qw
The courtyard he had seen on many a morning had turned into a hell unlike anything he’d ever seen.
The small but vivid flower bed had been trampled awry, and the trees
standing around the mansion had been felled, snapped in half.
The green grass had been dyed black with blood, with the prostrate corpse joined by the remains of several black-robed figures. Each showed signs of being subjected to incredible violence, with few remaining relatively whole. The
gruesome damage to the remains exceeded what he had seen in Earlham Village,
no doubt evidence of the great rage behind the murder weapon that had turned these unfortunate victims into mincemeat.
The deadly tool that had wreaked such havoc upon them, a bloodstained iron
ball, lay fallen among the dark figures in the center of the garden. The metal orb, linked to a handle via a chain, had smashed apart a number of foes, but in the midst of battle, its mistress had somehow relinquished her grip; it seemed to regret having been unable to fight alongside her to the very end.
And as for the demon who he presumed had wielded it one-handed in
ferocious battle…
“—Rem.”
…She was long gone from that place.
In a corner of the courtyard, a short distance removed from the iron weapon,
was Rem, her servant’s uniform dyed crimson red. The surface of the ground where she had fallen was drenched with a great quantity of blood that spoke of
the heroism of her demise.
“—”
Looking at the large number of corpses besides Rem’s in the courtyard, he knew. She had fought. The fangs that had slaughtered the villagers had menaced
the mansion with ill intent. She had battled hard to defeat a number of them, struggled while heavily wounded, and died.
“—”
What had the group of black figures been thinking in killing Rem?
Why? Why? Why, why, why, why, why?
What did they know about her? Rem tried her best, always worked hard,
always took care of others, jumped to too many conclusions, was kind and gentle
and stern to Subaru; when times were tough, she was on his side, but she’d left
him behind; she loved her sister and hated herself, but she’d just begun to like herself a little more, and— Just when she’d stopped calling herself a substitute
for her older sister, just when she’d begun to walk down her own path in life, she…
“…Rem.”
Though he called out to her, she made no response.
Though he shook her, her body had already gone cold and hard. He tried to
stroke her soft hair several times over, but it clung to her forehead, sticky with blood.
Subaru didn’t even have the courage to turn her over and see the look on her
face.
Maybe her expression was bitter, locked in place as she struggled against death to her final breath. Perhaps it was peaceful. He didn’t have the right to accept either.
After all, it was Subaru Natsuki who’d as good as killed her.
“—”
He left Rem, fallen with her arms wide to the sides, when he noticed the shed
containing gardening tools.
Rem’s unnatural location. The shed that she seemed to be protecting. And the
blood that had flowed out from under the closed door. Despite the scent of death,
Subaru suppressed his nausea as he reached toward the shed.
With a creak, the door opened; the next instant, the scent of overflowing blood assaulted Subaru’s nostrils. He reflexively covered his mouth with his hands as he beheld the results of Rem’s attempt at defense.
—Not a single one of the children inside the shed was still alive.
Subaru fell down and pathetically crawled onto the grass, heaving the
contents of his stomach upon the lawn. He thought that his overflowing tears and
vomit would stop, but there was no apparent limit.
“Uh, fuggh…”
Rem had died to protect the children and failed.
He thought back to the villagers who’d apparently picked up arms and
fought. They hadn’t run, either. The adults had stayed in the village so that the
children could escape. The little ones had run to the manor, with Rem fighting heroically in the courtyard to protect them as they huddled in the closed shed, praying for salvation.
But their prayers were cruelly, mercilessly trampled on, and then their lives
were taken from them as well.
“Hyeek.”
Abruptly, a cry in falsetto escaped his throat.
It wasn’t that anything had happened. It was simply that the forgotten terror
had suddenly reared its ugly head once more.
Subaru had returned to the village and the mansion in the hope of finding someone who knew him. And yet, not a single living soul was left. Only the silent dead greeted Subaru.
He felt like those hollow, empty eyes were saying something to him. He felt
like the blood-drenched tongues in their wide, gaping mouths were berating him.
He felt like they hated him. He recalled the days they had spent sharing smiles
with each other.
“No… No, no, no, no, no…!”
—Why are you alive?
—Why did we have to die instead?
“No… I didn’t… This isn’t what I wanted at…”
He’d had an ideal. He had dreamed of a hope.
When Subaru heard that Emilia had fallen into peril, he had thought it a blessing from heaven. Since she had lost all faith in him, he believed this was his chance to get back into her good graces. He’d believed he would save her from
peril as he had done before, she would thank him, and they’d put their meager
differences behind them to walk side by side, hand in hand.
He had disparaged the suffering, the danger, the tragedy that had occurred as
nothing more than a means to that end. He had taken it lightly, believing he could fix anything, no matter what happened.
And if the cost of that was a vast number of dead bodies—
“It’s…not my fault… I-I didn’t…!”
Subaru shook his head, rose to his feet, averted his eyes from the shed, turned
his back on Rem’s corpse, and ran toward the mansion. He cut through the courtyard, kicking in a window on the terrace and climbing through to intrude into the mansion. The dimly lit manor seemed to treat Subaru like an outsider as
the soles of his shoes crushed fragments of glass. He began to run around the building, clinging obsessively to the search for another living soul.
“Someone, anyone, anyone, anyone, anyone, anyone, anyone, anyone,
anyone…”
Just as when he had run from the village—no, even baser hopes continued flowing from him.
“It’s not my fault… It’s not my fault… It’s not my…fault…!”
—I didn’t want this to happen. So it’s not my fault.
He wanted someone to be alive so that they could agree. Or perhaps, the fact
that someone had survived at all would be enough to affirm his claim. So Subaru
kept searching for survivors.
He had to find one. If he couldn’t, he’d never be able to live with himself.
Now faced with the notion that his own, flippant thoughts had brought this tragedy about, there was no way that he could stay composed. To stop his mind
from shattering, and to not have to bear the burden of the multitude of dead, he
required a more tangible defense.
He violently thrust open the door of the nearest room, peering in to find it empty. Dejected, he moved to the next chamber. Checking whatever room was closest at hand, Subaru continued his search for the four people who ought to have been at the mansion: for Ram, for Beatrice, for Roswaal, and above all, for
Emilia.
Subaru’s half-crying voice carried a heavy imprint of despair.
“Come on… Come on… I’m begging you… Help me… Help me,
please…!!”
Normally, Subaru would have been able to easily reach Beatrice’s archive of
forbidden books, even without trying. Yet when he needed to most, he was unable to find it no matter how hard he looked.
He wanted to hear invective from her sharp tongue almost more than air itself.
Subaru, dragging his feet along in unmanly fashion, still had tears rolling down his cheeks.
Distracted by sobbing breaths, Subaru continued to walk in search of the living, his own eyes like those of the dead.
—He found Ram’s body in the room at the end of the second floor.
Having seen so much death in such a short time, Subaru knew immediately that
she was not asleep as she lay on the bed.
Her light skin had grown so pale that you could almost see through her. In contrast, her tongue stood out for being redder than normal. Unlike how her identical younger sister had passed away, Ram, adorned by the cosmetics of death, was lovely even after her passing. Subaru had always glibly said that she’d be cute if she only kept her mouth shut.
—But he’d never said that out of a desire to see her like this.
“Hgheee.”
Subaru felt like he heard a curse. The same curse upon Subaru’s life spoken
by the dead in the village and the courtyard.
Subaru stumbled clumsily out of Ram’s bedroom and fled. He put his hands
on the wall, slapping his uncooperative knees, and distanced himself as fast as he humanly could.
Closing his ears, shaking his head, Subaru arrived at the dance hall on that floor. He crawled on hands and knees, stumbling several times midway, and pathetically climbed up the stairs.
Ram was dead. That left three survivors. As if they had a mind of their own,
his feet avoided the floor where Emilia’s room was and climbed to the top level
toward the chamber at the center of the main wing.
This was Roswaal’s study. The thick double doors remained shut in silence,
their formidable solemnity making them seem removed from the wickedness that
had infested the rest of the mansion.
The doors weren’t locked. He stepped inside and looked all around, feeling half resigned to the possibility of finding Roswaal’s corpse slumped over the desk.
Rem was dead. Ram had passed away in the mansion. Subaru himself was no
longer certain if he was really looking for survivors or to find the despair that would eradicate his last hope.
“—”
There was no one in the study.
There was no sign of anyone having broken into the room. The desk and the
writing supplies on it were just like he remembered.
A slight feeling of relief took hold of Subaru, not only because he was unable
to confirm that Roswaal was dead or alive but also because there would not be
another casualty to weigh upon his battered conscience any further.
“—?”
No, he realized that his earlier feeling, that the room looked just like he’d remembered it, was off. There was actually one thing that was significantly different from his memory. Namely, the bookshelf wasn’t in the same location as
usual.
“A secret…passage…?”
The bookshelf on the wall had slid well to the right, revealing the entrance to
a dark corridor behind it. He timidly drew close and peered within, finding stairs spiraling downward.
