Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- Vol. 3

by Tappei Nagatsuki

  Puck sat down on top of Subaru’s black hair and adjusted the position of his tail.

  “What a prickly and uncomfortable head to sit on.”

  “Hey, it’s not like I thought someone was going to sit on it someday! No one warned me to bring a cushion, but just, uh, help yourself, okay?”

  “Nah, I’ll be done and back to Lia’s lovely hair in no time. So, ready to begin?”

  When prompted, Subaru hesitated for just a moment, but a smile quickly came over him as he nodded. He was on something of a knife’s edge of unease, but he just couldn’t deny his curiosity. Having received Subaru’s assent, Puck made a large nod of his own.

  Then, Subaru suddenly felt his entire body get hot. He felt something besides blood running through his veins—no doubt it was the formless gush of mana stirring inside him.

  He could tell that the energy inside his body was moving in accordance with Puck’s hand.

  “Subaru, try to picture it in your mind. Move the mana inside your body, flowing through me, by your own will. Push a portion of it out of your body through your gate. Picture it as a black cloud.”

  “Picture, picture. Trust me, daydreaming is totally my thing.”

  Subtly distorting Puck’s advice, Subaru tried to picture where the energy wriggling inside his body was supposed to go.

  He tried to picture the gate—the doorway at the center of his body. He pictured himself carefully opening a heavy door to make the energy inside flow out. Once outside, Subaru would generate the phenomenon by his own will—

  Right around the last part, Puck murmured abruptly, “Huh, this isn’t good. All of a sudden, the gate…”

  Subaru didn’t even have time to ask, The gate what…?

  The next moment, Emilia cried out—

  “Are you two—?!”

  A few seconds later, a black cloud spewed out with explosive force, shrouding the corner of the inner garden of Roswaal Manor.

  He didn’t blow up, but the result was a spectacular failure nonetheless.

  5

  “If I must make a conclusion, your control of your gate is too weak, so you shouldn’t push it, Subaru.”

  “You see me like this and that’s the first thing you say, damn it?!”

  Puck slapped his head and stuck out his tongue.

  “Tee-hee-hee.”

  “That’s not cute, you know!”

  Subaru shouted at Puck as his whole body soaked up the sensation of the lawn. Lying atop the grass, Subaru felt his breaths were labored; his whole body felt unusually languid. He was as sluggish as if he had a high fever. His limbs seemed to lack the will to move.

  He’d felt something like this before.

  Back on what was, in a true sense, his first day at the mansion, he’d felt the same sluggishness after Beatrice drained his mana. That was to say, Subaru was completely out of gas at that moment.

  Emilia interrupted.

  “For better or worse, Subaru simply isn’t used to using his gate. That’s why it ignored the user’s will and everything inside flew right out.”

  “So I didn’t close the lid right… What am I, soy sauce…?”

  He managed to voice his resentment, but the depletion of his strength was nothing to laugh at. He wanted to at least manage to get up, but he couldn’t put any energy into his limbs or the rest of his body.

  Subaru was still stuck lying on the ground when Emilia, kneeling beside him, met his gaze.

  “You mustn’t move. You’re all out of internal mana, so behave yourself. Maybe you should take today off work, too.”

  “—That’s really bad!”

  Emilia was scolding him like a misbehaving child when Subaru raised his voice out of the blue. Emilia blinked in surprise off to the side as Subaru deeply rued his own carelessness.

  If he really did have to give up the whole day, it meant abandoning one more day he needed to put this loop in order. That was crazy, even fatal. And now his body felt like it was rusted over.

  “Ughhhh…”

  “Now hold on, I told you not to push it!”

  “Now’s when I have to push it. If I don’t, I’m going to really seriously regret it later…”

  It was by no means unusual for him to reap what he had sowed, but the timing was simply too awful.

  Emilia, seeing Subaru’s brow covered with sweat as he struggled with all his might, slumped her shoulders.

