——The first thing that snagged the edge of his consciousness was the sound of dripping water, falling in a steady rhythm.
Drops fell at even intervals, keeping a constant beat, and with each pulse sent into the silent room, his consciousness sank deeper and deeper before finally being guided toward wakefulness.
The dormant brain restarted its activity, and the freshly reactivated nerves detected blood circulation spreading throughout the whole body. He twisted his body, let out a groan, and tried to sit up——but couldn't.
His limbs refused to obey, and all he could do was rub his face against the cold ground. At the same time, relying on his five senses that had come flooding back, he tried to take stock of his surroundings, but everything within his field of vision was painted over with darkness.
——Both his eyes had been crushed!?
In the spur of the moment, he assessed his condition and nearly jumped to a hasty conclusion. But before he could be horrified by that verdict, he noticed the crushing pressure binding his eyes tight and abandoned the thought. He quickly determined that he appeared to be blindfolded, and only belatedly realized how abnormal the situation was.
In place of having his eyes gouged out, both eyes were sealed. To add to it, his inability to move stemmed from the same cause: his limbs were bound tightly.
He could feel something like thin rope around his wrists and ankles. In this hands-behind-his-back position, even struggling to free himself was difficult.
"A-And what... is this!?!"
Fortunately, no gag had been stuffed into his mouth, so his voice came out normally. But being literally all-talk with hands and feet rendered useless was nothing more than a farce. And the person who had driven him into this state was unlikely to be satisfied with mere conversation——that much was painfully obvious.
The strangeness of his situation, coupled with the terror of being unable to glean any information about his surroundings. Holding both of these together,
Organizing his current state. Both eyes——sealed. Limbs——bound, with no chance of slipping free. Voice——functional. Should he shout for help? The person who tied him up would come running, and that would be that. Was there anything nearby that could cut through his restraints? Searching around was nearly impossible when crawling was such a struggle. A throbbing pain on the right side of his head——the moment he became aware of it, it began asserting its existence with a dull, pounding ache.
"The pain... in my head..."
By noticing the pain at his temple, Subaru recalled what had happened to him just before he lost consciousness.
He had used Return by Death, left the tomb, and gone to Roswaal to press him on the newly confirmed facts and deductions. There, provoked by Roswaal's unforgivable remark, he had lunged at him——only to be beaten down by Garfiel, who had been watching him the whole time.
No, saying "beaten down" didn't even begin to cover it. He had been overwhelmed by a crushing, incomprehensible force. Just a single restraining blow had crushed his head, and he thought he had sunk into death right then and there.
"If I died, then my state would be a Return by Death situation..."
If that were the case, the correct restart point for Subaru would be the tomb, right after the Trials. The rule up to now had been that his soul was pulled back to the room he had vacated just about an hour ago——the room he had been about to leave on his way to Roswaal's bedchamber.
At the very least, being kidnapped and imprisoned like this was something that only happened once in his memories——when he'd imitated a TV show and flipped the chabudai table, and his father, genuinely furious, had punished him by tossing him into the storage shed.
That was a memory from before he'd even started elementary school, so there was no way Return by Death had sent him back that far. And if the restart point hadn't changed, then the conclusion would be that Subaru had been tied up like this immediately after returning via Return by Death. That couldn't possibly be the case, which left only one conclusion—— "Did I... not die?"
Between the lingering pain in his head and his current situation, that seemed to be where his reasoning landed.
He had committed an act of violence against Roswaal that couldn't be more extreme. Considering that, being treated this way was morally justified. Though his emotions certainly didn't accept that.
——"Well, ain't it a relief that you caught on to your situation quick?"
Just as Subaru had put a temporary full stop to his self-assessment, a voice drifted down from above. He raised his face and turned toward the direction the voice seemed to come from, though his eyes were useless. From the tone, he knew who it was.
"...Garfiel, huh?"
"That's the right answer too. Glad your head's still working proper-like. I hit you a bit harder than I meant to, so, uh... my bad."
Having been addressed by name, Garfiel offered an apology to Subaru, whose vision remained sealed. However, his tone lacked the gravity the words called for, and with a "didn't think," he continued: "I was only tryin' to give you a light tap, but I didn't expect you to keel over like that. Heard you were the Knight of Lady
"Sorry to disappoint. I'm the brainy type, not the brawn type——that's my whole character archetype. ...Where am I, anyway?"