A thought rose up in the back of Subaru’s mind. An emergency escape route.
As a marquis and lord of the land, it was no surprise that Roswaal had such
measures in place for his own protection. It was the sort of thing he’d gleefully
arrange beforehand.
The cold wind blowing through the secret passage suggested that it continued
for quite a way down. He naturally imagined that the route was for safely escaping from the mansion itself.
“If so, then Emilia…”
Subaru took several deep breaths, hardened his resolve, and stepped into the
escape route. When he touched the rather cold wall, he wondered what it must be
made of; as he did so, it gave off a pale-blue glow that allowed him to see several meters ahead. Relying on the light, he kept one hand touching the wall as
he carefully followed the steps downward, making sure not to slip.
Apparently the hidden passage went underground. When he reached the end
of the stairs, the tunnel stretched forward in a straight line. The source of light didn’t change, leaving him relying solely on the radiance from the walls. But the
feeling that he was really chasing after survivors was enough to support Subaru
for the moment.
Whether he himself was dead or alive seemed ambiguous to him now.
“—Nn, oh?”
The wall he had been touching suddenly ended, leaving him abruptly groping
into thin air.
Subaru unwittingly flailed forward and was greeted by a hall in the middle of
the passage.
Really, it was more the size of a lounge than a hall. Smaller than a guest room, the space was supported by unevenly distributed pillars, so haphazard that
he felt like the architect had a twisted mind.
Slipping past the annoying supports, Subaru sluggishly advanced. Ever since
he’d gone underground, he’d felt like his limbs were stuffed with lead as languor
dulled his movements. Even his thoughts were clouding; even his memories from mere seconds before seemed vague.
It was a hard battle to take even a single step at a time. His eyelids were heavy; both his shoulders felt like millstones holding him still. Even so, a combination of tenacity, hatred, sense of duty, and madness pushed Subaru’s body forward.
Threading between the pillars, he headed straight forward to see an iron door
at the back of the room. When he reached it, the breeze slipping between the
split at the center told him that the path continued ahead.
—What was I looking for, anyway?
He reached out with bloodless fingertips before his stagnant thoughts could produce an answer. Subaru opened and shut his mouth as he breathed hard, grasping the door for no reason other than his sense of responsibility.
“—Agauaa!”
Screaming in fierce pain, Subaru shook his right arm as if trying to tear it off.
Touching the doorknob had left his entire hand in scalding pain. Subaru anticipated further agony as he lowered his eyes onto his right hand.
—He saw that it was missing its index finger.
“—Huh?”
Dumbfounded and astounded, Subaru lifted his hand before his eyes and
spread it out. Now colored white, with cracked skin, it was missing its index finger from the knuckle. The middle finger and thumb were also missing their tips.
“—”
Slowly, his gaze returned to the door. Subaru’s finger was stuck to the door
where he’d grabbed it.
More precisely, it had ripped his finger right off.
—Gotta get it back on, quick.
With only that incoherent thought in his head, Subaru reached out once more
to take back the finger he’d lost. But lethargy afflicted his body even more than
before; his thoughts reached his shoulder and elbow but not any further than that.
Impatient that his arm would not move, Subaru tried to step toward the door, but
the instant he did, his right foot shattered from the ankle down.
“—aaa!”
Subaru fell on his side, his voice trickling out of his throat though he was unable to form words. He didn’t know if he was screaming out of pain or in a futile struggle to live.
The instant he drew in breath to scream more, white frost filled the inside of
his chest, and he could move no more.
His lungs convulsed. In a single moment, his ability to breathe came to an end. He made short, shallow gasps, but his lungs could not expand nor take in oxygen anymore. In that perilous state, Subaru’s eyes alone desperately shifted about.
He had very little feeling anywhere in his body. It was the second time he’d
lost a leg, but the pain and sense of loss from its shattering were on a different
level than mere severing. The right side of his torso, now the underside of him, was cracked in several places.
His tongue stopped trembling as white breath came over it. Only then did Subaru realize the truth.
His cheek was now in contact with the ground. If he moved his head, his flesh would probably crack and tear right off. He no longer felt any pain. He moved violently, tearing his right cheek and ear right off, but he didn’t care. He spent some time repositioning his body so that he was lying faceup. When he looked back at the upside down view of the little room, he understood.
Of course the pillars were in irregular locations. They weren’t pillars at all.
No, they were pillars, but their function wasn’t to hold up a structure.
These were human pillars, men who had frozen over and died.
Subaru had wandered into the same white apocalypse, and his body would
become a frozen statue like the other victims’. And it would happen very soon.
His breathing had already stopped.
His limited oxygen flowed to his brain, but in the world of absolute cold, which would end sooner, his brain functions or his life?
He understood nothing. He saw nothing.
From the tips of his fingers, the being called Subaru Natsuki was coming to
an end, replaced by a fragment of ice.
Or perhaps it would have been more accurate to say it was no longer Subaru
Natsuki there but a madman wearing his flesh?
Perhaps his mind had died long before, the moment he arrived in the village.
He lost all feeling in his lower body. He couldn’t see his arm anymore. It was
strange that his brain was functioning at all. Where did one’s life reside? The brain or the heart?
There was no way that he would find the answer in that freezing world.
In the realm ruled by nothing but white, there was a frigid murmur.
“—You are far too late.”
And then…
—Subaru Natsuki shattered into tiny pieces, into white crystals, and vanished from the world.
CHAPTER 4
ON THE PERIPHERY OF MADNESS
1
—When the darkness split apart and he awoke, it began with the pain of sunlight
burning his eyes.
“—id?”
Warm blood flowed through his limbs. His shattered lower body was firmly
standing upon the ground.
Right after the first blink, all his lost mental functions seemed to return at once. His brain instantly restarted and then short-circuited from information overload, making his eyes literally spin.
Where the ringing in his ears had dominated his world, the sounds of
thronging humans going about their lives came rushing in. Various people mingled along the dusty road, burying his field of vision in the living souls he had so craved.
Subaru stood rooted in place as the human wave parted around him. The
beating of his cracked heart grew fiercer.
“Hey! Hey there! You listening?!”
Along with a click of the tongue, the rough voice reached him from right beside him. Subaru slowly shifted his gaze toward it and saw a stern, scowling
face with a vertical scar on it.
The man rubbed the white streak with a finger.
“Gimme a break, kid. Don’t just stare into space like that.”
“Eh, ah?”
The very faint reply drew a sigh out of the man.
“What’s with that weak reply? Well, whatever. More importantly, something
happen to you?”
The speaker held out his hand with a nice, shiny red fruit sitting on top of it.
Subaru came to the conclusion that the man’s appearance was a truly terrible match for the person inside. It seemed surreal.
Subaru remained silent as he gazed absentmindedly at the fruit. His
situational awareness was badly lacking.
However, the man didn’t suspect that something was wrong with Subaru,
instead leaning forward as he said, “Hey, enough fooling around here. I asked, how many abbles? Don’t make me say it over and over.”
The man reached over the counter and grabbed hold of Subaru’s shoulder. He
roughly pulled him closer, and Subaru’s defenseless body pitched forward and crashed against the shelf. The man let go with a surprised look on his face.
“Wh-what are you doing?! Stand up properly. Your legs are all wobbly, damn
it…”
“L-l-legs?”
The man pointed to Subaru’s lower body with an exasperated look on his face.
“You’ve got two good ones attached to your hips. What, daydreamed you’d
lost them or something?”
When Subaru looked down, he did have legs, trembling and shaking though
they were. Since they were unreliable and unable to support his body, he was leaning on the shelves at the moment.
With an annoyed voice, the man said, “I’m begging you, quit the bad jokes.
This ain’t normal conversation, and it’s messin’ with me.”
But Subaru’s body did not respond.
Reality didn’t register as real. He felt detached somehow, like some sort of discord had developed in the connection between his body and his soul.
What was he doing there?
What had happened to him?
He felt like something had happened to him, but what?
—What am I doing here? What, what, what…?
Suddenly, a girl’s voice sounded in his ears.
“—Subaru?”
“—”
Unable to speak a word, Subaru felt his eyes go wide as he lifted up his face.
Behind the counter, there was a tiny silhouette standing near the stern, tall man, cleaning things up. She wore an apron dress that was mostly black, with a
white apron and white headdress. She stood straight with a small stature and an
elegant body. With the counter between them, she turned her lovely face toward Subaru. Her shoulder-length blue hair fluttered in the wind, drawing attention to
her refreshing, gentle image.
Tears formed in his eyes.
“Ahh?”
“Subaru?”
Sobs poured out of him as his field of vision blurred. He earnestly rubbed both eyes, fearful that the clear, distinct image of the girl would fade.
And yet, she grew more and more distant as the murmurs loudened.
Before he realized it, he’d lost the support of the counter and fallen onto the
street. Unable to send strength and will to his feet, he lay there amid the pedestrians coming and going, tears flowing as he gasped with disjointed breaths.
No, it was not breathing…
“Hu-hee… Hi-hi, ha-ha… He-hi, hi-ha-ha-ha…!”
