CHAPTER 51:
LOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVE
LOVELOVEMEEEE
Subaru watches wordlessly as the golden tiger, Garfiel, bursts apart.
The beast's pending strike was readied with enough force to send the Witch's upper body hurtling off alongside the head. The power of a direct hit would undoubtedly mangle even a Witch to pieces. —But the strike never hit.
Using the Lewes double as his opening play, Garfiel had wrested victory into his grasp. But the instant before his claws could reach the Witch, Subaru witnessed the wounds the shadow had gouged in him writhe.
Writhing cuts—their cause being the shade beneath the Witch's feet, which had crawled to entwine Garfiel's limbs. The shadow's points slid into the injured tiger's wounds, maiming with their supposedly-incorporeal destruction, lacerating his flesh and spilling forth his blood. And the massive body of a wholly incised Garfiel, unable to endure the pressure of the shadow swelling inside him, exploded.
Endure—or such resistance must have been impossible, with this intractable manner of destroying a life. The offal that used to be Garfiel shoots, strews about the clearing as little mountains of gore. Only the golden fur stuck to the scattered clumps provides the faint proof of Garfiel having existed in this world.
Subaru: “—”
Subaru has no words. Including the Lewes doubles, there had been over twenty lives present in this clearing. Several seconds later, there were now just two. Or no, if regarding this line of thought, there had originally been lives present in SANCTUARY countable to one hundred. When considering that all of them were presently dragged inside the shadow, the weight of the sin the shade had committed was overly heavy. Overly unforgivable.
Bloodflow courses through Subaru's faculties, previously numbed by panic at the change in situation and the mess of his emotions, his body summoning up what is incredibly the most appropriate reaction. That being, anger at the witch.
Envy: “—I love you.”
Subaru: “Shut up.”
Envy: “IloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyou”
Subaru: “I told you to shut up...”
The shade's outline is vague, with not even its body height clearly distinguishable. Its voice still sounds indistinct as if passed through a voicechanger, impossible to peg as a man's or woman's.
Nevertheless, the sticking passion packed in its intonation communicates with irritating clarity.
She had entirely consumed the people of SANCTUARY, slaughtered Garfiel, and yet she still poured her interest, her concern, her love, wholeheartedly onto Subaru. The incredible crookedness of it is eerie, sickening to the chest, as it fosters nausea among others in Subaru.
It felt that just facing the witch was whittling at his sanity. A feeling close to frenzy boils up in his chest, hatred and loathing jumbling around in his heart.
Envy: “IloveyouIloveyouIloveyoudarlingIloveyouIloveyouIloveyou”
Motionless, standing stock still, the witch continues muttering her curse of love for Subaru. Spoken with near-enchanting passion. Her inappropriateness to context and inability to read mood is worse than Subaru's. Despite the target of the love so blatantly expressing their discomfort facially, the pushy and self-serving love keeps coming.
This love was entirely repulsive. And more than anything, what enraged Subaru was—
Envy: “IloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyou”
Subaru: “...”
Envy: “IloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyou—Subaru-kun.”
Subaru: “—Don't, call me that!!”
Subaru responds to the saccharine call with his fury provoked. That doting voice, behaviour, address, all of it infuriated Subaru.
Subaru: “Who the hell permitted you to call me that. Don't fuck around. Don't you fuck around. Don't you fucking, fuck around!!”
The closeness of being at his side. The affection in their calls to him. The sweetness of standing within distance to touch. The act of using that address for their interactions. Subaru permitted these of only one person in the world.
—And that was assuredly not the witch standing here.
Subaru: “Don't even fucking joke you grubby fucking witch. There's only one person that belongs to. I'm not handing it over to anyone else. Or, nope! Like I'm going to permit fucking anything to you. Do you think I'm going to waste even one strand of hair, one single cell, the grime under my fingernails in giving them to you—!?”
