Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-, Vol. 6

by Tappei Nagatsuki

  Seeing Emilia immobile in a pool of blood, eyes hollow in Subaru’s embrace, was Beatrice truly moved so little?

  But even if animosity was the obvious reaction, Subaru could no longer manage it. Indeed, in that moment, Subaru was grateful for Beatrice’s reaction, not asking him a single thing. He would have been more grateful still if she simply turned around and left Subaru there.

  “Will Puckie not come out, I wonder?”

  As Beatrice spoke, she walked closer and kneeled right beside Subaru.

  “Even if I tell you to look, I doubt you would listen… I do so hate to get my hands dirty.”

  Speaking indifferently, Beatrice reached out toward Emilia. Subaru did not know what she meant to do with the deceased girl, but he made no reaction as her fingers touched Emilia’s neck. Subaru, feeling uncomfortable with the action in a way he couldn’t put into words, began rebuking her.

  “It’s disconnected, I suppose?”

  But Beatrice accomplished her objective before he’d even gotten a word in. As Beatrice’s hand moved away from Emilia, it held a beautiful, glimmering green crystal. This was the pendant that Emilia never took off—Puck’s abode, and the physical representation of the pact formed between Emilia and the spirit. But now, it was…

  “Bro…ken…?”

  “A bold thing to say for the one who broke it… Though you seem to be unaware of the fact.”

  Gazing desolately as the two pieces of the crystal rested on her palm, Beatrice tucked the ruined thing away.

  What had happened to Puck, the spirit who should have been inside the broken pendant? What had happened to the spirit who had loved Emilia, now resting in Subaru’s arms, so much that he had called her his daughter? Where had he gone?

  “Are you concerned, I wonder? Puckie is not dead. He has simply been returned to his true body for the moment. It is only a matter of time until he comes… But it shall not be too long, I think.”

  Responding matter-of-factly to Subaru’s unstated question, Beatrice stood up with a slight flutter of her skirt. Subaru watched the girl’s bouncing hair rolls as he took solace in her answer.

  If that spirit was alive, if he would be returning here, then he’d probably…

  “—Do you have something you wish to say, I wonder?”

  Seeing Subaru’s extremely inappropriate relief, Beatrice gazed at him evenly as she posed the question.

  Subaru did not notice the feelings in Beatrice’s voice. But if she was asking if he had anything to say, then—

  “Kill me.”

  —he wanted someone to end his life, then and there.

  He was sick of everything. It had been one thing after another, and he was worn out.

  So he wanted to die. He wanted to die and end everything. Even if he died and did it over, he’d probably lose it all again. If things started over when he died, or even if they didn’t, he no longer wanted to be in that world. In a world where Emilia had died and Rem’s existence had been erased, there was nothing left for him. That was why…

  “Kill…me…”

  …putting an end to it all was Subaru’s only hope for salvation.

  If there was someone out there who would hear his plea, he wanted his good-for-nothing life plucked away. He had trod the dignity of his life underfoot, rendered everyone’s feelings meaningless, and abandoned everything in a pathetic effort to save his own life, and he wanted to be burned away and utterly destroyed.

  Surely the girl with supernatural powers standing before him could grant that much.

  Beatrice surely hated Subaru. If she listened to Subaru’s request, there was no doubt he could expect a cruel punishment that matched the gravity of his crime.

  He was a foolish human being. Dying nine times over had done nothing to change that. Why not cut him down for the tenth time, then? Now that the benevolence of God, Goddess, Buddha, and Witch were exhausted, there was no better time.

  Hence, “Kill me here, please.”

  Subaru earnestly pleaded to Beatrice as he embraced Emilia’s remains.

  If this was going to be the end, he wanted it to be with Emilia in his arms.

  Having achieved the worst of all worlds through his self-interested efforts, Subaru would indulge himself to the bitter end.

  Subaru squeezed Emilia harder, closing his eyes as he waited for the end.

  He imagined he would soon fall into that silent time.

