*This chapter is an edited MTL
The garden that had seen the same mornings so many times had been transformed into a hell he had never seen before.
The small but colorful flowerbeds had been blown away and burned down, and the trees that had lined the grounds surrounding the mansion had been snapped in half and fallen.
The ground that had been gouged out in places was the result of the tremendous mass of the explosion, which had wreaked havoc not only on the soil but also scattered many pieces of flesh.
The green grass was stained with black blood, and the remains of the black-robed men lay face down and sank into eternal darkness. Most of them were still intact, some with their heads blown off, some with half their bodies crushed, and some with their torsos shredded, the gruesomeness of it all surpassing that of the village.
It was a testament to the anger of the executioner who turned the wretched victims into wreckage.
The blood-stained iron ball, which was responsible for this horror, was chained to its hilt. It had crushed and destroyed many adversaries, but halfway through its journey, its owner gave it up, and it now lay abandoned in a corner of the garden.
And the «Demon» who seemed to have been struggling with it in her hands was,
Subaru: "—Rem."
Subaru was greeted by Rem’s corpse, whose entire body had been stabbed with an enormous amount of blades and whose left arm had been cut off.
The garden was filled with corpses of people other than her.
She had fought. She had fought against the malicious intent that had slaughtered the villagers and was now trying to turn its fangs against the mansion. She fought hard, defeated many, was covered in wounds, was struck by many blades, lost her weapons and her arms to control them, and still she fought back—and died.
Her black apron dress was torn here and there, punctured, and discolored reddish-black by the blood that spurted from everywhere.
He wanted to turn away. The murderous weapons that stood out of her body were made in the shape of a cross with a blade at the tip, and there were more than could be counted with the fingers of both hands covering her petite frame.
What is even more appalling is the fact that, despite the number of blades that had been used, there were far more scars on Rem's body than that.
Again and again, and again.
They thrust the blade into her fallen body, pulled it out, hurt her still breathing, toyed with her life, humiliated her dignity, insulted her way of life, and thrust it up, leaving an indelible scar.
What was her crime?
What were they thinking when they murdered her?
What did they know about Rem? She was hard-working, caring, quick-tempered, tender to Subaru, but sometimes harsh, a friend to Subaru in his time of need, but she left him behind, sisterly, hated herself, but was just beginning to like herself a little bit…, but she was a good friend to Subaru—
She had just finally started to walk away from a life she’d been telling herself was someone else's replacement, a life that was finally her own.
Rem would not move. Even when he shook her, her cold body was already stiff, and her soft blue hair, which he had stroked so many times, was sticky with blood like glue. She was lying face down on the ground on her stomach, and Subaru did not dare to look at her face.
Even if she had a sorrowful face, even if she was determined to resist to the end, or even if she had a peaceful face of death, he did not dare to accept it.
Because Rem had died because of Subaru.
Subaru, who was kneeling down and shaking Rem, who was no longer moving, looked up absentmindedly. Suddenly, he noticed the unnaturalness of the place where Rem had collapsed.
Her body, which had fought against despair by using the garden as a battlefield, had been dumped at the edge of the garden, away from the mansion and the flower beds, in an inaccessible space.
He didn't think it's a strange thing to say. It seemed as if the enemy had circled around her while she was fighting, or had driven her here while she was dodging, and she had simply met her demise here.
But Subaru thought the situation was strange.
And as he turned his mind to think, he realized the true nature of the strange spot.
The way Rem fell down with her arms outstretched—her left arm was missing from her shoulder, so she fell down with her right arm outstretched—looked as if she was fighting with something on her back and fell down because she ran out of steam in the middle of the fight.
Behind Rem's fallen body is a wooden warehouse where garden shears and flower seeds for landscaping are stored.
The place, which also serves as a temporary storage place for disused furnishings, is as big as a small shed, not to mention a warehouse.
As he got up and crawled toward the entrance of the warehouse, Subaru noticed something as he approached.
