“Wha—” Felt was cut down in midair by a slice that extended across from her shoulder, and unable to catch herself, she hit the ground and entered a roll.
The opening of the wound cut across her chest, from the left shoulder to her right underarm, and it was so deep it cut through bone and into her organs.
Ending her roll faceup, with every beat of her heart Felt spewed blood like a fountain, and it was clear that she had already lost consciousness from the pain and shock of the cut. She didn’t move an inch. In just a few seconds the flow of her blood lost its pressure, silently signaling the end of her life.
Subaru could not move.
He wanted to go to Felt’s side and try to stop the bleeding. If it was too late for that, then he at least wanted to close her eyelids. But Subaru’s arms and legs rejected his plea, and he could do nothing but shiver, shamelessly.
“The old man and the girl are both down, but you won’t move. Have you already given up?” Elsa said in a tone as though she pitied him, with eyes that looked bored.
All she had to do was walk a little closer and strike a single time with her knife. That much was obvious to her, hence her bored look. In Elsa’s movements was not even the slightest hint of hesitation. It even seemed as though she was trying to hold back a yawn.
In response to Elsa’s attitude, Subaru felt an uncontrollable anger welling up inside him. The two people fallen in front of him were people he had met just under an hour ago. But they had not only talked, they had bared emotions to one another. To take those two people and kill them, and feel no guilt whatsoever, was to Subaru absolutely unforgivable.
Furthermore, he could not forgive himself. He had just watched as both of them were slaughtered by this vile woman.
“So you’ve finally gotten to your feet. It certainly took you a while. I doubt you’ll entertain me much, but it could be worse.”
The anger welling up inside Subaru, though far too late, finally gave him the power to move his arms and legs.
His limbs still shaking, Subaru slowly pushed against the ground and was somehow able to stand up, though his movements were almost animalistic.
Was his shaking due to fear, or anger? Or was it both? Subaru didn’t care.
Facing Elsa and her kukri blade held at the ready, Subaru charged forward with all his strength and spirit, teeth bared.
He would fly at her and beat her down, pushing his own strength past its limits. But that mad rush of Subaru’s was…
“Pathetic.”
…brought to a swift end as Elsa elbowed him directly in the face. As she spun around, using the least amount of movement necessary, she had stuck Subaru with her elbow, and as he was reeling, Elsa, still in her spin, traced an arc with one of her long legs and landed a kick.
Subaru was thrown back into a shelf filled with porcelain and came crashing to the ground. In one single round of attack, Subaru had both his nose and front teeth broken. His side, which took the brunt of Elsa’s kick, was in terrible pain, and he could feel that a number of his ribs had broken.
But still, Subaru shoved his fist against the ground and immediately stood back up. Subaru’s brain had already started excreting endorphins and was rejecting the pain, which was greater than any Subaru had felt before.
In this aroused state, his breathing abnormal, Subaru launched another mindless attack…but he was again struck back.
Subaru’s flailing arms could not reach Elsa, and with her flowing limbs she struck Subaru with the blunt side of her blade, breaking his left shoulder.
Then, as if she was annoyed by having to listen to his screams of pain, she threw in a kick straight up into his jaw, which immediately shut him up. It also succeeded in knocking out the rest of Subaru’s broken front teeth.
Elsa looked down at Subaru as he tumbled to the ground.
“You’re no good at all. You’re just as inexperienced as you look, and your movements are all over the place. You don’t have any divine protection, or any special skills. I thought you might use your head and have some trick up your sleeve, but I see you have nothing. Just how did you ever think you could stand a chance against me?”
“Shuddup… It’s called being stubborn… You dink I’ll just dake dis lying down?” Subaru’s nose was broken, so he couldn’t even make a proper comeback.
Thanks to the last counterattack, Subaru couldn’t use his arm anymore. Everything from his left shoulder down was dangling limply. He couldn’t feel any pain, but the ringing in his ears was getting unbearable. He was intensely nauseated, and it felt as though his anger was seeping away out of his mouth.
