The flying tail stinger shattered the stone corridor, sending plumes of smoke billowing upward as destruction spread across the passage.
Even as the scene seemed to unfold in slow motion, Subaru watched a small figure in a dress launch herself straight into the heart of the devastating maelstrom before his eyes.
It was
Courage—no, sheer recklessness. Naturally, the small girl's body was fragile, far less durable than the stone pillar a single stinger strike had obliterated. Even if she had tried to shield him on impulse, her stature couldn't possibly cover Subaru from the chest up.
In the end, it was nothing more than an impulsive act—suicide, practically.
Just like when Subaru had grabbed
Just like when he had called out Julius's name as the flames of hellfire consumed him, unable to stop himself.
Just like when he had tried to hurl
Beatrice too, throwing "impossible" to the wind, moved to intercept the tail stinger—"
"Hwah!?"
"—It's an 'incomplete E.M.T'!!"
In that instant, Beatrice, who had stepped forward, seized Subaru's hand and thrust her other palm forward.
The moment the girl screamed, something invisible—an energy of some kind—was violently ripped from Subaru's body in a rush. And as his head swam, right before the palm Beatrice had raised, the stinger strike was blocked as if a wall of light had materialized.
"———"
The shockwave, which had seemed certain to reduce the corridor to rubble along with the buildings around them, was intercepted by Beatrice's palm-centered barrier of defense, diverting the damage outward around them as if bypassing Subaru and the others entirely.
The stingers didn't stop at just one—they rained down one after another, like a torrential storm. But every last one was blocked by this shield in the form of a young girl, Beatrice, who refused to let a single trace of damage pass through to those behind her.
A tremendous shockwave howled past, and shards of shattered corridor grazed Subaru's cheek.
With his hearing fading and his vision whiting out, Subaru squinted against the razor-sharp pain in his cheek—and his eyes were fixed on Beatrice's back.
If that enormous scorpion glimpsed for just an instant, and this rain-like barrage of projectiles were indeed its tail stingers, then their destructive power was equivalent to mortar rounds that could easily reduce a human body to dust.
And yet, shielded by the back of this tiny girl, Subaru's life had been spared.
Just moments ago, he had prayed to God for salvation—and that feeling hadn't yet faded before he found himself hurled into what kind of hell beyond anything this world could conceive.
Subaru, who had no luxury left to curse his own misfortune, caught something at the edge of his consciousness, in the corner of his vision—something that was neither Beatrice nor the scorpion.
It was Echidna, caught up in the same attack and exposed to the same danger.
She had once declared she would go her separate way from Subaru and the others, but he had stopped her just before the attack began, and now she too was trapped in this situation.
Fortunately, she happened to be in a position that Beatrice could shield, so the direct damage from the stingers had been blocked by the wall of light. But that was as far as it went.
What Beatrice could defend against was only the direct harm of being hit by the stingers.
She could do nothing about the secondary damage caused by the stingers' destruction.
In other words— "—Nn, ah!"
Echidna let out a faint cry as she lost her balance and began to topple backward. One step, her foot went back trying to catch herself—but the floor that should have received her foot was no longer there.
The corridor, half-collapsed from the stinger assault, had lost its structural integrity. The floor, ceiling, and walls were crumbling away, and Echidna had lost her footing. If she were cast into the unknown void beyond, a fatal fall would be inevitable.
Sensing this danger on instinct, Echidna's eyes flickered with alarm.
"—!"
Subaru, who had lunged forward on reflex, grabbed Echidna's hand and prevented her from plummeting to her death.
"Natsuki-kun...!?"
The hand Beatrice was gripping was his right; the hand he had caught Echidna with was his left.
Raid's forced procedure had put his shoulder back in place, but the pain ran deep, and if he overexerted it, it could dislocate again. He couldn't afford to burden Beatrice, who was desperately holding off the stingers, so Subaru gritted his molars, planted both feet, and poured every ounce of strength he had left into holding Echidna's weight.
"Grr, ooooooh...!"
