Re:Zero – Starting Life in Another World. Volume. 15.
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‘Chapter 7:- —PICK ME.’
Sub-chapter 1.
It was immediately after being separated from Ryuzu that Beatrice began waiting for That Person.
Having lost Ryuzu Meyer, who had established the Sanctuary at the cost of her own existence, they had endured against Hector, Devil of Melancholy. Her wait began immediately following that.
“Beatrice. I entrust you with administering the archive containing my knowledge. Until the appointed hour comes, I want you to protect the archive’s store of knowledge as its guardian so that none may ransack it.”
“—Eh?”
Called to her mother’s study, Beatrice opened her eyes wide, bewildered and shaken as she was commanded to keep watch.
She’d been certain that her mother—the Witch Echidna—would command her to risk her life fighting to support her in a coming battle. Beatrice could only widen her eyes at being handed a role she’d never even conceived of.
“Fortunately, as a master of Dark magic, you wield Passage, which connects an isolated space to familiar places… Yes, let us call this space the archive of forbidden books. Therein, the writings that contain all the knowledge I possess shall be collected and preserved. This is what I want you to protect.”
“W-wait…”
“You may link the archive to Roswaal’s mansion. That child… It’s more than likely his Gate was crushed in the previous battle and he’ll never be able to demonstrate his genius again. Even so, I am certain he will be of great assistance to you. I want both of you to get along nicely and await my return…”
“Wait just a… Could you hold on for a moment, I wonder?!”
As Echidna ignored her shock and kept pushing on with the conversation, Beatrice desperately asked her to slow down.
She could not comprehend Mother’s words—No, her instincts screamed she could not allow herself to comprehend. Echidna’s farseeing, far-reaching plans were well beyond the ken of any normal person. Her words were always absolute, so never once before had Beatrice even considered interrupting them.
That was precisely why she interjected now. If the words ahead were also absolute, she would forever regret allowing them to be spoken.
“Mother…what are you saying? D-do I even understand what this archive of forbidden books means, I wonder?! Betty…wants to go with Mother!!”
“Unfortunately, even if you are with me, I can do nothing against a foe even Roswaal could not handle. If you and I are both destroyed, what will happen to the knowledge I have accumulated? I have a duty to see it inherited.”
And having someone inherit this knowledge was the duty she was leaving to Beatrice by entrusting her with the archive of forbidden books.
Instantly, Beatrice came to a realization. She finally understood the meaning of the Dark magic she had so passionately studied, the purpose of her affinity for it.
“It cannot be… Betty’s power…was for this?”
“”
“Mother, from the beginning, you knew this would… Then not only this so-called archive but the Sanctuary…and Roswaal, and Ryuzu also…!”
Resentfully, with tears in her eyes, Beatrice shook her head. Echidna fell silent, narrowing her black eyes. Then the Witch stood up, gently offering her daughter the single tome that had been resting on her desk.
“This is…”
“An imperfect copy of my Authority. This is the book of knowledge. I have not completely analyzed the methodology behind that magic tome, but it should suffice as a simple guidepost in showing the way to the bearer’s future.”
The ring of those words, a magic tome guiding the way to the future, made Beatrice draw in her breath as she accepted the book.
If she’d had this before, leading her onto the proper path, would the words she was hearing from her mother that very moment, and what she should do next, be written within?
“There are two copies. The first, I give to you, and the second, I will give to Roswaal. He should make the proper arrangements henceforth. I am sorry this is so arbitrary, but I want you to do as I say.”
When Beatrice took in all of Mother’s words, she realized it was already too late.
No matter how much Beatrice cried, clung, and wailed don’t go, her mother would not change her ways.
—For Echidna, the Witch of Greed, had chosen to be a Witch ahead of being a mother.
“Let us speak about your term as guardian of the archive. Even if I do not return, the archive must be opened to someone at some point. The one suitable to inherit my knowledge will surely come one day. You will know when the time has come.”
“Come for Betty…?”
“As a placeholder, let us use the words That Person. Your term will last until That Person arrives at the archive of forbidden books and tells you that your duty has come to an end—this is my final request.”
Her final request—the ring of those words made Beatrice look up at Echidna’s black eyes once more.
Her mother’s…expression was ever-unchanged. And yet, for the briefest of moments, an unknown emotion passed over it.
“Betty—be well.”
Sub-chapter 2.
After parting ways with Echidna, Beatrice’s losses and farewells continued.
Just as Mother had told her to, Beatrice took up residence at the Roswaal family’s home. There, she used her mastery of Dark magic to construct the archive of forbidden books, filled it with her mother’s knowledge, and called herself its librarian.
Immersing herself in that role, she turned a blind eye to all the despair remaining in the world around her.
“Copying the soul… Overwriting the vessel…”
At some point, Roswaal began to frequently visit the archive of forbidden books. But his only interest was the bookshelves of knowledge within, so he and Beatrice exchanged hardly any words.
Beatrice wondered when the youth, once too lanky and stubble covering his face, had become an adult?
He bore a staff and looked like he had trouble walking—he had suffered unhealed wounds during the battle with that devil, putting Roswaal’s body into a state that made even day-to-day life arduous. In spite of this, ever since he had become able to walk again, he had terribly abused that inconvenient body, whittling his life away as he remained turned toward the bookshelves.
“Hellooo, Beatrice. I shall intruuude upon you today once more.”
“…Do as you please.”
By rights, the archive of forbidden books was a place she shouldn’t have allowed anyone into.
Echidna’s request was for That Person to eventually come and inherit her knowledge. It wasn’t an open library that just anyone could peruse until That Person came. Everyone else belonged in the Sanctuary.
But even so, Roswaal, and only Roswaal, was the exception.
He alone was special, the only other one to whom, like Beatrice, Echidna had entrusted a vital mission.
And to Beatrice, he was the only reminder that the days she treasured existed without a doubt. Yes, to Beatrice, only he—
“”
He had come to the archive again. Roswaal threw himself into the sea of Echidna’s knowledge with wild abandon, seemingly gambling his life on finding something within—Beatrice did not know if he ever did.
But several years later, Roswaal A. Mathers—the last person she had known from those days—lost his life just on the verge of entering his thirties, and administration of the mansion was passed on to the next generation.
“Greetings, Lady Beatrice. I thought I should say somethiiiing to you in place of my predecessor.”
“…Did Roswaal die, I wonder?”
“My predecessor has passed away. However, rest at ease. As current head of the household, I, Roswaal B. Mathers, duly inherit his duty toward you and his debt of obligation toward your mother.”
—He smiled as his eyes, one yellow, one blue, reflected her expressionless face.
Sub-chapter 3.
Little worth mentioning happened after that.
The heads of the Mathers family continued to call themselves Roswaal, inheriting the name from previous generations.
This was apparently so they would never forget to revere Echidna, Beatrice’s departed mother. Even though she understood this, she could not treat them like she had the first generation.
Of course she couldn’t. To Beatrice, there was only one Roswaal she could consider special.
All others were fakes. To maintain the archive of forbidden books, she needed them to provide access to the mansion. Furthermore, even if they offered other amenities, she wanted nothing beyond that, as it was a place for the sake of That Person alone.
And so for the sake of her guiding mission, she was alone for a long, long time.
Four hundred years passed—and in that time, the number of people who reached the Archive were few.