Subaru volleyed back with a light quip, matching Garfiel's mocking tone, before steering toward the real question. Hearing this, Garfiel snorted through his nose.
"Rest easy. You're inside the '
"You actually have a damn jail cell prepared? Be prepared and you'll never beworried' and all that, but having a facility like this on hand... honestly, that's kind of a turnoff."
"If you wanna complain about the bad taste, take it up with whoever built it. But come on——you of all people would actually go say that to his face, wouldn't ya?"
Garfiel expressed his displeasure with a genuinely sour air. His words triggered something in Subaru, and he furrowed his brow.
"What do you mean, 'to his face'...?"
"Don't play dumb when you're reekin' of
"Ran into her... inside the tomb?"
There was something off about the way Garfiel was phrasing things.
The tomb. The Trials. The person he had encountered there. A blank spot. After parting with his parents in the Trials, he had gone to the empty school building, and there—— "The Witch...!"
——He had encountered
Following the trail of wrongness back to his sense of loss, Subaru once again registered Echidna's existence in his mind. It was the same sensation he'd had in the previous loop, and now that he'd remembered, it felt bizarre that he had forgotten once more——a singularity so distinct it was hard to fathom how it had slipped away.
He suspected that this was the result of some kind of "condition" imposed on him during their first encounter. What astonished him was that even after going through Return by Death, this fact remained unbroken.
Even with Return by Death, which carried memories back with it, it had no effect against interference of this kind——a manipulation that targeted memory directly. Which meant that every time Subaru used Return by Death, he would forget about Echidna and have to start over from the moment of remembering.
"Wait... is this what Roswaal meant when he said I'd forgotten something...?"
With the Witch's existence resurrected in his mind, he became aware of it, but to treat it as the definitive answer felt premature. After all, while he had remembered Echidna, he couldn't find a single thread from their conversation that might help untangle the current situation.
From Roswaal's manner of speaking, whatever he wanted Subaru to remember had to be something significant enough to reveal even Roswaal's own unreadable true intentions.
At least, that was assuming the complete version of the Gospel he possessed was genuine.
"Going all silent on me, huh... That mean you feel guilty, or you hit on somethin'?"
"I'm not one of those high school girls who'll die if she's not talking 24/7, so I'll be quiet and think a thing or two, thanks. Right now, though, a thing or two doesn't even come close to covering what I need to think about."
There were too many things to deal with——Subaru alone didn't have enough brain cells for it.
Emilia.
Persuading him and earning his cooperation was an indispensable piece of Subaru's blueprint for saving the mansion. In the fight against Elsa, he probably couldn't assemble a greater fighting force than Garfiel. He had experienced firsthand, with both his eyes and his brain, just how reliable Garfiel's strength was in that battle.
"...I'm pretty sure you either punched or kicked me and my head got crushed or something. What happened with that?"
"Ha! We finally get to that after talkin' for a while, huh. It didn't get crushed all the way through. Just dented. Didn't wanna leave you be and have you up and die on me, so I patched you up a little."
"Patched me up... by who?"
"Ya think there was anyone besides me who could've done that right then and there?"
His voice carried a note of prideful self-satisfaction, and Subaru was left momentarily speechless.
He had never imagined that Garfiel——whose rough, violent side was so prominent——was proficient in healing magic. Subaru squirmed against his bonds.
"My head... it didn't come out square or pointy or anything, did it?"
"Next time I crush it, I'll hold it in shape with my hands while I do it."
A weary sigh. Probably paired with a shoulder shrug. Having received that response, Subaru at least confirmed that his body had been pulled out of a state that could be called near-death.
If that was the case, the next issue was what Garfiel's intentions were behind doing all this.
"Thanking you for patching me up when you were the one who crushed my head feels kind of wrong, but... what exactly are you trying to do here?"
"Well now, what do ya think?"
"From how things look, from your perspective, knocking me out back there was the right call, and I've got no beef with that. I went berserk and charged in like an idiot. You can't exactly say I didn't appreciate being stopped."
