“What do you mean by that? What do you know…?”
He felt like she was avoiding something. Something really important.
Subaru urged Beatrice to share her true thoughts. But she moved her fingers from her hair to Subaru’s sleeve, tugging and gently pulling him to the ground as she extended her foot.
Subaru was in shock at how he seemed to flow right onto the ground. Beatrice tossed back her hair.
“Does it truly matter to you, I wonder? These last four days, you spent most of your time holed up in your room and had little contact with them. Would the older sister let you press her about these matters now? I think not. It has nothing to do with you.”
“It’s not like…!”
Like I don’t know anything about them, he would have said, but Subaru’s words died on his tongue.
His repeated loops had given him more than two weeks of time with them. Subaru could have responded that he’d forged memories with them during the time that this Beatrice knew nothing about, but he did not, for he suddenly realized something.
Subaru realized it was possible he knew nothing of Ram and Rem, not their true faces, their feelings, or the bond between them, just as Beatrice had stated.
Subaru wondered what he really had learned about them during those first three lives.
What was the point of Subaru feeling such loss and despair when he didn’t truly know anything about them? Was it all really just a bad dream?
What was it that Subaru could draw on to refute Beatrice, who looked sternly down at Subaru at that very moment? Or did Subaru not know anything, not a single thing, about the two of them?
Even though he’d thought of them as precious people he wanted to protect…
“So in the end, I got worked up and pathetic all on my own, not knowing, not understanding anything…?”
—It has nothing to do with you.
Subaru knew nothing. He’d beaten away all his chances. He had nothing left but the skin on his back.
Within the darkness covering his eyes, the memories of the days he’d spent at the manor broke apart, one by one, into dust. Subaru’s heart, too, shattered.
Lying on his back, Subaru put his palms to his face and wailed at his own powerlessness.
Had it all been a utopia beyond his reach from the beginning? Was everything Subaru had seen simply a dream, the time he’d spent there a mere illusion?
Subaru looked like he was about to break out in tears when Beatrice called to him.
“…How long are you going to stay like that, I wonder? Stand before she finds you.”
Impatient from Subaru still not moving, she roughly grabbed the palms covering his face and yanked them up.
As his field of vision opened, the lightweight girl used her entire weight to haul Subaru to his feet.
“—”
The sensation conveyed by her palms took away his thoughts.
Ignoring Beatrice’s intent in rousing Subaru so insistently, he felt her palms, weighing how they felt.
“H-hey. What do you think y— Why so interested in my palms, I wonder?”
“I’ve felt these hands before, just like this… Earlier, did you?”
“…I shall regret it for the rest of my days. Perhaps you were simply too wretched as you slept like that?”
Abruptly, Beatrice looked away, giving him only her cheek. Subaru flexed his hands several times, reflecting on the warm, peaceful sensation he’d felt from them while he slept.
—While Subaru had his nightmare. A dream with an agonizing sense of despair and loss, over and over again.
That hadn’t been the only time he’d felt warmth when in pain. It’d happened before—
“Back then…someone held both my hands…”
Beatrice suspiciously raised an eyebrow. Subaru brought not only his right hand before him but his left as well.
It was difficult for one person to hold both hands of someone who was asleep. He doubted a single person could lie on a bed alongside another and hold both hands without difficulty.
“—”
So why did he feel like both his hands had been held? The reason was simple.
“Ram. Rem.”
Both had held Subaru’s hands while he slept.
It had been here on the fourth loop, before anything had happened at Roswaal Manor. Seeing Subaru suffer as he slept, both of them had taken pity on him and given him some small measure of compassion.
“—”
I will kill you, the hate-filled voice had cried out, her rage pounding into him like a curse.
The cruel words had scarred his heart. But more than that…
“—Can’t you make the crying stop?”
It was Ram’s sad cry of despair at having her other half ripped from her that never left his ears.
Some corner of Subaru’s heart, which should have been shattered already, cried out.
—By nature, Subaru was the sort to pick the path of least resistance.
He didn’t want to feel pain, suffering, despair. Just the thought of living with such burdens made him want to run.
“What…stupid things am I thinking here…”
For he thought he didn’t want to run anymore. He wanted to do something.
“I lived this time and everything…”
His shameless plea to Beatrice had allowed him to reach the fifth day with ease. It was the thought of what had greeted him that very day that settled Subaru’s decision.
“That’s right. My life’s mine. That’s why—”
What was wrong with fighting for an easier, more enjoyable life?
“—I’ll decide how to use it.”
The moment Subaru said it, he crossed a line inside. There was no going back.
Beatrice furrowed her brows at Subaru’s words. However, before he could ask her why she was doing that, her eyes looked toward the forest, full of caution.
“—You dithered too much.”
Beatrice’s regret-tinged words came as the rustle of the wind through the forest’s trees deepened. Mixed with the sounds of the swaying leaves, the sound of footsteps reached Subaru’s ears, too.