“Your power is simply marvelous. Please, by all means, lend me your power as a spirit.”
Shut up. Go away.
“Even if someone ordered it, making you stay all alone in a place like this is unforgivable.”
As if you understand? This is the precious duty Mother entrusted to me.
“Knowledge should be spread far and wide. If the vast wisdom accumulated here was shared, just how many people do you think it would help? Surely, you understand this.”
I care nothing for the many. Betty only wanted to save the one.
“Let’s go together. You’ve already done enough. Let me save you.”
There is only one person who can save Betty now.
Both men and women said all sorts of things to Betty, guardian of the archive of forbidden books. In the end, they all invariably asked her to open the archive.
Many times over, their proposals, their commands, and the hands they reached out with made her heart tremble.
Every time the door was pushed open, every time someone came in, her expectations rose. Had That Person arrived?
But her hopes were always dashed. These visitors knew nothing of That Person’s duty, nor did the mystic tome left to her by Mother indicate any of them was That Person.
Therefore, Beatrice brushed aside their words, their feelings, and the hands they extended, rejecting them all, clinging to Mother’s words alone and continuing to gradually shut herself in a cage of loneliness.
Would the key to that cage come from inside, or would it come from outside?
—Not even Beatrice herself knew anymore.
Sub-chapter 4.
As that long, empty time passed, an unwanted change arrived at Beatrice’s doorstep.
Even Beatrice, who tried her hardest not to associate with the outside world, had learned a fair bit about the circumstances of the half-demon girl—Puck’s contractor—whom Roswaal had brought home with him.
One might call the unexpected reunion with Puck at Roswaal’s mansion one of the few events that had made Beatrice’s heart leap in those four centuries of service.
Puck was a Great Spirit with origins identical to Beatrice’s. However, unlike how she lived according to the will of Echidna the Witch since days long past, he had started a new life long before the birth of the Sanctuary, and she had not seen him since.
However, the joy Beatrice felt at being reunited with the spirit who she adored like an older brother—was swiftly crushed.
Seeing Puck spend blissful days with the half-demon girl he’d contracted with sent cracks running through her heart.
She was jealous. No, it was something more than jealousy—she was envious that he was fulfilling his duty, something she could only imagine in her wildest of dreams.
Therefore, to the greatest extent possible, she did her best to avoid interacting with the half-demon girl who was so precious to Puck. Had she not done so, no doubt someday she would have taken the unease lurking in her heart out on the girl.
They would have clashed, and through no fault of anyone’s, she would surely make a mistake she could never undo against the girl her beloved older brother considered to be the most precious in the world.
She appealed to her heart’s self-control. Suppressing her emotions and keeping her words sealed away was her specialty.
She had done so over and over across four centuries. Her heart did not fear silence or loneliness at that late hour.
In her familiar, tried-and-true fashion, she gave up and chalked it up to the despair she knew so well.
—It was during those days of resignation that an anomaly suddenly intruded upon her domain.
At first, she assumed he was just another foolish human and held no interest in him whatsoever. He was a traveler the half-demon girl had brought back from the royal capital, and a stupid one at that.
By some twist of fate, he ended up staying at the mansion, and on top of that, he had an affinity for Dark magic, making him highly compatible with Beatrice’s Passage; as a result, he forced his way into the archive of forbidden books time and time again.
He was an odd boy.
It was plain as day to anyone with eyes that the boy was completely smitten with the half-demon girl. It was just as obvious that this was no scheme or dark ambition; the only motive was his shockingly simplistic love for her and nothing more.
On a whim, she had saved the boy from a curse and offered him words of advice.
She regretted this when afterward, he settled down at the mansion indefinitely, insisting on becoming even chummier.
But what she found surprising was that he knew of Beatrice’s talents yet did not desire them in any way. Indeed, when he came to ask about curses, it was Beatrice, and not the archive of forbidden books, he came to consult.
The boy harbored no interest in the knowledge left in her care or Beatrice’s power whatsoever.
Up until then, various persons had arrived at the archive of forbidden books, in which Beatrice placed her fleeting hopes—yet Beatrice herself had rejected them, denied them.
In the first place, the boy lacked many of the attributes Beatrice hoped for in the person she awaited.
First, there was a nasty quality to his eyes. His attitude was awful. His upbringing was deficient. His legs were short. He had someone he already cared for with all his being, and he wasn’t kind to Beatrice. She couldn’t find even one good thing about him.
It genuinely hurt when she tried to understand what the half-demon girl and the younger of the maid sisters saw in him.
He had absolutely no redeeming qualities, so Beatrice wished he would know his place and just accept being alone.
And given his situation, she thought she could at least be a little nicer whenever he poked his head into the archive.
Yet, even though that was how she thought of him at the time—
—in the end, without a single shred of consideration for Beatrice’s bewilderment, time coursed, and the world moved.
Beatrice did not know the fine details of what happened outside the mansion after that.
But the half-demon girl was summoned to the capital, and when she returned, the boy, who should have been traveling by her side, was absent. When he next reappeared, the boy had acquired an heirloom that belonged to someone whom she had fond memories of.
Upon seeing the book, Beatrice gained a keen appreciation of how yet another had left her behind in the world, even as she sent the boy and those with him off to the Sanctuary in accordance with Roswaal’s plot.
He was going to meet the Witch of Greed, fulfilling the long-cherished desire of his family—such were the words Roswaal left with Beatrice when he visited her in the archive before heading to the Sanctuary.
From those words and the look in Roswaal’s eyes, Beatrice surmised he was going to settle things.
Simultaneously, Beatrice settled upon a conclusion of her own.
A conclusion about the promised person supposedly recorded in the book of knowledge that had remained blank for four centuries.
—That Person would never arrive at Beatrice’s doorstep.
When the air of death permeated the mansion, Beatrice immediately came to a realization.
Even in the presence of such a thick aura, the book of knowledge had nothing written in it about Beatrice’s future. Destiny had abandoned her. And for some reason, she accepted this with ease.
That was probably because Beatrice had finally caught sight of the conclusion that she had long desired.
—That Person would never come. Yet, even so, she had to keep waiting.
In which case, Beatrice had no choice but to wait until someone stopped her from waiting any longer.
If that also meant robbing her of her life, she didn’t care who did it.
If it was possible, she would have liked to entrust even a tiny bit of the end of those four centuries to another.
Therefore, that night, when the boy—Subaru Natsuki—raced into the archive of forbidden books, Beatrice vented all her deeply repressed feelings, which were so difficult to put into words.
That instant, for the first time, Beatrice wanted some revenge against the destiny that had not tried to save her heart even once.
If he could be the one to take her and finally end the pact, then that would be—
“I’m getting you out of here, Beatrice—This time, my hand’s gonna lead you right out under the big ol’ sun, and we’ll play around until that dress is totally black from mud.”
“”
—So why, when it was far too late, did his hardened resolve tear at Beatrice’s heart?
All she’d thought about was meeting her end.
And yet, the boy showed her a possible future that differed from Beatrice’s own hopes.
She didn’t hope for anything like that. Such hopes had been worn away by four centuries.
“If—if you…were…the one I’ve been waiting for…”
That was how it should have been. Yet, as she listened to the boy’s indignant voice, a change began within her.
If she put it on her lips, if she spoke the words, her dormant emotions would bubble over and come out onto her face.
