Chapter 148: Natsuki Subaru, a Real Man, Leap of Faith!

"Subaru, that's so cool! And if you want to see Rem smile, you can see it anytime, anywhere!"

Rem's face went red, bashful as a girl in the first flush of love hearing sweet words for the first time.

She had spent many years married to Natsuki Subaru by then, had even borne his children — and still, every time he said something sweet, no matter how corny or how badly delivered, Natsuki Subaru could make her blush.

If that wasn't love, then what was?

"Found you at last. I'm not letting you get away this time!"

The voice came thick with hatred. Ram advanced step by heavy step toward Natsuki Subaru and Betty, wind-attribute mana coiling around her body until the very air warped.

"Stand back!"

Betty planted herself in front of Natsuki Subaru, her small face grim, and threw out a warning against the murderous intent bearing down on them.

"So long as the contract with Subaru holds, I won't go easy on you either."

"It's Lady Beatrice who should stand back! Don't forget, this isn't the manor — and we're in the forest, no less!"

"Are you truly confident you can keep him safe — out of Ram's hands?"

Faced with Ram's insubordinate challenge, Betty didn't get angry. She only narrowed her focus, tracking every twitch of the other woman's body.

Which was exactly the problem.

She never noticed Natsuki Subaru slipping in behind her, close enough to touch.

Not until the spiral twintails she groomed with such care every single day, the ones she prized above almost everything, were seized in his fist did she realize something was wrong.

By then it was far too late.

"Heave-ho—"

A mischievous grin spread across Natsuki Subaru's face.

He yanked Betty's twin drills straight out to either side, then let go, and they bounced twice on their own springiness.

"Ah!"

Betty's little mouth fell open. Shock gave way to confusion, confusion to fury, fury to a burning red flush — and her eyes looked ready to spit actual flame.

"What do you think you're doing?! Do you want to die?!"

Teeth clenched, Betty rounded on Natsuki Subaru in a blaze of indignation.

"Ahh, I've been wanting to do that forever. Nice texture, too. Totally worth it!" Natsuki Subaru said, hands on his hips, utterly at his leisure.

"But Betty, I really don't want to die. Dying is the sort of thing you only need to do once, at the end of your life."

— Although most of the time, whether I die or not isn't up to me.

Natsuki Subaru added that part silently, to himself.]

"Does Subaru like doing that so much?"

Outside the screen, Betty touched her own pale cream-colored ringlets, torn between two impossible positions.

"— Absolutely not! Even if Subaru is Betty's contractor, he can't be doing that all the time, I suppose! It's uncomfortable and a little humiliating and—"

Betty's lips pursed. Something wavered in her eyes at first, but in the end it settled into resolve.

"At most, once in a great while, Betty might let him get it out of his system. Humans are pitiful creatures who can't control their own desires, after all, I suppose."

She let out a small huff and considered the matter closed.

["And now, Ram!"

Having dealt with Betty, Natsuki Subaru raised a hand with grave ceremony, his fingertip drifting slowly around until it pointed straight at Ram.

Ram stared back, puzzled and running short on patience, wondering whether the man in front of her had lost his mind. He'd been spouting nonsense ever since a moment ago.

"I'm sorry! Because I was too much of a coward, I left the two of you with nothing but painful memories."

The next instant she watched Natsuki Subaru bend into a deep, formal bow of apology.

"So you do know something about Rem's death!" Ram shouted, ignoring the apology entirely, urgency cracking her voice.

But Natsuki Subaru met the pressure she piled on him without so much as a flinch.

"No. Sorry. I really don't know a thing."

"But it's precisely because I know nothing that I'm going to go find out the truth of all of it."

Natsuki Subaru straightened up, and it had the weight of a vow.

"What good does saying that do now?! Rem is already dead!" Ram said, the words torn out of her.

"I'm not going to make big claims about what I can accomplish. Up to now I haven't managed to accomplish anything at all," Natsuki Subaru said, half to himself.

"But I still remember the part of yourselves that you've forgotten."

He looked Ram dead in the eye as he said it, and there was no give in his voice.

"What could you possibly understand about Rem and Ram?!"

"You're right! There's plenty of important things I still don't know."

Natsuki Subaru admitted his own shortcomings. But there was one point he wouldn't concede.

"But you don't know either, do you?"

He dragged in a deep breath, then hurled out the words he'd been holding in for so long with everything he had left.

"That I love you both more than anyone — that!"]

"L-love us... more than anyone?"

Outside the screen, Ram and Rem both looked as though a bolt of current had gone through them in the same instant. Neither could speak for a long while.

Rem handled it well enough. Ram was another matter — the blunt, unshakable confession from the Natsuki Subaru on screen had scattered her composure completely. She dropped her head, her cheeks scarlet, as if her face had been set on fire.

What she didn't notice was Rem, off to her side, watching her in secret, with something complicated and unreadable moving behind her eyes.

"Wait. What is Subaru about to do?"

Reinhard shot up out of his seat, staring at the scene in front of him in blank horror.

And everyone else was doing the same.

Because the Natsuki Subaru on screen was about to end his own life, deliberately.

Every one of them understood it wasn't for his own sake.

[The words were still hanging in the air. While the two women beside him were frozen in shock, before either could react—

Natsuki Subaru spun around and bolted for the cliff's edge behind him.

"Wait!" Betty screamed, and her face was pure helplessness.

Why? If you really are that person, then why would you throw yourself off a cliff?

She wanted to move, to stop him, but a vast fear and bewilderment settled over her, and in the end she stayed rooted where she stood.

"If we don't understand each other, then let me be the one who goes and understands you!"

Natsuki Subaru kept his eyes fixed on the cliff ahead, and images from the earlier loops flashed through his mind — all the time he'd spent with the two sisters.

Theirs were the first faces he saw when he woke in that manor. Of everyone he'd met, it was with them he had spent the most hours.

He knew Rem was kind. She had bandaged his fingers with her own hands after he cut them peeling potatoes.

He knew Ram was kind too. She had offered to teach him his letters, and traded barbs with him like an older sister with a little brother.

And of course those words weren't only meant for Rem and Ram. There was Emilia, and there was Betty. Every one of them had shown him goodwill.

Sometimes, thinking back on it, meeting them was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

So — don't run. He couldn't run.

Natsuki Subaru watched the cliff's edge rush closer, meter by meter, and he never once stopped.

"I'm the only one who can do this. I swear I'll save you!"

Teeth locked, Natsuki Subaru reached the edge and launched himself off it in a single leap, flying high—

And then gravity took him, and he fell, face-first.

The dense field of jagged rock jutting up from the ground below swelled in his vision, faster and faster, and then—

A wet crunch.

The dull, heavy sound of flesh and bone meeting a bed of razor-edged stone.

Natsuki Subaru. Dead.]

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