Beatrice looked so young, yet here she was, in and upholding a pact—for some reason, Subaru felt something like an unendurable ache deep in his chest when he looked at her.
“Hey, are you really fine with all— Whoa!”
“Your questions are becoming annoying. You can read something and be quiet, I suppose.”
She underscored her statement by tossing a book at him. When Subaru caught it, he realized that the book he’d caught was written in I-script, down to the title.
When Subaru lifted his face, Beatrice had already lost interest in him, lowering her eyes to the book in her own hands, making a show of declining conversation.
She seemed to be strenuously insisting that he leave his half-asked question unfinished.
While her demeanor left no room for words of thanks, Subaru was grateful and happy.
7
Time in the archive of forbidden books passed gently and quietly.
With neither exchanging words, only the sounds of the pages being softly turned echoed within the archive.
That said, Subaru’s heart wasn’t into reading at the time; all he was doing was turning the same page over and back again, making the same page sound like a prank.
—Shut in the archive of forbidden books, he had no way to know what was going on outside.
Beyond the room not having windows, the very nature of the archive was to be in a separate space, locked off from the outside world.
He had no way to tell the time of day or feel the passage of time. He wondered what time it was by then.
By simple logic, being in the room for half a day would get him through the problematic night. But he had only a vague sense of just how much time had passed while he’d been in the archive.
He couldn’t trust his own senses, but he also hesitated to ask Beatrice.
It wasn’t for any reason as simple as not wanting to stop Beatrice while she focused on her reading. Subaru was afraid that any action he initiated might stir up something.
His fingers turning the pages of the book were numb. The tip of his tongue begged for water.
His heart was beating like an alarm bell. He was out of breath.
How long could he remain strong against such tension, he wondered?
If the start had been so brutal, the end might be without any warning whatsoever.
A murmur abruptly echoed through the silent archive.
“—Calling.”
Subaru’s face seemed to leap up as Beatrice put down her book and slid her legs onto the floor.
Rather than speaking to Subaru, it felt like she was murmuring to herself.
“A call for me, I suppose?”
Beatrice waved a finger as she spoke. The next moment, Subaru’s whole body felt ill as space bent.
Subaru made a small moan as his entire body shuddered from the sensation that most resembled floating. Hearing this, Beatrice looked at Subaru as if only just remembering he was there.
“Ah, you were there, weren’t you? I forgot, I suppose?”
“That’s a bad joke, forgetting about a guy right in front of your face…”
“—Puckie is calling. It would seem this is an urgent matter.”
With that as Subaru’s only warning, Beatrice strode past him to the door like it was the natural and obvious thing to do. Subaru’s voice shook as he called out to stop her.
“W-wait, hold on! If you go out now…”
“You can stay shut in here if you like. Perhaps you will be safe here?”
Beatrice left behind her words of obvious sarcasm as she passed through the door. Subaru, blood rushing to his head from her attitude, seemed to kick away his chair as he leapt up and reached toward the door. He’d hesitated for only a few seconds, but…
“Aw, to hell with it. What’s the big deal, right?!”
Spurring himself on with the foul-mouthed statement, he roughly opened the door and stepped outside.
The next moment, it hit him.
“Ah—”
Without thinking, Subaru’s voice leaked out of his lips like a complete idiot.
His hand shielded his eyes from the piercing sunlight of the morn that greeted him.
Deeply moved, he waved his hand in the air as if to confirm it. Subaru’s body wobbled forward toward the window just on the opposite side of the corridor that peeked out over the inner garden—beyond which the sun had just begun its rise.
It was the morning of the fifth day that he’d yearned for but had never reached.
“You mean…I made it? Past the fourth night…?!”
Unable to believe the result before his eyes, he pushed open the window, almost pounding it.
Holding down his hair as a cool breeze blew in, Subaru took a breath of the fresh morning air.
He stumbled, bumped his back against the wall, and slid down, having lost the will to stand.
He could do nothing but stare in shock.
He’d given up. He’d surrendered to despair. He’d been worn to the bone.
And yet, Subaru had passed beyond the fourth day and arrived at the fifth.
“Ha-ha-ha…”
Without realizing it, a dry laugh came over him.
Once it began, he knew no way to stop it.
“Heh-heh, ha-ha-ha. What is this? Hey, what is this? This is just… Ha-ha…”
He couldn’t think of any rational way to show how he felt at that moment.
Hugging his knees, Subaru remained squatting in the hallway, laughing like a madman.
He thought it was a far-off place that his hand would never reach.
He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t find the words. Finally, Subaru had—
Suddenly, a voice like a bell interrupted Subaru’s hollow joy.
“—Subaru?”
Lifting his gaze in annoyance, he saw a silver-haired girl standing deeper in the hall—Emilia. He was able to find her safe and sound, here on the morn of the fifth day.
Both of them had gotten past the fourth night. That fact made Subaru tremble.
He’d hoped for this chance. If the morning of the fifth day greeted both of them, they could rekindle that promise and have it granted.