—It was laughter.
The murmurs broadened. He could tell that more and more people were
shifting their gazes to him.
Someone was watching him. Someone saw him. He wasn’t by himself. He
wasn’t isolated. From this alone, he knew he was accepted, even lying there in
the street like a marionette with cut strings.
Rather than run around the counter, the girl leaped right over it to move to his
side.
“Subaru, what’s wrong?! Are you all right? Get a grip on…”
The girl wrapped her arms around the fallen Subaru to sit him up. As she did…
“Eh?”
She felt so defenseless, and he hugged her back with all his strength.
The girl accepted the embrace with astonishment. Her breath was so close, and her warmth was so comforting as he buried his nose into her shoulder and
hugged her tight.
Perplexed, she tried to say something.
“Er… Um, Subaru? Umm…”
Each word, each syllable, each character, each breath, was a hymn to Subaru.
He embraced her firmly, his arms refusing to let go. Nor did the girl stir even
an inch, quietly accepting the embrace, making no move to brush him off.
The warmth of her body, the heartbeats of life, made him feel that others were alive like nothing else could.
“Hi-ha… Uhi-ha, hi-hi-hi-hi.”
—The madman named Subaru Natsuki continued to simply laugh.
2
Ferris, sitting in a leather-covered chair, put a finger to his cheek and solemnly declared, “To be frank, Ferri can only say that it is all over now, meow…”
His ears twitched, and he swept back his flaxen hair as he shifted his gaze away from Subaru, sleeping in a feminine-looking bed. He looked instead to Rem with a pitying look in his eyes. He continued, “Ferri can only do something
about physical wounds, you see. Issues with the body are workable, whether within or without…but there is nothing Ferri can do for the mind, meow.”
After Ferris’s apology for his powerlessness, Rem bowed in a show of
respect.
“…No, thank you very much for exhausting all your efforts.”
But somehow, her flat voice sounded devoid of emotion. This was not like her normal suppression of her opinions. Rem’s inner turmoil was simply too great and had turned into profound sadness.
Ferris closed one eye in a pained look. Rem did not notice his reaction and
gently leaned her head forward, shifting her attention to Subaru where he lay on
the bed.
They had Subaru in bed to tend to him, but that didn’t mean he was asleep.
Both his eyes were wide open as he stared straight at the ceiling. From time to
time, he’d make a fragmented laugh, like he’d just remembered something, and
when that passed, he would suddenly break into tears.
In his unstable state, Subaru’s torment continued apace.
—Truly, the change in the boy had been a sudden one.
Until that morning—no, the entire time he’d been walking with Rem through
the royal capital that morning—he had been his normal self. Certainly the incident the day before weighed on him, and his behavior showed some signs that he was stressed, but Subaru was striving as he normally did. Rem deeply respected his wishes and sought to be close to him without changing his behavior.
She didn’t think anything had happened that could trigger this.
Rem painfully regretted that the instant Subaru had abruptly changed was when she’d taken her eyes off him. Even so, she was right there at the shop, listening to the shopkeeper converse with him.
Thanks to Rem’s tireless efforts, the store had sold its merchandise nicely, and the shopkeeper, in quite high spirits, seemed inclined to give them a souvenir. He was asking how many abbles Subaru wanted to take with him, and
she remembered him answering, “How ’bout all of ’em?”
The very next moment, his demeanor abruptly changed, and he fell limply onto the street. When Rem sat him up, he seemed so overcome by sadness and
tears of joy that he kept laughing.
Deeming he wasn’t well, Rem carried Subaru back to the Crusch villa,
accepting all the trouble it might cause. Suspecting it was some kind of magical
interference, she politely insisted that Ferris examine Subaru.
However, it had all come to naught. Even Ferris, the most accomplished
healer in all of the royal capital, could not identify the cause of his sudden change. If Ferris could do nothing, it might well mean that gathering all the great magic users in the entire royal capital would still not be enough to heal him.
Subaru’s present condition was unrelated to magic. But his mind had
suddenly become unbalanced.
Ferris asked, “Ferri doesn’t really want to ask, meow, but what will you do?”
“Without understanding the cause, dealing with it is difficult… I am sorry to
have troubled you, Master Felix.”
“Mmm, don’t worry ameowt it. As a matter of fact, it’s better for Ferri’s treatment now that he’s not making a weird fuss, in a meownner of speaking.”
Subaru hated Ferris’s treatment and often voiced his complaints. On that level, Rem could understand how he was easier to deal with lying down and listless. The words were still highly insensitive.
Ferris continued, “But…but is it really good to continue treatment meow?”
Rem, who was watching Subaru, lifted up her head and shifted her gaze
toward Ferris.
“…What do you mean?”
“Don’t be upset by my asking, meow, but the treatment for Subaru’s gate is to make life easier for him, yes?”
“Yes.”
“If he can no longer live a normal life, treating him is meaningless, isn’t it?”
“—Subaru is…!”
The even more insensitive remark drove Rem to forget Ferris’s status as she
yelled. But even faced with the maid’s emotions, Ferris’s look of doubt did not falter.
“Are you saying don’t stop now, meow? Seeing him like this? Are you serious? It’s true some things happened to him, but if that’s enough to break him, he’s not likely to ever recover!”
Ferris looked down at Subaru with undiluted scorn. To Rem, who knew that
this was the man to whom Lugunica had granted the title of “Blue,” the archetype for all water magic users, his behavior was all too callous.
If someone couldn’t be healed, throw the person away. That was the
judgment of the kingdom’s foremost healer? What did he understand about the
individual named Subaru to judge that he had no prospects for healing?
“Oh my, what a stare mew have… Subawu’s a lucky man. Not that he ever
realized it.”
“Subaru’s current situation is unrelated to the royal selection. He is not a person who would lose his mind over minor failures.”
“Believe that all you want. As far as Ferri is concerned, keeping his sanity after everything that’s happened presents problems of its own, meow. And besiiides…”
Ferris set aside his flippant tone as he looked frostily at Rem.
“Don’t misunderstand. Ferri doesn’t hate Subawu, so this isn’t meowt of
some kind of special grudge against him.”
“…”
“This isn’t particular to Subawu as a person. Ferri just hates people who lose their will to live, pure and simple.”
Ferris pointed at Subaru, and then he touched his finger to his own chin.
“Even for someone with my meowgic specialty, there’s no way to use that power
besides healing. Ferri helps all kinds of people day after day to be of service to Lady Crusch. Meow, everyone struggles hard to live, so thanks doesn’t matter, but Ferri hates wasting this power on anyone.”
“I think that is admirable.”
“Thank you— But it’s not right to save people who don’t want to live. Even
if you heal the body, isn’t it just saving an unused life? If that’s the case, end it before it causes other people trouble. Well, in this case it already has, meow.”
Ferris delivered his blunt assessment with a stern face.
Behind that hard demeanor, Rem keenly felt Ferris’s sincerity concerning the
many lives he had no doubt saved. His way of saying it was dismissive, but it was what Ferris had learned from watching life and death in all that time. That
had informed his views on life itself.
“Even so, Subaru is…”
Rem, battered by Ferris’s words, looked at the boy with pure regret. Subaru
was unaware that he was the subject of the conversation as he made faint, intermittent, warped giggles, as if hearing these things had stirred the wounds remaining in his mind.
Deep inside, Rem wanted nothing more than to lose her grip on herself, cling
to Subaru, and cry aloud. But that would bring dishonor to him and tarnish the
good name of Roswaal, her benefactor. More than anything else, it would be a betrayal of the feelings she herself had carried while watching over him all this
time.
A clear voice flowed into the room, abruptly breaking the awkward silence within.
“—Ferris, I believe your view is just a little too strict.”
Rem reflexively raised her head at the voice. When Ferris noticed the visitor,
his expression brightened. After all, his eyes were always full of zealous devotion when they gazed upon her.
“Lady Crusch,” said Rem.
“I do not go as far as to say weakness is a crime. I do believe, however, that
condoning that weakness and wallowing in it while leaving the situation
uncorrected is very much a vice.”
When Rem hastily lowered her head at Crusch’s arrival, the duchess checked
her with a hand.
With a shake of her long green hair, she moved to the edge of the bed. Her
eyes narrowed as she looked down at Subaru, who had a wicked smile on his face even then.
“I see. This certainly is an alarming state. Do you know the cause?”
Hearing Crusch’s question, Ferris raised both his hands up as he replied, “No.
According to Rem, he suddenly fell over, so Ferri examined him from head to toe. But there’s no sign of any interference with his mana, meow.”
“Is it possible this is some kind of curse? It is difficult to imagine, but I can
think of someone taking measures against those with knowledge of the royal candidates. Or one could suspect that this is a show of force by another camp.
However…”
“Neither is very likely, is it, meow? There’s not much time to set something up, and who’d go after Subawu in the first place? Anyone involved would know
he’s powerless, and there is no meowgical interference anyway, curses included.
