Anxiety — the kind that made him want to claw at his throat — had seized his entire body.
His feet were moving forward, his heart was reaching toward the future, his will was driving him toward his goal, and yet he could feel something nameless and terrifying creeping closer from behind, gnawing at his heels.
The nausea was excruciating. A ringing roar blared through his ears. His heart kept pounding as though it would spill right out of his chest, and the legs that kicked against the earth were so feeble and unreliable that, had he not been conscious of them, they might have crumbled away at the toes.
How had things gotten like this?
Everything was supposed to work out. Everything was supposed to be heading in the right direction.
It was just bad luck. The timing hadn't lined up.
If he tried, he could do it. If the task was clear, he could move forward without hesitation.
He knew what he had to do. All he had to do was save
If she had been cornered into a desperate situation, then pulling her out of it was Subaru's role.
That was how it had always been. He would do the same this time, and everything would work out. She would have to reconsider her opinion of him. She would see that she truly needed him, and she would keep him by her side.
He didn't want to be abandoned. He didn't want to be left behind. He didn't want to be looked down on. He didn't want to be written off.
With desperate feelings, with strained willpower, with death-defying resolve, Subaru chewed on those thoughts.
His breath ran out. His lungs burned. His overtaxed body groaned, and he could feel every unhealed part of his flesh screaming. But there was no way he could stop.
He had to run — even one second sooner, even the tiniest fraction faster.
Otherwise, he would be caught. Caught by that shapeless something closing in from behind, and devoured whole.
He didn't want that. That was the one thing he refused. Right now, that was the only thing that terrified him.
He wanted to see Emilia. He wanted her to smile at him. Why had
He should have stayed in that place. Always.
If only Subaru's time had remained buried in those days at the manor forever.
Coming to the
Every moment he had spent there was the cause of this present misery.
Reinhard,
Rot in hell. Suffer. Taste every last drop of pain and die.
If only they hadn't existed, Subaru wouldn't have lost himself.
If he could go back to the manor, reconcile with Emilia, and return to those heart-swelling days, he would gladly throw everything away.
There was nothing left now. Nothing remained.
Everything had slipped through his fingers. So now, he was going to pick it all back up.
For that. For that. For that. He would keep running.
Enduring the agony that felt like his lungs were being seared, the regret that threatened to split his heart apart, the ringing that threatened to swallow his consciousness whole — Subaru ran.
Over and over, resentment and regret cycled through his mind like a broken record.
How much time had passed as he kept running toward the goal with such a negative outlook?
Around him, the gaps between the trees that had been thickly clustered suddenly began to widen, and signs of human activity appeared — paths carved through nature.
Gradually, the ground beneath his feet took on the feel of a surface that had been packed down by repeated footfalls. Startled, Subaru raised his head and noticed a gentle upward slope. He couldn't help but tug the corners of his mouth upward.
He had wandered, in a daze, onto a familiar road.
There were no landmarks, and to anyone else it might have looked like just another stretch of forest path, no different from before.
But to Subaru, who had been running desperately in search of any change, who had traveled this road several times, he recognized it for what it was: the end of this endless green labyrinth.
He had not reached the manor.
Just before it — right in front of Subaru, beyond the slope — lay the village nearest to the manor.
Almost without thinking, his mind — which until now had been crowded with nothing but the faces of the manor's residents — began filling with the people he had grown close to during those days.
The overly familiar children, the villagers who were strangely lacking in any sense of caution. Eccentrics who had laughed off his otherworldly knowledge as absurd and accepted it at face value.
Nostalgia washed over him so fiercely that he thought he might cry.
He didn't even know why he had forgotten. Subaru's place to return to wasn't limited to the manor. There were still places that would warmly welcome him.
There, too, his value as Subaru remained.
That village was something Subaru had saved. A village that might have vanished without him. It was his accomplishment. There was no greater proof of the results of his actions.
His haven was just within sight, and remembering it made Subaru's legs surge even faster.
Beyond the slope, past the screen of trees, white smoke rose into the early morning sky — the symbol of daily life.
Cooking, perhaps, or boiling water. Maybe it came from a blacksmith or metalworker's workshop. Either way, it was proof that someone was there.
Right now, that was enough.