Beatrice would lose her obsession with Mother’s words, which had bound her for four hundred years, and from that moment forward, she would cling to something new, something she would never let go.
It was with full knowledge of this that Beatrice posed the decisive question—
“Would you…become That Person for Betty?”
“You really are an idiot. There’s no way in hell I’d become this stupid person or whatever for you.”
Sub-chapter 5.
She had been in danger of doing something she could never take back.
But before she even had a chance to try, the possibility was snatched away.
—She felt like she had reduced herself to a frivolous and very cheap clown.
“…Am I just…tired, I wonder?”
In the first place, she was wrong to even think of taking that boy’s hand.
He did not possess the pure heart of someone who would dirty his own hands for the sake of someone else without a second thought.
Just like Beatrice, he possessed a weak heart. He was indecisive and agonized over trivial things; uncertain of himself and hesitant, always ready to pile up one excuse after another instead of facing things head-on.
That was why her death would no doubt come in a different form.
Just like the intruders who had come into the mansion, enshrouded in a dense halo of death.
Or perhaps the flames spreading through the mansion would burn all to ash, like a fiery purgatory.
All she had to do was wait for it—
“Aaand I’m back! Hey, you big moron! You really got me good back there, damn it…”
“—!!”
“Gaaagh?!”
When the boy suddenly appeared in the archive of forbidden books like so many times before, Beatrice blew him away on reflex.
She was seething, and the attack came swifter than she could think. The boy was struck by a shock wave, shooting him out the door through which he had just entered. The door audibly slammed shut.
“I—I am finished speaking with you…and yet, you came again. Just how impudent are you, I wonder?!”
Beatrice couldn’t even understand the sheer gall needed for him to show his face again after what he had said to her last.
As if to clear her mind, Beatrice took several deep breaths, once more waiting for time to—
“Cut it out with the temper tantrums already! If you resort to violence right away, this conversation’ll never—
“You cut it out!!”
“Waaah!”
A two-pronged flow of magical energy hit him in the face, then in the gut.
The boy proceeded to groan in agony as he was hurled out of the room before the door shut again, forcibly ejecting him from the space.
“Is this even remotely funny, I wonder…?”
Murmuring with irritation, Beatrice settled back onto her stool, clutching the blank book of knowledge as she glared at the door, fearful that it might open again.
She was scared that her feelings, which had been shoved aside by arbitrary logic and unthinkable emotions, might be forced to the surface.
No matter how many times you come, I will continue to refuse you. After all, you are not That Person.
You abandoned any right to take Beatrice from here.
That is why Beatrice will stay until she and her unfulfilled promise meet their ends.
—At that moment, that was the only thing Beatrice thought could grant her salvation.
Sub-chapter 6.
Sent flying out of the archive, Subaru wisely broke his fall the instant he collided with the hallway wall.
“Gah… I’m in one piece!”
Having split off from Petra and Otto, he was hell-bent on trying to persuade Beatrice for the fourth time—and thanks to being smacked so much in a short span, he was becoming quite an expert at blunting the impact of the invisible shock waves.
“This ain’t the time to polish up stupid techniques like that. My instincts are telling me the fire’s getting bad.”
Wiping off his coursing sweat with a sleeve, Subaru crouched, clicking his tongue at the poor visibility.
The fire consuming the mansion had worsened, and hovering black smoke now reached every corner of the main wing. The floor below was already enveloped by the tendrils of flames; if he fell through the floor, he would not be able to avoid being charred to a crisp.
With the fire having spread to both the east and west wings, it was no longer possible to stop it.
The silver linings were that the candidates for Passage had been drastically reduced and that many of the demon beasts had fled due to the inferno, leaving Subaru with no enemies barring his path as he scurried around the mansion. That said, the more of the mansion that was lost to flames, the higher the odds of Subaru burning to death.
It would not be long until the mansion underwent a fiery collapse. He had to get Beatrice out of there before it came to that.
“Besides, what’s gonna happen to her archive of forbidden books if all the doors are burned to a crisp…?”
If, by any chance, all links to the doors were cut, just where would that archive’s door lead? Perhaps it would lead nowhere, and that girl’s world of loneliness would continue on for eternity?
Or perhaps the archive of forbidden books would share the mansion’s fate, consumed by flames and returned to ash?
“As if I’m gonna just stand by and let you end up like that…!”
Taking a deep breath, Subaru ran while staying so low to the ground, he was practically licking the floor. Throwing open the door from which he had been hurled, he put his hand on the next door, opening one after another.
The structural materials burned, and there was something like a bursting sound as the mansion where he spent so many irreplaceable days burned to the ground.
“—Gah, agh!”
When he grasped the doorknob of a yet-unopened door, he suppressed the urge to cry out in pain from his scorched palm. However, in a short span of time, it was a pain he’d grown accustomed to feeling.
The pain sharply stabbed him through his temples as he kicked the door open, racing inside.
“”
He gasped, breathing in the aroma of old books and seeing an atmosphere disconnected from scalding heat—it was the archive of forbidden books.
Realizing this, Subaru lifted his face. The girl sitting on the stool was glaring straight at Subaru.
“You again. You do not know when to give up…!”
“Ha!! Damn right I don’t! I’ll come to spirit you away as many times as it takes! If you don’t like it, come with me already! Do that, and it’ll be the last time I barge in here like this!”
“I have had enough of your flapping tongue! Do you even realize the mansion is on fire, I wonder?! If you do not flee this very instant, all that awaits you is your own fiery death!”
The fifth time Subaru challenged her, Beatrice chewed him out, having deemed him an incorrigible fool. Fierce emotion rested in her blue eyes, her lips quavered, and her fingers dug into her mystic tome.
“You… Have you not realized that you are out of opportunities to speak with Betty, I wonder? You are an unwelcome intruder… Why do you not understand this?!”
“Well, I don’t understand. As long as you’re not seriously rejecting me, I’ll come as many times as I want.”
“—!! Betty is rejec—!”
She was so angry, so offended, that Beatrice’s words made it halfway out of her throat before she opened her eyes wide.
She truly hadn’t realized the meaning of Subaru’s words.
Beatrice’s own words, own actions, were contradicted by Subaru’s very presence.
“Beatrice, if you genuinely don’t want to see me, just hole up here in the archive.”
“What are you…? At present, can Betty take even a single step out of the archive, I wonder?! And yet—And yet, you barge in here all on your…”
“Nah, you’re wrong. If you were serious, I’d never have been able to reach this place over and over in such a short time like this. Your rejection is skin-deep.”
“—I, ah…”
Beatrice grew even more confused. She was at a loss, unable to form the words with which to reject him.
Passage was not all-powerful. That was simply fact. However, it came shockingly close.
If Beatrice had genuinely wanted to separate the archive of forbidden books from the outside world, it should have been easy to prevent Subaru from entering.
Did she not—could she not—do so because her heart had strayed?
“”
After considering Subaru’s assertion, Beatrice, too, began to doubt her own heart.
Even had she not, the promise from four centuries ago that underpinned the current Beatrice was lost, leaving her wavering.
She no longer knew whether Subaru’s words or her own hopes were correct.
—And really, Subaru didn’t know, either.
Perhaps it was simply that the more the mansion burned away, the more the choices dwindled as well.