Envy: “—”
Enraged, leaving himself to anger, Subaru spits out the emotions churning inside him. His shoulders heaving with his ragged breathing, Subaru glares at the witch standing opposite him.
There was surely no way to beat this opponent. This was the monster which drank half the world. She had made entirely no problem of Garfiel, her strength making her stand out as a witch among witches. Submerging every life in shadow, paying not a scrap of interest, this utmost of calamities continued murmuring its obstinate whispers of love for only one person alone.
That Subaru was capable of glaring this monster straight-on was a mystery. All he can figure is that he's gotten desperate and lost all self-control. If the witch felt like it, she could drag Subaru into the bog of shade in the space of an instant. Otherwise skewer him through the chest with shadow, turn him into a gory firework like Garfiel, and transform him into fertilizer for the forest. Knowing that, how was it he could face her without losing heart? It had to be because Subaru unconsciously harboured a certain confidence about the witch.
Envy: “—”
Subaru: “...not moving?”
His emotions ranted out and now somewhat calm, Subaru feels a suspiciousness at the witch's lack of action. Before Subaru could even notice, the shadow's curselike murmurings of love—the statements of affection which had persisted with even through Garfiel's shredding—had stopped. Had suspended.
Subaru looks to find the shadows encroaching over the ground to have lagged—no, halted. Distancing himself from the unpleasant sensation transmitted from the shadow underfoot, Subaru picks an uncorrupted spot in the clearing and transports himself over. He keeps his attention fixed on the witch during this migration, but she doesn't react.
The witch stands perfectly upright with her arms dangling loosely, mantled as always in a shadow thick enough to warp the light, her expression invisible. She's so covered in openings that punching her right now might even work to defeat her.
Subaru: “Why're you so suddenly... no way, my words did that?”
Impossible, Subaru thinks, while he grimaces at his own inability to deny it. It was difficult to conceive that Subaru's statements carried that much influence, but considering the timing where the witch's speech and movements stopped, there was no other decent possibility. That said, this possibility did provoke in Subaru feelings that were near-unbearable.
Subaru: “If just being rejected by me's enough to throw your actions off this much...”
If he had spoken sooner, then this could've been settled without Garfiel and everyone else dying. This present where Emilia, Ram, Lewes, Otto, and Garfiel who protected him, had their lives spent before the shadow, was not a world Subaru had any will to live in. Echidna had just assured him that RETURN BY DEATH lacked a limit on tries. Although he hadn't been aware of it himself, perhaps it had inspired him to take concessions with living.
After all, hadn't he immediately withdrawn his proposal to act as bait, just by Garfiel rejecting it? Even though, with the witch plainly attached to Subaru, taking action from his side could've achieved something prompting this reaction and something presenting possibility?
Subaru: “Can't tell how she'd act, but... then'd my presence be the Witch of ENVY's weak point...?”
Being that her attachment remained stuck on Subaru, and that the situation was what it was, it was a highly likely possibility. The problem was, even should he have considered it, whether or not the opportunity to utilize it would have come. Besides, the circumstances for the loop series in SANCTUARY had changed here. It was a disaster Subaru had been pursuing means to cope with, and hadn't found even the first hints for a solution toward—but the changes on this loop were dreadnought tier.
Just dealing with Elsa, Garfiel, and the Sizeable Hare was nigh unmanageable, but append the Witch of ENVY to that and it was nigh impossible. Even his will to discern the pattern of her appearance, as he would with the former three, was wilting. That was how overwhelming the threat of the witch—the repulsiveness of this being—was. Formulating plans to resist her was pointlessly stupid. In the sense of crushing will to fight before the fight had even started, the petite witch was more terrifying than the massive White Whale.
Subaru: “—”
Although his opponent is a motionless witch, Subaru can feel his heart flagging with fatigue. The witch takes no action either. She gives no heed as Subaru forces himself to think. She simply immerses herself in her own interior.