He turned around. A girl with pink hair stood before him.
12
Ram, the forest at her back, glared at Subaru.
“I’ve finally found you—you will go no farther.”
Pain swept over Subaru’s heart as he beheld the look on Ram’s face, thick with hatred.
As she stood there, Ram had none of her usual meticulous look. Branches had torn and punctured her skirt; there was no sign of the headdress normally on her head. Her pink hair, buffered by the wind, had lost its usual beauty.
—The sisters dressed each other and did each other’s hair.
Subaru knew this. He remembered that they’d told him at some point.
He knew several other secrets between the two sisters.
“Would you relent, I wonder? So long as the pact is active, I cannot hold back against anyone.”
“Lady Beatrice, it is you who should stand aside. I cannot hold back against you, either.”
“A joke, I suppose. Did I hear you say to hold back in regards to me?”
“Perhaps you have forgotten you are not in the mansion, Lady Beatrice? Do you truly believe you can protect that man away from the archive, here in the forest?”
Subaru held his silence as the two girls continued to square off before him.
Beatrice’s words of regret proved that Ram’s words were no empty boast. Beatrice’s strength came with limitations, and this situation was beyond them.
Even so, Beatrice stubbornly refused to move, upholding her pact in front of Subaru.
From behind, Subaru reached out toward Beatrice. Then…
“Boing…”
He grabbed hold of the girl’s two ornate hair rolls and pulled on them, hard.
He let go. The large amount of hair bounced quite generously. Bouncy-bouncy—
“Mm, that felt pretty good.”<
br />
“W-w-w-wh…”
Her eyes wide open, her tongue quivering, Beatrice turned around, all flustered.
Subaru inclined his head slightly as he looked at her.
“Mm?”
“What are you doing, I wonder?! You have a death wish, I suppose?!”
“Don’t be silly. I don’t wanna die one tiny bit. When you die, it should be one time, to end your life for good. I truly believe that.”
As he spoke, he patted Beatrice on the shoulder and calmly walked past her.
Straight ahead, Ram glared at Subaru’s face with astonishment. As Subaru walked before her, she heightened her guard, exhaling from pursed lips.
“Quite some nerve. Finally resigned to your fate?”
“Not exactly. More like…I decided to do something.”
Not understanding Subaru’s intent, Ram scowled.
“—What?”
“Sorry. Because I was sloppy, I brought you girls so much sadness.”
“—! So you did do something to Rem…?!”
“No, sorry, but I honestly don’t know. There’s so much I don’t know. But…”
Subaru’s words trailed off as he took a moment to breathe.
“There’s so much I don’t know, but I think I know one thing now.”
“—What’s the point?!”
Ram shouted back, unable to accept Subaru’s display of resolve as anything but childish games.
Ram swung down a foot, kicking the earth like she was stamping her feet.
“Rem’s already dead! There’s no taking that back! What good is it that you know something now?!”
“I’m not gonna say I can do anything. It’s because I couldn’t do anything that things ended up like this. I know more than anyone that’s not gonna convince anyone.”
He wasn’t being defiant. Even now, regret deeply pierced his heart.
He hated himself for his own stupidity and weakness. If you could die from shame, he might have been dead already.
Still, his shameful behavior, his shameful living, his pathetic helplessness—these had brought him to this place.
And, thus, to his conclusion.
“And what is it you know about Rem and me?!”
“…You have a point. I don’t know any of the important stuff between you. But…”
Subaru had spent almost twenty days together with them. They didn’t know that, and he was unable to tell them.
But Subaru remembered.
Even if they had forgotten, Subaru’s soul remembered. He’d seen them. Laughed with them. Spent time with them.
The worlds Subaru had walked with Ram and Rem—those worlds really had existed.
Which was why—
“There’s no way you girls knew this, but…”
“What…”
“—I! Love! Both of you!”
The blunt, worrywart big sister.
The sarcastic, superficially polite little sister.
Subaru thought fondly of the days he had spent with both girls.
They were precious memories to him, even though they had killed him more than once.
Enough that, if he had the choice to spend time with them once more, that was a choice he would make.
Subaru’s shout made Ram open her eyes wide, freezing in shock.
Of course it did.
From Ram’s point of view, Subaru’s declaration was meaningless, empty nonsense.
Furthermore, he’d already abandoned them in an instant.
Ram’s thought process froze for only a moment. In the next instant, her body thawed and leapt into action.
But a momentary opening was an opening nonetheless.
“—!”
Subaru’s sprint was just a moment faster than Ram’s switch to anger-filled attacking.
Turning his back to Ram, Subaru rushed past Beatrice, his body moving like the wind—making a beeline toward the cliff.
“Wait—!”
Behind him, a girl’s high-pitched wail reached out.
Subaru’s mind never caught up to which girl’s voice it was.
