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

by Tappei Nagatsuki

  “That said, the fact that there’re just game trails makes it tough going…”

  “You may not be accustomed to this, but our meager progress is unacceptable…truly.”

  “Wait, don’t leave me behind that quickly. I understand how you feel, but just a little longer!”

  Ram’s maid outfit might have been wholly out of place for going hiking in the mountains, but her practiced gait made her marching twice as fast as Subaru’s. To Ram, full of concern about her younger sister, matching Subaru’s slow-footed pace was a hundred cons and no pros.

  At the very least, he couldn’t restore his good name by moving so slowly.

  “I’m walking wounded with a blood shortage, so I’m getting tired easily… Come to think of it, I didn’t have Emilia-tan telling me to come back soon, either!”

  “If you have yet to say, ‘I’m back,’ last night’s ‘come back soon’ remains in effect.”

  “It, ah, it works that way…?”

  Subaru tilted his head at Ram’s sophistry and thrust the sword in his hand into the ground like a cane to support his shaky legs as he chased after Rem.

  He had borrowed the sword he was using in place of a cane from the young men of Earlham Village.

  Subaru had a hard time forgetting the look on the face of the young man representing the others the moment he told them he was heading into the demon beast forest. He had been shocked, and when Subaru brushed off his cries to stop and partially explained the circumstances, the young man lent Subaru his sword.

  The sword, supposedly the finest in the whole village, was a simple one-handed blade. Even an amateur like Subaru could manage to swing it. He had accepted the weapon and the villagers had seen them off.

  But that wasn’t the only thing they had provided him.

  “Inside this pocket are…candy, a pretty stone, and… Whoa! There’s a bug in here!”

  Subaru let out a cry as rummaging through the pocket led to touching something fairly disgusting. Freed from cramped quarters, the winged insect escaped from Subaru’s hand; he watched it fly into the forest.

  “Just like those little brats to slip something like that in there. I’ll give them a good sermon later.”

  “It is proof that they adore you… What do they see in you…?”

  “The sincere eyes of children see how my manly nature sparkles before them. Besides, you’re well aware I’m not the only one they like, right?”

  Subaru sought Ram’s agreement, and Ram concurred.

  “…I suppose you are right.”

  Subaru looked quite satisfied with that, nodding several times.

  Ram, too, had seen the children toying with Subaru before they left the village. Subaru connected heart-to-heart whenever he could; to Ram, that was something she only wished she could do.

  After the young men had seen them off, Subaru and Ram had been caught by the freshly awakened children. Wanting to thank Subaru and Ram in person, the children had stuffed one sign of their affection after another into his pocket as soon as they noticed him. The piece of candy, the pretty stone, even the bug—these were the children’s gratitude in physical form. Subaru could not treat them lightly…though the bug had gotten away.

  Subaru repeated what the children had said with smiling faces as he wavered under the pressure of unnecessary gratitude being pushed on to him.

  “‘Bring back Remrin so we can thank her, too…’ Huh.”

  Where was Rem at that moment? How dangerous a spot was she in? Why was she fighting at the risk of her life?

  The children didn’t know that. They didn’t need to know.

  After all—

  “Don’t worry, ya little brats. I’ll make sure she’s right there with her big sister to lecture you about being bad kids for going into a dark forest to play without saying a word to anyone.”

  He should probably join them as the stupid boy who’d made trouble for everyone by rushing headlong into the woods and turning into a human chew toy. Wouldn’t it be fun to kneel for a lecture from the village chief all night?

  Naturally, drawing up that image of the future in his mind brought a twist to his lips.

  Then, in contrast to the odd grin on Subaru’s cheeks, Ram stopped walking forward. She quietly lowered her head, speaking in a commanding tone without looking back.

  “Barusu, wait a little. I will be using Clairvoyance.”

  She turned toward the silent forest. Subaru felt like sound itself had vanished as he rushed to Ram’s side. He drew his sword from its scabbard as he looked around cautiously.