  “Goodness, you really can’t be helped.”

  Once more, Emilia’s lips tapered as if she was upset with him. Subaru, not grasping the meaning behind Emilia’s statement, could only lift his eyes to look at her.

  “—? Emilia-tan, what’s mnnff?!”

  Emilia peered down at his face from above while suddenly stuffing something into his mouth. He felt something round and soft on his tongue. Though bewildered, Emilia put a hand over his mouth and nodded to him.

  “Bite down.”

  “—?”

  “Bite down…and swallow. Yes, there you go.”

  With Emilia tolerating no dissent, Subaru located the object in his mouth and bit down on it—hard.

  A bittersweet taste swirled all around his mouth. He narrowed his eyes as his taste buds sensed it was some kind of fruit. The next moment…it hit him.

  “Whoaaaaaaa—?!”

  Subaru, feeling like his whole body was alight, got up then and there, practically leaping to his feet.

  He felt like his blood was boiling as it coursed through his entire body, scalding heat reaching all the way to the tips of his fingers and toes. He exhaled hard, as if the air in his lungs was too hot to handle, and his knees were marching up and down all on their own.

  It was around that point when Subaru realized he was standing on his own two feet.

  There were still vestiges of sluggishness in every part of his body, but the crippling lethargy had vanished.

  “Wh…? What was that…?”

  “It’s called a bokko fruit. When you eat it, it gives the mana inside your body a kick so that your gate powers up again, just enough to feel a bit better.”

  Apparently, the mysterious fruit was some kind of MP recovery item.

  Subaru rotated his arms and, finding that nothing was wrong aside from a little fatigue, breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Wow, I’m relieved. I’d never forgive myself if I got another BAD END on account of that. Thanks, Emilia-tan.”

  “I don’t have many of them, and it’s not good for the body, so I didn’t really want to use it… You weren’t bluffing there, were you?”

  No doubt it was Subaru’s genuineness that had spurred Emilia into using such a precious item on him.

  Subaru responded to Emilia’s prodding by sticking out his chest and boldly declaring, “Not one bit. I won’t let you regret this.”

  Then he immediately wiped all the sweat off his brow.

  “But man, I was an idiot there… When this is all over I’m going to kick myself even more than before.”

  He carried the burden of having experienced numerous forms of death, something other people would only experience but once, but he wanted to avoid dying from embarrassment if he could at all help it.

  In fact, he wanted his suicide by leaping off a cliff to be the last death he ever experienced.

  The scars of having decided to end his own life ran deep. He didn’t want to do that again, ever.

  One death was enough for anyone. He wanted death to be the natural end of his life. Of course, the best result would be some crazy event that ended with Emilia embracing him, but—

  “Man, I’m such a kid I can’t even think about it, huh?”

  Even though he was always so glib, he would never again casually speak the word death. Surely Subaru could only laugh at his own cowardice because he was reliving the same experiences, literally whether he wanted to or not.

  Seeing the change in Subaru’s expression, Emilia had a sullen look as she asked, “Are you all right? Do you think you can go to work?”

&nbs
p; “I’ll do work, and all the other stuff, too. Having you on my side is like riding an unsinkable battleship, so I’ll give it all I’ve got.”

  “…Riding a… I’m not quite sure what you mean by that, but…”

  “Hey, Emilia-tan, how you put that kind of makes me excited. Can you say that again?”

  “You have a lewd look in your eyes, so no.”

  Their usual banter left Subaru laughing as he stretched his limbs and finally his back.

  “Well, I’d better go face my seniors and turn over a new leaf!”

  “I suppose so. I don’t think either has spoken one word about you since yesterday.”

  “—Ah.”

  Subaru stretched his back as his hips made their own dull creak.

  6

  “Sister, Sister. The lout known as Subaru has come.”

  “Rem, Rem. The wage thief named Barusu has appeared.”

  “I’m very sorry about yesterday…! Please forgive me!”

