CHAPTER 2
WHO ARE YOU?
1
With Emilia and Beatrice looking confused, Subaru was completely lost.
“ ”
It wasn’t something he would call familiar, not exactly, but he was in a room he recognized.
The walls and floor and even the ceiling were covered in green plants. He was sitting up on a bed of vines. There was a giant lizard behind him, and a girl sleeping on a bed near his.
There was no mistaking the fact that he was inside the Pleiades Watchtower’s green room.
“But…wait. Why am I back here?”
Putting his hand to his head, he tried to remember what had happened right before he woke up.
He had left Emilia and the others to their discussion and had gone to check whether he had some kind of cheat ability or not. In the end, the conclusion was that he was powerless as ever, and he’d been thinking about how he was letting them down when—
“After that, I was headed back to the room…and then what?”
The memories after that point were fuzzy. All of a sudden, he was lying on the bed.
And as he tried to probe his vague memories—
“Hey, are you okay Subaru?”
“Whoa! So close, Emilia-chan!”
Emilia’s face suddenly leaned in while his defenses were down, and he rolled off the other side of the bed. Emilia’s eyes widened at his over-the-top reaction.
“You don’t have to be so surprised… If anything, you’re the one who surprised us.”
“Really…?’”
“Obviously. We went looking when we noticed you were gone and found you collapsed on the ground. It would be strange not to worry after that.”
Subaru jolted up at Beatrice’s exasperated explanation. “Really? I collapsed again?” He felt himself all over to see if anything felt off, but there was nothing, or at least nothing that could be found by that cursory inspection.
Though there hadn’t been any external signs of his memory loss, either, so a wound or scar being present or not didn’t really mean much.
“But wiping out twice in such a short time is a pretty bad sign…Or should I be grateful my memory didn’t go this time, even if it was only a couple hours?”
“Subaru, before muttering to yourself like that, I wonder if you don’t have something to say to us?”
“Something to say…”
While he was looking at his outstretched hands, Beatrice pulled him back to their conversation. Looking up, he saw Emilia and Beatrice, and finally realized.
“R-right. Umm. Sorry. I didn’t mean to make you worry. Thanks for helping me again.”
“That will do.”
“Heh-heh. Our pleasure. But are you really okay? Can we relax?”
“It’s fine, it’s fine, Emilia-chan. At this rate, you’ll never get to rest your heart.”
Subaru lowered his head at being saved for the second time in such a short span. But Emilia’s brow furrowed at his response.
Her beautiful purple eyes wavered with shock…
“Ummm, about that… You’ve been acting a little strange ever since you woke up.”
“What? Also, that was kind of a vague question. What is it that’s bothering you?”
“I mean, you keep calling me Emilia-chan. It’s kind of really weird hearing you say that.”
Emilia spun her finger in her long, silver hair, looking at Subaru nervously. There was a heart-rending loneliness in her eyes that made Subaru gasp.
A girl so defenseless and intimate, so perfectly his type—but there was a deep gulf between how she was acting and what he was feeling.
It’s almost like—
“It’s not like this is the first time Subaru has pulled some prank, I suppose. More importantly, talk. Why did you go into Taygeta on your own during the night, and why did you collapse there?”
“—Huh? Wait, wait, wait! Um, what? Did I collapse in Taygeta again?”
“…Again?”
Subaru was dumbfounded by Beatrice as she stood there with pink, pouting cheeks.
“Th-that place is seriously scary… Wait, why was I even in there again? It’s already such a suspicious place. Talk about being reckless.”
Hearing something he couldn’t remember doing, Subaru was disturbed by a far too upsetting reality.
Maybe my memories of the moments before I lost consciousness are fuzzy because of something that happened in Taygeta. Or something there messed with my memories.
But as those frantic questions raced through his head, Beatrice raised her voice.
“Hold on. It feels like things are not quite fitting together. Subaru, be precise.”
“Hm?”
“Tell us what you are experiencing right now.”
Grasping the weight of Beatrice’s detailed instructions, Subaru nodded, getting caught up in the moment.
“First, like I said before…when I woke up, I didn’t have my memory. Not literally everything, but everything after being summoned into this world—”
“What?! W-w-wait, memory? What do you mean memory?!”
“Eh?”
Beatrice’s gravitas shattered at the start of his explanation.
Subaru was thrown off by her unexpected reaction. As Beatrice panicked, Emilia supported her shoulders from behind. But she wasn’t calm, either.
She stared at Subaru in confusion, too.
“Memory as in what? What are you saying, Subaru…?”
“Wait, that’s the part you’re tripping up on? I mean I just…”
He was about to say he had just talked to them about it, but he stopped.
“ ”
There was a deep confusion in their eyes. It was definitely not an act. Even he could see that much.
But their reaction being genuine was even scarier.
If it wasn’t an act, that meant they’d forgotten the fact that he had amnesia. The steadfast determination to accept that Subaru had forgotten everything was gone.
Could it be I wasn’t the only one? Has everyone been losing their memory ever since coming to this tower?
As that terrifying thought surfaced in his mind, Subaru noticed something.
“This exchange…”
It was like déjà vu. Not in a vague sense, but a proper memory.
His first encounter with Emilia and Beatrice—or at least the first he could remember—the contents of this conversation were more or less identical.
Actually, wasn’t the way they were watching me here in the green room the same as when I woke up after losing my memory?
“ ”
Having thought that far, Subaru gulped.
Glancing at them, he saw there was no change in their attitude. Their baffled gazes were filled with heartfelt concern for Subaru Natsuki.
That trust, instead of distrust, helped him maintain a measure of composure.
Honestly, my heart is being battered by a massive storm at the moment. But this situation is…
“I’ve seen this before. It’s a precog dream.”
Examining the situation in the moment he woke up, that was a reasonable explanation.
If that’s what he’d experienced, the moment his consciousness faded—or rather the moment he awoke—would understandably be fuzzy. Dreams were mysterious, slipping through your fingers as they faded.
Maybe this dream is the special power I was given when I was summoned into this world—
“That’s a really hit-or-miss, hard-to-use ability…”
But it was certainly powerful if it could be properly harnessed.
Prophetic dreams let people peer into the future. The greater their accuracy, the greater the possibility to use them as a decisive tool in getting out of a hopeless situation.
Though it’s dubious how useful this dream really was…
“—Listen, both of you. Try to calm down and hear what I have to say.”
With that hypothesis of his ability in mind, Subaru looked at both of them. They looked at each other and then nodded.
Seeing how serious they looked, Subaru hesitated for just a moment before continuing.
“I don’t know if you’ll believe me, but it seems like I’ve lost my memories.”
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