  He couldn’t let his guard down, for Ram was defenseless while she was using her Clairvoyance.

  “—”

  Ram lowered her pale face as she silently concentrated on Clairvoyance, also known as the Sight of a Thousand Eyes. She’d explained it as a power that could borrow the vision of other living things, and not limited to people, either. By riding the vision of creatures with compatible wavelengths and using the vision of yet other creatures to further expand her range, she was literally able to look around with “a thousand eyes.”

  Ram had used that power to scry the forest several times since they had entered, but she had yet to locate Rem.

  Apparently the sheer abundance of life made it rather difficult.

  However—

  “Barusu—there are eyes watching us once again.”

  “They came, huh…? Should I just walk in front?”

  Seeing Ram nod while keeping her eyes shut, Subaru inhaled a little and realized his heart was pounding hard. He gently stepped forward on the grass, leaving the defenseless Ram by herself and making his way up a moss-covered boulder. He stood on top of the rock and took a deep breath.

  He banged the iron scabbard against the hard surface of the boulder. As the sound echoed, the forest rustled right in front of him.

  “—!”

  The silence was broken as the sounds of running across the ground and unified howls thundered against Subaru’s eardrums.

  He instantly looked back to see a black four-legged beast above his head, leaping out from among the trees. Its fangs were bared and aimed at Subaru’s throat, pouncing on Subaru’s slow reaction to rip him to shreds.

  Subaru instinctively used both hands to protect himself, but the wild beast’s speed outpaced his own. Its maw opened wide as it closed in right before his eyes. Just before the tips of its fangs were about to easily puncture Subaru’s flesh, bringing blood and his very life gushing forth, a Blade of Wind struck it in the flank, slicing it neatly into two, slaying it instantly. The front half kept going and collided hard with Subaru and sent him flying.

  “Whoa!”

  An exasperated-sounding sigh reached Subaru’s ears.

  “I simply cannot understand why you lose your nerve at the sight of a single one of them, Barusu.”

  Unfortunately for Subaru, he ended his flight by hitting the slope and rolling downward. He stood up, wiped off his scraped-up butt, and glared defiantly at Ram, who was looking down at him from the top of the hill.

  “Hey, you! You can cut that a little less close, can’t you?!”

  Ram twisted her lips as she tossed him a nonchalant line.

  “I was too concerned about killing it with the least amount of suffering to think about your needs, Barusu.”

  Subaru looked at the body lying beside him. It was already a lifeless corpse. Even though he knew it was a dangerous creature, the thought of a living being lying dead like that tugged at his thoughts. Subaru gently brought his hands together in a prayer.

  “Your heart will not hold up if it breaks over a single creature, all the more so because your life is forfeited if they are not annihilated, Barusu… Hunting it like this was your idea, was it not?”

  “Let me have my hypocritical sentimentality here, geez. It’s important for my own peace of mind.”

  It wasn’t so much an issue of sentimentality as it was growing up in different worlds.

  Subaru couldn’t exact
ly claim to be a man of deep faith, but he did revere life. His awareness of its value had grown a little stronger over the course of Return by Death.

  “So, did you find Rem with your Clairvoyance earlier?”

  “No. Unfortunately, she seems to be deeper in the forest. Like just now, it is proving difficult to concentrate on her location with the Urugarum sporadically targeting you, Barusu.”

  Ram put a hand to her cheek as she said it, looking mystified at how the demon beasts went straight for Subaru. Subaru had a vague suspicion that he knew the answer, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it directly—he was weak.

  With Subaru’s lips sealed, Ram glanced back and forth between him and the beast.

  “I suppose it is because you are weak.”

  “And that’s what you come up with?! That’s rude.”

  “It is because you are easy prey, then.”

  “That’s a distinction without a difference, Big Sis.”

  Ram shrugged; Subaru slumped his shoulders.

