6
Once breakfast was over, the party headed to the Taygeta archive.
Along the way Emilia and Beatrice both held Subaru’s hands and refused to let go, but considering he had just inexplicably lost his memory, he reluctantly had to accept.
“But man, holding hands with a little girl on one side and a really cute girl on the other. Feels like a cold rain is going to fall today. Actually, isn’t it super lame that I have to be protected?”
“You wouldn’t be you if you weren’t lame,” Emilia said.
“Okay, that was harsh!”
And, after he was saddled with that evaluation, the party took a big staircase in another room, heading up to the next floor. And seeing what awaited them there, Subaru gasped.
“So this is Taygeta… Well, you were right. It’s jam-packed with books.”
There were shelves as far as the eye could see, and they were all filled with books. It was like a massive sea of information.
Subaru was a fairly voracious reader (of light novels and manga), but he’d never been around this many books before. The national library back in his original world might have been a match, but a simple comparison of the book quantity was pointless, since the archive here served a completely different purpose.
“If these are all books of the dead…and each book covers one person’s life, then this is a mind-boggling number. The titles…damn, I can’t read them.”
Glancing at the spines of the books on the nearest shelf, Subaru realized he couldn’t understand the script.
The writing on the spines should have been the titles, but it just looked like wriggling worms to him. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be any auto-translator function to help him read.
“Which makes it strange that I can talk with everyone… I guess it’s just the classic summoned-to-a-fantasy-world trope?”
“Trope?”
“Nothing, just talking to myself. Incidentally, could I read and write in this language before, Emilia-chan?”
Emilia cocked her head, confusedly sounding out what he’d just said.
“Umm, you couldn’t at first, but you studied and learned to. So, if you can’t read the titles now, then…”
“The results of the studies are all gone, huh… So I really don’t have any memories from after the summoning.”
“So we’ve proven that Barusu is nothing but useless baggage here in the archive.”
“There’s not much love lost in that summary…”
Ram snorted curtly when Subaru slumped over dejectedly.
But she wasn’t wrong. If all the studies he had done in this world were gone with his memories, he wouldn’t be much help in a library.
“So I’m as good as dead in terms of how useful I am to the party right now… Maybe my book is somewhere in here, then.”
“Don’t even joke about that… Anyway, where should we start?” Emilia’s white finger poked his forehead. Her rebuke nudged him to reconsider his position and he scanned the titles he couldn’t read.
“First is the question of what we’re looking for… You’re probably against us just picking up every book in order, right, Julius?”
“It is certainly not an experience I enjoyed or would recommend to others. Also, I failed to explain it before, but you cannot simply experience the memories of whoever’s book you happen to find. Most likely, it will not work unless it’s a person the reader was familiar with.”
“It’s limited to just people you knew? Then I won’t be able to read any…”
It was unknown whether the books would care whether he remembered or not, but even before getting to his lack of ability to read the writing, that was a major problem keeping him from trying his hand at the books. And with how many books there were, even if he had his memories, how long would it take to search for the book of a specific person?
“Doesn’t seem like there’s a catalog to reference here, either. So what, shove all the misses into a pile on the floor somewhere?”
“I wonder. I would wager that handling the books like that would be deemed as disrespectful to the archive and probably break one of the tower’s taboos.”
Subaru cocked his head at the word Echidna used. “Taboo?”
“Ah, sorry. That was another thing we forgot to mention.” Emilia held up a finger. “There are a few things you aren’t allowed to do in this tower. Like no leaving the tower until the examinations are all complete and no mistreating the archive.”
“I see. So shoving them all in a pile on the floor might violate one… What happens if someone breaks the rules?”
“Oh! Oh! Oh! If that happens, then it’s my job!” Shaula raised her hand excitedly at Subaru’s question. Her hair swayed, and she punched her palm in front of her almost too ample chest. “If anyone breaks the rules, then the star guardian—that’s me—will rock you like a hurricane! I’ll transform into a merciless killing machine and hasta la bye-bye to everyone taking the challenge!”
“A merciless killing machine…you?”
Subaru snorted at what had to be a dumb joke.
It was hard to imagine the lively and boisterous Shaula transforming into a cold and merciless terminator. And how much could she even do with those slender arms of hers?
“Or maybe in a fantasy world overflowing with magic I shouldn’t feel too confident about that assumption? I don’t really have a good feel for the power levels in this world…”
Either way, to avoid breaking the tower’s rules, grabbing all the books off the shelves was not a real option. That basically guaranteed that Subaru was not going to be of any use.
