CHAPTER 3
—STAND UP
1
The corridors of memory. And Louis Arneb. That was what the blond girl said.
“ ”
Subaru fell silent.
A white void that flew in the face of every expectation, and a completely unexpected encounter. To top it all off, the girl had a knowing look about her face, and she appeared willing to discuss several things, but…
“…Witch cult, gluttony, sin archbishop… What is all that mumbo jumbo supposed to be?”
“Aha.”
Louis covered her face and broke into a laugh as Subaru crossed his arms and cocked his head. On that point alone, it almost felt like a painting—a girl standing against an illusory blank canvas. But Subaru’s instincts were screaming out in alarm.
He was born and raised in peaceful, modern-day Japan, so the girl’s existence had to be something very different for his survival instincts to react like this. The only problem was that the title she had given meant nothing to him…
“…The Witch Cult, put simply, is like a gathering of outcasts hated by this world.”
“Oh?”
“Even you’ve heard about the Witch of Jealousy before, right? The Witch Cult is deeply connected with that great person… Well, you can think of them like her worshippers.”
“…So then that archbishop bit is…?”
Sin and archbishop seemed like words that were very much at odds, but they seemed to click together in his mind. The first thought he had was…
“You can tell right away that’s a villain’s title.”
“No way, shut up, nuh-uh, nope, never, not on your life.”
Shaking her head, Louis hugged her slender body. However, there was no sign of the creepy smile leaving her face, and she didn’t really seem to be denying it, either.
I can’t read what she’s really after… Or no, it’s more that I can’t really pin her down.
“Don’t bully a poor, innocent girl like that, mister. We can be hurt, too, you know. Our heart is more tender and fragile than the average person’s.”
“Color me unconvinced. And is that royal ‘we’ supposed to be some kind of unique character trait? Or are you just trying to sound cool, like some one-kid army? Try to keep it straight.”
“Ah…don’t worry about that. There are just a few too many egos, it’s a little vague which one gets to be in charge. We’re pretty fed up with it, though.”
Louis looked down slightly.
“But it is what it is. They’re gifts from dear brother and brother dearest. We’d be a failure of a little sister not to accept them. Siblings have to help each other out.”
“…A cute sister who cares about her big brothers. As an only child, I’m a little jealous.”
“Really? But you might have a younger brother or sister by now?”
“Whoa, that’s a scary thought! I’d rather not imagine that!”
His parents got along well and were happily married, so something like that might not be a joke. Considering the two of them, with me gone, they might start on another kid… Nah, there’s no way.
“ ”
If Subaru disappeared, his parents would keep searching until they found him.
So he prayed instead for this summoning to another world thing to be a rebirth.
If his parents were going to have to experience the pain of forever searching for their lost son, then he would rather have died before being reborn in a new world. That would be far better.
Picking up her hair that spilled across the floor in both hands, Louis looked up at Subaru.
“I understand, mister.”
“—! Yeah, as if!”
He erupted.
Peering into his eyes, acting like she understood the unease that Subaru wouldn’t put into words. It was infuriating. He turned away as he shouted at her.
“What do you know about me?! Talking out of your ass…”
“You feel guilty for your mom and dad, right? You regret being a bad son who couldn’t even say good-bye to them. No, you always regretted it. Now, and before, too, right?”
“ ”
Continuing like she knew exactly what he was feeling, Louis gently hugged Subaru from behind.
Her body was small, light. Subaru stopped breathing and froze. Not because she was hugging him, but because of what she was saying. She acted like she knew everything, and her words were surprisingly accurate.
“How do we know? Of course we know. After all, there isn’t anyone who understands you as well as we do, mister.”
“—Don’t touch me!”
“Ahh.”
Louis pouted as Subaru brushed her away and took some distance with a ragged breath.
What the hell is going on? Do women in this world just not have any hesitation about physical contact? Everyone gets too close. Gets too friendly.
Am I scared I might actually surrender my heart to that touch? That warmth?
“What are you?! What do you want to say?!”
“We just wanted you to have some peace of mind, mister. It’s okay. It’s okay. You managed to reach a resolution about your feelings toward your parents. It might have been one-sided, but you felt like you had faced up to it. It felt like a weight was lifted. At least, on the surface.”
Sneering the entire time, Louis used the fingernails of her right hand to claw at her left arm. She started scratching wildly, so violently that it was painful to watch. Subaru’s brow furrowed, but Louis stuck out her long, oddly bright red tongue.
