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

by Tappei Nagatsuki

  Maybe she couldn’t control her feelings, but she was hugging him with all her might. Every wound on his body began to cry out as Subaru desperately tried to pat Rem’s back to appeal to her. But—

  “You’re alive. You’re still alive. Subaru, Subaru…Subaru!”

  Rem was too overcome with emotion to notice how Subaru was reacting.

  He felt her press her face against his chest and her warm teardrops flowing down her cheek. A wide range of ticklish sensations struck him, well beyond the capacity of Subaru’s brain to deal with.

  In other words—

  “Oh man…not this…again…”

  As Subaru spoke, his head slowly tilted forward, his neck no longer able to support itself.

  His mind grew distant. The voices grew faint. Finally…

  “Go ahead and sleep. When you awaken, I must thank you quite earnestly. At the very least, rest assured I shall eliminate that which threatens you.”

  …someone’s voice sounded in his ears, serious and devoid of clownish affect.

  Feeling a deeper sense of security, Subaru gently let go of lucidity.

  Until the moment he fell asleep, he reveled in the warmth of the embrace and the relief of finally receiving it.

  Subaru’s consciousness sank into a river of unconsciousness.

  EPILOGUE

  TALKING ABOUT THE FUTURE

  1

  Subaru’s mind was invited to the land ruled by the black shadow once more.

  There was nothing. Only his consciousness seemed to hover in space. Subaru dimly realized that he existed.

  There was no one. There was nothing. Nothing began. Nothing ended. It was a world of no being at all.

  Subaru felt like he had been cast into the sea at night. He let his mind float with the fickle sensation.

  Abruptly, a change came over the world of darkness.

  In front, directly ahead of Subaru’s mind, someone stood.

  The shadow grew vertically. Before he knew it, a human silhouette stood before Subaru.

  He couldn’t see its face. The shape was indistinct. But he vaguely thought that it had the shape of a woman.

  The shadow wavered and slowly reached out a hand.

  For some reason, when her fingers gently grazed his mind, Subaru wanted to weep. The wave of strange emotion washing over him suggested that he had always been waiting for her to do so.

  He had an instinctive desire for the wriggling shadow to embrace him, to swallow him whole—and then it stopped. Something had stopped it.

  Subaru’s mind realized that there was another shadow, its white fingers embracing him from behind.

  Her touch felt soft, and not just warm but hot.

  The instant Subaru felt that heat, the shadow before him rapidly faded away.

  He faced his front. His heart trembled. He shouted ferociously. But the world of nothingness had no sound.

  He was left behind as the shadow became distant, fading, fading away.

  Finally, the shadow serenely stretched her fingers out toward Subaru, who was nearly in tears.

  “—ve you.”

  Even the words he could not hear faded, and the world fell apart.

  2

  When Subaru awoke, the first thing his eyes took in was an unfamiliar, ornate ceiling.

  Unlike his bedroom, the chamber he awoke in was ornamented more than most parlors; even the ceiling was decked out to excess. Perhaps it was mandatory in an aristocrat’s mansion, the better to show off the master’s authority to other parties.

  At any rate, to a boy like Subaru, born and raised in a small city, it was distinctly uncomfortable.

  Subaru blinked several times in the moments it took him to arrive at that thought after waking.

  “—It seems…you are awake?”

  The voice came from the edge of the bed, and at point-blank range.

  Subaru turned his head, which rested on an exceptionally soft pillow, and narrowed his eyes upon the girl sitting right beside him.

  “I suppose in one sense, having a maid by your side when you wake up is a man’s cherished desire.”

  “…Considering my degree of carelessness, this is the least I can do to atone.”

  “Man, that’s such a negative thing to say, Rem. More to the point…”

  With Rem’s eyes downturned, Subaru sat up, punctuating each movement with a word as he took his right hand from under the blankets and lifted it up. It was firmly in Rem’s grasp.

  “Did I do this? If I just grabbed you and didn’t let go… That’s kind of embarrassing. It’s like when I was a kid and wouldn’t let go of my favorite towel.”