Perhaps Subaru was conveniently discovering hidden powers at the perfect moment, enabling him to see right through Passage.
And perhaps it truly was that Beatrice could not bring herself to reject Subaru sincerely, and therefore Passage’s entrance remained open to him.
He didn’t know which was true—but Subaru hoped, prayed it was the last possibility.
But whatever the truth, it didn’t matter. There and then, every part of Subaru Natsuki was devoted to reaching the possibility of taking Beatrice with him.
“You…you…! You are not That Person for Betty!”
Seemingly unable to contain the inner turmoil swirling inside her any longer, Beatrice grasped the hem of her skirt and raised her voice. Abandoning the thoughts racing within her mind, she seemed ready to burst into tears as she stated her case to Subaru.
“You said yourself that you weren’t! You said it yourself! Did you not say it, I wonder? If only you were That Person… Had you said so, even as a lie, Betty would have probably believed you. Even knowing it was a lie, she would have to believe you.”
“Beatrice…”
“But did you not say that was wrong, I wonder? You said it was wrong, and you said it was stupid. Well, I suppose you were right. Yes, Betty is an idiot, a huge idiot who cannot bring herself to forget a verbal promise she made four centuries ago… That’s why! No matter what you say, is it not already over, I wonder?!”
As Beatrice shouted her rejection, fierce gales spawned around her, enveloping her like a cage.
The torrent of magical energy made the girl’s dress and hair flap in the wind, and a tragic mood filled the archive of forbidden books. After watching this unfold, Subaru drew in his breath, then began walking forward.
His feeble heart was afraid—afraid that the squalls would hurt him. Fighting against that fear, he clenched his burned palms tight and used that pain to focus on just looking straight ahead.
“I…”
“”
“I’m not That Person or anything like that. I’ll say it as many times as you like. The prince riding a white horse who you’re waiting for isn’t coming. He’ll never come no matter how long you wait here for him.”
As she listened to the repeated denials, the despair in Beatrice’s eyes grew deeper.
If things ended here again, nothing would change. Yet, if he could just tell her what came after…
“But.”
“”
“I want to be by your side, Beatrice.”
“—!”
“I want to be there for you so your gentle self won’t be sad anymore.”
“Ah…uuugh…!”
Beatrice’s expression twisted up.
The surging magical energy lost its focus, and the wind began to whip around indiscriminately, coming closer and closer to harming Beatrice herself.
Her face crumpled with grief, anger, and something beyond those things. Then she opened the book on her lap as if to hold on for dear life. The pages flapping in the wind…were white. They were all blank.
—The book of prophecy revealed nothing and urged her to make a choice all the same.
“—The hell?”
Beatrice closed the book. Simultaneously, there was an unnatural distortion in Subaru’s field of view. His vision became hazy, and he fell to his knees, unable to stand. It definitely wasn’t anemia or fatigue that brought him down.
The real culprit was the archive of forbidden books itself, which was swaying quite violently. The floor twisted, and the bookshelves, having lost their balance, tumbled one after another. The books lining their shelves were sent flying, blanketing the room in a sea of covers, spines, and paper.
This was the archive of forbidden books that Beatrice had built—if the state of the archive correlated with Beatrice’s mental state, then it was clear she was shaken to the point where she could no longer maintain the place.
“Beatrice—!”
As everything around him became progressively more warped, Subaru did his best to stand as he reached a hand out toward Beatrice. The area around her was the only place unaffected by the distortion; even then, the girl sat atop the stool.
If he jumped, he’d reach her. Trusting in this, Subaru turned toward Beatrice and took a leap of faith.
The instant he did, space itself ripped open like a piece of paper, and Subaru’s body was only moments away from being swallowed by the tear.
“—Oh, cra…!”
He wouldn’t make it. Able to do nothing else, Subaru dove into the gap.
This was not Passage. It was a leap through space that did not involve a door—Subaru had experienced this exact thing once before.
It was when he’d let Emilia die. It was when he’d let Beatrice die.
“”
At the last second, when he turned his eyes toward the rip in space, he saw Beatrice’s lips move.
—Every part of her face seemed to say the same thing.
Good-bye.
Sub-chapter 7.
The instant he emerged from his crossing, the smoke he inhaled sent him coughing. The hot wind felt like it was scorching his skin.
“—The entrance?! How courteous. Shit!”
Lifting up his black, grimy face, Subaru realized he was at the entrance of the burning mansion.
Looking farther, he was certain the entirety of the building was already engulfed by flames; the inferno touched not only the main wing, where the fire had started, but also the east and west wings.
It was difficult to find a place inside the mansion that was still in its original shape. Even the door of the entrance from which Subaru had just emerged had its lower half enveloped by flames. That Passage had worked at all was itself a miracle.
He wouldn’t be able to leap back into the archive of forbidden books from there—No, it was questionable whether there was a single door leading to the archive remaining in the mansion.
He wasn’t inside the burning mansion; he’d been thrown outside. Beatrice had probably intended this to be her reply.
“Good-bye, my ass—How are you gonna act tough, then show me a face like that at the end?!”
Brushing those rising doubts aside, Subaru kicked the burning door in all his fury, rushing into the entryway. He was immediately greeted by a wave of heat incomparable to anything he felt outside, and the agony of his singed windpipe brought tears to his eyes.
Charging into a burning building like someone who didn’t know better, trying to save lives and be a hero—that was the kind of dumb stunt that got people killed. But Subaru had no intention of dying.
“And I’m not letting her die, either!”
Subaru raced across the flaming Roswaal Manor in search of anything that might be connected to the archive.
His face, his neck, and his limbs were roasting, and his skin felt pain as if it was being scorched. It hurt to breathe, but not so much that he couldn’t run. Subaru shoved everything else out of his mind.
If Subaru had been capable of seeing things more clearly at the time, the sheer horror of the sight might have caused his body to quiver uncontrollably.
For as Subaru ran through the inferno, swearing he would bring the girl with him, he was enveloped by an incredibly dense black miasma, almost like a cloak of shadow that shielded him.
Unaware of this, Subaru broke through a particularly large wall of flame and found the stairs.
The first-floor dining room was where the fire had begun. Entryway included, it was highly probable that every door there had burned up. If there was a door still intact, it would be on a higher floor—probably at the very top.
In such a conflagration, it was naturally unlikely that he could get back up there from the first floor. Even so, without any hesitation, Subaru started climbing the stairs, racing toward the topmost floor.
A moment later—.
“”
He heard a sound like something wet was being dragged; Subaru turned about.
It had come from the corridor of the main wing, where the fire raged wildly, even though all reason told him it could not be so.
After their chain of command collapsed, the demon beasts were fleeing, for this was an inferno of certain death that brooked no living beings. What could be in such a place? —Wait, what the hell is that?
A figure dressed in black emerged from the flames: a black-haired woman holding a black blade in her hand.
“Elsa…?”
“”
There was no reply. But so far as Subaru knew, it could be no one but that all-black killer.
Multiple times in multiple loops, Subaru had run into her and died by her hand. In his latest plan, he’d left the woman to his most capable companion, thinking he would surely never meet her again.
And yet here, in a fiery world of life and death, Subaru and Elsa had come face-to-face once more.
“”
Encountering her in the burning Roswaal Manor, Subaru licked his lips, forgetting his sense of unease.
