Everything was a disaster.
Literally, scattered and ruined — and that was exactly how Subaru felt.
Found, dragged back, interrogated about what had happened.
And with every halting word he muttered, he could feel the situation deteriorating all on its own.
"So then, Subaru, do you really not remember anything?"
Looking down at himself as he hugged his knees, the silver-haired girl fixed him with a gaze heavy with worry.
Beside her, the small, delicate-looking girl was equally stunned, unable to take in what he was saying.
"I was already worried when we couldn't find you, but… I never expected it had come to something like this. It seems we're facing an extremely difficult problem."
The girl wrapped in a white fox fur stole spoke in a tone that was subtly stiff.
The one who lacked the composure to even nod along with those words was the elegant-faced knight.
"Just how pathetic are you going to let yourself look before you're satisfied, Barusu?"
She finished tidying up the mess Subaru had made and glared at him. But there was no real malice behind it — only a more vulnerable expression, almost pleading.
"Master, Master, Master! The mood's gotten really gloomy, hasn't it? You gotta smile more! And also… huh, what's that smell? It totally stinks like pee!"
The black-haired woman chattered away, oblivious to the gravity of the situation, laughing in high spirits.
Beside her, the small girl casually stroked her own braid and merely glanced over at Subaru with thinly veiled disinterest.
"———"
Every one of these reactions, broadly speaking, was one he had already witnessed before.
Once, twice — this was the third time. He had disappointed them three times.
Of course, this occasion — caught after soiling himself and wandering around in a panic, only to be discovered crying alone in a corner — was by far the worst state of all. That much was obvious.
— The only one here who truly grasped just how terrible his situation was happened to be Subaru himself.
"Heh."
He found himself laughing.
At the fact that he was repeating the same situation — no, the same stretch of time — for the third time.
He had seen this scene twice before. And now, upon the arrival of the third iteration, Subaru had finally come to grips with the nature of his predicament.
— He had died. Twice.
Both times, he had almost certainly fallen from the same spot. The first time, he had lost consciousness midway and never experienced the moment of death, so the awareness never registered.
But the second time had been different. Bad at falling, with no talent for dying, he had bounced off things on the way down, his body destroyed bit by bit before he finally died.
He had finally died — and then come back.
At the moment of death, he returned to that green room, experienced another awakening, and relived the day.
Dying, and returning. —"Return by Death."
That was the blessing — or curse — bestowed upon
"Heh."
A second laugh escaped him.
Whether it could be called a laugh was debatable, but at least to Subaru, it was one.
There was nothing else he could do. As for tears, honestly, he felt as though he had run dry.
Crying would only waste energy. Even if returning to life after death apparently reset the stamina he'd spent before dying, this time around he had hemorrhaged far too much of it upon waking up.
"In any case, let's have Subaru rest until he's calmer. Perhaps something will change once time has passed."
Subaru pieced together, in passing, that the situation had been decided for him on the basis of the silver-haired girl's proposal.
Presumably they feared he would go on another rampage — Subaru's person was, with exaggerated measures, escorted back to the green room under the watchful eyes of everyone present.
"I don't like the idea of leaving the current Barusu alone with
"…However, aside from determining the root cause of this condition, the most promising avenue for Subaru's recovery would be to rely on the spirits in that room."
"Then… then, it should be Rem who leaves that room. Ram will personally watch over her — no one else is going to worry about that girl the way Ram does."
Subaru wished they would hold their arguments and clashes of opinion somewhere he couldn't hear them.
Either way, there was no choice for him to make. He simply did not have the willpower, in his current state, to boldly push through this situation on his own.
"…Rem, you poor thing."
The twin of the girl who continued to sleep carried her on her back. Before leaving the room, she addressed Subaru with those words.
He did not understand the true meaning behind them. Nor did he want to.
"Subaru, stay here and behave. I'm sure Betty will find a way to bring back your memories."
"———"
"I won't let you sit there alone, cowering."
Before leaving the room, the small girl spoke to him gently.
Her voice held both anguish and a noble resolve — the unwavering sound of someone who believed with all her heart that this was the right thing to do.
To someone who would reach out to him with such concern —.
"…Ah."
When she extended her hand, Subaru flinched his shoulder away.
At that gesture, the girl with the distinctive crest in her eyes faltered in pain.
"———"
They were strangers.
No matter how far it went, they were strangers.
But that wasn't the issue for Subaru. For him, they weren't the strangers — he was.
