Chapter 41 41: “(Seeking Follows) This Time, You Are My Unwavering Choice!”

Rem exhaled in short, unsteady breaths, her eyes fixed on Natsuki Subaru with unwavering resolve.

Her sky-blue irises were filled with nerves — but beneath the anxiety, something else shone through: a quiet, released kind of relief.

These words… she had rehearsed them in her heart more times than she could count.

That day on the rooftop, she had taken Subaru's hand — and still hadn't been able to say what she truly wanted to say.

But today, at last, she could say every single word she had swallowed back then. All of it. Straight to Subaru.

And this time, she had no hesitations holding her back.

Without Lady Emilia standing between them, there was no need to think about how to encourage a dejected Subaru the way she had in the Royal Capital.

All she had to do now was pour everything she had into one grand, blazing confession!

Rem's voice trembled with a desperate, all-or-nothing courage — and yet each word rang out with unmistakable clarity through the still, quiet room.

Every syllable struck Natsuki Subaru's heart like a small, precise hammer.

Natsuki Subaru went completely still.

As his eyes rested on Rem, bathed in the light flooding through the window, his mind slipped — just for a single, unguarded moment.

It was as though he had been carried back to that rooftop overlooking the entire Royal Capital.

The walls of the room dissolved around him, replaced by weathered, abandoned pillars, and above — a wide, open sky with sunlight pouring down through it.

["Let's start over — from one… no, from zero!"]

In that daze, Rem's voice from the rooftop echoed in his ears — her confession, familiar and achingly clear.

But then the world shifted. Day turned to night.

Storm clouds swallowed the sky, and the air grew heavy and suffocating.

["Rem, Rem, Rem…"]

Subaru watched himself weaving desperately between the wounded lying on the ground, frantically searching for any sign of Rem.

["Re… m?"

At last, Natsuki Subaru found her — hands folded on her chest, lying on the ground as though simply asleep.

Thud.

When the doctor told him Rem might never wake again, Natsuki Subaru's legs gave out beneath him and he sank to his knees.

In the pit of that despair, without even realizing what he was doing, he picked up a broken sword lying on the ground.

"If I die right now, I'll have to fight Sloth again."

Natsuki Subaru swallowed.

"But I don't care!"

He gritted his teeth and pressed on.

"No matter how many times — I'll fight it. I'll bring it down!"

"Emilia and Rem — I'll save them both! I won't let either of them die!"

"To save you both — no matter how many times I have to die… I will!"

Then Natsuki Subaru drove the broken blade into his throat.

The next instant — Return by Death.

Then Natsuki Subaru found himself back inside the ground dragon carriage, seated close beside Emilia.

But the moment he returned, the Emilia beside him turned to him with a puzzled look and asked:

"Who is… Rem?"]

The vision shifted again.

Subaru watched another version of himself standing at the bedside of the sleeping Rem, weeping — face crumpled, body shaking, drowning in regret.

Watching it all, Subaru's eyes burned red. His gaze was filled with the same desperate, unresigned grief.

His last real memories ended with the closing of the Water Gate City incident.

And even then — even after all of that — Rem still hadn't woken up.

He had visited her sleeping form more times than he could count. He had jolted awake in the middle of the night more times than he could count.

He had asked himself again and again, deep in his heart — would he ever, in this lifetime, see the moment Rem opened her eyes?

He just wanted… to see his Rem one more time.

Back to today.

When Natsuki Subaru had seen Rem again, he hadn't felt the rush of emotion he had imagined he would.

Because he knew — the Rem standing before him now was a stranger to him. A stranger in every sense.

No bond had yet been built between them.

Rem might even regard him with hostility, put off by the scent of the witch clinging to him.

He knew. He knew all of it.

And yet — the more he reminded himself of that, the more desperately he missed the Rem whose entire world had revolved around him.

What he hadn't expected was what came next.

Rem — just like Emilia — had started acting strange.

She had suddenly kissed him, catching him completely off guard.

Then there had been her envy at dinner, the charged, intimate tension in the hallway — and yet none of it had managed to move something deep inside him.

Until… now.

Rem — this wonderful, dear girl — was confessing to him again, under the sunlight, with the same blazing and wholehearted conviction as before!

