CHAPTER 4
READY, STEADY, GO
1
Spurred on by powerful emotions, running with all his might, Subaru caught sight of a certain person.
When their slender and graceful figure came into view, his heart almost exploded.
Overflowing love punched him in the chest, but he somehow managed to contain it. This wasn’t the time to die from the cuteness.
And he also thought, I’m glad I was the one who got here first.
He knew what to say, he knew how to call out to her. And more importantly, what he wanted to call her.
“It’s okay, Emilia-tan.”
Sorry for worrying you, sorry for troubling you, and sorry for making you wait.
With all of that imbued in his words, he nodded, even as his expression softened despite the dire situation. And as understanding blossomed in the silver-haired girl’s eyes from just that one phrase, he continued.
Subaru struck a pose, with his left hand on his hip and his right hand raised, finger pointing upward…
“I’m your knight, Natsuki Subaru!”
“ ”
Emilia’s eyes shot open.
That was all they needed to understand instantly. Even with Gluttony’s authority menacing them, they were going to be fine.
And as Emilia stopped moving with her attention on Subaru…
“Ha-ha-ha! That’s a little too careless, don’t you think?!”
Lye leaped at her back, saliva dripping from his mouth.
His disheveled, long brown hair flying, Lye took aim at Emilia with both of his blades. Just before they slit her neck, though, her silver hair sank straight down.
“Eh?”
“Not…in the…least!!!”
With a stirring shout, Emilia traced a beautiful arc with her long, slender legs. The spinning kick she unleashed from a sinking stance landed heel first, right in Lye’s face.
“Uryaaaaaa!”
Just as it made contact, she supplemented it with an Ice Boot, sending Lye’s body flying.
His front teeth broke, and he spun from the force of the kick, sliding across the frozen floor of the passage. Emilia turned her palms on him and mercilessly launched a storm of icicles, dealing massive damage to Gluttony.
Subaru shouted with joy at watching Lye’s counterattack fail:
“Success! My distraction and Emilia-tan’s cute killer instinct made a perfect… Wagh?!”
“Subaru!”
Just as Emilia leaped onto him, he somehow managed to catch her, even as he was stunned by her warmth and softness.
“E-Emilia-tan?! That caught me by surprise, and you’re so soft and smell so nice! Did you change your shampoo?!”
“You idiot! You big dummy! I was so, so worried! And you…dummy! Stupid, stupid!”
“You’re really laying into me! Not that I have any excuse, though…”
Subaru faltered as Emilia looked up at him with those big eyes. And holding her so close, he felt his heart hammering up a storm.
“Anyway, I’m sorry for worrying you. But I’m back… Revived? In the thick of things? A perfect Natsuki Subaru? Something along those lines. So it’s okay now.”
He rambled in the heat of the moment, trying his best to put Emilia at ease. But as he did that, Emilia’s eyes blinked, and she gently put her finger on his chest.
It was a ticklish, gentle touch. Subaru’s body shuddered…
“Are you together?”
“ ”
“The you without your memories was still you. So even if you remember everything, the other you who was trying so hard is…”
“…Ah. Yeah. It’s fine.”
Falteringly, still touching his chest, Emilia confirmed the path he had taken.
With the merger of their memories, they had become one, and there was a Natsuki Subaru who could be thought of as having disappeared, but that Natsuki Subaru had still been connected with everyone’s hearts for a time.
“He’s still there inside me and inside you, too. So it’s really okay.”
“…Mmm.”
“So keep your eyes peeled for what perfect Natsuki Subaru can do now. All this pent-up frustration from this torrent of developments is gonna be the craziest nitrox. It’s time for us to blast off into a bright future!”
“Sorry, I really don’t understand what you’re saying.”
Emilia just shook her head as Subaru grinned and flashed a thumbs-up.
Even that cool attitude was adorable, and he would really have loved to spend minutes, hours, even days more messing around with Emilia like this, but…
“There are a lot of problems we have to clean up.”
The five obstacles blocking their way in the watchtower—even with Natsuki Subaru’s identity problem resolved, Subaru’s delightful and precious comrades were still in danger.
