CHAPTER 3
LOUIS ARNEB
1
We want to be happy.
Whether a life was good or bad was determined by a massive roll of the dice in the form of where and how you were born. That was Louis Arneb’s theory after having devoured and pored over the lives of countless people.
Louis was the youngest sister of the three siblings who bore the title of Archbishop of Gluttony.
Reports of the activities, scale, and organization of the Witch Cult were already sketchy and unreliable, but the Archbishops were particularly shrouded in mystery.
The most well-known Archbishops—in the past tense—were Sloth and Greed. Beyond them, it was known that Wrath, Lust, and Gluttony existed, too, but their identities had long been enigmas. And Louis Arneb, the youngest sister of the Gluttony siblings, was the best-kept secret of them all.
“Not because we especially wanted it that way, though,” Louis muttered to herself in the blank white space she had inhabited since she was born.
Due to her circumstances, she couldn’t leave this place and couldn’t contact anyone. She couldn’t wield the authority of Gluttony except in the most limited of situations, either, so her abilities didn’t do her much good.
The one silver lining was that she never lacked for meals, thanks to her brothers’ leftovers. The plates they brought her were brimming with individuality. Lye, the gourmet, loved a life seasoned with the richest of spices, be they good or bad. Roy, who ate any garbage he found, prioritized quantity above all else, dreaming of filling his stomach with whatever odd flavors he could find. Louis snacked on the meals her brothers brought her while developing her own school of thought.
Having digested so many lives, comparing all the flavors, testing so many, and dwelling on the idea for so long, there was something she realized— There was a quantifiable level of fortune in everyone’s life.
“That person was happy, but this one was even more happy. And there are lots and lots of unhappy people… How can they all live so haphazardly and lazily?”
Louis sorted, compared, and graded their lives by her standards. Wealth differences, love, the environment they were born into, friends and family, if they had a lover. Grading by every sort of metric, she assigned points to people’s lives one after the other, ranking them.
Looking through them all, she had another thought—
Why are they all so bad at life?
“If they just let us do it, we could do so, so much better. They’re all so hapless.”
Put another way, what she was doing was the equivalent of watching someone’s life, like a game being played on a screen, pointing out places where they could do better or how this or that choice wasn’t meta.
But she soon grew bored of making self-indulgent reviews. Obviously, all she could do was evaluate memories. There was no way for her to correct the play of someone else’s game in progress.
Watching someone play a game they were terrible at forever on end wasn’t just boring. It was torture. Even though they had the chance to walk on their own two legs in life, even though they had arms that could brush aside hardship, even though they had a head to envision a future. Everyone, even her brothers, were all scrubs.
“Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic. If you’re going to live so pointlessly, then give that life to us. We could live it so, so, so much better. Every last one of you are all too incompetent.”
Scorn-worthy lives lined her plate one after the other.
Digesting countless numbers of them, she grew sick from the rage and frustration.
“Ah, you look like you are eating with such gusto, dear brother.”
“Ah, you look so pleased eating, brother dearest.”
“Ah, meanwhile…we just want to vomit.”
That was the reason Louis Arneb was called the gorger.
A ravenous hunger that couldn’t be satisfied, no matter how much she ate.
Because it wasn’t her body but her ■■■■■ that was starving.
—We want to be happy.
—We want to be happy. We want to be happy. We want to be happy.
Her brothers were living their own lives. They didn’t have to wish for that.
But Louis alone had her life stolen from her. So she couldn’t help but wish for it.
“We want to be happy.”
In a white world, plowing through countless memories, that was her only wish.
That was Louis Arneb’s one true wish—maybe anyone’s one true wish.
“We want to be happy.”
She couldn’t be satisfied with borrowed life, snacking from other people’s plates. It was boring. She was bored.
She wanted a life all her own, just for her. She wanted a body, a soul, a fate.
“We want to be happy.”
Louis was unhappy.
The start of Louis’s unhappiness was that she didn’t have her own life to live.
“We want to be happy.”
But at the same time, she understood herself completely.
Easily bored and quick to give up, even if she happened to suddenly get her hands on a life, there was no way she would be satisfied with it. Because she understood.
There were countless lives in this world, but there was an unbridgeable difference in the absolute amount of fortune, and that was decided by the completely random gamble of birth.
Louis didn’t want to be inferior. She wanted to be blessed. She didn’t want to be looked down upon.
—We want to be happy.
—We want to be happy. We want to be happy. We want to be happy.
—We want to be happy. We want to be happy. We want to be happy. We want to be happy. We want to be happy. We want to be happy.
She had ranked other people’s lives. But whatever their score, wherever they ranked on her tier list, there were no lives that received perfect marks. And even a life that could earn top marks wouldn’t be satisfying at all for her.