He’d borrowed the strength of many to arrive at that point.
Otto. Ram. Ryuzu. Shima. Patlash.
Emilia. The people of Earlham Village. Garfiel. Petra. Frederica.
They were why Subaru could stand then and there—Subaru Natsuki did not doubt his allies.
“Garfiel wouldn’t lose to you. There’s no way you beat him.”
“”
“You’re not Elsa anymore, are you?”
When Subaru posed the question, Elsa—nay, the thing that had been Elsa—turned its empty black eyes toward him. There was no glint of life within them, only bottomless darkness. Subaru was peering into an abyss.
An empty body, a departed soul, and obsession incarnate. Driven by inexhaustible bloodlust, it dragged its smashed lower body along as it crawled toward Subaru through the raging fires.
This was far beyond an unnatural vitality that kept death at bay. The power had become nothing but a curse.
Just like Subaru’s Return by Death, it was nothing save a curse, a yoke placed upon her very life.
“You’ve got it pretty rough, too, but I don’t have time to deal with you. I’ve gotta get Beatrice—”
Out of here, he was stating to the corpse that had once been Elsa, ready to abandon it to the flames. It was certainly crawling slowly enough that he could easily shake it off. But—
“—!!”
Suddenly feeling death brush against the nape of his neck, Subaru immediately leaped up. After jumping to the flaming landing, he turned around. Behind him, the undead’s wicked blade had sliced clean through the steps below.
Closing the distance, the corpse swung as it came again to claim Subaru’s life. Naturally, the blade had not fallen short out of mercy. The swing had missed because the undead’s smashed lower body had prevented it from lunging forward properly.
“You’re kidding me—!”
Subaru instantly kicked away the corpse’s hand, which was reaching for the stairs, and dashed away.
Smoke from a fire moved upward. Accordingly, it was thicker on the floor above, increasing in its potency. The flames were strong there, too; he couldn’t call searching for a door in those conditions very realistic.
—More importantly, the undead had not relented in its pursuit for even a second, doggedly pursuing Subaru.
“Shit! Gotta go higher!”
Relentlessly chased by the corpse that had lost all humanity, Subaru kept running to the topmost floor. Stumbling onto the blaze-enveloped third floor, he found himself at the corridor that led to the study where he saw off Petra and Otto.
They must have made it out safe and sound. Garfiel and Frederica, too.
And judging from the lack of organization among the demon beasts, Meili must have been routed, too. As for Elsa—
“Roooaaah!!”
“Dah?!”
When that roar and a monstrous set of claws shot out from some nearby flames, Subaru screamed, unable to conceal his shock.
The culprit was a demon beast sporting a lion’s face. It had lost its mane, and half its body looked hideously burned, but there was no mistake: This was the same Giltirau Subaru and the others thought they had burned to death back in the dining hall.
Appearing to be struggling to even breathe, perhaps it was only still standing to obey its master’s command.
If that was true, then Subaru was truly like a moth to flame—the irony of chancing upon it in the middle of a massive inferno was too rich to be funny.
“!!!”
Roaring, the nearly expired demon beast swung its massive arm toward Subaru. Scraping the wall, it was a lethal blow that whistled through the air as it closed in. Even barely clinging to life, this beast could rob him of his life just as easily as it could mow down some weeds.
“You’re both one-trick ponies—!”
Subaru evaded the attack by rolling forward toward the demon beast’s flank—he’d already learned, probably from too much personal experience, that demon beasts had a habit of aiming for the vitals of their prey.
Thoroughly embarrassed after missing a clean shot, the demon beast angrily unleashed a follow-up attack—
“!!!”
It was then that the undead pursuing Subaru bared its fangs toward the demon beast.
There was not a single reason the demon beast and the undead should have to fight. To the undead chasing Subaru, the demon beast’s hulking body was nothing more than an obstacle on the path Subaru had traversed first.
There was no deeper reason behind the undead sending the demon beast’s hind paw flying away. Screaming as the wicked blade drew black blood, the beast cracked its serpentine tail at the undead.
In a feat beyond the limitations of a human body, the corpse evaded the tail attack, retaliating by slicing the tail off at its base. Unleashing the murderous techniques ingrained into its flesh, the undead cut into the demon beast in a one-sided manner.
Subaru, not letting slip the opportunity to turn misfortune into fortune, kicked open one closed door after another on the topmost floor.
The stateroom and the reference room were both busts. The battle between undead and demon beast continued, but all he heard were the screams of the demon beast, clearly losing the lopsided fight.
“Please, Beatrice…!”
Finally arriving at the study, Subaru flung the door open with a prayer in his heart.
However, uncertainty crept in as the only sight before him was a ransacked office.
“This didn’t work, either…! Then the last door is…”
The burning floors below were all wiped out. The other wings were burning up even faster than the main one, perhaps because of the collapses there. Was there even a single intact door left inside Roswaal Manor at that point?
“No, not yet! There’s still more! There’s one door!”
Biting down any thoughts of giving up, Subaru set eyes upon the wide-open entrance to the spiraling stairs leading to the escape tunnel. If he went down the stairs and arrived at the underground passage—there definitely ought to be a door ahead.
Previously, when he’d returned to the mansion during a Witch Cult attack, Subaru had headed deep into the escape tunnel, was bathed in cold through the door, shattered into dust, and died—that door was still there.
Instantly, hesitation arose in the back of Subaru’s mind. It was not fear. It was doubt.
His thoughts coalesced. Were his actions being guided? All the other doors in the mansion were misses, leading Subaru to the escape tunnel—was this Beatrice’s intent?
Was this all Beatrice’s plan so that Subaru might escape outside, so that he might live?
“—! I don’t even have the time to think about it!”
Behind him, death throes thundered throughout the mansion as the beast suffered a decisive blow. The demon beast had been unwittingly buying him time, but with that last strike, the cruel undead had surely taken its life.
—He had no other options. Subaru was being herded into the hidden passage.
The smoke was overwhelming the spiraling staircase leading to the basement of the mansion. With zero visibility and the fact that taking a single breath would spell death and a one-way trip to a world of nightmares, Subaru hardened his resolve, held his breath, and ran down.
What had once been extreme cold was now instead scalding hot. Subaru advanced deeper, deeper into the dark underground passage.
Finally, ahead of the smoke-infested darkness, he stopped, for he had found the door he sought.
“This is…”
It was the final possibility—Subaru drew in his breath as that realization sank in.
Subaru had never gone beyond the door in the hidden passage. He knew this escape tunnel ultimately led to a cabin off in the forest. But not once had he actually gone that far. Everything beyond that door was personally unknown to Subaru.
Accordingly, to Subaru, this door was the final candidate. It was his last chance to get through to Beatrice.
If he really had been guided there by Beatrice’s will, it was a poor wager.
Fearful of just that, Subaru reached his hand toward the door’s handle—
“Daaah! This door again…!!”
His palm felt like it was on fire. His fingers hadn’t even touched it. Subaru drew his hand back and glared at the door. The door’s reaction seemed to mock Subaru for his fear of what might result—and then suddenly, he came to a realization.
“The doorknob’s hot…?”
—Even if hot air had crept in, there was no sign of fire in the underground escape tunnel.
The hovering smoke and heat had coursed in through gaps in the stone comprising the spiral stairs. There was nothing burning in the tunnel. How could this interior door possess so much heat?