He wanted someone who knew him, someone who would accept him, to call out his name. He wanted them to do it warmly, with friendship, to prove that he was allowed to be here.
He sprinted. He charged uphill. The top of the slope drew near, and the base of the white smoke came into view. He reached the crest. Sweat trailing down his forehead suddenly dripped into his eyes, and Subaru wiped it away irritably before looking down at the village with a lighter heart.
— And then, Subaru was finally caught by the nightmare that had been pursuing him from behind.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * When he burst into the entrance of the village, the first thing Subaru did was let his gaze wander in search of the first villager he could find — and then he noticed something wrong, and his brow furrowed.
The moment he stopped running, the accumulated toll of his exertion crashed down on his cardiopulmonary system all at once.
Gasping for breath, spitting out saliva and phlegm, he braced his hands on his knees and doubled over, trying to recover his strength. Of course, he kept his eyes raised the entire time.
At first glance, the village didn't seem to have anything out of the ordinary.
And yet, he could feel that something was clearly wrong.
The early morning air in the village was crisp and pleasantly taut, the kind that poured clarity into a freshly-woken mind. And yet, for some reason, he couldn't sense a single human presence anywhere.
He crossed his arms, brooded for a moment, and then realized with an "Oh."
Having run through the night, Subaru had lost track — but it was still that early in the morning when very few villagers had begun their day.
So perhaps no one had come outside yet to start their daily work.
That thought satisfied him as an explanation for the emptiness, and with that settled, he headed toward the source of the white smoke rising into the sky to confirm what it was.
There was no smoke without fire, and wherever smoke rose, someone's hand had to be involved. If he went that way, he would surely encounter someone.
But that expectation, too, fell flat. Subaru met no one.
When he reached the edge of the village where the white smoke was rising, no one was there.
All that remained was a feeble fire producing the smoky haze, and no matter how he looked around, there was no sign of whoever had started it.
This time, it was no longer a vague unease. A clear, distinct anxiety enveloped Subaru.
For a different reason than exhaustion, his breathing quickened and his heartbeat began to accelerate again. Prodded by those reactions, Subaru could no longer hold back and pounded roughly on the door of a nearby house.
No response. His dread sharpened, and he shoved the unlocked door open and forced his way inside. But it, too, was completely empty. No one.
"Maybe the whole family went out to work the fields," he muttered, cracking a hollow joke through his parched grin as he stepped back outside. Without breaking stride, he moved to the next house. This time he skipped even the courtesy of knocking and invaded the interior. A scream — the resident would hurl accusations at this intruder — but none of that happened. This house was empty too.
His ability to understand the situation was finally beginning to break down.
That nameless chill he felt was terrifyingly similar to what the black-clad figures he had encountered in the forest had given him. Subaru, beside himself with desperation, chased after any trace of a person he could find.
But no matter how wildly he ran, no matter how hoarsely he called out, no matter how thoroughly he ransacked every spot where children might be playing hide-and-seek, he couldn't find a single soul.
Silence had fallen here too, and Subaru was left behind by the world.
He dropped his spent body to the ground with a heavy thud and let out a long, deep breath.
No matter how many times he encountered an incomprehensible situation, he never got used to it. Of course, an incomprehensible situation that was also unjust and unreasonable was equally terrible.
The reality pressing in on him from both sides was beyond anything that words like "besieged on all fronts" or "a difficult road ahead" could express.
Suddenly, a sharp pain rang through his skull, and Subaru reflexively pressed his hand to his forehead. But the instant he did, a foul discomfort spread across his skin.
He looked down — when he had fallen, his right hand had been on the ground, and it had been thoroughly coated in the mud and grime of the wet surface. Unaware, he had smacked it right into his own face.
The sensation of reddish-brown mud streaming down the bridge of his nose was the height of unpleasantness. Subaru wiped it away with his clean left arm, then shot a glare of pure resentment at the ground that had caused his right hand's condition.
He had been concerned about it since his run, but this morning the ground was particularly muddied and treacherous. The village entrance and the area around the rising smoke were the worst — he had nearly lost his footing several times while searching for villagers.
He had tried to sit down on a spot that looked less muddy, but judging by his right hand, his backside had probably taken serious damage too. Once he became aware of it, he felt a creeping dampness seeping into his lower abdomen, and an even more extravagant sigh escaped him.