It was as though Natsuki Subaru was only truly seeing her for the first time in this moment.

He had been forcing himself to pretend he didn't know her.

But now — standing here, watching Rem wrapped in the glow of the window —

Her gaze, her smile, her every small movement…

They were slowly, surely overlapping with the Rem he remembered — from the manor, from the Royal Capital, from that rooftop confession.

Natsuki Subaru's entire body trembled with a swell of emotion that nearly overwhelmed him.

His heart hammered wildly inside his chest, and the disbelieving joy of something lost and found again detonated somewhere deep inside him.

A sharp, stinging heat rushed up behind his eyes, and his vision blurred.

This was no illusion. No lookalike. Not some substitute.

The girl standing before him — bathed in that pure and radiant light, confessing to him with that same desperate, all-in courage he knew so well —

She was the Rem he had crossed countless deaths and endured endless despair to bring back.

"Rem…"

Natsuki Subaru's voice came out hoarse and raw, trembling with disbelief.

He lurched forward a step, as though his body had stopped obeying him.

Right now, all he wanted — immediately, without a second's hesitation — was to confirm that she was real.

To confirm this wasn't some dream too beautiful and too cruel to be true.

He opened his arms wide, desperate to pull that light — that person — completely into his embrace and hold her there against his chest.

"Subaru?"

Rem held her breath, nerves wound tight.

She watched the dazed, faraway look on Subaru's face, her own eyes nearly overflowing with anxiety.

Why was Subaru reacting like this?

The shock on his face — that much she had expected. The confession had been so sudden, after all.

But what came after left Rem bewildered.

Why was he just standing there in silence with his arms open wide, not saying a single word?

The Subaru she knew — upbeat, a little theatrical — would normally have launched into some embarrassed, fumbling attempt at turning her down.

But this silence… what did it mean?

Rem drew a long, steadying breath, as though making her final decision.

She stopped waiting for an answer. Instead, she stepped forward herself — one deliberate step at a time — walking straight toward Natsuki Subaru.

The halo of light at the window trailed behind her as she moved, casting a soft, hazy glow at her back — like an angel descending to earth.

From Natsuki Subaru's perspective, Rem's fair face was suddenly right there, close enough to touch.

He could see clearly — the faint trembling of her lashes, taut with nerves.

And in those sapphire-blue eyes, reflected back at him: his own face, wide open and utterly undone.

"Subaru."

Rem came to a stop directly in front of him, so close they could feel each other's breath.

She tilted her head up and fixed him with a gaze that burned.

"So — what does Subaru think? Please answer Rem!"

She reached out her hand — not a rough grab, but something careful and tentative, and at the same time utterly unyielding.

And gently, she took Natsuki Subaru's hand in hers.

The faint coolness of her fingertips against his skin was like a live current — it cut straight through the static chaos in Subaru's mind.

On instinct he almost pulled away — but stopped himself mid-motion, and instead held her small hand firmly in return.

"I…"

Natsuki Subaru felt his heartbeat thundering so hard it seemed ready to burst through his ribs, his breathing ragged and uneven.

The scent coming from Rem — warm sunlight layered over a faint, sweet fragrance — wrapped around him completely.

Even richer than when he had stumbled into her arms in the hallway. Even more disarming.

This sudden closeness, this confession out of nowhere —

It hit him harder than any Return by Death ever had.

Rem didn't rush him. She simply gazed at him — quietly, deeply, steadily.

But the grip around his wrist didn't loosen by even a fraction, as though she were making a wordless declaration:

This time, she would not let go so easily. She would not surrender Subaru to anyone else.

Outside the window, even the sunlight seemed to hold its breath.

The room was so quiet that the only sounds were the clear, distinct beating of two hearts —

And Rem's breathing — barely perceptible, trembling faintly — carrying within it a longing to be accepted, and in her eyes, a warmth of expectation that burned.

And to answer that longing, Natsuki Subaru stepped forward without a moment's hesitation.

With action — not words — he told Rem his answer, clear and unwavering.

The light fell softly between them.

It traced the outline of their slowly closing distance in a hazy border of gold — romantic and beautiful beyond words.

Time itself seemed to hold still in that single, perfect instant.

____

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