Ferri’s positive. And besides…”
As Ferris’s words trailed off, he tilted his head and gently leaned into Crusch,
who stood there with her arms folded.
“Lady Crusch, do you doubt Ferri’s abilities?”
“Of course not. I could never question your ability, personality, or loyalty.
Even if you were to hold a dagger in front of me, ready to run me through, that
thought is set in stone.”
“Oh my, Lady Crusch, what a meowgnificent line… Ahh, Ferri’s falling to pieces.”
Crusch left Ferris to squirm and wallow as she shifted her penetrating gaze toward Rem.
“Ferris has spoken. And if Ferris’s power will not suffice, none in my house
is capable of treating Subaru Natsuki. I’m sorry we can be of no assistance.”
Crusch’s apology, despite doing nothing wrong herself, sent Rem into another
low bow.
“—Not at all. Your deep consideration leaves me speechless.”
In truth, beyond the reach of words and pleasantries, Crusch had conveyed warmth to her that she could never return. The finest healer in all the kingdom had rendered his diagnosis, and the head of a rival political camp had conveyed
sympathy nonetheless. What more could Rem hope for from them?
Crusch and Ferris had done nothing wrong. Rem knew that.
—After all, she had her own suspicions about how Subaru had ended up in that state.
“—The Witch.”
The presence, the “miasma” of the Witch enveloping Subaru’s entire body
had become denser still. What linked that miasma to Subaru’s abnormal state was unclear, but it was a fact that she’d sensed an outpouring of it just before he had collapsed.
If the cause was the Witch’s poison, she could not criticize Ferris’s judgment
that there was nothing he could do. Very few beings were able to sense the presence of that substance in the first place. Not even Ram could catch the scent
the way Rem could.
Nothing good came with such pall. Those who planned wicked things were
rich with it. Her physiological distaste for it, and the hateful memories that accompanied it, made her deeply prejudiced against those who bore it.
Although the actions of the boy with the strongest Witch smell she’d ever met had melted her hard heart and swept those prejudices aside…
Even so. Yes, even so.
Rem knew that nothing good came from that miasma.
—The demon in her knew this.
3
Rem bowed and conveyed her deepest gratitude.
“—You have gone through great trouble for us. On behalf of my master, I thank you for your benevolence until this day.”
Crusch and Ferris stood before her. Rem and the others were meeting in the
Crusch villa’s reception hall—in other words, Rem was bidding them farewell.
“I am sorry we could be of no help. By rights, it is presumptuous to receive
compensation for such a thing…”
Seeing Crusch’s eyes fall slightly, Rem lifted her face and firmly replied,
“Not at all. Ending our request before it was finished is due to our own circumstances. You have given us your utmost consideration until now, Lady Crusch. It is only right that we pay compensation as promised.”
Receiving her reply, Crusch made one final apology: “I am sorry.” She would
say nothing more.
With his master’s lips closed, Ferris followed up.
“To be honest, it does leave things half-done, but it can’t be helped, meow?
Rem, be in good health. As for Subawu…get well soon, is what Ferri should probably say?”
With one eye closed and one finger raised, Ferris indicated Subaru, standing
behind Rem, leaning against the door in a slovenly state.
His condition had not improved. His reactions were as dull as before, with his
consciousness stranded somewhere between dream and reality. In spite of that, he followed like a child when they led him around by the hand, and he could at
least manage not to fall over. Though he still suddenly broke into little fits of laughter and tears from time to time.
Rem replied, “My words are insufficient to apologize for the rudeness caused
by a member of our house. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for treating
him with benevolence.”
Crusch replied, “We had a contract, and at the very least, I have exchanged
words with him. I could never treat him in an uncouth manner. I believe things
will be difficult from here, however…”
Rem glanced at the faintly smiling Subaru, grasping the hem of her apron in a
display of resolve.
“I am…prepared for that.”
Just as Crusch had gloomily pointed out, she knew there were many
hardships to come. Even so, Rem had appointed herself to be the one who would
walk with Subaru through thick and thin.
After all, she’d never forgotten what he had said to her long ago.
Let’s laugh, hug each other, and talk about tomorrow. I’ve always dreamed of
laughing with a demon and talking about the future.
She’d remembered that scene in her head many times, tens of times, hundreds
of times over.
That was why she could give Subaru no less than what he had given to her.
For what she had received was too precious for any sum of money to ever repay.
Crusch lowered her eyes and shook her head.
“I regret that I was unable to fulfill your request.”
Rem smiled a little. She was grateful for Crusch’s considerate words,
especially then, when she felt ready to crumble.
“It is all because of our shortcomings— Though this chapter has reached an
unfortunate result, I pray that you will do many great things, now and in the future, Lady Crusch.”
“And you as well. Tell Emilia, ‘Let us both fight to bring no disgrace to our
souls.’”
With that exchange, Rem keenly felt that her duty in that place had come to
an end. Subaru’s treatment had been abandoned before it was over, and she wasn’t able to fulfill Roswaal’s secret command.
She would no doubt be sternly scolded for scurrying back. Even so, she had
to return to the mansion…for Subaru’s sake.
“Ferri understands you’re returning to the mansion, but do mew have any leads for treatment?”
Rem held back the regret in her voice and replied to Ferris’s question with her single ray of hope.
“At the very least, if he can meet Lady Emilia…”
No matter how much she spoke to him, how much she touched him, how
much she continued in vain, the boy never responded to Rem with his usual Subaru-like reactions. But even in this state, sometimes words rich with meaning
would tumble out of Subaru’s mouth.
“Names…”
“Mmm?”
“From time to time, he says names. My name, Sister’s. And…”
She was happy that her own name was among those he whispered. On the
other hand, the fact that he didn’t respond when she called his made her sad.
Though much of his behavior was meaningless, the name he murmured with
the most frequency was…
“—Lady Emilia’s. If he is able to meet her, perhaps it will change him somehow.”
“But Ferri heard they parted on really bad terms. It hasn’t even been four days since then; is that enough time for her to calm down, meow? If you could wait a little longer… Ah, you really can’t, huh?”
“I am well aware that Lady Emilia has a poor understanding of her own heart. However, this is no longer something I can decide on my own. I must return and receive instructions…”
Rem’s words, full of concern for her lord and master, were for the purpose of
deceiving her own heart. She was hiding what she truly desired, burying it under
her duties as a servant. After all, it pained her to the point of tears that she was not enough to save his heart and mind.
Abruptly, Crusch lifted her face and narrowed her eyes.
“—Wilhelm has arrived.”
Following Crusch’s gaze, Rem saw that a dragon carriage was entering the courtyard of the villa from the iron gates. A familiar aged gentleman was sitting
in the driver’s seat.
Crusch continued, “At the moment, this is the only long-distance dragon
carriage that my house is able to lend. I cannot reveal the details, but a large number of these vehicles have been required for another matter of late.”
Ferris followed up, “You’re in luck, meow. If you head along the Liphas Highway, you should get back to the mansion before tomeowrrow. It might take
you half a day’s travel, give or take.”
Rem, watching the dragon carriage’s arrival, thought that the rays of the sun
high above were dazzling indeed.
Since it was around noon now, an all-out carriage ride would mean arriving
back at the mansion around midnight. If they were close to the manor, her shared
consciousness with Ram would no doubt inform her sister of their return.
“Thank you very much for your kindheartedness.”
Crusch replied, without a single hint of false pleasantries, “I do not mind. It is still a far cry from what I would normally be able to provide, so I can only hope
that this modest offering nonetheless accommodates your needs.”
Rem thought that getting to know Crusch as a person might have been one of the few happy things she’d gained from the time she had spent there.
“Then this time I must excuse mys—”
As Rem was stating her final farewell, Crusch interrupted her.
“Rem.”
When Rem stopped, she saw indecision in Crusch’s eyes for the very first time. The duchess continued, “This is extremely inelegant of me…but there is something I wish to ask.”
“Yes, what is it?”
“Why do you strive for Subaru Natsuki so?”
Watching Rem and the boy leaning against her, emotion vanished from
Crusch’s amber eyes. She continued, “The relationship between you and Subaru
Natsuki is not the master-retainer relationship Ferris and I share. I simply find it distasteful to judge men and women by appearances alone.”
“—”
With Rem falling into silence, the tone of Crusch’s voice dropped, as if she
was apologizing for her own lack of clarity.
“I do not mind if you do not wish to answer. I am embarrassed to even ask.”
Ferris silently watched his master as Rem shook her head at both of them.
“No, I am not hesitating to answer. I am simply unsure about what words I should use— It is a difficult thing to explain.”
When she was on the verge of putting it into words, she felt it change into something else entirely.
It was natural for Crusch to have doubts. What existed inside Rem didn’t stay
the same for even a second. Its size, strength, and heat shifted from moment to
moment, putting down its roots inside Rem.
She didn’t want to come out and say it. She couldn’t come out and say it.
How, then, to describe something formless inside Rem to another person?
“I suppose it is because…Subaru is special?”
“—”
Rem didn’t really understand if that qualified as an answer or not. However,
she felt like that response best exemplified what was at the bottom of her own heart.