Everything they offered — their warmth, their concern, perhaps even something approaching fondness — was directed not at the person standing before them, but at the Natsuki Subaru they already knew. Not at this remnant. Not at this husk.
And by the same token —.
"…I didn't do anything to deserve being killed, either…"
Alone, left behind in the green room, Subaru ground his molars and muttered the words.
Being on the receiving end of unearned affection and trust — of the time and bonds he hadn't built — was one thing. Having fond feelings directed at him was uncomfortable, but at least survivable.
But why should he have to clean up the killing intent that the Natsuki Subaru of this world had apparently accumulated?
Good things and bad things, all jumbled together — none of it belonged to him.
And yet here he was, flailing, drowning.
· "I'm done with this…"
Hours passed. Alone, Subaru pressed his back against the wall and forced himself upright with a grinding effort.
He had chewed on it too long — he spat out the mixture of blood and saliva that had pooled in his mouth. Then, step by step, he made his way toward the exit of the green room.
"———"
The only other occupant — a black lizard — let out a thin cry at Subaru's retreating back.
It sounded faint and laced with something like loneliness, but Subaru shook his head.
Silly to attribute loneliness to a giant reptile.
"Someone'll bring you food, so just stay put, will you?"
Subaru tossed the words over his shoulder as the lizard's thin voice continued to trail after him.
He didn't listen. Brushing aside the lingering pull of guilt, Subaru stepped out of the green room and into the corridor. He checked both directions — no one in sight — and crept along.
"The water and food were…"
He knew. He'd accompanied the water-fetching trip, so he knew where the well was. He also knew where the food stores were kept. The remaining question was how much to take.
"———"
Honestly, Subaru had no answer.
He didn't know who had pushed him, who had taken his life.
But he remembered clearly — back at that place, someone had pushed him from behind. Not a tap on the shoulder, not a gust of strong wind, nothing that absurd.
He had been pushed. Deliberately. With clear intent to kill, Natsuki Subaru had been murdered.
The suspects numbered seven:
He couldn't even be sure they were truly all acquaintances of his. In his current state, he had no basis for judgment at all.
— Were they all, in truth, assassins who had gathered in the tower with the sole purpose of killing him?
"Then…"
If that was the case, taking as much food as he could carry wasn't something his conscience should punish him for.
But that conclusion simultaneously meant suspecting Emilia — who had spoken to him with the same warmth in both prior loops — Beatrice, who had promised to search for a way to restore his memories — Ram, who had refused to believe he'd truly lost his memories and cried out.
"———"
He couldn't do it.
Even after enduring that terror, even after being killed not once but twice, Subaru could not, from the bottom of his heart, suspect them all. He could not simply bolt for his own safety.
"Damn it, damn it — what a half-assed coward…!"
Cursing his own pathetic indecisiveness, Subaru quietly stuffed food into a bag.
Emergency rations — no attention paid to taste. Right now, staying alive was all that mattered, and flavor was a distant second.
He decided to take roughly three days' worth — a single person's share — as best he could estimate.
Water, too, went into leather canteens. And then —.
"They said it was a desert outside…"
He found the coat, stored alongside the food, and threw it on. Based on the size and design, his was easy to identify. The coat was designed to be pulled up at the collar to cover the mouth when closed — essentially anti-sand gear, exactly what a desert called for.
With water, food, and desert equipment gathered, preparations were complete.
"Let's see… have I surpassed the time when I died for the second time?"
Given the time it took to flee, to stammer out an explanation, and to cower in the green room, he was probably standing at a point later than when he'd been pushed the previous time.
The effect of Return by Death had been put into action right away — overcome one death flag after another and keep walking the tightrope between life and death.
"———"
He didn't want any of it.
Rather than endure something like that, he'd rather not be in this place at all.
Subaru burst out of the room at a jog and headed for the spiral staircase just as he'd mapped it out in his mind. The place where he'd been pushed — twice. Naturally, the prospect of approaching it made his heart scream.
But — .
"———"
Reaching the spiral staircase, his gaze was snatched by the scene below for just an instant before Subaru whirled around, scanning behind him for any sign of an assassin.
Fortunately — whether because the timing was different, or because the assassin hadn't pinned down Subaru's location — there was no arm reaching out to push him from behind.
By now, they had probably gone to that library where the dead's memories slumbered, or to the upper floor where that brazen examiner waited — the memory of having his insides pierced came flooding back, and nausea surged.