“Ah, we want to be happy.”
There was a way. Gluttony’s authority, Eclipse, made it possible. Gluttony’s power stole other people’s names and memories. Eclipse was a power that used those stolen goods to re-create a person—with that, Louis Arneb could begin her life.
No one could control how they were born.
She was sure that was the root of everyone’s unhappiness. But Louis was different.
Louis had the right and the power to choose her birth, to choose her life. By stealing others’ memories and re-creating them using Eclipse, she could make them her own.
She could choose her life—and make every correct choice.
A happy family, kind parents, an affluent lifestyle, a blessed environment, good friends, and a soulmate. They were all nothing more than the same sort of happiness she had seen elsewhere.
That wasn’t what she wanted. She was searching for the ultimate life.
Louis Arneb hungered for the ultimate life. That was what she sought.
So when she learned about Natsuki Subaru, she was ecstatic.
Hearing a voice she should not have been able to hear:
“—What did you just do to me, Louis Arneb?”
“Eh…?”
She faced Natsuki Subaru for the first time.
A trespasser in the corridors of memory, on her turf. That alone was already surprising enough, but what lit her chest alight was the ache of the memories she had eaten.
Somewhere in the memories her brother had eaten was someone who felt very strongly about him. She summoned him, calling out sweetly like a memory, and then she forced him down when he flew into a rage. And with a passion that made her chest feel like it might explode, she devoured his name and memories.
It was a good meal. She had fully digested his memories, and yet…
“Mister, do you remember us?”
Why was he still calm, even though she had eaten his memories?
Why was he glaring at him with such hate-filled eyes?
Why was her chest pounding, even when she was so bewildered?
Why, why, why, why, why…?
“…Eh?”
Seeking an answer for what had happened, she sank into the memories she had just gained.
How to begin to describe the scale of the shock Louis felt in that moment?
It was…
“Why do you have memories of dying?”
“ ”
“Wait. It’s not just that, mister. It’s weird enough you have memories of dying. More than weird. But it doesn’t make any sense. Since…”
“ ”
“We don’t remember ever killing you, even though you have a memory of being killed in one of the memories we’ve eaten!”
It was strange. A paradox that shouldn’t be possible.
Was it the influence of Natsuki Subaru’s memories? Her repertoire was expanding, including a vocabulary she should not possibly have known. It was a paradox. An emergency caused by a paradox, Schrödinger’s Maxwell’s Einstein was Nicola Tesla…
“What is this?! What is all this?! Memories aren’t delusions! The dregs of a soul aren’t something you can just warp at will! So! This is the world you saw, mister! This is your history…a story all your own!”
Louis ran her fingers through her long, long blond hair as something inside her exploded.
To think such an impossible, world-bending thing like this could exist.
“Mister, are you an Archbishop like us?”
“ ”
“See! Petelgeuse is saying it in your memories, too! The factor is here! You’re Pride and… Isn’t that my seat?!”
Tapping her temple with her finger, Louis devoured the memories to the bone.
It was hard to believe. Unbelievable even. No one other than Gluttony could begin to believe it.
But because Louis could share the same memories, she could see for herself the path that Natsuki Subaru had taken. Or rather, she didn’t have to believe it; she knew it for a fact. Because it was already the same path that Louis Arneb had taken now, too.
“Whoa, amazing! You really died! Horrifically! Pathetically! Over and over! No fair, no fair, no fair… No, it’s so lovely! This is…this is death!!!”
Something that should not be possible, that should not exist, a memory of what lay beyond death.
Something fundamentally different from any of that near-death experience urban myth stuff, too. The curtain fall that signaled a soul shattering, a life scattering, a breath ceasing…
“—Return by Death…”
That was the great centerpiece of the memories that had taken root in her.
Accumulating the experience of countless deaths, carving them all into a soul that should only have been able to experience one, Natsuki Subaru was brimming with sediment.
And Natsuki Subaru had overcome every sort of difficulty.
“—want it.”
Why had Natsuki Subaru been able to reach the corridors of memory?
Why was Natsuki Subaru not affected by Gluttony’s power?
All those questions became like worthless confetti in the face of the ability to surpass death.
—Louis Arneb was searching for the greatest life.
And having consumed all sorts of lives, she had reached the conclusion that the greatest life didn’t come from being wealthy or being loved by countless people, or being blessed with some great status.
The greatest life was a life that went according to plan.
A life where every hope, wish, and dream came true.
A perfect world where there was no inconvenience, where there was no incompleteness, where there was no unreasonableness.
Louis had always been searching for a way to make that happen. She had been searching inside herself for the answer all this time, but finally, she understood.
“It’s Return by Death.”
With that, she could undo anything she didn’t like, undo any mistakes.