Time passes with Subaru still unsure of what he should do. His breathing, his irritatingly loud pulse, and the lukewarm sweat on his brow inform him of the time's passing.
No result will come of this no-longer-a glaring match. And, just when Subaru swallows his breath and goes to take a move, it hits him. The flash of inspiration arrives that instant.
Subaru: “—It couldnt've been Echidna's tea party?”
Envy: “—”
Subaru: “I disclosed forbidden information while inside her castle. I thought the penalty didn't come because speaking was allowed there, but...”
—But what if it wasn't?
What if the witch had still granted Subaru no permission to reveal RETURN BY DEATH to others? What if she had attempted to attempted to stop time and punish him for his loose lips as always? What if, unable to manifest at Subaru's side at the tea party, the witch had regardless attempted to punish him? —What if that was the truth behind this disaster in SANCTUARY?
Subaru: “You... just goddamn egotistic...”
Was this mass slaughter her retaliation for being unable to exercise punishment on Subaru? Did she believe herself qualified to do this? With this display of her power, what and to whom was she trying to show?
Envy: “—I love you.”
Subaru's thoughts must've touched on some point of the truth. The witch restarts with her repulsive activities. She points what is apparently her head toward Subaru, the curse again spilling from her mouth.
The whispers of love verify the shadow's progression, shade again beginning to spread over the ground. Feeling a bottomless bog consuming his feet, Subaru runs from the spot. Subaru: “The heck... you sure get lively the second I say the name of another girl, hell!”
Envy: “IloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyou” Subaru: “No matter how many loves you whisper, I'm not gonna love you! The #1 and #2 places in my heart're already long settled and staying there. There's no room for witches!”
Tit for tat—although all the witch voices is a listing off of love, intonation unchanged. But, discovering a definite display of emotion, Subaru's will to agitate her opens full throttle as his cheeks twist into a wicked grin. Pissing off others was a mighty forte of his, and now was time to test whether it worked on witches.
Subaru: “Don't just line up the I love yous, makes them kitsch.”
Envy: “IloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyou”
Subaru: “Y'know, the first I LOVE YOU I seriously got in this world... was something powerful enough to make a hopeless piece of garbage aspire to be a hero.” Enough to make that broken, twisted, ready-to-flee garbage believe he could challenge one more time, endless more times, a future he had almost abandoned. Such was the strength, nobility, and greatness of real love. Subaru: “Your loves aren't gonna be reaching my ears. Specially with you pulling atrocities out of some jealous fit, not a single likeable thing about you.” Envy: “IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou” Subaru: “If I had to love a witch like you...” Envy: “IloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyou—” What should he say, what would he best say, what would piss this witch off the most? Subaru, frontrunner in annoying others, knew exactly what. Subaru's smile thus is cruel, and his gaze disdainful. Subaru: “They're witches too, but Echidna and the others are more loveable—”
Envy: “—” The witch's curse instantly stops. And—
Subaru: “—ou,”
Subaru's vision—the world—is consumed in shadow.
※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※
The shadows rush in with astounding force, mass, as Subaru helplessly watches on.
The shade extending from beneath the witch horrifically resembles Betelgeuse's UNSEEN HAND. The differences would be that only Subaru could see UNSEEN HAND, and compared to UNSEEN HAND which was avoidable if you could perceive it, this shadow attacks at a velocity rendering evasion arduous.
Thus the shadow coiling around his body, lifting him high above the treetops, pulling him down faster than freefall, and bringing him directly before the witch, were all visible events to him. The entirety of it assaults him faster than his conscious perception can keep up, churning his burdened guts, prompting vomit to spew from his lips.
His vision rotates round and around, Subaru unable keep a straight hold on his awareness. His feet don't touch the ground. Something soft, clothlike, tenderly binds his whole body. The restraints are assuredly not hard, but they perfectly seal his movements, and he can't find where to apply force to break out.