"Like I could… take on something like that…"
She wasn't human. That assessment applied to both her skills and her personality.
There was no conceivable way he could win a fight against such an opponent. — And if that was the case, what did it say about him, standing here and letting them walk off into a fight he knew they couldn't win?
"How the hell should I know!!"
The riddles that kept surfacing and dissolving inside him were trying to pin him in place.
So what? So what if she might have been kind? It could all be a lie.
So what if she seemed worried? She might be sharpening a blade of killing intent behind that facade.
At the very least, shouldn't he warn them that a dangerous person might be lurking among them?
"Yeah, and what if the person I warn turns out to be the enemy?"
Enemy. Enemy. What a laugh.
In daily life — in a world removed from conflict — the word "enemy" rarely came up outside of a game. And yet here it was, coming naturally to his lips. Being forced to use it naturally.
This was wrong. He didn't want to be in a place like this. He couldn't stay in a place like this.
"———"
Suppressing the unbearable frustration churning up from deep in his chest, Subaru ran.
Down the spiral staircase, descending toward the fifth floor far below. The steps were numerous — an endless descent hugging the wall — the bottom nowhere in sight.
After having gasped and struggled upward not long ago, the sight of himself now desperately fleeing downward struck him as absurd.
Even so — he didn't want to die.
"Almost… there…"
He reached the fifth floor.
Inside the circular tower, unlike the fourth floor, the fifth was undivided — no rooms partitioning the space, just one vast open hall of equal scope.
On the fifth floor, the main feature was the staircase leading down to the sixth floor — and then there was —.
"A huge… door…"
A door so enormous it could only be gazed upon from below loomed before him, radiating a terrifying sense of oppression.
"———"
Facing the door, the sheer abnormality of it squeezed Subaru's throat shut.
He could faintly feel a sandy wind blowing through. Probably wind from outside, slipping through the gaps in the door and whispering sand into the tower's interior.
That was, ultimately, definitive proof that the door connected to the outside world —.
"If Emilia's explanation was correct…"
Beyond that door lay the desert.
A desert — he'd forgotten its proper name, but the plan was to cross the sand and reach civilization. That way, at the very least, there would be no more threat of an assassin trying to kill him.
The basics of desert travel: move at night. Avoid sandstorms. Determine your heading, then walk toward it. — That was the extent of his knowledge.
"Instead of staying in a place where I'm guaranteed to die, I'd rather take the initiative and gamble on surviving."
It might not be a rational decision — he could accept that.
But even if this was an irrational choice, he refused to consider the choice to save himself a mistake. In a situation where you couldn't even trust yourself, all that awaited you was darkness.
He would never sit in the dark and wait for death.
If he was going to die, he'd fight back.
"———"
He placed both hands on the enormous door and slowly pushed forward.
The door was at least ten times his size. Under normal circumstances, even throwing his entire body weight against it shouldn't have budged it even slightly.
And yet, pressed by Subaru's palms, it swung open as easily as a mechanical contraption.
"Heh."
A deflated breath escaped him. Subaru stopped the door from opening further.
Even if they hadn't noticed yet that he was slipping out, if the door was left wide open, they'd eventually catch on.
Even if they did discover he'd left, he wanted to put as much distance between them as possible before they could catch up.
"———"
Holding the door ajar, Subaru peered through the gap.
Instantly, what flooded his vision was a vast sea of sand, just beginning to be swallowed by the hush of night.
"…So it really is… a desert."
He narrowed his eyes, searching the horizon, but the end was nowhere in sight.
An environment with nothing to obstruct the view — and still the horizon was invisible. How much distance lay between here and its vanishing point, Subaru couldn't even guess.
But no matter the distance, it couldn't be infinite.
One step forward brought him one step closer to the outside world.
One step closer to the outside world meant — one step closer to his own world.
"———"
For an instant, Subaru's feet lingered inside the tower.
A pang of guilt stirred — guilt at leaving behind the people he'd meet, people who were almost certainly — surely — harboring no ill will toward him.
He shook it off. His yearning for the outside world, for his original world, was stronger.
He didn't want to be here.
The place Natsuki Subaru belonged was that house, where his mother and father were waiting.
"Let's go…"
He squeezed through the gap and stepped forward, planting his foot firmly.
Pressing his sole into the sand, he felt the grit grip the bottom of his shoe more than he'd expected. He ground through it by sheer force, and Natsuki Subaru strode boldly into the outside world.
And then — .
