2
With the door shut behind him, the archive was completely sealed off from the outside world.
The only remaining way to intrude into the room from the outside was to open every single door in the entire mansion.
Subaru no longer sensed pursuit. He slumped his shoulders, leaned back against the door, and sank to the floor.
He wasn’t squatting, and yet, his knees were shaking. So were the fingers he stretched out to try to hold them in place.
“If I were playing paper sumo, I’d cut some crazy lines right about now, ha-ha…”
Even his self-mockery had no bite to it. His dry smile seemed to contain nothing but hollowness.
The scent of old paper in the air of the calm archive gently sprinkled a sense of ease and tranquility into Subaru’s mind. Though Subaru knew it was shallow comfort, it was the only thing he had to cling to at the time.
One after the other, after another…he desperately took deep big breaths.
As Subaru gasped like a fish out of water, a scornful voice spoke from within the archive.
“—Quite a rude thing you are, barging in without so much as a knock.”
There was a footstool sitting straight ahead from the entrance, well inside the dimly lit room. A girl sat upon it.
It was Beatrice, guardian of the archive of forbidden books, keeping her distance from Subaru, the same as always, not a single hair of difference.
With a loud sound, Beatrice closed the book, altogether too large for her tiny body, and looked at Subaru.
“I wonder, how do you breach the Passage…? This makes twice now.”
“Sorry, a little while is fine, so let me stay here a bit. Please.”
Subaru put his hands together, bowed his head in supplication, and closed his eyes without waiting for her reply.
—This is a quiet place with no one here to bother me. I’ve gotta get a grip on the facts. What’s my name, where am I, who are the two twins from earlier? What’s the name of the girl in front of me, and who is she? This weird room? The four days I spent? The promise I made, to be with someone, tomorrow, who—
“Oh yeah, Emilia…”
He recalled her silver hair, twinkling under the moonlight, her bashful smile…
He remembered the promise he had made with Emilia, with the moon and the starry sky shining above them…
“Beatrice…”
“…Are we close enough for you to be calling my name, I wonder?”
“You said I breached the Passage just now, and once before, too?”
Beatrice made a sour look at being addressed like an acquaintance and having a question foisted upon her. However, Beatrice valiantly maintained her poise as she replied, “You and your thick skull barged in here not three or four hours ago.”
“The time I came in, messing with your setup, and you got mad so you bullied me. Got it.”
Though there was no strength behind it, he did not neglect his sarcasm toward Beatrice, getting further under her skin.
—Subaru had encountered Beatrice three to four hours earlier, she’d said.
Her words could only mean when he had first awakened at Roswaal Manor, when Subaru had, without any thought whatsoever, broken through the looping corridor on his first try. When he next awoke that morning, Ram and Rem were in front of the bed.
“In other words, this is the…second time I woke up in the manor, then.”
Subaru gathered up memories from all over the place to piece together his circumstances.
The only time the twins had both been present when Subaru woke was that morning. They’d alternated after that. Furthermore, the first day was the only time when he’d had the social status to use the bed in the guest room.
“In other words, I went five days ahead, and I’ve gone four days back…?”
Just like in the royal capital, Subaru had gone back in time. That summed up his present situation.
But understanding it was one thing; accepting it was something else.
Subaru clutched his head and tried to think of what could cause him to go back in time.
When Subaru had gone back in time at the royal capital, it was triggered by death, which he’d dubbed Return by Death. He’d decided that, having died three times over before saving Emilia, he’d left that loop behind.
In point of fact, he’d spent five days at Roswaal Manor in absolute peace and quiet, hadn’t he?
And then, poof, suddenly going back in time—he hadn’t received any warning whatsoever.
“Did the conditions change from before…? I made myself think dying sent me back, but maybe it goes back on auto after one week…? No, if that were the case, then…”
If that was so, there was no reason for him to have awoken on the first day at Roswaal Manor at all.
The principles underpinning going back in time remained unclear, but loops like the one at the royal capital surely followed certain rules.
One rule was definitely the place where you were reborn. If Subaru hadn’t been freed from that loop, he should have awoken right in front of the owner of the fruit shop with the scarred face, as he had three times over.
“But it wasn’t a scarred middle-aged man, it was those angelic maids. Guess I’ve moved on up…”
That part made him feel like he’d traded Hell for Heaven.
With several pats, Subaru felt up his own body and ensured that he was uninjured. You wouldn’t think anything had happened.
“But if I died, how did I die? Everything was normal before I slept during the fourth night. At any rate, it didn’t feel like any situation I’d die in my sleep before reaching the fifth day.”
He wondered if instant death without any conscious knowledge of it whatsoever was truly possible.
He tried to picture dying from poison or gas in his sleep, but that meant being assassinated.
There was no reason anyone would assassinate Subaru, so the preliminary conditions simply hadn’t been met.
“So does that mean it’s a forced loop unless I reach clear conditions…?”
