Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-, Vol. 12

by Tappei Nagatsuki

  “But in spite of that, there’s not even…an answer…?”

  With neither assent nor rejection, with the worlds dangling in the sky above, how could he resist?

  Not even knowing whether he was the one doing the violating or the one being violated, he couldn’t even cast aside the feeling of being discarded. Was it Subaru’s punishment that he could not even acknowledge his crime?

  No one could pass judgment on Subaru. No one could blame him. He understood that.

  —But was even Subaru himself prevented from doing so?

  “I think it is a terrible thing. But I also think there is no choice save to break with the past.”

  “…Break with the past?”

  With sluggish movements, Subaru lifted his head and turned his face toward Echidna. Nodding toward his gaze, she adopted the most serious look she had to date as she said, “Certainly, the choices you have made to date might well have come with many casualties. What you may have left behind, what cannot be undone, is surely incalculable. But to simply count the things you have lost and to be a prisoner to them is very hollow indeed. Don’t you think so?”

  “Cut with the simple psychological arguments, would you? Gotta say, are my experiences something a little counseling is gonna solve?”

  He didn’t need consolation. Echidna’s words were comfortable to the ears, but they were only to set him at ease.

  If Subaru was a better human being, those words making his wounds shallower, making the crime he had committed lighter, might have had the greatest effect of all. —But he couldn’t let himself think that way.

  “If those worlds really do exist, there’s absolutely no way to make up for what I’ve done. That can’t be refuted—not by you, not by me. I absolutely can’t be forgiven. It’s not something that should be forgiven.”

  “”

  “If I do X, I can forgive myself… How can I accept embracing something like that? Even though I rejected your helping hand…the hand of that fake Rem…”

  Pausing to breathe, Subaru’s face twisted and crumpled as he put the possibility he feared most into words.

  “—If I get Rem back someday, is she really going to be the Rem I wanted to save?”

  He’d left countless worlds behind. Among them, Subaru had left behind many people whom he had saved and many people who had saved him.

  Among them were the Emilia he first met in the royal capital, the Rem who told him he was her hero, the Beatrice who supported him when his mind had been worn away, the Ram who had fought alongside him for Rem’s sake; he had so many memories of the days he had spent together with them, and those memories, and the people who had woven them, were fading away.

  Even though this was so, even though a nigh-unendurable sense of loss was being pounded into him…

  “Even so…you’re telling me to break with the past?”

  “”

  “…You’re telling me, instead of counting the people I couldn’t save, live for the people I have saved… ?”

  The words Echidna had offered Subaru out of consideration should have constituted hope.

  If he could rely on them, cling to them, walk with them as his foundation, how much better would it be?

  But he could not. It was not possible. After all, Subaru’s anguish was nothing that shallow—

  “With that plain old psychological argument, you’re telling me…to resist…?!”

  “—I am.”

  “”

  “That is what I am saying to you.”

  When Subaru dismissed the consoling words, his voice rising to the edge of despair, Echidna spoke.

  Slowly, so that he might fully digest it, Echidna looked straight at Subaru as the words came out.

  “Rather than count the many you might not have saved, you should count the many that you have. That is what you did as you walked the path that brought you this far. I have seen it.”

  “What do…you know about me…?”

  “This is my dream, and I am the Witch of Greed. I know that in your own fashion, you have lived with all your strength, survived with all your spirit. That is why I say it. That is why I must.”

  “”

  “You have not taken a single futile step on the path you have walked to this day. No one has the right to say the whole of your spirit was not good enough. You did everything you were capable of, putting your life on the line, and even this very instant, you walk forward. —That is something you should take pride in.”

  Echidna’s sincere-sounding words pounded into Subaru’s empty chest. Something powerful resounded in the hollow space therein. —But it was not enough. He could not stand back up from such words alone.

  Even though she told him to take pride, the fact remained that Subaru let many things slip out of his grasp.

  He ought to have been able to manage. Someone not Subaru, operating under the same conditions, would have surely pulled it off. Yet despite this, because it was Subaru who was there, many had gone unsaved.

  That was Subaru’s crime. That was Subaru’s sin. It was a sin Subaru had to acknowledge and pay for.

  “No one can forgive me.”

  “I do. Knowing these things, I forgive you.”

  “No one can judge me.”

  “I do. Knowing your crimes, I judge you.”

  “—No one can approve of me.”

  “If I cannot approve of you, then I shall reject the you that cannot forgive yourself.”

  “”

  “If you accept your crimes, then I reject your crimes.”

  As Subaru spoke various words, Echidna persisted, brushing them aside.

  Why was the Witch this strong, strong enough to cast aside Subaru’s crimes?

  Why was the Witch so heavy she could bolster Subaru’s broken heart?

  “Why are you…trying to do all this for someone like me?”

  “…Is it not a bit too mean to make a girl’s mouth speak such words?”

  It was then that Echidna, who had not hesitated in her words a single time up to that point, began to prevaricate.

  And with the Witch’s face still faintly red, she consciously cleared her throat before continuing. “—Would you form a pact with me, Subaru Natsuki?”

  Her voice was quiet, but it made him sense a powerful will.

