A banquet where everyone had completely forgotten they were political rivals.
When Subaru returned to his room after dinner, the staff had already laid out futons during his absence. Side by side, the two futons sat ready, and Subaru silently marveled at the inn's efficient hospitality.
Whether at hotels or other lodging, these kinds of establishments tended to prepare futons, sheets, towels, and the like while the guests were out of the room. It was always neat and ready for them upon return.
He'd always thought it was a strangely unguarded custom.
"Subaru! It seems while Betty and the others were away, some unsavory characters snuck into the room!"
"Yeah. They neatly spread out the futons and even folded up the towels you messed up and put them back properly."
"This is...! A trap designed to lure us into dropping our guard, surely. They're thorough and meticulous, those lot."
"Once in a while, let's try trusting in someone's unsolicited goodwill. Well, maybe not entirely unsolicited."
He pacified
Incidentally, since formally forming their contract, Subaru and Beatrice had shared a room by default. Anastasia had offered to prepare a separate room for Beatrice, but knowing she'd end up in Subaru's room anyway during the night, he politely declined.
This wasn't because Beatrice was a child who couldn't sleep alone—it was purely out of consideration for Subaru's condition. The mana generated by Od during sleep was significant, and with his gate still incomplete, having her nearby helped stabilize his body.
"So it's not that Betty wants to be near Subaru. You mustn't misunderstand," Beatrice had insisted when they first contracted.
As for where her true feelings lay, it didn't really matter at this point. Subaru had long since grown accustomed to the sound of someone else's breathing while he slept.
"...This green lump is poison. If I eat it, it won't end well, I suppose..."
Having enjoyed herself a reasonable amount and grown sufficiently tired, Beatrice had been dragged into the Land of Dreams almost as soon as she crawled into her futon. Now she was tormented by nightmares about wasabi—the trauma from dinner still lingering.
Subaru gently brushed Beatrice's forehead, savoring the adorable sleeping face of his partner for as long as he could, then stood up.
"Well then. I should take a bath too, and get some well-earned rest tonight."
At the head of Subaru's futon, a change of yukata was laid out for him to change into. The staff had mentioned on the way back that if he wasn't sure how to put one on, he could ask freely—but despite appearances, Subaru could handle yukata and even kimono dressing quite competently.
As for why he knew, the answer was simple: he had way too much free time in his original world.
"If Felis and Anastasia weren't around, I could've been in charge of dressing all the girls. That would've been quite the perk."
Naturally, he would have loved to dress
"Ah well, no point lamenting. I'll be satisfied just having done Emilia-tan's braid after dinner."
He might undo it before bed, but the real goal of Subaru's two-pronged strategy was the 'Braid Wave!' that would trigger once the braid was released. While Anastasia's natural hair waves were beautiful, he was sure the look would also suit Emilia's long silver hair beautifully.
"Whether braided or released into waves, she's adorable. Emilia-tan truly is a sinful girl, honestly. You can't enjoy this with Beako though."
Beatrice's hairstyle, strangely, was always fixed in vertical rolls no matter what you did.
It was probably rooted in the circumstances of her creation as an artificial spirit. Forcing a different style wasn't impossible, but the moment you undid it, the rolls would spring right back. It was quite the spectacle in its own way, and Subaru had played with it more than once.
Looking forward to tomorrow morning, Subaru quietly slipped out of the room carrying his yukata.
Being careful not to wake Beatrice, he tiptoed across the wooden floor, doing his best to muffle his steps. It felt a bit careless, but given tonight's lineup of guests at the inn, any would-be intruder would be far more pitiful than the residents.
"I don't expect anything to happen, but if anything strange goes on in this ward, I'll pick up on it. Rest easy tonight."
Those had been Reinhard's reassuring words when they parted ways in the main hall.
He'd said "ward" rather than limiting it to "the inn," and that was almost too reassuring—scary, even. Knowing Reinhard, he may have been holding back from saying "city" out of modesty.
So Subaru walked through the inn without any particular guard up, his mind already set on the great bath. While he was a bit disappointed it wasn't an open-air hot spring, he figured there were inn-specific pleasures to be found in the bath experience.
"———"
He stopped mid-step, his drowsy expression shifting, when he passed through the veranda overlooking the garden.
