4
The repulsive zeal in that violet eye was all aimed at Subaru.
The sight of Sirius’s ecstatic gaze left him unable to do anything but draw in his breath.
“…She is…staring at you, Subaru.”
“…I know, so please don’t say it out loud and make me feel worse.”
When Beatrice whispered to him from his back, Subaru replied as he suppressed his fear as best as he could.
He’d felt this terrible premonition during the first time around that one loop.
“…This Romanée-Conti family thing almost sounded like an insane joke, but…”
At first, he’d entertained the ridiculous idea of a famous family in the Witch Cult cranking out one Archbishop of the Seven Deadly Sins after another, but reality easily exceeded Subaru’s expectations.
“If you have to be a husband-and-wife team of Archbishops, then you should get to pick your bride… Well, I guess if she is your pick, there’s nothing I can do about it, but…”
“Please do not ignore me, Petelgeuse. You truly are naughty. Always acting so coldly toward me… It just, just, just—frustrates me so much!”
Over a year after they last met, Subaru was finding new reasons to resent Petelgeuse and his awful taste.
Meanwhile, Sirius squirmed and pleaded with him in an ingratiating voice. Just the gestures from the bandaged madwoman were nightmarish enough, but seeing the soulwashed crowd performing the same gestures made the scene an outright comedy.
The fact that their souls were being manipulated to make them go along with the madwoman’s delusions really made it more of a tragedy, though.
“And what’s her basis for mistaking me for that Petelgeuse bastard in the first place? I don’t resemble that jerk at all.”
“…Goodness, I simply cannot put up with this. Most likely, she saw your earlier trick, spurring her current disturbing delusion. She truly does not know the meaning of shame. Strong women are so difficult to deal with when they become convinced of something. It goes well beyond pitiable and simply becomes unsightly.”
Regulus, now out of sight and out of mind as far as Sirius was concerned, shrugged with unconcealed disdain on his face.
But Subaru had learned something—it was Invisible Providence that had caused this. Sirius had mistakenly identified that incomplete Authority as Unseen Hands.
What made things worse was the fact that the evil spirit Petelgeuse had the power to possess and hijack the bodies of others. There was no room for doubt that the madwoman thought he was dwelling inside Subaru.
Setting that deduction aside, Sirius’s burning zeal from a moment before vanished like a mirage as she glared at Regulus with frigid eyes.
“Yes, yes, thank you kindly. And so very, very sorry. Right now, I am in the middle of something. Do you understand? Comprehension is quite important, and mutual understanding is just as critical. You’ve finished what you came for, yes? Would you quickly take your leave now?”
“Are you giving me an order? Do not make me laugh. Speaking of making me laugh, you called yourself Sirius Romanée-Conti, did you not? Would you notice already that using your feelings for him as an excuse to take his family name as your own without permission is just downright disturbing? In a sense, that is an infringement upon Petelgeuse’s rights. Well, dead people don’t have rights, so I suppose it’s fine, really.”
“He and I loved each other!!”
Regulus’s words, filled with bottomless disdain, triggered another explosion of Sirius’s emotions.
“I mean, our eyes met over and over again daily! He never scolded me for taking out his things! He let me have his leftover food and said nothing even as I breathed in the air he breathed out! He never grimaced when I slept in the same bed that he had, and he even praised me for skillfully burning half-demons away! He gave me my name! He smiled! For me, me, me aloooone!!”
Sirius’s breath had become ragged, her bandages drenched with tears as she laid her feelings bare. The gruesome sight and the contents of her words made Subaru feel sorry for Sirius for the very first time.
In addition, Sirius’s indignation resonated, and the surrounding crowd was suffused with roiling emotions once again. Their faces became dark red, and the bleeding from their eyes and noses increased; it was clear from a single glance that their lives were being whittled away.
“S-stop it! If this is for my sake, then don’t drag the people around us into this! Behave, please!”
“Behave, you say?”
Thinking about the collateral damage, Subaru clung to a single thread of hope: trying to play on Sirius’s yearning.
When Subaru made that dangerous gamble, Sirius stared at him in a daze for a while.
“…Ah-ha, ah-ha-ha, ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!”
Embracing her slender body, Sirius guffawed at Subaru’s words. Her reaction made Subaru tense up. Seeing this, Sirius tore her mouth open to form a crescent moon.
“Even if you wish it, I refuse. I mean, we’ve finally reunited! We have finally met like this once more. And yet once again, you ask me to endure, to hold back?! How dare you tell me to wait while some spirit I’ve never seen clings to your back!! I will burn you!!!”
Even as she spoke, her emotions raged as Sirius let out a roar and pointed at Subaru—no, at Beatrice on Subaru’s back. Sirius then shifted her other hand toward Regulus.