  “…t to.”

  Subaru, having selfishly decided to end it all, abruptly heard something.

  “—Eh?”

  It was a small, frail, halting voice.

  Without thinking, Subaru let out the breath he had been holding and opened his eyelids to look up at her. As before, Beatrice was standing in front of him, gazing down at him all the while.

  She embraced her tiny body with both arms, biting her trembling lips as if she were freezing.

  “To ask Betty to kill you… Is that not too cruel, I wonder…?”

  She said it with a tearful look and a choked voice, leaving Subaru completely at a loss. No matter how many times he blinked, Beatrice’s thick sorrow would not vanish.

  The girl Subaru knew would never wear that expression. After all, she was supposed to hate him. Even though she was always blunt, she’d put up with Subaru because she had some goodness in her, but he thought she was someone who could heartlessly lay into you by nature.

  Even though he thought she might not readily accept, or might even turn him down, he expected it to be accompanied by disdain and mockery.

  “You don’t understand… You don’t understand anything…!”

  Subaru had never dreamed she would refuse to kill him with such a sad expression.

  “B-Beatrice…?”

  “Shall I refuse every single thing you ask, I wonder? If you want to die so much, go die by yourself… I refuse to do it.”

  Beatrice shook her head and covered her eyes with a hand, suppressing the emotion on her face. Hiding her welling tears rather than letting them fall, she turned that hand toward Subaru.

  “What are you…? Everything is—?!”

  In that instant, the world began to distort. Everything around Subaru warped, and a crack appeared.

  These were preludes to the destruction of the world, or so he thought, instantly clutching the body in his arms close to him. Looking down at him, Beatrice spoke again with cold eyes.

  “If you’re going to be this useless, having you here is a bother— At the very least, perhaps I can protect this mansion, I suppose?”

  “What are you say—? No, Beatrice, you’re…!”

  “—Do not think Betty is like Roswaal. Pain, anguish, suffering, sadness, fear… Perhaps Betty hates all these things?”

  She replied to the question that was not a question with an answer that was not an answer.

  Space distorted, and the resulting fissure enveloping Subaru brought him beyond the reach of all known physical laws.

  It didn’t hurt.

  “If you are going to die, can you do it in a place where Betty will not see, I wonder?”

  Though her final murmur was cruel, she could not conceal even a tiny fragment of her desolation.

  He could say nothing. He understood nothing. But her emotions did tell him one thing.

  —Subaru’s decision and behavior had made Beatrice sad.

  The distortion reached its zenith, and then it snapped back to normal. Something like static ran across his field of vision as the world was instantly swept away; in the next moment, the distorted air succumbed without a trace and vanished.

  The gouge in the bloodstained floor was the only sign that Subaru and Emilia had ever been there.

  Beatrice watched the two vanish before leaning back against a wall with a tired look. She sluggishly raised her palms, lifting them over her eyes as if that would hide the world from her.

  “—Mother. How much longer must Betty…?”

  The murmur of the girl left alone in the world petered out, reaching
no one.

  5

  —Without warning, Subaru was cast out of a rip in space, plunging headfirst onto mossy plants.

  “Bwah!”

  Subaru spat out saliva that tasted like dirt, then lifted his head and looked around. Bunches of trees appeared in his dim field of vision. Surrounded by nature in all directions, Subaru realized that he had been cast into the middle of a forest.

  “A forest at night…? Somewhere in the mountains…?”

  He was only able to see at all because the moonlight was unhindered.

  A cold breeze rustled the leaves of the many trees, with the sounds of insects dominating the gloomy forest under the twilight sky. The fact that it was night outside the mansion made Subaru aware that he’d slept for more than half a day.

  “Teleportation…or something like it, I guess?”

  The air had bent, and right after the resulting fissure had swallowed him up, he’d been dumped out into the forest. Using the Passage magic spell, Beatrice was able to freely rearrange where each door in the mansion connected. Maybe there was no reason to expect she couldn’t relocate people one by one if she had a mind to.

