Unlike before when he was under so much stress, the lying on Emilia’s knees had made him able to smoothly converse with the twins. The remaining nervousness only bolstered his resolve, erasing his carelessness in the process.
Furthermore, at that moment, Subaru was calm enough that he felt like nothing could shake him. That was very fortunate, because he couldn’t afford to behave like a troublesome eccentric here.
The Q&A session with Beatrice the night before had established that a shaman had to physically touch the target of a curse. That’s what made curses a fairly risky means of assassination.
He compared having to get up close and personal to sniping from long range like someone would do from his world. The risk was probably offset by the curse being such certain means.
“Either way, I have an MO for the perpetrator. It has to be someone who touched me on the trips to the village before.”
And if the person had arrived in the village in only the last few days, then his suspect was as good as found.
That said, Subaru couldn’t rely on everything in the village being perfectly as he remembered. He’d learned that the hard way back at the mansion. It’d be very hard to go over the same things save for a few specific events.
“The ones who stand out are Muraosa, the acting headman, the granny touching butts in search of her lost youth, the leader of the young men with short haircuts, and the guy with a short cut leading the Ram-Rem Defense Force.”
Subaru named all the people whose faces stood out to him and went over each one.
There was the guy who acted like he led the village, Muraosa, and the old woman who engaged in perverse behavior while laughing and saying, “Got me youth back, got me youth back.” The two young men wore identical faces; they’d frequently butted Subaru’s shoulders, perhaps out of jealousy for being so close with the twin sisters.
“I had to lead Muraosa to the john when he started flaking out… Now that I think about it, all of them touched me somehow. That’s kind of suspicious…”
But all of them were native villagers through and through. They didn’t fit the profile.
“That being the case, guess I’d better just hang around the same places…”
Subaru sighed at himself for his lack of any better idea. And as Subaru made that gloomy sound, a series of voices reached Subaru from above.
“What’s wrong, Subaru?” “Are you hungry?” “Do you have a tummy ache?”
Subaru twisted his neck to see the multiple silhouettes glomping onto his back.
They were children who had raced to reach Subaru first before he’d even set foot into the village. There were seven in all, not just latched onto his back but his legs and hips, too.
Subaru, not finding the weight excessive for his build, cracked his neck.
“I’ve got a connection with you across time and space or something…”
“What are you saying?” “Did you hit your head?” “Do you have a tummy ache?”
“Quit it about the tummy ache, geez. You make it sound like I’ve got diarrhea or something.”
As Subaru spoke, the children all burst into laughter. No doubt it was less about his joke than the word diarrhea being funny in and of itself.
Apparently, hopping worlds didn’t change the fact that kids of that age thought the cruder, the funnier.
“And I’ve got kids all over me, just like old times…”
The kids on his back were pulling on his cheeks. Subaru could only slump his shoulders at being a brat magnet.
“Why is it I get along great with brats and the elderly? I mean, it’s like it’s the only good point I have in this world.”
He twisted his body to nuzzle the kids riding his back.
Subaru heard merry cries behind him, voices calling, “Me next! Me next!” as he marched around the village, children in tow.
At the time, Subaru was moving around by himself. Not that he actually was alone, but Ram and Rem were not with him.
When they’d arrived at the village, the maid sisters hurried off to go shopping, leaving ominous statements behind them.
“Sister, Sister. Let us gather all the light things.”
“Rem, Rem. Let us leave all the heavy things for Barusu.”
Subaru had said he wanted to have a look around the village, so no doubt they were being considerate, but he really did wish one of them had stayed with him. That way, the kids would have happily jumped onto her.
“And I managed to meet all the suspects without being super nervous, even…”
Subaru wiped some cold sweat off his brow, breathing heavily as he continued using himself as a decoy.
Subaru had opted for the extremely risky method of searching for the shaman. It was near suicidal behavior to put himself back on the chopping block, but if he didn’t, he wouldn’t be able to get a look at the face of the one responsible.
“At the very least, if it’s just the rite, I can get Beako to lift it, right?”
As long as there wasn’t some mistake and the curse activated right away, just having the rite embedded in him shouldn’t be a mortal threat. If he got cursed, he just had to bow his head to the floor before Beatrice and beg her to take it off.
“Subaru, your face looks bad!” “Scary face!” “Weird face!”
“Geez, you make that sound awful. And that third comment annoys me just a little!”
Subaru continued strolling around the village, dragging the children along while bearing the brunt of their jokes. It wasn’t like he could shake them off him, anyway, and they knew their way around the village, so they were somewhat useful. More importantly, to a shaman trying not to cause a fuss in the village, attempting to harm Subaru while he had a gaggle of children all over him was a poor option. So they functioned as human shields, too.
“Man, I’m getting pretty evil, too. I’m expanding my horizons here!”
“What’s wrong, Subaru?” “What is it?” “Did you flake out?”
“Nah, it’s nothing.”
Subaru rubbed the heads of the children clamped on his legs and laughed at his own expense.
“Well, this is all for my happiness. You’ll cooperate a little longer, won’t you?”
