With his entire body and soul, Subaru remembered how slender her fingers were, how warm her skin was when she nestled close, and also the enormity of the love she had granted him.
That was why he could say, firmly, that the Rem before his eyes—was a fake.
“She’d never tell me rest well now.”
“”
“She’d never tell me to give up and leave all those things to Rem.”
“”
“Because by liking me, she made me like myself, because she’s gentle to me, because she loves me—in this world, there’s no one stricter, no one who’s less soft on me than Rem!!”
Seemingly bouncing to his feet, Subaru howled, putting distance between him and the Rem in front of him.
Still on her knees, Rem looked up at Subaru, speechless. But her expression was filled with sadness at Subaru’s rejection of her, seemingly ready to split apart at any moment.
“You are wrong. Please listen to me, Subaru! Rem—Rem is different. Rem just couldn’t watch Subaru in pain like that and wanted to help him… That is all!!”
“I’ll show you my weakness. I’ll show you my vulnerabilities. I’ll even show you how I’m a petty, irredeemable bastard. —But the one thing I won’t show you is me giving up.”
Rem had once said…Subaru was her hero.
And Subaru Natsuki had decided to be Rem’s hero.
Ever since the moment that promise was exchanged, Subaru Natsuki had decided.
—In that world, Subaru Natsuki would show his weakness to Rem alone.
Only before Rem, who knew Subaru was weak and yet believed he would overcome that and be strong, would Subaru display his weakness, concealing nothing.
He would not show that to anyone else, not even to Emilia, not even to Beatrice.
Subaru, who had to be strong, could not show his weakness to anyone save Rem.
“That’s because my weakness belongs to her. It’s because my Rem has my weakness covered up so tight that even if I might flirt with giving up, it never comes out.”
“”
“Get lost, fake. —Don’t get sweet on me with the face, with the voice of my Rem!!”
Declaring this, Subaru thrust a fist out toward Rem—toward the fake.
Subaru’s statement left the other party at a loss for words. She proceeded to lower her face, slowly, silently standing up then and there—
“Th-this isn’t…how it was…supposed to be?”
Tilting her little head, the girl’s blue hair swayed as she haltingly wove together the words.
The unfamiliar voice made Subaru’s breath catch when…
“Ah…?”
…before his eyes something occurred, like a television breaking into static in the dead of night. Off in the static, Rem’s form grew vague and melted away.
—Standing there was a girl he did not know.
21
What greatly resembled Rem in appearance alone vanished, and the face of an unfamiliar girl appeared in its stead.
The girl had long light pink hair and somehow gave off a fragile impression. Her face was very refined, but rather than standout beauty, what she possessed was an uncommonly adorable appearance.
A muffler was wrapped around her neck, long enough that its end seemed to touch the ground, matching the white clothing with sleeves long enough to cover her up to the wrists; from this, he inferred that she was highly averse to exposing of her skin.
In fact, Subaru’s gaze made her lower her face, as if she was fearful of the eyes of men.
“Who…the heck are you?”
“I’m C-Carmilla…? Th-the Witch of Lust… P-pleased to meet…you.”
The reply the girl—Carmilla—gave to his question made Subaru unwittingly suck in his breath.
Not that the absurd phenomenon hadn’t made him think it, but—
“This nonsensical space…it’s Echidna’s dream?”
“Close but…incorrect…I think. Echidna is watching the Trial, so…the Trial is always like a dream, so……yeah.”
“”
Carmilla had politely confirmed his speculation, but the gaze with which Subaru regarded her was harsh.
Of course it was. She had done something beyond the pale. Shying from the stern gaze, Carmilla pleaded in worry.
“S-stop… Don’t hit me…”
“I won’t. I won’t, but…what were you tryin’ to pull back there?”
“Back…there?”
“Standing in front of me looking like Rem! Is that your power?!”
With Carmilla, this was the fifth encounter he’d had with the Witches bearing the titles of the deadly sins. Based on each Witch bearing some off-the-wall Authority, he could guess that the earlier transformation could be counted among them. However—
“Impersonating other people, that’s pretty simple stuff compared to the other Witches.”
“I—I did not t-transform…? Wh-when someone else sees me, th-that…… It—it is because you looked at me?”
“What?”
“I—I didn’t…want to do this, but Echidna……sh-she lied to me…”
As Carmilla murmured in a broken manner, Subaru realized just what was ticking him off about her.
The way she spoke, how her gaze wandered, the frailty with which she lowered her eyes as she looked back at him… All of it rubbed him the wrong way. What was she pulling with the clumsy words and the pouty demeanor?
“Did you…did you realize what you were doing to me…?”
“Echidna…said it was all right to pamper you, but…d-don’t…”
“—!! Listen to me!!”
“Th-this is why everyone…b-bullies me… That’s—that’s right. Echidna did it, too. Making me do this terrible…so terrible…”
“Didn’t you get it the first time when I said to listen—?!!”
Anger dyed his vision. He wanted to make the woman before him pay. The fury filling his chest was roasting him. His angry voice was raspy, his lungs hot. He was fed up.