  “Er, no, that’s…”

  When Subaru posed the question, still holding Rem’s hand as he glanced at her, he saw her cheeks redden just a bit.

  “I…did it.”

  “Why? I mean, I sweat a lot when I sleep, so my palm’s probably pretty nasty, too.”

  “Subaru, I…”

  “Yeah?”

  As Rem’s words faltered, Subaru had a warm feeling as he quietly watched her, their hands still joined.

  There was no rush involved, so Rem took several breaths before looking at Subaru with upturned eyes.

  “You seemed to be suffering while you slept, so I…”

  “You held my hand?”

  “Yes, because I am weak and full of flaws. Hence, I do not know what I can do for someone when this happens. Since I did not know, I did the thing that would have made me happiest.”

  Her halting, fumbling words suggested that this was linked to some kind of embarrassing memory. However, Subaru gave his hand a smile as Rem made her feelings clear.

  It was like that hand had rescued Subaru from a bad dream, as if he were a little kid. No doubt someone had held Rem’s hand on some night when she seemed about to cry. Subaru couldn’t help but be happy, even giddy, that she had done the same for him.

  With no reason to let go, their hands remained together. Subaru kept soaking up the warmth as he inclined his head.

  “Anyway, care to tell me what else happened before I read the sequel?”

  “Yes. How much do you remember, Subaru?”

  “Rozchi made fire rain from the sky, and you were worked up and bear-hugged me. That’s it.”

  “…So, what happened after, then…?”

  Haltingly, Rem explained the aftermath in a businesslike fashion.

  After Subaru lost consciousness, Roswaal had mopped up the demon beasts in the forest. The effect of Subaru’s stench of the witch worked fine even with him out cold, so Roswaal had used him as bait to lure out the demon beasts, and then incinerated the remainder in the forest.

  “Then the curses on me…?”

  “In this case…the casters were the demon beasts that bit you. You need not be concerned about dying from those curses any longer. Master Roswaal and Lady Beatrice and the Great Spirit have already taken care of everything.”

  “So all three are guaranteeing it, huh…? Well, I’ll believe it this time.”

  He’d been bitten almost everywhere else, so Subaru put a hand on his breast as he sighed with relief.

  Apparently the time bombs in his body had been successfully defused. He grimaced as he recalled just how many times he’d almost died and what pain and suffering he’d gone through to achieve this.

  “Master Roswaal also calmed the agitated villagers in person. Things have mostly returned to peace and quiet.”

  “I see. So the brats are safe, huh? But they’re probably worried sick about their beloved Big Bro Subaru coming back all beat-up, heh-heh.”

  Subaru was lightening up the mood when Rem made a murmur rich with meaning as she pulled down the blanket covering him.

  “—Yes…so it would seem.”

  What? thought Subaru, suspicious of Rem’s demeanor, but his expression soon changed to surprise.

  Under the blankets, Subaru was dressed in a gown just like the one he’d worn on his first day at Roswaal Manor when he’d been sev
erely injured. He realized there was something odd on the parts of the gown below the waist, namely…

  “There are scribbles all over it…like on a cast for a broken leg!”

  “The children Master Roswaal graciously invited to the mansion wrote these things.”

  “Geez, those little brats…!”

  Subaru clicked his tongue as he looked over their notes to him. In the first place, they were written upside down from Subaru’s point of view, and it wasn’t good handwriting to begin with. But since they were written in the I-script Subaru had learned, he eventually read everything.

  “Thanks for bringing Rem back.” “Thank you very much.” “You look crazy, but you’re cool.” “Do aerobics with us like you promised.” “Love you.”

  Subaru grumbled as he leaned back against the pillow, looking toward the window.

  “Geez, those brats… It’s so stupid. I don’t even like kids…”

  He was glaring toward the village and the children there who had written such things. He was looking forward to paying them a visit as soon as he could.

  Then he’d give those happy, prank-playing children a real chewing out.