"Huh—"
The sole of his shoe burst apart, and Subaru's body was hurled high into the air.
※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ Smashed back-first into the ground, Subaru lost all sense of up and down.
Complete panic — though by now, it was unclear whether a panicked state or a calm state was the abnormal one for Subaru.
"What…"
— happened? He tried to spit out the sand in his mouth, but there was no time to finish the thought.
Because the answer was right in front of him, presented with brazen authority.
"———"
Before his eyes, framed against the world darkening into night, a colossal shadow gazed down at him.
It had no limbs. It possessed slippery skin, and its mouth was lined with savage, cruel fangs. Its massive body — to Subaru, it looked like a worm.
A terrifyingly enormous worm. At least ten meters long. A worm monster.
"You have…"
— got to be kidding. A world where creatures like this existed.
Every sight more unbelievable than the last, the scenery kept hammering at Subaru's sanity and refusing to let him compose himself.
And the immediate crisis pressing in on him did not permit the luxury of crouching and despairing.
"You piece of…"
Sand-caked, he staggered to his feet and shook his head hard.
That attack just now — it had probably been a strike from the worm lurking beneath the ground. Or maybe he'd simply surfaced right on top of it while it was coming up for air.
Either way, this worm had sent Subaru tumbling across the sand, and now — .
"It's not going to… let me go…!"
Realizing the overwhelming disadvantage he was in, Subaru cast his eyes around.
He had taken only four steps from the tower. Pathetic didn't begin to cover it — but the option of running back inside and scraping together survival was still very much on the table.
But when he looked around, he cursed his own wretched luck.
Blown away by a single strike from the worm and sent rolling across the sand, Subaru had been pushed too far from the tower. The worm's massive body now stood between him and the tower — getting back meant slipping past the creature, and that was simply impossible.
"Even so…"
Running out into the featureless sea of sand would only delay the worm catching up to him.
For one thing, there was no guarantee this was the only worm. Given its size, this one might be the apex predator of this desert, but even one half its size would be threatening enough.
If a swarm attacked — .
"Guess the option of running away just wasn't realistic at all, huh."
He hated the world for its thorough, pedagogical cruelty in explaining that to him so clearly.
And the worm's attitude toward Subaru — still scrambling to make sense of the situation — appeared to have settled.
Slowly, its head — which had no eyes — turned toward him. Its gaping maw opened wide.
There was something jarringly out of place about the twisted horn on the worm's head.
"One shot. One shot. One shot. One shot…"
Pulling the sand-guard up around his neck, Subaru tracked the worm's movements.
He extended one arm forward and gauged the timing. In passing, he noticed his torn fingernail — the wound had closed, and the nail had begun, however slightly, to regenerate.
Healing magic, or perhaps the green room's lingering effect. In that momentary gap of consciousness — .
"———!!"
Letting out a shriek so piercing it was impossible to reconcile with its colossal body, the worm lunged toward Subaru like an avalanche.
A roar — the howl of displaced air — and for a single instant, Subaru felt his body abandon his consciousness entirely.
"———"
He threw himself to the worm's right side, rolling beneath its flank, dodging the initial strike.
Nothing else mattered. He watched — hallucinated — a phantom version of himself executing the maneuver perfectly. And then, trailing a beat behind his consciousness, his body simply followed the phantom's lead.
It moved.
"Shh—!!"
Dust erupted. A shockwave detonated right beside him.
Caught in the blast, Subaru rolled across the sand, mirroring the ghost in his mind.
"…Haah!"
His body moved with far more agility than his memories would suggest.
In that split second, a thought flashed through Subaru's mind — a year of Natsuki Subaru's life that he had no memory of. The residue of experience from the Subaru who had survived in this brutal environment.
He didn't dwell on it now. He simply used it.
"Just keep — !!"
Converting his rolling momentum into forward drive, Subaru sprinted — full speed — straight ahead, toward the tower's entrance.
In this one moment, clinging to the life right in front of him was everything.
He knew that returning to the tower meant enduring an atmosphere of suspicion he couldn't shake and the gnawing terror of death. Even so, choosing to die as worm fodder was out of the question.
"———"
He couldn't afford to look back, but the worm — which had buried its head headfirst into the sand — was far too clumsy to immediately redirect and pursue him.
Just a dozen-odd meters left. If he could just make it — "Ru—"
The instant before, it wasn't the worm's head — it was its tail. The tail burst through the sand like the ground splitting open, sweeping Subaru's feet out from under him. Sand erupted, and once again his body was launched into the air.
