Back on the commercial street, Subaru threw himself into the search for the Fake
That said, all he could really do was glare at the river of people until his eyes bulged. In the third loop, he'd run into her not far from the vegetable stall where it all started, so he'd planted himself around that area as his starting position for now.
The fact that the vegetable-seller's expression looked a shade more unfriendly than usual did bother him a little, though.
"Guess our meeting last time didn't go so hot, huh... But I know what you're really like, man. You've got a heart of gold. I know, I know!"
He flashed a thumbs-up at the sour-faced merchant, who finally looked away with an expression that said he'd just witnessed something deeply unpleasant.
Subaru tucked his thumb back in with a faint sense of loneliness and scanned the street once more.
Just as before, the commercial street was packed shoulder to shoulder—a potato-washing brigade of every race under the sun.
Residents of every conceivable fantasy world, and among them he spotted what could only be described as "beastmen"—a species that looked like a bipedal dog covered in absurdly fluffy fur. Subaru's excitement shot to MAX. He wanted to pet it. Wanted it so bad.
"What the hell is that level of cuteness... Born winners, the lot of them, at this point. Between them, Reinhard, and Fake Satella—it's a sin."
The creature was short and toddled along on unsteady legs, which only amplified its small-animal charm. It was the kind of thing you could get arrested for, if there were a crime called Existential Fairytale Offense.
"Ngh... settle down, right arm... This is no time for fluffing! Have you forgotten why you're here?!"
He forcibly restrained the arm that was itching to reach out for that white fur, watched the retreating figure leave with lingering regret, and finally managed to drag his gaze back to its original position.
But more than ten minutes of watching the commercial street go by and still no sign of her. He checked the time on his phone—nearly an hour had passed since the restart of this world.
"My sense of time's kind of shaky, but going by my memory, the theft should've happened by now..."
He muttered this to himself, and a nasty premonition flickered through his mind.
Once you felt that chill—maybe, just maybe—it was impossible to shake. Subaru scratched his head, yelled "Aaah!" and "Uuuu!" a few times, then trudged toward the shop in front of him.
"Hey, old man."
"What is it, penniless."
The vegetable-seller faced Subaru again, not bothering to hide his displeasure.
Harsh words, even if they happened to be true. Subaru kept his chin up through a rueful smile.
"I can't exactly argue with 'penniless'... but hey, old man, I've got a question. Anything go down around here recently? Pickpockets, commotion, anything like that?"
"You've got some nerve asking questions without buying a single thing. ...Besides, that sort of ruckus? Hate to break it to you, but it's nothing special around here."
"Seriously?!"
The vendor's malicious answer drew an involuntary gasp of surprise from Subaru. But come to think of it, it wasn't hard to imagine why. The loot house was the gathering place for stolen goods from all across the capital. If thefts were frequent enough to fill that enormous warehouse to any reasonable degree, the state of public order was self-evident.
"So my intel's completely cut off, huh...?"
"—But I do remember the ruckus from earlier. Couple of shots went off on the street, magic blasts. Look."
The vendor leaned forward and pointed toward a row of stalls about four blocks to the left. Subaru followed his gaze.
"Whoa, that's nuts."
"Icicle marks, like arrows stuck into the wall. They faded quick, though."
Just beside the stalls, at the mouth of a narrow alley, the wall was riddled with holes.
There were four of them, each roughly the size of a five-hundred-yen coin. Punching holes through a stone wall meant that the force and speed behind them would have been chilling to contemplate.
"That's a whole different league from lobbing ice pebbles... I guess Fake Satella's going all out this time, huh."
If he approached carelessly, he could end up on the receiving end of those himself. The thought made cold sweat prick across his forehead.
"But this puts me behind the eight ball again."
Setting that terrifying image aside, Subaru wiped the sweat from his brow and murmured.
Those magical traces were almost certainly Fake Satella's handiwork. If it was a theft case involving her, it could only be the badge-snatching by
That meant his chance to rendezvous with Fake Satella had evaporated.
At least, in his experience, there was no reliable way to meet up with her.
So his priority was— "Rendezvous with Felt, who has the badge. If I can, I want to catch her before she gets into the loot house and swap her for my phone."
He had zero desire to go near the loot house—after all, he'd been brutally killed there twice.
To be precise, the part he wanted to avoid was Elsa's involvement with the loot house.
"If I go too late, I repeat the disaster from the first loop. But if I meet up with Old
The crux of it was Felt's location.
Right now, she should be running herself ragged trying to shake Fake Satella's pursuit. She couldn't sprint forever, so Subaru figured she'd stop somewhere eventually—but with his limited knowledge of the capital's geography, tracking her down was a tall order.
"If I've got Return by Death... maybe this time I should just burn a loop and search everywhere?"
It seemed like a viable strategy, but Subaru shook his head and rejected it on the spot.
First, after dying three times, he doubted he could steel himself to die again just to go back. Each death had been exactly that—death, in every excruciating sense. If he could avoid it, he wanted his last experience of dying to be on a tatami mat at the end of a long life.
More importantly, there was still the nagging uncertainty about Return by Death's effective range. Burning loops until he had none left wasn't funny—it wasn't a joke at all.