Incidentally, he didn’t think he liked children very much to begin with. They were noisy, way too chummy, and completely self-serving.
—Perhaps that was how he thought about himself, too.
2
Ram ran a hand through her pink hair as she sighed with exasperation.
“Free time was finally over, so we came to look, and this is what we see…”
Ram stared at Subaru as he raised both arms to the sky then and there.
“Victory!!”
After Subaru raised his arms and shouted, a chorus of voices rang out in celebration.
“Victory!!”
The people beside him spontaneously patted one another’s backs as they voiced their admiration. Subaru, too, wiped the sweat off his brow, exchanging pleasantries and giving high fives as he caught his breath and headed toward Ram.
Subaru’s buoyant approach was greeted by Ram’s frosty gaze.
“What kind of attraction is this?”
“It’s nothing big enough to call an attraction. I figured I’d kill time with the kids, and then the adults saw and jumped on the bandwagon, that’s all.”
Aerobics was his chosen method for playing with a bunch of noisy kids at the same time. The adults saw and they joined in, with the end result being a huge ruckus with almost half the village’s population pitching in.
“Well, I’ve gotten so popular it scares even me. It’s something fun for the young and old alike. Maybe it really is the secret to living longer!”
“I would not know.”
“Geez, that’s a cold brush-off.”
Subaru gave Ram’s unimpressed reply an exaggerated reaction. Upon seeing this, the children copied him.
“That’s cold, Ramchi!” “That’s awful, Ramchi!” “You’re scary, R
amchi!”
“…You taught these children that manner of address?”
“Not so much taught them as, ah, made you more approachable? I mean, if you keep everyone at arm’s length, they can’t see who you really are. That’s a lonely thing… That’s what I think, anyway…”
“You certainly have an active mouth. I do not mind, but Rem may not care for it.”
“Remrin?” “Remrin.” “Remririn.”
“—Ah, we kind of…crossed that bridge already.”
Hearing from the children that her words of caution had come too late, Ram slumped her shoulders in resignation.
“So, did you look around the village as you desired?”
“—Yeah, that part went off without a hitch.”
Subaru’s cheeks warped into a grin in response to Ram’s question.
His stroll around the village to come into contact with the people on his suspect list was a great success. More to the point, Subaru stood out so much that it was he who had the opportunities to touch them this time.
“The last, last thing on my to-do list was to high-five the guy with the crew cut after aerobics, and that’s done.”
Having touched all the obvious suspects brought him a measure of relief. Now his time in the village was at an end—in other words, time to say bye-bye to the kids.
“I’ve got work to do, so get lost, guys. Ahh, what a pity. If I had more time I could’ve played with you some more. Ha-ha-ha, too bad so sad!”
“He’s smiling!” “He’s laughing!” “Are you really so happy?!”
Subaru “regretfully” shook loose of the kids, sticking his tongue out in the face of their complaints. He did not consciously recognize the sense of satisfaction filling him at having regained even such mundane ground with his limited capacity as a human being.
Either way, he and Ram were on their way to the rendezvous point with Rem when—
“Ah?”
Abruptly, the girl wearing her brown hair in braids tugged on Subaru’s sleeve, her face red.
Subaru was surprised, for until that moment, the braided girl had religiously maintained an arm’s-length distance from the other kids while they’d piled onto him together, never entering the fray herself. Subaru crouched so that their gazes were at the same height.
“What is it? If you’ve got something to say, I’m happy to listen.”
“Err, well… Come over here.”
The girl led him by his sleeve to another place. Subaru, guided by the slender hand, looked back at Ram.
“—You may do as you please a little while longer.”
“Oh, thanks, I owe you one. So, what is it?”
With permission having been granted, he continued to follow the little girl’s hand. With her in the lead, the children from earlier followed them to a corner of the village.
“You’ll be real surprised.” “You’ll love it.” “You’ll break out in a dance.”
“Surprise, happiness, dancing? You sure are expecting a big reaction out of me here.”
Surrounded by giggling children giving previews of how he’d react, they slipped past the houses of the village to a nook away from prying eyes. Then his eyes followed the children’s pointing fingers and saw it.
“Ah, yeah, there was this event, too, wasn’t there…?”
Out of the blue, Subaru voiced his assent, clasping his hands together and nodding several times over.
The braided girl rushed over, picking it up in her arms, out of breath as she returned.
—This was the creature with brown fur that looked like a dog.
Its eyes were round and its fur soft, making it almost seem like a newborn pup. The latter quality appealed to a connoisseur of fur such as Subaru.
But unfortunately, the puppy did not respond to Subaru in kind.
“Arf!”
“I figured this was coming…”
The moment Subaru reached out with his hand, every hair on the dog’s body stood up as it barked out a warning. The children all wore shocked faces at how its small body shuddered, on guard against him.
“But he’s always been so good!” “He’s only angry at Subaru!” “What did you do to him, Subaru?!”
“That’s what I wanna know—sheesh! This is the third time and everything. Just not compatible or what?”
