The moment consciousness returned, I couldn't perceive it.
Tinnitus roared in my ears like a downpour hammering them. My vision flickered between red and white in an alternating strobe, and the world tilted at a sickening, disorienting angle.
Sensation wouldn't reach my limbs. My throat was screaming as loud as it could—a raw, impossibly thick howl—from a pain like my organs were being wrung out.
I twisted my disobedient body, thrashed it, and used every part of me that could still move to convert the nameless fury surging up inside me into destruction.
I had no idea what was going on.
Where had the pain gone? Why was my consciousness so murky? Where were the wounds that had been consuming my entire body? Blood was draining. Life was draining. I was dying.
I don't want to die. I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die.
Pain, suffering, misery, sorrow, fear—I hated all of it. Every last thing.
I wanted to push it all away, but nothing else was within reach. So I surrendered to impulse, smashing, crushing, tearing, hurling, and flailing at every negative emotion my hands could find, trying to protect what was left of my heart.
"—!!"
Something was audible. Someone's voice.
Mixed in with my own beast-like howling, there was someone's voice, desperately clinging on.
The words didn't register. I couldn't understand them. I didn't want to understand them.
Listening was pointless. Listening would only hurt me. Listening wouldn't change anything. Nothing would change no matter what I heard.
And yet, gradually—so gradually—the world's colors grew clearer.
Blood returned to my fingertips. The sensations from my thrashing body began reaching my nerves properly.
My arms, thrown about wildly, had struck something hard time and again. My nails were split, the backs of my hands torn open—it looked like there was serious bleeding.
A sharp pain pierced through my brain, and my wailing lost just a fraction of its momentum.
And then I noticed. Clinging around my right upper arm, wrapping it in warmth, there was something soft.
Something similar was around my legs, too. Every time I had tried to bring both feet down to strike the floor, something small had thrown itself on top of them from above, pinning them in place.
Color returned to my vision. Before my eyes spread a white ceiling I had seen more than a few times before.
From the circulation in my blood and the weight pressing against my back, I realized I was lying on my back. The soft surface was the bed—I had been sprawled across it, limbs thrown out in every direction.
And the one who was physically restraining my thrashing arms and legs from that position— "Sir, sir. Have you finally calmed down?"
"Sir, sir. Are you done completely losing your mind?"
The instant those two familiar voices struck his ears, Subaru's brain stopped all other reasoning and chose to do only one thing: scream.
※※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ For Subaru, the morning of his first day at the Roswaal mansion—the fourth time overall—opened in the worst way imaginable.
Six times now, Subaru had died in this world and returned.
None of the deaths had been pleasant, and each time he had tasted the anguish of watching everything he'd gained slip through his fingers once more.
Pain and suffering never got easier with practice, and the loneliness and loss that welled up with each return were something no one could share.
Still, he had gritted his teeth and done nothing but press forward, living as hard as he could. He had sworn to never bend at the knee, to never lose that resolve.
But this time was incomparably worse than anything before.
The loss, the loneliness, the pain, the suffering—all of it carved into Subaru's heart, deeper and sharper, proportional to the bonds he had built over these past days.
There was no way he could stand. He didn't even have the will to try. He couldn't think of a single reason why he should. That was the state he was in.
"Okay, that's enough. The wound should be closed, but don't be too rough with yourself, okay? If it starts bleeding again, call me."
The girl sitting in the chair beside the bed smiled gently as she stroked the back of his right hand.
Her silver hair was tied back in a single bundle, and a pale blue light lingered in her palms—
Right after he had woken up and thrashed about, cutting his hands open, she had rushed in and was using healing magic to mend them.
In the room, only Subaru and Emilia were present.
The other two who had been there when he first woke up had taken one look at his ugly outburst, bowed their heads, and vanished without a word.
"I heard from
Hearing the names he didn't want to hear, Subaru jerked his head up as if spring-loaded.
His overreaction made Emilia's eyes widen slightly, but when she saw the turmoil written across his face, she pouted her lips.
"You were apparently feeling really down about it—saying you might have done something terrible. So when you see them next, you should say something to them, okay?"
"Something terrible, huh? Nah, nothing happened at all. ...Between me and those two, there was nothing."
His voice came out detached and listless, and the lingering malice in its undertones made Emilia's perfectly shaped brows draw together softly.
Seeing that, Subaru still couldn't bring himself to offer an apology or comfort.
Instead, what slipped out was a question that bordered on sarcasm.
