Note: So I was reading the original story of Re: Zero and I have finished arc 9. Don't worry I'm not planning to spoil anything but I want to say that as far as this story concerned, anything that will be written after arc 9 will not be considered. The timeline should be the same until arc 9, with some changes of course.
I have decided how the story will go and finish and I don't want to twist my plot twists after Tappei suddenly drops another crazy plot twist.
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This was the third—no, the fourth time Tanaka had set foot in this strange inner world.Yet the Castle of Solitude had never looked like this.
During every previous visit, the landscape had always been the same:a lonely hill buried beneath endless snow, a blizzard howling without pause, and four towering walls enclosing the space like a frozen prison. Cold, bleak, suffocating.
But now—
Everything had changed.
The snow was gone.The blizzard was gone.The oppressive walls were gone.
For the first time, Tanaka could see beyond the boundaries.
A colossal castle stood proudly in the distance—its spires gleaming pale gold beneath the sun, its walls swirling with faint, mist-like mana. Clouds drifted lazily beneath its foundations, making it look as though it rested on the sky itself.A kingdom suspended far above the world.
Tanaka stared, breath caught in his throat.
'So this place… was always this big?'
He took a step forward, still mesmerized by the sheer scale, when—
fwump
Something white and fluffy launched itself at him like a missile.
A small, polar-bear-like spirit—about the size of Puck—barreled through the air and collided with his chest, clinging to him with stubby paws.
"Tanaka-chaaaaan! It's been a while!"
Her high, cheerful voice snapped him out of his awe.
Tanaka's eyes widened—then softened, almost relieved.
"Ah—Odglass! It has been a while since I last saw you. But how are you here again?!"
The last he had heard about her was… unfortunate.The man beneath the parasol—the king of this domain—had told Tanaka that Odglass had been sealed after violating one of their contract terms.
Odglass puffed up proudly, tiny chest swelling under her snowy fur.
"Physically I'm not here!" she chirped. "I'm still sealed in the real world—super sealed!—but I'm allowed to be here spiritually now. I'm not on probation anymore!"
Her little eyes sparkled with triumph, Tanaka couldn't help a small laugh escape him—soft, genuine.
Among all the people he had met in this strange world, Odglass was the one who had stayed.Twelve years—twelve whole years spent.Not memories stretched by trauma, not illusions born from loneliness—but time actually lived together.Even if no one in the real world would ever believe it.
To him, She was the closest thing this world ever offered him to a friend.
Cepheus, who had been silently gazing under the parasol, finally stirred.
His icy-blue eyes slid toward Tanaka with the slow disdain of someone addressing a mosquito that had reappeared after being swatted.
"You made it past all those barriers to enter the Castle of Solitude—uninvited, again."His calm voice carried a cutting edge."Your lack of remorse or even basic self-reflection continues to baffle me."
Odglass floated up defensively, flapping her tiny paws.
"Well, well, it's not like he can help it, Cepheus-kun! To him, those barriers are practically nonexistent."
Tanaka frowned. "You didn't have to say it like that.…Anyway, what does my mood have to do with it snowing here every time?"
Cepheus lowered his hand from his cheek, straightening.
"Since this place is connected to you, that's why you're able to enter it—even though it goes against my wishes.This domain exists inside your soul. You influence it, whether you intend to or not—especially when your emotions are unstable."
Tanaka blinked. "Influence? I thought you made this place."
"I reside here as an observer," Cepheus replied coolly. "It is the only way I can interact with the world. Though I constructed this place, it still lies within your inner realm.If this were my grave or a space bound exclusively to me, I would have total control. But here? You remain the anchor. Therefore, your turmoil shapes the landscape."
Tanaka narrowed his eyes."Grave? What, are you some kind of ghost who didn't pass on to the other side?"
Odglass raised a paw with surprising solemnity.
"His name is Cepheus," she declared. "He's the seventeenth king of Gusteko."
His mind stalled—somewhere between confusion and disbelief.
A king? This guy?
Truthfully, it was evident that the person in front of him was a part of some noble lineage but the revelation still took him by surprise, to think he was a long deceased king from a country he never gone to.
Cepheus sighed, long and weary, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"Enough with the irrelevant questions. You came here for a reason. State it and be done."
Tanaka crossed his arms, irritation finally slipping through.
"Trust me," he muttered, "I'm not thrilled to see you either.I wouldn't come here unless I had no choice."
Tanaka exhaled sharply, forcing himself back to the matter at hand.
"As you saw earlier—Hugo, that boy." His jaw tightened. "His gate and Od are functioning normally, but his mana capacity is far larger than any normal person's. Does that have anything to do with his condition?"
Cepheus had already witnessed it, of course. Both he and Odglass could peer through Tanaka's senses as easily as breathing; nothing Tanaka saw remained unseen by them, even his memories.
Cepheus's response came flat and unbothered."It does not. Some individuals are born capable of storing more mana than average. Uncommon, yes, but not unheard of."
Tanaka's brows drew together. "Then what is the problem? Is it a curse? Something tied to his soul?" His voice sharpened. "I didn't come here for generic explanations—you must know something."
Cepheus didn't even bother to hide his disdain."I'm not sure how you imagine our relationship works, but what compels you to think I have any obligation to assist you?"
He shifted his gaze toward the falling snow, speaking with cool dismissal."And if you believe we share some sort of amicable bond simply because I intervened in Pristella, you are gravely mistaken. I only acted because remaining trapped in that loop was inconvenient."
Tanaka scoffed, temper finally cracking."I'll tell you why—you fucking owe me."
Even after everything, after years of acceptance and forced adaptation, there was still a part of him—a raw, resentful shard—that wanted a target. A face to pin the blame on. And the man standing before him was the clearest one.
