5
—His consciousness continued hearing the sound of things breaking.
Bones being chewed, his brain being crushed, his eyes bursting and splattering like overripe grapes.
His skull. It was his skull that shattered. And inside, all those important things jumbled together.
It all combined as his consciousness and memories turned into the color of flesh and transformed into vomit.
It was a head-splitting pain— As he thought that, his consciousness sneered at him.
Your head is already split, and everything inside it is already splattered. You lost the part that lets you feel pain a while back already, so what are you talking about?
His brain for storing memories was crushed, his organ for thinking destroyed, and all the crucial bits for just maintaining vital functions had burst. What was there other than death?
People who ended up like that died. So naturally, Subaru Natsuki had also—
“—rusu. Barusu. Get ahold of yourself.”
His untethered consciousness was grabbed by the root and forcibly dragged to a bright place.
When he got back, the first thing he sensed was someone else calling his name. It wasn’t just a voice. He could feel a gentle slapping on his cheek. And the gravelly feel of sand in his mouth.
“Barusu, wake up already. Don’t make me burn away your eyelids.”
“—Ngh.”
Hearing such a frightening threat as the first thing upon waking, his consciousness quickly surfaced.
Guided by that voice, his consciousness rose from a sea of darkness, breaking the water’s surface—
“—Are you up, Barusu?”
Right in front of him, he saw Ram’s face, her pink eyes narrowing.
“ ”
Dangerously close. Close enough to feel her breath. Close enough their lips might accidentally touch. Of course, Ram had no intention of something like that. It was just that the surroundings were dark, and they couldn’t see each other’s faces without being that close.
One breath. As Subaru exhaled, Ram slowly moved away. The darkness coloring the world felt unreal, and Subaru grabbed a handful of sand to double-check that he was really there.
And also, he could tell that he had died and reset again.
“I…I…”
Confirming his heart was beating, he took his time remembering what had happened.
The moment of death was always intense, and the perfect memory of it was as unpleasant as ever. Stepping through it, though, he traced the steps he had taken leading up to his death—
“Ugh…”
The vivid memory of the insignificant argument that had set him off, that had turned into a shouting match and then a murderous spree suddenly reared its head.
“Barusu?”
“Ugh, eh…gaaah.”
Ram looked suspicious of Subaru’s condition, but he didn’t have the mental capacity to answer her. His eyes were spinning in nausea.
When it came to his own death, he was a veteran. He had experienced more times than he could count on two hands. But that didn’t mean he was used to death, either.
That applied to his own death, too, of course, but it was the same for others as well. For his comrades and friends or anyone else.
He was scared of dying himself, but the thought of someone he knew dying was enough to tear at his heart.
—All the more so with how gruesome Ram’s death had been. That was the worst shock of all—and something he had never experienced before.
“…Ogh, geh, geh-hoh, gah-ha.”
He desperately tried not to remember it, but that was no different than trying to remember it.
Ram’s gory fate, trusty Patlash’s vicious act. The more he tried to forget them, the more vividly he saw the clumps of pink hair sticking out of the land dragon’s fangs and the remnants of her head lying on the ground.
As a result, he couldn’t hold back the nausea welling up inside him, and he vomited into the sand.
But his stomach and throat couldn’t recover from the shock of that death. He just hunched over, spasming as drool slipped from his mouth.
“…All that after waking up? How pathetic.”
A cold voice fell on Subaru as he bent over on all fours in the sand, desperately gasping. Ram was right beside him, looking down at him. Her cold attitude just reminded him of their argument right before he died.
Remembering the rage and murderousness that had swelled in him for no reason, the argument that had turned into a fight to the death…the way he had been overcome by his impulses, his chest ached, and he got scared.
What if something like that happened again—?
“Don’t you dare bite down.”
“—Ngh.”
With that one preface, Ram held his chin with her finger.
Subaru froze in surprise, but paying that no heed, Ram opened his mouth, and looking bored, she stuck her white finger down his throat.
“…?! Oh, eough.”
“I knew you were a bungler through and through, but if you can’t even do this much, how are you any better than a baby.”
Subaru’s throat was violently assaulted.
But because of that, his stomach and throat that had only been spasming adapted to that new shock and naturally ejected the nausea that was welling up inside him.
All that came out was gastric juices and saliva, but it made Subaru feel far better than before he had been able to get anything out.
“Eh-hoh, geh-ha…haah…huu… Sorry… I’m okay now…”
“Oh? Well, I’m gwad you were able to feel bwetter.”
“Y-you…”
Subaru wiped his mouth on his sleeve as Ram shrugged and responded with baby talk.
He had his complaints with that attitude, but it was true that his inability to perform that natural bodily function put him on the same level as a nursing baby. He didn’t have any ground to stand on to argue with Ram’s hand still gently patting his back.
It was a hard-to-understand, awkward sort of thoughtfulness.
“You can stop with the hand. More importantly, this is…”
“You remember the light from the watchtower and the crack in space shattering, right? We were swallowed up in that fissure and ended up thrown out here.”
Ram gestured at the surroundings with her chin as Subaru escaped her hand on his back. Hearing that, Subaru was struck by a surprise that was late to register.
