How many times now had his consciousness been swallowed by blankness?
Before a scene that defied comprehension, Subaru stood rooted to the spot, robbed of words—just as he had been so many times before.
He had been broken. Again and again. By now, wasn't he entitled to let out at least one word of complaint? Wasn't it about time someone saved him?
He had watched tragedy unfold, over and over, repetition upon repetition.
Lying on the bed directly in front of the standing Subaru was a blue-haired girl.
Her lifeless face was pallid, her closed eyes would never open again. She was probably wearing sleepwear—a thin nightgown—and despite the grim circumstances, it suited her with a girlishness that contrasted pointedly with the composed impression she usually gave.
It struck Subaru, almost in passing, that this was the first time he had ever seen her in anything other than her maid uniform. And the first alternative outfit he laid eyes on would be her burial shroud.
"Why…
He murmured, threading his fingers into her hair, and bowed his head.
Facing a situation beyond his understanding, his mind spun its wheels uselessly, and the resulting headache was excruciating. Sleep deprivation and exhaustion surely played their part too. Thinking felt unbearably laborious.
In every repetition—a full four times now—she had killed him three of those times. For Subaru, she had been the person he needed to guard against above all others.
Roswaal, who might well give the order to silence him, and
That was precisely why he had kept them at arm's length, why he had even talked the reluctant
Making it to the morning of the fifth day had been welcome news, but— "How did things end up so completely reversed…?"
Subaru was supposed to be the one Rem was trying to kill. It was definitively not the other way around, and he could think of no reason why Rem would be killed.
In a flash, Subaru stepped forward to check whether she was truly dead. The girl laid on the bed had her hands folded over her chest, and someone had tidied her death mask into a peaceful expression.
He reached out, about to touch the unmoving body. But— "Don't you dare touch her!"
His hand was slapped away by a forcefully swung arm, and Subaru let out a small groan as he looked up.
Across the bed, Ram clung to Rem, tears streaming down her face. She continued to cry without any sign of stopping as she whispered: "Don't touch… don't touch my sister, Rem."
The words carried absolute, unconditional rejection.
Having hurled that single statement at him like a blow, Ram clutched Rem's body again, weeping silently and murmuring softly. It was the sight of a devoted, heartrending mother reading a bedtime story to her sleeping child.
Yet despite this pitiable display from the elder sister, there was no sign of the younger stirring in rebuke.
The pale profile. The bloodless lips. The body whose heartbeat had stopped.
Seeing them all up close, Subaru finally accepted the reality.
Rem was truly dead.
"Probably something to do with magic, I'd say. Though it feels more like cursing than magic, doesn't it?"
Roswaal, who had followed Subaru out of the room on unsteady steps, offered his conjecture from beside the door.
He raised a finger, his indigo hair framing an expression that was slightly tighter than his usual loose, idle look.
"The cause of death was wasting. While she slept, her life force was sapped, her heartbeat gradually drawn away, and her soul's flame was gently—gently—blown out, as if she were simply falling asleep."
At the word "cursing," Subaru looked up.
He had heard this theory before. And he recognized the cause of death Roswaal described.
It was precisely the kind of anomaly he had experienced during his second death. If he assumed his first death had been caused by the same thing, then Rem's cause of death this time was identical to his own first—and indirectly, his second.
But— "I was under the impression that the magic that weakened me was Rem's doing."
Weakness by magic, skull caved in by an iron ball—that had been his second death.
Recalling that scenario, no one could blame Subaru for assuming it was the same culprit. Yet Rem had actually been killed by cursing, which meant Subaru had now survived both the effects of the curse and the baptism of the iron ball.
In other words— "Cursing and Rem are separate…? What about a cooperative arrangement?"
In the case of his second death, he had been weakened by the curse and then attacked. It was natural to assume they were working together. But how did the current case fit in?
A falling-out between partners? Subaru shook his head at the thought. For starters, he had no idea who the curse-user was. By all logic, the curse-user had to be someone close to the mansion. Otherwise, they would have no opportunity to come into contact with Rem. And more importantly, they had to be someone whose motives and access overlapped with Rem's actions.
Considering what had been said in the third world, Rem had been trying to kill Subaru in order to serve Roswaal. Indirectly, it also served to eliminate an obstacle to
And that underlying premise—the thing that had psychologically cornered Subaru into believing there was no escape—was now thrown into massive upheaval by this connection to the curse-user.
He couldn't construct a chain of logic that satisfied him. Rubbing his chin, Subaru's irritation was barely containable. The accumulated fatigue meant the blood flow in his head was at its worst right now.
He knew full well that no useful conclusion was going to materialize, but Subaru had nothing to do except think. And so— "Could it be that they're not even cooperating—that it's a completely separate case…?"