  But even if he could understand that much, he still had no idea what Beatrice had really been thinking.

  Even then, the final image of her crying refused to fade from his mind.

  Though she had turned him down, he had been sure she’d disdainfully leave him there. And yet, Beatrice had looked at Subaru with dejection and despair in her eyes—

  “It’s as if…she…”

  —as if she’d expected more of him.

  Subaru himself had rejected such notions, thinking them exceedingly self-serving. He’d acknowledged he was a spirit of pestilence, unable to do anything, hadn’t he? He’d accepted it, hadn’t he? If he couldn’t expect anything from himself, no one else could, either. Having even someone who hated him expect something of him was nothing but the height of “Pride.”

  —Even though he had kept running and running from other people’s expectations long before he’d reached that world.

  “Man, I’m hopeless, aren’t I…?”

  A crooked smile came over Subaru as he slowly knelt up on the grass. His legs seemed less mobile than expected. When Subaru looked down, he realized that there was something other than him weighing on his knees.

  Even then, after tumbling through space, Emilia’s remains continued to rest atop his lap.

  “Emi…lia…”

  In that world of gloom, a trickle of moonlight shone upon her pale face.

  She seemed neither in pain nor at peace in death. Instead, she seemed full of conflict, unable to understand the cause of the misfortune afflicting her body. Namely, how her heart had been crushed while she was still alive, in a world of frozen time.

  But even if she hadn’t felt any pain, that was no saving grace. There was no such thing as a peaceful death, nor was death a saving grace for anyone.

  —Except for Subaru himself, in that moment.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so, so, so sorry…”

  As he looked down at Emilia’s face, droplets fell upon her pale cheek.

  He had thought his tears had run dry, but they flowed from a bottomless well as Subaru was racked with ceaseless torture.

  He heard voices—voices blaming him.

  The people Subaru had met were shouting down at him in frigid anger.

  There was a girl with silver hair and a girl with blue hair among them—

  “Someone…someone, anyone…”

  —Please kill me.

  Under a hail of shouts that would not vanish, Subaru picked up Emilia and rose to his feet. From there, he stepped on the grass and broke branches as he began slowly walking into the forest.

  He could hear beasts howling in the distance. If he met those black demon beasts now, he felt like he’d greet them with a smile on his face. He wanted them to consume his flesh, his mana, his life—anything they pleased.

  For if they did not, if that did not happen, there would be no salvation for Subaru Natsuki.

  “—”

  Heading toward the howls, Subaru advanced into the dark depths of the forest.

  He no longer felt the weight of carrying Emilia, nor fatigue from walking along the cold mountain road with poor visibility. He wondered if it was because he had a clear goal and was earnestly working toward it. That would be pretty pathetic. Nor did the word pathetic begin to describe his fate.

  “Here… Past this ravine…and then…”

  Carefully heading downhill, he climbed up the twisting tree roots as if they were stairs.

  Like a candle on the verge of burning out, he was exhausting the last strength his life had to offer. But that was not the only cause of the lack of hesitation in his steps. Put simply, he remembered the path.

  After all, this place was—

  “Yeah, there you are.”

  A thin, heartfelt smile came over his lips as if he was relieved not to have missed his mark. Mad laughter came over him—the sort only a man smeared with blood and free of his sanity was capable of. Subaru knew a man who laughed like that. If he looked in the mirror at that moment, he’d probably see the same smile on his own face. Seeing such an expression ate away at your mind, its sheer malevolence giving rise to a physiological sense of revulsion.

  But those to whom he turned that crazed smile were accustomed to the sight.

  “—”

  Inside the nighttime forest, a group in black outfits that blended in with the darkness surrounded Subaru.

  As if rising from the shadows themselves, they had silently encircled Subaru, not even allowing him to sense their auras as they continued to stare right at him. Their gazes held no hostility, nor amiability, nor malice, nor benevolence. He couldn’t sense anything resembling “will” at all. Subaru, under their scrutiny, recalled his encounter with them from the first time around.