“ ”
Subaru had already died three times while trying to clear the Auguria Dunes. But his restart point this time was different from the previous two points. It had moved from right before they had faced the flower garden aboveground to the starting point of the sand labyrinth after being separated from Emilia and the others.
“You look pathetic.”
Subaru’s face had stiffened as he realized what had happened when Ram’s finger suddenly touched him. Looking toward that warmth, he saw Ram nodding, her expression unchanged.
“Don’t get flustered. Just calm down. What happened, happened. Right now, we have to keep our heads about us and accept the situation we are in. Though that might be asking a bit much of you.”
“ ”
Ram’s soft voice and the warmth of her finger gradually helped him get through the panic that hit him as he kneeled on the cold sand.
Ram’s thoughts and Subaru’s internal confusion were not quite in alignment, though.
Ram was thinking of the fact that they had been seemingly warped away and separated from their companions, while Subaru was dwelling on the combined facts of his previous death and that the reset point had changed, but they were both coming to grips with heavy shocks.
Finally, Subaru digested what Ram was saying—and her thoughtfulness—and slowly exhaled.
“…Ram…”
“What?”
“Your finger feels nice…bgh?!”
“Don’t push your luck, you Barusu.”
“Could you please not use my name like it’s some kind of insult?!”
Subaru ate a slap as payment for his careless comment and complained with teary eyes. But Ram was hurriedly wiping her finger with sand, ready to shoot that request down immediately.
Just when I think she’s being oddly nice, suddenly this is the treatment I get.
But Subaru experienced a heartfelt sense of relief at an exchange with her that was like normal.
It had not improved the situation at all, but even so, it felt like a weight off his chest.
Because of that, though, there was one more thing he wanted to say, before the scenario started moving again.
“—What?”
Seeing Subaru looking at her, Ram furrowed her brow dubiously.
Looking into her pink eyes, Subaru took a deep breath.
“Ram, the reason I grabbed you when this happened is because I was holding on to you before the world started shattering and because in that moment you were the weakest person and the person closest to me, and um…”
“ ”
“—Why did you grab me and not Rem?”
Hearing his explanation, Ram’s face merged with that of the Ram who had interrogated him earlier.
It was very clear that none of them were in their right mind when that unnatural fight broke out. They were not calm, and all sorts of little things amplified and turned into a murderous rage. It had been an impossible situation, the worst sort of thing that could happen, caused by such extreme densities of miasma.
But Subaru didn’t believe there wasn’t some lingering truth spoken in that moment, either.
“In the moment, I wasn’t weighing you and anyone else in the scales. I didn’t have the composure to do something like that, and my lackluster ability to act in an extreme situation is al—”
“Idiot.”
“Huh?”
Subaru was desperately trying to explain himself when Ram interrupted him with just one curt word. Subaru looked up at that unexpected response only to have Ram’s finger touch his nose. Or rather, she had pointed her finger, and he had stuck her finger into his nose by looking up. A sharp pain hit him.
“Gaaah!”
“I’m sick and tired of your driveling excuses— It’s pointless to keep blaming yourself. There’s no meaning in searching for someone else to blame, either. You have things you should be doing instead of wasting time like that.”
Heaving a sigh, Ram picked up the lantern next to her. She tapped the side of it, and the ragmite ore inside started faintly glowing, breaking the darkness of the labyrinth.
“We already wasted enough time with you spilling your stomach all over the sand.”
“I know… What about the others?”
“They are separated for the most part. Other than you and me and… Ah, looks like they’re back now.”
He wiped his mouth with his sleeve while hating himself for the shamelessness of asking a question he already knew the answer to.
Looking up, the light of the lantern Ram was holding ran into another lantern’s light. Anastasia and Patlash had come back after looking around their surroundings.
—Subaru’s heart shuddered at the gallant and menacing visage of the land dragon that appeared in the light.
“How stupid can I be…”
Gripping his own chest strongly, Subaru gritted his teeth, swallowing the weakness that was welling up inside him.
There was no reason for him to let himself be held back by that crazy friction now. The fact that he had been killed by Patlash had left a deep, deep scar on his heart.
Still, he had come face-to-face with people who had killed him plenty of times before.
“Right, it was the same with Rem and Ram, too. At first…”
At this point, Ram had even shown him a bit of kindness, even if it could be a bit difficult to understand. And Rem had done so much to support him, had saved him from despair.
Their relationships had been bad at first, and they had both not only tried to kill him, but even actually killed him before.
Compared to that, what had just happened with Patlash wasn’t even a result of her real feelings.
“—Thank goodness. So you’re awake, Natsuki.”
“Thank you for going to look around. Did you find anything?”
Ram and Anastasia started talking.
They were going to start discussing what to do going forward and how to get through the sand labyrinth. He needed to join in and let them know. To make sure that tragedy didn’t happen again.
“ ”
I’m past the fact that I died and the effects of what happened leading up to that. So the pain and sense of loss I’m feeling are just my imagination and not real.
Winning out against all of that is my battle, and I have to get through it with everyone safe.
In order to do that, he needed…
“—Fight, Subaru Natsuki. You don’t have time to be trembling in fear.”
He swallowed his fear and took a deep breath. In order to correct the mistakes he had made in his previous round, in order to change things this time.
“ ”
The black land dragon was looking at Subaru with concern in her eyes.
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