Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-, Vol. 10

by Tappei Nagatsuki

  How much of this, the very definition of love, Subaru had already received from her was simply incalculable.

  “If you really want to do something for Mom, take those feelings and give them to someone else. And if you happen to give that love to a girl you like, Subaru…isn’t that wonderful?

  “…Yeah, it’s wonderful.”

  “Of course it is. What your mother says is never wrong.”

  With a satisfied smile, Nahoko toyed with Subaru’s forelocks with her fingers. The feeling of those fingers tickled Subaru, making him smile back at her with his tear-marred face.

  “Aw man, I’m super pathetic, just crying and crying…”

  “It’s fine to cry. Subaru, you cried so much when you were born. At first, everyone cries in an ugly way. A lot of things happen, and you cry in lots of places.”

  “”

  “But if, after crying a lot, you end with a smile, everything’s all right. What’s important is not where you start, or what happens midway, but how it ends.”

  “So if the results are good, everything’s OK, then?”

  “You’re taking that the wrong way. Consider this homework from your mother.”

  An opportunity to revise his answer would likely never come.

  In the name of homework, she had offered him words of farewell. Accepting them as such, Subaru took them to heart. Surely, the day would come when the answer would emerge, and he would understand it, as if by natural design.

  “”

  It was neither a very manly nor a very valiant farewell scene.

  Neither father nor mother—faced with a son who’d holed up for so long before saying goodbye while unable to even say where he was going—had spoken a word of resentment; instead, they were able to send him off with smiling faces.

  For him, this place and his parents who were both too good for him—they were things he loved.

  “—Well, I’m headin’ off.”

  “Mm-hmm, go ahead.”

  Turning his head back at the end, he forced his cheeks to move and make a smile. Leaving that awkward, smiling face behind for his mother, Subaru turned his back to her and walked forward.

  The commute to school would be anticlimactic. After the fork, all he had to do was go straight down the road, then up a hill, and then the school campus would come into vi—

  “Ah, that’s right. Subaru, Subaru, I forgot.”

  Then, just when he was all hyped up to get going, a scatterbrained voice called out to him from behind.

  Subaru, worried about what the very, very end might bring, turned to see his mother raise a hand as she said, “Come back soon.”

  Then, with a little wave of her hand, his mother spoke those words with a pleasant smile.

  The last night before he had been summoned to another world, before heading out to the convenience store, his mother had surely seen Subaru off the exact same way.

  But at the time, Subaru, perhaps being in a sour mood, had said nothing, simply opening the door, and…

  “”

  This was the last chance for him to wipe away his regrets from that day.

  His mom’s advanced-level conversation piece was, “No matter how many detours you may take, you will always arrive at the right answer in the end.” The instant he remembered that, a genuine smile, not a forced one, broke out as he called out to her.

  “—Be back soon!!”

  9

  At the school campus, he didn’t see a single student, or teacher, or anyone.

  When he headed from the entrance to the foot locker, he opened the ill-fitting door that had remained closed for a while. He switched from outdoor shoes to indoor shoes, then walked into the linoleum-floored corridor.

  Third year, sixth class, seat twenty-two. That was Subaru Natsuki’s spot in school.

  The classroom for third-year high school students, the senior class of the school, was on the first floor. His own footsteps echoed down the silent corridor as Subaru wasted no time heading to his own classroom. Then he stood in front of the door and took a deep breath.

  “…”

  Putting his hand on the door, he slid it sideways, opening it wide in one go. That instant, Subaru, blatantly arriving so very late, had reproachful stares converge on him from all over the classr—

  “—I must say, you came far sooner than I expected.”

  No such thing happened.

  When he surveyed his classroom after so long, the seats, including Subaru’s own, in the back row and against the window, were empty everywhere he looked—save a single seat filled in the very center.

  Then the individual sitting in that seat turned toward Subaru, seat and all.

  “Welcome— Tell me, what did you gain from the time you spent facing your own past?”

  Stroking her own white hair, such was the question that the Witch of Greed posed to him, her eyes filled with inquisitiveness.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE FIRST STEP FORWARD

  1

  The white-haired girl remained seated in her chair in the middle of the classroom as she gave a wry, charming smile.

  Receiving her gaze upon him, Subaru leaned his upper body into the corridor, checking until he reconfirmed there was no one else around. Then he turned back toward the classroom once more, scratching his head.

  “First, there’s something I want to tell you…”

  “Mm, you may speak it. I am very interested in whatever you might be thinking.”

  “That school uniform really looks good on you.”

  The Witch’s eyes had an inquisitive glint as Subaru pointed and conveyed his impression.

  For a moment, the Witch blinked at that impression, and then she gave a burst of irrepressible laughter.

  “Ha-ha! Thank you. That makes it well worth rummaging through your memories to reproduce it. These clothes are seared into your memories particularly strongly. Perhaps you are rather fond of them?”

  The girl—Echidna—rose from her seat, grasping the hem of her skirt as she twirled around on the spot. The sight of her white hair swaying down her back made her look like nothing more than an attractive teenage girl.

