4
This Natsuki Subaru’s path was unsightly, haphazard, and unsalvageable.
“What a failure. An amateur through and through. Sloppy movements, too. No blessing, no techniques. I figured he had some knowledge to fall back on, but nope. Why did he even try?”
Tormented by a powerful enemy, the boy had been cut down without managing to mount any sort of real counterattack. And around him lay the bloody bodies of an old man and a blond girl. He had failed to save either of them. He couldn’t so much as lift a finger.
“Slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly losing warmth, growing ever colder.”
Finally, his stomach was cut open and his eyes were cut out. He wasn’t long for this world, and he spent his dying moments blind and clinging to fear.
Right up until the end, he was cowering, trembling, terrified, pathetic…
“Hey, did you stab him?”
“What else was I supposed to do?! What if he ran away? It’d be a huge pain in the ass.”
“Stop it, dumbass! Ah, this is no good. That’s a deep cut. He’s gonna die.”
What an easygoing conversation to have over the body of someone who’s collapsed.
If he didn’t focus on such trivial thoughts, he would be forced to confront the pain of being stabbed in the back.
He was astounded from the bottom of his ■■■■■. How masterfully he avoided suffering and protected himself.
Truly, a pointless death. A dog’s death, of no value to anyone.
A fitting ending, though. Why can’t you just pour all of yourself into every second of your life? Whatever. This world is over. I already knew that.
I knew I would see death ever since I came here. So if there isn’t anything decisive here, then this world is over. This one’s done. Just move on to the next one. Move along. Next. Next, next, next. If you don’t, the pain, the pain, the pain, the unbearable pain, there has to be something to carry into the next one…
Dying in your sleep. Such a simple end, but there was a venomous cruelty to it.
A death that you didn’t even notice might seem easier than the deaths that were all tied up in pain and suffering.
But that would be wrong.
Why did he die? Did he even actually die?
There were probably a lot of people afraid of death who wanted to die in their sleep, but after experiencing it himself, Subaru wouldn’t recommend it.
Because dying meant dying.
The end of a life, the final curtain needed to be a clear endpoint.
Panic and despair, shock and yearning. Experiencing all that, Subaru sought the next book of the dead. He had to know what happened next. He had to find out what killed him…
Mysteries invited more mysteries. He experienced incomprehensible and unreasonable deaths.
Countless endings, repeated tragedies.
They came for his life, to kill him, to break him, and ultimately, to betray him.
Why? It stopped making sense.
Why did he have to save the blue-haired girl who killed him?
Why was he so desperate to save her? Why had she given him that push when his knees gave out and his will was broken?
Why did hearing her words give him the strength to carry on?
A wish lay beyond that betrayal.
Hope that it wasn’t a true betrayal. Hope for a world where that was true.
The hollow, sad misunderstanding that Natsuki Subaru could save anyone. Sacrificing his life on the altar of that misunderstanding, he forced the books open.
Meeting Emilia, meeting Puck, meeting Felt, meeting Old Man Rom, meeting Reinhard, meeting Elsa, meeting Beatrice, meeting Ram, meeting Rem, meeting Roswaal, meeting Petra, meeting the people of Earlham Village…
…and desperately denying the muddy torrent edging ever closer.
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