  Subaru sought forgiveness, bowing his head low in an earnest apology.

  He felt like he’d done nothing but bow his head for half an entire day. He’d accounted for everyone at the mansion except Roswaal—meaning the entirety of the female population.

  “I’m back to a route with all the girls looking down on me again… I’ve got some deep karma here.”

  “Sister, Sister. It seems Subaru is quite the pervert.”

  “Rem, Rem. Subaru is a masochist who likes being degraded.”

  “That’s going too far, especially for you, Big Sis!”

  Shouting in response to the sisters’ sharp rebuke, Subaru used his arms as a fulcrum to go from his prostrate position into a handstand, twisting his body around and using the momentum to rise to his feet.

  “Anyway, I’m sorry about being pathetic yesterday and annoying the day before… Well, a lot happened, but I’ve had a complete change in attitude, so it’s a new me going forward.”

  “It was the lap pillow.”

  “The lap pillow, yes.”

  “Don’t tell me everyone knows?! That’s so embarrassing!”

  Subaru hid his reddened face and crumbled as the twin maids met each other’s gaze.

  “It is time to begin the morning chores, Sister.”

  “It is time to begin our morning duties, Rem.”

  “No comment?! That puts me down even more!!”

  With a wave, the two left behind Subaru and his pleas, heading off to work just as they had declared. As they did so, Subaru called for them to stop.

  “Time-out, time-out. There’s a favor I want to ask about work this morning.”

  Subaru’s appeal made both twins stop, turn around, and tilt their heads in sync.

  “A favor?”

  “A hassle?”

  “Weird, I haven’t heard Big Sis’s bluntness for a while and it’s getting me all fired up…”

  A pained smile came over him. Unlike the little sister, the older sister’s unpleasant attitude was a lot easier to deal with, but he was glad he could talk to them like this at all.

  He breathed out, trying to brush off the absurdity of it all.

  “Actually, I’d like to go see the village. It’s nearby, right? Isn’t there something you need to buy there?”

  Overnight, he’d formed a firm hypothesis in the archive of forbidden books, but he wanted to get to the village that day no matter what. That was what was on Subaru’s mind as Rem put a hand to her chest, sinking into thought.

  “Certainly, we are running a bit low on spices, so I was thinking of heading to the village tomorrow…”

  “Let’s change the schedule and do it today, then. Might as well get more before you’re running out, and you can’t just borrow some from the neighbors out here, can you?”

  There were no other mansions in the first place, even if they had wanted to go see the neighbors.

  Rem seemed to ponder Subaru’s suggestion a little when…

  “It’s fine, isn’t it?”

  “Sister?”

  In contrast to the little sister’s pondering, the older sister stroked her own pink hair with a look of indifference.

  “We have to buy them either way, and there are no other pressing matters. It is the perfect opportunity to employ Barusu as a mule.”

  “I was in bed with a gut wound just three days ago, so take it easy, okay?!”

  Subaru had hoped for some warmth from the merciless Ram, but her cover fire still made him tilt his mind’s inner head a bit.

  He’d thought so, but this was vivid proof that the twin maids were not united in their opinions.

  He remembered how, in the loop before last, Rem’s coming to kill him had been on Rem’s own judgment. Perhaps their thinking was even less on the same page than Subaru had assumed.

  Either way…

  “…If Sister…says so, then…”

  After thinking it over a bit, Rem finally gave her own consent.

  The majority of work at the mansion got done only because of Rem, but Subaru knew from long experience that she let Ram, the less accomplished of the two, make a lot of the decisions.

  Whether mere coincidence or not, Ram’s intervention had essentially settled the matter.

  Subaru pumped a fist as Rem’s face went from contemplation back to a calm, neutral look.

  “However, either way, going to the village must wait until after lunch. Let us do it after Two Solartime…after we have finished all other outstanding work.”

  “It will be all right. Barusu has pledged to work until his body is ground to a pulp, yes?”

