Emilia was stroking Subaru’s head. Her cheeks were red as she grinned.
“Oh, Subaru, you stroke my hair once in a while, don’t you? So I should return the favor.”
“”
“To tell you the truth, I was really scared. I was scared Subaru didn’t love me to the bottom of his heart, that he’d come to hate me. So I was scared, came here, but it didn’t work out after all… That’s why I’m truly, truly happy that you came, Subaru.”
It wasn’t an answer to his question. But Emilia was staring at Subaru with sincerity. There was nothing reflected in those eyes save Subaru; there was only Subaru and Subaru alone.
That was why—
“Stay with me forever? As long as you’re with me, I don’t need anything else—”
—In his wildest dreams, he’d never imagined how frightening the eyes of an Emilia blind with love could be.
“At first, I was really scared, you see. It was really hard. I mean, I wasn’t able to do anything right at all, and I thought, Subaru’s going to get fed up with me like this.”
“But I thought right after, this is no good. I can’t just be soft, shake in fear and let someone else take care of everything… This was really stupid of me, too, huh? I mean, I finally realized that you’ve always been taking care of everything, Subaru.”
“I remembered your words, Subaru. They’ve come up over and over till now. You’ve been telling me them ever since the first time we met. You’ve been giving me courage, urging me onward, supporting me… I remember, that you’ve said you love me…”
“I finally realized that you’ve always come through for me in really big ways. But in spite of that, you not being here made me worried; I felt like it would crush me…”
“That’s why when I saw Subaru coming to me now, I felt my chest squeezing… It got hot, too hot to endure, I thought; this might be a dream, but no, it’s not… I’m sorry, I don’t even know what I want to say anymore. Er, erm… I want to say this properly, so…”
“I’m sorry for everything up to now, Subaru. I, did a horrible thing to you. It has to be really something to have someone always thinking of you like this… I’m so self-serving. Even though I thought I want to understand Subaru more, I don’t understand you at all.”
“But it’s different now. I’ve been thinking about you all this time, Subaru. I’ve been feeling all these things. Now I want to say all the things to you that you’ve been saying to me… Mmm, I’m so sorry. This is really unfair of me. I—I need to properly say these things.”
“I need to properly…mm, properly convey them.”
“Hey, Subaru. I love you. I really love you. When I think about you, when I think only of you, I want to be with you forever. That’s what I think.”
“I’d be happy if…you think about me the same way, Subaru…”
“Eh-heh-heh. Yeah, yeah… I love you. Subaru…I really love you.”
4
“—What, the hell do ya think you’re thinkin’, aaah?”
When Subaru stood at the entrance of the tomb, he was greeted by Garfiel’s voice, brimming with rage.
The menace of the snow had not abated. The strength of the wind blowing it had increased, mercilessly piling up the snow that progressively blotted out the Sanctuary’s original landscape. As a resident, it was natural for him to harbor anger at the spectacle. And it was unreasonable for him to not harbor anger toward Subaru as well.
—For having left the girl, presumably the cause of that snow inside, Subaru had come out alone.
“Alone, alone…alone?! What about the Princess…the half-demon?! What about the damned snow?!”
“Emilia ain’t comin’ out. She’s sleeping inside right now.”
“Sleeping ya say? This ain’t time for slackin’ off like…”
“She’s exhausted. Since last night, she’s been repeating the Trial over and over. Her body and mind are… Her mind in particular is worn down. Right now, I want to just let her rest.”
Stubbornly believing it to be the best way to break the situation open, Emilia had challenged the Trial a number of times. Unable to surpass it even so, it wasn’t hard for him to imagine her mental state as the number of those challenges piled up.
After all, Subaru had felt the same sense of powerlessness as many times as he had tasted death.
—Inside the stone room, with Subaru’s jacket over her, Emilia was peacefully asleep.
His memories of her whispers of blindly devoted love and the heat of her body’s clingy embrace were still fresh. These filled him with enough feelings of love to make the blood plasma in Subaru’s body boil and enough regret to make him want to die.
