5
“ ”
Keeping quiet and watching for any sign of someone in the hallway, Subaru slowly left the room.
Behind him in the room, he’d done the barest minimum to hide Meili’s corpse. He carried her into a corner and draped a little bit of cloth that had been in the room over her body as a makeshift camouflage.
The way he nervously crept out of the room was the epitome of suspicious, and if anyone had been there to see it, he wouldn’t have had any excuse. If they checked the room, then it would be even harder to defend himself.
“There isn’t any defense anyway… The murder weapon used to kill her was my two hands.”
I don’t know what the trial standard is in this world, but any jury who saw Meili’s fingers and the scratches on my hands would come back with a guilty verdict for sure.
He had no idea how to fight that, so he had no choice but to hide her body.
He didn’t convince himself he was right or that it was the best choice he could make, but there wasn’t anything else he could do. There was one thing he could say, though…
“If we meet again…you’re off the list of suspects, Meili.”
He’d seen her corpse both this time and the last time.
It’s safe to say the suspicion over her is pretty much cleared. Not that that means anything to her now that she’s dead.
It was a standard mystery trope: only the dead could be discounted as suspects.
But Subaru had assumed the detective role and he possessed the genre-breaking ability to return after he died. With that, he could respond to any situation, and no matter how hopeless he actually was, he would end up looking like a genius detective. But…
“The detective being the criminal is another classic mystery trope.”
In this case, the killer is another personality of the detective—an old cliché. In those cases, the detective could always just throw themselves off a cliff to resolve things. But that’s out too with Return by Death gumming up the works.
The incident was unresolved. Or I guess you could say it’s re: unsolved…
“Is this really the time for that?! I’ve gotta get…”
“—Ah, Subaru! So this is where you were.”
“—Ngh?!”
Twitching, he spun around to see Emilia coming over to him. She cocked her head when she saw him tense at her little dash.
“Sorry, did I surprise you?”
“…Ye…ah. Yeah, a bit, but well, whatever. It was a little sudden, is all. I’m totally fine. What’s up, Emilia-chan?”
“? I was walking around the tower some to see if something would come to me… Hey, Subaru…”
“Yeah?”
“Are you teasing me or something?”
Subaru gulped at her curiosity.
Looking into her beautiful, gleaming purple eyes, he couldn’t tell what she was after. He couldn’t be sure that he had managed to successfully feign calm, but he did think his answer wasn’t unnatural.
At the very least he hadn’t done anything to draw her attention to the room behind him.
I hope.
“ ”
Emilia looked at him with her big, round eyes.
Her cute face that seemed completely incapable of scheming wasn’t enough to remove her from suspicion. When the tower had been annihilated in the last cycle, Emilia and Beatrice were the only people he hadn’t been able to find. Even if Subaru Natsuki acting behind the scenes could resolve the mystery of Meili’s death, it didn’t definitively answer anything else.
Someone else had killed Shaula, Echidna, Ram, Julius, and Meili, used the shadow’s power in order to collapse the tower, and then laughed while taking Subaru’s head.
It was still possible that that unknown person was an accomplice of Emilia’s.
“Subaru, are you okay? Are you sure you’re not pushing yourself?”
“I-It’s fine. I was just lost in thought a bit… You’re really staring hard at me.”
“Mm-hmm. I am. It seems like, when I notice it, I’ve been looking at you a lot lately… I don’t really understand it, but it’s kind of mysterious.”
He let Emilia reach out and touch his forehead as she smiled ever so slightly. He was cautious of her every move, but there wasn’t a trace of malice or animosity in her actions.
There was no sign of her revealing her true nature when given an opening, either.
Or maybe she really wasn’t hiding anything. Maybe she really was worried about him and was just a super cute girl like she seemed to be.
If she really doesn’t know anything…how would she react if I unloaded every last thing? Just totally spilled my guts. How much better would I feel watching that sheltered, pretty little face without a care in the world wrinkle up?
—If I told her the Subaru Natsuki she’s so worried about is nowhere to be found.
—Or better yet, if I told her he’s a brutal, evil murderer.
“—Oh yeah, about Meili.”
“—Ngh!”
Caught off guard, Subaru’s eyes widened, and he made a strange sound in his throat.
He hadn’t managed to hide the obviously suspicious reaction. But Emilia had looked down at the floor—no, more than that, at the tower itself.
“Ram might get upset and say we’re getting ahead of ourselves, but…if we make it back safely from this tower, I want to really do right by Meili.”
“Right…”
“What she did a year ago was bad, and I understand Otto saying not to blindly trust her…but she was the reason we were able to get through the desert, and if she really intended to do something else bad, she had plenty of opportunities already on the way here, right?”
Holding onto the sleeves of her outfit, Emilia started spilling what she’d been thinking.
Meili’s position in the party—he had heard from others and even Meili herself that she had been a killer hired to assassinate Subaru and Emilia and her group. And that she failed that mission and had been captured but was brought along on this trip to make use of her special ability.
“So a pardon or something?”
“If I said I wanted to let her be free, I think everyone would be against it. But I at least want to let her out of the basement cell so she can live with everyone else.”
“ ”
“Of course, that has to come after talking to her and confirming she wants that, too.”
Emilia stuck her little tongue out as she asked for Subaru’s opinion.
Most likely she’d only brought it to him after some serious thought on her part. She wanted to reward what Meili had done. That was the only thought she had as she pondered what to do.
—Not knowing that Meili had died painfully while being choked to death.
“…So stupid…”
“Eh?”
