Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-, Vol. 5

by Tappei Nagatsuk

  “—”

  All at once, the figures faced Subaru and reverently bowed their heads to him.

  “—Ah?”

  Subaru’s brain was unable to process the scene before him.

  The incomprehensible band that had emerged was paying Subaru respect for reasons unknown, and leaving him behind in his confusion, they began sliding out of sight.

  The wordless scene before Subaru’s eyes left him more dumbfounded than anything. Rather than do something to the frozen boy, the figures departed with silent footsteps.

  It was probably the silence of their footsteps that had allowed them to slip through Subaru’s mental blind spot. But though he understood that much, he knew absolutely nothing else about them.

  Subaru tossed aside any attempt to comprehend the figures, suppressing the worry churning around inside him as he continued to run. He focused on heading back to the mansion, as if doing so would shake off the fear and discomfort.

  He didn’t understand who the figures were or what they were after, so he stopped trying to understand them. That was why he never noticed it.

  Why he never noticed the fact that the unknown figures sliding out of his line of sight were headed in Otto’s direction.

  Nor would Subaru reflect on this later. Not even once.

  —His thoughts had stopped as he ran forward, as if he truly believed that it would save him.

  4

  Worry. Worry dominated his entire body to the point that he wanted to tear and scratch at it.

  His feet moved forward. His heart was set on the future. The destination of his mind was ahead of him, and yet he felt like fear of those unknown figures was stalking him from behind.

  His ears were ringing loudly. Nausea was rocking his head. He felt like every drop of blood in his body had turned into muddy water. The anxiety that tormented him was rapidly eclipsing everything within him, making the physical organ housing his formless heart feel like it was going to burst.

  —Why did it have to be like this?

  Everything seemed to be going well. Everything seemed to be going in the right direction.

  It was just a twist of fate. It was merely the timing that had been thrown off.

  He should’ve been able to do it. It should have been clear so that he could do it without hesitation. The stuff at the royal capital was just a bad dream, the result of simply pressing the buttons in the wrong order.

  That was why he wanted to meet Emilia now. He knew what he had to do.

  He just had to save her. She was in peril. It was his time, just like it had been before.

  That’s how it’d always been. It’d be like that this time, too. Everything would turn out all right. Subaru would be redeemed in Emilia’s eyes. She’d accept that she was wrong, that it would work out only if Subaru was there with her. She would allow him to be at her side once more.

  “Ha…ha…ha!”

  He was out of breath. His lungs hurt. His overused limbs creaked. His body was crying out in pain.

  But he couldn’t just stand there. If he did that, it would catch up with him. Something irrational was chasing him from behind.

  “Shit… Shit, shit… Shit!”

  He wanted to meet Emilia. He wanted her to smile at him. He wanted Rem to be nice to him. He wanted to stroke her head. He missed and adored Beatrice’s insults and Ram’s put-downs. Roswaal’s eccentricities and Puck’s making the world revolve around him put Subaru’s heart at ease.

  —He wished he’d never left.

  He’d headed to the royal capital, but the time he’d spent there, and the royal capital itself, was the root of all evil.

  Reinhard. Felt. Old Man Rom. Ferris. Wilhelm. Julius. Anastasia. Al. Priscilla. The Council of Elders. The Knights. One after another they rose up in the back of his mind, all of them objects of hatred at that moment.

  —Curse you. Suffer and die—painfully.

  If it weren’t for them, Subaru would have never lost sight of himself. If he’d reconciled with Emilia, returning to live his days in peace, he would have obtained perfect happiness.

  All of it had slipped out of his hands. That was why he was there to pick it all back up.

  “Just a bit farther…and I’ll…be back there…!”

  His lungs burned with agony. Subaru averted his eyes from the regrets forming cracks in his heart as he ran.

  It was cursing everything, and trusting that what he desired lay beyond those damnable things, that was keeping him alive.

  “—Aa.”

  Subaru had been staring at the ground as he ran for all that time, and when he could hardly breathe anymore, he raised his head.

  The scenery lining the road had begun to change from what he’d been seeing as he ran. The gaps between the trees were widening, and the natural traces of human labor appeared among them. When he caught sight of the rising slope of a familiar hill, a raspy voice of joy left Subaru’s mouth.

  He could see white smoke rising above the tree line coming from the other side of the smoke.

  Maybe it was from cooking, or maybe it was from boiling hot bathwater, but either way, steam was rising, produced by human hands.

  The village. On the other side of that hill was Earlham Village, the one closest to the mansion.

  “—Whe…w.”

  Until that point, only the faces of the people at the mansion had graced the back of his mind, but now he imagined the villagers he had so dearly missed. They included the very pushy children and the astoundingly unguarded adults. These were the good people who had welcomed the trivial things Subaru had brought into this world without laughing them off as absurdities.

  He missed their smiling faces so much that the memory of them almost made him cry.

  He didn’t know why he had forgotten them. It was living proof that Subaru had been in this world. He had saved them. They might have been wiped out had it not been for him. It was Subaru’s feat. Was there any other result of his actions he could take that much pride in?

