Sorry guys, last chapter, I stated that Tanaka was locked down in a cell deep down inside the mansion. I'm going to change the fact that his cell is located at the highest point of the building.
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Tanaka stirred from the edge of shallow sleep at the sound of the door opening. The faint creak of its hinges broke through the dim silence of his cell. His eyelids lifted with effort, and his gaze settled on the girl standing by the threshold — the faint torchlight spilling from the hallway revealed her violet-blue eyes, calm but distant.
His shirt had long since torn and been taken away, leaving his upper body bare, pale skin marked faintly by the touch of cold metal. The metal chains that bound his wrists clinked lightly whenever he moved, their surface glimmering with dull light. At least, he thought wryly, they'd given him new shorts this week — a small, pointless mercy in a place where time itself seemed to rot.
She stepped forward, careful and quiet, holding a tray with both hands. The faint aroma of soup reached him, thin and watered down. When she knelt to set it before him, her movements were practiced.
"Dear guest, I have brought you your meal."
Her voice was steady but empty, as though she were reciting a line she'd said a hundred times before.
Tanaka blinked against the dim light, raising his head slightly. The air was cool and heavy, every breath carrying the metallic taste of rust. His voice came out low, hoarse, but clear.
"Thank you."
For a brief moment, the girl seemed taken aback — not visibly, but in the faint flicker of her gaze.
He reached forward, chains rattling faintly, and took the bowl from the tray. The soup was lukewarm, but he didn't care. He sipped slowly, one spoonful at a time, feeling warmth spread faintly through his throat.
He noticed it after a few moments — the way she stood there, still and silent, staring at him without expression.
He looked up from the bowl.
"Is something wrong?"
The question broke her trance. She blinked, her composure snapping back into place with mechanical precision.
"Ah… nothing. I apologize. I also brought you a new set of clothes."
He studied her for a moment, then sighed softly. His tone was calm, almost conversational — strange for someone in chains.
"You can speak your mind, you know. I haven't talked to anyone for over a year, so… it would be nice to have a conversation."
For a moment, she said nothing. The faint sound of water dripping in the distance filled the silence. Then, with visible hesitation, she spoke.
"It's just… your attitude. It's changed quite a bit since the last time I served you food."
He paused mid-motion, spoon hovering above the bowl.
"Last time?" he murmured, setting the bowl down. "Ah… we've met before."
Now that he looked at her closely, he remembered.
She was the first one.The first girl to step into his cell when he'd first arrived in this place.
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Tanaka understood perfectly well what the girl had meant earlier. Her words had dragged him back to the beginning — to that day when he was cast into this place like a broken pawn on a chessboard.
When he first appeared in this cold, gilded prison, his mind had been clear. There had been no panic, no fear — only a weary understanding that he had failed, again. The loop had ended in an unfavorable state, and he had been thrust somewhere beyond his control.
So, he had made a choice.A simple, grim one.
If this wasn't the right loop, then he'd just find one that was.
And the easiest path to reach that end… was starvation.
The first time the door opened, it was her — the same golden-haired girl with the gentle, quiet eyes. She carried a tray with trembling hands, as though the weight of it could crush her. The scent of warm soup and bread briefly filled the room, faint and fleeting.
"Dear guest," she had said softly, "you have to eat something. You'll die if you don't."
He hadn't even looked up. His body was heavy, his mind distant. The spoon lay untouched, the soup cooling on the tray.
Three days passed. No food, no water. His lips had begun to crack, and his vision blurred in and out of focus. But the silence was preferable to false hope.
Then the door had opened again — not her, but him.
Regulus Corneas, the self-proclaimed Sin Archbishop of Greed, walked in with an air of offended superiority, his pristine white coat unblemished, his steps echoing sharply against the stone floor.
"What is this about?" he said in that falsely polite tone of his, eyes narrowing as he looked at the untouched meal. "Why is your food untouched? After my precious wife prepared that meal for you, don't you think you should at least show the decency of accepting it?"
The girl had fallen to her knees, trembling.
"Forgive me, dear husband, but our guest hasn't eaten nor drunk anything for the past three days."
Regulus sighed as though he were the one being wronged.
"Oi, oi, are you serious? At this rate you'll die. It's not like I'm keeping you here because I want to."
He paused — a long, deliberate pause — his expression caught somewhere between irritation and amusement. Then, suddenly, his gaze slid toward the girl.
"Number 184," he said evenly.
She lowered her head.
"Yes, Lord Husband?"
"If you want to blame someone," he said with a calm that chilled the air, "blame him."
There was no movement. No grand gesture. No flash of power. He simply blinked.
And then, a gaping hole bloomed in her chest.
The sound that followed was wet and final — the dull thud of her body collapsing, the metallic scent of blood spreading across the floor. It reached Tanaka's knees, warm and sticky, seeping into the cracks of the stone beneath him.
