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

by Tappei Nagatsuk

  It was troublesome to even move his head, but Subaru looked in the direction of the disturbance. Of course, his field of vision displayed nothing but the darkness of the cavern.

  But he felt something from that darkness nonetheless.

  Slowly, truly slowly, he felt a presence rising. It moved at only a snail’s pace, bit by bit, but inexorably drew closer to Subaru.

  “—”

  Somehow, even within complete darkness, it seemed to know where he was.

  Subaru shuddered with urgency and unease at the individual. But that feeling immediately fell away as a different feeling rose up in the back of his mind.

  —Where is this feeling coming from in the first place?

  He heard a sound like clothes rustling and extremely faint breath. The distance was rather close, no more than several yards away from Subaru. Having thought that far, he suddenly realized: it was at close range, not from the entrance, that the presence had abruptly appeared—

  No, what if she had started breathing again…?

  “R-Rem…?”

  He called out the name of the girl to whom the sounds and presence were likeliest to belong.

  That can’t be right, Subaru’s logical mind denied. Though he couldn’t endure looking straight at her, the last thing he had seen while the cave still had light was the horrific state of Rem’s body, to the point that he thought one of her fallen foes was far more likely to rise from the dead.

  She couldn’t be alive. She was dead. Of course she was dead.

  Yet in spite of that, he half believed that the presence in front of his own eyes was alive, and it must be Rem. And if she were dead, it was probably her just the same, coming to take him away. It had to be Rem either way. Therefore, there was no reason to be worried about the presence at all.

  “Rem, Rem…?”

  “—”

  He addressed her, clinging to hope, but the silence returned with a vengeance.

  Even so, perhaps Subaru’s voice made the other being certain of its goal, because it felt like it started crawling just a little faster. Yet it was truly only a very slight change.

  Slowly, slowly, he heard something pulling closer across the cold, rocky surface of the ground.

  Subaru pulled himself up, with the chains attached to his hands and feet ringing as he moved as close to her as he could. He’d advanced such a short distance, and the tormenting shame summoned tears once again, though he had thought they were dry.

  He kept himself from sobbing. He didn’t want Rem to hear that.

  Within the darkness, only the sound of crawling continued, with the distance closing and closing. And then—

  Subaru felt the struggling presence reach his body. The instant he felt something graze his upper arm, he instantly tried to take her hand and call out her name.

  “Re…”

  His throat froze over.

  The grasp on his arm was so light, so cold, that none would think it came from a living person.

  “R-Rem…?”

  Rem’s body lay facedown beneath the kneeling Subaru. The girl’s slender arm was shaking a little, but it was as cold as could be, devoid of warmth-giving blood.

  She was as icy as a corpse. She could no longer be here in this world. Yet though she should have been finished, she had dragged her body over and clung to Subaru. She touched his arms, his shoulders, his chest, his head, as if to make sure they were there; she pressed everything against him in a hug from the front.

  “—”

  Subaru, silently accepting the embrace of the dead, had no idea what would happen.

  A breath away from each other, Subaru was certain that it was Rem hugging his body. However, her flesh felt dead to the touch, unreal, as if she were animated solely by the dying embers of her life.

  But it was not unpleasant. Subaru meekly returned her continuing embrace. When he thought about it, they’d been close against each other many times, but that might have been the first time they’d touched like that.

  Perhaps that was how Rem wanted the final moment of her life to be. If so, the least he could do was to respond to her wishes.

  Even with Rem already dying and Subaru having already given up, perhaps his arms could transmit his feelings to her.

  It was Rem who brought the continuing cold, silent embrace to an end.

  “Rem?”

  As Subaru hugged her, her body surrendered its strength, collapsing onto his lap. He hastily moved to support her, but the next motion made that impossible. After all…

  “—Uuu?!”

  …Rem grabbed his outstretched arms and smashed them to the ground.

  Subaru, pulled forward and down, was shocked at the sudden violence achieved with strength far beyond his imagination. Hence, he was slow to react to Rem’s next action. Subaru’s arms, pressed to the floor, were bathed in a large amount of liquid.

  It was a cold, viscous substance with a rusty scent. The fact that Subaru had become so used to the smell made him rather slow to realize that Rem had coughed up blood.

  A chill ran up his spine at the discomfort of so much of another person’s blood pouring over him. But the bad feeling vanished in an instant.

  “—ma.”

  The whisper vibrated faintly in the air as the intervention of mana achieved its result.

  “—Dwaa!”

  Pain, like something sharp digging into his wrists, seized Subaru. The unexpected numbing ache shot from his wrists straight through his forearms, all the way to his shoulders.

  He didn’t know what was going on. He shuddered at the thought that Rem was doing this, coughing blood on him, sending sudden jolts of pain through him, and proceeding to turn both arms into useless appendages. But the next moment…

  —The wrist manacles, unable to bear the pressure pushing out from the inside, noisily blew apart.

  “—Oh.”

  The destruction sent metal fragments flying, and a tinkling sound echoed throughout the cavern.

