Re:Zero – Starting Life in Another World. Volume. 2.
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‘Chapter 3:- THE SOUND OF THE CHAIN.’
Sub-chapter 1.
“Dear Guest, Dear Guest. You look rather unwell. Are you all right?”
“Dear Guest, Dear Guest. You look like your stomach hurts; did you soil yourself?”
As Subaru hung his head in shame, the sisters called out with voices of concern.
They were familiar voices, even after such a short time. The voices were sometimes annoying, sometimes relieving, voices that he could trust.
—But now those voices sounded entirely different, ringing harshly against Subaru’s eardrums.
Responding to the feel of their gazes, Subaru put his breathing in order and lifted his face.
“Sorry to…make you worry. I’m just a bit…dense when I’m waking up.”
Somehow, the rage surging within him had dissipated while he pressed his face into the bedding. Though the initial shock had subsided, he felt as if he were bound with silk string, a sense of loss that made him feel a sob rising from his chest.
—Thinking how wonderful and infuriating it would be if only this was all just some mischievous trick Roswaal was playing on him. The pretense in his own mind making him feel somewhat better, Subaru opened his eyes and looked straight ahead.
“—Ah, that’s right.”
After an instant, the blurry world became clear and reality forced itself upon the young boy.
Subaru saw the twins standing on both sides of the bed, their hands on the bedding. The familiar faces of Ram and Rem were gazing expressionlessly at Subaru, as per usual.
Neither pair of eyes contained any emotion toward Subaru whatsoever. The four days that he had lived with them, growing closer to each other bit by bit, had evaporated like morning mist.
“Dear Guest—?”
With bewildered voices, both of their lips wove the words in unison.
Their gazes chased after Subaru, now sitting up in bed. But Subaru, seemingly feeling a chill in the air, obeyed his feeling of unease and rose in great haste, putting distance between them.
“Dear Guest, you mustn’t move suddenly. You are not yet well rested…”
“Dear Guest, it’s dangerous to move suddenly. You have not yet soundly rested…”
Subaru’s body reflexively pulled back from the two girls and their concerned voices. The cold response made their eyes tighten with hurt looks, but Subaru was too frantic to notice such a thing.
He was having a very hard time dealing with the feeling that he knew them but they did not, in turn, know him.
It was only a few days prior that Subaru had the same feeling in the busy street, the back alley, and the dilapidated shop.
But it was completely different now. The situation was different. The time was different. The experience was different.
It wasn’t like when he’d redone things with Emilia and Felt when he’d barely known them.
Certainly he’d done some arm-twisting to redo things with the people he trusted. But now, faced with having people he knew turn back into strangers, Subaru was gripped by an unshakable, faceless terror.
The maid twins before Subaru’s frightened eyes had begun to sense that something was terribly wrong.
Silence descended upon the room. Neither side could say or do anything. That was why…
“Sorry—I can’t do this right now!”
…Subaru’s action, gripping the doorknob and practically falling into the hallway as he rushed out, was just a moment faster than the twins’ move to stop him.
Subaru ran, the bare soles of his feet soaking up the cold of the hallway, drawing heavy, ragged breaths as he went. He ran fiercely, in a daze, with no particular destination in mind.
He ran. He fled. Yet he didn’t comprehend what he was running from.
All he knew was that he couldn’t bear to remain in that place a moment longer.
Subaru ran down a corridor lined with similar-looking doors, his strides still tenuous, like he was about to fall over at any moment.
Then, out of breath, Subaru put his hands on a door as if it led right to it—
—and, as he tumbled in, he was greeted by the great mass of bookshelves in the archive of forbidden books.
Sub-chapter 2.
With the door shut behind him, the archive was completely sealed off from the outside world.
The only remaining way to intrude into the room from the outside was to open every single door in the entire mansion.
Subaru no longer sensed pursuit. He slumped his shoulders, leaned back against the door, and sank to the floor.
He wasn’t squatting, and yet, his knees were shaking. So were the fingers he stretched out to try to hold them in place.
“If I were playing paper sumo, I’d cut some crazy lines right about now, ha-ha…”
Even his self-mockery had no bite to it. His dry smile seemed to contain nothing but hollowness.
The scent of old paper in the air of the calm archive gently sprinkled a sense of ease and tranquility into Subaru’s mind. Though Subaru knew it was shallow comfort, it was the only thing he had to cling to at the time.
One after the other, after another…he desperately took deep big breaths.
As Subaru gasped like a fish out of water, a scornful voice spoke from within the archive.
“—Quite a rude thing you are, barging in without so much as a knock.”
There was a footstool sitting straight ahead from the entrance, well inside the dimly lit room. A girl sat upon it.
It was Beatrice, guardian of the archive of forbidden books, keeping her distance from Subaru, the same as always, not a single hair of difference.
With a loud sound, Beatrice closed the book, altogether too large for her tiny body, and looked at Subaru.
“I wonder, how do you breach the Passage…? This makes twice now.”
“Sorry, a little while is fine, so let me stay here a bit. Please.”
Subaru put his hands together, bowed his head in supplication, and closed his eyes without waiting for her reply.
—This is a quiet place with no one here to bother me. I’ve gotta get a grip on the facts. What’s my name, where am I, who are the two twins from earlier? What’s the name of the girl in front of me, and who is she? This weird room? The four days I spent? The promise I made, to be with someone, tomorrow, who—
“Oh yeah, Emilia…”
He recalled her silver hair, twinkling under the moonlight, her bashful smile…
He remembered the promise he had made with Emilia, with the moon and the starry sky shining above them…
“Beatrice…”
“…Are we close enough for you to be calling my name, I wonder?”
“You said I breached the Passage just now, and once before, too?”
Beatrice made a sour look at being addressed like an acquaintance and having a question foisted upon her. However, Beatrice valiantly maintained her poise as she replied, “You and your thick skull barged in here not three or four hours ago.”
“The time I came in, messing with your setup, and you got mad so you bullied me. Got it.”
Though there was no strength behind it, he did not neglect his sarcasm toward Beatrice, getting further under her skin.
—Subaru had encountered Beatrice three to four hours earlier, she’d said.
Her words could only mean when he had first awakened at Roswaal Manor, when Subaru had, without any thought whatsoever, broken through the looping corridor on his first try. When he next awoke that morning, Ram and Rem were in front of the bed.
“In other words, this is the…second time I woke up in the manor, then.”
Subaru gathered up memories from all over the place to piece together his circumstances.
The only time the twins had both been present when Subaru woke was that morning. They’d alternated after that. Furthermore, the first day was the only time when he’d had the social status to use the bed in the guest room.
“In other words, I went five days ahead, and I’ve gone four days back…?”
Just like in the royal capital, Subaru had gone back in time. That summed up his present situation.
But understanding it was one thing; accepting it was something else.
Subaru clutched his head and tried to think of what could cause him to go back in time.
When Subaru had gone back in time at the royal capital, it was triggered by death, which he’d dubbed Return by Death. He’d decided that, having died three times over before saving Emilia, he’d left that loop behind.
In point of fact, he’d spent five days at Roswaal Manor in absolute peace and quiet, hadn’t he?
And then, poof, suddenly going back in time—he hadn’t received any warning whatsoever.
“Did the conditions change from before…? I made myself think dying sent me back, but maybe it goes back on auto after one week…? No, if that were the case, then…”
If that was so, there was no reason for him to have awoken on the first day at Roswaal Manor at all.
The principles underpinning going back in time remained unclear, but loops like the one at the royal capital surely followed certain rules.
One rule was definitely the place where you were reborn. If Subaru hadn’t been freed from that loop, he should have awoken right in front of the owner of the fruit shop with the scarred face, as he had three times over.
“But it wasn’t a scarred middle-aged man, it was those angelic maids. Guess I’ve moved on up…”
That part made him feel like he’d traded Hell for Heaven.
With several pats, Subaru felt up his own body and ensured that he was uninjured. You wouldn’t think anything had happened.
“But if I died, how did I die? Everything was normal before I slept during the fourth night. At any rate, it didn’t feel like any situation I’d die in my sleep before reaching the fifth day.”
He wondered if instant death without any conscious knowledge of it whatsoever was truly possible.
He tried to picture dying from poison or gas in his sleep, but that meant being assassinated.
There was no reason anyone would assassinate Subaru, so the preliminary conditions simply hadn’t been met.
