Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-, Vol. 12

by Tappei Nagatsuki

  However, there was a clear difference between the two. An unbridgeable gap existed between the positions from which they obeyed their magic tomes.

  Petelgeuse interpreted incomplete prophecies on his own, following the tome’s notations while adjusting to changing events on the fly.

  Roswaal strictly observed the notations in his tome, permitting no inconsistency with them, not even if events had to be redone as a consequence.

  Both fully intended on obeying their tomes, but their motivations and methodologies seemed completely different.

  And with Roswaal willing to use even Return by Death for the sake of his tome, Subaru was in an even worse position with him than Petelgeuse.

  —Just what was Roswaal’s objective, making him resort to such extremes?

  If Roswaal’s magic tome said to bring the current incidents in the Sanctuary and at the mansion to an end, he’d repeat those tragedies any number of times until things went to his liking.

  If that was so, why not just kneel on the ground and have Roswaal tell Subaru what was in the magic tome? Why not just make a firm promise to obey the notations, exhausting his strength until Roswaal’s wish was granted?

  But as a result of obeying the notations of the magic tome, Roswaal had made the snow fall on the Sanctuary. The snowy landscape had made people suspect Emilia, and her isolation was what caused her so much distress.

  If that was Roswaal’s…if that was the magic tome’s desire, then Subaru absolutely could not obey.

  Subaru’s and Roswaal’s goals were incompatible.

  To Subaru, risking his life to carry everything in his arms, Roswaal had spoken.

  —Strip away everything except that which is truly important to you, he’d said.

  He had also said that in doing so, Subaru would become like him. Not that Subaru wanted to resemble the man even slightly, but it was clear that Roswaal was acting in accordance with those words, up to and including throwing away his own life.

  Strictly obeying his book, he’d isolated Emilia, and Roswaal was firm in the belief that if he reached the conclusion the magic tome desired, he’d be able to protect the one thing that was truly important to him.

  All of Roswaal’s actions were for the sake of that. If so, Subaru had but one reply.

  “Let everything else go, my ass. No way in Hell.”

  He wouldn’t let Emilia be hurt—nor Rem, nor Ram, nor Petra, nor Otto, nor Frederica, nor the people of Earlham Village, nor the residents of the Sanctuary, nor Ryuzu, nor even Garfiel.

  If even one of them were to fall, Subaru’s small world would become a dreary one. To the greedy, self-centered Subaru, that was something he could not endure.

  “Roswaal, I—won’t become like you.”

  To make this declaration true, Subaru had to find an answer that defied the magic tome.

  He could rely on no one. Subaru worried, lived, and struggled alone.

  But if there was someone somewhere Subaru might rely upon—

  “Can I depend on you again…?”

  —There was only one Witch in that world to whom Subaru could confide his troubles.

  3

  Subaru quickened his legs, his impatience difficult to endure.

  After returning with Emilia, who finished her attempt to clear the Trial at the tomb, the usual review meeting at the Ryuzu residence had also been concluded. With the Sanctuary sunken deep into the dead of night, Subaru was earnestly running alone.

  Put bluntly, Subaru didn’t remember much of the contents bounced around the review meeting. But he probably didn’t need to remember to have a full grasp of the contents.

  This time, Emilia was distraught over the past. Therefore, with clumsy explanations and it being clear at a glance she was forcing herself, she tearfully vowed to challenge her nightmare again tomorrow and thereafter.

  Subaru respected her sense of duty and the nobility of her resolve. —But she would fail. This he knew.

  Accordingly, Subaru consoled the hurt Emilia, gently encouraged her, and saw her off to bed. After that, when Ram went to call him for his promised talk with Roswaal, Subaru brushed her off and rushed out of the house.

  Breath ragged, brow sweaty, he headed straight toward the Witch’s moonlit tomb—there lay the key to dealing with the situation, and even if not, there rested an ally with whom he could resolve some of the issues that troubled him.

