Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-, Vol. 9

by Tappei Nagatsuki

  “Let’s head back. A man can only do so much flirting with other people’s eyes on him, you know,” he said.

  “I suppose so. Right now, I feel like you want to flirt with me with all your strength in a way that you haven’t in a while.”

  “Oh yeah. Right now, my libido might be enough to keep up with even a demon’s endurance…”

  With that nervous murmur, he used the hand Rem was grasping to pull her into his embrace. “Wah!” she exclaimed in surprise as Subaru hugged her, Spica and all, deftly conveying his warmth to his family.

  “Well, let’s head back, then—to our house.”

  “Yes, darling.”

  Subaru walked forward, a basket of groceries in one hand, Rem’s hand in the other, with Rem, carrying Spica, cuddled up against him as she followed half a step behind.

  That was how they walked close to their still-frozen son at the center of the public park.

  “Hey, son, still stuck in WinterFest on your own? This is slow even for freeze tag, and I’m bored, so Mother and I are taking your sister back home. You can sleep over at a friend’s house tonight.”

  “That’s blatantly ditching me, damn it! And this is after having my parents be all lovey-dovey in a public park in broad daylight.”

  “You jelly? Sorry, Rigel. Rem here is all mine.”

  “Shut up!”

  Subaru fanned the flames, drawing an angry shout from Rigel, but he didn’t play the jilted son for long. He immediately took a deep breath and spoke. “Stay calm, stay calm. Don’t let Dad fling you around willy-nilly. Calm, I’m calm… OK, I’ve calmed down. So what were you and Mommy talking about?”

  “Where your name came from. Come to think a bit, I think Vega was my first candidate for your name.”

  “That sounds strong! Why’d you drop it?”

  “Nah, when I thought of the original backstory it seemed pretty rough for a name. No way am I raising a son who can only meet his lover once a year. Lovers are important…especially my bride, the cutest of all.”

  “Yes, I am Subaru’s Rem.”

  “Would you stop using topics about me to act all sappy like that?!”

  His parents’ sweet marital exchange drove Rigel to stamp the ground as he vented.

  The other children playing freeze tag noticed Rigel’s antics.

  “Aah, Rigel moved! You can’t break the freeze tag rules!”

  “Geh!”

  The children who had abandoned Rigel to that point showered accusations of rule breaking upon him. As Rigel froze, his throat tight, Subaru patted him on the shoulder.

  “He who breaks the taboo of freeze tag must be punished. You must face the hell of being tickled by demons until you are unable to either laugh or cry— Be strong.”

  “Don’t make up rules as you go with a serious look on your… Hey, what do you guys think you’re…! Wait a sec! Don’t just take what he says at face value! Wa, uwaaa—!!”

  Rigel desperately ran away as the various children pressed upon him. However, they headed him off. They proceeded to press Rigel to the ground as several sets of fingers closed in…

  “Farewell, my son. Father and Mother have something very important to discuss, so don’t you dare come back until nighttime. Also, use of your horn is forbidden. And make sure you don’t tear your clothes.”

  “Y-you heartless parents, I’ll remember this—!”

  Fingers pressed upon Rigel from all directions, toying with him as they pleased; his laughing voice echoed through the public park like a cry for help. The laughs of her older brother made Spica go, “Kya-kya,” laughing in obvious delight.

  Subaru sensed fine future prospects. Probably Spica’s growth would further solidify Rigel’s place in the Natsuki family.

  Having displayed his boundless love for their beloved son by tweaking his nose just a little, Subaru walked forward, leading Rem by the hand.

  And so he headed toward his own house, the place where he lived with his precious family in tranquility and happiness—

  “Subaru.”

  “Mm?”

  When he abruptly felt his arm tugged, Subaru stopped and looked back.

  That instant, a powerful gust of wind blew between Subaru and Rem. He unwittingly closed his eyes, slowly opening them again when the wind relented.

  Rem’s long, blue hair was fluttering in the wind, glittering as if it were making the sunlight melt.