“So does that mean it’s a forced loop unless I reach clear conditions…?”
If you looked at it like a game, it was like a Game Over that happened if you didn’t trigger the necessary flags.
Not knowing who’d put up the flags or why was bad enough, but not knowing the triggers—that was pretty dismal game design.
“Besides, I’m the kind of gamer who gives up quickly and runs off to read a strategy guide…”
A scornful smile came over Beatrice as she watched Subaru sink into an ocean of introspection. She sounded bored when she spoke.
“It’s become rather boring around here with all the mumbling you’ve been doing. Death this, life that—this is why humans are so boring, I suppose. It’s all deceits and conceits to the very end. This is why I can’t hold a conversation with your kind.”
It was a blunt, even cruel way of blowing him off. But Subaru was relieved that Beatrice’s attitude hadn’t changed a bit. He rose up, dusting off his rump as he turned to face the door.
“Leaving, I suppose?”
“There’re some things I’ve gotta figure out. I’ll leave moping around for sometime later. Thanks.”
“I have done nothing at all… Would you leave already, I wonder? I really must readjust the Passage.”
Though there was not even a sliver of gentleness in her tone, for some reason, Subaru found that reassuring.
Beatrice herself may not have had any such intention, but Subaru felt like her words were pushing him onward. He twisted the doorknob; a cool breeze blew as he took his first step outside.
The wind made his short hair sway; he covered his face with an arm as he felt a faint prickling in his eyes.
Then, the wind stopped, he felt grass under his bare feet, and his breath caught a bit as he spotted the silver-haired girl in the garden, making his heart leap for joy.
“Ahh, she really is so radiant.”
Well, this is a nice touch, he thought, internally pouring out a string of invectives at the cheeky guardian of the archive.
“—Subaru!”
Upon noticing Subaru, the girl’s violet eyes opened wide as she urgently rushed to his side. Those three bell-like syllables pouring from her lips were in the highest pitch she could make.
Subaru spontaneously shifted his feet toward the fast-approaching girl. As she gazed at him from head to toe, the corners of her eyes descended in relief. But she immediately snapped back to her senses and returned to her normal look.
“Don’t make me worry like that. Ram and Rem were really worked up, running all around the mansion making a big fuss because you ran off right after you woke up.”
“Rare for them to get that worked up, huh. And sorry. Beatrice held me up for a bit.”
“Again? I heard she picked on you once already before I got up, but…”
As Emilia’s beautiful face drew near with an expression of concern, her defenseless look made Subaru reach out his hand to her, as if his own weak heart were trying to cling to her for support.
But it was far too abrupt a place for it. If he did that, calming down in the archive would lose all meaning. It wasn’t his goal to make a scapegoat out of Beatrice.
All Subaru could do, seeing Emilia’s anxious face, was respond with a vague expression.
It wasn’t very Subaru-like behavior, but Emilia’s formality didn’t permit her to dig much deeper.
Of course it didn’t. Emilia hadn’t spent a single hour with this Subaru since meeting him; there was no way she could know that.
The four carefree days Subaru and Emilia had spent together had been tossed into the gutter; four carefree days that had really happened, that Subaru knew but Emilia did not.
“What is it? Is there something on my face?”
“Yeah, there are cute eyes, nose, ears, and mouth all over your face… Er, I’m glad that you’re all right.”
Emilia’s face, scowling as if to complain about the initial sweet talk, immediately nodded at the last part.
“Yes, I’m quite all right, because you protected me. How about your condition, Subaru?”
“Ah, all good, all good. Thanks to blood loss, mana drain, and the shock from when I woke up, I’m a bit weak and my mind feels like it’s been beaten with a bat, but I’m feeling good!”
“I see, that’s won— Eh? That sounds like you’ve been taking a beating all over…”
“I’m fine. See?”
He spread out both arms and turned all around to show Emilia that he was in good health.
He did seem to be returning to top form, bit by tiny bit. The gears were turning, the tongue was moistening the lips; he had to start being Subaru Natsuki.
“Well, that’s fine and good… Er, are you going back to the mansion? I have a little bit of business, actually.”
“Ah, chat time with the spirits, huh? I won’t be in the way, so can I stay? And lend Puck to me, would you?”
Emilia tilted her head and spoke as if speaking down to a child.
“That’s fine, but you really have to stay out of the way. This isn’t a game.”
Emilia’s sisterly behavior was just so adorable that it made Subaru’s spirit burn with determination.
“Okay, Emilia-tan, let’s get this show on the road! Time is short, the world is big, and our tale has just begun!”
“I suppose s… Eh? What did you say just now? Where did this ‘tan’ come from…?”
“It’s okay, just go with the flow!”
With Emilia expressing surprise at his intimate pet name, he pushed on her back as both headed to that spot in the garden.
Her losing the will to keep “correcting” him and grudgingly accepting how he spoke to her had been one of the bonds built up between them during those four lost days. Emilia still wore a face of resistance as Subaru walked behind her and murmured very quietly.
“—We’ll get them back.”
As they stopped, he gazed at her long silver hair, and then shifted his eyes to the sky.
—He spitefully looked at the sun rising in the low sky of the east.
This and four more and he’d be right at the appointed hour.
All he needed to fulfill the promise with this girl like the moon was to greet the arrival of the sun.
—He had time. And he knew what the answer would be.
“I dunno who’s got it in for me, but I’m gonna take it all back and make you cry. Don’t underestimate how tenacious I can be after I fell madly in love with the smile I saw that night.”
He shook a fist toward the sky and declared war to no one in particular.
It was Subaru’s first declaration of open defiance at the “summons” and “loop” that had brought him to that world.
He had begun his battle against the second loop. All so that he could move past his week at Roswaal Manor and learn how those days would continue.
And to protect and fulfill the promise he had made that night—
Sub-chapter 3.
Subaru’s caustic words to the rising sun raised the curtain for his second “first day” at Roswaal Manor.
All he had to do was see the sun rise five times.
Subaru’s plan was to spend the intervening time doing the same things to the fullest extent possible.
In accordance with his resolution in the garden, Subaru’s final objective was to fulfill the promise he’d made to Emilia on the final day. To do that, he had to get to that fourth night and make that promise once more.
This was because he’d concluded that loops were, to a certain degree, set in stone. If he followed the same path, the story would “conclude” at the same place.
If things followed the same flow as before, it was a natural result. Factoring in the thought processes and behavior patterns of the people involved, things would surely head to the same place. To Subaru, the important thing was to redo everything and change up only the end result. That was the best way to proceed he could think of.
In other words, the best way to reach his objective was to see the loop through. With sublime mischief, Subaru resolved to save and load his way forward, leading events to the conclusion he desired.
“So, what is this…? Did I mess up somewhere…?”
In the steamy bath, Subaru opened his mouth wide and blew bubbles as he looked back on his first day.
As far as his plan was concerned, everything after that moment of resolve that morning had been a complete disaster.
First, he’d finished his daily morning routine with Emilia and awaited Roswaal’s return to the manor before speaking to him in the dining hall.
Put bluntly, he didn’t have confidence he could reproduce all the fine points of an in-depth conversation, but surely he’d touched on all the high notes from last time. He’d got to touch Puck as a reward, addressed Emilia like a friend, discussed Emilia’s candidacy for the royal succession, and determined where he stood in relation to Roswaal Manor.
Just as before, Subaru had charmed his way into becoming an apprentice servant at Roswaal Manor. Afterward, he’d gone off with Ram to be shown around the manor and begin his first day of work, but that’s when things went off the rails.
Subaru, his face the only part not submerged in the bath, let his chin ride upon the water of the tub as he murmured with dismay.
“Then why was everything different from last time? I feel like a student who went through all the trouble of writing cheat sheets when they changed all the subjects on the test… What was the point of redoing it?”
Subaru’s whole plan had been to redo everything exactly as he’d done before. However, the details of the training for his new post and the duties Ram had imposed on him were completely different from before. He felt like it went from Odd Jobs 101 to Odd Jobs 401.
“They were still all odd jobs, but…there was waaaay more to them than last time.”
Perhaps he needed to look at it as trusting him with higher-level work and more of it?
“Last time everything just ran me ragged, but this time it was hard as nails… Damn, I thought it was gonna be easy, all the same stuff.”
Subaru was not merely venting complaints at his expectations being so cruelly disappointed. He’d decided he really wasn’t in a good situation.
