It was, without question, a room that could only be called a "library."
The spacious interior was roughly double that of a twenty-mat studio apartment, with bookshelves installed along the walls and everywhere else besides. Every shelf was packed tight with volumes, and the sheer number of books in the collection was difficult to even fathom.
"Books take up way more space than you'd think and they're heavy, so lugging a bunch around is a pain. My family's all huge manga fans, so we kept adding to the collection until one day the second floor just… gave way."
Without any warning, the floor collapsed, resulting in a full two-room renovation disaster. Fortunately, no one was hurt, and the manga had since been stored in a dedicated warehouse, so there were no further problems.
Even for Subaru, who had that particular book-related anecdote to draw upon, the library's collection dwarfed the one that had destroyed his floor. Of course, the mansion's construction was undoubtedly sturdier than his home's.
"If they've got this many books, there's gotta be at least one I can actually read… or is that asking too much?"
A quick scan revealed no Japanese text on any of the spines. No alphabetic script either. Most of what he could see was the pictograph-style writing he'd glimpsed on shop signs and the like. That must be this world's official script after all.
If he was going to live in this world, learning the language was going to be a must. For Subaru, who had given up on language classes back in middle school, that prospect was already daunting.
Subaru sighed at the troubles ahead. Then— "You barge into someone's bookshelves without permission, and on top of that you sigh. …Could it be you're looking for a fight? Because if you are, I'll take you up on it, you know?"
"I'm not socially skilled enough to talk to a stranger without any preparation. Give me a break and let me have a running start, would ya? Anyway, take two."
Holding up a hand to the girl glowering at him with narrowed eyes, Subaru stepped out of the room.
Then he reopened the door, re-entered, and looked at the girl still standing in the center.
"Oh, hello there. A person! Nice to meet you. How's it going? Wanna chat?"
"I know you're mocking Betty. The trespassing into the bookshelves, and all—don't you think you deserve some kind of punishment?"
To Subaru's re-enacted first encounter, the girl smiled sweetly and cruelly.
How many times in this other world had he employed this expression—she was a beautiful girl.
She was even younger than
Her hair was closest to cream-colored, its pale glow falling long and styled into distinctive rolled curls. Quite drill-like, really.
She was the living embodiment of the word "lovely"—a face so cute that no one could help but smile upon seeing it.
And right now, that face was turned toward Subaru with a prim, aloof expression.
"You know, that pouty look ruins an otherwise cute face. C'mon, give me a smiiile."
"Betty being cute is a given, obviously. More to the point, shouldn't you be worried about what I'm going to do with you?"
"Doing something to me doesn't sound too friendly. Sorry about ignoring your intentions there. Turns out I'm the type who accidentally nails the right answer on the first try without even trying. A GM would probably want me to trigger every event along the way, though."
The talent for hitting the one correct answer on the first shot when you had four choices and only brute force as a hint. People also called it "being unable to read the room."
In the past, Subaru had accidentally ruined many such events through sheer obliviousness.
The phantom corridor from just now would surely be added to that list.
"Peeing in someone else's hallway, or entering a corridor rigged with all kinds of mana-sensing traps without even trying to cross it—there's no other word for it, you're the worst."
"I'm the type who never takes side paths in RPGs, y'know. Which means on the second playthrough I'm busy collecting sub-events like crazy."
In galge, on the other hand, he went all-in on the heroines, so CG collection was actually pretty easy. When you had too many side paths, your CG gallery ended up riddled with gaps.
Setting those scattered thoughts aside for the moment, Subaru said "Right then" to pull himself together and looked at the girl once more.
Judging by what she'd said, she was apparently the one who'd set up the looping hallway. After that, the corridor had also been rigged with various surprise events designed to disrupt Subaru's urgent need to urinate. He'd managed to prevent all of them, though.
"I get wanting to show off your abilities, but sabotaging someone's bodily functions just for that? Not funny, seriously. I was one step away from social death. Just thinking about it gives me chills."