  With the pillar that supported him right before him, Subaru’s steps quickened.

  The dissipating white smoke nearly vanished in the wind. Subaru pressed on, as if fearful of that very thing. Someone was there. People who knew Subaru, people who knew his worth—they were definitely there.

  That moment, it was enough. He wanted proof that someone cared for him, that someone had affection for him.

  He ran. He sprinted up the hill. When he neared the crest of the slope, he could finally see the source of the white smoke. Subaru climbed up to the peak, using his sleeve to wipe off the sweat trickling down his brow, and cheerfully looked at the village.

  —And then, the nightmare finally caught him.

  5

  When Subaru ran to the village entrance, his gaze shifted around to find the first citizen he could. That was when he frowned, sensing something was wrong.

  The moment his legs stopped, the accumulated stress on his heart and lungs crashed down upon him. He gasped for breath over and over, coughing up spit, and strived to let his body recover as his eyes searched the area.

  At first glance, he thought that nothing odd had occurred in the village.

  The air that morning was very fresh, enough to snap a sleepy person awake.

  It was such a clear and sunny day, and yet he couldn’t sense anyone in the village whatsoever.

  Having been up so late, Subaru didn’t fully appreciate the fact that it was still very early in the morning, enough that people might still be asleep. He slumped his shoulders at the sleepyhead villagers and moved on, searching for the cause of the white smoke.

  If he looked for the source, he’d surely stumble across someone.

  “—”

  But Subaru’s hopes were in vain. He didn’t come across a single face.

  By the time he’d nearly reached whatever was burning, everyone was long gone.

  What had once been a fire was still faintly smoldering, causing the smoke, but he couldn’t sense anyone’s
presence.

  That was when Subaru was haunted not by vague anxieties but by very tangible ones.

  For reasons unrelated to fatigue, his breathing and heartbeat quickened. With his body reacting to that panic, Subaru banged on the door of a nearby house. There was no response.

  When he rushed in, it was an empty shell. No one was home.

  Maybe the whole family was out doing farm chores— No, he couldn’t dismiss the situation with a silly joke.

  He rushed into the next house, searching for people. There were none. It, too, was unoccupied.

  An amorphous chill came over him. Subaru, realizing that it greatly resembled what he’d felt when he met the figures in the forest, almost lost himself as he desperately kept searching for a human presence.

  “—!”

  He shouted enough for his voice to go hoarse, pounding on house after house, not caring that it was splitting his fingernails.

  The result was nothing but silence. Subaru, all alone in the world, collapsed to the ground, powerless.

  No matter how often he might encounter them, he couldn’t get accustomed to these incomprehensible situations. Naturally, the same went for senseless developments that he did understand.

  Forsaken by all, prospects grim, all avenues of escape cut off. This was always Subaru Natsuki’s future.

  “—”

  Having lost count of how many sighs he’d made, Subaru made one more as he decided that further searching was meaningless. No matter how many times he looked around the village, he wouldn’t find anyone. There was no one left.

  Subaru rose up, brushed off his butt, and tried not to slip on the muddy ground as he stepped forward. Though there was no trace of rain having fallen, there was mud everywhere. He’d lost his footing and tumbled several times over when he’d been running around the place. So Subaru avoided the mud, bypassed anything that might cause him to trip, and headed to the center of the village, the direction of the white smoke.

  The fire that had caused the smoke was already out. The smoldering remnants were nearly extinguished. Subaru gently lowered his gaze, looking absentmindedly at the remains.

  There was nothing odd to see, save for the charred corpse of the old man from which the white smoke was rising.

  “—”

  Subaru scratched his head, averting his mind from the sight as he walked toward the village exit. If there was no one inside the settlement, there was no point staying there. He had to hurry to the mansion.

  He stepped around the carelessly strewn corpse of a young man, walking carefully so as not to slip on the bloody mud. He gave the bodies of the young couple, piled on each other, a wide berth, passing right beside the old woman lying faceup as he entered the village square.

  Subaru searched for any signs of life among the numerous dead therein, seeking any salvation, anyone who might call his name.

  But his hope went unfulfilled, for inactivity was all that remained.

  Too many detours. He hadn’t fulfilled his original intention, and this was the result. He’d taken too much time, and futility was his reward. Everything in that place was in vain. There was nothing there that wasn’t, Subaru included.

  “—”

  Abandoning everything as futile, he dragged his feet in a daze as he crossed the village square. As he did so, his foot abruptly caught on something, sending the half-aware boy tumbling forward.

  Groaning from the pain of landing on his shoulder, Subaru reflexively glared at what had snagged his foot.

  —And so, he met Petra’s empty, unseeing eyes.

  “AAAAaaaaaaa—!!”

  6

  He couldn’t escape.

  Subaru cried and screamed until his trembling voice went hoarse, a flood of tears pouring down as he wrapped his arms around Petra’s remains, cast aside on the ground.

  Warmth had long faded from the girl’s body. Rigor mortis had set in. The body of an unconscious person ought to have been heavy, but even considering Petra’s youth, her body was far too light.