This was the result of his trying to spend his time like before. With so many details of his first day altered, he could not rationally expect things would be like last time on the second and following days.
Overlooking the fine details, he was terrified that a much larger problem might yet rear its head.
“I still don’t have any real clue why I went back this time around…”
This time, he’d gone to sleep “normally” and woke up having gone back in time. Unlike the death loop he had been in before, he had no way to avoid something he couldn’t anticipate. Just the thought of it made his head hurt.
“With this many differences, can I rely on my memory at all…?”
He thought back to that fateful day when he met Emilia in the capital.
A mountain of little details differed, but things were still proceeding in largely the same direction. He didn’t know how to escape from the big event. The only thing that stood out differently from the last time in Subaru’s mind was the promise he’d made with Emilia.
Surely, if he made it that far, he’d be able to change the results and get past this.
Subaru sank into the bathtub, put his thoughts in order without a breath of oxygen, and poked his head out of the bathtub once more.
“Well, hello. Maaay I join you?”
The sight of the bare-naked nobleman before him, hands on his hips, made Subaru deeply regret that he required air.
They were close enough to touch as he stood in the nude, his crown jewels swaying between his legs as he looked down at Subaru.
“It’s currently occupied. I refuse.”
“The facilities in my own manor are my personal belongings, are they nooot? Allooow me to freely enjoy them.”
“Then don’t ask. You don’t need my permission to get in the tub!”
“Oh my, so haaarsh. You do not understand. The bath is certainly my personal possession…”
Roswaal went down on one knee as his hand reached out and gently lifted Subaru’s unresisting chin.
“…but in the capacity of my servant, are yooou not as well?”
Chomp.
“No hesitation, I seeee.”
After biting the creepy fingertips holding his chin, Subaru swam backward, putting distance between Roswaal and himself.
The bathroom’s size was firmly in the realm of “stupidly huge,” with a tub as broad as the oldest, best bathhouses. Plainly, it was the habit of nobles to use an excessively large amount of space, but he had to admit that monopolizing all that space felt pretty satisfying.
“Another twist I didn’t expect, geez…”
—During the previous four days, he hadn’t encountered Roswaal in the bathtub even once.
During the last loop, Roswaal had been extremely busy; the two barely saw each other. No doubt the twins had tended to his needs, but Subaru barely had any contact with him outside of mealtime, their initial meeting excepted.
“Damn it, every little thing’s happening in completely different ways than what I expected…”
“Althooough I know not what troubles you, not eeeverything in this world goes according to plan.”
Roswaal moved to Subaru’s side as he spoke of it being a tough world. He leaned back against the wall of the bathtub and let out a long sigh, somehow looking like any other man in the world enjoying the pleasures of the bath.
“I only just noticed, but I guess even you take off your makeup for hot baths.”
“Mm? Aaahh, that’s right. Oh my, Subaru, I wonder iiif this is the first time you have seen my face unadorned?”
“I suppose it is. I’m like, you look totally normal. No need to hide your face like that.”
“Cosmetics is a hobby of mine. ’Tis nooot out of any need to hide my face. It is not as if the curl of my lips or the arch of my nose are abhorrent to the eye… Oh my.”
“Don’t look at me while saying that stuff. Make three doe-eyed blinks and I’m keeling over here and now.”
Being born with bad looks was a serious drawback when making first impressions. And if Subaru wanted to complain about the face he was born with, what could he say? He looked exactly like his mother.
Remembering his parents, Subaru had a conflicted look on his face as Roswaal changed the subject.
“Aaare you getting along nicely with Ram and Rem? They’ve worked here for quite a while, so they are suuurely passing things along to their junior?”
“Well, I haven’t talked to Rem much, but I’m getting along well with Ram. If anything, Ram is a bit too friendly. Even with us senior and junior, she hasn’t treated me any differently from when I was a guest.”
“Weeell, Rem will make up for that shortcoming. It is only right sisters support each other. Those two are verrry well suited for each other in that sense.”
“From what I see and hear, Ram’s the weaker sister, while Rem always covers for her.”
In every sense, it was clear which twin sister had the superior ability at domestic work. Rem had first-rate skills across the board while Ram would have needed to work hard to come close to second-rate. Normally, that setup would give Ram an inferiority complex, but…
“But all I hear is, ‘Ram’s amazing because she’s older.’ Being so bold is unreal.”
“If you wish to speak of being bold, I think you are quiiite the specimen? But I see. I wonder if you replied and said the same things to her? It is quite a thing you are treading upon without reserve, which is quite maaarvelous.”
“The emphasis there doesn’t sound like praise at all, you know?”
Subaru didn’t hesitate to intrude on other people’s personal turf because he was so bad at reading the mood. That aloof disposition made it easy for him to get isolated. You might say that it was his bad habit to get on other people’s nerves.
At Subaru’s reply, Roswaal closed his right eye and looked up at the ceiling with his yellow left eye alone.
“It is not sarcasm. I truly believe it is a gooood thing. Those girls are a little too perfect for each other, you see. Quiiite likely, some things change only when someone comes from outside and gives a liiittle…push, yeees?”
“Something like that, huh?”
“Something like that, indeeeed.”
The two immersed themselves into the bathtub up to their necks, letting their entire bodies soak up the sensations. A little after that, Subaru raised his eyebrows, remembering something.
“Oh, right. Ros, there’s something I wanted to ask you. Is that all right?”
“Weeell, if it is within my vast personal knowledge, I wooould not mind.”
“That’s the most roundabout way of saying ‘I’m really smart’ that I’ve ever heard. But ah, anyway, how is this bath heated?”
Subaru knocked a couple of times on the bottom of the tub as he addressed what had been nagging him the whole time.
The bathtub Subaru and Roswaal were soaking in was made of stone; its pleasant smoothness made him think of marble. The bath was in a corner under the mansion, and of course it was for both genders. To begin with, everything in the bath was swapped after each time, so he had no special sense of fulfillment from getting in after Emilia.
Subaru added a thought.
“Not that I’m boiling in here. I just noticed before I got in.”
“From time to time, your inquisitive spirit truuuly astounds me. I wonder if it is youth…although I wonder if I would have had that thought when I was your age?”
Roswaal seemed to see a rare dazzle in Subaru’s youth as he nodded.
“Regardless, the answer iiis quite simple. You seeee, there is a fire-attuned magic crystal under the bathtub that heats it. When triggered by the mana of someone entering the bath, it activates and brings the water to a boil. Surely you used such a thing in the kitchen?”
“So that’s how that pot worked. I was wondering how you cooked here without gas.”
After Rem had made brief use of it, it’d been Subaru’s turn to peel vegetables. In the first place, not understanding the meaning of words like it runs on mana, spoken like an obvious, everyday thing, probably meant the dawn of Iron Chef Subaru was still a long time away.
“I mean, if it’s mana, does that mean only magic users can use it?”
“Nooot at all. All life forms have ‘gates.’ Nooo plant or animal is an exception. If ’twas not so, we could nooot achieve a society built on the use of magic crystals.”
Subaru puzzled over the new piece of vocabulary. Roswaal, watching Subaru like that, cleared his throat and raised a finger.
“Very well, shaaall we indulge in a lesson here? I, teaching magic tooo you, the somewhat unenlightened?”
“I’ll ignore the way that stuff came out and accept with grace.”
Responding to the lecture proposal, Subaru turned to face Roswaal, who was kneeling in the center of the bathtub. None of that changed the fact that both were buck naked.
“Verrry well. First, the basics. Subaru, you know what a ‘gate’ is, do you not?”
“No, you say it like it’s obvious, but you don’t know what you don’t know…”
“Your voice sounds very low all of a sudden. So you do not know of gates…or shall I saaay, totally? Mm, did I use that correctly?”
Roswaal checked on the proper use of the word totally. Among all the little expressions Subaru had imported that originated from his world, he’d used that one especially frequently, so Roswaal was quite accustomed to it.
Subaru gave Roswaal full marks for good usage. After making a high five, they returned to the lecture.
“So, what is a gate, anyway? Is that something you have or don’t have?”
“Put very simply, a gate iiis a doorway that leads inside your own body. Mana enters through the gate; mana leaves through the gate. A basic rule ooof life.”
“Ahhh. It’s like a faucet connected to MP…”
He grasped Roswaal’s simple explanation. So that was a gate; his ears had heard the term several times over. So it was pretty much what he’d guessed.
“So if everyone has a gate, I have one, too?”