“…Beatrice. If you can hear this, listen to me.”
Keeping his hand away from the door, Subaru slightly craned his neck upward and spoke those words.
He believed his voice would reach the girl who was nowhere to be seen.
“You led me this far, didn’t you? To be blunt, if you were plotting to bring me to the escape tunnel by making it the only option, blatantly leading me here by the nose, then your plan’s a complete failure.”
Even if he’d had to slip past the mansion fire, Elsa, and the demon beast along the way, she’d no doubt hatched a plan and put it into action. If this door was a bust, too, leaving him no choice but to go to the cabin, her goal would have been achieved.
“But it doesn’t look like things are gonna go that smoothly… Even if this door’s a bust, I’m not running like you want. This isn’t talking tough or some bluff saying I don’t wanna run, okay? Sure, nine-tenths of how I feel lines up with all that…but this is a serious, legit issue.”
Subaru continued earnestly trying to convince her, not even knowing if the other party could hear him.
Subaru tapped the door barring his path with his foot as he let out a sigh.
“If I open this door, I’ll probably die. I don’t know if you or anyone else gets it, but that’s exactly what’ll happen…and I know because I have the power of science.”
Though it had failed him miserably with the misfire in the dining hall, the latent modern knowledge sleeping within Subaru was now ringing an alarm.
The door in front of Subaru’s eyes that moment was a door that had to be left untouched. This was a frequent danger at the sites of fires.
In front of him was a door of hellish flame. Behind him was the undead Elsa—this was a gambling parlor, and his life was on the line.
“Beatrice. I’m…going to open this door—I’ll leave it up to you to interpret my words.”
Was his voice really reaching Beatrice?
And if it did reach her, would Beatrice believe Subaru’s words?
Somehow, the idea that his life would be determined by her choice put Subaru’s heart at ease.
…Of course it did.
“—Beatrice. I…trust you.”
As he spoke, Subaru felt the pain of his palm being burned as he flung the door open.
And then—
Sub-chapter 8.
—The undead arrived underground, not by taking the spiral stairs but by rolling down them.
Black smoke invaded its lungs. The heat singed its skin. The flames threatened its life. The undead charged forward, heedless of all the danger.
It gripped a wicked blade in its right hand. In its left was the heart of the demon beast it had killed. One would think no sight so ghastly could exist in the world. Regardless, the undead felt an inexhaustible sense of duty as it pursued its prey.
Its flesh had been destroyed to the point that it should have been unresponsive. Its life had been whittled away beyond its ability to regenerate. There was no longer a person’s will residing within the crawling corpse.
That it moved even so was because the undead’s reason for existence waited ahead.
Finally, wordlessly, cruelly, the corpse arrived at the innermost part of the passage.
“”
Sensing black, stagnant miasma ahead, the undead instantly lashed out with its blade.
The firmly shut door was cut down, so that the life of the prey on the other side might be sliced asunder.
There was a dull sound as the door split apart. Kicking away the wreckage, the undead peered into the darkness on the other—
“”
A faint wind blew past. The undead felt like it was being pulled into the darkness ahead.
Before its eyes, white smoke blew in from the depths of the darkness. Suddenly, the white smoke mixed with the black smoke in the corridor, causing a puff of heat.
Immediately afterward, oxygen flowed into the tunnel, where incomplete combustion had occurred. The moment the heat and the oxygen-rich air came into contact, everything burst into incandescent flames. Though the earlier attempt to cause a dust explosion had failed, the fire had just produced the explosive phenomenon known as a back draft. This was not something that an undead bereft of all reason could ever have surmised.
“”
The merciless tendrils of the bursting flames enveloped the undead. The hellish fire instantly burned its body away.
Having lost its power to heal, the body of the undead, now nothing more than a rotting corpse, was swallowed up and turned to ash. What remained burned up all at once—destroyed by the roaring inferno.
The force of the fire was so great that it did not stop there. It barreled down the underground passage, turned the spiraling staircase into a sea of incandescent heat, and burst into the study, causing it to ignite as well.
That night, everything was enveloped by fire, burning it all down. Roswaal Manor’s doors were no more.
This time, the flaming Roswaal Manor truly found its end.
Sub-chapter 9.
The sight of the archive of forbidden books, to which Subaru had been invited, made him inadvertently draw in his breath.
Cracks ran across the floor and walls, and the tear in space through which Subaru had been expelled remained intact. The toppled bookshelves and scattered books remained as before, and on top of that, flames were rising from a corner of the room.
The effects of Roswaal Manor burning down had finally begun to be felt even in the archive.
“”
However, such sentiments toward the room’s interior dissipated with a single glance turned Subaru’s way.
That moment, he concentrated on the most important thing—one little girl.
—After all, this was probably his final chance.
“…You are an idiot.”
“That’s the first thing out of your mouth?”
“Is it not true, I wonder? Even though Betty went through all that trouble so you might escape, you threw it away… Are there any doors left anywhere in the mansion, I wonder? This is a dead end.”
As a matter of fact, she was right. There wasn’t a single door left in the mansion for Passage to connect to.
The flames that had reached the archive of forbidden books were gradually increasing in force, spreading to the Witch’s knowledge that Beatrice had continued protecting across four centuries, turning that promise to ash.
Her precious obligation was on fire. It was easily flammable, so it would no doubt burn down, and soon.
“At this rate, you and I are both goners.”
“…Yes, is this the end, I wonder? Betty wishes for little now. Everything she was to hand to That Person will soon burn away. Is everything now not completely contrary to her promise to Mother, I wonder?”
“Oh yeah? Then hear me out to the end, okay?”
She’d failed to keep her word. Subaru had failed to persuade her. Beatrice looked toward him with empty eyes.
She spoke no words of affirmation or denial. But at the very least, she seemed to be lending him her ears. Even in a situation like that, it just wasn’t in her nature to deny someone else to the bitter end.
He took a breath. There were words he had been unable to speak when they’d last parted.
—This time, he’d tell her everything he wanted to say.
“Beatrice—please save me.”
“…Huh?”
Subaru stated those words boldly with his head held high.
Hearing him say such a thing with his face all covered in soot, Beatrice could only stare at him in shock.
She’d no doubt imagined countless things that he might possibly say.
With both of them facing an unavoidable end, Beatrice had probably run numerous mental simulations about what words Subaru might say to her, no doubt intending to dismiss each and every one.
—I want to save you. I won’t let you be alone. I need you.
Those were the sorts of cool, manly words from That Person that she expected to be greeted with.
But if that meant trying to convey false feelings, Subaru just couldn’t do it.
“I considered saying cooler-sounding stuff about whisking you away from this loneliness, mind you… I didn’t think any of them would work. I figured I’d better come right out and say…what I think of you and what I really wanted to tell you.”
Beatrice was speechless as Subaru poured out his genuine feelings.
He figured it was pretty mean to put the ball entirely in Beatrice’s court, though.
“Really, you don’t need any of my strength. Not for saving you or anything else. You’re strong, you’re smart, you’re cute… You should be able to do anything if you put your mind to it.”
“”
“But even though you’re strong and smart and cute, you were scared of living alone. It must have been hard. It must have been lonely. No one can blame you for clinging to the idea of That Person.”
“Th-that is not for you to… You rejected Betty’s feelings… What do you know about it…?!”