He struggles and writhes. Only his fingers and toes move. The only area that responds to Subaru's will is from his neck up, every other part of him cloaked entirely in shadow. His blurry vision finally clears, throat freezing as he notices the vast cluster of shadows before him.
—Right in front of him, really right in front of him, the witch stands so close as to almost feel her breath.
She observes the caught Subaru from extremely near distance, her gaze never breaking from him, staring into his eyes with intensity to most burn open holes. His neck fixed in place, Subaru can't escape from the gaze. Closing his eyes would allow him to flee from the mutual staring, but somehow incapable of managing the action as if barred, Subaru winds up having the unfortunate experience of a close-range face-to-face with the Witch of ENVY.
Envy: “I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.”
Syllable by punctuated syllable, the witch continues to state her love. The instant Subaru hears those words, his rebellious spirit catches aflame. Putting strength into his immobilized body, Subaru opens his eyes wide as he glares at the witch. He opens his mouth to shower stinging insults upon her again and,
Subaru: “Distance isn't the problem. It's not resounding in my heart's what—”
Envy: “I love you. I love you. —Now you love.”
This time, it's the witch who interrupts. Subaru's brows furrows as he blinks, wondering if he misheard. The witch languidly raises her head.
Envy: “Now you love. Now you love. Now you love. Now you love.
Nowyoulovenowyoulovenowyoulovenowyoulovenowyoulovenowyoulovenowyoulovenowyoulove nowyoulovenowyoulovenowyoulovenowyoulovenowyoulovenowyoulovenowyoulovenowyouloven owyoulovenowyoulovenowyoulovenowyoulovenowyoulovenowyoulovenowyoulovenowyouloveno wyoulovenowyoulovenowyoulovenowyoulovenowyoulovenowyoulove—now you love.”9
What Subaru feels, this time, is genuine terror. Using rebellion, stubbornness, and rage, Subaru had successfully obfuscated his real feelings— which, faced with the change in the witch's call, come bare.
No matter what she said, no matter what she did, his heart wouldn't falter and he would raise his head high. For that alone, for that stubbornness alone, had Subaru intended to find meaning in his confrontation with the Witch of ENVY.
That minuscule bravery, that rash logic, now splinters into dust.
Aberration. Abnormal. Enthralled. Insane. Malefactor. Malevolent. Witch.
She understood that her continued whisperings could not gain her love. And so this time, she desired love in a forceful format, her attitude shallow and rapacious. And he understood.
The witch desired Natsuki Subaru, but did not see Natsuki Subaru.
What the witch saw was not Subaru, but the vessel known as Natsuki Subaru. She desired the superficial Subaru, and wished to be loved by the superficial Subaru. Whether his feelings were sincere or not was of no concern to her. Loving Natsuki Subaru, and being loved by Natsuki Subaru. That was the Witch of ENVY's entirety, the meaning of destroying the world.
—He didn't get it.
Understanding this, the questions in Subaru's heart wind up returning back to the beginning. That being: why was the witch so attached to him?
They'd never met, never talked, and this was the first time they'd really seen each other. Why was someone like this so insanely in love with Subaru? He didn't understand anything. Not a single thing about it was logical. It's easy to call love something beyond the scope of normal reason, but the witch's love took that to another dimension.
Envy: “—Nowyoulovenowyoulovenowyoulovenowyoulovenowyoulove”
The witch wishes to be able to mistake a superficial love for a true one. More than likely, if Subaru gave a reply answering to her love, she would release him from the restraints. Were this the usual Subaru, considering matters in mercenary terms, conducting himself with shrewdness, he might have reciprocated to her demand with overdone flattery. But,
Subaru: “—I hate you.”
9 I would really rather translate this as 'love me', but due to Reasons can't. Pretend it's simultaneously 'love me'.
Envy: “—”
Subaru: “I am never, going to love you.”
His soul still rejecting her, Subaru refuses the Witch of ENVY's demand.