"Hey, Emilia-tan... Don't you think I'm just in the way?"
"'Tan,' really? You..."
She flinched for an instant at the way he addressed her, showing the same rejection she always did—but Subaru's attitude in asking the question hadn't lost its seriousness for even a moment.
She was silent for a while, then prefaced with "Not really" before holding up a finger.
"In the way? That's ridiculous. Besides, Subaru, you saved my life. If I let the person who saved me just disappear without repaying that debt, I'd look pretty terrible, wouldn't I? So even if only for my own pride, I can't let you vanish until I've paid you back."
She rattled it off quickly, as though masking something with her words.
Subaru watched her intently, studying her every movement for any sign of falsehood, any reaction or gesture that might suggest she was hiding something.
"Oh, come on... seriously?"
Noticing himself watching her with such suspicion, Subaru couldn't hide his own disappointment and self-loathing as he murmured the words.
Hadn't Emilia just said it herself moments ago? If even a benefactor no longer felt that way about him, then that was the lowest thing a person could do.
Emilia was supposed to be the only oasis in this world where Subaru had no one to rely on—the one person whose heart he could entrust his to.
The possibilities that, in better circumstances, others might have felt the same way were now cruelly gone from his sight.
If he lost even his absolute trust in her now, then for Subaru it was no different from groping through pitch darkness with nothing but his own hands.
A thought suddenly crossed his mind.
What if he confided this despair in his chest—this cycle of repeating and retrying that he had been trapped in over and over—to her, of all people?
Come to think of it, Subaru had been flailing through every lethal crisis on his own, trying to handle everything by himself.
But things had reached their nadir. He could no longer afford the luxury of choosing the easy path—neither forward nor backward.
Then perhaps turning to a third party—someone he could trust—laying everything bare, and asking for help was the wisest move he could make.
As if fog had lifted, the anxiety and confusion clouding Subaru's mind scattered away.
Now that he had noticed it, he couldn't understand why he hadn't kept this option on the table. It was the most natural, obvious solution.
"Emilia-tan. There's something I want to tell you."
Lowering his voice, Subaru turned to face her.
She must have sensed the shift in atmosphere. Emilia's face tightened with concern, and she straightened in her chair, looking him directly in the eye.
Seeing himself reflected in those amethyst irises, Subaru slowly began by choosing his opening words.
Where should he start? With Return by Death? Or should he strip it all away and begin with the fact that he didn't even belong to this world?
It was the kind of story that would be laughed off, with a high chance of being taken as a joke. But she—she, if no one else—wouldn't dismiss his earnest plea so easily, would she?
That hope, that expectation, was everything holding Subaru together right now.
—I'll start with Return by Death. And if possible, I want you to lend me your strength.
Ashamed of his own shamelessness in asking another favor of the person who had already given him so much, Subaru drew a breath and formed his first words. That was where things would begin.
A situation muddled beyond hope, a situation where all he could do was throw in the towel—this was the opening of a light he had given up on finding.
That was what he had believed.
"————"
The very instant he tried to give voice to a word—tried to form the sound—it came.
Unease. Receiving it, Subaru hesitated over his first words in confusion.
Something was wrong. He realized the reason almost immediately: sound. Sound had vanished. From the world, it had abruptly disappeared. The pounding of his own heartbeat that he'd heard just moments ago. Emilia's faint breathing in front of him. The quiet color of the morning breeze slipping through the slightly open window as it circulated through the room.
All of it had been completely erased from the world.
A world without sound—the word "silence" was too lukewarm a descriptor for this absolute severance. Even the ringing in his ears was wiped away. Even the sound of blood flowing through his body was inaudible. It was an unquestionable state of total, absolute silence.
Just being subjected to it made chills race across his entire body, and an unbearable discomfort rampaged through his organs, raking them apart.
And that was only the beginning.
—What is this?
From a world where sound had vanished, next, all movement ceased.
Time stretched out. An instant became eternity. One second later became a distant, unreachable point far across the timeline.
Before his eyes, Emilia's expression remained frozen in that serious look. Her eyelids didn't so much as twitch. Her lips stayed tightly pressed together.
Standing in that composed posture, Emilia was denied her next move for eternity. And Subaru was the same—the thoughts he had been about to voice would never reach anyone, not if things stayed this way. Not ever.
Sound gone. Time stopped. Subaru's heartfelt wish was denied.
A phenomenon beyond comprehension, arriving without warning. His body, cut off from his nerves, couldn't move a fraction. Subaru could do nothing but let his thoughts race in bewilderment.