  Rem warmly watched how Subaru’s words contrasted with the look on his face. Then her expression wavered, her lips trembling.

  “Setting aside the past, I need to speak to you about your body.”

  “Mm, ah, suppose you’re right. Setting aside the curse, I pushed it pretty far, huh?”

  It was only as he spoke that he realized his right shoulder, the same side as the hand Rem was holding, was in its socket. Even when he put weight on it, there was no ache. He felt no malaise from the scars all over his body where fangs had punctured his flesh. This world’s healing magic can do anything, thought Subaru.

  “Subaru, I am sorry.”

  In spite of Subaru’s optimistic judgment, Rem bent forward at the waist and bowed her head before him.

  “Hey, hey,” Subaru said with a wave of his hand, not able to grasp why Rem would be apologizing to him.

  “Lift your head up, Rem. My body’s fine; there’s nothing bad about it. I’m in perfect condition.”

  “That is…not true whatsoever. Certainly the visible wounds have been healed, and fortunately, you need not be concerned about aftereffects hindering normal, everyday life. But…”

  As her words broke off, a bitter shadow came over Rem’s face.

  “The scars remain…not only on the body but the heart as well. Also, due to repeated healing, your body’s mana is on the verge of running dry.”

  “Ahh, that’s why my body’s a little sluggish… But that’s not a big problem, is it? Scars on the body are a man’s medals as long as they’re not on the back. And I’m pretty tough when it comes to mental scars.”

  Subaru pointed his thumb at himself as he smiled to drive away Rem’s pangs of guilt.

  He wasn’t making it up. If his heart had been naive enough to have been broken beyond repair, he’d never have made it to that morning to have Rem holding his hand like that.

  After all, he’d undergone wounds to his spirit that could very well have made him unable to look Rem in the eye again.

  Subaru gazed at Rem intently.

  She had short blue hair. Her face was more the “lovely” than “pretty” type. At first, he thought she showed little emotion on her face, but she was coming around on that bit by bit. He wasn’t afraid of her. He wasn’t afraid of her at all.

  There was a Rem who had made Subaru loop more than once, but here was a Rem happy from the bottom of her heart that he had come back alive. It was all by chance.

  There was the Rem who ran amok for her sister’s sake, the Rem who acted rashly to protect Subaru, the Rem who ran off before switching to Berserker Mode so that she wouldn’t cause friendly fire—

  “You may look like you have it all together, but you really aren’t the calm type at all, are you, Rem?”

  In everyday life at the mansion, Rem had exceptionally sound, rational decision-making ability. But in a fast-moving crisis, Rem’s thoughts also moved quickly, making her hasty and rash.

  Subaru wasn’t really one to talk about snap judgments, but in Rem’s case, it was scary how she held a hammer only to see every problem as a nail. Subaru had experienced that firsthand.

  When Subaru pointed that out, Rem froze for a moment before making a listless, low bow.

  “I…understand.”

  Her murmur seemed like the first drop to break the dam of feelings she held inside her.

  “I am powerless, talentless, and a reject of the demon race. That is why I could never live up to Sister. I was so slow-footed compared to Sister, and I could not think of any way to catch up beyond running faster.”

  Rem covered her face with her free hand, continuing her confession as if squeezing it out of herself.

  “Sister did everything better. Sister never blundered. Sister never wavered. Sister was right about everything. Sister… If it was Sister, she…”

  Rem’s words trailed off as she meekly looked up at Subaru.

  What rested in her eyes were not tears but hollow resignation and despair.

  “I was always Sister’s…substitute. I’ve always, always been inferior. Truly, I am a good-for-nothing. I could not catch up to Sister no matter how much I chased after her.”

  —Faint tears abruptly welled up in her eyes.

  “Why was I the one to keep my horn? Why wasn’t it Sister? Why was Sister born with only one? Why…? Why were Sister and I twins?”

  Rem’s lips trembled as she sought meaning for her very existence.