"Now that I think about it, I should have just kept looping you through the same stretch. That way at least, Betty's humiliation would have been cut in half, maybe."
"See? That's what I'm saying, Betty. Still, since I've come this far, it just goes to show my real-life luck outshines yours. Seriously, I've never been more grateful."
The urinary topic was sending waves of excitement building again.
Subaru shuffled his feet to deflect the conversation, and the girl, looking exhausted, pressed a finger to the bridge of her brow.
"You're… exhausting, you know. Roswaal, just because he lets that girl do whatever she wants, I end up meeting this incomprehensible person. I'm going to give him an earful later."
"You're tired? But you're so young! Kids are supposed to be bundles of energy! Don't go wrinkling your brow—that's no fun at all! Come on, hang in there! Live strong!"
He gave a thumbs-up.
"Live strong"—a catchphrase Subaru himself had heard countless times down in the slums. At first he'd thought it was lame, but the more he said it, the more it actually gave him a little boost.
The girl stared at him with half-lidded eyes. In response, Subaru stuck out his tongue and gave an embarrassed grin.
"Stop. That's not the reaction I expected. It's disgusting."
"I'd rather be called gross than actually hurt! Anyway, on that note, mind if we get to the topic at hand? Veer too far off course and my bladder's gonna be in real trouble."
"Be—" the girl began. "I have no idea what that last part meant, but it does feel like getting down to business would be better—for Betty's sake too."
"Okay-okay. So then…"
He was about to ask where the bathroom was, but stopped himself, sensing that it was about to stop being a joke.
In any case, the girl in front of him was in the category of mage. The hallway-looping trick alone was beyond anything Subaru could handle.
Beyond that, Subaru was freshly post-recovery and famished, his combat ability depleted. After that all-out sprint just now, he was keenly aware of how drained his stamina was.
His wounds had healed, but he was probably low on blood.
"I want liver. Liver. I want to eat some liver salad and replenish my blood. Tonight it's not 'Tiger Iron'—I'm the one who's hungry for blood. Hyaahh."
"He went off the rails again and I have no idea what he's saying…"
"Oh, sorry sorry. Topic, topic. So, uh—first of all, where am I?"
He should gather information while the other party was willingly engaging in conversation. Thanking the girl for her cooperation, Subaru decided to throw out a few questions.
First, confirming his own position. He didn't think he'd been captured by Elsa's side, but he couldn't be certain it was one of the other two, either.
If he could get some certainty from her statements, that would help, but— "It's Betty's bedroom."
"…Taking a straightforward answer as the right one is such a textbook move for you modern kids. That's not great, you know."
"Look what happens when I talk back to you a little! This is the result!"
The girl snapped back with a perfectly straight face—she called herself Betty, but was that actually her name? It had the ring of a nickname.
As Subaru contemplated this, the girl puffed out her cheeks. She folded her arms and sauntered toward him, her splendid dress swaying.
"It's almost time for Betty to reach her limit. I'm thinking it might be good to teach you a lesson—just a little."
"Whoa whoa, prisoner abuse is ancient history, come on, give it a rest, will ya!? I'm just an ordinary guy holding it in—fact, the bladder situation actually makes me less dangerous than the average person by that amount!"
"Meaning you're more dangerous than ordinary people because you're about to burst, isn't it?"
"Damn, nice comeback. No good—can't think of anything on the spot to prove my own helplessness! Tremble tremble, I'm a good boy, I promise!"
He shook his head in tiny increments, shrinking his body as small as possible and making his eyes glisten in a last-ditch appeal. But the girl's pace only quickened rather than easing.
Then— "—Don't move."
A chill ran down Subaru's spine.
Instantly, the old-paper smell that had filled the library vanished, replaced by a sharp pain in his nostrils as though someone had jabbed ice up his nose.