“Weeell, you surely would, if you are confident that you aaare human. So, are you?”
“There’s no purer human that’s been thrown into another world, ever. Totally normal. Totally mob-grade.”
Situations that required combat strength to bust through them were completely new to him. His scientific know-how was fairly below average; his hand-eye coordination was pretty high, but his endurance was a sore point. His Acquired Skills were Sewing and Bed-making.
One-way trip to becoming cannon fodder.
But Subaru wasn’t hung up on that; this was the second thing to be happy about since arriving in a different world. Enthralled by the word magic, his heart thumped, his eyes twinkling with hope.
“Of course the first thing I’m happy about is meeting Emilia, but this is pretty awesome! Finally, I can fulfill my dream of being a magic user… I’ve waited my whole life for this!”
“Weeell, I am glad speaking of magic pleases you so, but becoming a magic user is largely dependent ooon fortune. In the first place, the properties of gates matter a great deal. You are uuunlikely to be as blessed as a genius such as I. I boast only because I must.”
Roswaal’s behavior made Subaru hear a little ding as a flag rose in his mind.
In spite of Roswaal’s overwhelming confidence, he didn’t know that Subaru, soaking in the bathtub in the nude before his eyes, was a “guest” summoned from another world.
Tradition held that those summoned from another world possessed special abilities. So far, weapon skills were out, intellect was out, his luck modifier was either zero or somewhat negative, but: magic!
“My new hope is in your hands, Rozchi. Magic, magic, let’s talk magic some more! There’s a magic wave here, and my twinkling future’s surfing on it!”
“Is that sooo? Then let us continue. Did you knooow that magic has four basic affinities?”
“Nope!”
“Ahaaa, it feels good to have someone so senselessly, pointlessly guileless and ignorant before me, so I shall explain. The four elements of mana are fire, water, wind, and earth. Dooo you understand?”
“Got it; these are the basics, huh? Consider them absorbed. Go on, go on!”
Subaru’s request seemed to rub Roswaal the right way, so he nodded and continued his explanation.
“Fire element relates to temperature. Water element regulates life and healing. Wind element functions outside the bodies of living things. Earth element functions inside the body. So, most affinities are divided by these four categories, aaand normal humans have an affinity for one of the four! Incidentally, I shall have you know I have an affinity for aaall four.”
“Whoa, the boasting’s annoying but I’ll praise you anyway. That’s fantastic! How do you figure out someone’s element?”
“Naaaturally, a magic user as accomplished as I can discover that through mere touch.”
“Seriously?! This is what I’ve been waiting for. Well, do it and tell me!”
As Subaru begged like a puppy that hadn’t been housebroken, Roswaal gave him a halfhearted look and pressed his palm to Subaru’s forehead. The eyes of both completely nude men twinkled at the scene.
“Well, if you shaaall excuse me. Myon myon myon myon…”
“Whoa! A magical sound! Total fantasy immersion!”
Subaru was taken in by the invigorating scene before his eyes, forgetting his many sources of worry for that moment.
—Magic. Finally he, having been summoned to another world, would get fangs of his very own.
His eyes twinkling in certainty of his hope, Subaru awaited the results of the scan.
“—Yeees, I see.”
“Here it comes! What, what is it? Maybe fire element that burns like I do? Or water for when I’m calm and composed, the coolest guy in the room? Or maybe wind because of my refreshing nature, like the breeze blowing through the grass? No, no, it’s gotta be earth for my being such a laid-back, big-brother-type nice guy, definitely!”
“Yes, it’s Dark.”
“None of the above?!”
Doubting his ears at the scan result, his reaction was like someone being told he had cancer.
Roswaal then spoke in a grave tone that seemed to fit that image perfectly.
“You are completely, uuutterly Dark. Your connection to the other four elements is quiiite weak. Put differently, though, this iiis exceedingly rare…”
“So what is Dark, anyway?! It’s not in the other four categories? Some kind of reject?”
“I did not mention it, buuut there are also elements beyond the basic four, namely Dark and Light. Hoooweeever, very few people have those affinities, so I diiid not bother to explain.”
Meaning Subaru was far, far off the beaten path.
Hearing Roswaal elaborate made Subaru feel less buffeted and calmed him down.
Yes, this was a rare, limited element: in other words, a special power!
“It’s gotta be a really awesome element. Like some super-special power that comes only once in five thousand years.”
“Yes, Dark element magic is quite famous…able to obstruct an opponent’s vision, sever him from sound, slow his movements, and the like. Rather convenient uses.”
“I’m a Debuffer?!”
A Debuffer was a specialized support class dedicated to so-called debuffs—skills that weakened the enemy.
He’d had his hopes up that he could use magic of peerless, legendary destruction, able to rend the sky and split the earth, but Roswaal was breaking it to him that his magic would have crowd-control and attribute-lowering properties.
He really did seem apologetic, so it was no doubt the truth.
“Summoned from a world without weapons skill, intellect, or cheat codes…and a magical element for debuffs…”
“Incideeentally, you have no talent for magic. If my limit is a ten, yours is about three.”
“I wanted to hear that even less! This place is forsaken by God and Buddha!”
Subaru opened his mouth and made a loud groan as he immersed himself in the bathtub. Until a few moments before, it had been a theoretical hope, but expectations, once sprouted, were not so easy to brush aside.
“Well, using it at all is good, I think… Or maybe being a debuffer makes me kinda cool…?”
“Putting aside the level of coolness, there is nooo harm in learning. If you wish to use magic, by all means, learn. Fortunately for you, there is indeeeed a specialist in Dark spells here at this mansion.”
“I see, that’s it! I suppose I should be satisfied with learning magic for situations where you wanna slow someone down. Okay, let’s get this show on the road!”
Subaru was eager to have Emilia guide him into magic, drawing both of them closer together. His prior goal of following the same route as last time was long forgotten.
“You seem to harbor a misunderstanding, buuut the specialist in Dark spells is nooot Emilia, you know?”
“The heck?! Are you enjoying playing with someone’s heart like this?! So who’s the specialist, you, the elite magic user with all elemental affinities?! This sucks!”
“It is Beatrice.”
“That’s worse!!”
With a great kerplunk, water spray leapt everywhere as he let loose his loudest shout of the evening.
Sub-chapter 4.
“Damn, that was all over the map. Damn that Roswaal, working me up and down like that like I’m on Buddha’s palm!”
In the washroom, Subaru’s face was red as he put his hands through the sleeves of his change of clothes. With the affinity scan in the bathtub ending in dejection, Subaru got out of the bath first.
He’d been worked up during the conversation with Roswaal, but his face felt heavy from the effects of the long bath. After all, it hadn’t been a full day yet since being healed from his wound; he had to expect some anemia.
“Plus I’m gonna have serious aches and pains tomorrow. Ugh, damn you, Ram; you remember this, just because I’m better than last time doesn’t mean you have to work me like a dog…”
“I will remember that as you wish.”
“Fwaaaah?!”
The timely reply, coming just as Subaru was leaving the washroom with his laundry in a basket, surprised him enough to make him jump. As Ram stood in the corridor before the washroom, his underwear, scattering out from the bouncing basket, fell to her feet.
“My goodness.”
Ram crouched, plucked Subaru’s underwear off the floor, and stuffed them into a garbage bin right beside her.
“There’s a guy carrying a basket heading to the laundry right in front of you, y’know?!”
“I’m sorry, I was gripped by psychological distaste the instant I picked them up. I had to get rid of them without a single moment to spare.”
“Considering all that, your form was very relaxed, huh?!”
Subaru tearfully recovered his underwear from the garbage bin and turned to face Ram. Seeing Ram serenely standing in the hallway, he tilted his head and wondered what she was up to. Ram seemed to reply to his unasked question.
“Unfortunately, I have already bathed, so my clothes will stay on no matter how long you wait.”
“I didn’t say anything!! And ain’t that backward for a maid?!”
“I jest. I am simply waiting for Master Roswaal to finish before helping him dress.”
“That’s pampering him a little too much. I’m sure he can dress himself.”
Apparently, in this world, there existed people who’d never in their lives worn a single shoe without a servant slipping it on their foot. Roswaal surely fit the bill.
“Don’t tell me you both help him put on that weird makeup. My low trust’s falling even further.”
“There shall be no rudeness toward Master Roswaal in my presence. Next time I shall spank you.”
