CHAPTER 55: GIRL IN THE CRYSTAL
—Seeing the girl sealed inside the crystal, Subaru is so transfixed he forgets to breathe.
That was the terrifying beauty of this heart-jolting scene. Inside the transparent, faintly blue crystal, there is sealed a girl with her legs folded in seated position. Frozen—would be a close descriptor, but unlike ice for which melting offered freedom, the crystal would remain eternal unless shattered. And shattering this crystal would unmistakably mean shattering the sealed girl also.
Subaru: “Why... did this,”
The words slip from Subaru's mouth with faint anger. He felt a silent, but definite rage.
Nothing could safely free the sealed girl from the crystal. Subaru didn't know what the person who perpetrated this was planning, or what relation they had to the girl. Didn't know, but it still tore at his heart horribly.
Subaru: “Lewes-san... or isn't she?”
Subaru enters the room proper. —Unlike last time, the gaping hole in the floor is missing, and the crystal rests where the pit once was. The tall crystal sits upon a metal base, which is potentially the only implement in the near-ruined facility not slacking on repairs, as it glitters with the shine of a tool in brand-new condition.
Several desks stand lined up opposite the crystal. Subaru successfully realises that these, too, are objects which were destroyed and scattered all about the room last time. The room lacks light fixtures just as before. The moss growing over the wall still provides a faint glow, giving the room some level of visibility. Tools—somewhat resemblant of medical equipment—are spread alongside the wall and in healthy condition.
Subaru: “In six days from now this place'll be destroyed, and it won't be apparent what the SOMETHING practised here was.”
This place becoming known was inconvenient for somebody. Sometime in the days before the Sizeable Hare attack, that somebody would attempt to destroy the important parts of the facility, and bury the waste in darkness. This time, Subaru had managed to arrive prior to this.
Subaru: “Most likely candidate... is yeah, Garfiel.”
What spurred Subaru to search for the facility had been the unease he felt toward Garfiel's strange activities. Garfiel willed to protect SANCTUARY, and had a familial love for Lewes which he couldn't completely conceal. It was conceivable that he would destroy the facility for some reason unknown to Subaru.
There was also the factor that if the somebody wasn't at least as strong as Garfiel, destroying the facility would be an incredible effort. The only problem left was—
Subaru: “No clue at all what this facility was for.”
Subaru inspects the fortunately-undestroyed room, to no obvious result. Other than learning that the crystal is secured and fixed in place inside the room, nothing particularly stands out to catch Subaru's attention. Subaru looks at the back wall, beyond the desks, to discover the ventilation shaft he had crawled through before. Passing through it should lead him back to the waiting room.
Subaru: “...Pretty late to point this out, but isn't the houseplan here strange? Saying it's just this big room and a waiting room is pretty...”
The estimable size of the facility from outside did not align with the room layout inside. Tracing over his mental map of the facility and its outside facade, Subaru feels a faint awriness. — Enough space remains to conceal an entire extra room.
Subaru cuts across the room to stand before the wall with the ventilation shaft, and taps at the wall. The moss covering its face feels less like grass and more like animal fur. Being that no echo comes from his tapping, it appears the moss serves more purposes than simply illumination. If there were any mystery room, position-wise, it would be beyond this wall.
Subaru: “Considering the distance I crawled, there should be a room half the size of this one. Though doesn't feel you could get there from this room, unless there's some mechanism to rotate the wall...”
Which leaves the waiting room. Subaru's heart hadn't had leeway to thoroughly inspect the rooms last time. He would have clearly lacked the energy to search for traces of a hidden room in the narrow waiting room. Although worried about the girl in the crystal, Subaru nonetheless reasons he must investigate the waiting room—and turns around.
When he immediately comes eye-to-eye with somebody else who has entered the room.
Subaru: “...au?”
???: “—”
Meeting gazes with the emotionless eyes, Subaru lets slip a noise. Their round pupils stare up at Subaru—and their pink hair reaches down long, only a baggy white cloth covering this young girl. She looks identical to Lewes, but the feeling she gives off is different. Or no, rather she gives off no feeling at all. It's almost as if she is air, simply existing. Meaning,
Subaru: “Oh, a Lewes-san...”
Clone, is the word which passes through Subaru's mind, but he hesitates to apply to the girl. The term clone was a moniker used only in Subaru's imaginings. Being that her exact background is unknown, Subaru's heart has qualms about designating her as such.
Subaru: “But that said...”
Having nothing else to call the girl, Subaru winds up stuck. The little girl simply stands there quietly, in Subaru's view. Her expression remains motionless. She is a thing of silence, of whom even breathing is suspect.
Subaru hesitates to address her. The doll waits to be addressed. —Perceiving the still girl in this fashion, Subaru steels himself and opens his mouth.
Subaru: “Can you understand what I'm saying?”
Girl: “—”
Subaru: “Your name? Can I ask what you're here to do? And actually, what is this place?”
Girl: “—”
Subaru: “...SANCTUARY, Garfiel, Lewes. Are any of these words familiar?”
Girl: “—”
The questions for three silences. Subaru thought asking questions might prompt her expression to shift, but her face remains perfectly still to every query. As if her facial muscles simply didn't function.