The memory of the redness of Emilia’s cheeks, the quivering of her lips, and her whispers of love to Subaru came back over and over.
No one could understand how Subaru had agonized over the prospect of falling into that softness, drowning in it, and sinking down with Emilia together.
There was no reason for anyone to blame him. This was a world that was already done for. It was a platform of bubbles set to disappear. Just who could blame Subaru for choosing comfort and pulling the curtain down over them?
“So ya left the half-demon, and the snow ain’t endin’. Ya come back empty-handed with your head down, and what, ya think I’m just gonna accept that, huh? Hey, hey, just who do ya think ya are, huh?”
Still angry, Garfiel clacked his fangs, storming his way up to the tomb. With Subaru standing right before him at the entrance, the pupils of his jade eyes spoke of danger as they narrowed.
“So what kind of excuse did ya bring to tell me, aaah?”
“—Emilia. She said that she loves me.”
“”
As Garfiel emphasized and asserted his anger, Subaru’s rebuttal was way out in left field. It was so unexpected that Garfiel could only gape wide-eyed at him.
However, he immediately bared his fangs, the notion that he was being mocked igniting his anger.
“Looks like it ain’t just the half-demon; ya just love gettin’ on my nerves, too, don’t ya! Got a lot of guts talkin’ about stupid, shitty sweet nothin’s of love in a situation like this, don’t ya, aaah?!”
Filled with heat from his swelling anger, Garfiel was making the snow touching him evaporate. His fangs made a creaking sound as they elongated, and his body, on the verge of transfiguration, swelled to twice its size.
Though his eye caught that harbinger of transfiguration, Subaru’s expression did not waver.
All he did was stare at the angry Garfiel with his right eye alone as he continued to speak.
“Emilia said she loves me. She said to me if I was there with her, it was enough.”
“Why you…”
“She said with a cute face, a sweet voice, right by my side… Enough, it was enchanting.”
“I’m sayin’, what of it?! One glance was all it took to tell the half-demon had a thing for ya! The hell does it matter now! Ya want me to crush your head in my fa—”
“—There’s no way Emilia would tell me she loves me, goddamnit!!”
“—?!!”
As Garfiel howled, Subaru thrust his face into Garfiel’s and shouted.
The explosion of emotion made even the angry Garfiel forget himself and shut his mouth. Glaring at the reeling Garfiel, Subaru’s face fell apart as he screamed.
He cast the words exchanged in the tomb, the heat from their touching, the affirmed feelings of love to the wind.
He felt their loss. There was no way he could not. He couldn’t help but regret the loss of the words, the heat, and the emotions of love he had received. But Subaru could not become deft enough to pretend to be deceived by a false gemstone.
—If he was deft enough to play the fool and call it quits, his chest would not be filled with such pain.
“Like hell she’d say that to me. Emilia telling me she loves me…relying on me, leaving everything to me, say if I’m there she doesn’t need anything else… No way in h
ell.”
“Th-the heck are ya tryin’ to say…”
“Telling me ‘everything’ like that… There’s no way. And if Puck was by her side, there’s no way she’d rely on me in a way like that…!”
He did not know just how much he desired to be Emilia’s number one. But he was not so self-conceited as to believe he was Emilia’s number one that very moment. Her number one, the place in which she laid her greatest trust, was the little cat spirit, even then her one and only family.
With that same Puck absent, Subaru had stepped up to serve as his stand-in, nothing more.
That confession of love, those hot fingertips, and her trembling breaths—he didn’t want to think that they were all false.
—But they were not genuine. If they weren’t genuine, he couldn’t accept them.
“Someone’s driven that girl…driven her into a corner until she ended up like that. Drove that girl’s heart into a corner enough to make a situation like this, where she has to depend on someone like me…”
“Y-you’re the one who decided to do that, damn it…! So what, she made it snow like this for payback for all her failures?! She’s sayin’ it’s me and the old hags’ ’n’ geezers’ fault?!”