A sensation he had already experienced many times before. It was a feeling of death, a dark, dense feeling that stroked his skin, dried up the moisture in his mouth to the point of thirst, and slowed his stupor and his thoughts.
Approaching the entrance, Subaru's nose picked up on the smell of death. Underfoot, from beneath the closed door of the warehouse, a large amount of blood is pouring out and staining the young grass.
He gulped, spat, and swallowed down the feeling of vomit that had risen up inside him, and tried to put his hand on the door. His hands were trembling, but not in alarm. It was fear.
There was no sign of anyone inside. There was no need to worry about that, and Subaru did not have the presence of mind to think about such things.
His fingertips grazed the door handle and shook it repeatedly, as if refusing to grasp it. Tears welled up in his eyes, frustrated and ashamed of his body's refusal to listen to him. After repeating the process over and over again, his pinky finger finally latches on the handle, and with a creaking sound, the door is opened.
At that moment, the smell of blood that filled his nostrils was so strong that he couldn’t handle it.
Covering his nose and mouth with his hands, Subaru peeked inside, holding back what was rising inside him. He gave up even trying to imagine what kind of scene was spread out there, and simply tried to burn the reality into his eyes.
—The people in the warehouse were the children of the village.
The moment he realized this, Subaru's mouth filled with the gastric juices that had risen to the top of his throat, and with a rolling gait he ran out of the warehouse.
He fell forward onto the grass and spat out the hot vomit as he pleased. His stomach was empty, and all that came out was yellowish gastric juice. Still, he vomited. He continued to vomit. Even though his internal organs complained of pain, his throat was burned by stomach acid, and the sour taste overtook his mouth, Subaru continued to vomit.
No one is allowed to vomit in there, in that warehouse.
No one, no one has the right to defile those children any more than they did.
Subaru: "Rem, is..."
She fought and died protecting the children.
The only child’s corpse Subaru found in the village was that of a girl named Petra. He did not walk around looking for all the dead bodies of all the villagers, so he had completely dismissed the possibility that there might have been survivors.
The adults had fought in the village, and only the children had escaped to the lord's mansion. And even where they fled, despair struck, with the result that the outcome remained the same.
Cruelly, mercilessly, cruelly, their lives were snuffed out.
Subaru: "Hiii."
Suddenly, a voice leaked from Subaru's throat.
It wasn't that there was something wrong. It was just that he suddenly became afraid.
Subaru had returned to the village, to the mansion, in search of someone who knew him. And yet, not a single living person was left behind, and only the mute dead were blaming Subaru for his return.
It felt like he was being told. The vacant eyes that did not reflect anything.
It felt like he was being blamed. The gaping, blood-dripping lips.
It felt like he was hated. The memories of the days he had spent with them and laughed with them.
Subaru: "No…, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no..."
–Why, I wonder, did you survive?
–Why, they wondered, did we have to die?
Subaru: "No…, I'm not…, I'm not…, I didn't want this…, I didn't want this."
There was an ideal. There was a hope that he had fantasized about.
When Subaru heard that Emilia was in danger, he thought he had received a revelation. He believed that she had given up on Subaru and that he had been blessed with the opportunity to make her look at him in a new light.
As he had done in the past, Subaru believed that he could save Emilia, and that she would be grateful, and that they could bridge the small rift of their differences and walk hand in hand together.
He was confident that the predicaments, dangers, and tragedies that would arise would only be stepping stones to that end. He had underestimated that no matter what happened, he could fix it.
If the reward for that was this huge number of deaths, well…
Subaru: "It's not my fault…, I…, I…,"
Shaking his head, Subaru got up, turned away from the warehouse, turned his back on Rem's corpse, and ran toward the mansion.
Subaru: "Someone…, someone, someone, someone, someone, someone, someone…!"
He crossed the garden, went around to the front of the mansion, and tried to open the front door. But the door was stubbornly closed, as if it considers Subaru an outsider, and no matter how many times he bumped into it or kicked it roughly, it showed no sign of opening.