Subaru was beaten. He could never win. His chances of even landing a hit were minuscule.
“Well, I’ll admit that you’ve got at least an unusually high amount of determination. If you had gotten yourself up a little earlier, there might have been a different outcome for these two.” With the tip of her knife, Elsa pointed to the two bodies lying abandoned on the floor. As Subaru followed Elsa’s motion and looked at the corpses he suddenly felt a strange feeling come over him.
Why? Why did he feel that he had seen this all before?
The loot cellar, with its floor a sea of blood… The giant corpse with its missing arm… The dull glint of a reddish blade…
In the back of his mind, a thought shot through him like lightning.
“Let’s put an end to all of this. I’ll send you off to go meet the angels.”
Elsa licked her red lips, and with a sensual smile vanished into the darkness. Whether or not it was by some trick, to Subaru it looked as though Elsa had sunk down into the shadows of the cellar.
Subaru looked left and right, unable to find Elsa. “Wh-where are you?!”
Subaru began to panic, looking this way and that, listening as hard as he could for any sound. He looked like the prey of a ferocious predator just waiting to be devoured. From Elsa’s perspective, nothing could make her less excited, but that just made her want to get it over with even more quickly, so in a brilliantly direct slice…
“Wha—?!”
As soon as Subaru realized that the attack was coming for his abdomen, he managed to get clear, with not a hairbreadth to spare.
Subaru jumped back, pulling his stomach in, so that the horizontal slash only just grazed him. The skin of his abdomen was sliced open, but Subaru gritted his teeth and bore the sharp pain.
“Ughraaah!!”
Then with all of his might, Subaru was able to strike Elsa’s upper body from the side with a spinning kick. As Subaru twisted himself and landed his critical hit, he was able to confirm that he had been able to retaliate at least once.
However…
“Ah… That one was very satisfying,” Elsa said as, with a second kukri she had drawn from her waist, she sliced about 70 percent of the way through Subaru’s abdomen with her other hand, spilling out his blood and guts.
“Huh…?” Subaru took one step, two steps back, and as his shoulder brushed up against the wall, he slid down against it and fell to the floor.
As Subaru looked down he could see the blood flowing out of his abdomen and staining the floor bright red. With a shaking arm he tried uselessly to return the blood, but the bloody clumps of tissue spilling out of his stomach pushed his hand away.
“Are you surprised? I opened up your stomach as you rushed me. It’s my speciality, really,” Elsa said with a smile, walking splish-splash across the sea of blood.
Elsa approached Subaru, who was unable to say anything but gurgle out cries of pain, and stared at his bloody, blackish innards with a look of ecstasy on her face.
“Ah…just as I hoped. Your intestines have such a beautiful color to them.”
This woman was out of her mind.
At the pain that even his endorphins could not negate, Subaru’s consciousness started to fade. He realized that he seemed to have fallen on his side. With shaking fingertips, he weakly touched Elsa’s foot.
“Uu…ugh…”
“Are you in pain? Does it hur
t? Are you sad? Do you want to die?”
With his hand still grabbing at her ankle, Elsa knelt down beside Subaru and looked him in the eyes. Elsa’s eyes were filled with ecstasy. She had absolutely no qualms about taking another human life.
Instead…she seemed to be incredibly happy, filled with bliss.
“Slowly, slowly, slowly, ever so slowly your body will lose its heat and you will go cold.”
Subaru could feel Elsa’s voice vibrating his eardrums, torturing him, savoring him, pitying him, affectionate for him, loving him.
Before he knew it, Subaru couldn’t see anymore. His loss of blood was too great, and bit by bit he was dying. Now, he couldn’t hear anything. He couldn’t smell anything. He couldn’t see anything. He could only feel his body growing colder, his body dying, and the fear that came with it.
In this space, not knowing exactly when the light of his life would be extinguished, Subaru could not separate himself from the fear of death.