  He was worried that he’d be stopped as he ran to the tomb, but fortunately neither Ryuzu, nor Garfiel, nor Roswaal had interrupted his decisive move.

  —That night, for the second time, the third if counting during the day, he charged toward the tomb.

  “”

  Arriving at the entrance, Subaru got his breathing under control in the corridor filled with cool, serene air. With the Trial having already finished for that evening, it was no longer illuminated by the light that welcomed the qualified challengers. Even so, he squinted, searching for the entrance to the castle of dreams that ought to have been there.

  His vision was too poor to locate the door to that place. But the Witch had certainly spoken those words…

  “If you have the desire to know…”

  Echidna had said that this was the condition to be invited to the Witch’s Tea Party once more.

  Also that his voice had to be not only equal to but rise higher than at the time of his second invitation, when his entire body had been bitten away by demon beasts.

  Did pain and fear even exist that could exceed what he had experienced then, enough to drive him mad?

  —It did. The voice with which he cried out this time, for liberation from that dead end, rivaled that.

  “”

  The things he wanted to know, to ascertain, to mull over together were as innumerable as the stars.

  As bottomless emotions smoldered quietly in his eyes, Subaru’s footsteps echoed as he advanced down the corridor. With the chill permeating his body, it was dozens of seconds later when he arrived at the stonework room enveloped in a pale light.

  Nearly one short hour before, he had left this place, Emilia in tow—and it had also been nearly one short hour since Subaru had died in that place and that the world had restarted through Return by Death.

  In that place of Subaru’s anguish, Subaru’s death and resurrection, he yearned for an audience with the Witch.

  “Please call me, Echidna…!”

  He’d thrown his life away over and over. If casting away his pride as well was sufficient, he’d offer even that.

  For displaying his pathetic nature with all his strength was all the ignorant, powerless Subaru Natsuki was capable of.

  “”

  Kneeling in the center of the stonework room, Subaru offered up his prayer, his wish to be reunited with the Witch.

  In the back of his mind, he drew a portrait of a white-haired Witch, lining up his own emotions to make them a chorus with which to call out to her, fervently seeking the optimal possibility to bring those intertwined futures close.

  Desperately, he sought her out.

  With all his spirit, he craved.

  And as he continued doing nothing but wish, droplets of sweat dripped from his brow.

  —A moment later.

  “—Uu.”

  Abruptly, Subaru saw a white light in the back of his closed eyelids. The hallucination—no, this was no hallucination.

  Before he realized it, his kneeling body had come to lie on the ground. Unable to move his limbs, his lips were not even free to gasp at whatever might be happening. His consciousness was being peeled away from reality.

  It was the situation he’d desired. He was invited to the castle of dreams—and so Subaru felt gratitude toward the unexpected omen.

  As Subaru’s consciousness grew hazy, he was relieved that there was a finger pointing the way to a heretofore closed future—

  “—Behold the unknowable present.”

  The instant his consciousness vanished, he felt like he heard such a whisper.

/>   4

  Subaru’s emotions rocked back and forth in a way that made him feel drunk.

  He didn’t know what had happened. His consciousness had given out, and after that, his awakening was sudden.

  It resembled the confusion linked to the sudden shift between times present and past when Return by Death activated. His brain was in chaos when suddenly dealing with the difference between the world from the moment prior and the world that instantly appeared at that moment.

  When he realized it was a confusion that he was already familiar with, recovery was an easy feat.

  Taking a long, deep breath, he first told his racing thoughts and beating heart to calm down. —But he did not feel the mouth, the throat, or the lungs necessary to take that deep breath.

  “—?”

  With a hand, he tried to confirm that the parts he couldn’t feel were actually there. He could not touch them. The reason was simple: He couldn’t feel his hand, either. —No, it wasn’t just his hand. His head, his body—that moment—they did not exist for Subaru.

  —All he had was his consciousness; he existed as consciousness alone.

  Subaru’s consciousness was alone in the sky, an existence that retained only his vision from his commanding view of the world.

