Re:Zero – Starting Life in Another World. Volume. 1.
◇◇◇
Before starting please visit and bookmark our website dranimetv.com to listen audiobook of this Awesome series.
Also, Become our PATREON member to get series you wanted Faster and Earlier with Awesome Merch and Events.
So please check it out and let’s get started.
Diamond. diamond. diamond.
◇◇◇
‘CHAPTER 2:- A STRUGGLE TOO LATE.’
‘Sub-Chapter 4.’
While his violent first encounter in the place had left a terrible first impression, in the end, Subaru was let in to the loot cellar.
Subaru had described the man from whom he’d first gotten information about the loot cellar, and told the giant old man that he was the one who introduced him to the place.
In front of the counter that was facing the front door, Subaru sat on a fixed chair meant for visitors and shifted uncomfortably. There were splinters sticking up out of the seat, and they kept poking him in the rear. If he’d had to go to the bathroom, those splinters could have been the trigger to make him pop.
“Why do you keep moving about like that? Are you that concerned about where your balls are?”
“Of course not. My boys are just fine. But, really? That’s the first thing that comes out of your mouth in this situation?”
“Giant” was the best way to describe the old man, since he wasn’t just tall, and he looked cramped as he bent down behind the counter. When he came back up, he had a bottle of liquor in his hand, and after pouring himself a glass, brought it to his lips.
“Well, you interrupted my drinking time. I hope you have a good reason for coming here. If not, that’s just terrible.”
“The sun’s just started to set and you’re already drinking? You’re going to die an early death if you keep that up.” With that retort, Subaru, holding his chin up with his hand and elbow on the counter, took a quick look around the inside of the loot cellar.
There was not a single trace of the tragedy that Subaru had witnessed the previous evening he had been here. As he looked at all of the various stolen items strewn about the room, he couldn’t tell whether they were organized in some way or not.
The old man noticed Subaru looking about, and narrowed his eyes in a knowing way.
“So, kid, are you interested in some of these goods?” he said, striking right away at the heart of the matter. The giant old man, who had given his name as “Rom,” smiled as he poured himself another shot of liquor into his dirty glass. “There are really only two reasons that people come to this place: they’re either bringing something in they stole, or they have some business with the stolen items themselves.”
“…Well, one of those is one of the reasons I’m here.”
“One of the reasons…huh. So that means you’ve got some other business being here?” Rom raised one of his eyebrows as Subaru gave a conditional agreement.
Subaru nodded, and then, reluctantly, knowing full well that he probably wasn’t going to be taken seriously, said, “This may sound a bit odd, but… Old man, have you…uh, died recently?”
Subaru decided not to add in the details about the decapitated arm or sliced throat.
Old Man Rom opened his gray eyes wide for a few moments before; as if to signal time starting back up again, he broke into a laugh.
“Ga-ha-ha-ha! I was wondering what you were going to say! Now I may be an old man with not much time left to live, but too bad, I haven’t died yet! I suppose when you get to this age, I don’t imagine it being that far off, though.”
Apparently, Rom took Subaru’s question as some kind of edgy joke, and took out another glass for Subaru. “Want a drink?”
Subaru refused the alcohol with a hand signal, followed up by a “Sorry, not right now.”
Subaru had managed to get his first question out, but the others inside him were multiplying.
The corpse that Subaru had seen in the loot cellar…there was no question about it. It was definitely the corpse of the old man who was sitting in front of him right now.
Sure, it was dark, and it was the first time Subaru had ever seen a corpse, so it wasn’t as though he’d been in a perfect state of mind. However, this old man had so many characteristic features about him, Subaru couldn’t imagine mistaking him for someone else.
But Subaru could turn the question he just asked on himself. He, too, had been inflicted with mortal wounds as well.
Subaru started to think that it had somehow been all a dream. He wasn’t sure he could trust what was inside his own head.
Was all of what happened here really a dream? If it was, then how much of it was a dream, and why am I here in the first place?
The burning pain Subaru had felt, the warmth he felt from that girl’s touch, the overwhelming pangs of guilt…if they were all just some leftover traces of a dream, then why was he here right now?
It would make more sense to say that everything since he’d been summoned to this world in the first place was a dream.
“Rom, have you seen a silver-haired girl around here lately?”
“Silver hair…? No, I can’t say I have. Silver hair’s one of those things that stands out in a bad way, too, so even if my memory’s starting to fail me, I don’t think I would have forgotten if I saw someone like that,” said Rom, following up with a laugh.
But that didn’t make Subaru feel any better.
Rom must have noticed the seriousness in Subaru’s expression, because he wiped his own smile away and said, “Drink,” putting a glass in front of Subaru again.