As if chewing down on Subaru’s words, Garfiel brushed the snow aside and grabbed Subaru by the collar. He shoved him against the wall behind him by brute force, and an anguished groan trickled out of Subaru’s throat.
“Like I know or care what made her lash out! Bring the half-demon out! If ya can’t even do that…”
“Bring Emilia out and make it stop snowing…? No can do. I mean…”
“Ya mean what?!”
“—I mean, it won’t help because Emilia’s not the one making this snow fall.”
Subaru’s confident declaration made Garfiel’s grip on his collar relent.
With Garfiel gazing straight at him with a dumbfounded look, Subaru continued.
“The situation’s all wrong. The snow and Emilia… If she was holed up in the tomb, the timeline for making the snow fall is all messed up. If Emilia did make the snow fall, what’s her reason?”
“Th-that’s…payback against me, the old hags, and geezers…”
“Why would Emilia want payback against you? That’s just weird. You hold animosity for Emilia right now because the snow’s falling. The snow, being backed into a corner… The timing doesn’t match up.”
The situation had been warped from the beginning. He could only think that someone had set it up that way.
Someone in the Sanctuary was controlling the situation, hiding Subaru’s letter, inducing Emilia to hole herself up in the tomb, and stirring up Garfiel’s anger against her.
And as for who that someone was—he had a single guess.
“When it comes to people who can make it…who can control the weather, I have two suspects only. But Emilia can’t do it. Without Puck here, she can’t do something on that scale.”
“You’re sure of that…?”
“…A deduction with my own optimism mixed in, I suppose. I want to believe it, that’s all. Even if she’s desperate, Emilia’s not the kind of girl who can do something like this. That’s just what I want to believe.”
“Just want to believe…”
Subaru’s repeated pleas made Garfiel close his eyes and sink into thought. But his internal conclusion was soon in coming. Garfiel removed the hand gripping the collar, freeing Subaru from his grasp.
When Subaru’s feet touched the ground, he lightly stroked his throat and nodded toward Garfiel.
“—Where’s Roswaal?”
“The bastard’s in the old hag’s house. Ram was supposed to go there and get ’im, but…can’t expect much from her at a time like this.”
When one searched for suspects fulfilling the same conditions, only one name fit the bill of a mastermind. Garfiel had easily accepted the notion, perhaps because doubts about Roswaal had been growing inside of him as well.
“Ram’s…”
“Shaddap. Even against the girl I’ve fallen for, what I gotta do don’t change.”
If Roswaal was the mastermind, the loyalties of Ram, his faithful retainer, came into question as well. With a low growl, Garfiel’s statement interrupted Subaru voicing his concerns about that.
Subaru envied that resolve. Unyielding before the possibility the girl he’d fallen for might prove his enemy, he had the heart of steel Subaru wished he had.
Besides, setting Roswaal aside, it still wasn’t clear where Ram stood in Subaru’s book.
Going by his relationship with Ram to that point and her actions during those repeated worlds in the Sanctuary, he had a deduction that bordered on hope, but—
“—Hearing the answer is the last thing on my to-do list in this world.”
Subaru murmured that quietly, so that the spirited Garfiel might not hear it.
5
“My, my, it is quite rare to see such faces put together with such interesting tiiiiming, is it not?”
Roswaal smiled amusedly at the unexpected arrival of his guests.
His heavily wounded body wrapped in bandages, Roswaal was lying sideways on his bed in the room allotted to him, his face bearing the makeup of a clown as per usual—and before this man they had eyed as the mastermind stood Subaru and Garfiel side by side.
The expressions on both their faces were fairly severe, and anyone inside the room could tell that a palpable sense of tension was filling up the room. In spite of this, Roswaal was calm; if anything, he was in a rather good mood as he spread both hands apart.
“So a pair of youths have come to cart off a heavily wounded man during such a tremendous snowfall… Although I must somewhat question your choice of personnel. Judging from that left eye, you are quite a gravely woooounded man as well?”