"In the end, all I can do is give it everything I've got while I'm alive. No duh."
He twisted his hips, ground his joints, then did a deep squat on the spot as a warm-up.
The shopkeeper looked thoroughly annoyed at the impromptu radio calisthenics in front of his store. Subaru jogged lightly in place, warming his body, and raised a hand.
"Well, thanks for everything, old man. This time I really am leaving. Next time, I'll definitely buy some apples from you."
"Yeah, buy something and you're a customer. Then you're welcome. Go on, earn some money, penniless."
"Yes sir yes sir. —I'll be praying I can actually bring money next time."
With that dismissive send-off, Subaru took off running.
His destination was the slums—but a different direction from the loot house. Heading there would set off every BAD flag in the book, just as he'd reasoned. So he'd try a different approach.
※※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ "Felt's hideout, huh? Then it'd be two streets in from here."
"Much obliged. You really helped me out, brother."
"Don't mention it, brother. —Hey, just... live strong, okay?"
With a wry smile, the middle-aged face withdrew behind the creaking door.
Recalling how that strained grin had never once lost its thread of sympathy, Subaru quietly clenched his fist. His plan was working.
Caked in mud and filth, looking worse for wear even by slum standards.
"It was a strategy I worked out based on the first and second loop experiences in the slums... but it's paying off."
As he spoke, he brushed at the stiff, dried mud caking his track suit sleeves.
When Subaru had first arrived in the slums and worked out Felt's whereabouts, the masterstroke he'd come up with was this pathetic disguise.
During the first loop, when Fake Satella had dragged him through the slums looking like he'd been chewed up and spat out by a cat, the residents had been fairly sympathetic and cooperative.
Compare that to the second loop—when he'd shown up with barely a scratch on him and received nothing but cold indifference. Chalk and cheese. Remembering that, he'd deliberately gone overboard with his appearance this time.
"I mean, I did step in some poop from God-knows-what animal..."
He'd been terrified he'd slip on it and fall flat on his face.
Losing only his sneakers had been a stroke of fortune—his dignity and his life had been spared too.
Unfortunately, that was only how Subaru saw it. His mud-spattered ensemble hadn't retained a shred of dignity whatsoever.
"That makes four sources now... so far, three of them agree."
The sympathetic residents had given him a total of four leads. Of those, three pointed to the same place for Felt's whereabouts. Assuming the residents weren't all conspiring to screw him over, the information was probably accurate enough.
The outlier had been a remarkably hard-of-hearing old woman's opinion, so there was definitely no intent to deceive. Probably.
"Feel like I've got her hideout nailed down now... but the question is whether she'll go back to it."
He'd gotten intel on Felt's usual residence, but given that she was currently fleeing for her life, whether she'd actually return was a coin flip. When you were afraid pursuers might find your location, you tended to avoid your own hideout. —In that case, luck was all he could chalk it up to.
"Overthinking it won't help. Don't waste time worrying about what you can't resolve, that's my motto."
When worrying wouldn't produce answers, he didn't worry. Subaru's decisiveness shone through once again.
He knocked the caked mud off his clothes and jogged into the depths of the slums. The first time he'd come here, he couldn't even explore on his own, much less behind Fake Satella. The growth was real. He felt like giving himself a pat on the back.
"Reward for a job well done... Maybe I'll crack open another potage."
He was rummaging through a plastic bag when he reached a street. Suddenly, a figure emerged from the opposite direction, and they nearly collided.
He twisted out of the way at the last second and slammed his back into the narrow alley wall. "Ugh!"—the air knocked out of him. The near-collisionist regarded him with a languid gesture.
"Oh my, I'm so sorry. Are you all right?"
"I'm fine, I'm fine. Despite appearances, durability's my middle name!"
He looked up, trying to save face, and his sentence died in his throat. At the sound of that high-pitched squeak, the dark-haired woman let out a soft "Fufu."
"What an entertaining boy. But are you really okay?"
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Even that simple gesture carried an ineffable sensuality, and Subaru thought, as always, that every single one of her movements was ridiculously erotic.
A sultry, sensuous beauty whose gestures were nothing short of pornographic—the one person in the world he had least wanted to run into.
The woman who had gutted him twice in a row—Elsa stood before him.
"There's no need to be that frightened. I'm not going to do anything."
"F-Frightened? I'm not frightened! What makes you think I'm some scaredy-cat? I'm, like, totally freaking out right now, okay?! That really hurts, you know, hearing something like that—I'm seriously freaking out here—"
"Ignoring his bluster, Elsa narrowed her gorgeous eyes with a seductive smile.
"You reek," she said.
"Huh? I reek?" Subaru tilted his head.
She wrinkled her shapely nose delicately.
"When someone's frightened, they give off the smell of fear. You're frightened right now. ...And you're angry, too. At me."
She seemed to enjoy laying bare his inner state, looking up at him from under her lashes.
Subaru responded with a wordless, hollow smile while trying to kill his hammering pulse by breathing deeply.
Her words were true.
Subaru was afraid of her. Right now, she was, by an overwhelming margin, the most terrifying person in this world.