  She wore a gray skirt and a navy-blue blazer. The red ribbon adorning her breasts marked her as a student of the same grade as Subaru, providing a vivid contrast to the white shirt underneath.

  “It’s just that I like longer skirts more than short, personally. Long skirts twirl around for longer, so it tugs at your thoughts even stronger that way.”

  “I see. Well then, I must ensure that my skirt twirls for longer the next time.”

  “Not that there’s gonna be a next time! Also, it’s not as if I really like everyone wearing that outfit. Here, it’s just what you have to wear. It’s as obligatory as a knight’s dress uniform.”

  Echidna giggled at him, looking like she only took his explanation half seriously. Humphing through his nose at her, Subaru sat down in the empty chair in front of Echidna, turning to face her.

  “I really thought you would be more surprised…”

  “If you meant to hide it, you should’ve put more effort into the background. This goes for the commute to school, too, but there isn’t a single adult or child inside the whole school, and that’s impossible.”

  Even if he’d reasoned it was late afternoon of a normal day, the world simply felt too bereft of human presence. It was as if the world had been stripped of everything that was not useful information from Subaru’s perspective.

  “This world’s way too convenient from my point of view… What’s with this place? I was just entering the place called your tomb, and then…”

  “You entered my tomb, possessing the qualifications to do so. Therefore, the trial began. That is all. Did you not hear the words? ‘First, face your past.’”

  Echidna, replying to confirm Subaru’s impressions, crossed her hands behind her back as she tilted her head.

  The beautiful girl’s hair swayed with the wind, a gentle, cool breeze blowing into
the classroom as the school uniform on her casually melted away. Sensing that each of her nonchalant gestures was a trap she had laid around his heart, Subaru consciously averted his gaze from her.

  “It’s gradually…coming back to me. What did you do to the memory of when we first met? I completely forgot about you until the moment this trial was underway.”

  “I told you, did I not? You are forbidden to speak of having met me at my little tea party to anyone else. It was faster and more reliable to affect your memory than trust in the tightness of your lips. Ahh, I would like you to relax… I did not play around with any other memories. I would never do such a banal thing.”

  “…What basis do I have to believe what you just said?”

  “Perhaps your understanding of a Witch’s true nature? I am the Witch of Greed, lust for knowledge incarnate.”

  Echidna crossed her arms as if embracing her own elbows, leaving Subaru unable to read what rested within her black eyes.

  Whether to trust the Witch felt like a stupid question that did not require any elaborate thought. He’d already undergone terrible ordeals at the hands of the Witch of Jealousy and the Cult that worshipped her. The same went for Echidna.

  “But first I want to set you straight about something. The fact is, you’re the one who gave me the qualification for the trial.”

  “Set me straight, you say? Somehow, that sets my heart just slightly aflutter. How strange… I feel slightly elated that you would speak to me in such a manner.

  “All I did was to upgrade you from an unpalatable thing to a maybe-unpalatable thing.”

  When Echidna’s smile deepened, Subaru responded by tossing words her way that seemed intended to fend her off. “Tch,” went Echidna, tapering her lips as her almond-shaped eyes gently narrowed.

  “Everyone harbors regrets from their past. Living day to day makes it impossible to exist without regret—regret is a function built into all people.”

  “Don’t put it pessimistically like that. That regret thingy turns into reflection, reflecting on yesterday lets you scrape by today, reflecting on today lets you bust through tomorrow. That’s a function built into people, too, isn’t it?”

  “—Precisely!”

  The air audibly leaped; this was caused by Echidna, speaking in a strong voice, bringing her hands together in a powerful clap. She drew close to the surprised Subaru, her face approaching so close that they could share breaths, opening her mouth as if to press him for more.

  “Such a simple observation engenders what is, in the end, a minor difference. But which answer one chooses greatly affects whether one views the past optimistically or pessimistically. Most view the past pessimistically, repudiating the path that has led them to the present. And in that repudiation, they avert their eyes, never closing the lid upon what has happened.”

  “Um, your face is…close…!”

  “Such a thing cannot be helped, for the you of yesterday was infinitely ignorant compared to the you of today. The you of now is at an absolute deficiency of knowledge compared to the you of tomorrow. In the sum amount of knowledge, and in the total number of memories, the past is inferior to the present, and the present is inferior to the future. That is a fact!”

  Paying the overwhelmed Subaru no heed, Echidna spoke exceedingly passionately, punctuating her speech by strongly slamming both hands onto the desk.

  “Accordingly, when people face the past, they sift through hesitation, bewilderment, anguish, and sorrow, all in search for an answer. I shall affirm whatever answer they arrive at as a result. I shall find no fault in any answer, for it is proof that you have faced your past, absorbing it and using it as your cornerstone as you overcome it.”

  “…So that’s the objective of this trial? Huh, mission accomplished, I guess?”

  “Facing your own past can mean accepting or rejecting it. What is important is arriving at an answer. One cannot overcome the trial with fear, anger, or cowering. However, I extol those who have either accepted their past or made a clean break with it. For that, I shall offer as many opportunities as one might desire… That is this trial!”