The garden where Reinhard and Garfiel had clashed earlier that evening had transformed once night fell, offering an entirely different aesthetic pleasure.
A full moon hung in the dark sky, and the varying thickness of clouds passing over it lent the heavens an eerie, captivating charm. A cool breeze swept through the garden, and there stood a solitary figure.
"...Wilhelm?"
A powerful build, and hair bleached completely white.
There was only one old man Subaru knew who could look so naturally dignified in a yukata, even from behind.
"Subaru-dono. Did I startle you?"
He must have noticed the presence of someone approaching long ago. Wilhelm turned at Subaru's call, his expression soft as he looked toward the younger man.
His hand resting in his sleeve, his figure framed against the Japanese garden. Why did this man suit it so perfectly?
"Were you heading for the bath?"
"Yes, that was the plan. I took a detour to look at the garden at night. It's not that I got lost or anything in this unfamiliar inn, you know."
"That wouldn't be like you, Subaru-dono. Besides, I was the one who had lingered here intoxicated by the garden's beauty before you. I understand the desire to see this view."
"Heh, getting praised like that's a bit embarrassing, you know."
Subaru scratched his cheek, genuinely flustered by Wilhelm's unreserved trust.
In this other world, Wilhelm was one of the people Subaru most purely respected. There were plenty of others he wanted to stand alongside or compete with, but the person he wanted to look up to—to admire with something close to envy—might have been Wilhelm alone.
As a man and as a human, Wilhelm was Subaru's ideal.
"I must apologize, Subaru-dono. My presence, a foreign element in this solemn moonlit garden, must have diminished the scene for you."
"Not at all. If anything, the Sword Devil and a Japanese garden suit each other so perfectly that this image will be burned into the mental photograph of my heart forever. I'm a sucker for people who shine under moonlight."
As far as Subaru knew, the one who looked best under the moonlight was undoubtedly Emilia.
Her long silver hair gleamed differently than under the sun's rays. Emilia's beauty was that of moonlight—fleeting, yet something you wanted to be close to. That was why Subaru wished to be a star nestled beside the moon.
And so, the figure of the Sword Devil standing in the moonlit garden now evoked a profound sense of longing in Subaru.
"...You truly are a troublesome one, Subaru-dono. Words that stir the heart like those—you should whisper them to a woman, not an old husk like me. You'd certainly find a willing listener."
"With this face of mine, no matter how suavely I talk, the only thing I'll attract are butterflies—by which I mean they'll treat me like boric acid. And right now, the person whose heart I most want to touch doesn't take to that kind of rhetoric at all."
"To see the smile of a woman who won't bend easily, choosing your words with care... that frustration is part of the joy of love, Subaru-dono."
With a teasing lilt to his voice, Subaru shrugged his shoulders in an exaggerated fashion.
"Oh my, it's been a while since I got to dive into some meaningful romantic stories. So you had your days too, Wilhelm?"
"Would you like to hear?"
"By all means."
When Subaru offered a courteous bow befitting the occasion, Wilhelm put on a show of reluctance before his face lit up with pleasure.
"Well, as I still am now but even more so in my youth, I was a poor speaker—a man who couldn't find the right words. Having lost interest in everything but swinging a sword, I had nothing to talk about besides that. My wife must have found me dreadfully boring when we first met."
"But your wife never refused to talk with you, did she?"
"My wife was a woman of great depth and tolerance. Despite the weight of the destiny she bore clouding her heart, she never shirked her responsibility nor stopped caring for others. The reason she kept conversing with me in the beginning was undoubtedly because of that innate kindness of hers."
Wilhelm's eyes grew distant, lost in memory, a fond smile playing on his lips.
Subaru quietly sat down on the veranda and listened to the old man's reminiscences.
"Because I was such a poor conversationalist, whenever we met, it was always she who fed me topics. On top of that, I was utterly oblivious to the fact that I'd fallen for her. I even found the constant quickening of my heart while talking with her to be irritating."
"So Wilhelm, for all that, you weren't actually very experienced with women?"
"Truly. I had devoted myself entirely to the sword. I'd even forgotten the passion I'd felt when I first took up the blade, and threw myself into training as if it were my reason for living. It was my wife who reminded me of that reason."