And she was also, by an overwhelming margin, the most infuriating person in this world.
He genuinely wanted to knock her unconscious, and beyond that, he wanted to flee this spot immediately more than anything.
She'd killed him twice. Who could blame him for trembling down to his very core?
As Subaru fell silent, Elsa's eyes narrowed like a snake's. Pinned by that gaze, he still refused to look away—that much cowardice he wouldn't concede.
She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue at his bravado.
"...I'm a little curious, but fine. I can't afford to cause a scene right now."
"Th-That's a reassuring thing to say. Push me too far and you'll ruin that pretty face of yours, you know."
"My, how eloquent. —You'd be more impressive if you could hide the hostility."
Her reaching finger pressed lightly against his forehead, and the tension locking his body released in an instant.
Subaru exhaled and let his shoulders rise and fall. Elsa touched the fingertip that had grazed him to her lips.
"Well then, excuse me. I have a feeling we'll meet again."
"I'd appreciate a bright, crowded place next time. It'd help me relax."
That was all the sarcasm he could muster.
Elsa left behind only a troubled smile, flipped her black coat, and melted into the darkness of the alley. Subaru watched her vanish—literally vanish—then slumped against the wall, utterly spent.
"Well... that was an unexpected reunion, no joke. So she'd been lurking around this area back at the loot house too..."
The unplanned encounter had nearly broken his spirit.
In terms of psychological impact, she'd dealt Subaru a greater shock than even Fake Satella. He wanted to pray that this would be the last time he'd see her.
"Felt's hideout should be around here... but there's no way Elsa already tore through here and... right?"
She was a pervert who got off on disemboweling people.
She could've sliced two or three people open here just to kill time while waiting. Especially this deep in the slums—the unsettling images it conjured were impossible to shake.
"I-It's probably fine. I didn't smell any blood or see any splatter. Probably."
Rotting garbage and the stench of decay made it impossible to detect blood, and the darkness left no chance to spot bloodstains, but he was sure it hadn't happened. He wanted to be sure.
He didn't have the courage to rush forward yet, so he crept onward, inch by careful inch.
Muttering "Heh" and "Whoa" to himself, dodging insect wings and dodging full bottles of sake, his search continued.
Five minutes after his encounter with Elsa, he arrived at a ramshackle hovel.
"This should be the place based on the info... but is this actually someone's house?"
Standing before what appeared to be a door—a slab of wood—Subaru tilted his head.
The hovel before him was roughly the size of two portable toilets from a construction site. It was the living embodiment of "standing is half a tatami, lying down is one tatami."
"I mean, they called it a hideout, so I doubt this is wrong..."
Still, knowing that a little girl like Felt lived here made him feel sorry for her. Her greed and upward ambition suddenly seemed a lot more forgivable.
"Squeezing her tiny body down even tinier just to survive in a place like this. No wonder her personality got twisted beyond recognition. Ah, it can't be helped. How tragic. Ah, how tragic."
"You're laying it on real thick, big guy. Makes me sick, hearing you pity my home like that."
Just as Subaru had entered full pity-plus-it-can't-be-helped mode, a voice called out from behind him. He turned.
Standing at the end of his gaze, glaring at him with dead-fish eyes, was a small blonde girl—Felt.
Her outfit and posture were the same as ever. If anything, her usual grimy look appeared even filthier than before—proof, perhaps, of how fierce today's escape had been.
"Why do you keep making that increasingly pathetic face? You lookin' down on me or something, scruffy little girl?"
"That's a completely different sentiment... But anyway, I'm just glad you're okay."
The girl didn't bother hiding her displeasure, and Subaru let his shoulders drop in relief.
Finding Felt—he could be genuinely happy about that. The near-miss with Elsa had scared him half to death, but now that the dust was settling, things were looking up.
To Subaru's murmur, she snorted. "Oh, a customer?"
She eyed him warily, never dropping her guard.
"You've made it all the way here, so you must want something from me. ...From the looks of you, you don't seem like one of the locals."
"Oh. So you don't lump me in with your neighbors. You've got an eye for people."
"We've got folks here who at least keep a little cleaner than that. You're a complete mess. Honestly, you look worse than any of us. Worse than me."
Subaru already wanted to take back all the sympathy he'd felt just moments ago. She ignored the veins bulging on his forehead and pulled back with a "So?"
"What do you want? If you're commissioning a theft, put up a front payment. Depending on the target, I'll want a cut on top."
"Commissioning a theft... You've got some racket going. Is being a pickpoint something to brag about?"
"It's about survival. Without this, I'd have to sell my body. So—what's it gonna be? Or is it something else? Depending on what..."
Felt wiggled her fingers in quick succession, showing off their dexterity.
In her palm, a tiny knife materialized as if by magic. A warning, perhaps—depending on the situation, she'd use it for self-defense.
In reality, if it ever came to a confrontation, the mere fact that she was armed meant he didn't stand a chance. She'd outpace him, disappear, and before he knew it he'd be unlocking the "Stabbed to Death in an Alley BAD 2" route.
"I've got one request. —I want to buy the badge you stole."