  Rem had grown her hair long. The current Subaru somehow understood that this was due to her rivalry with someone. And so too did he understand that when he thought of a woman with long hair, the first image that came to mind was the one before his eyes: that of the girl most precious to him in the whole wide world.

  The long hair silently flowed as Rem smiled at Subaru, reembracing their beloved daughter in her arms.

  To Subaru, that loving smile was the loveliest thing of all.

  “Right now, I am…the happiest woman in the world.”

  INTERLUDE

  LET US FEAST

  1

  As they traveled along the highway, Rem let the dragon carriage rock her as she thought of him alone.

  Rem was lying down, eyes narrowed from the dazzling morning sun and the moist breeze, when she gently lifted her head.

  Straight ahead of her was the convoy of dragon carriages in military formation as they headed back to the royal capital. The carriages were carrying the wounded from the battle to defeat the White Whale; many of them were gravely wounded and had received only the bare minimum of treatment.

  But the atmosphere of the unit was far from somber; it was that of an overflowing sense that their earnest desire had been achieved.

  To them, the current trek to the royal capital was a triumphant return. The pain of their wounds did not hold a candle to their sense of fulfillment from achieving the wish they had waited years for. Indeed, their hauling the severed head of the White Whale to the royal capital would surely be greeted by praise from the masses for their valiant efforts.

  In contrast to their deeply held sentiments, Rem was concerned with a young man not present.

  “Your face is downcast, Rem. It seems your worries indeed know no bounds.”

  “…Lady Crusch.”

  When Rem looked toward the voice, she saw Crusch Karsten sitting right beside her.

  Though she was bandaged under her light armor, Rem did not sense that her demeanor was affected by her wounds in the slightest. But there were traces of fatigue upon even her gallant face. She was in precarious enough territory that she was riding a dragon carriage, not on her favorite land dragon.

  However, as Rem nodded toward her, Crusch cast her fatigue aside in the blink of an eye.

  “Ferris, Wilhelm, and the expeditionary force accompanying them are brave, highly trained warriors. He shall surely have Ricardo and the Iron Fangs aiding him… Besides, it is difficult to believe that Anastasia Hoshin does not have other measures prepared. The Witch Cult’s numbers are unknown, but it is not a losing battle.”

  “I wonder if it is selfish of me to worry, even so?”

  “Once the seed of worry has taken root, stepping on it is not helpful. If you are the cause, you must overcome yourself with devotion and resolve. But one finds the self to be a difficult opponent— Forgive me, helping others find peace of mind is not my specialty.”

  Seeing the gloom on Rem’s face deepen, Crusch lowered her eyes, realizing that she had misspoken. That instant, Rem broke into a small, spontaneous smile at how the woman who had felt so detached to date suddenly felt very close to her. “Very good,” said Crusch, drawing her chin in upon seeing that smile. “Subaru Natsuki said it well. That a smiling face suits you better, Rem. Hearing it from the side, I thought it mere flattery, but it is less idiotic than I expected.”

  “If you were to smile, Lady Crusch, the air you give off would surely change as well. You are always so imposing… I believe you would display a wonderful smile.”

  “…I wonder. I am a woman poor at sm
iling. I have always regretted it, and do so even now.”

  Rem’s suggestion caused Crusch to avert her gaze and murmur thusly. There was a smile carved upon her lips, but this was a slight smile, one plainly at her own expense.

  Rem was surprised to see Crusch display such disgust with herself. To Rem, lacking in confidence, Crusch, always valiant and composed, was one of the ideal images of womanhood. Though as far as Rem was concerned, Ram, her elder sister, was the most ideal of all…

  But before she could press the issue, Crusch hid her smile and changed the topic.

  “Concerning Subaru Natsuki and the others… This revolves around Emilia’s lineage. I anticipated the threat of the Witch Cult from the beginning. Surely Marquis Mathers has prepared measures of his own?”

  “I do not understand Master Roswaal’s thinking. For that reason, it shall do you no good to pry.”

  “How strict. Now that we are allies, he surely would not mind your letting a few words slip.”