After a final frustrating kick at the door, Subaru headed back toward the garden. He stepped on a rolling black-clad corpse, jumped over it, and went to the location of the desired object.
Picking it up, he dragged it, heavy enough to make his arms creak, to the terrace on the garden side of the mansion. Then, inhaling deeply, he flexed every muscle in his body.
Subaru: "—Ah!"
The centrifugal force of the clenched chain caused the steel ball to whirl, shattering the glass into pieces and scattering it around much of the room.
Subaru rushed through the entryway he had so forcibly created and slid himself into the mansion. The shards of the half-broken window ripped his skin open and carved several lacerations here and there on his limbs, but Subaru could not feel any of the sharp pain.
Subaru: "Someone, someone, someone, someone, someone, someone…,"
As if clinging, as if possessed, Subaru's lips continued to seek the presence of others.
It was the same as when he ran into the village, but it had shifted to a search for something different.
Namely,
Subaru: "It's not my fault… it's not my fault… it's not my fault…"
He wanted someone alive to affirm it.
Or the very fact that someone survived would be that affirmation.
So Subaru sought out the living. He thirsted for them. He had to find them.
Otherwise, Subaru would not be able to affirm it.
If he believed that this tragedy was caused by his own careless thoughts, there was no way he could keep his mind in equilibrium.
In order not to let his heart be shattered and not to be responsible for the deaths of so many people, he had to protect himself with a plausible theory.
Staggering, his upper body wobbling, Subaru ran around the mansion.
Unlike the garden, there was no sign of damage or destruction inside the house. The scene was the same as that of the mansion he knew so well, and for some reason, this place, which had not lost its normalcy despite the death so much in the outside world, seemed terribly frightening.
He put his hand on the door of the nearest room, opens it roughly, checks inside, clicks his tongue, and closes it with force. Compared to the vast number of rooms, too few people actually lived in the mansion.
There are four people who are related to the mansion whose presence Subaru has not yet confirmed—until he finds one of them, he’ll open and close the doors at random, repeatedly.
Subaru: "Damn… damn it! Why… why, no one… always would have…"
Subaru blurted out in a drawn-out, half-crying voice and scratched his bangs wildly.
Normally, Subaru would be able to get to Beatrice's archives so easily that he wouldn't even need to aim. And yet, at this crucial moment, he just can't find it.
He wanted to hear those hateful words come out of someone’s throat now.
He could endure being treated like an insect, and he could even endure the spilling of breath that does not hide his discomfort. If only someone would live, and affirm that Subaru was living.
Subaru: "Come out… come out… please, please, please… help me… help me! Come out...!!!!"
Unable to hold back the tears that were streaming down his cheeks, Subaru ran around the mansion. All that escaped from his mouth were sobs and feminine cries for someone to pull him out of this despair and rescue him.
Passing the guest room where he first awoke in the mansion, stepping on the carpet that Beatrice's magic had turned into an unreal looping corridor, crawling in the dining room where he had passed many times, turning his back on the kitchen where he had struggled to make mayonnaise, and leaving the large bathroom where he was entrusted with cleaning, the hardest job among the tasks given to Subaru... After leaving the large bathroom, where he was assigned to clean up the hardest work of all, he ran up to the floor where all the servants' rooms were located, pulled out the rooms nearest to him, and peeked inside.
In the seventh room, he found Ram's body.
Having seen so many deaths in such a short time, Subaru knew immediately that Ram, lying on the bed, was not asleep.
Her translucent white skin was pale and bloodless, and her lips, on the contrary, were more vermilion than usual. In contrast to her sister's death, who looked exactly like her, Ram's figure, even with her death makeup on, was somehow dainty even to the point of death.
If she had kept quiet, she would have passed as a pretty maid, as she usually said in a light tone of voice.
She was laid on the bed, but she would not have breathed her last as if she were sleeping here. There was someone who carried her to her bed and arranged her death in this way.
Perhaps it was Rem. I wonder what she was thinking in the face of her sister's death, how many times she shed tears while applying her death makeup, and with what feelings she left her sister alone.