Rom tilted the glass and filled it up full with an amber-colored liquid. Seeing that Subaru did nothing but stare silently at the glass, once more he said, “Drink.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t feel up to it right now. Plus, I’m not so much a little kid that I want to drink to act like I’m cool.”
“What are you talking about? Drinking and acting up is exactly what kids like you are supposed to do! So go ahead and take a big gulp and burn up your insides. When you do that you’ll be able to cough up a bunch of things you’ve got stuck inside because they won’t be able to take the heat. So drink!” said Rom a third time, pushing the glass on Subaru.
Overpowered by his attitude, Subaru took the glass in his hand and brought the amber liquid to his nose. A strong smell of alcohol struck the inside of his nose and Subaru’s face twisted as he almost started coughing.
However, despite all of Subaru’s resistance, there was a part of him that wanted to do as Rom said. Subaru had thought that drowning one’s troubles in alcohol was the mark of a lame adult, but…
“All right…here goes!”
Subaru tilted the glass and drank all of it in one gulp. Immediately his esophagus began to scream as it was burned. Subaru slammed his glass on the counter.
“Argh! Gah! That’s terrible! It’s hot! It’s so bad! Ugh! Disgusting!”
“You don’t have to say it that many times! Come on! You’re going to lose out on half of the fun in life if you can’t understand how good liquor tastes!”
As Subaru spewed out comments along with the heat from the liquor, Rom yelled at him and drank again. This time he took the whole bottle up and gulped from it.
After drinking about three times as much as Subaru just had, Rom gave a mighty burp and smiled.
“But still, you should be proud of yourself! That was good form there! So how about it? Do you feel like letting any of that stuff inside you out now?”
“…Yeah! Just a little! Old man, it’s time for me to take care of that one other reason I’m here!”
Turning the old man’s smile back with a wicked smile of his own, Subaru wiped his mouth with his sleeve and pointed into the back of the cellar, where it looked like most of the stolen articles of value were concentrated.
Rom’s face took on an air of seriousness, and Subaru told him directly.
“I’m looking for a badge that’s got a jewel embedded in it, and I want you to let me have it.”
This was Subaru’s original goal. Other than confirming Satella’s safety, it was the main reason he was here: to retrieve the thing so important to Satella that she would face danger just to get it back.
Even while Subaru still felt insecure about the state of Satella’s well-being, he thought that if he could at least get a handle on the state of the badge, he would have a clue toward finding her.
After Subaru had stated his goal with all of his emotions thrown behind his words, Rom made a difficult expression on his face before replying. “A badge with a jewel… I’m sorry, but no one’s brought in anything like that.”
“…Really? Think long and hard about it—you sure you’re not going senile yet?”
“If I can’t remember when I’m at my best with liquor running through me, then I really have to say I don’t know. However…”
Just as the last thread of Subaru’s hope was about to be cut, Rom gave him a sly grin.
“Someone’s made plans with me to bring something in later today. I’m told it’s something valuable, too, so it might just be the thing you’re looking for.”
“Is the person bringing it in, by chance…a girl named Felt?”
“That’s exactly the case, but…what? You actually know the name of the thief who took it?”
Subaru couldn’t help but strike a victory pose.
Just as he’d thought he had lost all of his leads, things had connected once again. Felt’s name had just come up. Felt, the name of the girl who had supposedly taken Satella’s badge. If that were the case, Felt’s existence would prove Satella’s existence. At the very least, Subaru would be able to be sure that Satella wasn’t some figment of his imagination.
“I was just about to think that my love of silver-haired heroines had made me delusional…”
“I’m sorry to interrupt your strange sense of relief there, but you don’t have any guarantee that you’ll be able to buy back the item, even if she brings it here. If it’s got a jewel embedded in it, it’s going to fetch a high price.”
“Ha! You can look around at me all you want, but I’m sorry. I’ve got nothing! I am eternally and peerlessly penniless!”
“Then you’re out of luck!” Rom yelled back, taken by surprise.
But just as he did that, Subaru lifted up a finger in front of his face and waved it back and forth. “Tsk-tsk-tsk. It’s true, I may not have any money. However! In this world, you do not necessarily need money to obtain things. There’s this wonderful system called ‘barter’—haven’t you heard?”
Rom didn’t argue back, he just nodded in silence, egging Subaru on. Subaru dug around in his pants pocket, and in his hand when he took it out was…
“…What’s that? It’s the first time I’ve ever seen anything like it.”
“This object that I now raise up is fantastic magical item that can be used to freeze any object in time! It is called a ‘cell phone’!”