  “Same thing, huh…?”

  Just as in Subaru’s memories, the black-robed figures all lowered their heads then and there. Like marionettes lacking wills of their own, they showed Subaru “respect” for the first time.

  Subaru had no idea why they demonstrated admiration for him. All he knew for sure was that they were all devotees of the Witch Cult, and that the darkness enveloping Subaru had some relationship to the Witch they worshipped.

  “—Outta my way.”

  Really, there were many things that he wanted to ask them. If this had happened before he’d resigned himself to death, he’d have had a mountain of inquiries. But by then, even that sentiment was a mere worthless relic.

  At Subaru’s brief command, the black-robed figures did not voice a single sound of dissent as they melted into the darkness and vanished. As they disappeared from his sight, Subaru noticed that the world was filled with silence. He no longer heard the howls of the beasts he wanted to come after him, nor the ceaseless cries of insects—not even the wind. It was as if all living creatures scorned the Witch Cult.

  Perhaps the reason wasn’t just the Witch Cult but Subaru’s presence, too. Perhaps the Cult and Subaru being together in one place painted so repulsive a picture that the world itself recoiled.

  —He thought that this latter assessment suited the current him far better.

  A faint laugh came over Subaru as he advanced past where the Witch Cultists had surrounded him. He passed beyond the roots, stepped across the soil, crushed the tree leaves with the bottoms of his shoes, and finally, the forest opened. A rocky, sheer precipice spread out before his eyes.

  “Beloved acolyte, I have been waiting for you.”

  Standing before the rock wall was a gaunt man bearing the same mad smile that Subaru did.

  6

  “My, my, my? And furthermore, furthermore, furthermore, you carry in your arms… Could that be the half-demon girl?”

  When Subaru approached the rocky area, Petelgeuse cocked his head and looked at Emilia, whom Subaru held in his arms. The madman’s head remained parallel to the
ground as his tongue slid out in amusement, dribbling spittle.

  “Heavens, for her to lose her life before even undertaking our trial… What a tragic fate! What an untimely demise! Ahh! And, and, and…what diligence upon your part! On the verge of the trial, before I even act, you have stolen the half-demon’s body and life…!”

  Petelgeuse shouted, hailing Emilia’s death with exaggerated gestures, waving his arms around. Subaru then noticed that the Witch Cult adherents had gathered around Petelgeuse at some point, all of them on their knees as they devotedly listened to the madman’s ravings.

  “Me, diligence…?”

  Hearing Subaru’s halting murmur, Petelgeuse rushed over with jubilant laughter.

  “Yes, that is right! Diligence! It is splendid! Unlike us, slow to decide, meager of wit, and lacking decisiveness, you made the Witch’s will manifest before any other!”

  Then he slid onto his knees and fell prostrate, virtually slamming his forehead against the rocky ground.

  “Compared to you! My fingers and I were so slow, so foolish, so lacking! Ahh, forgive me! For being unable to requite your love! Forgive this slothful, unfaithful flesh! Forgive this stupid man unable to respond to the love you bestow upon me!”

  A flood of tears poured from Petelgeuse as he pounded the rock with an arm, nearly splitting his forehead with the intensity of his apology. The fervent act of self harm was accompanied by a spray of blood. Subaru could see bone from where his wrist was cut. Despite that, Petelgeuse did not cease his violent action; indeed, each of the faithful kneeling all around rushed to emulate the madman’s self-destructive actions.

  It was a cacophony of blood and agony—and as he watched it all, Subaru felt nothing. Even with the man he had so hated right before him, his heart was unmoved whatsoever.

  “Ahh, what can I do for you, who fulfilled the trial in my place while I failed to respond to Her feelings? Tell me, please. What may I do for you, so that I may prove that my love is not slothful?”

  Petelgeuse came close, the blood trickling from his head causing tears of blood to flow as he made his earnest plea.