  The tears welling in her eyes rolled onto her cheeks, making Rem’s pale flesh glimmer in sorrow.

  Subaru held his silence. Rem seemed unable to bear the quiet, hastily wiping the tears off her cheek. She spoke rapid-fire, trying to take back her preceding statements.

  “I…I am sorry. I said some very odd things. Please forget them. This is the first time I have said such strange things to anyo—”

  “Hey, Rem.”

  Subaru called her name, cutting her words off midway.

  Rem was afraid of what Subaru would say now that he had broken his silence but lifted her face nonetheless.

  And so, Subaru said to her…

  “From everything I’ve heard from you, you’re a pretty big idiot.”

  “—Eh?”

  “I can think of three stupid things about you. Can you guess what they are?”

  Rem’s eyes quivered, unable to grasp the meaning behind Subaru’s words. Subaru smiled at her reaction and raised a finger in front of Rem.

  “Can’t be helped, then. The first stupid thing is…you’re going overboard given the fact that I was actually, you know, saved. You see me waving right before your eyes, right? I have both legs on and everything.”

  Subaru wiggled his scratched-up legs. Rem realized that Subaru was speaking in regards to her confession but meekly shook her head even so.

  “That is…justifying after the fact…”

  “A wise man once said, ‘All’s well that ends well.’ To be honest, I think my version’s a lot more on target than trying to grade every part along the way. That leads me to the second stupid thing, which is you trying to carry everything on your shoulders by yourself.”

  With a wink, Subaru raised a second finger.

  “Now, I’m super happy you flew off the handle like that for my sake, but everything has a time and a place. To begin with, if you’d talked to other people about it, we’d probably have come up with a better way.”

  Where hunting the demon beasts was concerned, it was crystal clear that Subaru had a point. Rem, unable to refute him, lowered her eyes as if ashamed of her own impulsiveness. Of course, his criticism was something that could be said only in hindsight. But Rem did not realize that even the tiniest bit, nor did she realize Subaru was sticking out his tongue just a little.

  “As for the third… You know what it is, Rem?”

  “I…do not und
erstand at all. I am always insufficient; I can never reach as far as—”

  “Yes, that. That’s the third stupid thing.”

  Subaru pointed at Rem and how she never missed a chance to put herself down.

  Then he raised a third finger and waved the three about.

  “Rem, just because she’s your older sister, you build her up and put yourself down to where it almost kills you… I don’t think Ram’s always in a stronger position than you, okay? Her stamina’s worse than yours, her cooking’s lousy, she slacks off work, she makes snide comments… I suppose she thinks a little too much, too?”

  In Subaru’s mind, Ram’s specs were a long way from the pillar of perfection Rem spoke of. She was an older sister with talents behind her younger sister in every area. Surely the sisters themselves were well aware of this. That was what Subaru supposed, but Rem shook her head, rejecting his suggestions.

  “N-no…you are wrong. Sister is truly… If she had her horn, you would never judge her so—”

  “But Ram doesn’t have her horn. So I don’t know a Ram like that.”

  Subaru, cutting off Rem’s attempt to firmly deny herself, continued.

  “The Ram I know is just like I described. She can’t hold a candle to you in cooking, sewing, cleaning, politeness, or the way she talks—well, I don’t think that last part is a bad thing, really.”

  It wasn’t bad to butt heads with her over her haughty manner of speaking from time to time. To Subaru, the distance between him and Ram was more comfortable.

  “It’s probably only you who’s worked up about whether she has a horn or not. Comparing someone else’s good points and your own bad points just gets you bent out of shape.”

  “—”

  “Whatever she doesn’t have, you have. So accept it already… You’re gentle, a hard worker, always doing your best, and your breasts are bigger than Ram’s, too—”

  “—!”

  “Ow! Hey, don’t smack me with tears in your eyes like that!”

  Subaru recalled his brief conversation with Ram in the forest. There, he had learned that Ram wasn’t particularly hung up any longer on what she had lost as a demon, to the point where he believed Ram wanted Rem to get over it, too.