As the party naturally settled into that conclusion…
“Subaru, it would be bad if anything like yesterday happened again, so don’t do anything reckless,” Emilia warned.
“Ugh…fine, I got it. It sucks not being able to do anything, but I’ll just trust you all and wait here.”
“Will you really? You won’t just start wandering around?”
“Why are you so insistent! It’s fine! I promised, so that should be enough, right?”
“So you really aren’t planning to behave…”
“What does that mean?!”
For some reason, Subaru Natsuki was not at all trusted to just wait and behave himself.
He looked around for some backup, but Julius and Echidna aside, Beatrice and Ram were in complete agreement with Emilia and had no intention of throwing him a lifeline.
After that brief talk, the investigation and exploration of the Taygeta archive was underway. Subaru had nothing to do beside hold his knees and wait for good news.
“Well, now I feel guilty. Almost like I’m pretending to be sick to skip a big test…”
“I don’t get that comparison, but I don’t think it really fits.”
Meili was leaning against a shelf next to Subaru while he watched everyone get to work. Subaru looked up at her playing with her braid and cocked his head.
“Hmm? Are you not going to help everyone out?”
“Nope. I’m not one of your real comrades.”
“What do you mean?”
“You heard before, right? I’m a killer… I messed up, so maybe a former killer now. But I was only brought along on this trip to help with one thing. And I did that job already.”
“Are those, like, the terms of parole or something? …Former or not, bringing a killer along on a big adventurer is a bold choice.”
“…It really is. I wonder what you were thinking.”
Meili put her hand to her mouth and giggled, ending the conversation. Subaru shrugged and looked in the other direction. He spotted Shaula waiting, also not making any effort to help out Emilia and the others.
“I get Meili’s situation, but what about you? Why are you sitting out?”
“Heh heh heh, ’cause I can’t read or write. So it’s all gibberish to me.”
“How did you get to be called a sage? Did the auto-translator bug out on that word or something? …Hey, wait a minute!”
After unabashedly declaring her uselessness, Shaula sidled up to Subaru, trying to cuddle with his arm before he quickly shook her off. His cheeks burned at the soft feeling that had enveloped his arm.
“Ohhh, how mean, Master.”
“I’m not being mean. Cut that crap out. A girl shouldn’t… Well, save that for whatever guy you actually fall for…no, scratch that. Even that guy would probably find it really weird, so just stop.”
“Blah blah. Again with that stuff about how a woman should be refined? You seriously haven’t changed at all, Master.”
Shaula pouted and made her dissatisfaction clear. But what she said made Subaru catch his breath a little and look down.
And…
“…Do you think I’m not any different, too?”
He’d been told that in multiple ways in the few hours he had been awake. Being told he hadn’t changed was a relief to Subaru, but it was also a curse.
It felt like everyone was playing spot the difference between him and a Subaru Natsuki he didn’t know.
“Mmmm, couldn’t tell ya.”
But Shaula just blew off his worries. Subaru’s shoulders fell in disappointment when he heard her unhelpful response.
“You…no, I guess I’m the idiot for asking you.”
“Mmm, changed or not, you’re still you, so who cares? If you just do what you want, how you want, then I just go along. That’s all that matters.”
“…Even if that leads to some weird results?”
“Eh! If something weird happens, then I’ll just open up a path forward with brute force. You might’ve forgotten, but that’s just how our relationship works.”
“ ”
He couldn’t sense even a whiff of ulterior motive in her frank answer. The moment her true thoughts on the matter hit him, Subaru’s eyes opened wide.
And then he looked away from Shaula so she couldn’t see his face.
“Mister?”
Only for Meili to see his face, forcing him to swing back the other way just as fast.
“What is it, Master?”
“Gah! Argh!”
With nowhere else to run, Subaru buried his head in his knees to hide. At least that way neither of them would be able to see the look on his face.
He could sense the two of them looking at each other, but he couldn’t bring himself to look up.
They shouldn’t be able to tell. No, I don’t want them to know.
That thoughtless, unreserved answer had been such a huge relief. Shaula’s brash attitude was a more eloquent answer than any speeches telling him not to get too worked up about losing his memory.
“You’re strange, mister.”
“Master’s always been strange. But I love that about him, too.
Head still buried in his knees, Subaru couldn’t comment on the exchange they were having over his head.
But it felt like the sense of urgency weighing on his mind had lessened, if only a tiny bit.
—It was only a few minutes later when Emilia and the others returned from the archive dejectedly without any finds to report.
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