If you looked at it like a game, it was like a Game Over that happened if you didn’t trigger the necessary flags.
Not knowing who’d put up the flags or why was bad enough, but not knowing the triggers—that was pretty dismal game design.
“Besides, I’m the kind of gamer who gives up quickly and runs off to read a strategy guide…”
A scornful smile came over Beatrice as she watched Subaru sink into an ocean of introspection. She sounded bored when she spoke.
“It’s become rather boring around here with all the mumbling you’ve been doing. Death this, life that—this is why humans are so boring, I suppose. It’s all deceits and conceits to the very end. This is why I can’t hold a conversation with your kind.”
It was a blunt, even cruel way of blowing him off. But Subaru was relieved that Beatrice’s attitude hadn’t changed a bit. He rose up, dusting off his rump as he turned to face the door.
“Leaving, I suppose?”
“There’re some things I’ve gotta figure out. I’ll leave moping around for sometime later. Thanks.”
“I have done nothing at all… Would you leave already, I wonder? I really must readjust the Passage.”
Though there was not even a sliver of gentleness in her tone, for some reason, Subaru found that reassuring.
Beatrice herself may not have had any such intention, but Subaru felt like her words were pushing him onward. He twisted the doorknob; a cool breeze blew as he took his first step outside.
The wind made his short hair sway; he covered his face with an arm as he felt a faint prickling in his eyes.
Then, the wind stopped, he felt grass under his bare feet, and his breath caught a bit as he spotted the silver-haired girl in the garden, making his heart leap for joy.
“Ahh, she really is so radiant.”
Well, this is a nice touch, he thought, internally pouring out a string of invectives at the cheeky guardian
of the archive.
“—Subaru!”
Upon noticing Subaru, the girl’s violet eyes opened wide as she urgently rushed to his side. Those three bell-like syllables pouring from her lips were in the highest pitch she could make.
Subaru spontaneously shifted his feet toward the fast-approaching girl. As she gazed at him from head to toe, the corners of her eyes descended in relief. But she immediately snapped back to her senses and returned to her normal look.
“Don’t make me worry like that. Ram and Rem were really worked up, running all around the mansion making a big fuss because you ran off right after you woke up.”
“Rare for them to get that worked up, huh. And sorry. Beatrice held me up for a bit.”
“Again? I heard she picked on you once already before I got up, but…”
As Emilia’s beautiful face drew near with an expression of concern, her defenseless look made Subaru reach out his hand to her, as if his own weak heart were trying to cling to her for support.
But it was far too abrupt a place for it. If he did that, calming down in the archive would lose all meaning. It wasn’t his goal to make a scapegoat out of Beatrice.
All Subaru could do, seeing Emilia’s anxious face, was respond with a vague expression.
It wasn’t very Subaru-like behavior, but Emilia’s formality didn’t permit her to dig much deeper.
Of course it didn’t. Emilia hadn’t spent a single hour with this Subaru since meeting him; there was no way she could know that.
The four carefree days Subaru and Emilia had spent together had been tossed into the gutter; four carefree days that had really happened, that Subaru knew but Emilia did not.
“What is it? Is there something on my face?”
“Yeah, there are cute eyes, nose, ears, and mouth all over your face… Er, I’m glad that you’re all right.”
Emilia’s face, scowling as if to complain about the initial sweet talk, immediately nodded at the last part.
“Yes, I’m quite all right, because you protected me. How about your condition, Subaru?”
“Ah, all good, all good. Thanks to blood loss, mana drain, and the shock from when I woke up, I’m a bit weak and my mind feels like it’s been beaten with a bat, but I’m feeling good!”
“I see, that’s won— Eh? That sounds like you’ve been taking a beating all over…”
“I’m fine. See?”
He spread out both arms and turned all around to show Emilia that he was in good health.
He did seem to be returning to top form, bit by tiny bit. The gears were turning, the tongue was moistening the lips; he had to start being Subaru Natsuki.
“Well, that’s fine and good… Er, are you going back to the mansion? I have a little bit of business, actually.”
“Ah, chat time with the spirits, huh? I won’t be in the way, so can I stay? And lend Puck to me, would you?”
Emilia tilted her head and spoke as if speaking down to a child.
“That’s fine, but you really have to stay out of the way. This isn’t a game.”
Emilia’s sisterly behavior was just so adorable that it made Subaru’s spirit burn with determination.
“Okay, Emilia-tan, let’s get this show on the road! Time is short, the world is big, and our tale has just begun!”
“I suppose s… Eh? What did you say just now? Where did this ‘tan’ come from…?”
“It’s okay, just go with the flow!”
With Emilia expressing surprise at his intimate pet name, he pushed on her back as both headed to that spot in the garden.
Her losing the will to keep “correcting” him and grudgingly accepting how he spoke to her had been one of the bonds built up between them during those four lost days. Emilia still wore a face of resistance as Subaru walked behind her and murmured very quietly.
“—We’ll get them back.”