A wasted effort. Subaru is stuck. Subaru scratches his head, sighing, when the girl moves.
Subaru: “...?”
Her shift to action was sudden, but her gait as she walks is lax. The girl treads in from the waiting room door, just as Subaru had, and strolls to the centre of the room—to the crystal.
The girl sealed inside the jewel looks expectedly identical to the girl approaching it. Before the girl amid a wakeless sleep, the free girl bends over and reaches for the lower section of the crystal's supporting base.
A part of the base clicks open. Subaru's eyes widen. Apparently the lower section of the base has a door, with the insides hollow and acting as a storage chamber. The girl squats down as she gets to work, blocking Subaru's view of the insides as he stretches his neck. Shifting his position to see inside, Subaru steps forward—
Subaru: “—Uegh!”
When an incredible stench pierces his nostrils, making Subaru recoil.
The stinging odour invades his nose, the sensation closer to pain than stimulation. His eyes water as the nausea strikes, the intensity enough churn the contents of his stomach as he trembles. This stench is unmistakably the same rancid odour which pervaded the room last time Subaru was here. The kind of stink suggesting a slaptrap jumbling of chemicals, and suspect as being pregnant with substances harmful to the human body. Subaru had thought it to waft up from the underground of the destroyed room, but,
Subaru: “It's actually from inside that base... or basically, the area around the crystal.”
Hand to his nose and eyes still watery, Subaru changes his placement. Amid a stench most stinging at his eyes, Subaru internally shudders at the girl who unfazedly continues her work. He then peeks down from beside her, and his eyes shoot open.
—Inside the base the girl is fiddling around with is an internal segment engraved with incomprehensible patterns, with magequartz installed all around it.
The quartzes dimly glow as they expel their internally stored mana, but one of them has used up its stores and lost its light. The girl carefully extracts that quartz, and is replacing it with a new one from the base's store.
Subaru recalls seeing the complex pattern before. A magic circle—an art practically guaranteed in parallel world fantasies, but completely absent in this world as far as Subaru had seen.
Subaru: “Seeing it connected here with the quartzes... it feels like machinery or a circuit, something like that. You consider the circle as the mechanism part, with the quartzes as batteries giving the energy, and...”
Hitting on this mental image, he can no longer envision it as anything else. The art of magic science, or otherwise said magiscience.
Subaru tilts his head as the girl appears to finish her work. She takes the emptied quartz in hand and closes the shutter. After a space of a few seconds, Subaru notices a tingling sensation on his skin.
—The atmosphere, minutely and minimally, is vibrating.
Subaru: “This's... when using magic.”
The use of large-scale magic—a sensation resembling what he felt during the White Whale fight, and when Julius used Nect during the Betelgeux fight. Most likely, some interference was occurring to the mana in the atmosphere, and his body was perceiving the corresponding shifts in mana.
In this case, it is rather obvious what the mana is reacting to.
Subaru witnesses the dim glow of the crystal steadily intensify. As the crystal's brightness compounds, the form of the girl sealed inside becomes more distinct. The magic circle inside the base also activates on the upper segment which supports the crystal, illuminating the room in a brilliant pale glow.
Subaru: “...A save point.”
Who from the present-day world could possibly blame Subaru for that unconscious mutter? A crystal installed atop a magic circle. This luminating, shining-blue jewel was exactly the familiar sight of a video game save point.
Regardless of the vivid display it gave for the eyes, the soundlessness of it further enhanced the crystal's mystique, leaving Subaru swallowing his breath and incapable of voicing his thoughts.
The girl, done with swapping out the quartzes, easily ignores the struck-still Subaru as she gets moving to leave the room. The extinguished quartz goes tossed and dumped into a crude disposal spot. Noticing her quiet attempt at departure, Subaru hurriedly reaches out for her shoulder.
Subaru: “Hey, hold on a mo... ah, touched her.”
Girl: “—”
With the seeming feebleness of her life and presence, Subaru had expected for his hand to simply pass through, but his fingers fortunately grasp her shoulder firm and he succeeds in halting her. Abruptly recalling that the girls who exploded after being touched while facing the Witch of ENVY were of the same breed as this one, Subaru's wariness rears its head, but—
Girl: “—”
The girl, silently staring back at Subaru, shows no signs of exploding. Relieved, Subaru returns her gaze straight-on.
Subaru: “Sorry for interrupting your work, but the questions're still going. This time, if you can, please don't ignore them. I haven't got much room to work with here, either.”
Girl: “—”
Subaru: “What did you just do here? Why are you lighting up the crystal? Do you know about the girl who's inside?”
Girl: “—”
Wasted effort electric boogaloo. No matter how many times Subaru asks, the girl responds with her silent gaze only. Not refusing his questions, as if the option to do so doesn't even exist for her.
Subaru: “If she could at least manage yes-no response communication, I could do something here...”
But that's not happening. Keeping ahold of the girl, who seems ready to leave him behind if he lets her go, Subaru turns his head to look at the crystal. No changes have occurred in the girl inside the dazzling, luminous jewel, but there is something Subaru can clearly perceive now that the crystal is brighter.