When will I die? When will I die? Am I still live? Am I not already dead? How do you define life? Can you even say that I’m alive in this state, lesser than any insect? What is life? What is death? Why is dying so frightening? Is it really necessary to live? No?
I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared.
As an absolute and unconditional death grew ever closer, Subaru’s mind instinctively rejected it. At the end, that rejection filled everything that Subaru was, and as his vision whited out, he thought…
Ah…I’m dead.
And with that very last thought, Subaru Natsuki’s life flickered out.
CHAPTER 3
ENDING AND BEGINNING
1
“Hey, man, don’t just stare off into space like that. You want an abble?”
As soon as Subaru’s consciousness had returned to him, there was a ripe red fruit in front of his face.
It looked just like an apple, and as he stared at it, the phrase “fruit of knowledge” crossed the back of his mind.
It was that forbidden fruit that, when eaten, resulted in expulsion from paradise.
If Subaru ate that fruit now, would it save him from the inexplicable situation he found himself in?
“Hey, kiddo,” said a middle-aged man as he furrowed his brow and called out to Subaru, who was being completely unresponsive.
Subaru slowly drifted from the vague edge of his consciousness back toward reality, and when he was back, he suddenly raised his head. He looked this way and that, his heart beating ferociously and his breathing ragged.
He was in front of the fruit store on the main street, just past noon. There were various colorful vegetables and fruits laid out, and the person standing in front of those goods was a stern-looking man, the shop owner with the white scar across his face.
This was the crowded street that Subaru had already seen several times before. He scratched his head.
“I just don’t get it…” he muttered, and then overcome with dizziness and nausea, he collapsed on the spot.
2
As he felt a cold rush of water on his face, Subaru was somehow able to bring his muddied consciousness back to reality.
“…”
Subaru looked at the empty water jug the fruit shop owner had brought Subaru. After Subaru had collapsed in front of his shop, the owner had helped him get himself together.
Subaru was glad that the owner had the heart to worry about him, but the fact that he was so kind as not to ask where Satella had gone struck a deep wound in his heart.
As Subaru sat on the earthen floor, he wiped away the water from his bangs and clenched his teeth. The glint of that blade still haunted the back of his mind, along with that terrible smile as it danced through the stench of blood.
“Hhgh…”
The back of Subaru’s throat twitched and as he sat hugging his knees, he couldn’t keep his entire body from shaking.
He’d lived a completely normal life up until this point. He had never experienced so much fear, so much despair.
He didn’t want to think anymore. He didn’t want to remember anymore. He wanted to draw back inside his shell and forget everything.
The glimmer of the blade, the arm flying off, the scream, sinking in a sea of blood, that silver hair…
“…”
The less Subaru wanted to think about it, the more clearly his memories came back to him. Overcome by anguish, Subaru raised his face up to scream, but just as he was about to let everything out…
“Huh…?”
The voice that had risen up inside Subaru dribbled out full of doubt, and he just stared, dumbfounded.
In Subaru’s range of vision, with his eyes open wide, he could see a tall figure with skin like a reptile…a beast-like humanoid that was only as tall as his waist…a young dancer with pink hair…a swordsman with six swords at his waist…
…and a young girl in a white robe with silver hair that swayed as she walked.
Those violet eyes of hers took one glance at Subaru as she walked by, but she looked away as though uninterested and walked on.
Those amethyst eyes, full of determination, just looked straight forward as she stared down the road.
In that gallant stance, that delicate beauty, in that girl that Subaru had been searching for, there was no change.
Unable to call out immediately, with rasping breath Subaru struggled to his feet and chased after her. “Wai—! W-wait! Wait up! Please, wait…”
For an instant, the girl reacted to his voice and looked back at Subaru with a cold gaze, as if she was looking at a stranger.