“Cut the taunts, Roswaal. This guy and I both know darn well that’s the kind of guy you are…but under certain circumstances, whether that’s allowable changes. Like now.”
“Seeing the two of you standing side by side, such words become truly persuaaasive…”
Saying this, Roswaal shifted taunting eyes toward Garfiel, standing right beside Subaru. He, standing in front of the room’s entrance to seal it off, crinkled his nose sourly.
“Like he just said. Changes with the circumstances. Me, if I don’t find out for sure who’s my enemy and who ain’t, I won’t know who to grind into mincemeat.”
“What a barbaric thing to say… In the end, Garf is Garf, I suppose?”
As Garfiel made a low growl, Ram, standing in a corner of the room, sighed toward him. Just as they’d figured at the tomb, she was indeed waiting at Roswaal’s side, even amid that snowfall.
And from the very fact she was there, Ram was a partner in Roswaal’s schemes—perhaps not all of them, but there could be no doubt she shared in part of them. The problem lay in the true intent behind those schemes.
Just what was Roswaal’s objective, and why was Ram cooperating with him?
“Don’t butt in, Ram, not this time. Me, I don’t wanna turn my claws against ya.”
“Should there be rudeness toward Master Roswaal, Ram will stand before him. It all depends upon you, Garf.”
“Calm yourselves, both of you. That of course goes for Garfiel, but you too, Ram. For the moment, do as he says and be silent. —Those are words that should be saved for the proper moment.”
“He has spoken. Be grateful for Master Roswaal’s benevolence.”
With a haughty, audible snort, Ram took a step back, suspending her role as attending servant. Garfiel went “Keh,” clicking his tongue as he said, “Puttin’ Ram aside, me, I’ve got no reason to listen to your words and calm down or anythin’ like it. Watch how ya talk to me. Dependin’ on what ya say, my claws might end up turned against one of ya.”
“Can you stop including me as a potential target for violence like it’s supernatural? Geez, you’re still doubting me?”
“Ya’ve got your own mountain of suspicious thing
s to spare, damn it. Witch-smellin’ lunatic.”
They harbored suspicions toward the same person but whether they shared comradery was a different issue altogether. Subaru didn’t trust Garfiel on all fronts, either. They both had claws pointing at each other.
Then, upon the exchange between the pair, Roswaal closed one eye, the world reflecting in his yellow pupil as he said, “Setting a bedridden man like me aside, you should not look upon good Subaru too lightly, Garfiel. If the two of you clash, it is by no means guaranteeeed that the odds of victory are invariably in your favor.”
“He’s missin’ one eye. How could he win? Ya got holes in your eyes? If he heard all the fights I’ve won, he’d be smacked senseless.”
“Is that so? If the proper conditions were aligned, I do not think his chances of victory are quite so poooor…”
As Roswaal narrowed his eye, Subaru could only agree that he must have a hole in it. Since being summoned to that other world, Subaru’s individual combat exploits were limited to one victory by three surprise blows.
Of course, it was futile even trying to compare Garfiel to three punks in a back alley.
“—!! Enough of this! I didn’t come ’cause I wanted to talk about crap like that! Are ya both asleep?! The old hags are out there, shiverin’ and waitin’!”
To cut off that futile line of conversation, Garfiel stomped the heel of his shoe onto the wooden floor. As the impact sent wood dust spreading within the room, Subaru closed his eye to the angrily snarling Garfiel.
Garfiel was right to be angry. Subaru had left Emilia at the tomb. Surely everyone present knew there was no time for taking it easy.
Accordingly, Subaru took a deep breath, opening his right eye. Catching Roswaal in his field of vision, he—
“You’re the one who made the snow fall here in the Sanctuary, aren’t you, Roswaal?”
—cut straight to the heart of the matter.
“”
Roswaal was silent in the face of Subaru’s question. But the smirk vanished from his lips.
He’d caught a glimpse of the true face under the mask of makeup that he’d kept up until the moment prior. Coming from him, that was more proof than anything that Subaru was on the money.
Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-, Vol. 12 Page 17