4
—Subaru’s consciousness was drifting in an inky, dark stagnant pool.
It had been a long time since he had been there.
He had been several times back then, almost like he had been forcibly summoned there when he died and reset. There was no ground or sky or edge. Just an unending sprawl of darkness.
An illusory space like an ephemeral dream that wouldn’t remain when he awakened.
In the deep darkness, Subaru didn’t have a body. His consciousness was just drifting along helplessly, but it didn’t make him feel uneasy or scared.
But the swelling affection, the love, brought some amount of satisfaction to his heart.
However, awareness of that powerful love was—
“You seem to be enjoying yourself.”
“This isn’t a joke. Do you think I’ll stand by while you get proud of yourself just because you got a little bit lucky, and then get ahead of yourself immediately after. You know, you should learn to view yourself objectively. If you did, you would realize just how shameless you are.”
“ ”
“This is the result of a terrible, shallow, self-satisfied love! Ahhhhh, what a sinful and corrupt way of life! Worthy of hatred and scorn and nothing more!”
“Not satisfied with merely being below average, you have actually fallen to subhuman levels. Incomplete in every way. Someone like you walking over me of all people? Know your place! You are unfit to stand before me, let alone get in my way or stop me, you subhuman animal!”
In the darkness, two unnatural consciousnesses were berating Subaru Natsuki.
Exposed to their raw anger and hatred and sinister emotions, Subaru was simply baffled. At his base consciousness level, he didn’t have the ability to understand their ferocious emotions.
If he needed to, he could just make it. It felt like he could do that while he was in this space.
“ ”
—But for some reason, he felt like he didn’t need to understand them.
He didn’t feel any need to spend any time on them, to activate his consciousness for their sake. He didn’t feel any desire to do that. In this place, Subaru Natsuki didn’t think to expend his efforts to understand them.
“What arrogance! What contempt! What scorn! Even after pushing me to work so hard, you refuse to even try to understand me! You are incorrigibly slothful!”
“How much must you use others until you are satisfied, you heartless beast…! I was a simple man who wanted nothing more than to simply enjoy his trifling, normal happiness. But you infringed on my rights, your evil calumny stole that away from me. Even if you can only live by trampling other’s happiness, you should have some limits…!”
Sensing that there was no development that was going to happen, he removed them from his consciousness.
After trying to do it, surprisingly, it worked perfectly well. It seemed like they were still saying something, but fortunately, he couldn’t hear anything. Couldn’t feel anything. It was incredibly calming.
And after calming his heart, finally, he was able to genuinely face the place he had come in the realest sense.
“ ”
In a pitch-dark blackness where it should have been impossible to see anything, the figure clad in even purer black was all the more brilliant.
Two hands with long, slender fingers that at times froze Subaru Natsuki’s heart and at times caused him to shudder. Slender limbs that seemed somehow soft and a dress the color of darkness made manifest.
As always, there was a thick fog covering her from the neck up, but Subaru Natsuki’s soul understood that there was someone there who’s heart bore love for him.
Her figure was clearly more distinct and closer at hand than in any of his previous encounters with her.
Before, he had only been able to see her hands and the rough outline of her body, but now he could see the decorations of her dress and her white shoulders and neck.
The majority of her body had become visible from the shadow. The only part left hidden was her visage shrouded by darkness.
It was frustrating. But he was okay with that for now.
He could feel her presence more intensely, more profoundly than before.
But Subaru Natsuki’s preparations to greet her were insufficient.
All he could do was be satisfied at being able to be so close to her presence.
Someday, he would be able to touch those unreliable fingertips, to wrap his hands around her slender waist, and speak his love to her.
“—I love you.”
I have to prepare lips to be able to answer those words the next time.
I’ll prepare a body that lets us touch each other, feel each other.
With that final thought, Subaru Natsuki’s being left the garden of shade—
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