Small as she was, Echidna still carried the weight of an entire human being. Lifting a single person was not something that came easily under normal circumstances—let alone with one hand, let alone while injured, let alone in a crisis where the person in question was uncooperative. There was no small risk of being dragged down with her.
He knew all of that without having to think about it. So why take the risk?
"...Could you stop doing things that make it impossible to gauge you?"
"Like... hell I can...! It was on reflex...!"
"That answer... even you should be able to think of it, Natsuki-kun!"
Rattling off an endless internal debate, Subaru fired back at the ungracious words from the girl he had reflexively saved. Echidna, awkwardly but determinedly, twisted her body and used his arm as a brace to haul herself back onto what remained of the collapsed floor.
Right to the end, supporting her every step of the way, Subaru finally let his gaze fall to his own arms.
—There were cuts etched like characters into his skin, dark blotches and patterns covering him that he didn't remember acquiring, and ghastly white scars lacing his entire body—gruesome and brutal to behold.
"...Can I... move better than the limit of my memories?"
The calluses and countless scrapes on his hands—unfamiliar to him. A physique that had barely grown a touch more muscular. That was all that had kept Echidna from falling to her death.
An incomplete body, by any standard—far too inadequate to carry out the "Book of the Dead" plan of killing no one.
"I managed... to climb back up...! Beatrice! How are you holding up?!"
"I'm about at my limit, I think! Soon...!"
Setting aside that oddly out-of-place sentiment, Echidna—who had managed to scramble back up—called out to Beatrice with a grim expression. Beatrice answered, her delicate cheeks taut with strain, and in the very next instant— "—!!"
The scorpion, which should have been firing its tail stingers in rapid succession, clung to the ceiling and, emitting a silent scream, swung its massive pincers down toward them.
"—!"
As the sweeping pincers bore down head-on, Subaru's thoughts flowed in slow motion.
In common understanding, scorpions were strongly associated with venomous stingers. But in reality, out of over a thousand species of scorpions, only a few dozen actually possessed venom. So for those scorpions that hunted without venom, what weapon did they rely on? —Naturally, their pincers.
Cutting power—or perhaps crushing force was more apt. Compared to a venomous stinger, the danger might seem lower, but with a scorpion this colossal, neither lethal capacity could be underestimated.
That much was clear from the way the tower walls and floor—which had barely maintained their form—were being sliced through as effortlessly as a kitchen knife cutting tofu.
"——Murak."
Beatrice, who had flown back into the fray, dodged that scene of destruction and slaughter—symbolic of nothing less than death itself—with an almost unbelievable leaping ability. No—more like an unnatural flight that seemed to exploit the laws of inertia.
A strange sensation centered on Beatrice, as though the interference of gravity had been evaded. She grabbed Subaru and Echidna by the backs of their clothes and bounded a great distance away from the scorpion's onslaught.
Creating distance, Echidna then raised the five fingers of her right hand toward the scorpion's face.
"El Jiwald—!!"
From each of her five fingers, white heat rays were unleashed—five beams of light that swept through the corridor like the claws of a giant, searing the face of the scorpion clinging to the ceiling, its right pincer, and its carapace.
Unable to withstand the power and the damage, the scorpion wildly thrashed its tail stinger and left pincer, destroying the corridor and kicking up clouds of smoke as it retreated rearward.
"Jiwald! Jiwald! Jiwald!!"
"Wait! Calm down, Echidna! It retreated! It ran away! It ran away, so—!"
Subaru tackled Echidna from behind in a bear hug, stopping her from continuing her barrage into the scorpion's smoke screen. Even so, Echidna struggled for a while, glaring furiously into the haze beyond, until eventually all the strength drained from her body and she slumped against Subaru.
"Haa, haa, haa... Did... did we get it?"
"...Not quite. It probably escaped."
Gasping for breath, Subaru shook his head at Echidna's disbelief. The smoke hadn't cleared yet, but he doubted the scorpion's carcass was lying in there.
If anything, he was terrified that another volley of stingers would come hurtling through the smoke at any moment.
"But that's... not it, is it? That thing just now..."
"—It's a mabeast. What a crass creature, suddenly appearing here on the fourth floor. The tremors from the lower levels, a mabeast on the fourth floor, and the anomaly on the upper level."