It felt like a warmth-filled warning, but seeing that she wasn’t kidding, he knew he ought to take it to heart.
In point of fact, Ram had explained his chores at the mansion with great care and patience, but she had a look that suggested she’d make him work in the hog house if he asked her the same question twice.
“I’ll save myself the grief, then… If you’ll excuse me. See you tomorrow.”
“Basuru, what are you doing later?”
“I’m just heading off to sleep. Morning comes early after all? Damn it. Those mornings are really tough.”
At Subaru’s reply, mixing rebelliousness with weakness, Ram nodded a bit and closed her eyes.
Subaru was just about to ask the silent Ram if there was something she wanted to say when she opened her eyes.
“Wait in your room, then. I’ll be there later.”
Subaru’s response sounded very obtuse.
“—Huh?”
Sub-chapter 5.
Subaru Natsuki, as he’d declared several times over, was firmly in Emilia’s corner.
Perhaps it was because he’d never encountered such beauty, either in this new world or the one from which he came, but Emilia stood out in Subaru’s mind.
It was partly pure physical beauty, but also the beauty of each and every action.
Consequently, there was simply no room for anyone else in his heart, no matter what she looked like.
“That’s why this perfectly made bed has one purpose: for me to get a good night’s sleep!”
Subaru forcefully thrust an accusing finger at his bed, venting to no one in particular.
Subaru, having returned to his room after leaving the bath, had wasted all the intervening time on putting his bed in order. He’d abandoned his laundry, working up quite a sweat in spite of having just bathed.
“There’s no deep meaning to it. No deep meaning to it! Mundane thoughts out, mundane thoughts out. Calm down, calm down. One Emilia, two Emilias, three Emilias… Is this Heaven?!”
“Be quiet, Barusu. It’s night already; do be quiet.”
“Yikes!”
He made a large leap and slammed into the wall. Ram, having opened the door without a sound, was standing at the entrance to the room.
“And just after I told you to be quiet. You are hopeless.”
“What’s with rules that apply for only you?! Anyone would jump from that! What do you want from me here?!”
Ram made a muted hmph at Subaru as he vented. Subaru, struck by the humiliation of not being worth a proper word, had no good option left but silence.
Then, cutting in front of the silent Subaru, Ram entered the room—and headed straight to a writing desk in the corner.
It was something every room was supplied with, but to Subaru, who couldn’t read that world’s books, it was a worthless piece of junk, so he had not turned in the desk’s direction until then.
“What are you standing there for? Come here, Barusu.”
Subaru made a dispirited face at being spoken to like a dog being taught manners, but he was resolute to not get wrapped up in Ram’s pace. Besides, screwing around was Subaru’s job.
He headed toward her with a steely resolution to not be swayed no matter what wacky statements she might dish out. Subaru felt like he was going to war as he stood before Ram, puffing out his chest.
“And? What impossible trial awaits me this time?”
“What are you talking about? I told you, sit down quickly if you want me to teach you how to read.”
“That’s news to me!”
His steel heart was instantly shattered.
Subaru could not hide his unease at having his hardened resolve so easily broken. He sucked in his breath as he beheld the pure white note page spread atop the table, joined by a feather pen and a reddish-brown bound book.
Apparently, this was neither a joke nor a prank; she truly intended to teach him how to read.
“But why now, all of a sudden…”
Ram’s reply to the bewildered Subaru’s question was extremely straight and to the point.
“I realized while watching you work today that you could not read. So I will teach you. If you cannot read, I cannot send you to buy groceries or leave you notes.”
Ram showed Subaru the red-bound book as his mouth flapped like that of a fish caught off guard.
“We shall begin with a simple picture book meant for children. I will accompany you for study every night from now on.”
No doubt it was an offer he should be grateful for, but Subaru’s bewilderment was stronger than his gratitude at that moment.
Like the events that unfolded in the bath, this situation was one that was unthinkable last time. And, according to Subaru’s senses, his intimacy with the twins still fell far short of what he’d experienced on the fourth day last time.
“Why are you being nice to me like this?”
“It is obvious. I… No, it is to make things easier.”
“Man, you’re hard-boiled. You didn’t even say what you corrected…”
“It is only natural. As your work increases, mine decreases. If my work decreases, Rem’s work will naturally decrease as well. It’s all for a good cause.”
“That means a ton of work falling on me, though?!”
“…?”
Ram tilted her head like she couldn’t understand what he was getting at. He was at a loss for words.
But even if he was at a loss like this, he was happy that Ram was showing him such concern.
“Okay, roger that. Let’s get this studying started, shall we?”
“Since you already have the spoken language down, it should not be all that difficult. After all, now is the time to correct your vulgar word selection.”
“Tossing in insults with your help, huh?”
As he spoke, he sat down at the desk and completed preparations, feather pen in hand. With light and rather smooth and speedy strokes, he wrote his first words one ought to use to commemorate a visit to another world.
“Subaru Natsuki enters stage left… There we go!”
“You do not have the free time to be scribbling. Time is limited. Morning comes quickly, after all.”
“Well, this is actually my mother tongue… Guess it wasn’t obvious, huh?”
He’d held out hope that their being able to talk might mean she’d be able to read his writing, but nothing so convenient unfolded. Just like Subaru, she was unable to read the other side’s language.
“First, we’ll begin with basic I-script, moving on to Ro-script and Ha-script after you’ve perfected I-script.”
“So there’re three types, huh? Sucks to hear that.”
It was tough to have your spirits discouraged right before a lesson in a new language. He recalled how foreigners felt when trying to clear the high hurdle of the hiragana, katakana, and kanji when learning Japanese.
“You can read the picture book by grasping I-script. Time is limited to one hour. Tomorrow is another day, and Ram is sleepy, too.”
“That last bit sounded like the real story. Not that I mind…”
“I think my honesty is one of my selling points.”
He didn’t know if her unhesitant reply was serious or a joke. It really felt like she meant it, so Subaru dove right into the script lesson.
Fundamental to learning any new language was grasping the characters through repetition of the writing process. He copied the basic characters Ram wrote down, filling the page with them. It was enough drudgery to break him, but it was necessary, indispensable labor. Subaru felt fatigue and sleepiness pile up when, seized by a somewhat mushy feeling, he conveyed his honest thoughts to Ram.
“Y’know, even if you said it’s to make things easier for you, I’m still glad.”
The feather pen made a faint sound as it ran along the paper. Subaru thought back to the four days from last time while writing down the same characters page after page.
Now that he thought about it, he was chasing after Emilia every day whenever he had the chance, but he’d spent the most time with Ram during that period.
Subaru was basically an amateur at all the chores of the mansion. Of course teaching him was bone breaking, all the more so because Ram was doing that on top of her regular duties.
The burden naturally fell on Rem as well. In addition to that, he hadn’t had much contact with Rem during those four days. Subaru knew that the highly competent Rem was covering for a portion of her sister’s chores, so Subaru owed her for indirectly shouldering his burden, too.
“Honestly, I didn’t think you liked me that much.”
It was natural that educating a useless newbie like Subaru was a pain. Certainly that was the opinion Ram voiced, but Subaru felt used to it already.
“I hate to weigh you down, but thanks. I want to be useful as soon as possible.”
Subaru was thanking her from the bottom of his heart for then and for the future. For her part, Ram quietly went…
“Guu.”
…making a cute sleeping sound atop the immaculately made bed.
The feather pen made a sharp sound as it snapped.
Sub-chapter 6.
Subaru, surrendering to his sudden impulse, opened his mouth wide and yawned.
He brusquely wiped away the wetness from the corners of his sleepy eyes and stretched all the way up. The sinking sun of the evening sky had left an orange tint as its parting gift to the leisurely passing clouds, thanking them for another day’s work.
Subaru watched the clouds as he rotated his arms, legs, and neck to make sure everything was in working order. Effects remained from heavy labor, but he didn’t feel the same fatigue that he had on his first night.
No doubt it wasn’t that his body had grown tougher; rather, he’d become more accustomed to his chores, the greater efficiency leaving him less beat.
Since his body didn’t get any stronger with Return by Death, he had to rely on learning through experience.
“Sorry to make you wait, Subaru— Are you all right?”
“Mm. Yeah, I’m totally okay. Finished your shopping, Rem?”
“Yes, no holdups. It seems you were rather popular.”
Holding a carry bag containing the things she’d bought and complimenting Subaru was the blue-haired girl—Rem.