"You brought me to this world," Tanaka said, voice low and trembling with long-buried rage. "Everything bad—every loss, every moment of suffering—that I've gone through happened because of you."
He wasn't wrong.
Kazuki Tanaka's summoning was born from a phenomenon known as synchronization. A process in which the countless realities of Natsuki Subaru—each twisted, broken, or saved by the Witch of Envy's meddling—interlinked. The timing of Subaru's summoning created cascading divergences, shaping entire worlds into hellscapes depending on when he was pulled from them.
Cepheus and Odglass had exploited that phenomenon.
They interfered with the summoning of Natsuki Subaru and a result, Kazuki Tanaka was summoned as well.
Whether the outcome was ideal or catastrophic…Tanaka was left to bear it alone.
Cepheus had been guiding the process when something went wrong—an unexpected recoil in the summoning itself. And just like that, he too was dragged into this liminal state between worlds.
Tanaka's hands curled into fists. His voice cracked, raw and unfiltered.
"I was working my ass off. I had a dream. I had a family. I had a life—"His words trembled, torn from somewhere deep."—and you ruined all of it."
Odglass's expression softened, guilt dimming her eyes.
Her apology back then wasn't empty—she felt it, even if she hadn't been the one pulling the strings.And Tanaka, despite the avalanche of frustration boiling inside him, found the edge of his fury dulling. Because he knew the truth:
If everything had played out differently, countless others would have died.
Still…The true culprit showed no such regret.
Cepheus remained perfectly composed—unbothered, lofty, disdainful.His very calm felt like an insult.
Tanaka's voice rose again, cracking under pressure as he shouted at him.Cepheus listened in silence.
Then finally, with a dismissive exhale, he spoke.
"Based on what I've seen from your memories," he doubled down, "your life was already ruined."
Tanaka snapped.
"You fucking piece of shit!"
He lunged forward, arm swinging—
—but an overwhelming force slammed him straight to the ground, flattening him as if gravity itself had multiplied tenfold. His breath punched out of his lungs in a sharp gasp.
Odglass shot toward Cepheus in a flutter of panic, hovering right in front of him.
"Cepheus! Stop being mean to him!"
Tanaka gritted his teeth, muscles trembling as he tried—and failed—to push himself up.
Cepheus barely acknowledged either of them.
"…Your time is up."
The domain shifted.
The horizon twisted. The grassy world inverted, flipping like a page in a book. Tanaka felt himself turn weightless, then falling—plummeting upward into the sky.
Weight abandoned Tanaka.
Then—
He fell.
Upward.
"Fuuuuuuuuck yooooooooooou!"
His scream echoed as he plummeted through the inverted sky, the world shrinking into streaks of green and blue—
—and then everything snapped.
___
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He was back in his room.
Sitting upright on his bed.Chest rising hard and uneven.Sweat clinging to his skin in cold beads.
The Castle of Solitude was gone.Only the phantom sensation of falling lingered in his bones, vibrating beneath his ribs.
Teeth clenched, Tanaka slammed his fist into the bedframe.
"That scumbag!"
His voice cracked, raw with frustration.
In the end, his encounter with him resulted in no progress, he still has no clue regarding the boy's case. And not only that, he also flatly called made mocked him after all the crap that he caused him to go through.
"Screw him… I'll figure something out by myself."
A faint rustle made him pause.
The curtains swayed gently which caught his attention momentarily.
"…Did I leave the window open?" he muttered.
But he knew—he hadn't.
Something was off.
He rose slowly, every sense sharpening. He scanned the dim room, eyes narrowing, breath shallow. The air felt… occupied.
As he turned—
"Don't turn around."
Cold pressure touched his neck—the unmistakable kiss of a blade's tip.
Tanaka froze.
"I thought you were mute," the voice continued, "But you were screaming your head off a minute ago."
Tanaka cursed himself internally. How could he have let his guard down now?
The blade never left his throat as the intruder circled around him. small footsteps. Light. Careful.
"I came here because I found something you dropped," the assassin said brightly, "but this was way more interesting than expected."
The shinobi stood in front of him—barely half his height—dressed head-to-toe in a tight, dark outfit. hooded. Unreadable. Yet the aura was sharp as a knife.
Still holding the kunai against his neck with one hand, she dug into her pocket with the other and produced a small silver capsule.
His capsule.
The poison he used to force a return by death if things became hopeless.
"So tell me," she hummed, raising the capsule. "When and on who were you planning to use this?"
Tanaka stayed silent.
"Nothing? Not even a little excuse?" she tilted her head. "Well, we can go through things slowly once I take that mask off."
Her free hand reached toward his face.
And Tanaka finally spoke.
"Sure," he said quietly. "I was careless."
His eyes narrowed.
"But the same can be said about you."
She paused. "Hmm? And what's that supposed to—"
"You shouldn't have faced me."
The assassin's body seized.
Literally.
Her limbs locked in place, stiff as stone, breath tight and shallow. Her entire figure became immobile, frozen in mid-motion.
Tanaka stepped back, calm now.
His ability only worked when he saw the target's physical form—blood flow, the rhythm beneath their skin. Once the figure was in sight, he could seize that flow, stop it, halt movement entirely.
He plucked the capsule from her still hand.
"What… what did you do?" she strained.
"It's magic," he said simply. "But that's not your biggest concern right now."
He disarmed her with ease, slipping the kunai away, and reached toward her hood.
"I don't know what your intentions are, but breaking into someone's room is called an invasion of privacy. You'd better be prepare—"
He stopped.
The hood slipped off.
Red hair.Soft gray eyes.Freckles dusted across her cheeks.
A child's face.A familiar one.
Tanaka's blood turned cold.
"…Nora?"