“Either way, your real objective is the half-demon that man is carrying, isn’t it?! Why are you so partial to a filthy, silver-haired half-demon?! Surely, you understand by now?! Why choose that wretched, vulgar, damned half-demon…?! If you love her that much, then I will burn her before your very eyes…!”
“Geez, I don’t even understand a thing you’re saying anymore…”
Screaming and even coughing up blood, Sirius vented her hatred toward both Emilia and the Witch of Jealousy.
Wasn’t resurrecting the Witch of Jealousy the Witch Cult’s goal? Subaru couldn’t understand why she treated the supposed object of their worship like it was the one thing she most hated in the entire world.
More than that, it meant Sirius didn’t share Petelgeuse’s long-cherished desire in the slightest, didn’t it?
In any case, with Subaru’s hope for a breakthrough dashed, the situation had turned into a three-sided battlefield.
That said, the side in the worst state was, without a doubt, Subaru’s party. Despite surviving longer than in any other loop this time around, his failure to acquire any information except how dangerous their enemies were left him in all-consuming despair.
But he couldn’t simply stand there—he had to save Emilia and the city.
“Isn’t it fine either way, I wonder?”
From his back, the sound of a dependable voice bolstered Subaru’s decision. Relying on that voice, Subaru moved to boldly leap toward the two Archbishops of the Seven Deadly Sins—
“—Excuse me, I am sorry to interrupt when you are getting so motivated, but it is finally time, you see.”
“What?”
Regulus cut in and dashed Subaru and Beatrice’s resolve. Still carrying Emilia with one hand, he pointed toward the sky with his empty one.
—The next moment, the sound of a bell echoed in the sky above the City of Water. That tolling indicated that noon had arrived.
Nodding in response, a melancholic smile came over Regulus as he spoke up.
“With this, I no longer have free time to spare for you. At the very least, you should be thankful to the Gospel that… No. It is meaningless to thank a torn page. You should be thankful to me, then, for doing my part in obeying the Gospel.”
Leaving these words behind, Regulus turned his back on Subaru and Beatrice, having lost all interest in them. Dumbstruck by his sheer gall, Subaru immediately exploded.
“Hold on a minute! ‘Time,’ you say? What about the time? What the hell are you talking about?!”
“It is exactly as you heard. My free time has come to an end. We have something that we came to do in this city. Ahh, I do not mean merely me, but also the woman touched in the head over there. Isn’t that right, Sirius?”
Replying to Subaru’s inquiry, Regulus motioned his chin toward Sirius as the latter stood still.
When Subaru looked over, it was shocking how Sirius, who had been so enraged before, was obediently tucking her chains into her sleeves, looking like she wasn’t satisfied with the outcome. Nonetheless, she was clearly getting ready to move on just like Regulus.
What impudent, selfish, completely conceited people were they to do this much and then just drop it all and walk away?
“Ahh, do not lament, Petelgeuse! I understand! I, too, wish so much to burn what is incomplete! To act like this before you… It fills me with such sadness that I wish to tear my chest apart! Is it not the same for you, darling?!”
In stark contrast to Regulus’s composure, Sirius clawed at her face in grief. Swallowed up by the madwoman’s emotions, the crowd let out sobs and laments that filled the square.
As that painful and revolting scene played out before him, Subaru ferociously broke into a sprint. Regulus was right there, carrying Emilia out of the square as if the conversation was already at an end.
“Wait, you bastard! Don’t carry on with the conversation all on your own! Put that girl down! If you don’t…”
“You see, a thought occurred to me.”
Stopping in his tracks, Regulus turned only his head toward Subaru, smiling.
That smile petrified Subaru’s body—almost fatally so.
“It is a lonely thing to have a ceremony without any attendants on the new bride’s side, so it would be a little too coldhearted and pitiless of me not to invite you, the illicit lover— Therefore, I will not kill you.”
As he spoke, Regulus lightly tapped a paving stone with the tip of his toe.
With a gesture that made it seem like he was only adjusting the fit of his shoe, he shaved the top of the paving stone right off. The resulting debris flew toward Subaru’s legs—instantly causing his right leg to explode.
“—Eh?”
A horrid cross section was revealed as if he’d been gouged by a massive beast’s claw, neatly exposing Subaru’s white bone, pink flesh, yellowish fat, and gray-colored blood vessels, which had been savagely severed.
Incomprehension. Comprehension. A moment later, the pain reached his brain.
“?!! Daaagh! Agaaaagh?!”
His vision went pure white as terrible pain shot through him. It was as if a number of sharp needles had been stabbed into the crown of his head.