  That was probably because of all the blood that had flowed out of the gaping wound in her chest.

  Petra had died with her eyes open and an expression of surprise. The only comfort to be found was that the absence of pain or suffering on her face meant that she’d died instantly when her heart was impaled. After all, there was no reason for her to die with a gaping hole in her chest and then suffer in agony on top of that.

  Subaru laid Petra’s corpse upon the ground and covered her with his track jacket, the only funeral he could provide her. He’d tried to close her eyes, but with her body already stiff, he couldn’t grant her even that small mercy.

  Praying that Petra would rest in peace, Subaru trembled as he turned his back to her— He continued to avert his eyes from the hellish scene the familiar village had become.

  The cause of the white smoke was Muraosa’s charred body. The young men had no doubt fought with the swords they had. There were weapons and farm implements scattered about, with the blood of the slain villagers drenching the bare earth around them.

  Death had befallen the village. It had all been over long before Subaru arrived.

  Far too late, Subaru was now the only person to bear witness to the results of the tragedy befalling that place. He offered up both his hands, as if pleading for someone, anyone to take them.

  What happened?

  What had happened? What terrible, horrible thing had occurred? Who had violated the village in a merciless slaughter of its innocent denizens, trampling upon their dignity even in death?

  No one still breathed. Not a single person was left alive.

  A memory of days long forgotten arose in the form of a carefree voice.

  “Oh, Master Subaru. Good morning to you. Here to play with the children again?”

  He remembered the brash, noisy, fond, and very pushy voices of the young children.

  “Subaru’s here!” “Subaru came!” “Subaru’s all alone!”

  One girl had pretentions of adulthood as she made a cheeky promise about the future.

  “Eh-eh-eh, Subaru’s the one who saved my life, so when I’m bigger, I’m going to return the favor.”

  He couldn’t see her face anymore. His track jacket now covered it.

  No one was left. His memories had been trampled underfoot, shredded, discarded, lost.

  It wasn’t sinking in. Liquid was pouring from every cavity in his face. Whether it was tears, snot, or drool, he had lost the will to hold it back as it continued to sully his face.

  “—Aaa.”

  Then, as Subaru wallowed disgracefully, practically drowning in tears, he came to grasp something far too late. He finally understood the obvious.

  There was no reason for the senseless tragedy to have stopped at the village’s edge.

  “—”

  A chill worse than any that had come before shot through Subaru’s entire body.

  Since Subaru had fallen into that world, he had overcome mortal crises several times over.

  Even then, he had never known fear and despair as he did in that moment.

  —The despair that, somewhere beyond his reach, the people precious to him had been taken away.

  His teeth chattered to their very roots. His eyes, painful from too much crying, could see little, but he raised his limited field of vision to the sky. The clear blue ether seemed innocent in the face of the tragedy beneath it. And under that sky, the mansion awaited.

  That place he’d wanted so much to return to, that he’d yearned for, the place practically right before his eyes, was now too frightening to contemplate.

  But whatever had turned the village into hell surely hadn’t overlooked the mansion.

  “—Ah, ahh.”

  He was scared. He couldn’t help but be scared.

  He didn’t want to think of the possibility that this “something” had torn through the mansion. He was afraid that if he thought it, let alone spoke it aloud, that would make it real.

&nbs
p; He shook his head, casting off the fearful images. But though Subaru tried to drive them to the back of his mind, one of them obstinately held on, whispering in Subaru’s ear, refusing to be forgotten.

  That was why Subaru clung to it, the lowest means for him to escape. If he could voice even the possibility, the chance that something had happened to her, then…

  “Rem…? Rem…where are you…?”

  It was the name of the girl who ought to have arrived before him, the girl who had cared for him, who had cuddled with him, who had affirmed him, and who had betrayed him in the end.

  Subaru instinctively knew what it meant to call her name. And knowing this, Subaru had chosen to do it anyway.

  In the name of worrying about Rem’s safety, he was fooling his heart with the most sordid of means.

  “If Rem came back… She’d never sit back after that happened to the village…”

  Excuses.

  It was another excuse, spoken in a place where he stood alone, and it didn’t even fool him.

  He was the worst. He was the lowest of the low.

  He didn’t want to understand, but he did.

  If he could voice the possibility that he’d lost the girl he cared for and the possibility his own heart could break, then why not offer up a sacrifice so that he wouldn’t have to?

  Subaru told himself such lies so that he could pretend not to see his own overly unscrupulous heart.

  He felt like the blue-haired girl’s pleasant smile, the warmth of her nestling against him, her voice that called Subaru’s name, were growing further, further away.

  “That’s right… Rem… Rem can… Rem…”

  Subaru began listlessly tottering along the road to the mansion. He dragged his feet, leaving Petra’s remains and the corpses of the villagers behind, covering his ears to block everything out.

  He still didn’t know what awaited him. He thought both that he didn’t want to know and that he needed to know, but he didn’t have the courage to run to find out.

  Subaru slowly, slowly climbed the upwardly sloping path, clinging to the girl’s name like she was the pillar supporting his heart as he walked toward the mansion.