Subaru felt his heart gouged by the chill in her sharp gaze. He had not done what she had asked of him. He had hurt her. He hadn’t apologized yet. There was no way that he could be forgiven, but even so Subaru chased after her.
He didn’t know how she felt. At the very least he had to know what she was thinking.
If he was going to let what he imagined her to be thinking hurt him, he would rather be hurt by the real her, here in this reality where he could feel pain.
“Wait, please! Satella!”
He wasn’t sure of what he wanted to say to her if he could catch her, but when the answer to that question became clear in his mind, Subaru called out Satella’s name as if he had just remembered it.
Finally it seemed as if his voice had reached her, because just as she was starting to get away from him the girl stopped immediately in her tracks.
Subaru weaved through the crowd to catch up to her, and put his hand on her thin shoulder.
“Don’t…ignore me. It’s my fault that I went away and it’s my fault for not listening to you, but I’ve been desperate. After what happened I went to the loot cellar, but I wasn’t able to meet you there and…”
As Subaru grabbed her shoulder, Satella looked at him in surprise.
As she turned around and Subaru opened his mouth, what came out was a sort of self-defense that sounded full of excuses.
What made him realize that was Satella’s clear eyes.
Her stare was emotionless, and as Subaru faced it, he still felt a sense of ease. As far as he could tell, Satella didn’t appear to be wounded. Subaru experienced this as salvation.
“I’m sorry for going on about myself… I’m so glad to see you’re okay.”
The fact that they were able to meet again made Subaru feel simple happiness.
There were so many things they had to talk about, but before all of that Subaru felt as if nothing he had done was in vain. He was finally and profoundly relieved…
“…What do you think you’re doing?”
But as Subaru found this sense of ease, Satella was incredibly angry. Her white cheeks had reddened, as she twisted her body to get Subaru’s hand off her shoulder. After taking a step back and putting some space between her and S
ubaru, Satella’s eyes were filled with hostility.
After this unexpectedly stern reaction, Subaru unconsciously gulped.
Still, this reaction made sense. From Satella’s perspective, she should be shocked that Subaru would even show his face in front of her. There was no insult too great for her to lob at Subaru and—
“I don’t know who you are, but what the hell are you thinking, calling someone the same name as that Witch of Jealousy?!”
After hearing that reaction, which was beyond anything that he could have imagined, everything that Subaru had built up to brace himself was smashed to pieces.
Faced with those unexpected words, Subaru felt as if time had stopped.
The sound of the crowd disappeared. All that Subaru could hear was the violent beating of his heart, and the rough breathing of the silver-haired girl in front of him, tense and defensive. He felt as if all of the other sounds had disappeared…but that was no illusion.
“…What?”
As Subaru looked around he realized that everyone, everyone all around this crowded shopping district, all the pedestrians on the road were staring at them. Everyone looked shaken, and no one would move a single muscle, stock-still and quiet.
It was as if the conversation between Satella and Subaru had taken control of the entire area.
With her severe stare, Satella was waiting for Subaru’s answer. However, unsure of what he was guilty of, Subaru couldn’t think of how to answer. The reason why Subaru thought Satella would be upset and the real reason she was upset were different.
“I’ll ask you one more time. Why are you calling me by the Witch of Jealousy’s name?”
“What do you mean? That’s what I was told to call you…”
“…I don’t know who told you that, but whoever it was, that’s in incredibly poor taste. Even if you’re not the one who thought of it, it’s bad enough that you agreed. This is the Witch of Jealousy we’re talking about, the embodiment of all things taboo. Most people would hesitate to even utter such a name, and you’re using it to name me?”
With her anger displayed for all to see, Satella…the silver-haired girl threw Subaru into a storm of confusion. Everyone else around seemed to be nodding, agreeing with her, and that, more than anything else, proved that she was right. Subaru had absolutely no idea what was going on. He couldn’t understand what she was saying. Subaru had only just called her by her name.
Re: Zero -Starting Life in Another World- Vol. 1 Page 12