What if there was no relationship at all between Rem and the curse-user?
First time: Subaru was targeted by the curse-user and died. Second time: Subaru fell victim to the curse-user's spell, and Rem killed him for some reason. Third time: pure loyalty-driven rampage—Rem killed Subaru. The curse-user had no involvement.
And this fourth time— "Because I did nothing, Rem became the curse-user's target…?"
He couldn't trace the causal chain. For that matter, he had no idea why he himself was being targeted by some curse-user. Or perhaps the curse-user's aim was everyone in the mansion—but if so, he couldn't see why lower-ranking people like himself and Rem would be prioritized over key figures like Roswaal and Emilia.
Ultimately, this was a dead end as long as the curse-user's identity remained unknown. His thinking hit a wall on all sides and stalled, and Subaru clicked his tongue in frustration, cutting off his thoughts. Just then— "My, my. You seem to be wrestling with this quite seriously, don't you?"
From a slightly elevated vantage, Roswaal looked down at Subaru and made that observation. His mismatched eyes—one blue, one yellow—were narrowed as if appraising Subaru's every thought, and the unpleasant feeling of having his inner mind laid bare drew Subaru's brows together.
Perhaps Roswaal noticed his discourtesy. He immediately straightened up, inclined his head toward Subaru, and said: "My apologies. I'm a bit on edge myself, after all. When you think of a beloved servant being put through something like this, well…"
Though his words were apologetic, Roswaal's demeanor did not soften in any genuine sense. He crossed his arms, tapping them lightly with his fingers as he continued: "Roast over fire, drown in water, carve with wind, bury in earth. I'd say it would take roughly that level of retaliation to constitute an adequate reply for this. Forgive me for asking something so indelicate, but… esteemed guest, is there anything that rings a bell?"
There was not a trace of jest in the low voice that delivered those words.
It was a raw, unvarnished threat spoken aloud, and Roswaal fixed Subaru with a probing stare. Subaru became suddenly, painfully aware of how dire his situation was and agonized over how to respond. But before he could open his mouth, another voice cut in.
"You were warned to stay on guard last night. You said that yourself, didn't you, Subaru?"
Looking up, Subaru's widened eyes met a gray cat moving its short arms as though washing its face—
Subaru was rendered speechless by the unexpected remark. Puck tilted his head.
"Emotionally and out of genuine gratitude, I'd very much like to side with you. But if I let that priority cloud my judgment of the truth, there's going to be a kid who doesn't get a fair deal."
Puck turned his black eyes toward the room beyond and rubbed his pink nose with a paw.
His manner was as cheerful as ever, but perhaps Rem's death did weigh on him. He shifted slightly, moving less than usual.
"Lingering attachment and unresolved doubts mean the soul won't be saved—it falls into demonhood. That's heartbreaking both as a spirit in general and as someone who spent no small amount of time with that girl."
He shook his small head, made clear he had said what he intended to say, and curled his body into a ball again. Beatrice, who had been silently watching him rest in his palm, was also staring at Subaru without a word.
What emotions lay behind that gaze—he who had known Beatrice as such an expressively lively girl could not even read it in his current state.
"…Subaru."
Emilia tugged at his sleeve, her voice uncertain, her glistening eyes turned toward him as though imploring him with everything she had.
*If you know anything at all.* That single, unspoken plea conveyed it all.
On one hand, Subaru wanted to throw his entire soul into answering her plea. On the other, the impulse to push her away when she clung to him was equally genuine.
*If you know anything at all*—everyone said it so lightly.
But if that were true, it was Subaru who should have been screaming it at the top of his lungs. If someone truly understood the truth of this situation, he wanted them to step forward right now. He wanted them to slam down every last one of his mountainous questions and drag him out of this dead-end alley with no exit.
Yet in reality, no such conveniently omniscient mastermind appeared, and the meaning behind the four pairs of eyes trained on Subaru did not change one bit.
The warning he had given Puck with good intentions had backfired spectacularly this time. Even Puck, who knew Subaru was hiding something, had likely grown distrustful. And Emilia, who shared such a deep bond with Puck, could hardly be expected not to harbor significant suspicions of her own.
He had cycled through loops, struggling each time to make things better. But every action only made things worse, dragging him back to a situation more dire than he could have imagined. Surrounded on all four sides—how many times would he have to repeat this before he could feel the same anguish Subaru felt?
"Subaru."
Emilia called his name. Clearly. Deliberately.
Her insistence on speaking his name was proof that she could not dismiss her doubts. Even as he felt a pang of sorrow at her perfectly natural reaction, Subaru thought: In this state of near-total ignorance, how could he possibly say anything to satisfy them? He supposed they would be disappointed in Subaru for not knowing anything either.