  Likely, her jesting manner of speaking was her being considerate toward Rem. As a matter of fact, Rem had managed not to sink into a swamp of worry thanks to Crusch’s speaking to her like that.

  Besides, Crusch’s hypothesis made perfect sense. It was a certainty that Roswaal, of all people, would have some kind of countermeasure for the current incident. After Subaru’s having fallen into misfortune, his actions to assist Roswaal would surely restore his good name.

  No, his cooperation in the battle against the White Whale had already made his name echo far more than that.

  The hero, Subaru Natsuki.

  To Rem, it was natural to assess the man who had saved her heart and her future thus; there was no other appraisal fitting Subaru, who would surely perform other shining exploits thereafter. And if Rem could exist beside that shining light, have it turn toward her from time to time, Rem sought nothing more. Rem would be fulfilled by that alone.

  When Rem thought about Subaru, her heart was always filled with complex emotions. It always made her feel warm and at ease. And yet at some point anxiety crept in, bringing anguish; she felt like worry was tearing her apart.

  It was Subaru, and Subaru alone, who gave her heart such joy and distress, ceaselessly alternating between one and the other…

  “Subaru…truly is a very vexing person.”

  With a small, wry smile, Rem whispered loving words toward the image of the man rising in the back of her mind.

  Crusch watched the side of her face in visible relief. She let her long hair flow down her back as she silently shifted her eyes toward the dragon carriage on the road ahead—but her amber eyes abruptly narrowed.

  “—Mm?”

  Crusch let out a tiny murmur. Rem lifted up her face, for she had detected a jarring sound at nearly the same instant.

  The dragon carriage in front caught by the amber eyes was in the same direction as the discordant sound Rem had noticed. The two discrepancies were linked to the same event, which occurred a moment later.

  Namely, the sudden destruction of the dragon carriage directly in front of Crusch.

  It was destruction in its purest form. Out of the blue, the dragon carriage’s entire frame was swallowed up by an overpowering shock wave, which blasted it away in pieces. To Rem, the sound of the devastating blow was like that of rainfall.

  Red mist spewed out as the dragon carriage was instantly transformed into a bloody spectacle. The land dragon, the carriage, and surely the wounded inside the carriage as well, had been pulverized by wholly merciless destruction.

  “—! We’re under attack!!”

  Instantly, Crusch shoved all distress from the blow aside and called the formation to arms. The expeditionary force’s warriors, immediately sensing something was very wrong, raised their weapons, girding against enemy attack. Rem, too, ignored her physical fatigue, rising up with an iron ball in her hand… Then she saw a figure on the other side of the bloody mist.

  Unarmed. Unguarded. Unconcerned. Unmoved, unmerciful, unreserved malice—

  “—Trample them!!”

  Crusch shouted toward the driver’s seat. Hearing this, the knight loudly snapped the reins in lieu of a nod. The neighing land dragon accelerated, and the dragon carriage became a weapon, charging to run over its foe. And so they would score a direct hit on their target, the figure standing rooted to the spot, making no move to avoid it, sending him flying—

  “Lady Crusch—!”

  Rem shouted as she grabbed Crusch by her slender hips and leaped, escaping to the dragon carriage’s side. The knight on the driver’s seat was beyond her reach. Rem clenched her teeth in regret, and just after, she heard a voice.

  “Goodness, could you not? I think running over someone who’s done nothing is slightly beyond what decent people would do.”

  It was a gentle voice speaking with all the urgency of someone taking an early-afternoon stroll in a public park. In fact, if she’d heard such words in a public park, Rem would have been far less shocked. Yet that voice had unleashed the destruction that had shattered a dragon carriage in a tragic spectacle of blood spatter.

  At a glance, he was an utterly unremarkable individual.

  He was of medium height, with a medium build, and he had naturally white hair that was neither short nor long. The white suit that he wore to match the hair on his head was neither extravagant nor shabby, nor did his face have any defining characteristics; he looked like a completely average man.