Biting her lip, Beatrice glared at Subaru with an emotion that bordered on hatred.
However, her trembling did not convey that at all. As the outpouring of fierce emotion threatened to dissipate immediately, Beatrice shook her head, desperately trying to stay firm and resolute.
“I know. I know how kind you are. I know if someone was tossing and turning from a nightmare, you’d hold their hand to put them at ease. If someone was being battered by some trouble they couldn’t do anything about, you’d reach out and open the way for them. You feel sad for people who lose someone dear to them, even if you can’t help but hate them.”
“You speak as if you know so…”
“I’m powerless. I can’t save you. But I don’t want you to be alone. If there’s one thing a guy like me can do, it’s to cling to you and beg.”
When Subaru offered his right hand, Beatrice’s eyes shot open even wider.
His hand was inflamed from burns and was a hideous sight. Even so, it was still in better shape than his left, which had sustained so much damage that the very sight of it was unbearable.
He offered the one hand he had that could be cleaned up to pass as something suitable for taking a pretty girl’s hand.
“Beatrice. Save me, please.”
“”
“I’ll be too lonely to live without you. Save me.”
Really, just how pathetic and unsightly was this arm-twisting of his?
He claimed he couldn’t go on without her to force her hand.
He didn’t know what he could do for her, so he was telling her what she could do for him, pressuring her into using it as a reason to live.
It was so very selfish, so completely illogical. It was all the coercion that Subaru Natsuki could muster.
“Not fair… This is…not fair.”
The shameless manipulation made Beatrice’s lips tremble with intense, barely containable emotions from the bottom of her heart.
“How…how can you speak that way to Betty…now of all times? I mean, you’re not even That Person… You rejected Betty…! And yet…!”
She couldn’t speak properly. Her words strayed. She hesitated. Beatrice’s heart panicked as she agonized over the choice.
Beatrice clutched the book within her arms very, very tightly, never taking her eyes away from the hand offered to her.
Tears spilled from the corners of her eyes.
“For four hundred years, I have always been alone…! I spent my time in loneliness, and even if I accept your hand here, you’ll die right away anyway! The life span of a human being is a blink of an eye to one such as Betty… How?! How can I cling to such a thing now…?!”
“I can’t even begin to imagine the four centuries you spent. I’m not gonna pretend like I understand. Four hundred years? I haven’t even lived a twentieth of that. I probably don’t understand one thing about your fear of the time after I die.”
“Then! Then…your words will change nothing…!”
“But tomorrow, I’ll be there to hold your hand.”
“”
“I’ll be there tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, and the day after that. Even if I can’t promise to be around in four hundred years, I can still spend each and every day I have together with you. Even if we can’t be together for eternity, I can treasure you tomorrow and right now.”
“”
“That’s why, Beatrice—pick me.”
Subaru had already made his choice.
And he was indicating his choice to Beatrice. The rest was up to Beatrice to choose.
Would it be the flames that brought the words of her mother, words she had faithfully upheld across four centuries, to an end?
Or would she break her promise to her mother, abandon her hopes for That Person, and take Subaru Natsuki’s hand?
“Y-you are not…That Person…”
“Nope. Don’t you dare confuse me with some other guy, okay? I’m me. Subaru Natsuki. This four-centuries-old unrequited love you’ve held for some bastard whose face you don’t even know? Forget all that.”
“”
“Instead of being scared of good-byes that might come one day, come live with me for a guaranteed future. I’m weak, but even so, my dreams are really big… If you stick with me, a busybody like you will have your hands so full, you won’t have any time to be bored or lonely.”
“…Ugh, ngh…”
“Pick me, Beatrice.”
He’d say the words as many times as it took to sink in.
That’s because he understood the wavering girl’s feelings.
The guilt that made the girl hesitate, her sense of shame toward casting promises aside—he’d make it so she could pin those things on the selfish high-handedness of the human known as Subaru Natsuki.
—So that this girl would never cry alone again.
“Even though you’ll eventually leave me…”
“Nothing lasts forever. The future you’re afraid of will definitely come someday. You’ll live forever, so we’ll probably part ways at one point or another. But you and I haven’t tasted nearly enough of life to give up on all the fun we’ll have together and live in fear of being pulled apart.”
“Even though you’ll leave me behind…”
“Let’s be together. Let’s live life together. Let’s do this together. Let’s build up so many memories that we can blow away all that fear, puff our chests out, then laugh and say, We sure had fun. We’ll do so much that you can make up for the four lonely centuries you spent living here.”
“Even…if we did all that! Someday, I’ll be alone again!”
He saw himself reflected in the girl’s trembling eyes.
He looked shabby, unsightly, a far cry from the prince on a white horse she’d spent too many years waiting for.
The only one who stood there was the same old Subaru Natsuki.
“To someone like you who’ll live forever, maybe the time you’ll spend with me will be one brief moment. If that’s how it’s gonna be, then I’ll carve my moment right into your soul.”
“”
“—And when all’s said and done, even weighed up against all of eternity, I’ll be so vivid that nothing will fade when it comes to Subaru Natsuki!”
There was a sound like glass cracking. The world known as the archive of forbidden books was breaking down.
At some point, the rips in space around Subaru and Beatrice had become enveloped by flames.
But in that moment, he no longer felt heat or fear.
Inside Subaru, there was nothing except Beatrice.
And that moment, there was nothing in Beatrice except Subaru.
With trembling arms, Beatrice gripped the book that her mother had given her.
Believing her four centuries of loneliness would be healed once she let it go, he reached out with his hand.
And he shouted:
“Pick me! Beatrice!!”
“—Ah.”
“—You wanted someone to take you outside! Isn’t that why you always sat in front of the door?!”
With a decisive sound, that world finally met its end.
The girl’s lonely cage, that solitary world known as the archive of forbidden books, was engulfed by flames and vanished.
But just before that happened, there was a sound.
—The sound of a single tome falling to the archive’s floor.
Sub-chapter 10.
Otto and Petra gazed wordlessly as Roswaal Manor burned to the ground.
“”
The three of them—Otto, Petra, and Rem, who was being carried on Otto’s back—had safely used the mansion’s escape route to slip past the demon beasts’ perimeter.
A barrier had been scrupulously set up around the cabin in the mountains behind Roswaal Manor, to which the escape route led. This made it impossible for not only the wild demon beasts in the region to approach them but even warded off the demon beasts participating in the attack.
And it was not only Otto and company watching the mansion as it went up in flames.
A crowd of the Earlham Village residents who had not headed toward the Sanctuary could be seen gathered around—evacuated to the barrier beforehand by Subaru in a determined effort to keep them from being embroiled in the attack on the mansion. Considering the great horde of demon beasts, it was clear that his concern had not been excessive. It was not only Otto who keenly felt that way but the villagers as well.
However, no one felt at liberty to raise joyous voices at having arrived there safe and sound.
That moment, all any of them could do was gaze at the mansion with anxious hope, waiting for some visible change and believing Subaru and the others still struggling inside the mansion were safe.
“”
Otto, too, stared at the mansion, deciding to treat his burn wounds later. Petra was right beside him, latched on to Otto’s arm with strength unimaginable for one so young.
She was doubtlessly worried sick. Anyone could tell the young girl had a crush on Subaru from a single glance. Considering her melancholy, one couldn’t help but pray he was safe.