"Is that when you realized you were in love with her?"
"...You saw right through me, Subaru-dono."
Wilhelm's words came weakly, and Subaru responded only with silence.
Wilhelm surely had no idea what kind of face he was wearing right now. That fact—that being able to see that face—filled Subaru with an inexplicable pride.
Wilhelm's eyes, the creases on his cheeks, the tone of his voice, his gestures—every last detail told a story.
Even now, he was in love with the woman he'd first met—
The old man's face, his manner, his very existence proclaimed his love for his wife without the slightest reservation.
Who, upon seeing that face, could fail to notice that he was caught up in love?
Even if you gathered every obtuse soul in all the world, they would all know the depth of his feeling.
Wilhelm's love was that brazen, that unashamedly radiant.
"———"
Without realizing it, Subaru felt tears welling up as he looked at Wilhelm's face.
Something surged within him, and no matter how hard he tried to suppress it, a hot pressure gathered behind his eyelids. He didn't understand why he felt this way. Why did seeing someone else's face in love make his own heart burn so?
If he started crying here, wouldn't he just be troubling Wilhelm?
"You're right, Subaru-dono. I became conscious of my feelings for my wife at that moment."
Subaru quickly looked down, pretending to scratch his head, hiding the glimmer of tears from Wilhelm. As the old man continued speaking, did he notice Subaru's tears?
Whether he was absorbed in his own story or deliberately pretending not to notice—Subaru couldn't tell which was right, so he simply listened.
"Swinging a sword was everything to me. But everything I'd thought before taking up the blade, and everything I'd come to think through wielding it—all of it made me who I was. My wife was the one who made me realize something so obvious. From then on, every time I gripped my sword, I thought of her."
"And still now?"
"What connected my wife and me, was and always has been the sword."
After a brief pause, Wilhelm spun his words.
With moonlight at his back, Wilhelm faced Subaru. The emotions flickering in the old man's eyes were complex—too difficult for Subaru to read easily.
There was pride. There was regret. There was hesitation. There was passion. There was shame. There was courage.
—But above all, there was love.
"As long as I grip the sword, I will continue to think of my wife. That is why, even now that we've been parted by death, I cannot forget her. When I die, I want to die with a sword in my hand. To me, that means I can be together with her."
"———"
That was Wilhelm's way of love—clumsy, straight, and the only way he knew how.
Subaru swallowed hard, then drew several deep breaths to steady his pounding heart. When the tingling in his tongue subsided and he judged that his mouth could form proper words again— "Don't say things like 'when I die'—that's terrible luck. You're still way, way, way too young, Wilhelm. If you're only thinking about retirement, that's a problem."
"Subaru-dono?"
"Crusch-san and Felis both depend on you like crazy. Crusch-san, with her unreliable memories, has it tough enough, and Felis, though he'd never show it on his face, is surely pushing himself to the limit. They need you to help them! And so do I!"
"———"
"There's still so much I want to learn from you, Wilhelm. I know, I know—you might think, 'How presumptuous, from someone in the enemy camp.' But I..."
Subaru loved Wilhelm as a person.
That was why he respected him as a man—for carrying his feelings for his late wife in his heart and avenging her death. Even if Wilhelm hadn't set out with that intention, and even if their master-student relationship had lasted less than ten days, Subaru had witnessed something truly admirable in Wilhelm's strength.
Hearing the word "death" from Wilhelm's lips frightened him all the more for it.
Ever since before, Subaru had grown increasingly sensitive to the death of those around him. Part of it was his covenant with Roswaal, and part was how his own stance toward "Return by Death" had changed.
It was something Emilia and Beatrice quietly worried about as well.
"...As always, I'm hopeless at choosing my words properly."
Stubborn and desperate Subaru—and hearing that earnest voice, Wilhelm smiled.
The old man looked at the shallow-breathing youth with a gentle gaze, his lips still curved into a smile.
"I've caused you both embarrassment and distress. I said what I did earlier, but I'm not constantly thinking about death. I was consumed by those thoughts for a time, it's true—but I believe I've safely crossed that threshold."
"...Ah."