Muddled, incoherent, tangled thoughts.
He wished he could just speak them aloud and be done with it—and at that very instant— The world's stagnation and the black haze—it came as though triggered by his resignation, once again feeding on his despair to erode reality.
He lost his power of speech. No—his lips, which would have produced words, did not so much as tremble.
Naturally, his hands, feet, eyes, and tongue would not move either. Even the air was severed from the world. Sound and motion drained away, and in the revival of an absolute space of silence and stillness, Subaru was rendered literally speechless.
It was the same unreasonable phenomenon that had forcibly blocked him from telling Emilia about Return by Death.
The black haze moved faster and more gracefully than before, forming a dark arm. Where previously it had extended from the wrist to the elbow, this time it materialized with the faint outline of an upper arm.
As before, the arm showed no hesitation as it slipped into the motionless Subaru's chest. It brushed softly over his organs and ribcage until it reached his heart— And in that instant, his consciousness was blown apart, and a pain that nearly killed his psyche tore through his entire body.
"Subaru!?"
Hearing Emilia's anguished, grief-stricken voice, Subaru realized he had returned to reality.
He was clutching his chest, drenched in sweat from his forehead, on his knees and gasping for air.
He raised a weak hand to reassure the worried Emilia, then reflected on what had just occurred.
When he had tried to tell Emilia about Return by Death, that black haze had intervened as a warning to stop him.
If it had appeared this time for the same purpose— "Because it can't be explained without touching on the contents of the loops…?"
At the very least, given his state of mind just now, Subaru couldn't imagine he had successfully deflected any persistent questioning. But if that was in fact the case, then this situation was the worst it could possibly be.
Subaru, who wanted to pour out everything inside him, and a group who wanted to excavate everything inside Subaru—for the black haze, there could be no greater stage to perform on.
Unending questions meant unending torment. The instant he realized this, Subaru trembled with a fear of that unbearable pain and stumbled backward.
That action— "If you know something, I will not let you escape."
—seemed an unforgivable transgression to the girl who had collapsed in tears inside the room.
In the next instant, a sudden gust slammed the door on its hinges, and the shockwave smashed into Subaru's bangs. He squeezed his eyes shut against the natural gale, and immediately after— "Guh—!"
A sharp pain lanced across his cheek. Instinctively, Subaru pressed his palm to his face. What his fingers felt was the slick, warm trickle of blood seeping from a fresh wound.
Realizing the injury had been caused by that gust of wind, Subaru turned his shocked gaze toward the back of the room.
The peach-haired girl was gently stroking her sister lying on the bed with one hand, while the other was extended toward him—and she was glaring at Subaru with fury blazing in her eyes.
"If you know something, spill every last drop of it."
"Wait, Ram! That's—"
He caught himself before uttering the words *I can't.* The instant he said them, any chance of resolving this situation would vanish forever. But even holding them back, he had no solution to offer, no words that could break through.
He did not know what would trigger that warning again.
The fear of that pain stripped him of the ability to make the right judgment about Ram.
As a result, his words trailed off into nothing, and he failed to quell her momentum.
To Subaru's silence, Ram answered with yet another warning—a gust of wind.
If a banal description were permissible, it was a phenomenon one might call "blades of wind."
A magic related to wind, most likely. The wind she raised whipped up a kamaitachi that flashed with the sharpness of a cutting edge, slicing through the wall and door along its path to Subaru, and was about to deliver a blow that would tear his cheek open just as the last one had— Then it simply vanished.
Both Subaru and Ram gasped in shock. And between the two of them— "A promise is something I keep."
It was the girl with cream-colored hair who now stood before Subaru.
Beatrice lightly waved the palm she had raised, having casually dismissed Ram's kamaitachi without showing any particular pride in the act.
"While this person is within the mansion, Beatrice will guarantee his safety. I suppose."
"Beatrice-sama…!"
Ram bit her lip in indignation at Beatrice's bored, offhand declaration.
Ignoring her reaction, Beatrice looked up at the tall figure standing beside her.
"Roswaal. Your servant is committing an act of violence against your guest. As master of this mansion, how do you intend to handle that, I wonder?"
At the question directed at him, Roswaal's brow furrowed for just an instant. But he quickly recovered his usual composure, closed one eye, and shrugged.
"It is indeed a most regrettable matter. If it were possible, I would welcome him as a guest again immediately. The moment he bares his heart and lightens his load, I would do so without hesitation."
"…This human was in Beatrice's Forbidden Library last night. So he should have nothing to do with this affair."
"What matters now is no longer where he was. Beatrice, you should understand that well enough."