To try and put Petra at ease, he gently stroked Petra’s brown hair. When Petra looked at him in momentary surprise, Otto smiled at her, turning his eyes toward the mansion once more—it was then that he noticed.
“…That’s…”
It was from the topmost floor of the main wing of the burning mansion. With incredible force, fire burst out of the office that Otto’s group had used as an escape route. The windows cracked, and the outpouring flames engulfed the mansion’s topmost floor. Roswaal Manor finally reached its limit, succumbed to the flames, and collapsed.
“Ah…”
The sight brought a tiny sound out of Petra’s throat.
Next to spread across her eyes would likely be despair. As an adult, Otto tried to wipe that sadness away.
“Mr. Otto! Look!”
“Gah?!”
Otto had a meek look on his face when Petra slapped the side of it with her little palm.
The blow caught Otto by surprise and brought stars to his eyes. But when he saw the delighted expression on Petra’s face as she pointed at the mansion, he immediately understood, hastily shaking his shock away.
Just like Petra, the people of Earlham Village were raising voices of delight.
“Ha…ha-ha…”
—From Roswaal Manor, aflame and collapsing, a single ray of white light stretched up toward the sky.
The light, which was like a shooting star, changed its angle high in the sky, glimmering as it arced and flew far off to the east, as if to signal its destination.
Otto knew what lay in that direction.
When Petra said, “There! Just now!” with a happy look on her face, his expression had already relaxed.
“The rest is up to you—all this has really worn me out.”
Sub-chapter 11.
Simultaneously, just as Otto let his shoulders fall with relief, Garfiel, half-naked and wearing nothing but a tattered cloth around his hips, looked up at the same light and clacked his fangs.
“Ha! Ya sure pulled it off, General! That’s my general! Hoshin kept his promises even if it killed him!”
Garfiel, who had escaped the burning mansion and broken through the perimeter of demon beasts, laughed himself silly.
He was covered in soot and burn wounds and injuries all over, but his face was full of smiles.
“Gah-ha-ha-ha-ha… Owww?!”
“Do not get worked up while you’re so badly hurt! They will scar!”
As Garfiel laughed, a fist grandly struck the back of his skull. When Garfiel clutched his head and looked back, Frederica stood there with anger on her face.
“A-aren’t ya happy that the general and she are safe and sound?”
“Of course I am… We were right to leave it to Master Subaru. If Lady Beatrice has been saved, then I can rest easier as well.”
Letting out a sigh of relief, Frederica gently patted her own chest. Seeing his elder sister’s reaction made Garfiel crack a smile. “Gotta say, though,” he said as a preamble. “Even if ya talk tough, it’s hard to look tough when you’re all embarrassed while wearin’ a single sheet of cloth.”
“—! It cannot be helped! There was no time to strip my clothes off before transforming!”
Red-faced, Frederica was indignant as she stood there naked save for the curtain wrapped around her.
As he endured his sister’s anger, Garfiel glanced at the girl sleeping under the shade of a nearby tree—Meili—and narrowed his eyes.
At the height of that ferocious battle, Elsa had gone to save Meili when she was in danger of being crushed by falling debris, letting her favorable chance to win against Garfiel slip away. Had she not done so, the victor and the loser might have been reversed.
In the end, Frederica had transformed and pulled Meili out of harm’s way, and with all obstacles removed from the battlefield, Garfiel had settled things with Elsa—and thus, he had supposedly won.
And yet, the feeling that he hadn’t really won refused to go away. Was it just that he was still immature?
Or was it a lingering symptom of having killed for the first time, one that would not allow him the comfort of immersing himself in victory?
Either way—
“The echoes of victory and the feel of killing—I can leave that all for later. The rest is happenin’ in a place where my hands can’t reach no matter how hard I try… Countin’ on ya to take care of it, General.”
Thrusting his fist forward, Garfiel glared, baring his fangs toward the trail of light heading toward the eastern sky.
Gazing in the same direction, Frederica folded her hands against her chest as if making a prayer.
“’Cause once everything’s said and done, there’s still that bastard we both needa smack real good!”
Sub-chapter 12.
—She’d been caught.
She’d understood, yet she’d been ensnared all the same.
She’d known from the start. If she took that hand, if she clung to its warmth, she would never be able to return to those lonely nights again.
Even though she’d rebuked herself, saying living by relying on warmth that would someday vanish was foolishness, even madness…
That voice had called her.
Those eyes had gazed upon her.
That hand needed her.
She should have known. There was no way that she could reject them.
—Subaru.
“Yeah, that’s right.”
—Subaru. Subaru.
“That’s right. That’s my name.”
—Subaru, Subaru, Subaru.
—Subaru!!
“You finally said my name, huh?”
Sub-chapter 13.
The snowfall had become a full-blown blizzard.
The world was dotted with enough snow to blanket one’s field of vision. It was a hell of extreme cold that could freeze one’s breath the instant it touched the outside air.
Though exposed to such ferocious elements, powerful will rested in the girl’s violet eyes as her silver hair flapped in the wind.
“I absolutely, absolutely…won’t lose, not to anyone or anything!”
With faint light entwined around both her hands, the silver-haired girl raised them to employ and release the vast amount of mana within her.
The freezing magic, amplified amid that fiercely blowing snow, began to glow, and that pale radiance became countless swords of light that flew across the world, slicing apart each and every one of the white demon beasts atop the snowy plain.
—There was a disturbing clacking of their short fangs biting against one another in unison.
This was the most unsalvageable thing in the world, the most difficult to coexist with, the great calamity that overshadowed all others since times of yore.
Before these beings, the embodiment of appetite, known as Gluttony incarnate, the girl stood, not backing away a single step.
However, her breathing was ragged; she had lost control over a portion of her mana, which was so vast that she had yet to master it; and part of her body had begun to be covered in white crystals.
At that rate, it would not be long before she was turned into a statue of ice by her very own magical energy.
—Even so, she did not retreat. She could not.
“This is for Mother, for Geuse, and for everyone in the present… Besides, as long as I don’t forget the words he wrote, I’ll never give up.”
Therefore, even if her body was enveloped in ice, the one thing she absolutely would not do was regret.
As the demon beasts tightened their encirclement, they gradually closed in on the girl and the people depending upon her.
If push came to shove, she was ready to put her life on the line. She was ready.
“—You don’t need to overdo it, Emilia-tan. Everything’s gonna be all right.”
There was a light sound. The girl realized someone had landed right next to her from somewhere far above.
She looked beside her. The raging blizzard was in the way, so she couldn’t make out their face.
But she knew exactly who it was.
His voice, his demeanor, and more than that—there was no way he wouldn’t come when she most wanted him at her side.
“You can stand back and leave the rest to me—we’ve got beginner’s luck on our side.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t really get what you’re trying to say.”
She sensed he was making a wry smile as he stepped ahead. And tagging along was a second, smaller figure.
And then she heard two voices.
Voices that leaped, as if they had been waiting eagerly for this moment for a very, very long time—
“I do not have any idea if this will work.”
“Yeah, we’ll manage somehow—you and me!!”
—So began the pair’s first battle, one of the many, many times Beatrice the spirit and her contractor, Subaru Natsuki, would fight hand in hand.
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Diamond. Diamond. Diamond.
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