"Top, bottom, middle... you're saying problems were breaking out everywhere at once?!"
Subaru whipped around, face drained of color, at Beatrice's grave report.
Sure enough, Julius was still fighting on the lower level, and the existence of the scorpion—a mabeast—had now been confirmed on the fourth floor. The anomaly on the upper level was also explained by Raid having descended from there.
"...One of those problems is you, though. You don't seem self-aware of that."
"———"
Echidna, who had pulled away from Subaru and was standing on her own, was the one to shatter that train of thought at its roots. She wiped the sweat from her brow and stared at Subaru with vigilance still lingering in her gaze.
Her pale blue eyes held wariness, suspicion, and at the same time, anxiety and confusion.
"You are... what exactly are you? What is it you're trying to do, and on whose authority do you stand?"
"I don't know the details. I told you. I don't know any more than you do about what's happening or how. Because I'm..."
"—Amnesiac."
Subaru could only weakly mutter the same confused answer he had given before. It was Beatrice, who had been furrowed in thought with a troubled expression, who took those last words and finished them.
Amnesia—in this loop, Subaru had only confessed it to two people:
They knew, and yet Beatrice's attitude was still like that.
Echidna, too, was still weighing her words carefully.
"How did you escape from the cage?"
"...When I came to, my shoulder was dislocated, and I'd fallen outside."
He answered with complete honesty, though he doubted anyone would believe him. But piling lie upon lie had only led him to this wretched impasse. And after all, he had already prayed to God with snot dripping from his nose, begging for things to work themselves out. There was no pretense left to maintain, no dignity to preserve.
With that mindset, Subaru answered without a shred of falsehood, and Echidna hesitated for a moment. But then, she closed her eyes and continued without looking at him.
"...Why did you save me just now?"
"———"
"If you hadn't reached out, I would certainly have died. A terrible, wretched death with this body, I imagine."
The question carried an almost detached quality, as though it were about someone else entirely—a distance that made it feel like she was deliberately stepping back.
But she had done so deliberately for the same reason she refused to look Subaru in the face. Namely, a desperate measure to ensure her judgment wasn't swayed by emotion.
Facing Echidna's reasoning head-on, Subaru considered. Why had he reached out to Echidna? —Because Julius had entrusted that to him at the very end.
Was it those words that had made Subaru extend his hand?
"...It was reflex. I don't know why."
But Subaru shook his head, rejecting that idea.
It was true that at first, remembering Julius's words, he had moved to prevent Echidna from going off on her own. But when she had truly been in mortal danger, the reason his body had moved was not something so calculated.
He didn't understand. Why he had acted the way he did.
"Not everything has a reason, right? It was sudden. Everything was sudden. And so I..."
Bracing himself for disappointment, Subaru haltingly laid bare the emotions inside him. He expected a cold reaction from Echidna in response—but instead: "—... That might be the essence of who you are as a person."
"Huh...?"
Echidna, who had stiffened in front of him, suddenly let her shoulders drop and murmured those words. Subaru was dumbfounded, completely taken aback.
At a loss for words, Subaru stared, and Echidna shrugged.
"There's no point in arguing about it here. It would be foolish to linger and invite another attack from the mabeast. Let's move. I want to reunite with Julius."
"Oh, ah..."
"I agree. Let's leave this place for now."
Leaving the bewildered Subaru behind, Echidna and Beatrice calmly made their decision. Echidna checked behind them, and Beatrice squeezed Subaru's hand tightly.
At that small touch, he looked at the girl, and Beatrice gave a deep nod.
"Betty wonders if you don't even remember bringing Betty outside."
"...S-sorry. I don't know what you're talking about—"
"—It's okay."
Hearing the faint, unbearably sad and lonely feeling woven into Beatrice's voice, Subaru felt as though he had committed the most terrible crime in the world.
But Beatrice shook her head at Subaru, who was being consumed by nameless terror. Then, hiding her own lonely feelings, she carved a fearless grin onto her lips.
"Even if Subaru forgets, it remains inside Betty. What Subaru carved into Betty will never fade. So it's fine for now."