Incomprehensible. Incomprehensible. Incomprehensible. Incomprehensible. Incomprehensible—.
He had no mental margin left to even speculate on the reason.
He could only cry out in lamentation within his skull, battered by wave after wave of incomprehensible territory.
And the end of that sensation arrived with utter abruptness.
—What?
The question surfaced in his mind, and Subaru tilted his head in his imagination alone.
There—within his fixed, unmoving field of vision—it appeared, as if born from nothing.
A black haze. For Subaru, who couldn't even blink freely, its appearance was the very definition of abrupt.
It hovered there, as though it had cut its way into his consciousness.
But what was truly peculiar was that only this black haze was slowly changing shape.
In a world where everything was frozen in stasis, only the black haze shifted form at a leisurely pace. Its mass was roughly what two hands could cradle, and its outline grew clearer bit by bit—it took a good dozen seconds of subjective time before it finally settled into its intended shape.
To Subaru, it looked like a black palm.
The transformed haze had taken the shape of an arm.
Five fingers. A length reaching only to just past the elbow—a floating, black arm.
And then, as if testing, the fingertips trembled—and with unmistakable intent, it moved toward Subaru.
Unable to do a single thing, Subaru could only watch, and his senses instinctively drew a sharp breath.
The black fingertips slipped forward, unimpeded by anything, and slid smoothly into Subaru's chest. And Subaru felt it—clearly—the sensation of those fingertips stroking his internal organs.
They touched his viscera, grazed his ribs, and pressed further inward, until they reached the most vital organ in the human body.
—Hey, wait.
A voiceless voice. A body that refused to obey. Unable to move a single inch, understanding nothing of what the black palm intended, Subaru was consumed by terror.
—This is dead serious— Before he could finish the thought in his chest, an impact shook Subaru to his very core.
Could anyone explain why it hurts to have your organs damaged? The answer was simple: you didn't need to think about it at all.
In that moment, the excruciating pain that struck Subaru needed no justification.
It was just brutally, purely the pain of his heart being crushed without mercy—and it continued to batter Subaru like a fist.
He couldn't make a sound. He wasn't even allowed to shudder from the pain.
No means of numbing it, only the agony of knowing nothing but pain—who in this moment could possibly understand what Subaru was going through?
Only agony existed there. And it brought with it something beyond mere agony, leaving Subaru a tearfully welcome warning.
The pain tore Subaru's very existence apart. His consciousness was crumpled and distorted as if handled carelessly. His thoughts were shredded beyond recognition— "—Subaru?"
"—Huh?"
"Subaru, are you okay? You suddenly went quiet—I was worried, you know."
She placed her hand on his knee. That silver-haired beauty gazed at him with worry swimming in her eyes.
The moment he registered it, Subaru let out a long, relieved breath. Then he confirmed that his fingers moved at his will, and reaching up to touch his own chest, he felt from the outside that his heart was beating steadily.
His body could move. His voice worked. His heart felt no pain.
But the terror was carved in.
His fingertips trembled. His voice refused to leave his body. He remained hunched and small.
By as much hope as he had gained, the reality that thing had brought him left Subaru in despair.
Just the thought of mustering courage again to face it—just that fleeting idea at the corner of his mind—and Subaru's peripheral vision conjured the illusion of a black haze sweeping past.
And finally, Subaru had no choice but to admit it.
Overwhelmed by despair, he pressed his palms over his face and shrank into himself on the bed. Emilia looked at him with confusion and spoke up.
"Wh-what's wrong? Since a while ago, something's really off. If something's—"
"—I have a favor to ask."
Cutting off her worried voice, Subaru raised a palm toward her.
He couldn't look up. He must have been making a terrible face. In this state of mind, he couldn't trust himself not to say something terrible if he looked at her.
Summoning every ounce of self-control, Subaru produced just a single sentence.
All the words he had wanted to say, all the feelings he had wanted her to hear, all the passion he had desperately wanted to confess—he threw every bit of it away.
"Emilia-tan."
"Y-yeah. Anything. Just tell me."
"Don't—don't pay any attention to me anymore."
Weakly, he said only that, and without even looking at her reaction, he collapsed backward onto the bed.
His hand drifted unconsciously to his chest, feeling the faint pulse through the thin fabric, and the reality that had been forced upon him became starkly, unmistakably clear.
—He was not allowed to confess.
—Subaru could do nothing but keep struggling alone.