However, there had been a lot of developments. For example, the tidal wave of shadow that swallowed up the entire tower made this whole operation a race against the clock. That was the Witch of Jealousy’s calamity, and it had happened before in the Sanctuary.
The cause that time had been him talking about Return by Death with Echidna inside her grave. Assuming it was the same reason now, then the shadow would ruin everything again if his secret got out. In other words, Louis Arneb finding out about Return by Death and taking up residence inside him was the prime culprit.
Now that Louis had been removed from Subaru, it was maybe fifty-fifty whether the shadow would swallow up the Pleiades Watchtower now.
That wasn’t much reason to start getting optimistic about things, but…
“Emilia-tan! I have an idea!”
“—! Got it! Then let’s do it!”
“I didn’t say anything yet!”
“It’s fine! If it’s your idea, then you must have come up with it after thinking about it really hard! I’d rather put my faith in that instead of trying to think of everything myself right now and making a snap judgment!”
“Argh, damn it! You know just what to say to make me smile!”
Subaru was stunned by her ready acceptance, but Emilia answered with a full-throated show of faith in him. He scratched his cheek, feeling like he had to live up to that trust, before pointing down the hall filled with shards of ice.
“First of all, just to be sure, give him another blast!”
“Ey!”
There was a loud thud as Emilia dropped a massive block of ice down the tunnel.
It would be nice if that unflinching blast was a finisher, but the odds were slim. In fact, peering intently at the point of impact, Emilia gasped.
“Subaru! The Archbishop is gone!”
“Tsk, resilient little asshole. But you definitely landed a clean blow earlier.”
That cockroach-like hardiness was frustrating, but running away the moment he judged the situation to be disadvantageous set him apart from Petelgeuse, who was so diligent and straightforward, or from Regulus, who didn’t have the word humility in his vocabulary. But there was no way that Lye had left the tower entirely yet.
“Emilia-tan! For now, we need to meet up with everyone! We have to adjust our deployment! If everyone doesn’t do their best, we won’t be able to get through this!”
“Okay! But is it okay to just let him go?”
“Honestly, if we could have finished that bastard, then that would have been great, but…”
It wouldn’t be easy to pin a tail on Lye after he had gotten away, and if they were going to waste time searching for him, it would be better to prioritize meeting up with everyone, so Lye could live for now.
“You don’t need to worry. He won’t leave the tower. Louis…his sister should be begging for help, and considering how bad his sister complex is, that guy won’t run away.”
“Sister complex…?”
“As in he’s obsessed with his little sister. Not exactly a healthy relationship in their case.”
At the very least, he had not sensed any sort of familial love for her brothers in Louis. Those guys were either pathetic victims, devoting themselves to Louis without realizing the truth, or else they were dedicated role-playing fanatics.
Either way, the Archbishops were reliably twisted people.
“I guess if they were more flexible and could change up on the fly, they wouldn’t have become Archbishops.”
After having had so many unwanted interactions with them, that was his conclusion. They never considered that they might be wrong. They were obsessively devoted to their own ideas and forced them on everyone around them. Because of that, they didn’t admit defeat and couldn’t retreat.
To destroy them…
“Emilia-tan! We need to get everyone else!”
“Mmm, got it! But where are they…?”
“Leave that to SubaNavi, your Subaru’s onboard navigation system.”
Activating SubaNavi, Greed’s authority, he searched for the responses from their comrades around the tower. That was just a fun way for Subaru to refer to Cor Leonis—the power that allowed him to perceive the manifestation of his precious bonds.
It was an ability that let him sense the presence of his comrades, and it was the most valuable power Subaru currently possessed. He couldn’t comprehend how Regulus could be so isolated despite having this power. It was almost a sort of genius. A pathetic, pitiful virtuoso who could only become an Archbishop…
“This isn’t the time to be pitying him, though… Ah, found them.”
Once he found the faint lights he could sense using that power, Subaru raised his head.
First priority was linking up with the people who Emilia had made sure escaped. Meaning…
“First things first, time to retrieve my adorable little partner!”
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