“I said it was stupid. You know it yourself, don’t you? Getting ahead of yourself? You’re damn straight. Right now…in this situation, we can’t be worrying about later.”
His knowledge of Meili’s death made Emilia’s thoughtfulness feel ridiculous. And the uncomfortable truth engraved in his arms made him snap back. Of course, he immediately regretted the emotional outburst. It had been a spur-of-the-moment thing that not only hurt Emilia but, of all things, unnecessarily drew more suspicion to him.
Hit with that unreasonable and childish outburst—
“Subaru!”
“Bgh.”
“What was that? Even if you’re in a bad mood, you shouldn’t say things like that.”
He froze up in anticipation only for Emilia’s response to come from an entirely unexpected angle.
She squeezed his cheeks between her hands, not letting him escape from the embarrassment. Her pupils looked straight into his as she earnestly continued.
“If it hurts, then talk to someone! Don’t sulk! Beatrice or I will always listen to whatever you have to say. If something’s bothering you, then it can bother both of us together. But stop trying to hold it all in. Don’t get all worked up by yourself and try to solve things alone. That’s just like what Roswaal did when he was bad, too. Don’t try to copy it.”
Emilia was talking to him with all her heart. Letting his face go, she pulled his head to her, hugging him to her chest and gently patting him.
“Can you tell? My heart isn’t mad at all. I won’t get disappointed, either. Just talk to me.”
“ ”
Past the soft feeling and the warmth, he could sense the rhythmic beating of her heart.
It was so gentle, like a lullaby to soothe a baby, and it made him gasp. A deep, powerful shame welled in his head.
After everything she had done, after he said something so terrible, she was still so kind.
What was the point of suspecting her, of recklessly trying to hurt her?
—Is there really someone plotting to kill me?
—What if my dying like that was just an accident?
—What if it wasn’t intentional? What if someone tripped and pushed me while falling?
What if there wasn’t anyone bad in the tower?
What if the darkest, ugliest, most dangerous person there was Subaru Natsuki and Subaru Natsuki alone? The foolish visitor from a distant land who wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place.
“Emilia…I…”
“—Mm-hmm.”
“I…”
He didn’t know where to begin.
But he thought about saying it, coming clean, laying it all bare.
Losing his memories, what happened with Meili, how time leapt backward when he died.
She might not believe it all. But she also might. And if she did believe it, they might be able to find a way out.
And if they could at least find that, then he—
“—Lady Emilia! Barusu!”
It was the moment he tried to wring something out of his crumpled brain.
A sharp, urgent voice cut in, blotting out Subaru’s anguish. With Emilia still holding him, over his head, he heard her say:
“Ram? What is it? I’m having a really important conversation with Subaru right now…”
“I can tell just by looking, but…please put it on hold. There is an urgent matter.”
“O-okay…”
Emilia nodded and let Subaru go. He rubbed the heat at the corner of his eyes away and turned to face Ram. It was embarrassing being seen in so pathetic a state, but Ram didn’t comment on it. Her face was tense and her eyes serious as she addressed them.
“Please come quickly to the third-floor archive. Lady Beatrice has discovered something grave.”
“Beatrice has?”
Ram nodded at Emilia’s stunned response, and then she turned away from them.
“Lady Anastasia…or rather Echidna? We must find her and Julius. Barusu, you stay with Lady Emilia.”
“Y-yeah, got it…”
Her demeanor brooked no argument, and Subaru just nodded, caught flat-footed. Ram didn’t wait to see their response before dashing past them. Stunned by what had happened, Subaru looked back at Emilia.
“Umm, I know what Ram just said…”
“—Let’s hurry. Ram was that serious. Something big must have happened.”
“ ”
“Subaru, I haven’t forgotten what I said before.”
“…Yeah…”
Subaru weakly nodded and went along.
To tell the truth, when she hugged him, he’d intended to just tell her everything. But he had missed his timing, completely derailing that plan. Instead, he followed Emilia who was hurrying up to Taygeta.
Rushing up the long stairs, they were greeted by a massive collection of books of the dead.
“—You’ve come.”
Beatrice was standing in front of the stairs to greet them, the shelves filled with books at her back.
Crossing her arms, she sighed as if exhausted.
“Beatrice, Ram called us here. You found something grave?”
“It is certainly not something that could be called good news. If anything, it should probably be called a terrible omen.”
Beatrice shook her head and then turned her blue eyes toward Subaru.
“Betty has been investigating the archive here since this morning. Because of how you collapsed here, but also because it’s not entirely dissimilar to the forbidden archive in design, Betty decided to analyze this space.”
“…Save the preamble. What happened? Just tell us.”
His breath was a little ragged from running up the stairs, so Subaru nudged her to the point.
Beatrice closed her eyes for a moment, and then slowly pointed to one of the shelves diagonally behind her.
“The book three shelves from the top and furthest to the right.”
“Third shelf…”
“And furthest right.”
Following Beatrice’s directions, Subaru and Emilia moved to the shelf.
It was stuffed with books, and the spines had titles written in this world’s script that he couldn’t read. As always, it just looked like patterns.
So he couldn’t read the title of the book Beatrice had pointed them to.
At the very least, it being in this archive would mean it is a book of the dead…
“It can’t be…”
Emilia gasped beside him.
Glancing over at her, his face tensed when he saw her shock.
It was a terrible shock, followed by a delayed but still swift wail.
What could have shaken her heart that badly?
While he felt her intense reaction was a bit much, her lips trembled.
She said it, with a terribly trembling voice…
“Meili Portroute.”
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