"Beatrice..."
"Even if Subaru forgets, Betty won't. Betty will remember forever. And Betty will make Subaru remember too. For that sake, Betty will do anything."
"———"
That answer was far too radiant for
How many hardships would one have to overcome, how thoroughly would one have to temper their heart into steel, for a girl this young to possess such unwavering resolve?
"—Ah."
The sensation of being saved—of being rescued—made Subaru's breath catch. The feeling welling up behind his eyelids was trying to kill him, and he fought desperately to contain that surge of heat.
Beatrice said nothing. She simply held his hand, and that was enough to support him.
Just holding his hand—she was there for him.
"With the mabeast's attack, the route Natsuki-kun came from seems impassable. It's undeniably dangerous, but we have no choice but to advance through the intact corridor on the side where the mabeast retreated."
"Echidna, you too..."
"Forgive or not forgive, trust or not trust—those conversations are not suited to this situation. Either way, the doubts inside me won't be resolved. But the situation won't allow for that. Setting priorities is an essential skill in commerce. I watched Anastasia do it from right beside her for a long time."
So, no further argument would be had here.
That was Echidna's conclusion. Subaru, too, decided not to pour cold water on the judgment Echidna had made despite her reservations, and to follow the two of them.
He still wanted to run away. That feeling hadn't changed. But rather than crouching alone, cradling his head and praying to God, he wanted to believe that a better plea awaited him up ahead.
"———"
Behind Subaru, the corridor he had run through was in ruins. Just as Echidna had said, it had been pummeled by the mabeast's rain of stingers and reduced to what was essentially a mountain of rubble, utterly impassable.
What Beatrice's magical defense had protected was only the lives of herself, Subaru, and those with him. Whether they headed down to Julius, who was still fighting on the fifth floor, or toward Emilia's group, who had gone off on their own, they had no choice but to press forward through the corridor on the side where the scorpion had retreated.
"Ugh..."
Beyond the hole where Echidna had nearly fallen to her death, the smoke from the corridor scorched by her white heat rays had begun to clear—and there, Subaru could see the reason he had involuntarily groaned.
—It was, by all appearances, the tail of the mabeast, severed almost at its base.
"I see—so that's why there was no counterattack. Losing its attack method is at least a small piece of good news."
"It would seem so. ...Don't step on the floor. Jump over, I think."
The two of them regarded the tail with its stinger still attached and nodded to each other. Overwhelmed by its grotesque appearance, Subaru recognized that the mabeast had indeed lost its long-range attack capability.
Of course, the floor below was swarming with countless fire-wreathed centaurs. The threat of a single mabeast being diminished hardly lowered the overall danger level of the tower.
"Right—"
Subaru gathered a little momentum and leaped over the hole, still carrying Beatrice. Her body was light—too light, even compared to a girl of her age. That lightness seemed unrelated to the results of that year he couldn't remember—the one he had just felt in his own flesh.
"———"
With that thought lingering at the edge of his consciousness, Subaru looked down again at the scorpion's tail lying on the floor beyond the hole.
The tail that had fired stingers in a storm—but its mechanism was in a completely different dimension from the scorpion ecology Subaru knew. Naturally, the venomous stingers of the scorpions he was familiar with were never launched as projectiles, and they certainly didn't regenerate multiple times.
Above all, judging from the state of the corridor's destruction, those had not actually been physical stinger projectiles. —What had been fired were stinger-shaped concentrations of force.
In short, just like Beatrice's wall of light and Echidna's white heat rays, what the scorpion had unleashed could equally be called a kind of magical needle.
Of course, since it had been treated as a tail stinger, he wanted to believe that losing its tail meant it could no longer fire—but— "——?"
Thinking that far, Subaru noticed something amiss.
Studying the severed tail intently, he realized: the tail, severed near its base, had a strangely clean wound.
If it had been cut by Echidna's heat ray, the cut might be sharp, but there should have been scorch marks on the wound. Indeed, the surrounding corridor bore corresponding burn traces.
