8
—The feeling he’d had when he read Meili’s book of the dead was fairly vague.
The scenes he saw and the life she had lived were vivid, but his memory as the person watching those scenes felt very much like he was becoming the same person as the person whose name graced the book. He thought from their perspective and experienced their emotions.
Long story short, the journey through the contents of the book of the dead was like merging with the subject.
In that instant, tracing those contents, Subaru Natsuki was Meili Portroute.
And that was part of the reason why she sat at the edge of his consciousness, the odd fragment of consciousness that assumed the shadow of Meili.
If that was the effect of the book of the dead, then what Subaru was seeing in this moment was Reid Astrea’s life, and should have been his first-person view of the world, as difficult to understand and comprehend as his thoughts were.
What did he think, what did he like, what did he dislike, what did he love, what did he hate, what did he achieve?
He should have become one with Reid Astrea’s mind and been shown his life.
And so Subaru immediately noticed something unusual.
—The place he found himself in was clearly not Reid’s past.
“…Huh?”
He was standing in a bright, bright white place.
The surroundings were a vast, endless white void. He had no idea where he might be.
He could see his arms. His legs. Bending his neck, he could see his torso and waist, too.
Meaning he had a body. From that alone, things were already different from what had happened when he read Meili’s book. The experiences were not matching up, and he realized that he had been dropped into a new unknown situation.
From what he could see, his clothes were exactly what he had been wearing in the archive.
Was that because his mind registered that as his present form, or because of some other intent, like the will of the book’s spirit taking direct action, recreating him in this form?
I don’t want to think I was physically absorbed into the book when I started reading, but…
“—Ohhh? You came again, mister?”
“—!”
Subaru jumped, hearing a voice besides his own.
It came from behind, so he reflexively jumped forward, rolling once before spinning around. The eyes of the person behind him shot open at his sudden movement.
“You’re…?”
Subaru couldn’t hide the surprise and confusion in his voice.
It was someone completely unexpected, entirely beyond what he had imagined—an encounter with someone he didn’t recognize at all.
A girl he had never seen before was standing there in front of him.
Beautiful pale blond hair, almost like gossamer threads, that was unbelievably long. It spread across the white floor, gathering in a pool of gold at her feet.
Big, round, blue eyes and limbs the color of delicate bone china. She was wearing a plain white dress, and everything about her gave off the feeling of translucence.
“ ”
A girl he had never seen before. That was how it should be.
But his eyes narrowed upon seeing her. He rubbed his eyes furiously with the back of his hands, as if trying to clean fogged glasses, but she didn’t look any different.
Even when he checked again, he didn’t know her. He felt faintly as if his memory was aching, though.
“Have you calmed down some, mister?”
“Where is this…? No, wait, who are you? Which should I start with?”
“Greedy, aren’t you, mister? But we don’t dislike the way you come right out and say what you want to ask. We love greedy people.”
Her lips cracked into a sneering grin that bewildered Subaru. There was no other way to describe that smile.
She looked maybe thirteen or fourteen, if that. With her neat appearance, a regular smile would’ve suited her nicely.
But in Subaru’s eyes, her expression was sinister. His instincts seemed to be telling him that she had trampled on countless lives.
As Subaru shuddered, the girl spoke.
“This is the lonely, white end of the line for souls. The cradle, Odo Ragna. The corridors of memory.”
“Corridors of…memory…?”
“Yep, yep. And…”
Subaru’s eyes widened at that unfamiliar term. And satisfied with his reaction, the girl spoke. The girl who was a walking bundle of malice spoke with a sneer.
“—And we are Louis Arneb, the Witch Cult’s Sin Archbishop of Gluttony.”
“ ”
“It will just be for a short while again, but it’s nice to meet you, mister.”
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