2
“Ngh! Rem?!”
Suddenly coming to, Subaru sat up with a jolt.
As he did, he began coughing because of a painful lump in his throat, hacking up phlegm as he forced himself to settle down and look around.
He was in a meadow—he had been sprawled in the middle of it.
It was a familiar way to wake up, but Subaru quickly realized this was not the déjà vu of coming back from death—he couldn’t see Rem or Louis anywhere nearby.
“This is…definitely the place we were sent to. I…nghh.”
Recalling what had just happened earlier, he gingerly touched his neck, and the pain brought back an unpleasant memory.
While carrying Rem on his back, Subaru had been choked to death—well, not quite.
“My neck hurts like hell…which means Rem didn’t kill me.”
She had strangled him but stopped short of killing him.
Surprised by her decision given how cold her voice had sounded, Subaru breathed a sigh of relief, then quickly reminded himself that it was too soon to relax.
He was still alive. That meant he would have to pick things up from that last terrible development.
Because of the lingering scent of the Witch, Rem harbored serious doubts about Subaru and had run away with the worst possible impression of him. Since Louis was also missing, he assumed Rem had taken her along.
Left behind here, he had effectively forced Rem to be alone with an incredibly dangerous individual.
“Damn it! The hell am I doing…?!”
Bitter about his series of mistakes, Subaru slapped his cheeks and stood up.
Based on where the sun was in the sky, not much time had passed. He still didn’t want to think of it as a good thing, but Rem would have trouble moving.
He was sure she wouldn’t get very far on those legs.
“I can see the marks from her dragging herself across the grass…! I can follow her!”
It would have been hopeless if he’d had to track her without any clues, but the tracks she’d left after dragging herself across the meadow were still visible. There was no telling how far they would take him, though.
“I’ve taken plenty of risky gambles already!”
That was hardly anything to brag about, but even so, Subaru sprinted off across the meadow, following the tracks in the grass.
Fortunately, they didn’t suddenly end, and he was able to make out where the two of them had entered the forest. The lush and dense plant growth underneath the canopy of tall trees made it look like a tropical rainforest.
Upon closer examination, it was obvious he was sweating from the heat and humidity. This climate was nothing like the bone-dry desert they had just come from.
The big leaves and vibrant vines reminded him of jungles like the Amazon, though he had never been there himself. From what he’d heard, the Amazon was supposed to be a deadly place for anyone who wandered in unprepared, but…
“If that’s where Rem went, then I’ve got no choice.”
Subaru and Rem were equally unprepared for venturing deep into the forest. As he imagined Rem desperately fleeing into the forest despite her uncooperative legs, he couldn’t help berating himself for every rash choice he’d made so far.
“Rem! Please come out! Please! I made a mistake!”
He hesitated for just a moment, and then, praying that Rem was still safe, he boldly dived into the woods, calling out in a loud voice.
His feet sank into the soft ground and endless undergrowth. The chirps of insects he had never heard before and the rustling of the plants he pushed past were loud and annoying, so he raised his voice again.
Of course, he realized that calling out to her like this might scare Rem and make her actively avoid him. But it was better than wandering lost through the forest without any clues or markers to rely on.
And more than anything, he had to do something productive, or the self-loathing he felt would make his heart explode.
After all the things everyone had done for Rem’s sake, if anything happened to her now, how would Subaru ever make it up to her?
He couldn’t even atone with his own death.
“Rem! Where are you?! Please answer me! I’m begging you, don’t leave me!!!”
He shouted through the trees, not caring how hoarse his voice got.
It didn’t take long for his limbs to start feeling like lead. He was fighting a losing battle against immense exhaustion. Thinking back, he had only managed to catch a couple hours of sleep to recover after the hard fighting at the Pleiades Watchtower.
The spirit in the green room increased the natural recovery rate of anyone under its care, but that was a drop in the ocean.
If Subaru wasn’t careful, he might collapse in relief the moment he found Rem.
Wary of such a stupid possibility coming to pass, Subaru pressed on with his search in the rainforest…
“Rem! Please answer! I’m begging you! I’m sorry! I was wrong!”
Putting his hands to his mouth, he continued to shout.
He pleaded with her from the bottom of his heart, but there was no response, and his spirit was flagging.
He continued to chase after a phantom of Rem, keeping his eyes peeled as he moved past tree after tree.
“ ”
Just as he was about to shout her name for the umpteenth time, he spotted something out of the corner of his eye.
The slightest trace of movement. Something peeked out from the underbrush, in a gap between the trees. It wasn’t just a breeze rustling the leaves—
“Re—”
Getting his hopes up, Subaru turned in that direction.
That was the exact moment something slammed into his chest with tremendous speed.
“Gh?!”
Before he could so much as shout, he was knocked off his feet and sent flying backward. He crashed into a tree trunk, and the wind was knocked out of him.
“Gah… Wh-what the…?!”
His brain was scrambled by the sudden impact. He looked around, but considering the sheer force of it, he’d obviously been attacked. Before he had a chance to gather his thoughts, he tried to make a run for it.
But he couldn’t, because—
“Agh?”
The thick arrow sticking out of his chest had punched a hole right through him and come out the other side, pinning him to the big tree trunk behind him.
“Gh, bluh…”
As soon as he realized what had happened, he coughed up all the blood that was welling up in his throat.
He was bleeding profusely, both inside and out, and it wasn’t stopping. Coughing up more blood than air, Subaru struggled to breathe.
“Kgh…”
Despite the terrible pain, he grabbed the arrow in his chest and tried to pull it out.
It didn’t even budge. The arrowhead was buried solidly in the tree, preventing him from moving at all.
Whoever had shot him must’ve used a heavy bow to achieve such extraordinary force, enough to pin him down like an insect specimen. All he could do now was struggle pathetically…
“Agh, uggh, hng, nghh…”
When he wasn’t choking on his blood, he continued to call out to the girl who should still have been somewhere in the woods. He could no longer form words, but all the same, he tried to warn her of the menace lurking in the woods.
There was someone out there—specifically, the person walking toward him with a bow and arrow.
The quiet sound of Subaru drowning in his own blood was slowly muffled by the rustling footsteps of the approaching hunter, who had come to confirm the death of their prey.
They were slender and tall. An arrow was nocked in their bow. Everything else was lost to the darkness—Subaru couldn’t make out anything else.
By their hand, Subaru had pathetically, helplessly failed to reach Rem, and…
“—em.”
They’re right in front of me. An enemy. Are they the enemy? Why? What’s going on? What do I do?
What can I do with no one to rely on?
The welling heat and the pain he had been all too slow to notice were steadily spreading through his body. Blood was dripping from his eyes, nose, and ears now.
A feeling of emptiness was growing, a harbinger of a cold death’s approach. Subaru desperately kept his eyes open and called out to her until the very end.
He called her name with his very last breath.
Even as blood spilled from his lips.
Over and over, he called and called and called, until his very last moment.
Calling—
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