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In front of him, there was a light when his fingers touched a gate barring his way, and then the gate disappeared. As if it came undone.
The next moment, a noxious stench assaulted his nostrils from down the path that had just opened.
“ ”
Puckering his face, Subaru pushed through the darkness, following the stench. The underground was still dark and cold everywhere he went, so that stench was his only guide.
—Several hours had passed since he had fallen into the ground and started scurrying around.
In his blind flight, Subaru’s will had almost broken several times already. He’d slipped down several sand hills, had paths blocked by walls, and been sent into tremors from a rain of sand falling from above.
It had been a long, long time. Long enough that he couldn’t even laugh at the wild joke of wondering whether he’d just failed to notice he was already dead and was simply wandering lost in hell.
The only reason he’d kept moving was because he was scared of the end that awaited him if he stopped. He was desperate to get as far away as he could—until he noticed the stench.
The noxious odor assaulted his nostrils as he wildly chased after it.
To Subaru, who had spent hours wandering blindly in the dark, that had been the only relief. That had been the only change he’d been able to find underground.
It was his only thread in order to escape hell.
And as he followed it, he’d encountered yet another gate blocking his passage through the sand.
“This is the third one…”
On all fours, he looked down at the hand that had touched the cold gate for just a second.
The gate stood between Subaru and his path following the terrible scent. No, that was too grandiose a way to put it. The gate wasn’t barring Subaru’s way at all.
Despite blocking the passage so completely, it disappeared the moment he touched it. Vanished like smoke. So the gates never once stopped Subaru. And every time he passed a gate, the stench grew stronger.
In other words, the more gates he passed, the closer he came to the source of the smell.
“Hah, hah, hah…”
Breathing raggedly like a dog, he followed his nose in search of a signpost.
He’d heard that animals living underground often lost most, if not all, of their vision through evolution while their other senses grew sharper and sharper. It had only been a few hours, but he could tell that his other senses had grown more sensitive to compensate for not being able to rely on his sight.
He pushed his sense of smell to track the stench and his sense of touch to track the slightest breeze to their limits. And in doing so, he was able to forget the shapeless fear gripping his heart.
He cherished the darkness and silence, the solitude where he was unthreatened by anyone.
The lukewarm, muddy stagnation cradled his desperate heart, and he could feel the sticky water seeping into him as he entrusted his body to it.
It would be easier to just melt away into that stagnation.
“—Ah?”
Suddenly, a hoarse sound escaped his parched throat.
It was a reaction to a change. But it was not a good reaction.
“ ”
Kneeling in front of a gate, Subaru ran his hands over it. The gate had just let Subaru pass without issue so many times before, but now, after all that, it bared its fangs.
He pushed and pulled, but the gate did not budge. It had suddenly decided to block his way.
“This isn’t funny!”
With that sudden betrayal, Subaru was filled with shock, and even more so, anger.
He had passed the fourth gate and was trying to pass the fifth one. He didn’t have any clue what about it was different, but this gate was trying to stop Subaru.
The powerless Subaru Natsuki had no means of forcing it open.
Getting thrown off the track I was following, after all this…
“—Ngh.”
His mind went red in rage as he slammed his head against the gate.
As his forehead pummeled it again and again, pain shot through him as his skull rattled each time. As terrified as he’d been of pain before, his rage in that moment surpassed it all, drowning everything else out.
A pitch-black emotion welled up from inside.
It was an inexorable torrent of fury that had taken root in his heart from the moment he first caught a trace of the noxious scent. He’d been able to ignore the emotion while he was blindly following the signposts. But now, the inexpressible negativity, the darkness born from being shouldered with such an unreasonable, unfair fate, exploded.
Why did this have to happen to me? Why do I have to suffer like this? If there is some god out there who gave me this fate, I’ll bludgeon them to death. There’s no reason I had to suffer this fate.
“It’s not my fault…”
It’s everything around me making this hell happen.
So why…
“Go back…? This shit isn’t funny. Why are you getting in my way?!”
Shouting was a pointless waste of energy. Or worse, it might draw the attention of a ferocious monster lurking somewhere underground.
But letting go of that entirely reasonable common sense, Subaru slammed his head against the gate and screamed.
This was a gate made just for him. He could tell immediately. So why was it blocking his way? Why, when getting beyond it, revealing what lay behind it, meeting what lay in wait was his role?
—Why is this gate, why is ■■■■■■ blocking me?
“Wha—”
As he unleashed an irrational rage on the gate, suddenly, a change occurred.
Perhaps a change of heart after his venting, or else as a preset exit for those who couldn’t pass the gate.
But just as the previous gates had done before, this time Subaru’s body glowed faintly, surrounded in a light that lit the darkness.