  Yet as a matter of fact, the land dragon coming into contact with him forcefully cried out as half of it was torn asunder; the knight on the driver’s seat and the smashed dragon carriage were destroyed together to the point that it was impossible to tell them apart.

  And what shocked Rem the most was not the man’s demeanor as he treated the awful spectacle like it was nothing, but the fact that the man who had assuredly destroyed the dragon carriage had simply stood there. The man had done nothing. Merely by standing, he had taken a head-on collision from a dragon carriage, and won.

  “I thank you, Rem. You saved me…but it seems the situation has improved little.”

  As Rem stood frozen, Crusch, embraced in her arms, rose to her own feet. She remained wary of the still-unarmed man as she turned a painful eye toward the bloody remnants of the dragon carriage.

  “How dare you inflict such cruelty on my retainers…? Who are you?”

  Razor-sharp will to fight rested in Crusch’s eyes as she posed the question to the man in a hard voice. Upon receiving Crusch’s question, the man touched his own chin, nodding multiple times as he spoke.

  “I see, I see. That means you do know nothing about me. But I know all about you. Right now, the royal capital…no, the entire nation is astir where you are all concerned, candidates to become the next ruler. Even if I have little interest in titles and the affairs of the world, I can imagine it takes a great deal of resolve to bear such burdens. It must be so hard for you.”

  “Enough idle chitchat— Answer my question or I shall strike you down.”

  “What a terrible thing to say…but perhaps arrogance of this level is mandatory if one is to support a nation on her shoulders…not that I can understand even a smidgen of that emotion, mind you. Well, I suppose I could never understand the thoughts of someone who actually wants the throne and having that responsibility piled upon her. Ah, not understanding does not mean I am putting them down. You see, unlike you, I simply lack such arrogance…”

  The man continued to ignore Crusch’s demand as he spoke glibly at length. But—

  “—I told you there would not be a third chance.”

  Crusch made that calm statement at the same time that she waved her arm, unleashing a blade of wind. This was Crusch’s technique, One Blow, One Hundred Felled—the product of wind magic and her blessing of wind reading.

  The man was slashed by the invisible cutting attack, able to slay a person, before he even realized he had been sliced. It was this might with the sword by which Crusch had protected the Duchy
of Karsten in her first sortie, preventing damage when the demon beast known as the Great Hare appeared, causing rumors of the Valkyrie to quickly spread.

  It was a hearty sword blow that could even rend the thick hide of the White Whale, sending a beast of that size crashing to the ground—a man’s flesh, with a mass greatly inferior to that of the demon beast’s, could not possibly withstand such a blow.

  And yet—

  “…Who raised you to cut a man down in the middle of a pleasant conversation?”

  Tilting his head, the man stood there, his body showered with the slicing blow, only to easily shrug it off.

  The cutting attack that had rent even the White Whale hadn’t even made him twitch. There was no sign of the man’s flesh—no, not even of the man’s clothes having been cut.

  It was thanks to an unknown phenomenon that did far more than merely defend against Crusch’s invisible blade.

  Crusch gasped; Rem’s body froze up from the work of a different abnormal phenomenon. Looking at the two in front of him, the man sighed and pushed up his forelocks in annoyance.

  “Now hold on, I’m speaking. I’m speaking, okay? Isn’t it strange to interrupt a man when he’s speaking? Not that I feel like asserting the right to speak, but it’s common sense not to bother a man when he’s trying to say something. Now, you’re free to listen or not, so I won’t complain about that part, but you deciding not to let me speak, that’s just…I mean, how self-centered is that?”

  The man spoke rapidly as he began to scuff the ground with the tip of his shoe. The pair maintained an awkward silence as the man pointed at them, clicking his tongue in further annoyance.

  “And now silence. What’s up with you people? You heard me. I know you heard me. I asked questions, didn’t I? Then answer me. That’s how it works. And you won’t even do that. You don’t want to. Ahhh, liberty. This is your liberty at work. This is how you employ your own liberty. That’s fine, do as you please. But you know what that means, don’t you?”

  The man leaned forward as the mad glint in his eyes grew stronger. Then—