But the scorpion's severed tail had no such marks. Its cross-section was unnaturally clean, almost— "...Bea—"
Something was wrong. Subaru realized it. Too late.
At the edge of his vision, the tail lying on the floor gave a single, violent tremor.
—And in the next instant, light exploded.
※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ —There is a mechanism known as autotomy.
A phenomenon seen mainly in arthropods and lizards, commonly called "dropping one's tail"—the act of deliberately severing a part of one's own body to escape a predator.
This behavior is also observed in crab pincers and the like. In essence, something similar was what the scorpion-shaped mabeast had done.
When a lizard autotomizes its tail, the severed portion continues to wriggle on the spot for a while, drawing the predator's attention and allowing the main body to escape.
Of course, the tail itself possesses no will—it is nothing more than a reflexive action. But it serves as a concrete example that one can engineer a specific reflex into an autotomized body part.
If that were the case, could it also do this?
—Could a severed tail be given the role of a "landmine" that detonates when prey approaches, inflicting damage at that precise moment?
"Ugh, guh, uuuu...!"
Subaru groaned. Gasping through his throat, he dragged himself along, one agonizing step at the time.
The dragging wasn't due to fatigue—it was a physical problem. A deep gash on his left leg was bleeding profusely from the torn flesh, and running normally was simply out of the question.
And Subaru wasn't only dragging his own body.
"...Enough. Just... leave me. Go."
Saying that, the one being dragged along by the limping Subaru was Echidna, completely drained of strength.
Subaru had hooked his arms under both of her shoulders and was pulling her from behind, doing whatever he could to put distance between them and the blast site. If he didn't get away from the detonation zone, that mabeast would return.
—The scorpion mabeast that had left behind its explosive calling card and torn them both to shreds.
"—Shit, shit, shit, shit!"
He had let his guard down. He had absolutely let his guard down. His head had been soaking in lukewarm water, completely and utterly.
Because of what he had said to Beatrice, because Echidna's attitude had softened ever so slightly—a gap had opened in his heart, and he had fallen right into this.
He was pathetic. He was so pathetic that the sheer wretchedness of himself brought tears to his eyes.
Why, after being pushed into this many hardships, did he still fail to grow? Failed to change? Weren't trials and tribulations and crises meant to be opportunities for growth bestowed by God?
If hardship brought nothing but being beaten, bleeding, bones broken, soul shattered, and life snatched away—if that was all hardship offered—then what was the point of suffering at all?
"Natsuki-kun... that's... enough..."
"It's not enough! Nothing is enough!"
"...Rather than me... shouldn't you be more worried about... Beatrice?"
Echidna, eyes shut, murmured haltingly. Subaru had shouted back in response, but her following words made his breath catch.
Echidna's words were painful, but they were the truth. If Subaru were asked which mattered more—Beatrice or Echidna—then, as painful as it was, he would choose Beatrice.
The value of a life might be equal, but the value of a person was not. Relationships had priorities. If forced to choose, he would follow that ranking.
—But Beatrice wasn't here. She was gone. She had vanished.
The moment the scorpion mabeast's severed tail had detonated, Subaru had felt a chill of terror and pulled Beatrice close. If only he could have shielded her with his entire body.
But his actions were heartbreakingly slow, and his wish went unfulfilled.
The light had exploded, scattering countless needles in every direction—the mabeast's tail, weaponized. Subaru had been caught in the blast as well, but he had survived his injuries thanks to Beatrice.
The instant he had pulled her close, she had pressed herself against his torso, trying to shield his vitals. She had taken the brunt of the light's fury directly— "—!"
"...So that's how it is. That child really was... the worst kind of precious."
The unspoken end of that sentence was something Echidna, eyes closed, could clearly imagine. Subaru could not deny the sound of her sigh-like voice.
Bleeding, groaning in pain, Subaru had been unable to exchange final words with the girl dissolving like mist before him. —Only her last expression remained in his memory.
Those eyes—relieved, as though gazing at him with all the tenderness in the world.
That convenient, impossibly kind expression—was that really the last thing Beatrice ever showed?
If so, then a "Natsuki Subaru" who had made a vanishing girl wear such a face should simply vanish from this world without leaving a trace.
