Chapter 144: I love you... Barusu!

As the door of the sealed chamber swung open, the clattering rattle of chains rose beside Natsuki Subaru's ear.

And the moment he heard that sound, his body stiffened on instinct.

After living with it for several years, he had thought he was used to it by now.

But at a moment like this, when he had come seeking his own death, when he was about to die at Ram's hands!—

The sound of chains rattling from Ram dragged him straight back into memory: to the manor, where Rem had crushed him to death with her morningstar, and to the forest, where Rem had shattered his legs and butchered him with slow, deliberate cruelty!—

Everything had begun to fall apart with Rem, and everything would end with Ram.

It was almost enough to make a man sigh.

In this life of his, he really had been undone by those two oni sisters...

Ram, wrists and ankles bound in chains, lifted her head at the sound. She stared at the figure of Natsuki Subaru before her, half feverish with emotion, half dazed.

"Barusu, you came... wait, you're bleeding! You're bleeding so much!!"

Ram had meant to open with the calm little greeting she had spent so long rehearsing.

But then she saw the way he was clutching his stomach in pain, and the ragged, ugly wound dripping blood down his body.

The composure on her face broke apart, and her voice shook as the words spilled out.

"None of that matters. Ram, there's something I want to tell you. You already know, don't you?"

"The four great nations have us surrounded. Pandaemonium has been destroyed. This is probably... my ending."

"And it's the chance I've been craving all along—the chance for release!"

Natsuki Subaru's expression burned as he stepped forward, but the motion was too sharp and it tore the wound open. Blood surged out in a rush, staining the hand pressed to his left side an even deeper red.

The pain wrung a low grunt out of him.

And that grunt, that sight of him, twisted something in Ram's chest until it ached.

It was fortunate, at least, that when the idiot Barusu had locked her in this chamber, he hadn't meant for her to be unable to move at all.

So long as she didn't leave the room, the chains gave her enough slack to walk wherever she liked.

So when Natsuki Subaru made that pained sound, Ram dragged the clattering chains forward step by step until she stood right beside him.

And then. (Five hundred words are omitted here; it was simply an apology, nothing more.)

"Ram... what are you doing?"

Natsuki Subaru's voice trembled. That brief span of time had nearly made him forget what he'd come here to say.

Ram's sudden action startled him so badly that his personality corrected itself a few degrees, and even his despair toward this world eased a little. For a moment, faint specks of color crept back into everything within his sight.

Of course, it all faded back to black and white soon enough.

"It's just... compensation."

Ram stopped, her face faintly flushed, and turned her head aside as though embarrassed.

Then she shook her head, and whatever thought crossed her mind, her eyes hardened again with resolve.

"Barusu, listen to me. There's only a misunderstanding between us that was never cleared up. Otherwise we would never have come this far..."

"A misunderstanding? Really?"

Natsuki Subaru shook his head and laughed without humor. Ram was genuinely strange today, and the malice in him churned up until he wanted nothing more than to provoke her properly.

So he seized his own collar and yanked it down, forcing her attention to his throat, where she could see them clearly—the bruises, purple-black and mottled, the marks of strangling fingers!—

"You remember these, don't you? Even looking at this, you still think it's a misunderstanding between us? Have you forgotten Rem's death? Have you forgotten how these marks got here!"

Natsuki Subaru roared it at Ram, whose eyes had gone soft with grief for him.

He knew perfectly well that Rem's death wasn't his doing. He simply had no intention of letting Ram learn that.

Because all this time, Ram had hated him for one reason—she believed he had gotten Rem killed.

If he told her the truth, that hatred might vanish, and her attitude toward him would change.

But ever since the day he fled the manor, Natsuki Subaru had held to a single principle:

"Once a person changes, they learn to deceive. Once they learn to deceive, they may betray!"

If her attitude toward him changed, if she stopped hating him, then Ram too would lose her color in his eyes—and with it, the right to kill him.

And that, he refused to allow!

"No!!"

All at once Ram threw herself at him, crying out in a voice torn ragged with anguish—the very same word echoing in Natsuki Subaru's own chest at that instant.

At the same time, her smooth little hand caught his and held on, refusing to let go.

"I'm sorry, Subaru... I'm sorry!"

Ram's face was streaked with tears.

When he had deliberately shown her the strangle marks on his throat—the marks she had left—the guilt inside her had nearly driven her out of her mind.

So she barely stopped to think.

Almost entirely on instinct, she blurted the whole truth out at him:

"Subaru, the truth is I've known for ages. Rem's death had nothing to do with you. The one who was really at fault was me... it was Ram!"

"Ram was the one who made the mistake, and yet Barusu never chose to resent me."

"That day in the snow, Barusu saved me when I was barely breathing, and carried me everywhere, running from place to place, doing anything to get the mana crystals that would keep me alive. I know all of that. I know all of it!"

Ram gripped his hand tighter and used the leverage to lean forward, curling her already small frame into his arms.

She stole greedy little breaths of his burning warmth, and there was a strange light in her eyes as she spoke.

"It's precisely because I know that I understand how important Subaru is to me!"

"Only you would ever keep valuing a useless, unpleasant Ram like this. You gave Ram the feeling of being needed, and that was the only reason she had the courage to go on living afterward!"

Ram raised her head. In her eyes now, a dark flame seemed to churn—the madness of pure obsession.

"I'm sorry, Barusu."

"Everything before was my fault, all of it. Playing at being aloof, smugly keeping up that so-called gentleness of mine—"

"But not anymore! Ram is a disobedient dog... and from now on she'll listen to no one but her master!"

"Beat me, curse me, discipline me—Ram will take all of it. After all, between the two of us... we've already finished the rite of claiming, haven't we?"

What Ram meant, of course, was that shameful scene she had performed in Natsuki Subaru's room before the viewing.

Even with that blank, uncomprehending look on his face, she would not take it back, would not pretend it had never happened and let it pass as one more moment between acquaintances.

She had said the words out loud, after all: that she would be a bitch for Natsuki Subaru to command as he pleased.

And this—this was what "love" meant in Ram's eyes.

"I love you... Barusu."

Ram leaned close to Natsuki Subaru's ear, moist red lips parting softly, and said it just like that.

[Author's Note: There was a rather steamy portion, so cuts and edits were made. My esteemed readers, please forgive me.]

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