He could only stare. His mind blank, his throat dry.
"Why… did you kill her?" he whispered.
Regulus turned to him, expression smooth, voice steady — as if explaining something trivial.
"Because of you. It's your fault."
"Huh?"
"You wouldn't eat. Therefore, I had no choice but to kill her. She made the food, and you refused to eat it. That only means you refused because of her."
Tanaka's lips trembled, anger and disbelief tangling in his chest.
"What… what kind of logic is that, you sociopathic monster?"
Regulus tilted his head, unbothered.
"I'm not keeping you alive because I want to. When it's time for you to die, I won't stop you. But for now," his tone hardened, "I was asked to keep you alive."
He turned away, brushing invisible dust off his sleeve.
"I'll send another one of my wives to bring you food. You'd better eat, since I don't want to spill the blood of my precious wives again."
And with that, he left — his footsteps echoing down the corridor, fading slowly into silence.
Tanaka sat there, surrounded by the thick scent of iron and death, staring blankly at the lifeless body of the girl who had tried to feed him.
The puddle of blood spread wider, and the faint warmth of it touched his hands.
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From that point onwards, his attitude suddenly changed and he ate every meal that was brought to him.
It was sheer luck that a few hours later, darkness enveloped him and the world twisted — the unmistakable sensation of a reset.
When he opened his eyes again, the cell was the same, but she was alive.
He exhaled softly. "I wonder if they're doing okay…" Subaru, the others — the thought passed through his mind like a distant echo.
But what comforted him most was this small mercy. That at least in this fragment of time, the girl had been spared.
The loops only happened three times after that, and then they stopped. A year passed in stillness, but her survival remained one of the few constants in his mind.
Now, sitting in that same cell, he looked at her again — the golden-haired girl with those quiet, violet-blue eyes.
"If I hadn't eaten," he said softly, "that bastard would've killed you."
There was no hesitation in his tone. Not a guess — a certainty carved by repetition.
"I think he called you Number 184, right?"
"Yes, that is correct." Her voice was calm, but faintly surprised. "I'm surprised you still remember."
He let out a faint chuckle, though it carried no real amusement.
"I've got a good memory. But honestly, I'd rather call you by name."
She looked at him, lips parting slightly before she fell silent again.
"Ah, right," he muttered, catching the hesitation. "You're not allowed to say it, are you?"
53.
That was the number of women that served over the course of a year. Changing once every week. It has been a year since he last saw this woman, which means the rotation has changed.
The number Regulus referred her with was number 184, he couldn't confirm it, but it was highly likely that Greed killed other previous wives as well, the number assigned to this girl is way higher than 53 and he also saw him do it without any hesitation.
He leaned back against the wall, the chains clinking softly.
"Well, mine's Kazuki Tanaka. Weird name, I know."
Unlike the other girls, she was the first person whom he was able to have a conversation with for a long time, so he became unusually talkative.
"You've been… remarkably calm," Sylphy said after a pause. "For someone living like this."
Despite how physically exhausting it has been, In truth, his sense of time had dulled beyond repair. He barely felt the passage of an entire year.
Unless he occupies himself with something, years will pass in an instance.
"I've been keeping myself busy," he said quietly. "Trying to figure out how his authority works. Ever since that fight, I can't get it out of my head."
Her eyes widened slightly.
"You… fought him?"
He nodded slowly.
"If you were wondering why he was furious when I first got here — it's because I got in his way. He wanted to kill my friends. I stopped him. And he can't kill me, which pisses him off even more."
There was a flicker of satisfaction in his eyes — small, almost imperceptible, but real. The thought that Regulus, for all his arrogance, couldn't end him was a comfort in its own twisted way.
"Why is that?" Sylphy asked softly. "Why can't he kill you?"
Her question hung in the air.
Not only was Tanaka the first man Regulus had ever kept alive in his mansion — he was also the only man the Sin Archbishop seemed bound to spare. It went against everything in his nature.
Tanaka's eyes darkened slightly.
"So you don't remember…" he murmured.
In his memory, that day had gone differently. Regulus hadn't spared him out of mercy. He had spared him because he couldn't do otherwise.
Whatever had transpired that day, something — or someone — had tied Regulus's hands.And Tanaka intended to find out why.
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He still remembered that day.The day he was dragged into this nightmare.The day Pandora brought him to the mansion of Greed.
The moment they appeared, the atmosphere had warped—air trembling under Regulus's fury. The Sin Archbishop's face twisted in rage the instant his eyes met Tanaka's, and before anyone could breathe, he struck.
A flash of light. A soundless impact that rattled the world itself.Pandora's body shattered—disintegrating into thousands of shimmering fragments.