  It was hard to tell if Ram meant those words or was just needling him. Probably the latter.

  Lone demon beasts had attacked them a few times since entering the forest. Either way, Ram had been using magic to strike down the ones targeting Subaru.

  It was Subaru who’d established the surefire hunting method. They always went after Subaru, even when Ram was defenseless while using Clairvoyance. At first, Ram had had her doubts about it, but that was then.

  —Subaru halfheartedly thought that now was as good a time as ever to bring up a different subject.

  “Can I ask you what hornless means?”

  He’d kept wondering about the term he’d abruptly heard just prior to entering the forest. He could guess up to a point. Ram took the word in as she continued looking down at Subaru from above.

  “It is what it sounds like, a disparaging term employed by fools to mean a demon without a horn.”

  The word demon brought to mind the sight of Rem from the night before. He would never forget the sight of her covered in blood, laughing hysterically, with a white, faintly glowing horn on her forehead.

  She looked like a demon straight out of the fairy tales.

  And Ram had called herself hornless. In other words, Ram’s forehead—

  “I lost my one and only horn in a minor skirmish. I have had to rely on Rem for everything ever since.”

  “…Probably was a bad thing to ask, huh?”

  “Why?”

  As Subaru scratched his face, Ram tilted her head as if she was genuinely mystified.

  “Er, well, I don’t know how big a horn is to someone who’s a demon, but I’m guessing it’s a pretty big deal. I thought it might’ve been pretty insensitive to ask.”

  “Even if that is the case, there is no getting it back now. Well, you can rest easy.”

  Ram spoke down at Subaru, putting him in his place before lightening her tone very slightly.

  “I may not have been calm about it then, but I am now. I lost my horn, but I gained a life in its stead—I suppose that is not what Rem thinks, however.”

  Her voice had a painful overtone before she cut things off, a wave of her hand indicating her intent—she was entering Clairvoyance again. By the time Subaru climbed up the slope, Ram was already deeply enmeshed in viewing the world through the eyes of others.

  Ram’s eyes were closed, her breathing ragged, and she had a considerable cold sweat on her brow. Both of her legs trembled, looking like she’d run them ragged over the course of the long day; more than once, she looked like she was getting dizzy and was about to totter over. Using Clairvoyance to borrow the vision of other beings simply put that great a strain on her body.

  But no matter how painful it was, not the slightest sound of weakness passed through Ram’s lips.

  When you really got down to it, Ram and Rem were twins who greatly resembled each other. If pushing themselves hard was what it took, they’d do it without a moment’s hesitation. When you considered Emilia and Beatrice as well, the mansion’s girl squad prioritized others just a little too much.

  “Man, this makes me feel even guiltier for being a weakling…”

  He kicked the grass at his feet. That was a major miscalculation, for a piece of grass leaped into his mouth and the dirt flew right into his eyes.

  Spitting out the earth-tasting grass, he cursed his own extremely hesitant nature. But he relaxed a little, thinking that even such stupidity was fitting for him.

  Even though he knew it wasn’t a good thing to disturb Ram’s concentration while in Clairvoyance, he asked, “Ram. You’re worried sick about Rem, right?”

  Ram, her concentration focused on aligning herself with other people’s vision, belatedly replied, “Of course I am. Certainly that girl is much stronger than me, but that is no reason not to worry.”

  “…Yeah.”

  “Even if she is better than I am at everything, I am still her older sister. That will never change.”

  Until then, Subaru had seen Ram as someone who used her younger sister for the sole sake of making things easier on herself. He’d gotten it all wrong. Calling it a foolish misunderstanding didn’t come close to cutting it.

  Ram understood her own position far more keenly than Subaru ever had. She was well aware that she couldn’t live up to Rem’s constant boasts.

  Subaru, seeing how Ram had accepted it, could only harden his own resolve.

  He scratched his head, murmuring as he stretched to loosen up.