The negotiation collapsed. Roswaal shrugged and turned both palms upward. In them, multiple points of multicolored light suddenly appeared.
Even Subaru, who possessed zero knowledge of magic, could tell this was a state in which concentrated magical power had become visible.
Red, blue, yellow, and green—four pale colors glowed. He had no idea just how far beyond the norm this was.
At Roswaal's display, Beatrice wrinkled her small, adorable nose.
"As always, a clever little striver. A modest amount of talent, a bit more effort than others, and a touch of fortunate birth and mentorship—and you think that's enough to escape the trap of being a jack-of-all-trades, do you?"
"And you're as harsh as ever, of course. Though I confess, spending your days in a room where time stands still—I've wondered now and then how different you truly are from us, who walk ceaselessly forward. Whether I'd like to put that to the test… well, it wouldn't be honest to say the thought never crossed my mind."
Between the two of them, magical power surged, creating the illusion that the very air was warping.
Unknowingly, the two principals of this confrontation had escalated their fighting spirit, leaving Subaru—whose presence was the entire cause of the dispute—utterly sidelined.
He had no idea why it had come to this. But the fact that he could not utter a single word to stop them was yet another reality he could only grit his teeth against.
"My, my. To think you'd go so far to protect him. You must have taken quite a fancy to him."
"If you must make jokes, confine them to your hobbies, Roswaal. Beatrice's ideal is Nii-sama—himself. That human simply doesn't compare in terms of adorableness or fluffiness, I suppose."
While Roswaal amplified his four visible colors of magical power, Beatrice stood her ground with composed ease, taking no particular action.
Yet Subaru, standing close enough to see, could sense that an overwhelming phenomenon was occurring around the girl who appeared to be doing nothing at all—a distortion in space itself.
That was merely the ambient leakage of gathered power. The mere thought of what that directed force could actually do sent a chill down his spine.
"Why go to such lengths, I wonder?"
"A contract is absolute. If I were to break it, Beatrice would cease to be Beatrice. Fidelity to a contract takes precedence above all else."
In response to Roswaal's sigh, Beatrice continued: "If you exploited your contract with Beatrice to engineer this situation, that would make you quite the scoundrel, wouldn't it?"
"I never had any such intention—!"
Casting a sidelong glance at Subaru, Beatrice turned her emotionless eyes away.
What Subaru had asked of her was solely to treat the phenomena tied to his deaths as dangerous. He had never—never—wished for a situation like this.
"It doesn't matter! None of it matters!"
Ram stamped her foot, cutting through the exchange.
Under the gaze of everyone present, she clenched the hem of her skirt.
"Don't stand in my way. Let me through. Rem's killer… if you know anything, tell me everything. Save me… save Rem…"
A heartbroken plea—but Subaru had no words to offer in return.
His silence was met with a blade forged of rage and disappointment. But once again, it did not reach Subaru, blocked before it could land.
"I'm sorry, Ram. But I'm choosing to trust Subaru."
It was Emilia who stepped up beside Beatrice, taking a stance to hold Ram at bay.
She turned her palm toward Ram, Puck perched on her shoulder, and walked toward Subaru. Slightly bowing her head as though searching for words: "Subaru, please. …If you can save Ram, save Rem—tell me everything?"
At the tenderness embedded in her voice, Subaru felt his own smallness and was ashamed.
Even now, with things having reached this point, Emilia was still trying to stand on his side. In this loop, where he had shown nothing but a poor attitude and still refused to speak about what truly mattered.
And he felt shame at his own weakness, unable to return even a single thing to her kindness.
"Sorry—"
The word hung in the air as Subaru let himself retreat, putting distance between them.
For an instant, Emilia's hand reached out to stop him. But before it could reach him, it was redirected to parry a blade of wind that had been launched his way—and in the end, no one in that room could halt Subaru's feet.
"Subaru—!"
Breaking free of the voice calling after him, Subaru tore down the corridor without a second thought. Behind him, he could feel the clash of magical power erupting—but he did not have the courage even to look back.
Despite the fact that Emilia had agonized over him so deeply, Subaru did not have the courage to face that terror.
He was weak. Unforgivably, hopelessly fragile. And so, trampling every kindness and goodwill beneath his feet, he fled—selfish to the last.
He no longer knew what to do.
Where to go, what to think—none of it.
Only— "I will absolutely kill you!!"
From behind him came the scream of a girl tearing her throat raw.
Half her being lost, she shrieked a cry of vengeance that could rend the soul—and that alone pursued him.
Fleeing, fleeing, fleeing—hands pressed over his ears, head shaking, voiceless sounds tearing from his throat, Subaru threw everything away and ran.
He kept running.