"That's a pretty convoluted mindset you got there. I get the urge to smash that goofy grin off his face, but the ones who'd be in trouble if I did are the old hags."
It seemed Garfiel shared Subaru's complicated feelings toward Roswaal. Still, for both of them, their reliance on Roswaal ran deep enough that acting on those feelings and cutting ties wasn't something they could do lightly.
For Subaru, Roswaal was his backing in this world. For Garfiel and the others, Roswaal was needed as the administrator of the Sanctuary.
But it was telling that the first thing Garfiel brought up when discussing this was Ryuzu——and by extension, the livelihoods of the Sanctuary's residents.
At the same time, Subaru could understand what Frederica had said about Garfiel when viewed through the lens of family. In truth, when Garfiel had chosen not to leave with his sister and instead stayed behind in the Sanctuary, it was because he had considered the feelings of the residents who would remain.
"Ryuzu and the others are important to you, and without Roswaal, you can't protect their way of life. Without him—the guy who gets called a demi-human fanatic—life in the Sanctuary can't function, since the residents can't leave."
"Don't go standing there lookin' all know-it-all while layin' out sappy theories. Who's stayin' here for sentimental reasons like that? I'm only here because I can't leave—"
"Frederica, who's your blood relative, was able to leave, but you can't? Is that what you're saying, Garfi?"
Fresh information he had only acquired in the previous loop. He played that card, watching for Garfiel's reaction. But the response exceeded anything Subaru had imagined in its ferocity.
——!!
Wind screamed, and in the next instant, a tremendous explosion of sound rang out right beside Subaru's head as he was rolled across the floor. The sound of air detonating echoed through the room, and before his brain could process that it was the ground Garfiel had stomped into, the floor shattered and the shape of the room changed.
The ground bounced playfully, and Subaru let out a small scream as the shockwave flung him away. Unable to even take a proper breakfall, he tumbled across the hard floor, and before his momentum ran out, he slammed into the wall and was forcibly stopped.
His brain rattled, the impact drove the air from his lungs, and the back of his skull screamed in agony. Subaru coughed violently, drool spilling from the corner of his mouth. At the sight of him: "Who the hell told you that, you piece of shit. Frederica must've run her mouth extra... no, wait, she wouldn't say something like that. She cut ties with me clean when we parted."
"Something like that doesn't actually cut the blood running through your veins, just because of how you word it—"
"Even at a time like this, you still got the nerve to push back, huh. If you're gonna use it, there were plenty of other moments you could've brought it up."
Despite groaning, Subaru kept talking back, and Garfiel's uncanny, razor-sharp intuition kicked in. It was as if he'd somehow picked up on a fact Subaru himself hadn't known, during the brief window when he'd looked away.
In truth, that guess wasn't just in the ballpark——it was dead on. But the line of reasoning to reach it was far too straight, almost unnaturally so.
It was either an absurdly keen intuition, or he had some kind of "hunch."
"Don't tell me... you too...?"
——The moment that possibility dawned on him, Subaru's voice lost its ability to hide the tremor.
"————"
To Subaru's subjectless question, the only reply was an eerie silence.
It may have been only a few seconds in real time, but to Subaru now, it felt like an eternity.
There was no answer. Why wouldn't he speak? Subaru's question had been vague to the point of being almost meaningless. If he didn't know, he should just say so plainly and be done with it——maybe even throw in a kick for good measure. If he got that kind of blunt reaction, Subaru could at least cling to something.
And yet: "Not me either."
Tall boot-steps. The sound of Garfiel's feet striking the stone floor drew closer, and Subaru could tell he had crouched down right beside him. Subaru lifted only his head from the floor. Garfiel must have brought his face close as well, baring his sharp fangs as he spoke.
"Why'd you think that, huh? Hey?"
"Quit it with that ominous way of asking. I'm not making sense here, am I? Just flat-out deny it already, will you? ...It's fine, you know."
"Hard to do that when you're beggin' me with a voice like you're about to cry."
Dismissing Subaru's pleading wish, Garfiel answered in a deliberately evasive tone. His noncommittal response only made Subaru more anxious. Inside, Subaru's thoughts were already in complete chaos.