The small but vivid flower bed had been trampled awry, and the trees
standing around the mansion had been felled, snapped in half.
The green grass had been dyed black with blood, with the prostrate corpse joined by the remains of several black-robed figures. Each showed signs of being subjected to incredible violence, with few remaining relatively whole. The
gruesome damage to the remains exceeded what he had seen in Earlham Village,
no doubt evidence of the great rage behind the murder weapon that had turned these unfortunate victims into mincemeat.
The deadly tool that had wreaked such havoc upon them, a bloodstained iron
ball, lay fallen among the dark figures in the center of the garden. The metal orb, linked to a handle via a chain, had smashed apart a number of foes, but in the midst of battle, its mistress had somehow relinquished her grip; it seemed to regret having been unable to fight alongside her to the very end.
And as for the demon who he presumed had wielded it one-handed in
ferocious battle…
“—Rem.”
…She was long gone from that place.
In a corner of the courtyard, a short distance removed from the iron weapon,
was Rem, her servant’s uniform dyed crimson red. The surface of the ground where she had fallen was drenched with a great quantity of blood that spoke of
the heroism of her demise.
“—”
Looking at the large number of corpses besides Rem’s in the courtyard, he knew. She had fought. The fangs that had slaughtered the villagers had menaced
the mansion with ill intent. She had battled hard to defeat a number of them, struggled while heavily wounded, and died.
“—”
What had the group of black figures been thinking in killing Rem?
Why? Why? Why, why, why, why, why?
What did they know about her? Rem tried her best, always worked hard,
always took care of others, jumped to too many conclusions, was kind and gentle
and stern to Subaru; when times were tough, she was on his side, but she’d left
him behind; she loved her sister and hated herself, but she’d just begun to like herself a little more, and— Just when she’d stopped calling herself a substitute
for her older sister, just when she’d begun to walk down her own path in life, she…
“…Rem.”
Though he called out to her, she made no response.
Though he shook her, her body had already gone cold and hard. He tried to
stroke her soft hair several times over, but it clung to her forehead, sticky with blood.
Subaru didn’t even have the courage to turn her over and see the look on her
face.
Maybe her expression was bitter, locked in place as she struggled against death to her final breath. Perhaps it was peaceful. He didn’t have the right to accept either.
After all, it was Subaru Natsuki who’d as good as killed her.
“—”
He left Rem, fallen with her arms wide to the sides, when he noticed the shed
containing gardening tools.
Rem’s unnatural location. The shed that she seemed to be protecting. And the
blood that had flowed out from under the closed door. Despite the scent of death,
Subaru suppressed his nausea as he reached toward the shed.
With a creak, the door opened; the next instant, the scent of overflowing blood assaulted Subaru’s nostrils. He reflexively covered his mouth with his hands as he beheld the results of Rem’s attempt at defense.
—Not a single one of the children inside the shed was still alive.
Subaru fell down and pathetically crawled onto the grass, heaving the
contents of his stomach upon the lawn. He thought that his overflowing tears and
vomit would stop, but there was no apparent limit.
“Uh, fuggh…”
Rem had died to protect the children and failed.
He thought back to the villagers who’d apparently picked up arms and
fought. They hadn’t run, either. The adults had stayed in the village so that the
children could escape. The little ones had run to the manor, with Rem fighting heroically in the courtyard to protect them as they huddled in the closed shed, praying for salvation.
But their prayers were cruelly, mercilessly trampled on, and then their lives
were taken from them as well.
“Hyeek.”
Abruptly, a cry in falsetto escaped his throat.
It wasn’t that anything had happened. It was simply that the forgotten terror
had suddenly reared its ugly head once more.
Subaru had returned to the village and the mansion in the hope of finding someone who knew him. And yet, not a single living soul was left. Only the silent dead greeted Subaru.
He felt like those hollow, empty eyes were saying something to him. He felt
like the blood-drenched tongues in their wide, gaping mouths were berating him.
He felt like they hated him. He recalled the days they had spent sharing smiles
with each other.
“No… No, no, no, no, no…!”
—Why are you alive?
—Why did we have to die instead?
“No… I didn’t… This isn’t what I wanted at…”
He’d had an ideal. He had dreamed of a hope.
When Subaru heard that Emilia had fallen into peril, he had thought it a blessing from heaven. Since she had lost all faith in him, he believed this was his chance to get back into her good graces. He’d believed he would save her from
peril as he had done before, she would thank him, and they’d put their meager
differences behind them to walk side by side, hand in hand.
He had disparaged the suffering, the danger, the tragedy that had occurred as
nothing more than a means to that end. He had taken it lightly, believing he could fix anything, no matter what happened.
And if the cost of that was a vast number of dead bodies—
“It’s…not my fault… I-I didn’t…!”
Subaru shook his head, rose to his feet, averted his eyes from the shed, turned
his back on Rem’s corpse, and ran toward the mansion. He cut through the courtyard, kicking in a window on the terrace and climbing through to intrude into the mansion. The dimly lit manor seemed to treat Subaru like an outsider as
the soles of his shoes crushed fragments of glass. He began to run around the building, clinging obsessively to the search for another living soul.
“Someone, anyone, anyone, anyone, anyone, anyone, anyone, anyone,
anyone…”
Just as when he had run from the village—no, even baser hopes continued flowing from him.
“It’s not my fault… It’s not my fault… It’s not my…fault…!”
—I didn’t want this to happen. So it’s not my fault.
He wanted someone to be alive so that they could agree. Or perhaps, the fact
that someone had survived at all would be enough to affirm his claim. So Subaru
kept searching for survivors.
He had to find one. If he couldn’t, he’d never be able to live with himself.
Now faced with the notion that his own, flippant thoughts had brought this tragedy about, there was no way that he could stay composed. To stop his mind
from shattering, and to not have to bear the burden of the multitude of dead, he
required a more tangible defense.
He violently thrust open the door of the nearest room, peering in to find it empty. Dejected, he moved to the next chamber. Checking whatever room was closest at hand, Subaru continued his search for the four people who ought to have been at the mansion: for Ram, for Beatrice, for Roswaal, and above all, for
Emilia.
Subaru’s half-crying voice carried a heavy imprint of despair.
“Come on… Come on… I’m begging you… Help me… Help me,
please…!!”
Normally, Subaru would have been able to easily reach Beatrice’s archive of
forbidden books, even without trying. Yet when he needed to most, he was unable to find it no matter how hard he looked.
He wanted to hear invective from her sharp tongue almost more than air itself.
Subaru, dragging his feet along in unmanly fashion, still had tears rolling down his cheeks.
Distracted by sobbing breaths, Subaru continued to walk in search of the living, his own eyes like those of the dead.
—He found Ram’s body in the room at the end of the second floor.
Having seen so much death in such a short time, Subaru knew immediately that
she was not asleep as she lay on the bed.
Her light skin had grown so pale that you could almost see through her. In contrast, her tongue stood out for being redder than normal. Unlike how her identical younger sister had passed away, Ram, adorned by the cosmetics of death, was lovely even after her passing. Subaru had always glibly said that she’d be cute if she only kept her mouth shut.
—But he’d never said that out of a desire to see her like this.
“Hgheee.”
Subaru felt like he heard a curse. The same curse upon Subaru’s life spoken
by the dead in the village and the courtyard.
Subaru stumbled clumsily out of Ram’s bedroom and fled. He put his hands
on the wall, slapping his uncooperative knees, and distanced himself as fast as he humanly could.
Closing his ears, shaking his head, Subaru arrived at the dance hall on that floor. He crawled on hands and knees, stumbling several times midway, and pathetically climbed up the stairs.
Ram was dead. That left three survivors. As if they had a mind of their own,
his feet avoided the floor where Emilia’s room was and climbed to the top level
toward the chamber at the center of the main wing.
This was Roswaal’s study. The thick double doors remained shut in silence,
their formidable solemnity making them seem removed from the wickedness that
had infested the rest of the mansion.
The doors weren’t locked. He stepped inside and looked all around, feeling half resigned to the possibility of finding Roswaal’s corpse slumped over the desk.
Rem was dead. Ram had passed away in the mansion. Subaru himself was no
longer certain if he was really looking for survivors or to find the despair that would eradicate his last hope.
“—”
There was no one in the study.
There was no sign of anyone having broken into the room. The desk and the
writing supplies on it were just like he remembered.
A slight feeling of relief took hold of Subaru, not only because he was unable
to confirm that Roswaal was dead or alive but also because there would not be
another casualty to weigh upon his battered conscience any further.
“—?”
No, he realized that his earlier feeling, that the room looked just like he’d remembered it, was off. There was actually one thing that was significantly different from his memory. Namely, the bookshelf wasn’t in the same location as
usual.
“A secret…passage…?”
The bookshelf on the wall had slid well to the right, revealing the entrance to
a dark corridor behind it. He timidly drew close and peered within, finding stairs spiraling downward.
A thought rose up in the back of Subaru’s mind. An emergency escape route.