Now that Rem has been so cruelly killed, he will never know what she felt.
He touched his fingers to Ram's cold lips, and the vermilion makeup adheres slightly to the tips of his fingernails. Rubbing his fingers together, he played with the color with his fingertips, and before he knew it, Subaru was sitting in the corner of the room.
Dimly, he looked up. There, calmly, was the figure of the dead woman, who he would have believed if he had been told that she was merely sleeping.
She greeted Subaru's return in silence and denounced him as a living person.
Just like the many vacant eyes that looked up at Subaru in the village.
Her lips, which will never tremble again, hurl silent curses at Subaru endlessly.
Subaru: "Hiii."
Crawling away, Subaru fled in a heap from the bed where Ram slept. Forcing his trembling arms, his knees that won't listen to him, he got up and waddled away from the room as quickly as possible, putting his hands on the wall.
Subaru: "Don't... it's not... me, I'm not, I'm not anything…!"
Covering his ears, shaking his head, and spinning words to defend himself with his hoarse throat, Subaru tries to move away from the vindictive voice whispering in his ear. But the voices, the despair, stalk Subaru everywhere and nowhere, taunting him as he flees.
He ran down the hallway, dragging his feet. He comes to a landing with a staircase. On all fours, he climbed the stairs. On the way up, he fell several times, got bruised several times, and with blood dripping from his busted lip, he tries again to reach the corridor on the upper floor he has reached.
Only the dead greet Subaru. With Ram dead, there are only three living people left. His feet naturally avoid Emilia's room on the same floor. On the second floor, Ram was dead in her own private servant’s room. The image of Ram dead in her own room flashed in his mind, and tears, which should have dried up, welled up once again. He thought he had already expelled all the water from his body, that the sobs and gastric juices had emptied out, and yet the never-ending sadness still ached deep in his chest, urging Subaru to run.
Without it, he could have sat there, head in his hands, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, knowing nothing, wanting nothing, being given nothing, being deprived of nothing, being loved by nothing, not having started anything, not having finished anything, not having changed anything, stagnating.
With tears and whining streaming down his chapped face, the wobbly Subaru arrived at the top floor, in front of Roswaal’s office. The heavy, double-doors are silent, and the solidity of them appears to be protected by a robustness that seems to repel even the malice that looms over the mansion.
But such hope is fleeting.
There was no such thing as a safe place, no such thing as a permitted place, in this place where everything was over, and there should be no such thing.
The door was pushed open and a cool breeze flowed out into the hallway.
A chill stung his arms, and Subaru was suddenly reminded of the fact that he was so lightly dressed that he was defenseless against it. He wondered where his jacket was, and then remembered that he had given it to Petra in the village, fed up with the fact that he was trying to protect himself with unhelpful thoughts.
He stepped into the room. He couldn’t deny that he had a half-hearted feeling of resignation that Roswaal might be leaning on the desk in the office as a corpse.
With Rem dead and Ram's life crushed, it was difficult to hold on to hope for others in the midst of it all. He no longer knew whether he was running around the mansion in search of the living or whether he was violating the memories with despair in tow in order to lose sight of hope.
But the world, which had betrayed Subaru's hope three times in the village, in the garden, and in the private room, did not now turn its fourth betrayal against him.
There was no one in the office.
He ran his eyes around the empty room, crawled behind the desk, under furniture shelves, and even behind the reception desk, and still could not find any trace of them.
No small amount of relief washed over Subaru.
It was a relief that he did not have to confirm whether Roswaal was alive or dead, and also a sense of self-pity that he did not have more reasons to be tormented by the dead.
"–?"
Suddenly, the sound of a window shaking in the wind made Subaru turn around.
As soon as he opened the door to the corridor, a chilly wind flowed into the room, knocking on the window and shaking the leaves of the houseplants in one corner of the room.
A flow of wind had been created.
The wind, which had gained a passage through the door, was blowing around the room and flowing outward, accompanied by cool air. While tasting this fact on his skin, Subaru looked around for the source of the wind, relying on the feel of the wind and his intuition.