  “I really figured we’d have met up with Rem by now, but…”

  Maybe Ram felt how Subaru seemed unable to calm down. At any rate, she abandoned her fruitless Clairvoyance and brought her mind back in full. She promptly put her sweaty hair in better order as she cast Subaru a suspicious glance.

  “Barusu, what do you plan on doing?”

  “The way things are, I’m just baggage, exactly as you said. I told you before we headed into the woods… I’m gonna make myself useful and help save Rem.”

  He wasn’t waiting to be sure of his guess, but based on prior events, he gave it about 70:30 odds in his favor. Of course, the remaining 30 percent weighed heavily on his mind, but…

  “I’ve gotta play the hot hand here. Ram, you ready to cross a somewhat dangerous bridge?”

  “I am alone with a young man in a forest full of demon beasts. As a maiden, there is surely no greater danger.”

  “Oh, now you’ve said it, Sister.”

  Subaru laughed, then took a deep breath and reopened his eyes.

  If Subaru’s thought proved true, he could turn the situation around. Even though he knew it was necessary, it didn’t quell the fear in his heart.

  He knew he was a scaredy-cat. Even so, there were some things he couldn’t run from.

  If Subaru was right, this was one of them…

  “Ram, actually, I—”

  —He began to speak of Return by Death.

  Subaru acted like he was about to break the taboo, putting into words that which it was forbidden to convey.

  Before his eyes, Ram looked like she was wondering what Subaru was saying when her expression froze.

  No—time itself had stopped.

  The world lost color, sound vanished, and the very concept of time came to a grinding halt.

  It was a world where everything had stopped. Suddenly, the sole exception to the rule appeared.

  “There you are.”

  His murmur did not actually create a sound, but he hoped his invective still reached that which hovered before his eyes. If even a fraction of his emotions communicated, that would give him great satisfaction indeed.

  In the frozen world, the only thing unaffected was the black cloud. The cloud that had suddenly emerged before Subaru shifted into a silhouette of an arm to call his bluff. It formed fingers, then a wrist; the biceps emerged to complete a full right arm. Though the previous arm hadn’t even reached an elbow, this one materialized all the way up to the shoulder.

 
“—”

  Subaru’s breath felt like it caught inside him as the cloud, more distinct than the first time around, slid its black fingers forward. They moved past the thin flesh of his chest, stroked his rib cage, and went straight toward his heart.

  Even though he knew it was coming, there was no way he could endure pain so far past his limits. He had no words with which to express the mad screams inside his head from feeling his heart directly grasped.

  The long suffering, the time of unbearable anguish, continued.

  His heart rhythm was thrown off. His blood flow was cranked to the limit, making his entire body scream out. It was such torture that he felt like he was gushing tears of blood, biting down on his teeth hard enough to break them. For Subaru, the only thing he could sense in this world was pain. All he was allowed to do was continue to writhe.

  The agony seemed to last for eternity as his field of vision was dyed pure white—

  “—Barusu?”

  When he heard his nickname, Subaru realized he had fallen onto his knees and butt. He hastily wiped off the saliva that had spilled from the corner of his lips and rose back up.

  “Man, daydreams are bad, bad stuff.”

  “It is because you forced yourself back from injury too soon. If it is too hard, you should return to the village. If you have some other way to find Rem, at least tell me that before…”

  Before completing her sentence, Ram gasped, and her expression changed as she looked all around the area.

  The only sounds were those of the quiet forest: tree branches swaying from the wind and leaves rustling as they rubbed against one another. Ram listened carefully as she looked back at Subaru.

  “What did you do, Barusu?”

  “…I rolled the dice a little, pain and all.”

  Despite how extreme the pain had been, not even a single trace of that remained in his body at that moment.

  Even as Subaru silently reviled the wounds carved solely into his mind, he was grateful for the saving grace that his body still had enough endurance with which to act.

  After all—

  Within the deep verdant foliage, the rustle of the wind began to lose its tranquility. Ram frowned and looked to her right.