He had wanted denial from the perceptive Garfiel. And yet what he got back were loaded, meaningful words that only reinforced the foreboding in his heart.
He had already encountered Beatrice and Roswaal——people he had considered allies——each revealed to possess a Gospel. For Subaru now, the appearance of a third such person would not be surprising in the slightest.
"That's why...! I'm asking if you know too...!"
"——Oh, so that's what you mean. Now where did you figure that out, I wonder?"
"——!?"
His throat seized with shock, and Subaru painted Garfiel into his sealed-off vision.
The tone of voice, the languid sigh. Everything about it was far removed from the Garfiel Subaru had known. But the man who left those suggestive words hanging didn't change the distance between them.
"You look surprised, but it's not exactly weird, is it? I'm a resident who's been cooped up in this Sanctuary for ages. Been dealin' with this stuff for a long, long time. The opportunities weren't exactly limited to one or two."
"B-But... you hated the Witch, didn't you? You had such an extreme reaction to her... and yet..."
"Yeah, that's right. I hate the Witch, and I've got my suspicions about reekin' types like you, and I don't think much of the half-elf Lady Emilia either. But that doesn't mean I think what she had to say was wrong. At the very least, I was able to find out what I wanted to know, and that's the honest truth."
"What you wanted to know...?"
"——I got no reason to tell you that. Why don't you go ask her yourself? Might be your last chance, though."
With that, spat out like a dismissive afterthought, Garfiel rose to his feet. He moved away from Subaru and, it seemed, reached for the exit of the cell——the door.
The hinges groaned, and Subaru called out to the departing figure.
"Wait! Wh-What happens to me? Or rather, what's the situation?"
"Your soft touch nearly killed Roswaal, and you're still actin' all chipper, huh? Until things settle down, you're in restraints and under house arrest."
House arrest——a word he had heard only the other day, from Roswaal's own mouth. The irony that Subaru would end up in the very state Roswaal himself had been subjected to, as a result of assaulting the man, was almost too much.
Subaru had no comeback, and Garfiel snorted.
"Meals come twice a day, morning and evening. Don't do anything stupid. I'll be keeping a proper eye on you through my little helper."
"Don't worry about that——I'm not worried about that right now! More importantly, results? You said results, didn't you? Results of what? What am I waiting for...?"
"Results, results——it's obvious, ain't it?"
At Subaru's question, Garfiel finally answered with a tone of condescension.
"——Lady Emilia's Trial. Once she heard about what you pulled, she got all fired up for some reason. Probably about making amends or whatever."
※※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ——After Garfiel left the room, Subaru was left alone in the cell, sinking into a sea of thought.
The words Garfiel had left just before departing refused to leave his head.
It seemed Emilia had taken it upon herself to tackle the Trial in order to clear Subaru's name. The thinking was that if she succeeded in liberating the Sanctuary, her achievement could overwrite the scandal Subaru had committed.
It was so like Emilia——she didn't doubt Subaru for a second.
"But in that moment..."
He had been furious, but Subaru had genuinely tried to strangle Roswaal.
With both hands, he had gripped a human throat, used his trained grip to crush the windpipe, and poured everything he had into either snapping the neck or suffocating the man to death.
His arms were bound behind his back and useless, but he could feel his fingers trembling in small, uncontrollable spasms.
If he could forget the fury of that moment, all that would remain in his hands was the dark afterglow of having tried to threaten another person's life. Nausea churned up from his empty stomach.
And if the target of that murderous intent had been someone close to him, it made everything worse.
"I don't... understand anymore."
He simply had no idea whom to trust, what to think, or what to do.
What was Beatrice's position? The Gospel in her hand. The days they had spent together.
What was Roswaal thinking? What was the complete Gospel he possessed? What did he want Subaru to remember? The truth behind his bewildering stance.
How could Subaru help Emilia pass the Trial? No——was it even right to send her toward the Trial in the first place? He didn't even know if the starting point was correct.
What were Garfiel's intentions? Did he possess a Gospel too? Without his cooperation, repelling Elsa would be impossible. With the relationship deteriorating each time he used Return by Death, how could he possibly bring Garfiel to the mansion?
