“Hoooooow~ Nice of you to join me!” The clown said, completely wrapped in bandages like a mummy. The only part of him I could see was his eyes. He lay in bed in the only fancy looking house in the entirety of Sanctuary.
Honestly, I didn’t get how more people hadn’t recognized he was sus.
“You stupid clown really banged yourself up this time.”
For now, it was just Ram and I in the room with him. I hadn’t met up with Emilia, yet.
“Indeeeed,” He unnecessarily elongated the vowel.
“Roswaal-sama,” Ram began, “Would you like me to begin healing you, now?”
“Noooo~ need for that! In faaaact, I would like it if you continue ~assisting Subaru.”
Ram bowed at the waist in acknowledgment.
“As you can see~, I tried, unsuccessfully, to get the villagers out of Sanctuary. I suppo~se, I’ll be relying on you and Emilia-sama for the rest.” Roswaal eyed, me.
If he wasn’t revealing his true plans to me yet, that meant he believed I would die sometime in the next few days, triggering a loop.
Ever since I’d body-jacked Subaru, I hadn’t triggered return by death once. I didn’t want to trigger it. I honestly didn’t know if Satella would even recognize me as the ‘proper’ Subaru. If that happened, if she didn’t recognize me as Subaru, then I’d probably be dead for good. Too bad for Roswaal, I didn’t intend to find out.
“You don’t plan on explaining your evil scheme to Ram?” I poked the bear.
Roswaal turned to me, glaring at me. He quit doing the weird thing with the vowels as his clown makeup magically disappeared. “If you are asking me that, this must not be the first time.” He looked at me, perhaps trying to read if he was correct or not.
I didn’t respond in the slightest.
“In that case, no~, I don’t think I will.”
After that, he refused to respond altogether. Ram couldn’t even get him to respond when she asked if he wanted tea.
Once we left the building, Ram asked me with just a bit of heat, “What did you do to Roswaal-sama?”
“Nothing. He’s choosing to act that way all on his own. Too bad for him, things aren’t gonna go the way he thinks they are.”
Ram glared at me for a bit but relented. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if that was the stamp-enforced loyalty acting on her or not. I wanted to say it wasn’t— that she would have listened to Subaru either way. But I couldn’t know that for sure. It stung— I didn’t regret stamping her, not exactly, but I also felt a particularly kind of slimy for possibly subverting what might have otherwise been her natural reaction.
Logic tried to say that giving her a full heal and another horn more than made up for the difference, that doing that for someone would have made them loyal in either case. The question was: would it have made her more loyal to me than to Roswaal? I didn’t know, and that’s what bothered my conscience.
I’d let the stamp tempt me in a way I shouldn’t have been tempted, I decided. I hadn’t done right by Ram, not completely, even if I had healed her body. I promised myself right then and there that I’d never use the stamp on someone again without their express permission.
Unless they were evil, then all bets were off. Elsa was totally just getting sold.
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I took a deep breath in, and then out. I felt oddly nervous, but I didn’t know why I was so nervous. It was just Emilia.
The phantom Subaru in the back of my brain wanted to shout at me, about ‘just Emilia’. His engram wanted me to shout EMT to the skies. I turned it off.
“Subaru-kun, I’ll be there with you, you know?” Rem gently reminded me.
Ram was off somewhere doing who knows what, she’d gone off with barely a word after our talk earlier. Rem had exited our Sweet Home and found me shortly after.
“Is Beako settling in alright?”
“Yes, Subaru-kun. But, don’t change the subject right now. Emilia-sama will be happy to see you.”
I huffed. “I don’t know about that.”
“Just apologize, and it’ll work out. She’s not the kind of girl to hold a grudge.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
I took one more breath, and then I finally opened the door to the cabin. A pink-haired little girl stood next to the doorway, the collar of her gray sweater coming up past her chin. One of the clones, then.
“Welcome’jya,” She added a weird, archaic Japanese phoneme to the end of her welcome.
“Thanks.”
Suddenly, I felt really awkward. I stood at the precipice to the cabin, just one step away from entering. Sitting at a small dinner table was a silver-haired half elf with beautifully purple eyes.
“Subaru?” She asked, surprised. “And, Ram?” She tilted her head a bit.
“This one’s name is Rem, Emilia-sama.” Rem bowed. “You may not remember me, but I’m Ram’s little sister.”
“I... see.” Emilia turned back to me, “But Subaru, what are you doing back here? I thought I asked you to stay with Crusch and finish healing...”
She had no way to know this, but body talent had fully healed me the moment I possessed the original Subaru.
Emilia twirled her fingers and looked at the floor. “No, that’s not what I wanted to say. I heard you were the one who saved the villagers and even defeated a Sin Archbishop.” She looked up at me, practically grimacing. “I guess you’ve saved me again, huh?”
From behind, Rem firmly pushed me past the threshold, into the cabin. I stumbled a bit, but managed to keep my footing.
“Emilia,” I started.