  Subaru breathed raggedly as his pain radically eased, and his entire arms felt incredibly free despite the scalding sensation. He opened and closed both of his now-unfettered hands, confirming that they could still move.

  Then he understood.

  “Rem, you…”

  Rem had used magic to freeze the blood from her mouth, utilizing the pressure to destroy the manacles from within.

  Of course, both of Subaru’s arms, having directly endured the effects of magic, hadn’t emerged unscathed. That said, he could rotate his wrists and get his fingers to do as he asked. If he disregarded the pain, he could move them normally again.

  In other words, Rem had succeeded.

  “Re…?”

  Subaru was about to voice his thanks when he felt a very light body bump against his chest.

  Light. So very, very light. She’d lost so much blood, the last of her consciousness was a candle in the wind, ready to be snuffed out.

  In other words, her life would soon expire.

  “Rem…wait, Rem. Wait…don’t…”

  Don’t leave me, he might have meant to say.

  Do you hate me? he might have wanted to ask.

  Subaru despaired at the true thoughts and feelings behind both.

  That once again, she had protected a weak, miserable creature such as him.

  She’d literally come back from the dead to save him, yet he…

  “…Nn.”

  “Rem?”

  Rem’s tongue, as cold as a corpse’s, tried to form words with some kind of meaning behind them.

  She barely had the strength to speak a single syllable, yet she’d wrung magical energy out of her immobile body and hazy mind. She’d worked herself past the point of death to accomplish her objective, but she wanted to leave one last thing behind.

  Subaru, not wanting to let such a message slip by, embraced her body and drew it close. He brought his ear near her quivering lips so that he could carve each word, each syllable, upon his very soul.

  The
girl’s last words were…

  “L…ive.”

  “—!”

  “I l…o…”

  She died.

  That moment, Rem died.

  Within Subaru’s arms, her light body grew heavy. Her form, both light and so, so heavy, her frame completely bereft of her soul, burdened Subaru’s entire being with its excessive weightlessness.

  —In the end, haltingly, haltingly, Rem had told Subaru, “Live.”

  —His wails resounded throughout the dark cave.

  7

  By the time Subaru removed his leg shackles and exited the cave, it had been several hours since Rem had died.

  His hands, free from the wrist manacles, had snatched a cross sword from the nearest figure’s corpse. Using that, he’d unfettered his legs over a period of long hours.

  “…Light, huh.”

  Subaru rotated his scraped ankles. Each step sent pain running through him fierce enough to make his mind go blank. If he ignored that, not a problem. His legs were more than enough to support him while he carried Rem’s remains.

  He tossed the broken crucifix sword against a wall. The impact made the lagmite ore in the wall glow, bathing the cavern in pale light. Subaru felt like his eyes were burning. With Rem in his arms, he gazed at her face, not having seen it in the light for over a day.

  Tears gently fell from his eyes.

  —Subaru would never be able to forget the cruel state of the girl in his arms.

  “Let’s go, Rem.”

  Subaru relied on the light as he made his way through the dark cave, following the narrow corridor to the entrance. From inside the passage, the rock blocking the entrance was transparent. Subaru passed right through it.

  It was probably some kind of magic trick to obstruct vision. It was probably closer to a hologram than a mirage. Subaru had neither the determination nor a compelling reason to consider the matter further.

  When Subaru exited the cave, it was not the light created by lagmite ore that greeted him but the orange rays from the sun. The light pouring from the sunset scorched the world beneath it.

  The sun was sinking past the horizon of the forest and hills beyond it, giving its final greeting before retiring from its daily duty and dyeing the world in the same color as its own flames.

  Subaru, greeted by that scene, stood with the rock wall behind him and unfamiliar trees standing everywhere he looked. A quick glance around the area revealed no trace of a road, forest trail, or anything else that resembled a path. He should have expected as much. A group infiltrating an area would logically set up far from human habitation.

  “But I’ll walk…”

  His destination was the same as before: Roswaal’s mansion in the Mathers dominion.

  Subaru was sure that Rem had been heading to the mansion with him when his mind was a hazy abyss. He rummaged through his memories of the dragon coach rocking him as he rested peacefully on Rem’s lap.

  Thinking of Rem made his heart tighten painfully. He wanted to thank her and tell her he was sorry.

  When he remembered Petelgeuse, his body creaked with hatred, almost as if it would snap. Rage. Sadness. Hatred. Love. These supported Subaru. These kept Subaru alive.

  His path was uncertain, and there was nothing to guide him. Even so, Subaru’s mind rebelled, and his feet stepped forward to search for an uncertain destination.

  —Perhaps it might be said that what happened to him was nothing short of a miracle. Without anyone’s aid, with nothing to rely on, Subaru arrived at his destination. The one desire of his shriveled mind was granted—surely it could be called nothing else.

  It was the first miracle that world had bestowed upon Subaru since his arrival. If there was indeed a deity that governed fate, that god was finally smiling upon Subaru.

  And then, Subaru knew.

  “Ha.”

  If there was a deity that governed fate, its manner of laughter was surely the same as Petelgeuse’s.

  —The village had been violated in exactly the same hellish manner he had seen before.