Tanaka had seen it with his own eyes.He knew she was dead.And yet…
"What are you doing, Bishop Corneas?"
Her voice cut through the smoke, calm and composed—as if the act of dying meant nothing to her.
Regulus froze. His hand, still raised in fury, trembled. The arrogance in his expression cracked for an instant.
Tanaka could only stare. The space where she had perished shimmered, and there she was again—untouched, unburned, unbothered.
"I will forgive your violent impulses," Pandora said gently, folding her hands. "Your anger, your rash outbursts—such things are beneath my concern. However…"
Her golden eyes sharpened, soft and merciless.
"I will not overlook your disregard for the Gospel's command."
Regulus's jaw clenched. "Tch—what nonsense are you spewing now? I am following the Gospel's words! Don't act as though you have authority over me, woman!"
"Look again."
The words seemed to echo, bending the air around them.
Regulus blinked—and suddenly, the Gospel was in his hand. He hadn't brought it. He remembered clearly leaving it in his chambers, far from this hall. Yet there it was—its black cover gleaming, faintly pulsing with something alive.
Confusion flickered across his features, replaced by a reluctant frown. He opened it.
A single page turned by itself.His eyes scanned the script—and the color drained from his face.
"Kazuki Tanaka-Sama must not die," Pandora said softly. "Until the next command is received."
Silence pressed down on the mansion like a vice.
"You—" Regulus's teeth ground audibly. "Commands this, commands that! I told you I was following the Gospel! Who do you think you are, barging into my home, interfering with my authority!"
"You may throw your tantrums, Bishop Corneas," she replied, her tone light, almost musical. "But you understand the consequences of disobedience, do you not?"
The golden light in her eyes pulsed once, and the pages of the Gospel flickered faintly in his hands—lines of script glowing white-hot for a brief instant before fading.
Regulus's defiance faltered. He clicked his tongue and looked away.
"Then I will take my leave," Pandora continued, turning toward Tanaka. "There is no need for further instructions, since you already know the cost of ignoring the Gospel. I entrust Tanaka-sama to your care."
And with that, she vanished.No trace. No sound.As though she had never existed at all.
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Regulus's face twisted with barely contained fury. His aura flared, shattering the marble tiles beneath his feet. The mansion trembled as his rage erupted—walls splitting, pillars collapsing.
But when it was over, and the air stilled again, he did not strike Tanaka.He only glared down at him with venom in his eyes.
"A guest," he hissed. "That's what you'll be. My guest."
And with that, he dragged Tanaka to the deepest cell of the mansion—bound him in divine chains, and left him in the dark.
No further words.No explanations.Only the echo of his tantrum fading into silence.
Whatever power Pandora had invoked that day, it was far more absurd than Regulus's greed—stronger than his warped sense of self.
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Sylphy tilted her head, eyes narrowing with a question dangling on her lips. Tanaka let out a small, tired laugh and answered before she could form the words.
"Ah—sorry, I was spacing out," he admitted, rubbing his temple. "He wasn't able to kill me because of the Gospel's command.
It was strange and infuriating. Pandora had been there when he first arrived; everyone had seen her. Yet none of them remembered her now. She had appeared, spoken, vanished—an event witnessed by many and erased by whatever rule she wielded. Tanaka had even tried to bait Regulus by naming her afterwards, but the man either genuinely could not recall or pretended not to; the provocation dissolved into an awkward silence.
He glanced at Sylphy and tried to explain, keeping his voice low so the damp stone couldn't borrow his words for gossip. "I don't think what they did was a straightforward fight. I dropped an ice mountain on him and—nothing. Not even a scratch."
He shook his head slowly, searching for the right phrasing. "Not even a scratch. His clothes didn't move. His hair didn't stir. It was as if I'd struck something that didn't exist in the same rules as the rest of us."
He watched her reaction closely. "It didn't feel like normal magic—I didn't sense any mana flow or backlash. That leads me to think it's an authority—something that ignores physical phenomena. It sits outside time, making him… immutable, in a manner of speaking."
"Outside of time?" Sylphy repeated, the words strange and distant on her tongue.
Tanaka let a humorless smile flicker across his face. "Think of it as a rule the world obeys, not a spell you launch. To test that"—he leaned forward a beat—"have you ever seen him eat, sleep, or… do anything normal? Show any sign of human needs?"
"..."
Tanaka's smile went thin. He'd expected that. "From the look on your face, I'll take that as confirmation."
A thought crossed his mind and he almost laughed out loud, but caught himself—some jokes weren't worth the price here. Instead he steered the conversation back to the practical.
"Such an absurd ability... But just like other authorities, it must have a condition or two."
Like how Gluttony required knowing someone's name to eat it and if there were some repercussions like when someone's memories are too overwhelming. A condition like that must exist for greed as well.