  When Subaru took this as meaning he’d passed, Echidna made that powerful declaration, raising her clenched fist. Immediately afterward, Echidna audibly gasped as she came back to her senses, her cheeks reddening as she cleared her throat and said, “I became a t-trifle too excited. I am sorry for the unsightly display.”

  “I don’t really mind. I did get to smell your breath a lot, but it smelled like citrus fruit. More importantly…from what you’re saying, I passed the conditions for clearing the trial, right?”

  “I believe you have displayed sufficient results for me to declare that this portion is finished.”

  Echidna touched a hand to her chest, her face full of satisfaction, like one savoring the aroma of luxuriant black tea.

  “In regards to your trauma and your lingering feelings of guilt toward your past, you have found an answer to both. This, I wish to praise with thunderous applause.”

  “One portion… Wait, you saw me bawling my eyes out, didn’t you?!”

  “So sowwy, before I knew it, even my eyes were moist.”

  “Shaddap!! Don’t tell a soul, it’s embarrassing!!”

  Subaru couldn’t keep his cool at her being a Peeping Tom in regards to his farewell with his parents, both longing and regret bared. Her inquisitiveness that instant was a slight against Subaru’s family.

  “But what a pity…it seems you already had your answer for facing your painful past.”

  “Ahh?”

  “I welcome any answer. But it is my belief that an answer means more when one must take an excessive time to arrive at it. I was hoping that you would arrive at your answer as a result of racking your brain…but it would seem the trial unfortunately came too late for you to amuse me to the fullest, more’s the pity.”

  Echidna made a morose sigh. Knotting his brows at her words, Subaru slowly realized it for himself.

  If Echidna’s desired outcome for the trial was for Subaru to face his past trauma in the form of both his parents, overcoming that past after much agony, he could only give his condolences.

  “A girl told me, a totally helpless no-good guy, that I’m her hero. That’s why I’ve already accepted how much I come up short. I don’t need to face my past now to teach me that.”

  “So you resigned yourself to it in a different manner. It is not at all amusing that this has gone contrary to my will. Should you meet that girl on the outside, I would like you to convey that a Witch bears a grudge against her.”

  Subaru’s breath caught at the way she so casually stated that extremely frightening complaint. He knew he was at the limit of his ability to avert his eyes from comprehension he did not wish to accept.

  Echidna’s presence, the world without people, and her saying she was reproducing a school uniform from his memories—even an idiot would realize that…

  “Not that I even need to ask. This world, it really is…”

  “Yes, that’s right. This is a fictitious world reproduced using completely faithful reliance upon your memories. Therefore, naturally—your real parents remain with no knowledge of where you are and what you are doing, and are no doubt worried about their son, vanished without a trace.”

  “Really faithful in every way, though? They talked about a whole bunch of things I didn’t know about…”

  “Did you truly not know these things? Perhaps you saw a letter sent by an acquaintance of your parents once? Did you not meet an old man who knew your father when he was young? Did you truly not suspect even once that this image of your father was at odds with what you believed?”

  When Subaru seemed to cling to her, Echidna indulged him, pounding home point after point.

  “You thought they didn’t know, but in your heart, did you really want to conceal it? Can you truly say you didn’t want a fictional father and an idealized mother to know all along, out of the self-serving desire to be loved in spite of
them knowing?”

  With Subaru cowed into silence, Echidna drew her face close to his, the tenor of her speech gradually diminishing to a whisper as it gained an ever-more-suspicious-sounding ring. Then, when she was close enough to breathe on him, she said, “That is a little too idealistic, a little too convenient—do you not think so?”

  “”

  Echidna gracefully smiled as those soft, seemingly adoring words dug deep into Subaru’s heart.

  At odds with the age-appropriate appearance she had displayed to that moment, this was the malevolent smile of a Witch. In the face of that captivating smile, infected with a Witch’s seductiveness, Subaru closed his eyes and—

  “Don’t mock my parents out of some half-baked resentment, Echidna.”

  “…What?”

  “I gave my entire answer to them. Both my mom and my dad accepted it. I told them everything I hadn’t said, and they said everything I wanted them to say: Hang in there, come back soon.”

  Subaru stood up, put his hands on the desk, and put his forehead to Echidna’s. Subaru watched the Witch’s black eyes blink in surprise as he pounded his own chest.

  “Those voices, those smiling faces…every last bit was what my imagination poured into them—they’re not vases for you to pour your half-baked ideas into. Don’t look down on them. Those are my parents.”

  “”

  “I told them everything I had to say. I’m not gonna be led astray by words from someone like you.”

  Turning her bladelike words back upon her, Subaru snorted and set his hips down on the chair once more. His brusque crossing of his legs, rough nasal breathing, and hard glare made the Witch look taken aback as she exhaled.

  “Goodness, to not leave any room for doubts in the answer you have given… You truly know how to make a little Witch cry.”

  “Sucks to be you. I reeeally love Mom and Daddy.”

  He puffed out his chest as he asserted it, though he couldn’t quantify just how long it had taken before he could do so.

  Echidna greeted Subaru’s stance with a resigned shake of her head.