Subaru wanted to shut up by force the squeamish, squirmy mouth continuing to spout those tearful words, to pound the anger he harbored into her, to make her understand what she had done—
“—Any more, and your life will be in peril.”
“”
That instant, that voice, seemingly whispering into his ear, brought him back to sanity.
“Gagh…?”
Instantly, he was assaulted by the anguish of lack of oxygen from a prolonged lack of air and the ferocious pain of his heart seemingly remembering how to beat and make his blood flow once more.
“Eha, ngh… Gogh, haagh…!”
“Rough treatment, but at least it has brought you back. —Carmilla’s Faceless Bride makes its victims forget how to breathe. By the end, their hearts forget how to beat as well.”
As the difficulty in breathing caused Subaru to writhe and cough, his thought process blinked white and red.
The serene voice making his eardrums tremble seemed to soothe his nerves, making his breathing and heartbeat gradually calm down.
Had the voice saved him? Even if it did, should he just politely accept that?
With that thought, Subaru, now on all fours, lifted his face. He glared straight ahead at the face of the individual sitting there, the very one who had engendered that situation.
“What the hell were you scheming—Echidna?”
Seeing that hate-imbued gaze, the white-haired Witch calmly stroked her own hair.
Sitting in a white chair at a white table on a field of grass, she laid her cheek against her palm with a charming, suggestive smile as she said, “Isn’t it obvious? Wicked deeds. —I am a Witch, you know.”
Echidna winked as she spoke.
CHAPTER 6
THE WITCHES’ TEA PARTY
1
As Subaru writhed, his breathing painful, he realized that at some point the scenery had shifted to a grassy plain.
His nostrils were filled with the thick scent of grass coming from the
ground where he squatted. Like just after a rainfall, the sun poured down from above; Subaru’s entire body was enveloped by natural aromas, the scents almost chokingly cloying.
Atop that green hill, Echidna waited in her natural state of being, preparations for the tea party already complete.
In her natural state, just like usual. —Just like usual.
“I am guessing you have various things you wish to say, things you wish to ask me…but first how about we begin with you sitting and having a cup of tea?”
“…Do you really think I can just shrug off what you did to me just now and sit over there?”
“I do. You are capable of putting calculated rationality first, as opposed to allowing anger to throw your opportunity to waste. You would rather speak with me than push me away… This is the internal decision you have already made, yes?”
“”
From above, like an adult easily seeing through the schemes of children, Echidna easily struck the mark resting in Subaru’s chest, using that confident demeanor to make him submit.
Her assertion was correct. But he was not such a doormat to just listen and take it with good grace.
“Echidna…if that wasn’t your real intention, say so.”
“Mm?”
“From earlier…if that was Lust doing her own thing, not what you actually intended her to do, say it. Say you’re sorry. If you do that, I won’t find fault with you.”
He presented his case to Echidna. To go any further, Subaru required her intellect, her cooperation.
Even so, he could not forgive the unforgivable. After all, the fact remained that Echidna had used Carmilla to trample on an inviolable Sanctuary of Subaru’s own.
Hence, it was necessary, both for the sake of forgiving Echidna and to bring himself to sit at her tea party.
“…I wonder how to best put this…”
And in that single instant, she no doubt fully comprehended the weakness and conflict inside Subaru’s heart.
Echidna let a faint exhale trickle out, and as Subaru awaited her reply, she narrowed her black eyes and said, “It is as you said. That was all Carmilla running amok. I tried to stop her, but she refused to listen to me. She used the Trial as an excuse to begin a stage play in an attempt to ensnare you.”
“”
“Though I must say, you escaped that perilous juncture under your own power. And using the opening from Carmilla failing to ensnare you, I seized back the initiative, narrowly resulting in this reunion with you.”
“”
“…Now that I have said all this, are you satisfied?”
Having laid out, in a rush of words, the reply Subaru desired, Echidna undermined it all with that final sentence.
When that reply made Subaru bite his lip, Echidna’s shoulders sank with visible exasperation. She proceeded to bring a cup resting on the table to her lips as she continued. “I’m sure you understand. I directed Carmilla to head to you and disguise herself as the woman who rests in your heart. Though you seeing through it because of insufficient resemblance is her fault.”
“…Why do something like that?”
“—Because it was the method that was likely the most effective, carrying the greatest possibility of working.”
As Subaru’s expression evaporated, Echidna continued her words without the slightest hint of guilt.
“To be honest, your being pulled into the second Trial was unexpected, even for me. You may take this as a confession that the Trial thrusting that deeply into you was beyond my imagination.”
“”
“Oh, please close your eyes where my peering into the Trial is concerned. I said this after the first Trial, but these Trials are of my own design. It will be awkward if you were to complain.”
“…Go on.”
“As thou wish. At any rate, while watching you from the sidelines during the Trial, I had this thought. —If I just left you like that, the Trial would wear your heart down to nothing.”
Echidna’s prognosis was no exaggeration. Indeed, there was little doubt that’s how things would have ended. Subaru was not so unable to gaze beneath his own feet as to blindly deny it.