Envy: “—”
Again the witch goes silent. Surely people who could deject the Witch of ENVY two, three times were not so common. Subaru feels a pointless pride in this. Which is when his elevation slowly begins to drop.
Still wrapped in the robe of shadow, Subaru is lowered to the ground. But that doesn't mean he is released. Still restrained, he slips closer and closer to the witch—into the middle of the now-churning vortex of consuming shade.
Seeing that she couldn't acquire Subaru's heart, it appears the witch decided to claim Subaru. An entirely hasty and excessively pragmatic idea. His legs swallowed up to the shins, having been terrified at the progressive loss of sensation, Subaru abruptly has a doubt.
If consumed by the shadow, Subaru would almost unmistakably die. Meaning, in a sense, there was worth in giving up. Welcoming DEATH would be resistance against the witch. And so his shins are swallowed. However,
—If it was the witch's power allowing him to re-do his DEATHS, would he really be capable of a re¬do when the witch was killing him personally?
Subaru: “—!”
The instant he realises it, Subaru acts in far-too belated opposition. With his lower body already consumed by shadow, the idea of opposition in itself was excessively infantile. But he couldn't go without doing it. Thinking deeper, before getting to the question of whether he could re-do, he didn't even know if getting swallowed by the shadow would actually kill him. Worst case scenario, he could be drawn into the shadows and assimilated with the witch, made to pass eternity while forbidden to die. Over that long, long timespan, where his present resolve and determination would get worn and whittled down, would he or would he not eventually fold to the witch? He wouldn't—was not a statement Subaru was confident enough to make. So he could not be consumed here.
At worst, even if biting off his tongue, before he could fall into the witch's hands—
Subaru: “—ue, ou?”
—is a decision prematurely aborted by the heat in his chest.
A blaze near hot enough to burn springs up from the left side of his chest, Subaru lowering his gaze to look. And he finds that the heat is generating light, bright enough to spill outside of the shadow enveloping Subaru. The surprising part is that from the point of the light's origin outwards, the witch's shade binding Subaru steadily melts away to nothing.
Subaru: “Then...!”
Before he can question the nature of the suddenly overflowing light, Subaru squirms about to sever the robe of shadows with its power. His range of movement widens as the shade slices apart, and after confirming his arm is free, he immediately reaches for the source of the light. What his fingers retrieve from his pocket, fluttering in the wind in his grasp, is a handkerchief— embroidered with a grey cat, Petra's handkerchief.
Subaru: “Why is... nevermind!”
Putting off thinking about it for later, Subaru strikes with the handkerchief. Although supposedly a thing of soft fabric, it follows Subaru's will as its solidity compounds and its sharpness grows to that of a knife, severing the shadows connecting to the witch and the ground.
Envy: “—”
Subaru: “Woah! With this... I can do it!”
Subaru stabs the handkerchief into the shadow which swallowed his lower body. The glowing handkerchief's point digs into the shadow, the shades displaying a split-second attempt to gather in counter to the light, but they instantly and silently burst and disperse. All that remains after the shadows vanish is Subaru, his legs left ejected on the ground.
Subaru immediately tumbles backwards, confirming the healthiness of his legs. He readies the handkerchief at his hip as he glances over the glowing thing. The handkerchief Petra sewed. It was unthinkable that her feelings for Subaru could have summoned this much of a miracle. The thought then arises in Subaru's mind of someone who may have conducted this work on the handkerchief.
Subaru: “That Echidna... did she goddamn know that this'd happen?”
Subaru had given the handkerchief to Echidna in the dream world, and lacked the free time to consider how it could interfere with reality—but if the interference was just some little trick like this, perhaps transferring from dream to reality was possible. Either way,
Subaru: “If she's readied me with a way to fight the witch, I'll go thank her.”
Envy: “—”
Faced with the reality of her shadows being destroyed, the witch simply stands there stupefied. Subaru takes a short breath, twisting around to stab the witch during this opening.
Subaru: “Negligence is The Enemy!”