Subaru: "Such, such a trick..."
As soon as he fiddled with a contraption hidden under the ebony desk, a sound like the meshing of gears rang out. Then there was a low sound like a millstone grinding, and the bookcase on the back wall of the office slid nearly a meter to the side.
In front of Subaru, who was stunned by this unimaginable contraption, a black hole with a gaping hole appeared on the other side of the bookshelf.
As Subaru approached, he saw a stone passageway that continued for only a few steps, and beyond it, a spiral staircase leading downstairs.
Subaru: "A, hidden passageway…?”
It must have been in case of an emergency.
As a frontier count with the role of a lord, Roswaal should naturally have an escape route as a means of self-preservation. Whether or not he would actually have the opportunity to use it, it was easy to see that his character would have happily prepared it.
He had no idea that he would actually have the opportunity to use that passageway.
The cold wind that was flowing in the room seemed to be coming from the passageway. In other words, the wind was blowing through the passageway beyond the loophole, starting somewhere deeper and colder.
Gasping, taking several deep breaths, Subaru squeezed himself into the hole just as his sharply beating heart slowed down, if only slightly.
The walls, which were cool to the touch, were made of some kind of material that gave off a dim, pale blue glow that allowed him to see several meters ahead.
Relying on the light, Subaru descended the spiral stone staircase to the lower floor, taking great care not to miss his footsteps.
The anxiety of stepping into a completely unknown place, wondering how far it goes and where it is headed, tightens his inner gut. But what burns even more strongly than these negative feelings is Subaru's anger at the existence of this hidden passageway.
If the wind is blowing, it means there is a way out.
That meant that someone had used this tunnel to escape. There were three survivors who were not seen in the mansion—considering whose office the location was from, he didn't even need to think about who abandoned the devastation of the mansion and ran away.
Did he leave it behind and run away, abandoning so much devastation, abandoning the girl who adored him so much. Did he run away because he was so desperate for his life?
Subaru does not notice that the roots of his teeth are trembling with anger and joy.
Anger at a man who, in the name of humanity, has committed a spiteful and slanderous vice.
The joy of having found someone to whom he could cast vindictiveness, curses, scorn, abuse, and all the blame for the speechless dead in their place.
With a maniacal smile, a jumble of emotions, and endless tears, blood dripping from his bitten lips, the madman heads downstairs.
How many flights of stairs did he take? It was quite a long way, and the height of the stairs was not the same as going up from the third floor to the ground level. The tunnel seemed to have led to the basement of the mansion, and at the end of the stairs, there seemed to be a straight passageway leading back to the basement. The material of the wall was still the same, blue ore, which emits a blue light, and when touched, it took away the heat from his fingertips.
He is chasing after the remnants of the living. That was the one thing that made Subaru happy right now.
He was glad of the fact that the beings ahead of him would be no better than he was, and that they would be the ones to be cursed for their inferior choices.
He was really happy to be able to find the living in a world where there are only the dead, and to find out if he was really alive now or if he had died.
Subaru: "Hmm… oh,"
The palm that had been applied along the wall suddenly lost sight of the wall and caressed the air. Unexpectedly, his body fell forward, and what he saw was a small room with a slightly larger space on all sides than the passageway before.
In the dimly lit space, a number of pillars stood in a row and dotted the room. While feeling something distorted in the unevenly spaced pillars, I could not help but nod in agreement at the sloppy design if this passageway itself had been built in a rush.
With a satisfactory conclusion, Subaru passes through the side of the pillar that is in the way. His limbs are feeling very slow and sluggish. He feels as if his fingertips are stuffed with lead, and even his thoughts, which had begun to become even vaguer, begin to slow down.
He struggled to even take a single step forward as he continued to walk. His mouth was dry and sore, and the blood that used to flow to his lips had stopped before he knew it.
His eyelids were heavy and his movements were restricted as if weights were placed on both of his shoulders.
