned, and he’d lost even that, kicking everything down the road.
He’d reunited with Emilia, gaining the chance to talk with her, and he had a mountain of thoughts and feelings he wanted to share. No matter how much he tried, it would never be enough to cover it all.
Many, many words floated into his thoughts, filling his throat, but that’s where they vanished.
Contained with him was a flood of emotions and ideas, but in that moment his entire body and soul yearned for one thing.
What to talk about? What to tell her?
What words to choose? How would he face her?
“Why…?”
She asked him once again.
He took a short breath. And then, in a single phrase, Subaru told her.
Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-, Vol. 9 Page 19