“Don’t…gh! This isn’t funny!”
In a rage, he cursed the gate and raised his head again.
But before he could slam his head down again, his body disappeared from that place, just like the gates before had. Not starting from one part, but all at once.
He tried to resist, but the light didn’t listen. The absurdity of the world was as deaf to Subaru’s opinions as ever, forcing itself on him like always.
It was like that again this time. Events proceeded without paying any heed to his thoughts.
And thus—
“Hah.”
Right after the light flickered bright, Subaru was freed from the cold underground.
“ ”
Dumbfounded, Subaru looked down at his hands.
He saw dried-out hands covered in sand. He could see them. Naturally. Because there was light. There was color. There was a stone floor visible beneath his feet.
A stone floor…
“—Ngh.”
As it finally clicked in his head, Subaru leapt aside and looked all around himself.
He was standing in the middle of a vast space, and turning around, he saw something familiar behind him and immediately recognized where he was.
—Behind him was the giant gate closing off the building from the outside.
It was the giant door on the fifth floor of the Pleiades Watchtower that Subaru had used a few hours earlier.
In other words, he was inside the tower…
“Don’t…”
But he couldn’t finish that angry shout. The words wouldn’t come out.
He couldn’t understand. It hadn’t even been a minute ago that he’d been underground, beneath the sand in a darkness so complete he couldn’t even see his hands in front of him. But in the blink of an eye, he’d returned inside the tower. It was a violent assault on logic even after taking into account that this was a fantasy world.
The appearance of a nightmarish absurdity just demanded he accept it, demanded he understand it.
“Run, run, and run some more…”
And as payback for that pathetic running away, I get this.
There were countless beings in this world that Subaru couldn’t begin to match, with that worm monster topping the list, and no matter how desperately he ran, his efforts were all in vain.
Even though the reason he’d run was because he didn’t want to die…because he didn’t want to just wait and cower in fear…
“Nothing maters.”
Exhaustion washed over him. The strength slipped from his knees. Steadying himself to keep from slumping to the ground, Subaru let out a long, deep sigh.
A calm, quiet acceptance expressed in an understanding of the rage burbling in his heart.
The feeling brought about by that acceptance and understanding lingered in his eyes as he slowly looked up. The corners of his lips softened.
I should have realized the answer sooner.
“ ”
Why had he needed to crawl around in the darkness for so long? Because someone was plotting to kill him. Had killed him. Not just once but twice. Because there was a murderer hiding their intention behind a composed mask while putting their twisted plan into action.
—And the possible suspects have been whittled down to someone in the tower, haven’t they?
—If I know that much, then isn’t there an easy solution?
—If someone is trying to kill me, then I just have to…
“…kill them first.”
Knowledge of the future gleaned from his return-by-death ability. That was Subaru Natsuki’s advantage.
No matter what plan the murderer concocted, they would never expect Subaru to be aware of their murderous intent in advance. Their plan was falling apart from the beginning.
“Heeheehahaha.”
With an evil grin, Subaru clenched his fist at the revelation that brought him back from the brink.
In that case, there was no time to be wasted. Heeding his conclusion, Subaru quickly started moving. Breathing softly, he started up the long, long spiral stairs leading up to the fourth floor.
When he’d run down them to escape, he had been terrified of the stairs, but not now. When he’d walked up them in order to live, they were dear to his heart.
“I don’t know who my enemy is, but…”
I’ll teach them a goddamn lesson.
The dark emotion scorched his body as he headed up the stairs with a ferocious grin. The dark hope of cornering the person who killed him guided him forward.
“I’ll kill you. Kill. I swear I’ll kill you…”
An ominous curse dripped from his lips.
If words contained power, then the hex he was weaving empowered his thirst for vengeance. It felt like his body was swelling with greater strength each time he said it.
“Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill…”
He muttered to himself as he sniffed the air. There was a faint whiff of the same stench that he’d tasted so much of underground. Or was the fact that he was smelling it still, so far from the underground, proof that it now filled him completely?
Light and color returned, he could see again, but even still the stench slipped into his nostrils, burning his chest. That searing heat drove his legs forward to bring him closer to his enemy.
He’d wandered in the sea of sand for hours, and his head was heavy from the spent stamina. His thoughts were dull. That allowed him to forget the scent he was following and the murderous curse he was spinning.
“Kill, kill, kill, kill…”
Kill to protect myself. Before they kill me. Not because I want to, but because I have to.
—Because he had to kill in order to live. Because he didn’t want to die.
So he decided to immediately kill the first person he saw. Settling that in his mind, he climbed the stairs, spinning his hex, until he reached the fourth floor. To where everything began after he lost his memories.
And—
“—Hah.”
—He found Shaula lying on the floor with her head brutally crushed.
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