His skin prickled. He could hear a high-pitched ringing far away. The disruption of his sense of smell was due to one sense being suppressed in order to concentrate fully on the others.
In this case, those two were vision and touch.
The girl was already within arm's reach.
The height difference was stark. The girl only came up to about Subaru's chest, and her pale ashen-blue eyes gazed up at him from point-blank range.
Her thin, peach-colored lips formed a smile, and it was the girl's sheer innocence that kept blaring alarm bells in Subaru's mind.
"Something you want to say?"
The girl tilted her head, looking at Subaru with his wide eyes and trembling lips.
Sweat trickled down his forehead and along his cheeks. For just a moment that sensation broke his paralysis, and Subaru grasped the one precious instant he'd been given to find the perfect words.
Yes—something to say here and now, something that could break this situation. It was— "P-Please don't hurt me!"
"You've committed to the bit, I'll give you that. —Whether it hurts or not… that depends on you, doesn't it?"
Saying this with what sounded like genuine admiration, the girl's hand reached toward Subaru's chest.
Her palm was placed against him, and she gently, delicately stroked the surface.
An itchy sensation, a shiver like fingers trailing along the back of his neck—and then— "Buwaah…!!"
—the next instant, Subaru was overwhelmed by the sensation that his entire body had been set ablaze.
Something ferocious raged inside him, burning from fingertip to every last strand of hair.
A discomfort accompanied by pain, as though every inch inside and out had been traced by fingers of flame.
His vision flickered, and before he knew it he had dropped to his knees, drenched in tears. His breathing was ragged as though he'd run several kilometers nonstop, and his body ached with the soreness of the day after an extreme workout.
Most of all, there was a bone-deep exhaustion, as though something essential had been ripped from his psyche.
"You didn't faint, huh. Just like I heard—you're sturdy."
"What—what did you do, drill-haired loli…"
"Just listened to the Mana inside your body a little. —For someone so mediocre, you've got a strangely shaped soul. And your Gate seems to stay shut all the time."
The girl murmured contradictory words, then knelt before the collapsed Subaru.
She poked Subaru, who was desperately propping his upper body up, with one finger.
"Well, I was able to confirm you don't mean any harm. And as for the numerous offenses you've committed against Betty up to now—I suppose this Mana collection will serve as your pardon."
A poke that sent him past his limit. His trembling arms gave way and his upper body crashed to the floor.
That made three times he'd kissed the ground face-down. His lips weren't exactly innocent anymore. Considering this was a world he'd reset, it was technically still a first kiss, though.
Gathering every last scrap of energy from his body during those idle thoughts, Subaru somehow managed to change the angle of his neck on the floor. Slowly, over time, he lifted his gaze to the girl's face.
"Hm?" The girl watched Subaru's efforts with an amused smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. Subaru bared his teeth and grinned back.
"You're… that thing, aren't you. Not human, I mean. And I don't mean that in a personality sense."
"Despite looking the part, you were slow to catch on. Typical."
Her way of speaking was even more childlike than her appearance suggested, which only reinforced the impression of a cruel child pulling the wings off insects for fun.
The way she watched with delight as Subaru drooled and crawled on all fours only drove that point home further.
"One correction… personality-wise, you're not human either…"
"Don't measure a noble, exalted existence by your own standards, human."
It was far too cold a statement for a girl to make.
Subaru vaguely sensed something smoldering in his chest. But he only had enough awareness left to feel it, not act on it.
Mental and physical exhaustion were dragging his consciousness into darkness, entirely beyond his will's control.
—He'd just woken up, and now he was going under again?
"I'll let the others know what happened. It'd be a problem if you wet yourself here."
For a parting shot, he seriously considered letting it all go right here. …No good, he didn't have the guts.
Unable to even muster that last bit of snark, Subaru slipped once more into unconsciousness.
※※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ "Oh my, you've awakened, big sister."