Subaru immediately realized he was talking about the battle against the
For Wilhelm, the confrontation with his nemesis had been a battle he was willing to trade his life for. In that moment, Wilhelm had gone in prepared to die. And now, having survived that— "I'm doing well enough now. Having poured so much of myself into it and yet still surviving—now, even being an embarrassment to behold no longer feels like a disgrace."
"Wilhelm..."
"I'm grateful beyond measure that I'm still needed. That this body, which can do nothing but swing a sword, is still sought after—it makes my heart tremble with gratitude. There are people I must support, and I can still visit my wife's grave. I am truly blessed."
Was that so?
Was that really true? Was Wilhelm not putting on a brave face?
The heart behind that gentle smile was beyond the ken of someone shallow like Subaru. He wanted to believe that smile held no falsehood, but he couldn't accept his own weakness—the suspicion that it might.
Was he, in truth, forcing himself? If he wasn't, could it be that he was carrying a suffering he couldn't reveal to Subaru?
But if Wilhelm truly felt this way from the bottom of his heart—wasn't Subaru just arrogantly wishing for Wilhelm to bear misfortune instead?
"Subaru-dono. That quality of yours is a virtue, but it is also a weakness."
"............"
Watching Subaru's troubled expression, Wilhelm spoke in a quiet voice.
There was no mirth in it. Nor was there displeasure or reproach. It carried a certain gentle wisdom—the tone of an elder speaking to a younger person.
To put it more plainly, it was the voice of a grandfather talking to his grandson.
"My wife had the same quality. That terrible habit of suppressing her own feelings and worrying about those around her instead—putting herself last."
"Terrible habit? ...Look, I'm really not that good a person. I've never wished for everyone to be happy or anything like that. I just hope that the people around me, at least, can be happy."
"It's a question of where you draw that circle. My wife never sought it out, but as a single woman, she wielded more power than was necessary. And the reach of what that power could achieve extended far further than she ever imagined."
Wilhelm's wife, Theresia, had been the previous Sword Saint.
Her history was brief but something Subaru had been able to touch upon over this past year. She was the hero who, within just a few years of inheriting the title of Sword Saint, had quelled the civil war known as the Demi-Human War that erupted within the
What she had accomplished with her overwhelming power was nothing less than saving the nation.
There was no way
"I understand what you're saying about your wife. But applying that to me is a bit of a stretch, no?"
"In peacetime, my wife was an ordinary woman who loved tending flowers. Just because someone is a hero recorded in history doesn't mean they're like that every moment of every day. And Subaru-dono. Your name, and the reach of your influence, are already wider than you realize. That will only continue to grow."
"That's..."
"I am certain of it. You are the kind of person who will gather those who cannot accomplish something alone, and together, you will achieve it."
"———"
He was speechless.
Speechless at how much Wilhelm believed in him—and at that very fact.
Did Wilhelm really see Subaru as someone capable of such things?
Subaru was weak, stupid, and lacking even in willpower—a half-baked nobody. Since he couldn't do anything alone, he'd relied on quick tongue and quick hands to rope others in, surviving from one improvised solution to the next.
That approach would surely break down someday. Right now he might be getting by, but when something came along that couldn't be handled with quick fixes, it would all crumble.
And when that inevitable moment came, Subaru would be met with disappointment— "I apologize. Having this piled on you must be unpleasant. When one has only accumulated useless years, this kind of concern is all one can offer—and one can only regret it."
"Wilhelm, I..."
"You may not be able to recognize it yet. Perhaps many others haven't either. But someday, everyone will understand."
"I'm small and useless, you know. A total good-for-nothing."
"Yes. A small, useless good-for-nothing—I love that about you."
After a beat, Wilhelm nodded with satisfaction.
"And there will only be more people who feel the same, going forward."
Something in Wilhelm's words resonated deeply, and Subaru fell into a quiet silence.
On one hand, he felt overwhelmed. On the other, he wanted to laugh it off as an exaggeration. But he didn't dismiss it outright—because the one saying it was Wilhelm.
He wouldn't believe it blindly.
But neither would he deny it out of hand.
Subaru decided to carry these feelings with him, to hold onto them until he could properly digest them.
After all, Subaru was well aware that he was lacking in everything. Gains, emotions, words—he had decided to keep dragging along whatever he could, for as long as he could.
He would make Wilhelm's words one more thing to carry.