He’d introduce Emilia to the kids in the village, they’d both walk around the blooming flower garden together, they’d form the same memories together—and yet…
“Emilia…?”
Subaru began feeling a sense of accomplishment that barely seemed real while Emilia watched him in silence. Then, as if Emilia had remembered something, she rushed over to Subaru.
“Subaru, where did you go?”
“Er, I…”
“I mean… No, that’s fine. It’s fine, just…come with me.”
Emilia pulled up Subaru with surprising insistence and ran off with him. She looked like she wasn’t going to take no for an answer as a smirk came over his face.
“Where are we going… Hey, Emilia, listen to me. I’ve worked really hard to get to this point…”
Subaru stared at the side of Emilia’s face as he tried to find the words to convey his success.
“Why are you making a face like that? I mean, it all turned out all right…didn’t it? I’m safe and sound, and you’re… Yeah. Let’s go to the village…together, and then…”
“—”
“There’s lots I want to do with you and talk about with you. A lot’s happened. I wanted you to know th—”
“—Subaru.”
With one brief call of his name, she interrupted him. That was when he noticed the momentary wavering in her eyes, the irritation she could no longer conceal.
The look she had was like when they’d been fighting for their lives at the fence’s shop.
“What in the world h—”
Happened, he tried to ask but couldn’t. For before he could put the word on his lips, a different sound slammed into his eardrums.
—He thought it was a yell. Perhaps it was a wail instead.
It was a long, high-pitched sound filled wit
h sadness that scarred the very soul.
The morning air of the manor was rent by the unending cry of pain, as if someone were being torn asunder.
They passed through the corridor and headed up the stairs. The east wing of the second floor of the manor was for the servants’ bedrooms, where Subaru’s room on previous loops had been.
Emilia led him by hand to the innermost room. And there stood…
“Roswaal and…”
…The man with long indigo hair narrowed his eyes as he saw both rushing over. Beside Roswaal stood Beatrice, leaning her back against the wall as a gray cat curled up on her shoulder.
With the three of them having arrived, Subaru was about to ask about the circumstances when Roswaal spoke simply.
“Inside.”
Roswaal motioned to the open door of a bedroom beside him.
When Subaru turned toward Emilia, she nodded to him as well. Emilia’s clear violet eyes settled things for him.
Holding his breath, Subaru walked in.
Here, too, the yell continued unceasingly, filling the whole of the room. Subaru entered, his eyes wide open, frozen from tension—and then he saw.
It was an immaculately preserved room. It looked like a girl’s room with minimal furnishings employed to maximum effect, a reflection of a steadfast maid’s personality.
Though Subaru had received an identical room, it felt different.
For a moment, such feelings let Subaru forget the sight before his eyes. But the moment passed as the horrible truth crashed upon him, a truth from which he found nowhere to run.
“AaaaaaAAAAAaaaaaaaAAAAaaaaA—!”
It was Ram yelling, tears pouring out, her deep sadness threatening to rip her throat asunder.
—And there lay Rem, still clinging to her older sister when she had breathed her final breath.
8
How many times had his mind gone blank from what he’d experienced?
How many times had he come face-to-face with tragedy beaten into him?
Wasn’t it time someone saved him from this?
“—”
The blue-haired girl lay upon the bed, no longer breathing. Her skin was pale; her eyes would never open again. She was dressed in a delicate negligee that somehow seemed perfect on her.
Subaru abruptly realized that he hadn’t seen Rem out of a maid uniform once.
“Why did…Rem…”
As Subaru murmured, brushing his short hair back with his hand, he fell to his knees.
His head hurt. His brain came up with the wonderful suggestion that the sight before him was all in his sleep-deprived imagination.
This was his fourth loop at the manor. To Subaru, who’d already died and gone back three times, Rem was the person he was most wary of.
“Then why…why was Rem killed…?”
Surely it was Rem who killed Subaru, not the other way around.
Suddenly, a little devil on Subaru’s shoulder whispered—maybe she wasn’t really dead?
Maybe it was all a trick, a trick to make Subaru drop his guard? A joke in exceptionally poor taste was incomparably better than the nightmare before him being real.
He approached Rem to check her pulse, but…
“—Don’t touch her!”
As he reached out to touch Rem, his hand was slapped away, hard.
When Subaru yelped and looked up, Ram was glaring angrily at him. The tear-filled rage on her face easily drowned out any words of retort Subaru might have used.
“Don’t…touch my little sister!”
She refused to let anyone come between them.
With a tearful voice, Ram repeated herself as she clung to Rem’s body, tears flowing quietly down her face.
There was no sign that the devoted, pain-filled older sister expected her little sister to ever awaken.
That made the truth clear.
—Rem really was dead.
As Subaru wobbled out of the room, Roswaal stood by the doorway and voiced his deductions.
“Appaaarently, death by debilitation. Her vigor was stolen as she slept, her heartbeat gennntly slowed, and the fire of her life puttered out, likely the work of a curse rather than magic per se.”
Subaru’s eyes snapped open at the word curse, the word for what the clown believed to be the cause of death.