“Not, ‘Emilia-tan’?” She showed me a sad smile.
“Emilia-tan.” I gathered my courage, “About back then, I was wrong. BUT! Those old dudes were insulting you, and it really made me angry. I apologizing for embarrassing you at that time, but I still think those old men were in the wrong. What gives them the right to be so cruel to you, Emilia?”
Emilia opened her mouth to say something, but I barreled on ahead.
“And, I know that it bothered you at the time, and it bothered Julius for making light of the knights. I get that now. I wanted to treat you specially, since I thought of you as a special person in my heart.” I raised up a hand to stop her from talking, “I know you didn’t want to be treated specially, but tell me something, Emilia. Could you ever treat those you care about in any way other than specially? Would you treat Puck the same way you treat some random person on the street? And don’t say you would because that’d be a lie. I know you cherish Puck. What’s wrong with me if I want to do the same?”
Finally, I stopped speaking, waiting to see what Emilia might say.
“You know Subaru, when I was evacuating with the villagers, the children let me know that it was you who came to save me again. They said they weren’t supposed to tell me, but they let it slip. I was so~ surprised, because I couldn’t understand why you always come to save me. You said it was because I saved you, but I don’t remember such a thing.”
She paused, maybe expecting me to say something. After I didn’t, she continued.
“I’ve never had someone want to treat me specially before and make it sound like a good thing.”
I quickly interjected, “Doesn’t Puck treat you specially?”
“That’s different,” she tried to say.
“Who are you to say the way in which I want to treat you? Are you saying I can’t treat you the same way as Puck, for similar reasons? Because that’s what I’m saying.”
“But! Puck loves me!” She almost shouted.
I just raised a brow up at her.
She covered her mouth and let out a quiet, “Oh.”
“I did love you,” I admitted. Phantom Subaru in my head tried to shout that he still loved her, but I quieted that part of me down. “I still care for you and I want you to win the royal selection. But, frankly, you aren’t ready for romantic love.” I stared her in the eyes, daring her to correct me, but she just nodded slowly with wide eyes.
“So, you aren’t ready.” I held out a hand to her, “Emilia, would you formally accept my request to treat you specially, for you to be my friend?” I smiled.
I didn’t expect it, but tears started gathering in her eyes as she reached forward to grab my hand in a shake. She smiled brightly at me, tears pooling, as she nodded her head once and hummed in agreement.
“Emilia-tan.”
“What is it Subaru?”
“Thanks for being my friend.”
She seemed to smile even brighter. “Is it ok for me to have so much happiness?” She let go of my hand so she could rub at her eyes.
I stepped forward and pulled her into a gentle, platonic hug. “Yes, you do. Your heart is full of kindness, Emilia. Everyone deserves friends, and you more than most.”
“That makes me happy.” She rubbed her face into my chest.
In the corner of my eye, I could see Rem beaming at me. Though she’d never say it, I had a strong suspicion that she was happy with the way things turned out— Secretly happy that she’d won a woman’s contest of love.
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Honestly, if I wanted to, I could take down Sanctuary’s barrier right this second. Echidna wouldn’t be able to break through my Mind Defense at immunity level, so I could just walk right through the trial chamber, grab her soul crystal, and she’d be completely at my mercy.
But, I couldn’t do that. I’d made a promise between men that I wouldn’t deal with the barrier until after I beat Garfiel in a martial contest. I took my promises seriously, unlike Canon Subaru.
As far as I could tell, that meant I really only had three problems to overcome for the time being. Deal with Elsa, deal with Meili, and annihilate the Insatiable Hare. I had no idea when those three things were supposed to happen, and I honestly had no idea if the sister assassins would even be a problem now that there wasn’t anyone in the mansion. I’d still keep an eye out for them, since it would make sense to me if Roswaal had changed their orders given the changed timeline.
But, before all of that, I’d encountered a new issue.
“I have to break the barrier around Sanctuary,” Emilia declared with a serious expression.
Emilia and I sat at the dinner table in the clone’s cabin. We both had steaming cups of tea in front of us, smelling to my inexperienced nose like grass water. Rem stood at attention behind and just to the left of my chair. She had just finished pouring the tea for us.
Perhaps just to delay, I picked up my teacup and took a small sip. Despite not knowing much about tea, this tasted pretty good to me. Definitely better than Ram’s. “As expected of Rem-rin.”
“Geez, Subaru! I’m being serious right now,” Emilia scolded me.
“I got it. So basically, there’s not enough food, and if we don’t get the refugees out of here soon, they’re going to starve.”
I couldn’t remember anything about the villagers starving in canon, maybe this was because the entirety of Arlam village came to Sanctuary this time, rather than just a subset?
“But, there’s more,” Emilia said, “Puck isn’t responding to me.”
I nodded my head, I’d expected that.
“I’m going to try the trial tonight,” Emilia said with conviction.
So the problem was thus, what did I do about Emilia wanting to break the barrier?