In the second Trial—he’d seen a number of Hells. They had thoroughly deprived him of any bluffs, stubbornness, or misunderstanding he could use to shield himself.
“Therefore, I interfered. I did so because I saw the possibility of the Trial breaking you, making you give up on the future.”
“But that’s weird. It’s a contradiction. I know you said you’re not hung up on the Trial’s results. You said it yourself: You’re someone who wants to know everything in the world, greed for knowledge incarnate. It was like that for the first Trial. If someone’s gonna fail, that failure is still one of the results you want to know.”
“It is not inconsistent at all. Certainly, your mind breaking would constitute one result. —However, I am not such a heartless woman that I have no regrets regardless of the result.”
“What…?”
When Subaru pressed the point, Echidna lowered the tone of her voice as she replied. For the first time in that conversation, the echo of her words made him knit his brows for a reason besides anger.
He was groping for the true intent behind Echidna’s remark from just then. If he was to take her words at face value, then—
“You’re saying you did that to…stop me from being broken down as a result?”
“…I have no excuse for having wounded your heart. Therefore, your anger is just. I will accept your disparagements with grace. You are correct. I was mistaken. That is all.”
Averting her gaze, Echidna entwined her white hair around a finger as she spun her reply.
Subaru drew in his breath at her demeanor and voice, which somehow came off as acting…stubborn. And then the anger he had harbored for the Witch in his mind until a moment before seemed so shallow and misplaced.
In point of fact, without Echidna’s aid—though he hesitated to use that term for an impersonation of Rem—Subaru’s mind would have no doubt shattered and carried away by the winds.
Surely, once his mind was ruined, he would completely lose all means with which to resist and become unable to fight.
Echidna had prevented that beforehand. —He could not convey gratitude toward her. However, this was not behavior that warranted being showered in vitriol and insults. This would serve as their common ground.
“…Let me say just one thing.”
“—Ah.”
Standing up, Subaru went over and took a seat at the tea party atop the hill. Seeing this, Echidna let a tiny breath trickle out, and from the very slight slackening of the corners of her eyes, he knew.
Relief was the water that had washed a little of the worry off her face.
Therefore, Subaru glared at the Witch’s face and spoke.
“I won’t drink any Dona Tea. —But I’ll take you up on a conversation.”
2
“I understand what it is you most wish to know. Shall I explain about the Trial, then?”
With Subaru having sat down for the tea party, Echidna proposed a topic, seemingly to demonstrate her sincerity to him.
He had no objections to the contents. When Subaru nodded in assent, Echidna gently lifted up a finger.
“Just like the first Trial, the second Trial is, to put it bluntly, a construct. Those worlds are reproduced from your memories, gathering together various conditions that exist within your memory, and from information about past, present, and future, a fictitious ‘now’ is created, nothing more.”
“In other words, those were…”
“However well fashioned, they were not reality. Their cohesiveness ran far ahead of my expectations, but those worlds are ‘constructs’ nonetheless. It does not mean that, in fact, such worlds exist.”
“Then!”
“However—”When Subaru tried to see hope in her explanation, Echidna’s logical gaze immediately obstructed that glimmer just coming into view, sealing of
f Subaru’s path of escape. As Subaru choked on his words, Echidna closed one eye and said, “Your Return by Death is a Witch’s Authority. Only she knows the principles by which it functions. As for whether your death triggers the rewinding of time, or shifts to a parallel world—the existence of which I find doubtful—or if ‘you’ overwrite a ‘you’ that exists in that world, I can only say there are nothing but possibilities. The facts are unknown.”
“Parallel worlds…”
Echidna had deduced that parallel worlds might exist—so-called parallel world theory. By that way of thinking, when people in the world acted and made a choice, a reality branched off with each possibility, leading to countless planes of existence.
It was this very possibility of which Subaru, he who Returned by Death, was most afraid.
“Isn’t there…isn’t there any way to…to make sure?”
“—There is not.”
“Ah…”
As Subaru clung to hope, Echidna cut him off with that heartless assertion.
The Witch’s assertion slammed into Subaru, leaving him speechless, powerlessly sinking into his chair. Gazing at Subaru’s state with a pained look, Echidna tapped the table with her fingers.
“All that worries you, only the Witch of Jealousy knows. —I am exceptionally upset that I cannot relieve you of this pain here and now.”
In a form that differed from consoling, Echidna spoke with Subaru in a way that seemed to bring her closer to his heart.
If this was her being considerate, he was probably grateful enough to burst into tears. But at that moment, it was no salvation to Subaru.
—Even Echidna, one of the Witches of the Deadly Sins, could not expunge the crimes Subaru had created.
He’d hoped for a firm denial. A denial that the worlds Subaru had seen after his death did not exist.
If that was no good, he’d hoped for an assertion. An assertion saying, Your conceit has come at the cost of numerous sacrifices.
With either reply, Subaru could fight. The reply would surely chastise him, drive the truth home so that he might never forget, and he would grit his teeth, tears of blood would flow, and his very soul would wail as he stepped forward.
Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-, Vol. 12 Page 24