She could deal with the fact that there was no knowing what might happen in the future. No matter what went wrong, or was unfair, or was imperfect, as long as she knew she could do it again…
“We can live the best life!”
“ ”
“What to do? How do we steal it? If your Return by Death is an authority, then just eating you won’t be enough to take it. Things tied to memories and names are different. Witch Factor is the antithesis of the Odo Ragna! There’s no easy way to strip it out! So…”
To steal an authority, she would have to steal the Witch Factor.
But Louis didn’t know how to do that. She had never thought to steal any other Archbishop’s authority. The thought of even touching them was repulsive.
“Wait! You can use Petelgeuse’s authority…?”
The invisible hand in his memories, though it was massively degraded from its original form, was unmistakably the power that Petelgeuse had used. That meant Natsuki Subaru was living proof that it was possible to double-dip Witch Factors. To have multiple authorities.
If she stole that ability from him…
“…We can live our own life!”
“ ”
“Ha-ha, isn’t that great? Don’t make us laugh! Someone who has everything could never understand the feelings of a have-not! A happy person can’t comprehend the full measure of another person’s unhappiness!”
She was sick and tired of annoying arguments forced on her by others.
No matter what pretty arguments Subaru might make, the truth was he had used his Return by Death to get here. There was no reason for her to tolerate any double standards.
What she needed was to figure out how to steal his authority…
“…No, that’s not it. That’s not our way.”
Hitting her fist on her palm, Louis welcomed this revelation. Somewhere along the way she had confused her ends with her means. That was a terrible mistake.
She wanted to gain his authority to Return by Death. She wanted to live the best, most enjoyable life using it. But stealing it wasn’t the goal.
After living so long as an Archbishop, she had come to think about everything in terms of violence, which clouded her mind.
It was simple. If she just needed to get access to it instead of stealing it…
“We can just become you.”
“ ”
“We can just become you, if we just consume you with Gluttony’s authority…we can merge with you, Witch Factor and all.”
Saying that, Louis pinched her cheek and pulled violently.
It wasn’t to be cute, but to injure. Why? To rend her flesh and spill her blood, splitting off a part of herself.
“The three great demon beasts. Those monsters were made the previous owner of our Witch Factor long, long ago. We can do something similar. We just never did is all, since there wasn’t much reason to…”
“ ”
“But if we put our mind to it, we can do anything.”
It was a monster of possibility. The infinite possibility of a creature before it was born. A creature fated to live the ultimate life before long.
““That is our existence.””
Louis’s slowly spun words overlapped.
The same voice resonated in stereo, and it was not the sort of thing that was just a trick of the mind. This was exactly what it sounded like. The same voice, in the same tone, spoken by the same person, but from two sources.
“I was surprised by your memories, mister. I didn’t know Arneb is a rabbit constellation. And it was shocking to find out you were the ones who destroyed the Great Rabbits.”
“But in that case, it shouldn’t be too surprising, right? Are you happy to see another cute little Louis? Or not? Not, right? You aren’t the type to crave little kids. Hmm, I see.”
Seeing him open his eyes in shock, Louis wrapped her arms around someone with the exact same face as her—around Louis.
Because this was the corridors of memory, a place removed from reality. Louis was just a soul attached to a Witch Factor, without any body. That was the only reason this could work.
She could peel off a bit of her soul, break herself into two, and create another being.
It was probably not something that Lye or Roy could do, since they lost themselves when using Solar Eclipse. Making a copy of herself was the sort of wild feat that only Louis, with her weak sense of self, could pull off.
And Louis, who alone could manage that, was the only one capable of reaching out to claim the ability of Return by Death.
“ ”
The boy who was a receptacle for a Witch Factor was saying something.
When she looked at him, a loving feeling welled up inside Louis, a desire for something apart from the allure of his power. It was vexing, so she relinquished the memories causing that feeling. Peeling it from her soul, she cast it aside as if it was no longer needed. No, not as if. It truly was no longer needed.
All those memories were nothing more than a snack to allow her to hold on until she achieved the ultimate life. But Louis Arneb had finally found her full course.
““We can do anything we put our mind to.””
To do that, Louis Arneb would eat away at Natsuki Subaru from the inside, and once she was done, she would consume him entirely from the outside and gain Natsuki Subaru for herself.
“—■■■■■■■■■■ ■■■■■■ it.”
To the very end, the receptacle said something, refusing to go down smoothly.
She ignored that and licked up every last dreg attached to his soul, completely inheriting his memories.
She attuned herself with the now empty shell devoid of memories and readied herself to steal the memories of someone she had already eaten once before—in search of the greatest, the ultimate experience.
Louis waited impatiently for the ultimate main dish that would grant her happiness to arrive…
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