How should he handle Elsa's assault——fight or flee? Why had the day of the attack shifted between the first and second loops? How had that killer known the escape route she shouldn't have known? Who was Elsa's employer? What was needed to defeat her? That woman could never be forgiven.
And beyond all of that: the Sanctuary's origins and purpose. The nature of the remaining Trials, and why the Trials existed at all. Echidna's goal, sleeping in the tomb. How to meet her again. What had happened in the Sanctuary at the end of the last loop, when it lay deserted.
And at the very final moment——what was it that had killed him and devoured him?
"Not a single... answer."
Round and round and round, an endless carousel of unanswered questions spun through his mind.
His eyelids were clamped shut with agonizing tightness, and as long as his vision remained sealed, as long as he couldn't perceive the world outside, a person could only turn inward for answers. And when that inner world was packed with nothing but mysteries and doubts, it meant a dead end.
What tormented Subaru, however, was not only the unanswered questions but also the mounting anxiety over time slipping away while he sat here mulling over them.
With his eyes covered, he couldn't be certain, but by Subaru's reckoning, it had very likely been a full day since the night he had strangled Roswaal.
He had been imprisoned in what felt like a hideout somewhere in a forest——a structure with no natural light coming in. Even accounting for that, the cold was notable.
Compared to the daytime temperatures he'd experienced before, this was a dramatic drop. And rather than thinking the temperature had plunged suddenly, it was more constructive to assume it was nighttime after sunset. If it was night, then it naturally followed that at least one full day had passed.
Natsuki Subaru had suffered his share of injuries since being summoned to this other world——wounds light and heavy alike. He had experienced the treatment for every tier of that spectrum and remembered what it felt like.
And in Subaru's experience, having half your head caved in or split open was, frankly speaking, a fatal injury. Surviving without
In principle, as long as you weren't dead, most injuries could be healed——that was the kind of world this was. But the more severe the wound, the greater the toll treatment imposed on the body.
Physical exhaustion and the stamina consumed by recovery. Considering all of that, Subaru's injuries from this time around were not the kind where you'd feel the benefits within a few hours of treatment starting——not within the same night, at any rate.
Nine times out of ten, an entire night had passed. And what supported that inference above all was: "I'm... hungry."
His empty stomach, which had received nothing while he slept, was asserting itself by growling painfully loud.
※※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ Time's passage, the blur of its markings, ground away at Subaru's psyche.
He had lost track of how much time had elapsed. His restraints hadn't changed, and he had been left alone in the cell, abandoned to the slow crawl of hours.
"————"
The blank stretches were so vast that he tried counting seconds to measure the time, but his sense of timing went haywire within an hour, and eventually his will broke and gave way to resignation.
What good would knowing the time even do him now? Because: "This is... impossible."
Already, six meals had been brought to Subaru. If the two-per-day schedule of morning and evening was being followed, three full days had passed. Three days since Subaru had woken up——which meant he had entered the fifth day since arriving at the Sanctuary.
That morning, he had set out from the Sanctuary and was just barely on track to reach the mansion in time for Elsa's predicted attack. Having crossed that point, the deadline had already passed.
Truth be told, from the very start, Subaru had gotten things wrong.
He could never forgive himself for losing control and lunging at Roswaal. If he hadn't let his emotions take over, he could have pressed Roswaal harder for the core of the matter, and above all, he wouldn't have damaged his relationship with Garfiel to the point of being locked up like this.
Surrendering to the boiling heat of his emotions had left him in this caterpillar's predicament.
Unable to accomplish a single thing he needed to do, unable even to see the faces of the people he wanted to protect, he was left displaying his pathetic self as the deadline crept ever closer.
And so Subaru had already given up on this "loop."
"Look what you've turned into, huh."
Because of the blunder Subaru had committed, every means of preventing the tragedy at the mansion had been lost. That was the same as despairing for the lives of the four people there.
He knew Rem, Petra, Frederica, and Beatrice would die, and he would watch it happen. And he had once accused Roswaal so loudly for doing the same thing.
"...I'm the worst. Just die already."
He wanted to die. If the restart point hadn't changed, and he could try again, he could return to that night and take another crack at it. He'd still be groping in the dark, no closer to knowing where to start, but it had to be better than this wretched state. He could do better. He had to do better.