Subaru passed through the small room, dodging the pillars that dotted the hall, and in the blue light, he saw that there was an iron door in front of him. A passageway, a staircase, a passageway, a small room, and now a door… could there be what he was looking for beyond this door?
—What exactly was it that I was looking for?
Before his stagnant thoughts could reach the answer, his bloodless fingertips were reaching for it. Subaru, standing in front of the door, opens and closes his mouth as if gasping for air, and, abandoning his thoughts that bring nothing to mind, he grabs onto the door handle with only his sense of duty as a reason.
—At that moment, he felt a searing pain in his right hand, which had touched the handle.
Subaru: "Aghhh!"
Subaru's throat screamed out from the intense pain, and he shook off his right hand as if to pull it away. The burning pain was all over his palm that touched the knob, and Subaru looked down at the devastation of his injured right hand as he let out a pained cry.
—The index finger of his right hand had been cut off.
Subaru: "—What?"
Stunned and dumbfounded, Subaru unfolded his right hand lifted before him.
His right hand was discolored white and the skin of his palm was peeled to shreds—of the five fingers extended, only his index finger was missing from the root.
Slowly, he turned his gaze toward the door in front of him. Subaru's right index finger was still attached to the handle he had grabbed.
—That's all there was to it.
Subaru, with a restless thought, pointed his right hand at the handle to retrieve his finger that had been taken off. However, he had even more difficulty moving his body than before, and his will could not be transmitted from his shoulder to his elbow and from his elbow to the end of his arm. Frustrated by his motionless arm, Subaru stepped forward to close the distance to the door—his right ankle shattered at the root and he fell over on his side.
Subaru: "—Ahhhhh!"
An inarticulate voice leaked from his throat.
He didn't know if it was an exclamation of pain or just a rush of life that came out for no reason. However, there was something he could understand in the midst of not knowing.
As soon as his mouth opened to breathe out the voice and he took a breath in, his insides were filled with a white substance and he stopped moving.
His lungs convulsed and his breathing was labored. Subaru's eyes were busy with the unusual situation as he repeated short, shallow breaths, desperately pumping oxygen into his lungs, which were not inflating.
He didn't know what had happened. The sensations in his whole body were terribly vague.
His right ankle was shattered, and there was a pain and sense of loss that he had never experienced before. And the moment he fell down, he could see that the right half of his body, which was the side that he had fallen on, was also partially missing and collapsing, just like his right ankle.
From lips that no longer quivered, he exhaled a breath that barely held on to life. Subaru noticed, even after all this time, that his breath was visibly white.
His face, in contact with the ground, stuck to the floor, and he knew that if he moved his neck, his cheek would peel off. He felt no more pain. He moved it roughly and his cheek and the outer part of his right eye fell off in a heap. He didn't care. He finally turned over and saw the small room he had passed upside down in his vision.
Looking at it from below, Subaru finally realized that the reason for the uneven alignment of the pillars dotting the small rooms was not due to faulty, shoddy construction.
They were all icicles of people who had died after being frozen by ice.
Like Subaru, they were victims who had wandered into this white demise and turned into ice sculptures. And this was the end that would soon come for Subaru as well.
He had already stopped breathing.
Limited oxygen was circulating in his brain, but his brain was so sluggish that it was a wonder that he was still conscious, and his existence was on the verge of disappearing in this extremely cold world.
He didn't understand anything.
He couldn't see anything.
From the tips of his toes, his body was gradually reduced to shards of ice, and he was no longer Natsuki Subaru.
If that were the case, then perhaps what was here was no longer Natsuki Subaru, but only a maniac wearing the same skin.
The sensation in the lower half of his body was gone. Already his arms were nowhere to be found. His right eye fell out. It was strange that he could still see through his remaining left eye. Where does life reside, the brain or the heart?
The answer to that question was not going to come out in the frozen world—
???: "—It's too late now."
A mutter of lost temperature echoed in a world dominated only by white.
—Natsuki Subaru shattered into pieces and disappeared from the world in shards.