Screaming, Subaru failed to break his fall as he tumbled to the ground. He then tried to stanch the leg injury with his hands. It was no use. The wound was too big. Subaru’s hands alone could not plug it.
“Subaru?! Subaru! Subaru, hold on! Let me—!”
Beatrice, falling to the ground alongside Subaru, hurriedly activated a healing spell as she realized the gravity of his injury. Seeing the pair reduced to that miserable state, Regulus nodded in apparent satisfaction.
“Your demeanor toward me has been quite rude this whole time, but with this, let us call it even. I hope this pain serves as sufficient motivation for you to reflect upon your actions. Ahh, there is no need to thank me. I mean, this really isn’t enough to thank someone for. It is merely a wake-up call that should be natural coming from any reasonable person.”
“Aaaaa! Gah, ghh, ugoaaah!!”
That voice wasn’t audible anymore. Pain, pain—Subaru Natsuki was ruled by pain alone.
His eyes were cloudy. He was clenching his back teeth so hard that they seemed ready to split in half. His vision was completely red. He didn’t have any sense of up or down, left or right. Incomprehension. Incomprehensionincomprehension. He did not comprehend, but there was something he knew.
“Emiliaaa…! Waghhh, urgh, goeee!”
In the throes of excruciating pain, Subaru called out the name of the girl who was the only thing he cared about in that moment. But it was useless. As he gasped from pain, tiny Beatrice desperately tried to keep him from thrashing about as she continued treating him.
However, as if to mock Beatrice’s dedicated efforts, the situation continued to worsen.
“…This isn’t funny in the least.”
“My apologies. But this is no joke. This, too, is a matter of natural consequence.”
As Beatrice murmured despondently, Sirius replied from somewhere behind her in a melancholic voice.
All around Sirius, people were writhing in pain. They were screaming from the crippling pain in their leg, identical to Subaru’s wound. It was as if they’d all been maimed by the same beast.
“If my beloved Petelgeuse had a chance to share a few words, he would say this: Pain makes us savor life, and life exists so that we may prove our love. I believe this to be true as well. That is why I have this wish! After all, love is the wish to become one! To see the same things, to feel the same things, to pass the time together, to end our lives together—for love is all about joining with one another!”
Spreading both hands wide, Sirius brought them together before her chest, producing a loud, explosive sound resembling applause.
After indulging in the suffering of others with an expression of pure ecstasy, Sirius turned a hateful eye toward Beatrice.
“Everyone should taste the same life as my precious. But I shall allow no such thing for you or for that filthy half-elf. Who would knowingly allow you to share anything with my precious?”
“…Would you cease being so crazed with jealousy, I wonder? Betty has long become one with Subaru without turning into anything like you. Is Betty not Subaru’s, I wonder?”
“—!”
Beatrice gave a retort, conceding nothing to Sirius and her manipulative words.
The spirit and the madwoman sternly crossed gazes. But the madwoman quickly averted her eyes from the staring contest.
“For now, I leave him to you, for the instructions of the Gospel must take precedence. Yes, I have little choice in the matter. So sorry. My apologies. But I will come to see you again soon. Yes, very soon indeed.”
To the end, Sirius directed her mad feelings of love toward Subaru, even as unbearable pain stripped him of conscious thought. On a final note, the madwoman gave Subaru a long stare of yearning before departing from the bloody square with a single leap.
Beatrice could not even keep her eyes on Sirius’s back as she faded into the distance. Before she realized it, all sight of Regulus, and Emilia with him, had vanished from the square.
“—Subaru.”
Subaru was unconscious, vomiting stomach fluids mixed with froth.
Touching his leg, she continued to treat the still-bleeding wound. The site of the injury was large and deep; if she let her mind wander, he would almost certainly die of blood loss. Subaru’s life was Beatrice’s first priority.
There were nearly fifty other wounded besides Subaru in the square. Thanks to the Authority of Wrath, they had suffered the same exact wound as him, but the effect of Beatrice’s healing was not being shared. It was an abominable Authority.
“—Subaru, I am so sorry.”
Diligently tending to Subaru’s health, Beatrice murmured frailly as she tried to stay strong.
A tear fell from her one of her wide-open eyes, leaving a line as it coursed down her white cheek.
“I am so sorry. Could I be any sorrier, I wonder…?”
Beatrice apologized over and over, even though she knew that her voice could not reach Subaru, who had passed out from the pain.
Even though she knew that her words changed nothing.
“I am so sorry, Emilia…!”
Sirius of Wrath had toyed with people’s hearts, creating a long list of casualties in the process.
And after a display of overwhelming might, Regulus of Greed had abducted Emilia.
—Two Archbishops of the Seven Deadly Sins had been unleashed upon the Water Gate City of Pristella.
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