"That's right, he's awake now,
The sensation of waking from sleep was the same as breaking the surface of water—more of the same.
This reawakening, with time having passed, began with the voices of two girls who sounded identical.
The soft comfort of his bed appeared to be the same one. What scorched Subaru's sleepy eyelids was the sliver of sunlight filtering through the curtains. The brightness was gentle, which told him it was probably morning.
"Don't have a clue what time it is. Handy in situations like this—the stubble clock."
He aimed a sales pitch at someone unseen, then propped himself up to check the time.
Running a finger along the stubble on his chin, he guessed it had been four or five hours since the last awakening. A bit of lethargy still lingered in his body.
"It is now the seventh hour of the day, sir."
"It's now the seventh hour of the day, sir."
The voices answered his unspoken question kindly, perhaps because they noticed him looking toward the window.
The seventh hour of the day—that didn't make much sense, but by the look of the light it was probably seven o'clock in the daytime. He wasn't even sure whether time in this world ran on a twenty-four-hour clock.
It was hard to say for certain that it was morning seven, but if he didn't count the brief few minutes of wakefulness from before— "Nearly a whole day straight, then. Ah well, nothing to a NEET who once slept for fifty-two hours straight."
"My, what a worthless thing to say. Did you hear that, big sister?"
"Yes, what a lazy thing to say. I heard, Rem."
"So who are you two, standing there stereotypically judging me, sisters!?"
With a rustle of blankets, Subaru sat bolt upright.
His exaggerated motion startled the girls standing on either side of the bed. They took a wide detour around the bed, converged in the center of the room, and joined hands as they looked at Subaru.
He'd more or less expected this, but seeing it confirmed—the two girls whose interlocked fingers held his gaze were identical. Twins.
They were roughly a hundred and fifty centimeters tall. Large eyes, peach-colored lips, and soft-featured faces that conveyed both youth and charm.
The two with the same face had matching short haircuts, but their hair color was different—one peach-pink, the other pale blue. The pink-haired one hid her left eye behind her bangs while the blue-haired one covered her right, another distinction between them.
But those differences were trivial. What truly threw Subaru into turmoil in this moment, taking all those features into account, was— "Impossibly… in this world, maid uniforms actually exist?!"
Classic maid outfits—black-based apron dresses paired with white frilled headpieces. The twin beauties before him were dressed in the orthodox, time-honored style of maid uniforms.
—Now these were maids as they were meant to be.
"Oh my. Right now, sir is having indecent and debasing thoughts about you in his head, big sister."
"Oh no. Sir is having shameful thoughts about you right now, about Rem."
"Don't underestimate my capacity. Both of you together are just fodder for my fantasies, sisters."
He crossed both arms and flexed his palms open and shut in the air. The meaningless gesture sent a tremor of horror across the twins' faces, and they released their clasped hands to point at each other.
"Grant me this mercy, sir. Spare Rem—defile big sister instead, please."
"Please stop, sir. Leave
"This sisterly love is the opposite of beautiful! Selling each other out like that, and I'm the villain!? What is this!"
"C-Scary!" the twins cried, joining hands and fleeing once more.
Subaru leaped out of bed and gave chase.
The three of them raced around and around the spacious room in a game of tag. And then— "…Couldn't you have woken up even a little more peacefully?"
From beyond the door, which had opened with a soft knock, a girl stood gazing at them.
The beauty of her long silver hair was undiminished, and today it was unbound, cascading naturally down her back. Her outfit wasn't the robe he'd seen her wearing in town, but a sleek black-toned ensemble that suited her slender frame. Her skirt was slightly shorter than knee-length and lustrous, though thigh-high stockings concealed everything up to that point.
"Got it! I know who I'm picking—you're the one, GJ!"
"…I have no idea what you're talking about, and the fact that you're celebrating anyway is honestly pretty sad."
Subaru pumped his fist and couldn't help but cheer.
The girl at the doorway—