2
—Subaru lost his memories when he collapsed in the Taygeta archive.
When they heard his revelation, Emilia’s and Beatrice’s reactions were basically the same as what he had seen in his predictive dream.
“Ey!”
There was a sharp crack as Emilia slapped her pale cheeks. The pain and shock of that brought a vigor back to her eyes that had been wavering with uncertainty.
“All right.”
“I-I…”
Encouraged by Emilia, Beatrice looked straight at Subaru with heartbroken eyes.
And seeing her struggling to speak, he endured the pain searing his heart. He knew the words and the expressions that would follow.
But that was not remotely any sort of relief to him.
It hurt to betray someone’s feelings and expectations. It was scary.
No matter how many times it had happened before, even if it was for the same reason, it still felt just as bad.
And this time, he knew Beatrice better than he had the first time. So seeing her eyes trembling anxiously was all the more scary than it had been last time.
“—Argh, sheesh! You really are a helpless contractor!”
Beatrice broke through the shell of anxiety and bewilderment like the butterfly mark in her eyes, escaping the chrysalis of hesitation and spreading her wings.
Seeing that filled Subaru with relief, but it also made him hate himself.
—Is this good enough? Are you happy now, Subaru Natsuki?
—Do you want me to build a sandcastle on the foundation of bonds and trust that you made?
“ ”
Watching Emilia and Beatrice’s kind and heart-rending resolve, Subaru gritted his teeth.
Subaru didn’t tell the two of them he had had a dream predicting all of this.
He glossed over the exchange that occurred immediately after he’d woken up and explained away the contradiction of his remembering their names by claiming he simply hadn’t forgotten everything.
The question of what he could or couldn’t remember came down to him, so the two of them had no reason to doubt what he said. The reason he had done that was to set the stage as close as possible to what he’d seen in the dream so he could test its accuracy.
By aligning reality with the dream, he could see how well the flow of events matched. There was already a difference right from the start, but he hoped that it was still recoverable.
But that wasn’t the only reason he hadn’t told them about his dream.
“ ”
He remembered the world he had experienced in the first dream. No one had remarked about him having any sort of precognitive ability. Not a single one of them.
Considering how powerful it could be, it was hard to believe that they would have hidden that ability from him. They hadn’t really had time to line up their stories, and he couldn’t think of a reason why they would want to in the first place.
In which case, the natural explanation was that they didn’t know about the dreams.
Meaning the old Subaru Natsuki never once told them about the power he had.
“…What were you thinking, Subaru Natsuki?”
He was saying his own name like it belonged to some stranger… No, that wasn’t quite right.
Subaru Natsuki was effectively a stranger to him. He couldn’t even begin to guess what Subaru Natsuki had been thinking and he couldn’t talk to him. There was no way he could even begin to understand him.
Why did Subaru Natsuki deceive them and hide the power of his dreams?
A distrust of Subaru Natsuki started to take root in Subaru’s head.
“You…”
What were you thinking, Subaru Natsuki?
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login