  “Yep. Just watch what I can do now that I’ve been reborn. I’ll work like a hot knife through you know what.”

  They corrected his corrupted idiom in unison.

  “Butter.”

  “Right. That.”

  Subaru scratched his face as it sunk in that he’d succeeded in his negotiations. Now that the promise to go shopping had been made, it was finally time to begin servant time.

  He watched Rem leave in a hurry, probably sorting out in her head the order of her chores, before shifting his gaze to Ram beside him.

  Naturally, Ram had been given orders to stick with Subaru for another day and oversee his education.

  No doubt it was best to avoid the tension that had built up the day before—or rather, the day before last. More to the point, finding himself had been so painful that re-creating the tension was a little too much to ask.

  “Getting self-conscious of my own bad points in such a short time like that… It’s a bigger shock than seeing an infant grow into a man in three days.”

  As Subaru sank into reflection, Ram folded her arms and gave him a cold look.

  “Before we get to the issue at hand…”

  For some reason, Ram’s gaze made Subaru feel like he should straighten his back. He did so and turned toward her.

  “About that magic in the garden earlier…”

  “Ah, sorry for the mess. I can’t use that thing right, so I’m not touching it for a while. I hear it’d take twenty years for me to learn the fundamentals right.”

  “A mess it may have been, but do not provoke Rem too much.”

  “…?”

  Not understanding what Ram meant, a virtual question mark came over Subaru’s face. Ram watched Subaru’s inquisitive look before making a belated hmph.

  “Rem was quite disturbed by the magic that covered a corner of the garden as well as Lady Emilia. You should be dancing for me in thanks for stopping her, Barusu.”

  “Ah… Ahhhh… Yeah, you’re right…”

  In his shock at the failure of his magic, Subaru hadn’t noticed, but a third party was unlikely to see that situation as a mere failed spell.

  He was truly grateful that Ram hadn’t jumped the gun. On the other hand, he was aghast at Rem’s willingness to make a snap judgment on the spot.

  “Oh man, I was way too careless… I have to think ahead more after four Continues.”

  “What are
you mumbling about…? If we do not get to work soon, both breakfast and dinner shall run late.”

  “Oh, I was just thinking about the shopping in the afternoon. Which one of you will be going with me?”

  Under the circumstances, going with Rem would be a heavy weight on his mind. Either way, though, it made practical sense for Rem to be the one to go with him to the village. Subaru figured that he’d be going shopping with Rem, just like he had on two previous occasions. However…

  “What nonsense are you speaking?”

  “…Eh?”

  Subaru inclined his head. For once, Ram’s neutral expression broke into a smile—an extremely cold, malicious, devilish smile.

  “You shall go with both of us. You will have a lovely flower on each arm, Barusu.”

  That would be nice, as long as the flowers aren’t poisonous.

  Subaru, now aware that the negotiations had gone a little too well, covered his face with a palm, looked up to the heavens, and groaned.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE MEANING OF COURAGE

  1

  From Subaru’s perspective, it was his third visit to the village.

  It was a village named Earlham, practically right beside the mansion, part of the territory belonging to Roswaal in his role as margrave. It was a small village, with about two hundred residents, give or take. In his original world, that wouldn’t have been enough to fill an elementary school. And there was Subaru, walking around a village you could do a full lap of in twenty minutes, with two girls, “a flower on each arm.”

  “I must say, work was finished rather quickly.”

  “Barusu was so deft, it was revolting. What happened to him?”

  “I won’t blush, so praise me all you want. The latent potential sleeping in me has finally blossomed!”

  Subaru was rather full of himself at the high praise for his work before noon. He’d focused on speedy work for the sake of the afternoon shopping trip, and it worked out well. Apparently, he’d been failing as a result of putting too much stress on himself; this time, a more natural approach seemed to work much better.

  No doubt his ability to let go had something to do with the feel of Emilia’s lap…

  That sure helped me relax, huh…?