Wearing her maid uniform, Rem was holding down her windblown hair as she looked at Subaru—his servant’s outfit stained with mud, dust, tears, and snot—with a slightly hardened expression.
“Kids have taken a liking to me since way back. I guess they really fell for, you know, motherly stuff that I just can’t keep bottled up?”
“It’s because children are just like animals and naturally decide a hierarchy. They instinctively recognize whether it’s appropriate to make light of a person or not.”
“That doesn’t sound much like praise!!”
Sharp comments like that were what made him accept that Rem and Ram were actually sisters.
Ram was direct; Rem was roundabout. You had to have a thick skin to stick around them. Of course, their job was one that could not be accomplished without physical toughness as well.
The village closest to the mansion where Subaru and Rem were at was called Auram.
Though Roswaal dwelled in the hinterlands, he was nonetheless a minor lord possessing several pieces of land. Everywhere within them, and Auram Village was no exception, the residents welcomed Subaru and Rem like it was the natural thing to do, speaking to them in a very friendly manner.
Apparently, just the fact that the twins spent a lot of time in contact with them in the course of shopping meant word of Subaru’s existence had passed around. The shock at the speed rural rumors traveled surprised Subaru, but still, though it was awkward, Subaru was happy for the warm welcome.
“Having said that, what’s with those brats getting all clingy like that… Don’t they know that touching everything just gets your fingers burned? Can’t they tell I’m putting out a hard-boiled aura here?”
“It seems your pretending to be a ‘motherly’ adult kept you quite busy all by yourself.”
“The ‘by yourself’ part sounded a bit sharp there, but it would’ve been nice being busy without getting mobbed like that. I really should’ve stuck with you going shopping…”
Since Subaru’s inability to tell ingredients apart made him useless, Rem had him kill time in the village while she was shopping. The kids found him and he was immediately abducted.
“Man, they just don’t have any respect. That’s why I can’t really get to like kids.”
“When it comes to lack of respect, you look plenty childish to me…?”
“A very sound theory! Having said that, I think taking someone for granted from the get-go is a little different… Ram’s really good at that, though.”
“Sister is incredible.”
They were speaking past each other somewhat. The way Rem seemed full of herself as she boasted about her sister, plus the fact that her sister wasn’t watching, made Subaru surmise they were her true feelings.
“Feels like Ram’s personality causes a lot of conflict, though.”
“Her unflinching demeanor is part of her charm. It is not something I can pull off…”
Subaru, hearing a sad undertone to the words she added at the end, knit his brow but didn’t press the point.
With Subaru suddenly at a loss for words, Rem seemed to snap back to normal as she changed the subject.
“Come to think of it, how is your studying going?”
“I’d like to say…steadily, but it’s not as simple as that. Stuff like this needs time to slowly nurture and develop…just like love!”
“As long as you don’t give up midway.”
“There wasn’t much tenderness in that comment just now!”
Seeing that his shout brought a slight smile to Rem’s face, Subaru also smiled in relief.
—It had already been four days since Ram had offered him personal lessons. He’d heard Rem might take over, but she hadn’t actually assumed the instructor’s position as of yet.
Ram being that busy meant that the burden on Rem was all the greater.
Subaru kept smiling and waved to Rem, who was acting slightly hesitant for once.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m not going to give up or disappoint Ram. I just wish she wouldn’t fall asleep on my bed in the middle of the lesson. It’s really distracting.”
“Sister is probably acting that way to spur you forward.”
“Man, your total worship of your sister is way past normal. Totally demon possessed.”
“Demon possessed…?”
Rem tilted her head at the latest word trend Subaru had coined.
“Like possessed, except by a demon instead of a divine spirit. Demon possessed. It works, huh?”
“Do you like demons?”
“Better than gods. I mean, gods don’t give you anything, but a demon will have a good laugh with you over a chat about the future.”
Talking about the last year seemed especially popular with them. Subaru remembered the image of the Red Demon and the Blue Demon hugging each other as they laughed themselves silly, when he suddenly realized there was a definite smile carved upon Rem’s face.
“Whoa…”
He’d seen her faintly smiling several times over, but this was the first time he’d seen a real smile on her face. Subaru didn’t know what had tickled Rem’s thoughts, but he snapped his fingers.
“That smiling face is worth a million-volt skyline.”
“I will tell on you to Lady Emilia.”
Subaru straightened himself and meekly pleaded for forgiveness.
“I wasn’t trying to hit on you!”
Rem lightly raised her eyebrows toward Subaru.
“What happened to your hand?”
“Mm? Oh, that mangy mutt with the kids went all chomp-chomp on me.”
His left hand, covered in bite marks, had already stopped bleeding, but it still looked somewhat pathetic.
Incidentally, it was only after he returned to the mansion that he realized that the middle of the back of his servant outfit was stained with snot.
“May I heal that wound?”
“Eh? What, you can use healing magic, too, Rem?”
“Only simple magic up to first-aid level. Perhaps you prefer Lady Emilia?”
“Mm, that is a pretty attractive suggestion, but…I’ll pass on both.”
Subaru declined her offer while gazing at the bite marks on the back of his left hand.
He’d decided that scars, in a way, were a good thing. The fact that everything, up to and including his scars from the previous loop, had vanished when he’d begun this play-through weighed heavily on Subaru’s mind.
The presence or absence of scars was a great way to tell if he’d done a Return by Death or not. If the dog hadn’t happened to bite him, he’d have been forced to cut himself with a sharp feather pen.
“Well, it’s a mark of honor. No one lives as prettily as on the day they were born.”
“It is said that scars are a man’s medals, though all you accomplished on the battlefield were mistakes.”
“That might have a kernel of truth, but don’t say stuff so cold, geez!”
The way Rem tilted her head and looked at him indicated she didn’t realize what a venomous tongue she had. That was even scarier.
“Besides that, I’ve cut my hand lots of times in front of you before, so why offer to heal me all of a sudden? I mean, you never offered to do it before?”
“That’s because I thought you’d forget if it didn’t hurt, so you should keep the wounds as a warning.”
“That’s educational policy straight outta Sparta… So why’d you offer now, then?”
He wanted to know the reason why this case was different from the others, making her unable to let this one go.
After Subaru posed his question, Rem kept her silence for a while.
Looking at her face from the side, Subaru thought it might have to do with the little smile from earlier.
“The futon flew on. The kitten catnapped. Who’s the one who said a pun?!”
“Did you suddenly go wrong in the head?”
“You’re jumping to conclusions. No, I thought I’d find out for sure why you were all smiles earlier.”
Though, considering her reaction to the demon talk earlier, he thought it could be that, too…
“I thought you’d really go for cheap gags. So I wondered if I tried it, maybe it would put you in a good mood and make you want to be nicer to me, or something like that.”
“Do not expect you will get a chance to have me heal your wounds ever again.”
“You’re that angry?!”
“I have been this angry since earlier from your bad-mouthing Sister behind her back.”
“I do that a lot lately!”
The look Rem shot at Subaru grew sharper still thanks to that last comment.
Fearful, Subaru gave up on apologizing, closing his mouth and gazing at the sky. Evening was slowly giving way to night. That was when he felt his limbs stiffen.
—After all, it was his second time in that world reaching the fourth day.
“So the challenge is to get to tomorrow morning safely—but before that…”
…Before that came another important challenge: making sure that he actually had a promise with Emilia for a date to begin with.
Sub-chapter 7.
For the second time, Subaru Natsuki was approaching his greatest crisis during his first week at Roswaal Manor.
With things having gone so much against his experiences during the first loop, he couldn’t really call it smooth sailing, but the greatest danger was indeed that moment.
And so, with a slight blush, Emilia said to him…
“So, since Ram and Rem both said they weren’t going to show their faces here tonight, I’ve come to supervise your studying in their place. Not that I can do much to help…”
…and cutely stuck out her tongue.
With Subaru sitting facing the desk, having Emilia sitting on the bed, watching him like a hawk, was ferociously whittling down his endurance.
—Here was a cute girl in the room of a teenage boy, just the two of them, late at night like this… Surely no one could blame Subaru for losing his concentration as he struggled against his baser instincts?
“Hmm. You’re taking studying more seriously than I expected, Subaru.”
Subaru was desperately chanting innocent inside his head, unable to feel innocent at all, when Emilia got up and voiced her admiration. Apparently she’d bathed just earlier; the faint hint of warmth hovering around Emilia, mixed with her own scent, were two more sharp blows to Subaru’s state of mind.