  The houses had been burned down; the villagers were covered in blood. The remains of those who had futilely struggled against the theft of their lives had been carelessly gathered in the center of the community, piled into a mountain of corpses.

  He looked right; he looked left. There were only smoldering embers and the stench of death. He could not hope for any survivors.

  Looking over the corpses of the villagers, Subaru realized that this world held one difference from the one before it.

  “Petra. Mildo. Luca. Meyna. Cain. Dyne…”

  The cruel sight of the children’s corpses was a part of the mountain of corpses and the river of blood.

  “—”

  With Rem still in his arms, Subaru’s knees let go. He fell on the spot, clutching tight the cold body in his arms, and wept.

  What had he been doing all that time…?

  Knowing what would happen, why did he sit back and watch…?

  Until he slipped through the game trail and saw the smoke rising from the direction of the village, Subaru had completely banished from his own brain the hellish sight that had shattered his mind.

  No, he’d averted his eyes. He’d wrapped himself in grief over Rem’s death and used it and his limitless hatred of Petelgeuse as excuses to deny his memories of that hell.

  Once again, Subaru Natsuki had fled from reality due to his selfishness. The result was the sight before his eyes.

  The children had died there because Rem, who would have protected the children like last time, had been unable to arrive at the village. The adults were not able to let the children escape.

  The sight of their own children being murdered, as if for sport, had been burned into their eyes before they, too, died in agony.

  Not a single one had been spared. Subaru had stood by and done nothing, and this tragedy was the end result, leaving only despair and resentment in its wake.

  That contemptible reality ate at Subaru’s heart.

  I get it now. I get all of it.

  —Petelgeuse.

  The man who had killed the villagers, the children, and Rem.

  He, the madman, had committed those unforgivable acts not once, but twice.

  “—Ha.”

  His plan was set in stone. He knew what he needed to do.

  “Petelgeuse…”

  He had to kill Petelgeuse. Murder him, kill him, keep killing until the last cell of his body was burned away, his entire being erased from that world.

  Nothing short of that could even begin to make up for these deaths.

  His thoughts were dyed with nothing but hatred. His field of vision turned crimson red. He knew that what was left of the blood he’d lost had mostly gone to his head—it was even bleeding out of his nose. He roughly wiped away the nosebleed, re-gripped Rem so that she would not be stained, and rose to his feet. His knees shook, his ankles quivered; whether he could stand, let alone walk, was an open question.

  “Kill, kill, kill, kill, I’ll kill you…”

  But if he could walk, if he could move forward, then he could surely tear out the man’s windpipe with his teeth.

  Dragged forward by his hardened, bloodlust-dyed mind, Subaru headed toward the mansion.

  He’d seen the hell at the village. Next was the mansion. What was it that awaited him there?

  Right before his death, right before he started things over, something had happened, but his memories were broken, unclear.

  He thought that he’d arrived at the mansion and seen something that decisively cracked his psyche. He desperately lit up the neurons in his head trying to remember what it was.

  He’d found Rem dead.

  And this time, that experience had already run its course.

  “Khah.”

  Spontaneously, laughter spilled out of him.

  Really, really, nothing has changed at all, has it?

  Only the order had been altered. Nothing had changed in terms o
f what had happened. Had he ever before spent his relived time in such idleness as he had then?

  Before, no matter what had happened, Subaru gained something over the course of death. But trapped in his own cage, he hadn’t been able to salvage anything. Now that he’d encountered the same hell once again, was there anything he could gain from it? Having wasted his Return by Death, did he have any value at all?

  “—”

  At some point, he’d begun to lose sight of the target of his bloodlust.

  Petelgeuse. That name was all that kept Subaru going. That was a good thing. He was who Subaru wanted to kill, right? So kill him already.

  After he’d been killed, “—” could die for all he cared.

  Who is “—,” anyway? Just kill them, too, then? Yeah, if everyone dies, all the better.

  When such static began to invade Subaru’s thoughts, his mind flickered on and off, over and over.

  Subaru looked ahead of him with bloodshot eyes as he once again straddled the fence between sanity and madness. Having already decided to head to the mansion, come what may, he chose to postpone dealing with the immediate problem, like he always did. Then…

  “—!!”

  The instant he crested the hill, Subaru witnessed the destruction of Roswaal Manor.

  A ferocious sound erupted, and smoke rose all around. The roof collapsed; the terrace fell to pieces. All at once, the glass windows cracked and shattered into glistening shards, the cracked white walls wailing like a maiden as they were rent asunder.

  When he arrived, Subaru stared up at the front gate, dumbfounded at the overpowering devastation. The mansion had lost its shape in a single instant, just as if someone had demolished it with explosives.

  The familiar building had lost all integrity, its meticulously arranged garden was buried in rubble, and the ruin that had once been the mansion was falling to pieces.

  “Wh-what the…”

  He groped through his memories. But he had no memory of this experience. Something had happened that he didn’t remember. Or perhaps the shock of being on the verge of death was so vivid that he’d forgotten the destruction surrounding him as he died.

  Having lost his bearings, an all-too-thin man’s crazed laughter rose in the back of his trembling mind.