She has no respiration, pulse, or bloodflow. —The essential functions of life have stopped for the girl trapped in the crystal.
Subaru: “...Thanatosis, would probably be way too optimistic here.”
This wasn't anything so easy as warming up frozen flesh to return the person to life. This girl's body has crystallised. Freeing her is a dream upon a dream.
Subaru: “Again, powerless...”
Stricken with an unbearable feeling of powerlessness, Subaru brushes his fingers against the face of the crystal. Feeling the coldness at his fingertips, Subaru can't tell whether to be angry or relieved that the girl cannot feel this chill constantly eating away at her. And just when that sentiment passes through his chest—
Subaru: “—wha?”
The coolness at his fingers flashes into heat, travelling up Subaru's arm, circulating rapidly through his whole.
Subaru: “—Oa, au, agha!?”
It starts as a warmth—but instantly combusts into blaze scorching his entirety. Fingers of flame trace along the insides of his body as Subaru groans in pain, writhing on the spot.
The heat suffocates him. His screams echo through the room. Lacking the composure to care about the filthiness of the ground, Subaru lets his limbs give way as he topples to the floor. He convulses, his vision strobes—and,
Subaru: “—heuh, u?”
The announcement ending the endless hell comes abruptly. The furious heat tempers away, freeing Subaru's body from the storm of agony.
Subaru: “...Wh-what the hell, was...”
Mutters Subaru at he uprights himself, checking the condition of his arms and legs. The sudden agony and its abrupt end. Subaru wouldn't know its processes or outcomes without knowing its cause, leaving behind only questions and a painful memory.
Subaru: “There's, nothing. But, if there's nothing then why on earth...”
The cause of the pain was most likely the crystal's magiscientific apparatus. Subaru may have run into a situation similar to receiving an electric shock. Thinking that far, a Subaru entirely occupied with his own hurt remembers about the Lewes girl who had completely fallen out of his consciousness.
Subaru: “Ah, cra...”
Girl: “—”
Subaru hurriedly goes to stand up—but seeing the girl standing still standing before him, he untenses, relieved. When,
Girl: “—”
—The girl reverently kneels before him, bowing her head.
※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※
Head lowered and knee to the ground, her posture perplexes Subaru. If he isn't reading this wrong, then those mannerisms, that stance, could only be display of respect and submission toward him.
Subaru: “What're you planning, all of a sudden?”
Subaru's wariness beats out his surprise for the previously-unheeding girl's complete change. The trench between Subaru and the girl runs deep. Neither know anything of the other's identity. Who could possibly not find this situation suspicious?
Girl: “—”
The girl stands from her kneeling before the wary Subaru. She looks up, her gaze aimed beyond Subaru's head. It baits him to look over, but he finds nothing in the area her gaze is pointed. It seems like she's staring up into space for the purpose of thinking things over. Subaru turns his head back to her, and,
Subaru: “Uauh!?”
Girl: “—”
Discovering the girl standing right in his face, within breathing range, Subaru recoils. But the girl's outstretched hand takes a flinched-back Subaru's arm, Subaru: “...? You mean, follow me?”
Girl: “—” The girl wordlessly tugs as Subaru's sleeve, apparently trying to take him somewhere. She nods in response to his question. Subaru's expression is fretful.
That she's so stubbornly refused to speak might be because she's unable to. But regardless, it seems she comprehends Subaru's question. So basically, her attempt to take Subaru somewhere should probably be considered some kind of response in her discussion with Subaru.
Subaru: “Nothing ventured nothing gained, I guess.” Girl: “—” Subaru: “Talking to myself. —Alright, lead me along. I'll follow.” Subaru nods back. The girl continues pulling his sleeve as she starts walking. Following behind her footsteps, Subaru glances one last time back at the crystal.
—As always, inside the glimmering glow, the girl remains asleep. Dragged outside by the sleeve, Subaru leaves the main room, passes through the corridor, and enters the waiting room. The girl proceeds to attempt to guide Subaru outside of the facility.
Subaru: “So it's not inside. I'm okay with going out, but...” If they wind up going all the way to SANCTUARY, it's going to spill the beans that Subaru snuck into the facility. Subaru could of course rationalize it away by explaining he hadn't done anything reproachable, but considering his relationship status with Garfiel, he would much rather avoid it this loop. Subaru worries over what to do if the girl's course starts heading for SANCTUARY, when, ???: “—That ers sure a complercated look yer have on, Lil' Su.” Subaru: “...Are you kidding me with this timing?” Just after stepping out of the facility and into the open air, a voice addresses Subaru.
He looks toward the voice's source, his mouth slackening at who he discovers there. Though, he can't tell whether that resulted from relief, or from some other basis. ???: “I'm sure yer've got lotser things yer wanner talk about, but ferst how says we change the location?”
Subaru: “Yeah, let's. I've seriously, got way too many subjects piled up.”
Subaru shrugs in agreement. And just how did she perceive that Subaru?
—That Subaru standing alongside a girl most identical to herself, her back to the moonlight, just how on earth did the original Lewes perceive him?
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