Death by debilitation via a curse: that was the direct cause of Subaru’s deaths during the first and second loop. In other words, Rem had died from the same curse that had previously killed Subaru.
“But I thought the curse came from Rem…”
The second loop, Subaru had died from debilitation via curse as well as having his head smashed by an iron ball.
Subaru had deduced from that night’s circumstances that the witchcraft and the iron ball were linked. But Rem herself being killed by a curse had ripped his hypothesis to shreds.
“Then the shaman and Rem are separate…?”
Subaru’s mind was in chaos as the thought of a new, separate shaman arose.
Rem had slain Subaru out of loyalty to Roswaal. At the very least, that was the only answer if Rem’s words during the third loop were true.
He wondered if Rem, who’d killed him by her own hand, and the shaman were connected somehow. But if that was the case, Rem being killed this time around made no sense whatsoever from the shaman’s point of view.
So maybe Rem and the shaman weren’t connected to begin with…?
The first time, the magic of a shaman had slain Subaru; the second time, the shaman’s spell had debilitated Subaru when Rem murdered him for whatever reason. The third loop, Rem had eliminated him with no connection to the shaman whatsoever.
“The fourth time…I didn’t do anything, so Rem was the target instead…?”
It was baseless supposition, but based on the circumstantial evidence, it was the only reasonable conclusion.
If Subaru had been the target for reasons related to the royal succession, he could understand it as an indiscriminate preemptive strike against Emilia’s side. The victim, be it Subaru or Rem, was random.
“You appear to be in raaather deep, serious thought?”
The mismatched blue and yellow eyes looked down, reflecting Subaru in them. Subaru’s eyes rose as he felt like Roswaal’s scrutinizing gaze was seeing into his very soul.
“It pains me to ask such a thing…but do you have aaany idea about what happened, good guest?”
“Wh-why would you think…I…”
“Myyy, forgive my rudeness. I am simply somewhat…displeased at the moment, that one of my pretty retainers has suffered such a fate, you see?”
Roswaal abruptly shifted his gaze from Subaru to the painful sight inside the room.
Looking at the side of his face, it truly sank in to Subaru just how precarious his situation had become.
Subaru had no way to prove his innocence. This time, Subaru had done nothing to earn the slightest smidgen of trust from the others.
Emilia tugged on his sleeve, speaking with an anxious voice.
“…Subaru.”
When he looked, the shimmer in her violet eyes seemed to be pleading with him: If you know anything, please say it.
Her eyes and her calling his name told him that much.
The implication of answering Emilia’s earnest request hit Subaru hard.
He’d have loved to tell everyone what he knew. He wanted to shout it at the very top of his lungs.
When Subaru made no reply, Emilia’s small fingers trembled a little as they held his sleeve.
He’d thought that repeating the past would lead to a better future, yet here he was, every silver lining having a dark cloud, with the outcomes worse than he ever imagined possible.
“Subaru…”
Confusion clawed at the inside of his head. He’d thought that it would all be swept aside and things would be better someday.
No, he thought they’d become better already.
—And the moment he thought it, this happened.
> “—”
The moment he pictured the black cloud and the world stopping, ceaseless pain gripped his head.
His breath caught. The sensation of Emilia touching his sleeve made Subaru’s stomach twist in pain.
If Emilia kept her pleading look trained on him, Subaru’s heart would falter. Even if he didn’t, Puck, able to read emotions, could easily expose the fact that Subaru was hiding something. But still, Subaru couldn’t explain anything about Return by Death.
And that meant the torture would continue, pain without end, over and over.
He felt his tongue quickly dry. Unable to resist his urge to flee, he took a small step back.
“—If you know anything, you’ll never escape me.”
To the girl crying her eyes out inside the room, Subaru’s small action looked like nothing more than an attempt to flee for his own convenience.
Instantly, a raging gust of wind made the door violently shake, its passage blowing Subaru’s hair down flat. The moment after the sudden gust made him close his eyes, a sharp pain heralded a vertical cut on his cheek.
“Ow…!”
He immediately touched his cheek, moistening his palm with blood. Wind. The wind had wounded him.
From within the room, Ram was shooting Subaru a hate-filled look as she trained her palm toward him.
“If you know something, spill it!”
“Wait, Ram! I…!”
Can’t, Subaru was about to say, but the word died instantly on his lips, since he knew what would befall him.
But he was coming up empty for any way to kick that can down the road.
With Subaru holding his tongue, Ram shot him another gust of wind as a warning of what would follow.
Had he been able to calmly assess the matter, he would have called it a Blade of Wind.
Wind magic—magic that inflicted cuts like the whirlwind monsters of lore. The sharp slice had enough power to leave a cut on the floor between Subaru and Rem, slice the door in half, and stop right at Subaru’s cheek; such was the power she threatened him with.
If that hit him full force—faced with the phenomenon before his eyes, Subaru forgot to breathe. But Beatrice extended her cream-colored palm in front of Subaru and countered the Blade of Wind.
Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-, Vol. 2 Page 21
