5
It was two days later that Subaru rose from his sickbed and paid the village a visit.
“Yeah, I really had a close call there, but I’m just glad you’re all okay!”
Subaru grinned and gave a thumbs-up. He was dressed not in the butler’s uniform but in some strange gray clothing Petra had never seen before. Even in her current state, Petra still had enough presence of mind to conclude that this suited him much better than the dignified uniform.
“Subaru!”
“He’s better!”
“Subaru’s up and moving!”
“Subaru walks the earth!”
“Oooh, hey there, little punks. Glad to see you guys are in good shape. Don’t say I never did nothing for ya.”
Though he was shy and awkward around the grateful adults, Subaru was his usual self around the kids, boasting about his heroics to anyone who would listen. But Petra and the adults somehow knew that was only an act to help everyone else feel comfortable.
This realization made Petra feel terribly frustrated. What Subaru had done for them, for the entire village, was incredibly significant. So why was he acting like this?
“Subaru! Come play with us!”
“Yeah, come on!”
“Let’s go fish for kreyfish!”
“We’ll catch a whopper!”
Meanwhile, the boys paid no heed to Subaru’s delicate condition and had grabbed his arms and legs to drag him around like they always did. When Petra saw Luca get ready to jump on Subaru’s back, she shouted, “Luca! What are you thinking?! Subaru is still recovering!”
“Wha-wha-wha-wha—?!”
Startled by the loud scolding, Luca felt his bottom hit the ground. The others spun around to see Petra standing off to the side on her own.
Then Subaru extended a hand to her and said, “Hey, Petra. Whatcha doing all the way over—? Wait, huh?!”
The moment he called out to her with a smile, Petra turned around and ran. She heard Subaru’s startled gasp behind her, but she didn’t stop. She had been planning to apologize, but that plan went up in smoke. This was no better than how she had behaved back at the mansion.
“Haagh… Hagh…”
Petra ran all the way to the other end of the village. Her knees buckled, and her breath was ragged when she looked around. She had reached the village outskirts—and the spot where she had met Meili and the puppy.
“It’s all my—”
“A lot of messy things happened here, huh.”
This time, Petra was so shocked that she wouldn’t have been surprised if her heart had actually stopped. She turned around and spotted Subaru just a few steps away. He made a big show of catching his breath as he leaned against a tree with a magic stone hanging from it and said, “D-dang…running this hard on the first day out of my sickbed…that really hurts. Wait, maybe I shouldn’t call it a sickbed if I was injured… What do you even call that? An injury bed?”
“Why…?”
“You sure recovered quick… Guess my stamina just sucks.”
With a sheepish grin, Subaru unceremoniously plopped himself on the ground. Petra just stood there, confused, unsure where he was going with all this. Subaru looked at her, patted the ground next to him, and said, “C’mon, Petra, sit. Let’s talk.”
“…Okay.”
Petra didn’t have the courage to tell him no. She gingerly sat beside Subaru, her eyes shifting nervously from the ground to Subaru’s face. He didn’t look angry. But he had every right to be.
“Agggh— Okay, so, I don’t really get what this is all about,” he began. “But the other kids said I should go after you. Is there something you wanna say to me?”
Petra’s eyes shot open. “W-well yeah, there is, but…”
She realized the others had set this all up to give her a chance to apologize. In other words, the entire village was helping her make up for what she had done. Luca, Mildo, Cain and Dyne, even Meyna…all of them were helping Petra apologize.
And with the table set so neatly for Subaru, this was the perfect opportunity for him to give Petra a piece of his mind—
“What did you want to talk about? Don’t tell me you got hurt before I got you out of the woods?! Those dogs had a real mean bite! I hope they didn’t give you any scars… If they did, I’m sorry!”
“Uh, um…”
“Leaving a mark on a little girl is just unforgivable. Lemme see, I think if you want to make sure it doesn’t leave a scar, you’re supposed to massage it…something like this…”
Blue in the face, Subaru suddenly panicked, worried that Petra had gotten hurt. As he frantically racked his brain for helpful tips, Petra remained slack-jawed for a while, wondering if all of this was just a ruse to make Petra feel even guiltier. Of course, she quickly realized that wasn’t his intention at all.
“…”
The boy sitting beside her genuinely thought Petra had done nothing wrong. If anything, he felt guilty about possibly hurting her somehow.
And that misunderstanding only made Petra angrier.
“Subaru.”
“I know! Petra, show me your wound—oh, but, uh, only if it’s not in a problematic place—”
“Subaru!!!”
“Yes, yes, yes, hello?! What’s wrong???”
Stupefied by Petra’s growl, Subaru whirled around and quietly opened his striking black eyes wide—because Petra looked like she was about to cry.
She was so overwhelmed with emotion that she wanted to scream. But it wasn’t shouts of anger that she needed to get out.
“I…”
“I?”
“I’m sorry…!”
Moments after she stammered those words, tears rolled down her cheeks. This only made Subaru more flustered, but Petra let her emotions guide her and repeated her apology again and again.
“P-Petra?! Why are you apologizing?!”
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry…! I’m sorryyyy…”
As Subaru grew increasingly alarmed, Petra just sobbed as she said those words over and over.
“It’s all my fault.”
After confessing, Petra glued her gaze to the ground as she tightly clenched her fists. The tears were still falling, but her shaking had subsided enough for her to talk. So she talked, the best she could, and confessed her sins to Subaru just as she had to her parents.
She told him what had happened with Meili and the puppy, then explained how it was all her fault that he had gotten hurt.
Once she was finished, Subaru fell silent, a perplexed look on his face. Whenever Petra closed her eyes, she could see Subaru unconscious in bed. And the way he ran after her and arrived totally winded was still fresh in her memory.
As he sat beside her now, she could see the white scars on his arms beneath the rolled-up sleeves. Scars that would never disappear.
Subaru watched her with just as much concern as before and said, “Listen, Petra…”
“……Yeah?”
Petra gritted her teeth when he called her name. She was ready for whatever came next.
What would he say to her? How would he rebuke her? For Petra, who had always been told that everything was forgiven no matter what she did, it was terrifying to face the possibility that this time might be different.
So when she peered up and saw Subaru’s troubled smile, she forgot to breathe. Those weren’t the eyes of a man who intended to hold a grudge forever.
“Well, I don’t think you did anything wrong, Petra… Well, that’s not quite right,” Subaru stretched his neck, searching for the right words. “You apologized…so it must be…”
“H-huh…?” Petra stammered nervously.
“Yeah, I think I know what I need to say now.” With an understanding nod, Subaru looked deep into her perplexed eyes and said, “I forgive you.”
“………”
“I guess it’s true that you did mess up in a lot of ways—and it would probably be wrong of me to brush it off and say you did nothing wrong. But when you feel so bad about what you did that you’d cry about it, it made me think about what you needed to hear most of all…”
“………”
“I forgive you, Petra. Don’t worry, I’m not angry. I’m just glad all this didn’t leave any marks on you and Meyna. It’s different for me and the boys—scars are a mark of courage for us.”
There wasn’t a trace of anger in Subaru’s smile as he talked. It was the same smile that first made Petra like him.
“—Wahhh.”
As a totally different kind of shock ran through Petra, she promptly crumpled to the ground and started crying again.
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