I really am turning into an idiot, he thought.
And well he might. He had been traveling under brutal conditions for over a day and night, getting almost no sleep. He had only managed to stomach something like emergency rations — tasteless fare that Otto had shared with him — so it was hard to say he had eaten enough. On top of that, while conscious, his mind had been whirling ceaselessly in worry over Emilia. If he weren't exhausted after all that, Subaru wouldn't be human — he'd be some kind of ultra-high-performance artificial intelligence.
Another pointless joke surfaced in his mind, and once again Subaru let a hollow laugh cross his face.
He shook off his backside, reluctantly scraped the grime from his right hand by pressing it against a wall, and then turned to resume his search of the village. This was his last desperate flail.
He had called out this hard, run this much, and they still wouldn't show their faces. There was probably no one left in the village. Where had they gone, and why — he couldn't determine any of that, but once he accepted that much, there was nothing to do but move on.
He circled the entire village one last time and found himself back at the edge where the white smoke had been rising. It was the only place where it felt as though time was still flowing, buffeted by the wind — the only thing that seemed to ease his loneliness of being left behind by the world itself.
When he arrived at the spot, the lingering white smoke had finally lost nearly all its heat and was on the verge of disappearing.
Feeble wisps of smoke were battered by the breeze, swaying helplessly left and right before dispersing into nothing. Watching them, Subaru felt a pang of sorrow, and he surveyed the area with eyes that held no expectation.
But still, there was no sign of anyone. The search had apparently been in vain.
He let out a sigh he had lost count of long ago and kicked at the ground in irritation. His toe gouged the muddy earth, and the scattered mud delivered the final blow to the last of the white smoke.
The faint, dying whisper of the extinguished fire tickled his eardrums, and the smoke, its source severed, vanished into the sky. After the last wisp was swept away by the wind, nothing remained.
Subaru slowly lowered his gaze, watching the white smoke disappear.
With the smoke gone, this place was no different from anywhere else — a space frozen in time, severed from the world. There was nothing left here to hold Subaru's attention.
Only the village chief, who had been producing the smoke, lay crumpled on the ground.
Scratching his head, he looked away from the body and surveyed the surroundings. A crew-cut young man had been flung against the wall and lay sprawled on his back, a weapon jutting from his chest, the copious blood pooling beneath him staining the earth red.
Inside the first house he had entered, he now noticed a middle-aged couple collapsed in a heap near the corner of the room right by the entrance.
The next house, and the house after that — Subaru found none of the people he had been searching for. All that remained were husks, robbed of all dignity and violated of their lives like rags.
The number of corpses was staggering, and as he surveyed them, Subaru searched for some sign of life. He kept calling out, hoping someone, anyone, would call his name back.
But no matter how many times he circled the village, his wish was never granted.
There was nothing here that Subaru wanted. He understood only that much. Throwing away every other understanding, Subaru abandoned his search of the village and headed for the path to the manor.
He had made a pointless detour. This was the result of failing to stay the course. He had wasted precious time and still hadn't reached the solace he had already obtained. It was all pointless. Everything was pointless. All that was here was pointlessness. Including Subaru — nothing but pointlessness.
Spitting those words out, Subaru stumbled forward on unsteady legs. And then, on the path leading out of the village, he suddenly caught his foot on something and fell.
The instant he felt his feet slip out from under him, it was already too late. There was nothing around to break his fall, and his momentum carried him hard into the ground, landing on his shoulder.
Pain split through his skull. Subaru let an agonized groan erupt from deep in his throat, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes by reflex, as he glared down at whatever had tripped him.
— He met the empty, hollow eyes of Petra, who would never see anything again.
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh—!!"
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * — He hadn't outrun it.
Subaru's throat, raw from screaming, still trembled as he cradled Petra's lifeless body to his chest, tears pouring down in torrents.
The warmth had long since left Petra's body. Her limbs had begun to stiffen. A lifeless body should have been far heavier than a living one, but Petra's body was too light — even accounting for how small she was.
The wound piercing her chest must have drained far too much blood.
Petra's eyes were wide open, her expression one of surprise. The fact that there was no trace of pain on her face was the only mercy — it meant she had died instantly, her heart destroyed.
A child like her had no reason to endure the pain of a slow death with a hole bored through her chest.