Subaru fumbled with his notebook as he opened it to show Emilia where he’d gotten in his studying.
“R-right now I’m learning basic I-characters by writing them. My current goal is to read this picture book for kids, since it’s mostly written in I-script.”
“Hmm, the goal is a picture book… Ah!”
“What, it’s got an interesting story or something?”
Emilia lightly shook her head at Subaru as her hand stopped midway through browsing the picture book he was using for reference.
“Well, nothing big, but yes, a little. When you can read this, too… Yeah.”
Audibly closing the book, Emilia sat on the bed once more and got comfortable. Subaru was unable to conceal how Emilia’s refined but unguarded nature left his mind all jumbled.
“Normally I wouldn’t be doing this for someone I met only a few days ago, but I’m giving you special treatment…to thank you for your hard work.”
“Sheesh, that’s not a whole lot of thanks, Emilia. If you want to show your thanks, how about a massage? Something to melt away and heal all the aches and pains of a hard day’s work, geh-heh-heh.”
Emilia clapped her hands as she scolded him.
“That sounds perverted somehow, so no. And don’t change the subject. Keep going, will you?”
Subaru turned back toward the desk as he fought his worldly desires.
Subaru chanted innocent, innocent in his head as he wrote the characters onto the notebook, driving out idle thoughts as he focused his head on one thing at a time.
“Goodness, you can do it just fine if you don’t let yourself get distracted.”
“That’s because I lose track of everything around me once I’m into something. That’s why I’m straight-like-an-arrow aimed at the person I like!”
“Hmm, is that so? It’d be nice if the person you like notices that sooner rather than later.”
Certainly, Subaru’s statement had been very frivolous, but Emilia brushed it off like it had nothing to do with her. The fact that she clearly didn’t see herself as the target of Subaru’s affections gave him no route to follow up.
“Hey, Subaru… Why don’t you take work as seriously as you do studying?”
“My motto is to be diligently un-diligent…is what I would say, but this isn’t the right mood for that. Uh?”
“It’s a serious matter—Ram was complaining about it a little, too. From time to time it feels like you’re holding back.”
Naturally, Emilia’s words and expression both held distaste at having to convey such a message. Hearing this, Subaru could make only a pained grimace, for she had hit the mark.
Ram was correct in her assessment that Subaru was holding back from work, for the truth was that Subaru wasn’t taking the work seriously.
More precisely, he was deliberately trying to produce the same outcome as the last time. Compared to last time, when he hadn’t learned the first thing about being a servant, Subaru was at least a little bit better. His slight adjustments hadn’t escaped the veteran maid’s attention.
“…So you do feel guilty about it. It feels like you’re honest to a fault in some odd places, Subaru. You’re not slacking off studying, after all.”
“Well, there’s some little circum… I guess that’s not an excuse. I’ll put everything into it starting tomorrow, so please forgive me, Your Highness!”
“Mnn, I have no objections… Ah, was that a little off?”
Emilia cutely tilted her head, perhaps wondering if she’d been a little too haughty.
Subaru, relieved at seeing Emilia’s stance softening, firmly resolved to honor the pledge to Emilia he’d just given.
At the very least, there’d be no need to copy the last time after that night was done.
He’d work very hard to repay the debts he owed to Ram and Rem from over those four days.
…Not that he thought easing up on the brakes would turn everything around overnight…
“Feelings are real important here. I want my renewed hard work to completely provoke those two sisters!”
“And there, another splendid moment completely wasted… Are you finished studying?”
“I managed to get today’s part done! Hey, Emilia, would you listen to a little request of mine? I’d like a reward for working hard from tomorrow on, so…?”
“A reward? Just so you know, I don’t have a lot of money I can spare.”
“Wow, you sure were brought up strict. Now, now, just hear me out. I’ll work seriously starting tomorrow, so…let’s go on a date!”
Subaru posed with a full smile and a thumbs-up as he made his proposal to Emilia.
Faced with the greatest smiling face in Subaru’s arsenal, Emilia’s big eyes blinked slowly.
“Um, what’s a date?”
“Heh. A date is when a guy and a girl go out all by themselves. What happens between them, only the Goddess of Love knows!”
“Then you went on a date with Rem today, Subaru?”
“Nooo, an unexpected counterattack?! Please, that didn’t count, that didn’t count!!”
Certainly that counted as going out with a beautiful girl, but Subaru was hoping for something a little more mutually involved than buying groceries for the household.
“I understand you want to go out with me, but where?”
“Actually, there’s this village close to the mansion with this super lovely mutt. It has flower gardens, too. I wanna use my metia to record for all eternity you standing among the blooming flowers.”
Subaru went to a corner of his bedroom, where his shopping bag with his few, precious possessions from his original world were stored. The cell phone and cup of ramen were still in there, having survived the ferocious combat at the fence’s shop.
“If the battery holds up, I wanna fill the whole memory card with pictures of Emilia…”
“Ah…the village, huh?”
In front of the person who wanted to drag her out from her daily routine, Emilia put her hand to her cheek, deep in thought. Subaru recalled that she’d hesitated considerably before the last date invitation, too.
Somehow he’d gotten her to say yes the last time. Subaru made his teeth shine to recreate that memory.
“The dog’s super cute. Let’s go!”
“But it might cause you quite a bit of trouble, Subaru. The villagers….”
“The kids there are completely innocent, totally a bunch of angels. Let’s go!”
“…All right already. It can’t be helped. I’ll just have to go with you.”
“The flower gardens are magical and wonderful and… Wait, seriously?”
He was struck senseless at how Emilia seemed less resistant to the idea than last time.
Subaru was still thrown off as Emilia tapered her lips and drew in her delicate shoulders.
“If that’ll make you work hard from tomorrow on, I’ll go with you. So don’t go drifting off anywhere, okay…?”
“Nope, nope, will do no such thing! My soul’s already burning with determination to finish all my work perfectly!”
“Your soul’s burning for something like that?!”
Emilia’s shocked face at Subaru’s burning drive sent them both into laugher.
After laughing like that for a while, Emilia nodded a bit and got up from the bed. She passed by Subaru’s side and looked out the window, making a faint, charming smile up at the sky.
“Mm, the stars are so pretty tonight. It’ll probably be clear tomorrow, too.”
“—Yeah. It’ll be a day I’ll never forget.”
“There you go again, Subaru…”
Emilia turned around and leaned against the windowsill as she began to admonish Subaru for his frivolity. But her tongue stopped moving when she saw the expression on Subaru’s face.
—No doubt it was because, when she hadn’t been looking, Subaru’s expression had become uncharacteristically serious.
“If you stay here too long, I’m gonna end up falling asleep and mistaking you for a squeeze pillow till morning…”
“Just now… Ahh, it’s nothing.”
“You know, if you suddenly stop talking like that, it really makes guys nervous…?”
Emilia, perhaps set off by his probing the deeper meaning of her actions, remarked, “It’s nothing!” as she left the window and cutely strode past Subaru. She went straight to the doorknob before looking back.
“Now then, Butler Subaru. Work hard come tomorrow. Rewards come only to children who work hard for them.”
She made a light wave of her hand to bid him good night, followed by a smile and a toss of her hair. Without waiting for Subaru’s reply, the silver silhouette vanished past the doorway.
He could stretch out his hand, but it could not reach. All that remained in his room of the lovely girl was the faint scent of her perfume in the air.
But—
“Hold on, hold on, seriously? Geez, I’m getting real popular here. Seriously.”
The promise had been made once more. Now, Subaru could challenge the night again.
It was six hours to get through the fourth night. Six hours before the promised morning of the fifth day.
“Now, Mr. Fate, let’s do this—”
Sub-chapter 8.
Subaru was sitting on the floor with his back against the bed, anxiously passing each moment as he waited for daybreak.
The coldness of the floor hadn’t really registered in the two-plus hours he’d spent sitting there. But Subaru’s body was extremely, almost excessively aware of the cold. The reason was simple.
“Who could sleep with his heart pounding like this anyway?!”
His heartbeat was fast and loud, making large thumps that he could swear were ringing in his eardrums. His senses were keen to the point of feeling his blood coursing through his whole body; his fingers throbbed nonstop like they were numb.