"Oh, a—"
Flailing limbs that reached nothing, Subaru looked down.
Below him, spinning through the air, he could see the worm's gaping maw — its foul, open throat — ready to swallow him whole.
— He had underestimated it.
This environment — this world as punishing as a greenhouse — and the wild creature that had survived in it long enough to grow to monstrous size. Thinking he could outwit it had been the height of arrogance.
Shallow, thoughtless — and once again, he would pay for it with his life.
"No — don't…"
Falling, scraping his limbs uselessly like a beetle with its wings torn off, the words spilled from him.
He was going to die. Die again. And even dying — would it even be a clean death this time? And if he did die, if it ended here, then what? Could he endure it?
Even if — even if he were cast into an endless, never-concluding darkness.
Could he endure it?
"Noooooooo!!"
He screamed, reaching toward the night sky, begging for rescue.
Nothing to grab. Through a haze of thin clouds, not a single star was visible in the sky — and Subaru, alone, fell.
Abandoned by the star bearing his name, swallowed by a monster's belly, erased from existence.
Such despair — .
— A brilliant white light burst forth.
"———"
The white light erupted and struck the worm's face dead-on.
The impact, quite literally, drove into the creature's head like a lance, warping that massive skull as though it were spun sugar, and in the next instant it exploded.
The worm's head burst apart, spraying foul-colored flesh and blood in every direction.
The head that should have swallowed Subaru was gone, and the worm's titanic body swayed. But before it could topple, Subaru's body crashed into the headless torso.
It was like slamming face-first into raw hamburger meat.
Using open wounds, internal organs, and the flesh itself as cushion, Subaru traded a revolting sensation for his life.
A liquid that stung his throat and triggered the urge to vomit sloshed into his mouth. He coughed violently. All the while, the worm's carcass slowly began to topple onto the sand — but didn't.
One after another, lights flashed at the edge of his vision, and the worm's remains were shot through again and again.
Pierced, exploded, shortened, scattered — the worm was dismembered, torn to pieces. That the debris didn't hit Subaru was pure, dumb luck — good fortune embedded within the worst of bad fortune.
At last — .
"…Ah."
Subaru realized his body had been flung onto the sand by the force of the bombardment.
He spread his limbs and lay on his back.
"———"
Overhead, the same starless sky — the same sky that had looked down on him when the worm tossed him into the air — stared back.
For reasons unknown, even now — having clawed his way back to life — the sky remained unchanged, abandoning "Subaru" just the same.
Taken for granted, desired, forsaken, hated, loved, pushed away.
Did he want to live? Did he want to die? Did it hurt? Didn't it?
"What do you want me to do…?! If there's an answer, then just tell me…!"
He covered his face and screamed at the empty sky where no one stood and nothing could be seen.
In the silence that answered him, Subaru asked — who held the answer he most wanted to hear?
That would probably — .
"…Tell me, Natsuki Subaru."
Murmured in a feeble, exhausted voice, Subaru rolled onto his side.
It was an idle motion — meaningless, purposeless. He simply shifted.
— And that tiny movement saved his life, just barely, as a white beam of light grazed his ear and drove into the ground.
"Guh—"
Something had sheared across his right ear at tremendous speed.
Clutching the ear that screamed in agony, he rolled sideways. Blood dripped. He looked at the source of the pain.
A slender, white, needle-like object stood embedded in the sand.
"This… is…"
Reaching out to touch it, the moment his fingers brushed the needle, it crumbled to dust.
And the very next instant, Subaru's vision lurched.
"———"
Lurched violently — downward.
Whether the worm's thrashing had destabilized the ground, or that final white needle had been the last straw, the earth beneath Subaru's rear collapsed, and the surrounding ground caved in with him.
"Ah — oh — noooo!"
He tried to leap back, tried to grab hold, but his fingers only slid through the sand.
Like a bug falling into an antlion pit — powerless to resist, Subaru's body plunged into the depths of the sand.
His limbs were buried. He couldn't move. Looking up, he gasped desperately.
His whole body was being swallowed by the sand. With the suffocating premonition of being buried alive bearing down on him, he fought with every last shred of strength.
"Someone… anyone… help…"
The words that followed dissolved into formlessness as Subaru's body was consumed by the sand, sinking deeper and deeper.
And not a single star in the sky spared even a passing glance at the wretched, struggling "Subaru."