He’d meant to be determined, but now his thought process was in tatters, like someone had clawed it apart.
His heart beat hard, but his body creaked all over, as if to betray his mind. His limbs felt like leaden weights.
He was running with all his might, but the world seemed to move in slow motion. It was as if Subaru’s mind were putting off the results of his change of heart as long as it possibly could.
—So stupid. He was conflicted even then.
He knew why. He’d tenaciously clung to living without shame to that point.
Even when he’d wanted to die, he’d chickened out in the end, able only to fall to his knees.
But Subaru could do it now.
“It’s rude to Beatrice, huh…”
With those words, Subaru voiced his final regret and left everything behind.
He raced to the cliff. A few steps more. He was too scared to count them. Pathetic. Insane. He had the urge to laugh. But he didn’t laugh. He couldn’t laugh.
All that he was leaving behind was a life of living death. To Subaru, giving up on a future in that place meant he’d already died inside.
If he could live as a dead man walking, he could do “something” with that life.
And that decision, to do something instead of doing nothing, was one only Subaru could make.
“—I’m the only one who can do it.”
His feet left the ground. He clawed at the air. He could touch nothing. He could reach nothing.
So fast. The wind was strong. His eyes hurt. His head hurt. The ringing in his ears was distant. He felt like he’d left behind his beating heart. He couldn’t hear the ringing. The ringing inside his skull was like a broken record.
If it ended with his death, that was that.
But if, if only he could go back, then…
For she had cried out, “I’ll kill you.”
If he could go back—
“—I’ll save you, I swear!”
The moment after he voiced his determination, his head smashed into the hard ground.
He heard the echo of something spectacularly breaking apart, and then nothing.
The hate-filled voice could not chase him any longer. Nothing could, not anymore—
13
—All that was there was “nothingness.”
Absentmindedly, he looked around the nothingness of his mind.
Perhaps looked around was not the proper phrase.
Eyes did not exist within his mind. Nor did hands, nor feet, nor any pieces of his body. All that remained was his incorporeal, floating mind.
Knowing nothing, aware of nothing, he looked about.
Darkness. A room with nothing.
A room that was a world without a floor or a ceiling, covered in pitch-blackness so great that it defied thought.
Suddenly, in the world of everlasting darkness, there was meaning.
A silhouette abruptly emerged in “front” of his mind.
The contours of the silhouette were slender and as pitch-black as the rest, the upper body more of a fog, rejecting his mind’s recognition.
With the emergence of the human shape, the mind gained its first strong desire.
He felt a breach in the cold as the shadow gently moved, as if to convey something to his mind.
He didn’t understand. He was aware of nothing.
But for some reason, his mind could not avert itself from the shadow—
“—I cannot meet you. Not yet.”
With that faint whisper, the dark world abruptly vanished, and in so doing, the shadow, and his mind, went with it.
AFTERWORD
Hello, Tappei Nagatsuki here; it’s been a while. Say hi to the gray cat over there.
Thank you very much for picking up this volume after the first. I do not think anyone out there is brave enough to pick up Volume 2 first, but to any such daredevi
ls, look at the shelf; Volume 1 should be right beside where you found this one. And if it’s not, just say to the sales staff, “There’s a first volume for this, right?” and order it. That’s one more sale for me!
There you go, direct stealth marketing to get Volume 2 buyers to pick up the whole series. You know how these things are—we always have to write cliff-hanger volumes and resolution volumes so we can go, “Continued in the next volume!” and all that.
This series will continue to have long stages where we go over things again and again. I think having fun with the changes that happen each time while bringing a resolution closer and closer is a good way to go.
Hey, don’t worry, this time the resolution volume, Volume 3, comes out just next month, yay!
Volume 2 brings an all-new cast of characters. I’m sure all the readers of the web-novel version were really looking forward to seeing them.
In particular, the maid sisters and the loli librarian are especially popular, and Otsuka-sensei really made them shine. Thanks to him, our heroines are marvelously lovely, and Ros comes off miraculously shady. Really, I can’t thank Otsuka-sensei enough.
Now, then, continuing from the games for Volume 1 and concerning the background behind the creation of this volume…
Personally, I’m very fond of stories with low-status, low-power males going through thick and thin, all for the sake of a girl. That’s why I started with a main character lacking in power: also knowledge, talent, caution, sensitivity, and good sense, with nothing special about him at all. As he lacks great power or even wealth, any reader can identify with him.
And so, the powerless main character who returns upon death is born. Our story is framed as our main character being flung around by a silver-haired heroine: a lovely, unattainable flower.
I worked out the background with input from a friend I’d known for ten years, hammering it out over the bar at a certain family restaurant, and expanded upon it until it became what you see today.
In other words, this series was created in late-night sessions at a restaurant, trading wild ideas with my buddy.
Since I’ve used up more than half my afterword on silly stuff, I’ll use the rest to give people proper thanks.
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