And so, by process of elimination, with Beatrice gone, Subaru dragged the still-breathing Echidna along in his escape.
As if seeking penance. As if seeking atonement. Or perhaps like a guilty man begging for punishment.
Even this, Echidna tried to stop, her breath fading. She had been so insistent, saying this was pointless, that she needed to return Anastasia's body to her.
And that was only natural. —Both of her legs had been blown off from the hips down.
"———"
She was barely bleeding anymore.
Dragging a body even lighter than Beatrice's, with almost no first aid administered, what kind of future could possibly await her?
"Ugh—!"
At the very moment that thought surfaced, Subaru's foot caught on rubble, and he collapsed. Echidna, who had been dragged behind him, was thrown onto the corridor floor and rolled over.
For a long moment, only the sound of two people cursing the world echoed through the passage.
"It hurts... aah, it hurts. Truly, a human body... hurts..."
"I'm... I'm sorry... sorry, sorry... No, that's not what I mean, I..."
"Don't apologize so dutifully, Natsuki-kun. Besides... even though I no longer have a single face left to show Anastasia... this pain is the only... repayment I can offer her."
"Repayment...?"
Still collapsed on the ground, unable to move, Subaru crept to Echidna's side, his eyes wavering with incomprehension at her words.
Repayment—what on earth did that mean? Seeing his questioning look, Echidna's mouth curved at the corner.
"Because... think about it, right?"
"If I returned this body to Anastasia now... she would be made to endure pain as if the world were ending, and the terror of death. ...That's hell. I'll be the one to bear it."
"Ah... uh..."
"I couldn't return this body to Anastasia, couldn't even help Julius. ...Falling into hell like this... suits me just fine."
Self-mockery and self-reproach were burning fiercely inside Echidna's heart—he could tell.
Her lifeless eyes were slowly drawing closer to her own death, beginning its countdown, and Subaru could sense that too.
Helpless, powerless, responsible for nothing, incapable of anything.
Full of regret, Echidna was dying. —Dying, and leaving Subaru behind.
"St—"
"Don't... think about making it easy for me... I'm fine... yes, this is fine..."
As Echidna's life ebbed and Subaru cried out in fear, she preempted him. But to Subaru, who could do nothing on instinct, her words offered a new choice.
—Make it easy. It was far too late for euthanasia as a course of action, but even so, shortening the time she spent in pain, helping to hasten her death—Subaru could do that much.
"———"
Watching Echidna from the corner of his eye as she drew shallow, labored breaths, Subaru forced his aching body upright and picked up a fragment of the ruined corridor. He tested its weight.
Something that fit in his palm—roughly the size of a fist. But for taking the life of a girl who was practically on her last breath, even this should suffice as a weapon.
"...Echidna."
"———"
Rubble in hand, Subaru approached Echidna and called her name.
There was no answer. She did not open her eyes. But she was not unconscious—he could tell from the slight tension in her cheek, the way her lips were pressed together.
She simply had no energy left to resist.
If Subaru raised the rubble and brought it down hard on her head, her life would end easily.
*"Crushing someone's head with a stone—I've never done that either, y'know."* A girl's sweet voice echoed in Subaru's mind, phantom-like. But this act was not for the purpose of reading the Book of the Dead.
Even if it might lead to that eventually, in this moment, that thought was nowhere in Subaru's mind.
This was a mercy killing—a headsman's blow to ease the passing of someone dying in agony.
If anyone had the right to take this life, then surely only this moment was sincere— It was the only—the only chance for atonement from Subaru, who had been unable to do anything, the only chance for Natsuki Subaru.
It was his only chance, and yet— "———"
His hand was trembling. Pain screamed from behind his eyelids, and his throat locked up, forgetting how to breathe.
Raise it. Bring it down. The simplest of motions. And yet, Subaru could not do it. His body refused to move, as if he had forgotten how.
"...Ah."
A ragged breath escaped. The rubble clattered to the corridor floor.
Defeated by his buckling knees, Subaru crumpled right there.
"...This..."
Was this all he was capable of? Even this, Natsuki Subaru couldn't do?