It was a compact-size, white-colored, thin-model cell phone. As Rom looked on amazed at this mysterious item he had never seen before, Subaru quickly moved his fingers and a moment later a white light flashed in the darkness inside the building.
As a loud shutter sound rang out along with the flash, Rom fell back behind the counter. It was such an exaggerated reaction that Subaru couldn’t help but laugh, but Rom was obviously mad.
“What are you doing?! Are you trying to kill me?! Don’t think you can fool me with your funny moves!”
“Wait, wait, calm down. Take a deep breath, relax, and come over here and take a look.”
Rom was still red in the face, and it wasn’t because he had been drinking, but nevertheless Subaru held out his cell phone in front of him. After a doubtful look at Subaru, his eyes opened wide as he looked at what was in front of him.
“This is…this is my face. How did you do that?”
“I told you, didn’t I? This is a fantastic item that cuts out a piece of time and freezes it. Using this item, I cut out a bit of your time, just before now, and sealed it within this device.”
Then, Subaru changed the direction of the camera and pointed it at himself, and took another picture. When he showed the screen to Rom again, it showed Subaru making a peace sign.
“It cuts out little pieces of time, just like that. So how about it? Pretty rare, huh?”
“I can’t get terribly excited about that lame pose of yours, but this really is…hmm…”
After insulting Subaru’s pose, Rom looked very intensely at the cell phone. Subaru made a fist and squeezed it, emboldened by the fact that Rom seemed more interested than he expected.
“This is my first time seeing one of these, but…basically, this is a mitia, isn’t it?”
“A mitia?” Subaru was about to say, “It’s just a flip phone,” but caught himself. Rom nodded again.
“It’s what you call things you can use to do magic without opening up a gate, like magic users do. That said, they’re mostly used as gifts rather than tools…”
So magic items were called “mitia.” Subaru nodded, thinking the word fit pretty well. Rom, who had continued to look closely at the cell phone, finally put it back on the counter.
“I’m not sure I can put a definite price on this. I’ve worked here in the loot cellar for a very long time, but this is my first time handling any mitia. …I can say, though, that it certainly would sell at a high price.”
It seemed that rare items commanded attention in any business, even for those working the black market. Rom’s voice had quickened in excitement, and he rubbed the tip of his chin as he looked down at Subaru.
“To be honest, even if it has a jewel embedded it in, exchanging something like this for a purely decorative item really puts you at a loss. You’d be better off trading it for something more expensive… Well, really, you can’t compare it to any of this stolen junk I have here.”
For someone involved in illegal activities, it was strange for Rom to give him such a kind warning, and Subaru responded with a weak smile. To anyone else, what Subaru was trying to do must seem stupid.
“No, it’s all right. I’ll exchange this mitia for the badge that Felt brings in.”
“Why would you go so far to do that? Is that badge really worth more than this mitia? Or are you saying that it’s worth more than money can buy?” asked Rom, unable to come to terms with Subaru’s decision.
Honestly, if Subaru was in the same position as Rom, he thought he might have said the same thing.
“Well… Actually, I haven’t seen the badge myself yet, but I don’t think that it could be worth more in money than this cell phone, and I’m sure I’m going to be taking a loss.”
“If you understand all of that, why do you want to go through with it?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I want to take a loss.”
Rom blinked a few times at Subaru, but at the same time Subaru felt a sense of exhilaration, because this…this was his answer.
“I want to pay someone back. I’m someone who always feels like they have to return a favor. I’m one of those modern kids who can’t handle the feeling of being indebted to someone. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. So, even if I have to take a big loss, I’m going to take back that badge.”
“Hmm… So, it sounds like this badge isn’t actually yours… Is that right?”
“It belongs to a beautiful silver-haired girl who saved my life. I don’t understand why, but it’s very precious to her.”
“But what about that person who saved you? Why isn’t she here?”
“I’m currently looking for her! Actually, right now I’m not even sure she’s not a figment of my imagination that I created because I was feeling down!”
Subaru gripped his fist and laughed off his previous anxiety by putting it into words.
Subaru was going to get this badge back, and then once again meet that girl. He wanted to see her smile.
“You’re quite the idiot, aren’t you?” laughed Rom as he looked on at Subaru and his determination.
◇◇◇
Diamond. Diamond. Diamond.
◇◇◇
Thank you for Reading on Light Novel Page.
Please like, Share and Subscribe our YOUTUBE Channel.
Also follow me on INSTAGRAM and TWITTER to get future updates.
And support me on PATREON.
This is Dr.Anime & Stay tuned for next Chapter.
◇◇◇