  The unnatural lack of his flesh and blood generated a new kind of confusion. However, by thinking of the nonexistent organs and remembering the concept of a deep breath, he instilled an imitation of calm into his heart.

  Brushing aside his bewilderment and his sense of intoxication, he earnestly strove to grasp the present circumstance. —Beneath those thoughts, Subaru sought to ascertain where he was and what he was doing.

  “—aru.”

  Abruptly, there was a voice. It was a broken, small voice.

  It was such a frail voice that it was difficult to hear just what it had said.

  And yet, Subaru instinctively knew.

  —This was a voice to which he must not listen, must not notice: a voice he must ignore.

  However, that was not possible.

  Without a body, Subaru was not permitted to turn his head aside or even to close his eyes.

  He was permitted nothing, save to watch the scene from so very close, to burn it into his consciousness.

  He was a fool. He should have welcomed the confusion. That intoxication was the mercy of God himself—

  “Liar…liar, liarliarliarliarliarliar…!”

  As the word repeated itself, he heard clearly what he initially could not; the voice became more apparently tearful.

  It was a painful sight. He could hear the unendurable misery in the voice. Among the sufferings of that world, to lend his eyes to this, for his ears to hear this, that was what he had feared most.

  Why was he here? Why did he notice that he was there?

  He’d failed. He’d miscalculated. He’d made a mistake. His judgment had been faulty. He should not have noticed. It was not for him to know. It was not something he ought to have learned. After all—

  —If only I hadn’t thought there’s no way that could happen.

  “Liar, liar! Subaru…you liar! You liar—!!”

  Tears poured out of her purple eyes like a faucet, Emilia crumpling as she yelled in a shrill voice.

  She shouted as if accusing him of betrayal, as if a nightmare had appeared before her very eyes, her long hair swaying about like that of a child. Emilia cried and shouted as if she had gone mad.

  On the bed, lying beside Rem, was Subaru, dead from running a short blade through his own throat.

  5

  —What the hell am I seeing right now?

  “”

  Crying and crying, Emilia continued calling out Subaru’s name over and over.

  Her laments were futile, for Subaru, blood-ridden and lying stomach down on the bed, did not even twitch.

  Of course not. That Subaru was already nothing save a corpse.

  The dead Subaru had become a ghost, looking down upon the Subaru that was no longer anything but an empty shell. It was immeasurably repulsive. Never had he known a more terrifying scene.

  Even Subaru, whose deaths had already exceeded ten, never once had such a commanding view of his own death.

  He was experiencing something as never before: Emilia grieving over him.

  “”

  He gazed upon the furniture of the room, the various people assembled in that place, and at the sight of him pathetically dead and the cause of that death.

  Urgently tying those things together, comprehension struck Subaru like a lightning bolt as to exactly when this scene must have taken place.

  It was after Petelgeuse Romanée-Conti, the Archbishop of the Deadly Sins, had been dispatched and Emilia saved from the Cult. This was the outcome of Subaru’s quick-tempered action when he first learned that Rem was lost to him.

  After riding to the capital, only to learn that all memory of Rem, attacked by the Witch Cult, had been lost from the world, Subaru impulsively thrust a knife into his own throat, wanting with all his heart to bring Rem back.

  —Subaru’s rash wish was not granted. He tasted despair when he went back in time to a few scant seconds prior.

  The starting point for Return by Death had changed, which meant Subaru lost his means of saving Rem. Vowing not to give up on Rem even so, he swore in his heart to cheer Emilia on. But—

  “I didn’t know… I’ve never seen this before. I didn’t know… There’s no way I could have known!”

  It was a scene he had never beheld. After all, in that world, Subaru was already dead.

  Even with the power of Return by Death granted to him, he could knew nothing of what took place in a world after he had died. —No, he thought; that wasn’t true.

  To Subaru, who went back to do things over at the cost of his life, repainting the most awful of conclusions, a world where he had died represented nothing except a midway point on his journey toward the future that was his final destination.