Watching Subaru grapple with his decision, Wilhelm gazed at him with a tender look.
Too preoccupied with introspection to notice, Subaru was oblivious to that gaze.
"...I've talked too much, haven't I? I've kept you here far longer than I should have. My apologies."
Judging that Subaru's internal conflict had reached its resolution, Wilhelm changed the subject.
Taking the cue, Subaru decided this scene had reached its natural conclusion.
"No, I'm the one who should apologize, for a lot of things. I came out here wanting to hear your love stories—pestering you to tell me, no less."
"No. It's been a while since I've felt even close to satisfied—I'm glad I could speak about my wife. Recently, I rarely get much time alone with Crusch-san or Felis either."
"On top of not getting enough romance, I ended up hearing about the awkward dynamics within your faction!"
"I became a bit too sentimental. The ramblings of an old man must have been tedious."
Wilhelm's thin smile carried a fleeting emotion through those blue eyes.
Subaru caught that momentary glimpse and didn't let it pass. His attention turned to how this whole encounter had begun.
At first, Wilhelm had been standing alone in the garden.
Subaru had initially assumed he'd come down to enjoy the scenery, just like Subaru himself. But Wilhelm had told him— That his presence was a foreign intrusion, marring the beauty.
The best seat for enjoying the garden's aesthetic was the veranda where Subaru stood. If you were standing in Wilhelm's position instead, the pleasure of the moonlit garden view would be diminished.
Of course, Subaru might have been overthinking it. But if there was another reason Wilhelm had come to the garden— "...That spot, that's where Reinhard was standing, wasn't it?"
"———"
The position where Wilhelm stood was the exact spot Reinhard had maintained as an inviolable domain during his standoff with Garfiel.
The gravel, slightly disturbed, still bore the clear footprints of the red-haired swordsman's immovable stance.
It was only natural that Wilhelm had noticed that dissonance and wanted to investigate. But the true reason he'd lingered there—that only Wilhelm himself could know.
"Wilhelm, I have no intention of poking my nose into other people's family affairs, and I'd like to think I've graduated from the idle curiosity of asking what went wrong... so I don't want to pry, but..."
"Yes, please ask."
"Can't you and Reinhard get along? You're family, aren't you?"
The tactlessness of prying into the complicated relationship between grandfather and grandson in the Astrea household.
Subaru knew that brooking this topic risked damaging the trust he'd built with Wilhelm—and he brought it up anyway.
If it had been before the conversation in the garden, he might not have. But having seen that earlier exchange, and having glimpsed Wilhelm's profile as he gazed down at his grandson's footprints— Once he'd seen that, he couldn't look away.
"Speaking with you, Subaru-dono, I was thinking."
"............"
"Why can't I exchange words with my own grandson? Why is it that I'm still unable to do so?"
It was a voice full of anguish—from the depths of Wilhelm's heart.
All expression vanished from Wilhelm's profile. Expressionless, but not emotionless. The reason he suppressed his feelings was a hard shell, forged to prevent the world from seeing his ugly grief.
What Wilhelm carried within him was unmistakably regret.
"I am a man haunted by many regrets. But there are three regrets in my life that I can never make excuses for. One of them is the cause of the rift between me and my grandson."
"But you feel remorse about it, don't you, Wilhelm?"
"Remorse alone cannot earn forgiveness. The words I... that I hurled at my grandson—at Reinhard—were that heavy. Unforgivably so, irredeemably foolish."
In his expressionless profile, there flickered a spark of fire that could烧 Wilhelm alive from within.
It was the blazing inferno of rage that had burned through Wilhelm's very core for years without mercy. Regret was the spark, and the flame scorched him without letting go.
"Using my wife's avengement as justification, I turned away from that regret. Now that I've fulfilled that duty, I know I should be reaching out."
"But you can't find the courage."
"How embarrassing. The thought that my grandson still resents me—it paralyzes me. My legs simply won't move."
A voice steeped in the kind of self-disgust that comes from the very bottom of one's heart.
Seeing Wilhelm—who had seemed so diminished, so small—Subaru was stunned. And then, after that moment of stunned silence, he burst out laughing.
"Subaru-dono?"
"Sorry—sorry. I didn't mean to laugh, but I just couldn't help it."