“On the surface, it’s completely wholesome. No one can tell you aren’t feeling aaaanything in your heart. You’re skilled, mister. And that’s what’s so sad.”
Subaru’s lips twisted as her words tore at his heart. His instinct was screaming that he shouldn’t indulge her any further.
“I don’t know what you are trying to say. What I do know is that you’re going to hurt yourself if you keep that up, so stop it. And a conversation is supposed to be a game of catch. No major league fastballs. Stick to easy throws.”
“Both of us?”
“Both of us. For example…let’s get back to that archbishop thing from before.”
Not willing to let her dictate the flow of conversation anymore, Subaru shifted the topic back a step.
Archbishop and gluttony. That at least rang a bell for Subaru.
“If you’re supposed to represent glutton, then there should be six more people like you, right?”
“If you count dear brother and brother dearest, it should be exactly six, probably? Ah, but it went down by two recently, so maybe four. Two of them can just die already.”
“…From the sound of it, there’s not much comradery.”
“Obvious, isn’t it? We’re called Archbishops, but in the end, we’re still a gathering of outcasts. The titles are different, but we’re the same as the Witch.”
Louis knelt down, burying herself in her blond hair. Careful not to step on any of it, Subaru sat down cross-legged on the ground in front of her.
“Witch? Together with the Witch who’s supposed to be super scary?”
“The Witch of Jealousy is even nastier than us, so we don’t really want to be lumped in with her, though. The others are the same. The Witch and the Archbishops, they’re different titles, but the same thing. Good-for-nothings compatible with the Witch Factors, just called different things in different times and places.”
“ ”
“Well, you’ve forgotten about the Witch and Archbishops and us now, so maybe it doesn’t matter to you. We get it. We understand. We do. We get it, we get it, but, because we get it, because we want to get it…”
“Gimme a break.”
“Ahh.”
Stopping her swelling wave of words, Subaru put his hand on his chin.
At the very least, it felt like he was hearing something really important, even if it wasn’t really clicking for him. The problem was this situation just didn’t feel real. An empty white space, a girl standing there… He was getting hit by a strong sense of déjà vu…
“Are you, like, some kind of god or something?”
“God…ah, this? Like some kind of reborn in another world thing? That doesn’t make much sense to us, but we don’t have anything to do with that. Though it is the sort of place that can make you feel weird.”
Laughing with another sneer, the girl spun around while sitting on a cushion of her blond hair, gesturing to the empty white expanse around them with her fluttering hair.
“As you can see, this is a place where eeeeverything disappears, so it’s completely empty. And there is one person all alone here, so it looks like a guardian deity.”
“Cradle of Odo Ragna, was it? Like corridors of memory, that’s another name that I can’t make heads or tails of.”
“Mmm-mmm-hmmm, right…? Long story short, this is the place where souls are filtered.”
“Souls get…filtered?”
That was a phrase he had not heard before, and a question mark popped over his head. Filter wasn’t a verb he had ever heard anyone use when talking about souls.
But Louis cheerfully pulled her knees to her chest.
“Yeah, yeah. After using a rag, you wash it and dry it and then use it again, right? Souls are the same. Brush off the dirt and use them again once they’re clean.”
“And that dirt on them…is that supposed to be memories and experiences or something?”
“If that’s easier for you to understand, then sure. Call it whatever you want.”
Louis’s cheeks twisted as she stuck out her tongue.
Subaru spun his head, looking all around. It was still just a white space—there was nothing new to see in the corridors of memory. There was no obvious evidence of what Louis was talking about in the endless white void.
“It’s not that simple a thing to understand.”
“This Odo Ragna god thing seems pretty nasty.”
“It’s nothing like what you’d call a god. It doesn’t have any special thoughts or ideas. It’s just a mechanism. A mechanism so the world doesn’t break.”
“A mechanism…?”
“Witch Factors, blessings, the Sword Saint, the Witch—it doesn’t see any of that. If there’s anything good about it, it’s that it doesn’t care at all. Everything is equal and fair and unbiased.”
Half closing her eyes in boredom, Louis wedged her face between her knees. Glancing sidelong at her face warped by her white kneecaps, Subaru let out a small breath.
She had been pretty open thus far. It was likely that she had not told any real sort of lie. Which is all the more reason why he sighed.
Exhaled, inhaled, exhaled one more time, and then looked at her. And asked the question.
“—Are you the one who stole my memories from before today?”
“That’s right.”
The criminal answered the question disappointingly easily.
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