  The words made Subaru blink his eyes. It required several seconds of time before he understood them correctly.

  “Pa…ct…?”

  “We were speaking about something just before you left the last time around, yes? I was referring to this.”

  To Subaru, having a hard time following her words, Echidna flashed a very slight smile as she spoke. The words made him go back in his memories to the time just before a series of upheavals, and he remembered that such an exchange had indeed taken place.

  Certainly, at the end of the previous tea party, Echidna had said it.

  —That should there be a third tea party, there were things she wished to speak to Subaru about.

  “By pact I mean a formal pact with the Witch of Greed. —Would you do this and form a bond between you and I?”

  “Exchange a… What does that mean?”

  “It is a simple matter. —Hereafter, when you slam into a wall that you can do nothing to overcome, you and I shall inspect that wall together. When you desire to hear someone’s words, when you desire to convey words to someone, I shall make every effort. When you are ever on the verge of being crushed by your crimes, I shall bear them upon my shoulders.”

  Pausing her words, a bashful-looking smile came over Echidna.

  “Would you not exchange such a pact with me?”

  “…Wasn’t the story since you’re already dead, you can’t interfere in the real world?”

  “I suppose I am exceeding the remit of the dead. But we have already come this far, so I think there is no harm in it now. —If you will permit this, then…”

  When Echidna put a hand to his chest, lowering her face, her voice made Subaru’s eardrums
tremble. The trembling spread within his body, progressively becoming tinged with heat, which together with the circulation of his blood traveled across the whole of his body.

  Sensation returned to his numbed limbs. A strange heat was surging into the tip of his dry tongue and the back of his eyes.

  He was at a loss at how to respond to the hand, the request, the proposal offered to him by the Witch.

  He had vowed to continue to struggle. When he was on the verge of losing sight of what that meant, it was she—Echidna the Witch—who had bolstered his fracturing will.

  “Oh yes, not to brag, but I have confidence in the extent of my knowledge. I should be able to provide plans to deal with the majority of problems you face, and no matter what preposterous difficulties may befall you, unlike the other people around you, no explanation will be necessary. After all, Return by Death is something shared between us.”

  “…The hell? Don’t tell me, you’re giving me a sales pitch for forming a pact?”

  “I thought that raising the merits of forming a pact with me is a natural attitude for the proposing party to take. I am gambling that this may tilt your heart toward forming a pact even a tiny little bit. Calculations, you see. Calculations.”

  The aura of mystique she maintained until a moment before vanished as the Witch turned a smug face toward Subaru. That such a witch could appear so intimate made Subaru unwittingly slacken his cheeks.

  Listlessly taken aback, short of breath—“Yeah,” went Subaru, his voice trickling out.

  Giving his body over to the grassland breeze, he slumped back in his seat as he gazed up, narrowing his eyes at the white clouds in that constructed blue sky, and as he gazed at that relaxed scenery, Subaru breathed easier.

  When he hit a dead end, when he no longer saw an answer, when the time came to confront his troubles…

  —If he could meet and exchange words under a blue sky like that, then…

  “Maybe that’s a good thing…”

  “—Meaning?”

  Spontaneously, or at least acting as such, Echidna knocked her chair back, leaning forward as she peered intensely at Subaru. When his eyes bulged at her excessive reaction, the Witch’s cheeks reddened a bit as she replied. “Ah, er…yes. If you strenuously insist, I would be willing to form such a pact with…”

  “Bit late to smooth that over now. Wait, I’m not the one asking, you… No, that’s wrong. In any case, it’s pretty cheap to talk about who went first.”

  Echidna had done the proposing, but this was ultimately to save Subaru’s mind.

  If he had to put it bluntly, this was the Witch’s kindness.

  She was engaging in such clumsy theater for no reason save consideration for Subaru’s mental state.

  He was incredibly weak. If Subaru Natsuki was unable to stand alone, then with someone’s aid, he might…

  “”

  Sitting up from his slumped position, he rode the momentum to rise to his feet. Echidna, standing at handshake distance, lifted her gaze due to the minor height difference, a faint hint of worry on her face.

  The Witch was crafty with every expression. —Though that had been his salvation.

  “So how do you form one of these pact things anyway?”

  “—To form a formal pact, a bond must be tied between your soul and mine. The fine details are handled on my end…but at any rate, let us begin by joining hands.”

  Echidna lifted her right hand, turning its white palm toward Subaru.

  She most likely meant for him to place his palm upon hers.

  Straight in front of him, Subaru saw the subtle but undisguised grin of delight on the Witch’s lips, audibly exhaling as he felt like all the poison was being drained from the air.

  “If with this, it’ll make things turn a bit for the better, then…”

  Yes, he moved to place his own palm upon Echidna’s, with no small amount of hope for the future imbued within—

  —Impact.

  An earsplitting sound echoed. From out of nowhere, the white table was blown into the air.

  The blow that smashed the table apart was continued traveling straight into the hill, causing the grassland to spectacularly cave in. The ground shook ferociously with an earthquake-like roar and shuddered, throwing Subaru onto his backside. And there stood—

  “—I’m putting that pact on hold.”