  After all, if he didn’t think that way, if he didn’t see it that way, Subaru would…

  —Subaru Natsuki’s world would shatter.

  “Stop it. Stopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitpleasestopit…!”

  Unable to accept the scene playing out before his eyes, Subaru sent up an incoherent scream.

  However, his voice did not project from his throatless form, and he could not turn his eyeless face away, nor block out sound from his earless head. The end of that world was being inscribed into Subaru, now nothing save a consciousness.

  —This was punishment for the rash act Subaru had committed.

  “Lady Emilia! This is—”

  As he listened to Emilia’s voice cry and shout, someone rushed into the room with a sharp voice.

  He had white hair and wore a black butler’s outfit. This was the Crusch manor in the royal capital. Wilhelm the “Sword Devil,” who very much belonged there, took in the tragic scene, his eyes widening in horror.

  For his part, the consciousness-only Subaru was almost beside himself at the sight of the aged swordsman in shock. That was how much Wilhelm was thrown off balance by Subaru’s corpse lying before him.

  “Subaru… Subaruuu…you liar… You said we’d be together…”

  “What has happ— No, Lady Emilia, forgive me!”

  Emilia blamed him for his betrayal like she was casting a curse. Her sobbing voice pulling Wilhelm back to his senses, he gently peeled Emilia away as she clung to Subaru’s body. Emilia proceeded to wobble and fall onto the floor. But Wilhelm was more concerned with resuscitating Subaru than with her.

  “Ferris! Felix! Come quickly! It is urgent! Utmost urgency!!”

  Quickly stripping his jacket off and pressing it to the wound, Wilhelm forcefully shouted with a grave look on his face. Slamming Subaru’s chest in an attempt to coax his still heart to beat again, droplets of blood smeared his terrible visage.

  Too much blood had coursed out. A man who had seen as much death as the Sword De
vil surely knew Subaru’s soul was no longer present. Even so, his efforts to resuscitate Subaru did not relent.

  “Old Man Wil, why’re you raising your voice like… Eh?”

  “Felix, hurry! A blade has pierced his throat! Not a second to lose!”

  When Ferris appeared, Wilhelm instantly conveyed the facts in a sharp voice. Ferris enshrouded his palm with a blue luminance, and this great quantity of mana became healing power that he poured into the prone Subaru’s wound.

  As he attempted treatment, desperate concentration gripped Ferris like never before. Subaru’s consciousness lamented as he looked down, watching them attempt to resuscitate an empty, soulless shell.

  “Just stop already… It’s no use. It’s just no use. He’s already dead…”

  The result was already obvious. Subaru had died there.

  No matter how desperately they might try, no matter how much Emilia might cry, Subaru was dead.

  Thinking nothing of what would happen after his death, forgetting everything else, he’d selfishly died.

  “You will not perish! Absolutely not… As if I could let he who aided me die like this?!”

  “How could you, at a time like this…? Stop messing around, just stop it…!!”

  Wilhelm shouted as he compulsively applied pressure on the wound; Ferris’s voice trembled with anger as he employed the kindest magic in the world.

  The scene and the waves of emotion from both of them continued to crash against Subaru’s heart.

  But no matter how earnestly the pair might strive—

  “Felix! Why?! Why have you stopped the treatment! At this rate, he’ll…”

  “It’s over, Old Man Wil. —There’s nothing of the soul left here.”

  As Wilhelm drew close, Ferris shook his head, gently wiping with a handkerchief the wound that the jacket had plugged. The scar had been sealed so neatly that, as he wiped it, there was no sign of there ever having been a wound at all.

  But a great quantity of blood had flowed out, and the soul that had slipped out was nowhere to be found.

  “Why…why?!! Why, Sir Subaru…how could you do this so easily…!”

  Looking down upon Subaru’s dead face, Wilhelm formed a fist of regret, pounding it against the floor.