The children booed behind Subaru as he turned toward the unfriendly puppy with a strained smile.
He’d encountered this puppy on both his prior visits to the village—in other words, during prior loops. Each time it had displayed a severe dislike of him, wounding his animal-loving heart.
“I guess in one sense, having something not change between loops feels about right…but I’d have liked a more friendly reaction, seriously.”
In spite of Return by Death, many things had been repeated very differently, but the puppy’s reaction was practically a broken record.
But when Subaru made a friendly smile, the puppy suddenly let down its guard. With the puppy curled up in the braided girl’s arms, Subaru snapped his fingers, realizing this was his chance.
“Well, if you’ll excuse me…”
He’d show this puppy his full range of the fur-stroking skills he had honed on Puck.
He rubbed the puppy in all the important places, like the head, neck, and the base of the tail, with the sensation bringing a big grin over Subaru.
“Heh-heh, I’ve been looking forward to this feeling. Pretty nice stuff for a stray. A little tender, loving brushing and this’ll be a long, shiny coat. Hey, there’s a bald spot on the head. This a wound? Where did you bump against—?”
Maybe the puppy had a complex about the white scar; the instant Subaru touched it, the puppy’s maw chomped hard on his hand. He quickly pulled his hand back, but it had a prominent bite mark on it nonetheless.
Subaru yelped at the sharp pain on the back of his blood-smeared hand as he stroked the wound.
“What an event with which to get a one hundred percent completion rate. You even got me in the same place. What, did you do a time leap just for this?”
Subaru smiled to put it at ease, but the puppy, back on guard, continued to snarl.
Watching relations between man and beast return to the gutter, the children observing the two nodded to one another.
“Yep, he got carried away.” “It’s because he touched it that much.” “The puppy’s a girl!”
“I feel like that’s a weird tangent at the end there…and what, no one’s worried about me? I’m gonna cry here.”
Subaru lightly washed his hand at a watering hole and waved good-bye to the puppy and the frolicking children. The braided girl looked like she felt responsible, waving with a frail, bashful smile before returning to the others.
When he got back, he had a maid waiting for him, leaning against a wall with her arms crossed and a big attitude.
“Sorry for the wait.”
“I sent you off thinking it would be a brief affair, but you come back with your hair disheveled, your clothes a mess, and bleeding from your left hand, of all things.”
“Well, sorry about that! A bunch of things happened. You can tell just by looking, right?”
“I suppose so. One glance and I can largely tell what happened.”
He saw a gloomy expression on her elegant face as she sighed a little.
Subaru raised an eyebrow at the odd nuance of her statement and her un-Ram-like demeanor, but Ram instantly gave her usual hmph, not allowing Subaru to voice his question.
“Your wound and clothes are both unsightly. We shall quickly rendezvous with Rem, because she can actually heal you.”
“Ramchi, you don’t use healing magic?”
“I can handle sealing a wound after an amputation.”
Subaru could not conceal his shudder.
“That’s some really extreme first aid there!!”
Out of nowhere, Ram walked over and tugged on Subaru’s sleeve. Subaru blinked, turning only his head to face Ram when she went, “Ar
en’t you coming, Barusu?”
“It’s with you, so yeah.”
For a single, brief moment, he saw her lips slacken at his reply. Ram proceeded straight to leading him off by his sleeve.
He thought that she’d be really cute if she always acted this straightforward, but that might have been because his honesty with himself kept him spewing lines like that all the time.
Perhaps honesty, too, had a time and a place.
That was the thought on his mind as he and Ram walked toward where Rem was waiting for them.
For some reason, he sensed that the girl leading him was walking more slowly, more gently than usual.
3
By the time the three returned to the mansion, the sunrays were heavily tilted, as it was well into the evening.
As they stood before Roswaal Manor, bathed by the evening sun, a lone man collapsed onto the ground.
It was none other than Subaru Natsuki. He set the oversize keg aside and flopped onto the ground, breathing hard.
“I made it… I made it! …Good job, me! Totally good job!”
“Yes, yes, well done.”
“Yes, yes, much appreciated.”
The twin maids sandwiched the fallen Subaru as they gave him stiff, formal thanks for his labors.
Ram’s coolness was entirely normal, but Rem’s bluntness was no doubt due to her anger at seeing Ram leading Subaru by his hand when they met up after shopping in the village.
The first words out of Rem’s mouth had been, “You and Sister seem to be getting along nicely.”
That made Subaru regret the decisions he had made. He wanted to make up for it somehow, so when she’d made him carry a heavy barrel back to the mansion out of apparent spite, he hoped it would improve her impression of him just a little.
Rem spoke down toward Subaru.
“Well, then, we shall return to the mansion ahead of you. Take your time.”
She then picked up the large barrel as if it were filled with feathers.
Subaru could bench-press about 175 pounds, but he had serious doubts that he could lift that barrel above his shoulders. And yet, he’d just seen Rem pick up the heavy object with one hand while still carrying miscellaneous objects in her other arm.
Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- Vol. 3 Page 8