He rubbed his wrists where the metal bit into his skin. "Yin-type magic might bypass that kind of authority if my guess is right. It's not my specialty, but it interacts with… Space and time, I will need a few trials and errors to make it work."
But again, he's out of mana, after using most of it to try and save everyone one year ago. After being taken as a prisoner, he didn't encounter a single spirit in order to restore his mana.
Sylphy's face tightened into an expression of quiet worry; the cell's shadows seemed to bend closer as if the stone itself strained to hear. Tanaka noticed the shift and offered a small, steadying shrug—an attempt at comfort in a place that offered very little of it.
"Don't worry," he said softly. "I'm only talking. I won't ask you to do anything that puts your life at risk."
What he was seeking now was just information, any clues that could lead to figuring out Greed's weakness would be a massive achievement.
For a long moment the two of them sat in a companionable silence, listening to the distant drip of water and the faint clink of chains. Then the heavy sound of steps on the corridor announced an approaching presence.
Regulus's silhouette filled the doorway like a blot of white on the dark stone. He stopped in the threshold, eyes flashing with that familiar blend of disdain and irritation. "What is this?" he demanded. "Why in the world are you speaking to my wife as if you two were old friends?"
Sylphy bowed her head automatically. "Forgive me, Lord Husband—" she started, voice small and practiced.
Tanaka cut her off with an easy, irreverent smile. "I might be your prisoner," he said, "but before that I was a guest. That gives me the right to conversation, does it not?"
Regulus's nostrils flared. "You're talking to someone who belongs to me — without my consent."
Tanaka shrugged, letting the chains clatter softly. "I'd speak to you, but we've only met twice in a year. Talking to whoever's here is hardly a crime."
He said it partly to needle, partly because it was practical: the wives were observers of the mansion, and any slip of manner or phrasing could reveal how Regulus's authority functioned. If the man ever unwittingly let something show, he would catch it.
Regulus's lip curled. "Fine. But despite appearances, I am an exceedingly busy person." His tone tried for haughtiness and landed somewhere between petulant and dangerous.
"Then don't complain," Tanaka replied coolly. "Let me speak to whoever is present, or at least let me die in peace."
Regulus's patience thinned. "I am already aware you are insane. Therefor, I might—"
"You're the one to talk about insanity?" Tanaka's retort cut sharp. "You call your wives by numbers number. Stand in front of a mirror sometime and take a good look."
Regulus's face paled a fraction with the insult, but his voice steadied into a dangerous calm. "Listen. I am the most fulfilled person in this world. That's why I'm going to overlook your interruption and your insolence—out of mercy. You would do well to learn some courtesy."
Tanaka gave a humorless snort. "Fulfilled? That's rich coming from a lapdog! Don't make me laugh, you are just a mere pawn who follows the instructions of the gospel."
Every barb served a purpose. He wasn't trying to humiliate for sport; he was baiting, trying to peel Regulus's composure back to find the seam. Regulus could kill a wife on a whim—he'd already shown he could—but he could not, for reasons unknown to Tanaka, end Tanaka himself. The provocation was a scalpel aimed at distraction.
Regulus's laughter broke the silence like a crack through glass — sharp, grating, almost too bright to be sane. "You know…" he began, voice trembling between amusement and madness. "I had a really hard time abiding by the Gospel's commands. Every word of it grated on me. But now—" His grin widened, showing too many teeth. "Now, I'm glad I did. I'm so very glad I didn't kill you yet."
Tanaka's chains clinked faintly as he straightened, tension coiling through him.
Regulus turned toward the corridor. "Come now, you wretched woman! Come and see this fool like you asked…"
The sound came first — the soft, hesitant click of heels against stone. Then the faint rustle of fabric brushing the cold air of the cell.
When she stepped into the torchlight, time seemed to still.
Long black hair spilled down her shoulders like a river of ink, gleaming faintly in the dim light. A familiar navy sailor uniform clung to her frame, immaculate, unchanged — as if preserved by memory itself. Her eyes, deep and green like spring after rain, found him through the darkness.
Sylphy watched in muted astonishment as the calm, unflinching man she had come to know — the one who faced Regulus's madness without so much as a twitch — suddenly froze. The color drained from his face, his breath catching mid-motion.
"H—Hana!?"
The name tore itself from his throat before he could think.
She looked exactly as she had the day he'd last seen her. Four years had passed, but she hasn't changed, not even a bit.
She shouldn't be here.
She shouldn't be anywhere near him.
Tanaka's voice trembled, the words forced through disbelief. "How… Why in the world are you here?"
Her lips quivered into a fragile smile, and tears shimmered in her emerald eyes. "It's because…" she whispered, voice breaking like porcelain. "Because I wanted to see you."
Her fingers curled over her heart, trembling. "So badly."