As a marquis and lord of the land, it was no surprise that Roswaal had such
measures in place for his own protection. It was the sort of thing he’d gleefully
arrange beforehand.
The cold wind blowing through the secret passage suggested that it continued
for quite a way down. He naturally imagined that the route was for safely escaping from the mansion itself.
“If so, then Emilia…”
Subaru took several deep breaths, hardened his resolve, and stepped into the
escape route. When he touched the rather cold wall, he wondered what it must be
made of; as he did so, it gave off a pale-blue glow that allowed him to see several meters ahead. Relying on the light, he kept one hand touching the wall as
he carefully followed the steps downward, making sure not to slip.
Apparently the hidden passage went underground. When he reached the end
of the stairs, the tunnel stretched forward in a straight line. The source of light didn’t change, leaving him relying solely on the radiance from the walls. But the
feeling that he was really chasing after survivors was enough to support Subaru
for the moment.
Whether he himself was dead or alive seemed ambiguous to him now.
“—Nn, oh?”
The wall he had been touching suddenly ended, leaving him abruptly groping
into thin air.
Subaru unwittingly flailed forward and was greeted by a hall in the middle of
the passage.
Really, it was more the size of a lounge than a hall. Smaller than a guest room, the space was supported by unevenly distributed pillars, so haphazard that
he felt like the architect had a twisted mind.
Slipping past the annoying supports, Subaru sluggishly advanced. Ever since
he’d gone underground, he’d felt like his limbs were stuffed with lead as languor
dulled his movements. Even his thoughts were clouding; even his memories from mere seconds before seemed vague.
It was a hard battle to take even a single step at a time. His eyelids were heavy; both his shoulders felt like millstones holding him still. Even so, a combination of tenacity, hatred, sense of duty, and madness pushed Subaru’s body forward.
Threading between the pillars, he headed straight forward to see an iron door
at the back of the room. When he reached it, the breeze slipping between the
split at the center told him that the path continued ahead.
—What was I looking for, anyway?
He reached out with bloodless fingertips before his stagnant thoughts could produce an answer. Subaru opened and shut his mouth as he breathed hard, grasping the door for no reason other than his sense of responsibility.
“—Agauaa!”
Screaming in fierce pain, Subaru shook his right arm as if trying to tear it off.
Touching the doorknob had left his entire hand in scalding pain. Subaru anticipated further agony as he lowered his eyes onto his right hand.
—He saw that it was missing its index finger.
“—Huh?”
Dumbfounded and astounded, Subaru lifted his hand before his eyes and
spread it out. Now colored white, with cracked skin, it was missing its index finger from the knuckle. The middle finger and thumb were also missing their tips.
“—”
Slowly, his gaze returned to the door. Subaru’s finger was stuck to the door
where he’d grabbed it.
More precisely, it had ripped his finger right off.
—Gotta get it back on, quick.
With only that incoherent thought in his head, Subaru reached out once more
to take back the finger he’d lost. But lethargy afflicted his body even more than
before; his thoughts reached his shoulder and elbow but not any further than that.
Impatient that his arm would not move, Subaru tried to step toward the door, but
the instant he did, his right foot shattered from the ankle down.
“—aaa!”
Subaru fell on his side, his voice trickling out of his throat though he was unable to form words. He didn’t know if he was screaming out of pain or in a futile struggle to live.
The instant he drew in breath to scream more, white frost filled the inside of
his chest, and he could move no more.
His lungs convulsed. In a single moment, his ability to breathe came to an end. He made short, shallow gasps, but his lungs could not expand nor take in oxygen anymore. In that perilous state, Subaru’s eyes alone desperately shifted about.
He had very little feeling anywhere in his body. It was the second time he’d
lost a leg, but the pain and sense of loss from its shattering were on a different
level than mere severing. The right side of his torso, now the underside of him, was cracked in several places.
His tongue stopped trembling as white breath came over it. Only then did Subaru realize the truth.
His cheek was now in contact with the ground. If he moved his head, his flesh would probably crack and tear right off. He no longer felt any pain. He moved violently, tearing his right cheek and ear right off, but he didn’t care. He spent some time repositioning his body so that he was lying faceup. When he looked back at the upside down view of the little room, he understood.
Of course the pillars were in irregular locations. They weren’t pillars at all.
No, they were pillars, but their function wasn’t to hold up a structure.
These were human pillars, men who had frozen over and died.
Subaru had wandered into the same white apocalypse, and his body would
become a frozen statue like the other victims’. And it would happen very soon.
His breathing had already stopped.
His limited oxygen flowed to his brain, but in the world of absolute cold, which would end sooner, his brain functions or his life?
He understood nothing. He saw nothing.
From the tips of his fingers, the being called Subaru Natsuki was coming to
an end, replaced by a fragment of ice.
Or perhaps it would have been more accurate to say it was no longer Subaru
Natsuki there but a madman wearing his flesh?
Perhaps his mind had died long before, the moment he arrived in the village.
He lost all feeling in his lower body. He couldn’t see his arm anymore. It was
strange that his brain was functioning at all. Where did one’s life reside? The brain or the heart?
There was no way that he would find the answer in that freezing world.
In the realm ruled by nothing but white, there was a frigid murmur.
“—You are far too late.”
And then…
—Subaru Natsuki shattered into tiny pieces, into white crystals, and vanished from the world.
CHAPTER 4
ON THE PERIPHERY OF MADNESS
1
—When the darkness split apart and he awoke, it began with the pain of sunlight
burning his eyes.
“—id?”
Warm blood flowed through his limbs. His shattered lower body was firmly
standing upon the ground.
Right after the first blink, all his lost mental functions seemed to return at once. His brain instantly restarted and then short-circuited from information overload, making his eyes literally spin.
Where the ringing in his ears had dominated his world, the sounds of
thronging humans going about their lives came rushing in. Various people mingled along the dusty road, burying his field of vision in the living souls he had so craved.
Subaru stood rooted in place as the human wave parted around him. The
beating of his cracked heart grew fiercer.
“Hey! Hey there! You listening?!”
Along with a click of the tongue, the rough voice reached him from right beside him. Subaru slowly shifted his gaze toward it and saw a stern, scowling
face with a vertical scar on it.
The man rubbed the white streak with a finger.
“Gimme a break, kid. Don’t just stare into space like that.”
“Eh, ah?”
The very faint reply drew a sigh out of the man.
“What’s with that weak reply? Well, whatever. More importantly, something
happen to you?”
The speaker held out his hand with a nice, shiny red fruit sitting on top of it.
Subaru came to the conclusion that the man’s appearance was a truly terrible match for the person inside. It seemed surreal.
Subaru remained silent as he gazed absentmindedly at the fruit. His
situational awareness was badly lacking.
However, the man didn’t suspect that something was wrong with Subaru,
instead leaning forward as he said, “Hey, enough fooling around here. I asked, how many abbles? Don’t make me say it over and over.”
The man reached over the counter and grabbed hold of Subaru’s shoulder. He
roughly pulled him closer, and Subaru’s defenseless body pitched forward and crashed against the shelf. The man let go with a surprised look on his face.
“Wh-what are you doing?! Stand up properly. Your legs are all wobbly, damn
it…”
“L-l-legs?”
The man pointed to Subaru’s lower body with an exasperated look on his face.
“You’ve got two good ones attached to your hips. What, daydreamed you’d
lost them or something?”
When Subaru looked down, he did have legs, trembling and shaking though
they were. Since they were unreliable and unable to support his body, he was leaning on the shelves at the moment.
With an annoyed voice, the man said, “I’m begging you, quit the bad jokes.
This ain’t normal conversation, and it’s messin’ with me.”
But Subaru’s body did not respond.
Reality didn’t register as real. He felt detached somehow, like some sort of discord had developed in the connection between his body and his soul.
What was he doing there?
What had happened to him?
He felt like something had happened to him, but what?
—What am I doing here? What, what, what…?
Suddenly, a girl’s voice sounded in his ears.
“—Subaru?”
“—”
Unable to speak a word, Subaru felt his eyes go wide as he lifted up his face.
Behind the counter, there was a tiny silhouette standing near the stern, tall man, cleaning things up. She wore an apron dress that was mostly black, with a
white apron and white headdress. She stood straight with a small stature and an
elegant body. With the counter between them, she turned her lovely face toward Subaru. Her shoulder-length blue hair fluttered in the wind, drawing attention to
her refreshing, gentle image.
Tears formed in his eyes.
“Ahh?”
“Subaru?”
Sobs poured out of him as his field of vision blurred. He earnestly rubbed both eyes, fearful that the clear, distinct image of the girl would fade.
And yet, she grew more and more distant as the murmurs loudened.
Before he realized it, he’d lost the support of the counter and fallen onto the
street. Unable to send strength and will to his feet, he lay there amid the pedestrians coming and going, tears flowing as he gasped with disjointed breaths.
No, it was not breathing…
“Hu-hee… Hi-hi, ha-ha… He-hi, hi-ha-ha-ha…!”