“Here’s what I get for looking forward to the promise with Emilia. Geez, I haven’t had this much trouble sleeping since before that picnic in first grade…and I ended up oversleeping for the school trip. Really takes me back…”
His reminiscing distracting him somewhat, Subaru glared at the sky he’d been looking up at for hours on end.
—Still a long time, he belatedly thought.
It was about four hours until morning. He didn’t feel sleepy whatsoever, but remaining on guard for whatever might occur had frayed his nerves. Thinking of the possibility of an attack made it impossible for him to focus on anything else to kill time.
Besides, continuing to think was the only thing Subaru could do.
He’d redone the last four days, as in, four days for the second time.
There were numerous differences in discord with prior events. They had heavily affected the path he’d taken to reach that night. But Subaru had surely checked off the majority of the events in his memory.
However, what nagged at him was that he still didn’t have a clue how to avoid causing a new loop.
Relations with Emilia were good. He felt like relations with Ram and Rem were getting better, but…
He hadn’t encountered Beatrice since that night.
The last time, it wasn’t for long, but Subaru had been in contact with Beatrice. Setting that aside, he had barely seen Beatrice this time around. Strict time management had prevented him from exchanging more than a few words with her.
“Just like before, she gave me a good tongue-lashing just from seeing my face, sheesh…”
He didn’t recall having much discussion with her, but it was most certainly Beatrice’s being there that had saved Subaru’s mind from shattering when confronted with facing his “second” first day.
It was the sheer normality of how she blew him off that made Subaru feel calm enough to find himself.
“I should’ve thanked her for that somehow.”
Not that Beatrice would appreciate what he was thanking her for, and no doubt she’d make quite a sour face if he did, but Subaru still wanted to share his thoughts with her.
With a smile, he thought back on the thorny conversations the two had instead engaged in.
If he made it to the next morning, there would be lots and lots more that he could accomplish.
He had things he wanted to say, not just to Beatrice but to Ram, Rem, and even Roswaal. Of course, he wanted that to be after first exhausting ten thousand words on Emilia.
Looking back on it, he had to smile. Putting last time and that time together, it was eight days all told.
Maybe it was the mushy feeling inside him that made his eyelids seem a bit heavier, though there were still three whole hours until morning.
“This isn’t an MMO. It’s no joke if I fall asleep here…”
He rubbed his eyelids as the sudden sleepiness faded away. But the sleepiness had come with a chill; he made a bitter smile as his body began shivering out of the blue. He cradled both shoulders, trying to raise his body temperature. But the chill wouldn’t leave him no matter what he did. Still, the sleepiness gradually got worse.
—Subaru, so gripped with optimism, realized that the situation had changed.
Looking closer, he saw that the skin under the sleeves of his track jacket had goose bumps all over. Chilled to the bone, he couldn’t stop shaking. It wasn’t normal. The season of this other world was like late springtime in his own world. The days were almost too warm for long-sleeve shirts. So why were his teeth chattering like this?
“This is bad; don’t tell me this is…?!”
Feeling a chill that came not from cold but from fear, Subaru nervously put his hands on the floor. But with the shaking already spreading through his whole body, his arms could not support him. When he got up, his knees felt creaky enough to break apart; Subaru was aghast at how sluggish and nauseated he felt.
“S-somebody…”
Subaru’s heart rate, so strong just earlier, had weakened, and his breathing was hard as he left the room. He wanted to call for help, but his raspy voice caught in his throat. His legs were cramping as if his lungs weren’t accepting oxygen from the dry air that hovered in the dark corridor.
This is bad, was the thought that dominated the back of Subaru’s mind. He didn’t have any tangible understanding of what was happening to his body. The one thing he did know was that his life was in danger.
Subaru sluggishly walked forward, groaning as he made his way toward the stairway going up.
Each step through the familiar passageway was labored enough that it seemed to shave off another piece of his soul.
“Haa…haa…”
Reaching the stairs, he climbed up one step at a time on hands and feet. He wondered how long it would take him to reach the top. Just thinking about it deflated Subaru as he crawled deeper into the hallway.
The insides of his body seemed to be melting; he felt like everything was turning into some kind of soup. The vomit that welled up dripped from the corner of Subaru’s mouth onto the corridor; his face was stained with tears.
Subaru, crawling so pathetically, had only one thing, one person, in the back of his mind.
—Emilia. Emilia. Emilia. I have to get to Emilia.
Responsibility, or perhaps duty—Subaru was driven by an emotion he couldn’t put into words.
In that moment, Subaru had none of the self-preservation instinct common to all species.
Subaru, crawling his way to Emilia’s room, was already barely breathing. His arms too weak to bear the weight of his body, he leaned against the wall and slid his way forward. Anyone watching would have felt less pity than disgust at his having lost the dignity of walking upright like a man.
“—”
His whole body was sluggish. His breaths were ragged as his ears continued their high-pitched ringing.
So it was pure happenstance, one might even say dumb luck, that Subaru noticed the strange sound.
—The sound he noticed was like the clank of a chain.
Getting a bad feeling, he stopped moving. His shoulder slid down the wall; he pressed his head against the floor.
“—Uh?”
The next moment, an impact blew Subaru back.
Subaru’s body, flopping to the floor but a moment before, flew. He bounced several times, his face literally wiping the floor, as Subaru realized something had hit him incredibly hard.
There was no pain.
However, he felt a malaise like everything from the tips of his fingers and toes to the middle of his chest had gone through a blender.
“What happ…”
What happened, he started to say as he tried to put his hand to the floor to lift himself.
But his shaking hand had no strength to grip the floor. That was strange. He had no balance. His right arm was working so hard; what was his left arm doing? Where’d it run off to?
Annoyed for no tangible reason, Subaru glared at his useless left arm.
—That was when he realized that everything left of his shoulder had been torn off.
“—Ah?”
Falling on his side, Subaru gazed dumbfounded at his amputated left arm.
A large quantity of blood gushed out from the wound carved into him that had sent his left arm and shoulder flying, dyeing the hallway red.
A moment after he noticed the existence of the wound, Subaru was wracked with pain like lightning coursing through his whole body.
Subaru, no longer able to process the pain and heat, flailed around like a stranded, dying fish and slammed himself against the ground several times, too choked up to even scream.
His vision faded, with red and yellow light mixing together as Subaru’s consciousness faded from the mansion.
I wanna die. I wanna die. I wanna die. I wanna die. I wanna die. I wanna die. I don’t wanna live. I just wanna die. I’ll die soon. I’m dead. I don’t know anything. Everything’s far off. Can’t remember anything. Don’t care about anything. Just let me die already.
As if responding to Subaru’s earnest plea—
“The sound of a chain…”
That faint sound was the last thing he heard before his skull was smashed, granting his wish.
Sub-chapter 9.
“—!!”
Waking up screaming was an experience that was bad for the heart.
Subaru, thrusting off the sheets as he woke, breathed raggedly as he absorbed the shock.
“L-left hand… It’s here; it’s here, isn’t it?”
He stretched his left hand into thin air as if grasping for something with it.
His severed, blown-off left side was intact. Clutching his right arm to confirm it, too, was there, the sense of loss Subaru absorbed for a while made him shake and feel sick to his stomach.
Subaru felt like his heart was wrenching as he looked at his restored left hand.
Of course, there were no scars, either, not from being blown off, not from the dog biting the back of his hand.
“I’ve gone back again…”
The vanishing scars meant that Subaru had lost his bout against fate.
He’d gone back in time. Perhaps one could instead say that he’d been given another chance for a rematch.
At any rate, he had to confirm the time—and as he arrived at that thought…
“Ah, sorry. Good morning.”
Subaru finally realized that the twins were clutching each other in a corner of the room as they watched him.
Like small animals keeping their distance, neither replied to Subaru’s completely out-of-place greeting. Subaru scratched his head as he wondered what he should do.
Ram and Rem had no doubt forgotten about Subaru. That pained Subaru’s chest somewhat, but Subaru ignored the pain and formed a smile.
He’d show his sincerity as the first step to getting along. After all, even if they’d forgotten him, he hadn’t forgotten them.
“Sorry for the trouble. Subaru Natsuki, rebooted and ready to go!”
Subaru strongly rose from bed, standing and pointing his index finger to the heavens.
Disregarding the twins’ surprise at his sudden approach, Subaru remained in his dramatic pose and said, “By the way, what’s the date and time?”
—And so began his first day at Roswaal Manor for the third time.
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Diamond. Diamond. Diamond.
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