Her once-lovely features had drained of all color, and her brownish curls were now matted with blood and mud beyond recognition. He wished, at the very least, he could have closed those staring eyes, but the onset of rigor mortis on her eyelids denied even that small kindness.
Subaru laid Petra's body on the ground. As a final act of penance, he draped his jacket over her open eyes and prayed that restful sleep would come to her.
Then, steeling himself to look at the thing he had been so desperate to avoid, he raised his gaze — and at last accepted the reality that the village he knew had become hell.
The white smoke that had been curling into the sky had been rising from the charred body of the village chief.
The young man from the volunteer brigade must have fought with a sword in hand. The blade Subaru recognized was now impaling his own chest, pooling blood beneath its master.
The couple who had collapsed in an embrace were husband and wife. The husband had shielded his wife from above, holding her, and both had been skewered by the same weapon, dying together.
There were massacred bodies. Burned bodies. Torn-apart bodies. Crushed bodies. Battered bodies. There was nothing but bodies.
Death had fallen on every corner of this village.
A suffocating silence lay over the village of corpses. Everything had ended long before Subaru arrived.
Now, alone, Subaru was the sole witness to the conclusion of the atrocity that had taken place here, reaching out with hands far too late, gasping as no one took hold of them.
What — had happened?
Something had happened. Something terrible and incomprehensible.
That something had savaged this village with merciless brutality, desecrated the dignity of every living thing, and slaughtered all the innocent villagers.
Not a single one was breathing. Not a single survivor remained.
Every hiding place had been meticulously turned inside out. He had even found corpses that appeared to have been burned alive while hiding — that was how thorough the search had been.
His mind couldn't keep up. From every hole in his face, liquid streamed ceaselessly.
Tears, snot, saliva — his face continued to be marred by fluids as he lost all capacity to hold them back.
He understood the facts of what had happened. But he couldn't comprehend them.
He had no idea what had transpired. He knew nothing. But there was one thing he understood.
This tragedy could not have ended in just this place.
The moment that belated understanding struck, an unprecedented chill seized Subaru's entire body.
It was the greatest terror he had ever felt since falling into this world — greater than every life-threatening ordeal he had survived or submitted to.
His teeth chattered.
His eyes, sore from crying too much, flickered, and his unsteady gaze rose to the sky.
That hateful blue sky. And beneath it, the manor waited for him.
The place he had wanted so badly to reach, the place he had been seeking all along — now that it was within sight, it seemed like the most terrifying place in the world.
He didn't know what had happened.
But something had definitely happened.
And whatever it was, it would not have overlooked that place.
He was scared. He was terrified.
He didn't even want to think about that possibility. The moment it formed in his mind — the moment he gave it voice — it felt as though it would become real, and that was too frightening to bear.
So Subaru shook his head, trying to cast the thought away.
But the thought that had once passed through his mind slipped past his outstretched arm of denial, whispering close to his ear, refusing to be forgotten.
And so Subaru gave up on fighting it off and clung to a different means instead.
If it meant not putting her in danger — if it meant not shattering himself — "Rem...? What happened to... Rem...?"
The girl who should have reached this place before him. He spun those words of concern for her safety, trying to deceive his own heart with the lowest possible means.
"If Rem had come back, there's no way she would've let something like this happen to the village..."
That was an excuse. An excuse told in a place where only he existed, one he couldn't even fully fool himself with.
"Did something happen...? Could she have run into trouble on the way...?"
It was the lowest thing he had done. The worst. He didn't want to understand, but he understood.
He had lied to his own heart — choosing to put the possibility of losing a beloved girl on his lips rather than let his own mind break, deciding it was better to sacrifice someone else as a surrogate.
He had betrayed her trust.
"That's right... Rem... Rem... Rem..."
Subaru rose to his feet, swaying, and began to move forward on legs that had no strength left.
Leaving Petra's body behind, dragging himself along, he made his way slowly toward the exit of the village — toward the manor — crawling at a snail's pace.
He didn't know what waited ahead. He didn't want to know. And yet he knew he had to know. But he couldn't muster the courage to run.
Dragging his feet, clinging to hope, calling the name of the girl who was his refuge — Subaru slowly, slowly climbed the slope, heading toward the manor.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * — Rem was dead in the garden.