  Smashing her fist into the ground, the blond, blue-eyed girl made that declaration with an imposing air.

  The Witch of Wrath was glaring at the pair, her eyes filled with powerful anger.

  3

  Squatting on the impact-flattened ground, Subaru squinted up at the bearer of that angry gaze.

  With bottomless anger in her blue eyes, the beautiful face of the Witch—Minerva—had a crimson hue. It was not toward the frozen stiff Subaru but to Echidna, standing at his side, to whom she turned a grave look as she said, “I repeat, I am putting this pact on hold. I do not approve of this pact.”

  “…Hmm. To me, this is quite an unexpected development.”

  The way she spoke held familiarity as well as enmity, displaying an attitude far too bloodthirsty to be called friendly.

  As she trained that toward Echidna, Minerva stood at the center of the crater, crossing the arms with which she had used to make the mighty deformation, making her bountiful breasts bounce as she bit her lip.

  “This is the occasion of a pact and a Witch’s pact at that. Even you are surely not incapable of understanding what an important ceremony this is. Or perhaps you had your eye on him, too… Is this envy?”

  “Do not make light of this with your petty jokes. Do you not understand the reason I am angry like this? I am indignant. I am in a rage. You have driven me into a fury!”

  When Echidna tried to sidestep with frivolities, Minerva shouted with anger, her face growing redder still. She was so high-strung that her eyes were filled with tears, with clear droplets trickling down the sides of her tender visage.

  This was the very different sense of presence that Minerva—no, what was odd was not the sensation but the fact that she was there at all.

  “…How are you here?”

  “What?! Are you saying it’s wrong for me to come here like this?!”

  “Not that. I’m not saying that…but I mean, Echidna’s, like, right there.”

  As Minerva’s cheeks puffed up with dismay, Subaru pointed toward Echidna. The pointing finger made Minerva cock her head, but Echidna went “Ah” in apparent understanding, clapping her hands together as she said, “Now I know the cause of your bewilderment. —You find it strange that she and I are together in the same place.”

  “Th-that’s right. Before when you let me meet with the other Witches, you said you were lending yourself to let them borrow your existence, but this would mean that talk was—”

  “She lied to you, then. This girl has a foul personality, prone to evil pranks for no good reason.”

  When Minerva smacked down his rebuttal, Subaru went, “No way,” and looked at Echidna.

  “Please do not misunderstand,” Echidna stated as a preamble in response to his gaze. “Certainly, when I explained substitution was necessary, I lied but only about that single point. But their manifesting here presents a danger to me. If I, a soul alone at present, am defeated, the right to rule this place will be transferred. There is no guarantee that they would not angle for that.”

  “That’s, ah, but just on account of that…”

  “For example, if Sekhmet, the Witch of Sloth, was of a mind to do just that, I have no chance of victory. Though in the first place, if I made an enemy of her, she could slaughter me and the other four Witches put together in one second.”

  To Subaru, slow on the uptake, Echidna was revealing what had happened without a single shred of guilt. There were parts that he could accept and parts that, emotionally speaking, he could not.

  But as that complicated mental state made Subaru grimace, Echidna continued, “Besides, perhaps I dislike othe
r Witches crawling out of the woodwork out of concern one might whisk you away?”

  “Er, um, what?”

  “I find myself liking you more with every return. Not in life or death has a conversational partner made my heart leap so. Therefore, I want you all to myself. If you must declare me a fool for making one shallow lie for that sake…go ahead and laugh, if you like.”

  For her craving to monopolize ran very deep—a powerless smile came over Echidna as she revealed her true thoughts.

  Left speechless, Subaru’s thoughts wandered over Echidna’s excuse—and in search of the reason for her obsessive spirit toward him. It wasn’t just her; the Witch of Jealousy also saw Subaru as—

  “What do you think you’re doing, swallowing everything she says so easily?”

  “—Dah?!”

  As Subaru sank into thought, a powerful blow struck his head from behind.

  The impact made his eyes spin. It seemingly had enough power to rip his head off—and yet, what occurred was not pain but a feeling of excessive exhilaration that blew lethargy out of his entire body.

  The blond Witch who had done this made an exaggerated grimace with her adorable face and said, “And, you, stop letting Echidna take you for a ride with her flattery! That lightweight decision-making and empty-headed attitude is really ticking me off!!”

  “Flattery makes it sound so underhanded. I am creating an opportunity between him and I only so that we might strive for greater understanding together. If I do say so myself, a pact is simply the result of having formed a bond of trust…”

  “I’m telling you, change that ‘I explained it properly already’ attitude! Certainly, you’ve spoken with the boy about the good points of a pact. But as for the bad points of being in a pact! You haven’t! Said! A single! Darn! Word!!”

  Giving in to her anger, Minerva stamped her foot on the ground, making the grassland explode in a spectacular cloud of dust. Setting aside her overwhelming state of agitation, Subaru was aghast at the meaning of Minerva’s words.

  —Certainly, he had no memory of touching on the downsides of a pact during his back-and-forth with Echidna. He became self-conscious of how careless he’d been in not realizing that fact.