"Otherwise... what was the point..."
Had he accepted defeat, bitten through his lip, and decided to watch the end come?
Having determined that saving the mansion was impossible and that this particular death could not be avoided, Subaru could have immediately taken his own life to trigger Return by Death. But he didn't.
The situation was certainly the worst. Even if he kept living from here, the future awaiting him was nothing but an empty husk. He should be gambling on Return by Death to rewind the world and fight for the best possible outcome. But: "Going back without understanding anything would just lead to the same dead end."
At the very least, he needed to know what happened in the Sanctuary after he was gone.
What would unfold past the sixth day in the Sanctuary——he had to verify that. That was why Subaru had screamed until his throat was raw, bitten down until his back teeth cracked, and swallowed his lingering attachment to the mansion. He had given up on this loop.
If today was the fifth day, then tomorrow something was supposed to happen.
During these three days, the only visitors to this cell had truly been Garfiel and a single caretaker. The caretaker was taciturn, following Garfiel's instructions in silence, so Subaru couldn't gauge their personality. From the way they wiped his immobile body and fed him, though, he suspected it might be a woman.
In an environment where every movement was being watched, he hadn't been given the opportunity to probe further. As a result, the identity of this apparent associate of Garfiel remained unknown.
But this was a place where Emilia, trying to rescue Subaru, would never find him.
It was probably a genuine secret from Garfiel and the others' perspective—a place so well hidden that not only was discovery unlikely, but even sending out a distress signal from Subaru's side would be difficult.
Then again, since Garfiel and Roswaal had already agreed to keep Subaru under house arrest, escaping would serve no purpose anyway.
"If Emilia can pass the Trial to save me, that'd be wonderful, but..."
If the roles were reversed, Subaru could say with confidence that he would cross the Trial for Emilia. But he simply couldn't envision Emilia overcoming the Trial for his sake. He didn't believe his own existence could be that strong a motivation for her——that was the kind of self-deprecating assessment Subaru made of himself.
In truth, the lack of good news over these three days meant that Emilia was still, just as in previous loops, unable to overcome the past no matter how many times she tried.
Which meant the situation was at an impasse on every front—the mansion, the Sanctuary, Subaru, and Emilia alike. It was exactly what Garfiel had once roared at Subaru.
"As I thought... I have to do something."
Emilia, the mansion, the Sanctuary—all of it. Every problem that arose. He would overcome it all with these hands, with the single weapon granted to this body.
A quiet resolve. It was only his stubborn refusal to give up that kept him alive.
During the long, long stretch of thinking, he had reached this conclusion over and over again. He had nodded to himself more times than he could count on both hands, and now Subaru simply waited for time to pass.
——The situation shifted suddenly when he felt the sensation of his sleeping body being shaken.
"Mmph."
Someone gripped his shoulder and shook him awake, pulling Subaru from a shallow sleep back to reality.
He felt drool trailing from the corner of his mouth. Unable to use his hands, he wiped it with his shoulder—a gesture that strained his body considerably. He was getting used to it, and as he wiped the dampness away: "Who... is it?"
His voice was hoarse from having just woken and from screaming himself hoarse earlier.
Having his throat shredded from screaming had become practically a ritual by now. He had grown almost numb to the blood-coughing pain, which was not a happy development.
At his call, the person who had woken him let out a short breath. Then: "I know you're in the middle of a nap, and I apologize for the interruption, but can you move, Natsuki-san?"
"Huh?"
The voice was so unexpected that Subaru couldn't help but let out an idiotic sound of surprise.
Taking his shock for residual grogginess, the person lightly tapped his cheek with an open palm.
"I'm crossing a dangerous bridge here too, you know, so get your act together. Neither of us wants things to end in a place like this."
As he spoke, he cut through the shackles binding Subaru's wrists and ankles with a blade. The sensation of limbs freed after so long washed over Subaru, but he didn't dwell on it—he tore the blindfold off with a rough motion.
"Oof, your hands, your feet, even your eyes—all look like they've been through it."
In his blurry, distorted vision, a man with a vaguely unpleasant expression stood over him.
It was