—It was laughter.
The murmurs broadened. He could tell that more and more people were
shifting their gazes to him.
Someone was watching him. Someone saw him. He wasn’t by himself. He
wasn’t isolated. From this alone, he knew he was accepted, even lying there in
the street like a marionette with cut strings.
Rather than run around the counter, the girl leaped right over it to move to his
side.
“Subaru, what’s wrong?! Are you all right? Get a grip on…”
The girl wrapped her arms around the fallen Subaru to sit him up. As she did…
“Eh?”
She felt so defenseless, and he hugged her back with all his strength.
The girl accepted the embrace with astonishment. Her breath was so close, and her warmth was so comforting as he buried his nose into her shoulder and
hugged her tight.
Perplexed, she tried to say something.
“Er… Um, Subaru? Umm…”
Each word, each syllable, each character, each breath, was a hymn to Subaru.
He embraced her firmly, his arms refusing to let go. Nor did the girl stir even
an inch, quietly accepting the embrace, making no move to brush him off.
The warmth of her body, the heartbeats of life, made him feel that others were alive like nothing else could.
“Hi-ha… Uhi-ha, hi-hi-hi-hi.”
—The madman named Subaru Natsuki continued to simply laugh.
2
Ferris, sitting in a leather-covered chair, put a finger to his cheek and solemnly declared, “To be frank, Ferri can only say that it is all over now, meow…”
His ears twitched, and he swept back his flaxen hair as he shifted his gaze away from Subaru, sleeping in a feminine-looking bed. He looked instead to Rem with a pitying look in his eyes. He continued, “Ferri can only do something
about physical wounds, you see. Issues with the body are workable, whether within or without…but there is nothing Ferri can do for the mind, meow.”
After Ferris’s apology for his powerlessness, Rem bowed in a show of
respect.
“…No, thank you very much for exhausting all your efforts.”
But somehow, her flat voice sounded devoid of emotion. This was not like her normal suppression of her opinions. Rem’s inner turmoil was simply too great and had turned into profound sadness.
Ferris closed one eye in a pained look. Rem did not notice his reaction and
gently leaned her head forward, shifting her attention to Subaru where he lay on
the bed.
They had Subaru in bed to tend to him, but that didn’t mean he was asleep.
Both his eyes were wide open as he stared straight at the ceiling. From time to
time, he’d make a fragmented laugh, like he’d just remembered something, and
when that passed, he would suddenly break into tears.
In his unstable state, Subaru’s torment continued apace.
—Truly, the change in the boy had been a sudden one.
Until that morning—no, the entire time he’d been walking with Rem through
the royal capital that morning—he had been his normal self. Certainly the incident the day before weighed on him, and his behavior showed some signs that he was stressed, but Subaru was striving as he normally did. Rem deeply respected his wishes and sought to be close to him without changing his behavior.
She didn’t think anything had happened that could trigger this.
Rem painfully regretted that the instant Subaru had abruptly changed was when she’d taken her eyes off him. Even so, she was right there at the shop, listening to the shopkeeper converse with him.
Thanks to Rem’s tireless efforts, the store had sold its merchandise nicely, and the shopkeeper, in quite high spirits, seemed inclined to give them a souvenir. He was asking how many abbles Subaru wanted to take with him, and
she remembered him answering, “How ’bout all of ’em?”
The very next moment, his demeanor abruptly changed, and he fell limply onto the street. When Rem sat him up, he seemed so overcome by sadness and
tears of joy that he kept laughing.
Deeming he wasn’t well, Rem carried Subaru back to the Crusch villa,
accepting all the trouble it might cause. Suspecting it was some kind of magical
interference, she politely insisted that Ferris examine Subaru.
However, it had all come to naught. Even Ferris, the most accomplished
healer in all of the royal capital, could not identify the cause of his sudden change. If Ferris could do nothing, it might well mean that gathering all the great magic users in the entire royal capital would still not be enough to heal him.
Subaru’s present condition was unrelated to magic. But his mind had
suddenly become unbalanced.
Ferris asked, “Ferri doesn’t really want to ask, meow, but what will you do?”
“Without understanding the cause, dealing with it is difficult… I am sorry to
have troubled you, Master Felix.”
“Mmm, don’t worry ameowt it. As a matter of fact, it’s better for Ferri’s treatment now that he’s not making a weird fuss, in a meownner of speaking.”
Subaru hated Ferris’s treatment and often voiced his complaints. On that level, Rem could understand how he was easier to deal with lying down and listless. The words were still highly insensitive.
Ferris continued, “But…but is it really good to continue treatment meow?”
Rem, who was watching Subaru, lifted up her head and shifted her gaze
toward Ferris.
“…What do you mean?”
“Don’t be upset by my asking, meow, but the treatment for Subaru’s gate is to make life easier for him, yes?”
“Yes.”
“If he can no longer live a normal life, treating him is meaningless, isn’t it?”
“—Subaru is…!”
The even more insensitive remark drove Rem to forget Ferris’s status as she
yelled. But even faced with the maid’s emotions, Ferris’s look of doubt did not falter.
“Are you saying don’t stop now, meow? Seeing him like this? Are you serious? It’s true some things happened to him, but if that’s enough to break him, he’s not likely to ever recover!”
Ferris looked down at Subaru with undiluted scorn. To Rem, who knew that
this was the man to whom Lugunica had granted the title of “Blue,” the archetype for all water magic users, his behavior was all too callous.
If someone couldn’t be healed, throw the person away. That was the
judgment of the kingdom’s foremost healer? What did he understand about the
individual named Subaru to judge that he had no prospects for healing?
“Oh my, what a stare mew have… Subawu’s a lucky man. Not that he ever
realized it.”
“Subaru’s current situation is unrelated to the royal selection. He is not a person who would lose his mind over minor failures.”
“Believe that all you want. As far as Ferri is concerned, keeping his sanity after everything that’s happened presents problems of its own, meow. And besiiides…”
Ferris set aside his flippant tone as he looked frostily at Rem.
“Don’t misunderstand. Ferri doesn’t hate Subawu, so this isn’t meowt of
some kind of special grudge against him.”
“…”
“This isn’t particular to Subawu as a person. Ferri just hates people who lose their will to live, pure and simple.”
Ferris pointed at Subaru, and then he touched his finger to his own chin.
“Even for someone with my meowgic specialty, there’s no way to use that power
besides healing. Ferri helps all kinds of people day after day to be of service to Lady Crusch. Meow, everyone struggles hard to live, so thanks doesn’t matter, but Ferri hates wasting this power on anyone.”
“I think that is admirable.”
“Thank you— But it’s not right to save people who don’t want to live. Even
if you heal the body, isn’t it just saving an unused life? If that’s the case, end it before it causes other people trouble. Well, in this case it already has, meow.”
Ferris delivered his blunt assessment with a stern face.
Behind that hard demeanor, Rem keenly felt Ferris’s sincerity concerning the
many lives he had no doubt saved. His way of saying it was dismissive, but it was what Ferris had learned from watching life and death in all that time. That
had informed his views on life itself.
“Even so, Subaru is…”
Rem, battered by Ferris’s words, looked at the boy with pure regret. Subaru
was unaware that he was the subject of the conversation as he made faint, intermittent, warped giggles, as if hearing these things had stirred the wounds remaining in his mind.
Deep inside, Rem wanted nothing more than to lose her grip on herself, cling
to Subaru, and cry aloud. But that would bring dishonor to him and tarnish the
good name of Roswaal, her benefactor. More than anything else, it would be a betrayal of the feelings she herself had carried while watching over him all this
time.
A clear voice flowed into the room, abruptly breaking the awkward silence within.
“—Ferris, I believe your view is just a little too strict.”
Rem reflexively raised her head at the voice. When Ferris noticed the visitor,
his expression brightened. After all, his eyes were always full of zealous devotion when they gazed upon her.
“Lady Crusch,” said Rem.
“I do not go as far as to say weakness is a crime. I do believe, however, that
condoning that weakness and wallowing in it while leaving the situation
uncorrected is very much a vice.”
When Rem hastily lowered her head at Crusch’s arrival, the duchess checked
her with a hand.
With a shake of her long green hair, she moved to the edge of the bed. Her
eyes narrowed as she looked down at Subaru, who had a wicked smile on his face even then.
“I see. This certainly is an alarming state. Do you know the cause?”
Hearing Crusch’s question, Ferris raised both his hands up as he replied, “No.
According to Rem, he suddenly fell over, so Ferri examined him from head to toe. But there’s no sign of any interference with his mana, meow.”
“Is it possible this is some kind of curse? It is difficult to imagine, but I can
think of someone taking measures against those with knowledge of the royal candidates. Or one could suspect that this is a show of force by another camp.
However…”
“Neither is very likely, is it, meow? There’s not much time to set something up, and who’d go after Subawu in the first place? Anyone involved would know
he’s powerless, and there is no meowgical interference anyway, curses included.
Ferri’s positive. And besides…”
As Ferris’s words trailed off, he tilted his head and gently leaned into Crusch,
who stood there with her arms folded.
