Chapter 84: Everyone Gradually Begins to Truly Understand Natsuki Subaru

"How is it that time has wound back to the very beginning again?"

Garfiel scratched his head, then his eyes suddenly lit up as if something had just struck him.

"Hey — since the wounds on Boss's hands have all vanished, doesn't that mean he doesn't have to die after all?"

"No. Look at the expression on Barusu's face. The truth is most likely the exact opposite."

Ram's voice trembled as she spoke, slowly.

"It's very likely that he didn't escape death at all — rather... he has already died once!"

Ram gazed at the Natsuki Subaru on the screen with a complicated look in her eyes, his expression of terror reflected in their depths.

That expression — she knew it all too well.

In her memory, after that pursuit through the snow, Natsuki Subaru had run himself ragged in every direction gathering mana crystals to replenish her magic — all to save her life.

He would often, just like he was doing now, suddenly and without warning begin gasping for breath in great heaving gulps, his face fixed in the terrified expression of someone who had just looked upon hell itself.

"Barusu... it is very likely that every time he dies, he returns to the past — and starts all over again!"

As Ram forced her conjecture out of her mouth, in her own heart understanding dawned as if the clouds had been parted, and she finally grasped all the inexplicable contradictions she had never been able to make sense of before.

If it were so, then it was no longer any mystery how Barusu, beginning from nothing and possessing no power at all, had clawed his way step by step into the position of head of an organization that dominated an entire region — the [Purge King].

Ram bit down hard on her lip, feeling as though her very heart were dripping blood, twitching ceaselessly with the pain.

Just how many times had Barusu died, in order to save her?

All to save her — this useless thing who could only ever take her anger out on others, who had committed the sin of wrath?

Ram's eyes had gone bloodshot, yet on the surface she still had to let no trace of anything unusual show.

Rem, who could faintly sense her elder sister's emotions, quietly tightened her grip on her hand, offering her wordless comfort.

Nee-sama... was she blaming herself for not having noticed and saved Subaru?

If so, then she felt exactly the same way!

Even though she was Subaru's wife, here she had been able to offer Subaru no help at all.

And what was more —

"After he returns to the beginning, Subaru alone retains the memories of the time he spent with Nee-sama and me."

"And yet we have long since forgotten Subaru — treating him as a stranger. That is just... too cruel!"

No... the truth might well be far more terrible than that.

Otto thought to himself.

Because he was attentive by nature, he had always found it easy to remember the small details of how he had interacted with others.

And precisely because of this, Natsuki Subaru in his eyes had been very nearly a god of war — a man of marvels, suffused with mystery and the colors of legend.

Every single time, he could pinpoint the exact opening in any predicament, and then resolve the crisis in two strokes and a flourish.

What had always puzzled him, however, was that Mr. Natsuki's behavior would sometimes contradict itself from one moment to the next, or shift with extremes so jarring they were hard to credit.

Now that he looked back on it... was it that, on each of those occasions, Mr. Natsuki had already died at least once?

No — perhaps not just once.

It was simply that the discrepancy he himself had been able to perceive could occur, and could only occur, the one time.

But that was not what worried him most right now.

What worried him was that he had no way at all of confirming whether the moment he had actually first met and come to know Subaru was truly the moment his memory said it was.

Just like the two sisters, Rem and Ram, on the screen.

Once everything had begun again, they no longer carried the easy, banter-filled lightness they had shared with Mr. Natsuki at their first meeting; in its place, their eyes were filled to the brim with scrutiny and wariness.

If they continued to deal with Mr. Natsuki in such a state, then surely what followed would not be —

Otto shuddered violently and forced the horrifying conjecture inside him back down.

"So that's how it is — so that's what's been going on, Teacher!"

On the other side, Roswaal let out a satisfied sigh, as though he had at last unravelled a riddle that had plagued him for years.

He had long known that Natsuki Subaru possessed the power to remake this world — yet he had never known the mechanism behind it.

To think that the condition for invoking this power — no, this authority — was nothing less than death itself!

"No wonder, no wonder Subaru gives off so thick a witch's scent, I suppose!"

Betty murmured, her small fists clenched tight.

"The authority to turn back time... could it possibly be the one that shares Mother's very name — the Witch of Envy?"

Across from them, in the camp of the Royal Selection candidates, everyone broke into an uproar at what they had heard.

"After he dies, time rewinds back to the past?"

Julius let out a low cry, his thoughts turning to all the tactical plans Natsuki Subaru had drawn up before the campaign to subjugate the Sloth Archbishop of the Witch's Cult — plans that had seemed for all the world to know the future itself.

Wilhelm, for his part, was wondering whether, during the campaign to subjugate the White Whale, his benefactor had died there too.

Did this authority still function even after one's very existence had been devoured?

"So as long as he fails, the whole thing gets tossed out and started over again? Now that's just no fun at all!"

Anastasia heaved a long sigh, feeling deeply for the Natsuki Subaru who was now being treated as a stranger by Ram and Rem.

"I, on the contrary, think that being granted countless chances to try again would help Subaru arrive at the ending he himself wants."

Felt countered, stroking her chin.

"There are upsides and downsides both. Compared to that, I would far rather my husband no longer resort to this ability — and live out his days in peace."

Crusch's spirits had sunk low. She held no grand ambitions; all she hoped for was that the man she loved might be happy, and spared from suffering.

"This ability of my husband's is, in point of fact, rather similar to Aldebaran's — only far more powerful. Truly worthy of being this concubine's man, no~"

Priscilla had her face hidden behind her fan, and her gaze turned briefly cold the moment Al was mentioned.

It was only because she had already dismissed Al earlier — sent him packing — that she did not now have to have him taken into custody.

Otherwise she would have grilled him properly to find out why on earth he should possess an ability so very like that of her husband!

While each was lost in their own thoughts, the image on the screen continued to play.

["Do none of you recognize me anymore? Are you treating that time we spent together as if it never happened?"]

Natsuki Subaru had recognized the reality that he had once again undergone Return by Death — but he could not accept that the memories of his time with Rem and Ram had been wiped clean along with it.

He clutched his head in anguish, clinging to the hope that this was nothing more than a nightmare.

Seeing this, Rem and Ram, standing one to the left and one to the right at the bedside, exchanged a glance and tilted their heads — clearly utterly baffled by what Natsuki Subaru was saying.

"Enough!"

Unable to bear the unfamiliar, distant looks in the two sisters' eyes a moment longer, Natsuki Subaru climbed out of bed, pulled on his shoes, and ran out of the room.

"Damn it — why has it been reset again? This means even the promise I made with Emilia has been —"

Natsuki Subaru clenched his teeth as he sprinted down the corridor; the eager, expectation-filled promise he had made with Emilia the night before stood in jarring, absurd contrast against the morning in which everything had simply started over.

"So that was it. That date Subaru asked me on... I'm sorry, Subaru — I had actually forgotten all of it!"

Emilia, who had already been struggling to hold herself together from the moment Natsuki Subaru had undergone his Return by Death, finally lost her grip on her emotions all at once.

She, who held promises as more important than anything else in the world, could not accept that she herself had broken one.

"Give it back to me! That was an important promise between Subaru and me!"

Emilia shouted up at the heavens, as though interrogating some existence beyond.

Watching Emilia fall apart, Ram, too, felt something bitter stirring inside her heart.

Were she and her younger sister Rem any different? They, too, had forgotten the precious time they had spent together with Subaru.

What, in the end, had she missed out on?

____

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