Wilhelm looked at him incredulously, but Subaru couldn't believe it either.
How many times in a single evening was this old man going to surprise him?
"Wilhelm, you look like you've convinced yourself you don't deserve to call yourself Reinhard's grandfather..."
"Yes, that's exactly it. When it comes to my grandson, even knowing I'm in the wrong, I can't take that step. I've grown so tired of that cowardly version of myself..."
"Anyone could see you're just a grandpa who's scared his grandson won't forgive him."
"...What?"
Wilhelm, who had been wearing such a clouded expression, froze and stared at Subaru.
Subaru, still riding the tail end of laughter, waved his hand— "I don't really know what happened between you and Reinhard or why things got so awkward. So I might be completely off-base here. But even from an outsider's perspective, you clearly want to reconcile with Reinhard, and you look like you'd sincerely apologize if you could. So just apologize. That's absolutely the right move."
"But Reinhard wouldn't accept my apology."
"Then keep apologizing until he does. And seriously, you're not apologizing because you want to be forgiven—you're apologizing because you want to apologize. The apologetic feeling of the person apologizing is just that selfish. Because, after all, the one who wants to apologize is the one who did wrong."
"———"
This time, it was Wilhelm's turn to be struck speechless by Subaru's extreme logic.
Of course, Subaru fully understood that it was an absurdly self-serving argument. But sometimes you needed to wield that kind of reasoning and force it on someone.
To move Wilhelm. To bring him face to face with Reinhard.
"I mean, if someone you haven't spoken to in years suddenly shows up apologizing, your first reaction would probably be 'What's this guy's deal?' But if you keep apologizing over and over, eventually even that will change. Whether it changes into 'Ah, fine, what can you do' or 'God, this guy's annoying'—well, I can't say for sure."
"That sounds like things might get worse."
"But it's still a change. Right now it's at rock bottom and frozen solid—if it moves even a little, isn't that better?"
Subaru had a well-earned reputation for starting every interpersonal relationship at absolute rock bottom.
When it came to being surrounded by the worst possible relationships from every direction, it was nothing new to Subaru.
"And if you slip him some allowance after a few years, his attitude might soften right away. That classic rule of 'he's always been kind of a jerk, but then he does one nice thing and suddenly he seems like a good guy'—we can use that. Reinhard might be easier than you think. When he called me his friend, it was way simpler than I expected."
"Even Reinhard wouldn't be that straightforward..."
"—Reinhard said he wanted to hear about what happened during the White Whale fight."
At Subaru's offhand remark, Wilhelm's guard eased just slightly.
Subaru then relayed the words Reinhard had asked him to pass on—words he'd requested as they headed toward the tearoom after their reunion.
Upon hearing this, Wilhelm's blue eyes flew wide open.
"I don't know if the White Whale is connected to the awkwardness between you two. But if it is, then Reinhard was affected by it. And he knows perfectly well that you were the one who slew the White Whale. He knows you spent over ten years trying to avenge your wife's death."
"———"
"I'm sure he's hoping that whatever's been frozen can finally start to thaw. Not necessarily now—but someday."
Subaru had absolutely no idea what Reinhard was really thinking.
Reinhard was a man so perfect it bordered on inhuman. Subaru had always secretly assumed that someone like him had probably never once lamented his own powerlessness or ignorance.
A wildly presumptuous assumption. Reinhard was human too. He surely had his own struggles, his own doubts.
Even Wilhelm, whom Subaru could only see as a superhuman, was underneath it all just an ordinary man—an ordinary grandfather, full of ordinary worries and flaws.
Why wouldn't the same be true of Reinhard?
With every word Subaru spoke, Wilhelm found himself surprised anew.
The old man closed his eyes, as if weighing each word, and simply stood there, quietly bathing in the breeze.
After a silence had flowed between them for some time, Wilhelm spoke.
"My grandson... would Reinhard be willing to listen?"
"Start by being annoyingly persistent—keep talking to him even if he brushes you off. That's pretty much how it goes with most girls besides Emilia-tan, in my experience."
"Absolutely—"
Hearing Subaru's answer, Wilhelm shook his head.
Then the old man raised his eyes, gazing up at the moon behind him, and said with a smile in his voice: "I can't hold a candle to you, Subaru-dono."