“Lady Crusch, do you doubt Ferri’s abilities?”
“Of course not. I could never question your ability, personality, or loyalty.
Even if you were to hold a dagger in front of me, ready to run me through, that
thought is set in stone.”
“Oh my, Lady Crusch, what a meowgnificent line… Ahh, Ferri’s falling to pieces.”
Crusch left Ferris to squirm and wallow as she shifted her penetrating gaze toward Rem.
“Ferris has spoken. And if Ferris’s power will not suffice, none in my house
is capable of treating Subaru Natsuki. I’m sorry we can be of no assistance.”
Crusch’s apology, despite doing nothing wrong herself, sent Rem into another
low bow.
“—Not at all. Your deep consideration leaves me speechless.”
In truth, beyond the reach of words and pleasantries, Crusch had conveyed warmth to her that she could never return. The finest healer in all the kingdom had rendered his diagnosis, and the head of a rival political camp had conveyed
sympathy nonetheless. What more could Rem hope for from them?
Crusch and Ferris had done nothing wrong. Rem knew that.
—After all, she had her own suspicions about how Subaru had ended up in that state.
“—The Witch.”
The presence, the “miasma” of the Witch enveloping Subaru’s entire body
had become denser still. What linked that miasma to Subaru’s abnormal state was unclear, but it was a fact that she’d sensed an outpouring of it just before he had collapsed.
If the cause was the Witch’s poison, she could not criticize Ferris’s judgment
that there was nothing he could do. Very few beings were able to sense the presence of that substance in the first place. Not even Ram could catch the scent
the way Rem could.
Nothing good came with such pall. Those who planned wicked things were
rich with it. Her physiological distaste for it, and the hateful memories that accompanied it, made her deeply prejudiced against those who bore it.
Although the actions of the boy with the strongest Witch smell she’d ever met had melted her hard heart and swept those prejudices aside…
Even so. Yes, even so.
Rem knew that nothing good came from that miasma.
—The demon in her knew this.
3
Rem bowed and conveyed her deepest gratitude.
“—You have gone through great trouble for us. On behalf of my master, I thank you for your benevolence until this day.”
Crusch and Ferris stood before her. Rem and the others were meeting in the
Crusch villa’s reception hall—in other words, Rem was bidding them farewell.
“I am sorry we could be of no help. By rights, it is presumptuous to receive
compensation for such a thing…”
Seeing Crusch’s eyes fall slightly, Rem lifted her face and firmly replied,
“Not at all. Ending our request before it was finished is due to our own circumstances. You have given us your utmost consideration until now, Lady Crusch. It is only right that we pay compensation as promised.”
Receiving her reply, Crusch made one final apology: “I am sorry.” She would
say nothing more.
With his master’s lips closed, Ferris followed up.
“To be honest, it does leave things half-done, but it can’t be helped, meow?
Rem, be in good health. As for Subawu…get well soon, is what Ferri should probably say?”
With one eye closed and one finger raised, Ferris indicated Subaru, standing
behind Rem, leaning against the door in a slovenly state.
His condition had not improved. His reactions were as dull as before, with his
consciousness stranded somewhere between dream and reality. In spite of that, he followed like a child when they led him around by the hand, and he could at
least manage not to fall over. Though he still suddenly broke into little fits of laughter and tears from time to time.
Rem replied, “My words are insufficient to apologize for the rudeness caused
by a member of our house. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for treating
him with benevolence.”
Crusch replied, “We had a contract, and at the very least, I have exchanged
words with him. I could never treat him in an uncouth manner. I believe things
will be difficult from here, however…”
Rem glanced at the faintly smiling Subaru, grasping the hem of her apron in a
display of resolve.
“I am…prepared for that.”
Just as Crusch had gloomily pointed out, she knew there were many
hardships to come. Even so, Rem had appointed herself to be the one who would
walk with Subaru through thick and thin.
After all, she’d never forgotten what he had said to her long ago.
Let’s laugh, hug each other, and talk about tomorrow. I’ve always dreamed of
laughing with a demon and talking about the future.
She’d remembered that scene in her head many times, tens of times, hundreds
of times over.
That was why she could give Subaru no less than what he had given to her.
For what she had received was too precious for any sum of money to ever repay.
Crusch lowered her eyes and shook her head.
“I regret that I was unable to fulfill your request.”
Rem smiled a little. She was grateful for Crusch’s considerate words,
especially then, when she felt ready to crumble.
“It is all because of our shortcomings— Though this chapter has reached an
unfortunate result, I pray that you will do many great things, now and in the future, Lady Crusch.”
“And you as well. Tell Emilia, ‘Let us both fight to bring no disgrace to our
souls.’”
With that exchange, Rem keenly felt that her duty in that place had come to
an end. Subaru’s treatment had been abandoned before it was over, and she wasn’t able to fulfill Roswaal’s secret command.
She would no doubt be sternly scolded for scurrying back. Even so, she had
to return to the mansion…for Subaru’s sake.
“Ferri understands you’re returning to the mansion, but do mew have any leads for treatment?”
Rem held back the regret in her voice and replied to Ferris’s question with her single ray of hope.
“At the very least, if he can meet Lady Emilia…”
No matter how much she spoke to him, how much she touched him, how
much she continued in vain, the boy never responded to Rem with his usual Subaru-like reactions. But even in this state, sometimes words rich with meaning
would tumble out of Subaru’s mouth.
“Names…”
“Mmm?”
“From time to time, he says names. My name, Sister’s. And…”
She was happy that her own name was among those he whispered. On the
other hand, the fact that he didn’t respond when she called his made her sad.
Though much of his behavior was meaningless, the name he murmured with
the most frequency was…
“—Lady Emilia’s. If he is able to meet her, perhaps it will change him somehow.”
“But Ferri heard they parted on really bad terms. It hasn’t even been four days since then; is that enough time for her to calm down, meow? If you could wait a little longer… Ah, you really can’t, huh?”
“I am well aware that Lady Emilia has a poor understanding of her own heart. However, this is no longer something I can decide on my own. I must return and receive instructions…”
Rem’s words, full of concern for her lord and master, were for the purpose of
deceiving her own heart. She was hiding what she truly desired, burying it under
her duties as a servant. After all, it pained her to the point of tears that she was not enough to save his heart and mind.
Abruptly, Crusch lifted her face and narrowed her eyes.
“—Wilhelm has arrived.”
Following Crusch’s gaze, Rem saw that a dragon carriage was entering the courtyard of the villa from the iron gates. A familiar aged gentleman was sitting
in the driver’s seat.
Crusch continued, “At the moment, this is the only long-distance dragon
carriage that my house is able to lend. I cannot reveal the details, but a large number of these vehicles have been required for another matter of late.”
Ferris followed up, “You’re in luck, meow. If you head along the Liphas Highway, you should get back to the mansion before tomeowrrow. It might take
you half a day’s travel, give or take.”
Rem, watching the dragon carriage’s arrival, thought that the rays of the sun
high above were dazzling indeed.
Since it was around noon now, an all-out carriage ride would mean arriving
back at the mansion around midnight. If they were close to the manor, her shared
consciousness with Ram would no doubt inform her sister of their return.
“Thank you very much for your kindheartedness.”
Crusch replied, without a single hint of false pleasantries, “I do not mind. It is still a far cry from what I would normally be able to provide, so I can only hope
that this modest offering nonetheless accommodates your needs.”
Rem thought that getting to know Crusch as a person might have been one of the few happy things she’d gained from the time she had spent there.
“Then this time I must excuse mys—”
As Rem was stating her final farewell, Crusch interrupted her.
“Rem.”
When Rem stopped, she saw indecision in Crusch’s eyes for the very first time. The duchess continued, “This is extremely inelegant of me…but there is something I wish to ask.”
“Yes, what is it?”
“Why do you strive for Subaru Natsuki so?”
Watching Rem and the boy leaning against her, emotion vanished from
Crusch’s amber eyes. She continued, “The relationship between you and Subaru
Natsuki is not the master-retainer relationship Ferris and I share. I simply find it distasteful to judge men and women by appearances alone.”
“—”
With Rem falling into silence, the tone of Crusch’s voice dropped, as if she
was apologizing for her own lack of clarity.
“I do not mind if you do not wish to answer. I am embarrassed to even ask.”
Ferris silently watched his master as Rem shook her head at both of them.
“No, I am not hesitating to answer. I am simply unsure about what words I should use— It is a difficult thing to explain.”
When she was on the verge of putting it into words, she felt it change into something else entirely.
It was natural for Crusch to have doubts. What existed inside Rem didn’t stay
the same for even a second. Its size, strength, and heat shifted from moment to
moment, putting down its roots inside Rem.
She didn’t want to come out and say it. She couldn’t come out and say it.
How, then, to describe something formless inside Rem to another person?
“I suppose it is because…Subaru is special?”
“—”
Rem didn’t really understand if that qualified as an answer or not. However,
she felt like that response best exemplified what was at the bottom of her own heart.
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