He couldn't even raise a weapon to ease the suffering of someone dying before his eyes—not even this hollow pretense.
Lip-service atonement. Convenience masquerading as guilt. If not that, then what was this?
"...Natsuki-kun."
"I..."
"For a mercy killing... you can't even... grip a stone..."
Echidna cracked her eyes open slightly, and her faint, pale blue gaze found the kneeling Subaru as she murmured those words. That breathless, feeble voice seemed to condemn Subaru's weakness, and it stole his breath.
But even as Subaru shrank before her, Echidna—improbably—let her lips soften and said: "...I'm sorry... for doubting you."
"———"
"———"
As though exhaling her last, she apologized.
Echidna apologized. She apologized for doubting Natsuki Subaru.
—And before he could even confirm the sincerity of those words, she died.
He had killed Meili, hidden the body, concealed the fact that he had lost his memory and played at ignorance, heaped suspicion upon suspicion, escaped from the ice cage he had been locked in, failed to fulfill the wish entrusted to him, been shielded by a girl who tried to save his heart, and in the end had been unable to so much as dirty his hands for the girl who lay dying before him. He had knelt in shame before his own wretchedness, and Echidna had apologized and died.
"———"
He had wanted to die.
He wanted to forget everything that had just happened and simply cease to exist.
He wanted the whole world to point their fingers at Natsuki Subaru and declare him deserving of death. He wanted to be sentenced to die. Subaru despised himself, believing he had committed crimes worthy of that fate.
He despaired.
Despaired.
※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ Despair was devouring Natsuki Subaru's heart.
"———"
He couldn't move. He didn't have the right to move. Even if he did, nothing good would come of it.
He had proven it. Natsuki Subaru had demonstrated his own incompetence—no, not incompetence. Incompetence would have been forgivable. Instead, he had proven himself something worse than that: a genuine plague upon others.
"———"
When despair nested in the heart, when the heart was killed, the soul was consumed before the body.
Once that happened, standing back up became impossible. Resisting anyone became impossible. When you understood—without the slightest possibility of denial—that you yourself were an unequivocal harm, it was only a natural conclusion.
He wanted to disappear. He wanted to vanish completely.
He should have made the decision sooner. Before this happened in another world. Before ever coming to a place like another world, he should have known.
Why is it that your very existence troubles the hearts of others?
Do you have even the slightest right to occupy any part of another person's heart? You wall stain. Dust gathered in the corner of a room. Maggots swarming on garbage. A scar left behind where it could always be seen—visible, indelible, an ever-present mark.
Natsuki Subaru, why won't you die?
If you die, you just start over? Who decided that? Who confirmed that it goes on forever? If once isn't enough, then die ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times.
Die until you vanish completely.
Die until your name disappears from every memory, until you can no longer affect anything, until no trace of your name, your existence, your imprint remains in anyone's heart.
—I love you.
Shut up. Disappear. Make it stop.
—I love you, I love you, I love you.
Be quiet. Stop talking to me. Stop preventing me from disappearing. I want to disappear, I want to disappear.
—I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you.
I want to die. I want to disappear. I want to be ground to dust. I don't want to leave any trace. I want to become something that never was. I want to erase my existence. I want to vanish from history. I want to disappear from memory. I want to disappear from recollection. I want to disappear from the girl who told me she wouldn't forget. I have no worth. I have no meaning. I can't leave anything behind. I shouldn't leave anything behind. Everything, all of it—this entire world—disappear. Be gone.
—I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you I love you I love you I love you.
Despair dominated Natsuki Subaru's heart, the world around him swallowed in black shadow, and the endless, hollow declarations of love cascaded toward the shape of a man crouched in filth, demanding his disposal.
If he were swallowed into that—would he be allowed to vanish?
Would he be sunk into a void beyond death? Would he be thrown into some dark, empty space beyond anyone's reach—a place with nothing, utterly convenient?
If he could die there, then he would— He would— Natsuki Subaru plunged into the depths of that all-consuming despair— "—That's enough."
—A voice, rang out.
A voice like a silver bell, one that denied the end of the world.
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