Subaru thrusts the handkerchief up to stick the witch from aside. She doesn't move. But shade bursts up from beneath her feet in self-defence, the Garfiel-dubbed shadow dress engaging in protective action.
Subaru: “—Rrruaaaaah!”
But even the dress fails to guard against the handkerchief's light. The knife-sharp handkerchief tears through the shadow dress as easily as a cobweb, plunging straight through to stab the face of the witch—and strikes true.
Subaru: “Got her—!”
Crying out in joy, Subaru swiftly uses the momentum to pivot for a backswing. He spins, the blade moving to again strike the witch—
Subaru: “—wha?”
—When what he sees makes him stop the motion. The witch stands stock still, looking at Subaru. The light assuredly reached her face in that hit, her previously vague and indistinct features now separated from the mask of shadow, exposed.
A familiar silver-haired girl, her eyes frozen of emotion, stares at Subaru.
Subaru: “Emilia...?”
She doesn't respond to the call. But everything else takes massive action. The robe of shadow returns. Although supposedly dead, it again grips Subaru from below, grappling him. This time it constricts without any leniency, causing him to shriek.
With his right hip as the origin point, the robe of shadow restrains him tight across the left side of his body. All he can move is his handkerchief-wielding right arm, barely, but even that has its operable range restricted and can't move properly. The shade beings to pull the immobilized Subaru to the bottom of the sea of shadow, progressively and without hesitation, blatantly speedier than last time.
His lower body submerges, sinking up to his left shoulder. Only his right side from his breast upwards, his neck, and his head remain outside. He frantically raises his head, half-sunken and resisting,
Subaru: “Emilia! Emilia!? Wh, why are, why!?”
Seeing her missing from the tomb, and the shadow consuming SANCTUARY, Subaru had thought Emilia had sunken into the sea of shade at the hands of the witch. And now this, when his efforts resisting the Witch of ENVY thus far had quite considerably been a battle of revenge.
—Why was she cloaked in shadow, attacking SANCTUARY?
He can't collect his thoughts. She isn't answering or seeing Subaru. The cold gleam in her amethyst eyes is one Subaru has never seen before, making him doubt whether she is conscious in there. He doesn't have time to check his doubt's veracity.
Subaru: “Ghu, uw, au...”
His body is being dragged deeper and deeper into the shadow. He feels no sensation from his swallowed body parts. Or rather 'no sensation' would be one thing, but losing the sense of the parts even existing, Subaru again realises the risk of being swallowed here.
Recognizing the handkerchief in his left hand, and his mobility which narrowly remains there, Subaru hardens his resolve. The image of the white-haired witch passes through his mind. He would rather like to amend his previous words, and give her a complaint.
Subaru: “Did fucking Echidna actually seriously think it'd go like this...?”
If so, he could shed tears at her scrupulous consideration. Tears, but those being tears of blood.
—He closes his eyes, and the instant he snaps them back open, Subaru plunges the handkerchief into his neck. The sharp tip tears through his flesh, boring a hole through a fatal region of his throat. Blood washes into his windpipe, running down into his lungs, his consciousness beginning to drown.
Suicide. The Witch of GREED had prepared Subaru an opportunity for such. It was not a means to counter the Witch of ENVY. Echidna had most likely perceived that their talk in the castle had infuriated ENVY. Here, he would pay the compensation.
Envy: “—!”
Seeing Subaru's suicide, for the first time, an emotion other than love detonates in the Witch of ENVY. But Subaru, drowning in his own blood and already losing consciousness, can't tell.
Though, seeing the girl's familiar face twisted in sorrow—regardless of what happened to her insides—and witnessing her anguished expression, the pain to his chest remains the same.
Overflowing blood runs into his throat, and although unable to muster any proper speech, Subaru regardless to her—and not to the counterfeit filling the vessel, to her—reports.
Subaru: “I, no matter what—“
—Will save you.
Natsuki Subaru lost his life the next instant.
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