As they stopped, he gazed at her long silver hair, and then shifted his eyes to the sky.
—He spitefully looked at the sun rising in the low sky of the east.
This and four more and he’d be right at the appointed hour.
All he needed to fulfill the promise with this girl like the moon was to greet the arrival of the sun.
—He had time. And he knew what the answer would be.
“I dunno who’s got it in for me, but I’m gonna take it all back and make you cry. Don’t underestimate how tenacious I can be after I fell madly in love with the smile I saw that night.”
He shook a fist toward the sky and declared war to no one in particular.
It was Subaru’s first declaration of open defiance at the “summons” and “loop” that had brought him to that world.
He had begun his battle against the second loop. All so that he could move past his week at Roswaal Manor and learn how those days would continue.
And to protect and fulfill the promise he had made that night—
3
Subaru’s caustic words to the rising sun raised the curtain for his second “first day” at Roswaal Manor.
All he had to do was see the sun rise five times.
Subaru’s plan was to spend the intervening time doing the same things to the fullest extent possible.
In accordance with his resolution in the garden, Subaru’s final objective was to fulfill the promise he’d made to Emilia on the final day. To do that, he had to get to that fourth night and make that promise once more.
This was because he’d concluded that loops were, to a certain degree, set in stone. If he followed the same path, the story would “conclude” at the same place.
If things followed the same flow as before, it was a natural result. Factoring in the thought processes and behavior patterns of the people involved, things would surely head to the same place. To Subaru, the important thing was to redo everything and change up only the end result. That was the best way to proceed he could think of.
In other words, the best way to reach his objective was to see the loop through. With sublime mischief, Subaru resolved to save and load his way forward, leading events to the conclusion he desired.
“So, what is this…? Did I mess up somewhere…?”
In the steamy bath, Subaru opened his mouth wide and blew bubbles as he looked back on his first day.
As far as his plan was concerned, everything after that moment of resolve that morning had been a complete disaster.
First, he’d finished his daily morning routine with Emilia and awaited Roswaal’s return to the manor before speaking to him in the dining hall.
Put bluntly, he didn’t have confidence he could reproduce all the fine points of an in-depth conversation, but surely he’d touched on all the high notes from last time. He’d got to touch Puck as a reward, addressed Emilia like a friend, discussed Emilia’s candidacy for the royal succession, and determined where he stood in relation to Roswaal Manor.
Just as before, Subaru had charmed his way into becoming an apprentice servant at Roswaal Manor. Afterward, he’d gone off with Ram to be shown around the manor and begin his first day of work, but that’s when things went off the rails.
Subaru, his face the only part not submerged in the bath, let his chin ride upon the water of the tub as he murmured with dismay.
“Then why was everything different from last time? I feel like a student who went through all the trouble of writing cheat sheets when they changed all the subjects on the test… What was the point of redoing it?”
Subaru’s whole plan had been to redo everything exactly as he’d done before. However, the details of the training for his new post and the duties Ram had imposed on him were completely different from before. He felt like it went from Odd Jobs 101 to Odd Jobs 401.
“They were still all odd jobs, but…there was waaaay more to them than last time.”
Perhaps he needed to look at it as trusting him with higher-level work and more of it?
“Last time everything just ran me ragged, but this time it was hard as nails… D
amn, I thought it was gonna be easy, all the same stuff.”
Subaru was not merely venting complaints at his expectations being so cruelly disappointed. He’d decided he really wasn’t in a good situation.
This was the result of his trying to spend his time like before. With so many details of his first day altered, he could not rationally expect things would be like last time on the second and following days.
Overlooking the fine details, he was terrified that a much larger problem might yet rear its head.
“I still don’t have any real clue why I went back this time around…”
This time, he’d gone to sleep “normally” and woke up having gone back in time. Unlike the death loop he had been in before, he had no way to avoid something he couldn’t anticipate. Just the thought of it made his head hurt.
“With this many differences, can I rely on my memory at all…?”
He thought back to that fateful day when he met Emilia in the capital.
A mountain of little details differed, but things were still proceeding in largely the same direction. He didn’t know how to escape from the big event. The only thing that stood out differently from the last time in Subaru’s mind was the promise he’d made with Emilia.
Surely, if he made it that far, he’d be able to change the results and get past this.
Subaru sank into the bathtub, put his thoughts in order without a breath of oxygen, and poked his head out of the bathtub once more.
“Well, hello. Maaay I join you?”
The sight of the bare-naked nobleman before him, hands on his hips, made Subaru deeply regret that he required air.
They were close enough to touch as he stood in the nude, his crown jewels swaying between his legs as he looked down at Subaru.
“It’s currently occupied. I refuse.”
“The facilities in my own manor are my personal belongings, are they nooot? Allooow me to freely enjoy them.”
“Then don’t ask. You don’t need my permission to get in the tub!”
“Oh my, so haaarsh. You do not understand. The bath is certainly my personal possession…”
Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-, Vol. 2 Page 10