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{3rd Pov}
Her face—when Subaru finally saw it clearly—made his entire body freeze.
It was her face.
It was Emilia's.
The same delicate features, the same silver hair, the same soft, angelic beauty that had once been his source of comfort, the light that pulled him out of despair again and again.
But this face… this version of her wasn't the Emilia he knew.
There was no purity in those eyes, no innocence, no warmth.
Her expression was warped — utterly consumed by madness.
Her smile twitched at the corners, her pupils trembled with obsession, and her gaze locked onto him with a fixation that made his stomach twist.
It wasn't love.
It wasn't affection.
It was something far darker — something primal, suffocating, possessive beyond reason.
The way she looked at him wasn't like she was seeing a person.
It was like she was staring at the most precious thing in all creation — her only treasure, her reason for existing.
Her lips, painted pitch black with a glossy, almost wet sheen, stopped moving for a moment.
The endless chant that had echoed nonstop — those cursed, repeated words I love you, I love you, I love you — fell silent.
And then she moved again.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
Her head tilted slightly, her glowing amethyst eyes still locked onto his.
Then, with a faint, sickening sound of her tongue sliding across her lips, she stuck it out — long, soft, and trembling with hunger — and dragged it across his cheek.
The sensation made every hair on his body stand on end.
It wasn't gentle.
It wasn't playful.
It was desperate.
Like a starving animal — no, like a dog deprived of affection for far too long — licking the one person it adored, craving attention, craving touch, craving acknowledgment.
Subaru sat there, stunned.
Completely paralyzed.
His mind blanked for a moment as he processed what just happened.
The Witch — the one whose presence alone warped reality — was now acting like a lovesick beast.
Her body pressed even closer.
He could feel it — the warmth of her against him, her soft, generous breasts pressing firmly against his chest through the thin fabric of his shirt.
Her every movement seemed to radiate need, obsession, and possessiveness.
She buried her face near his neck, nuzzling against his cheek affectionately while murmuring the same three words again and again.
"I love you… I love you… I love you…"
Each repetition sent a chill down his spine.
But it wasn't just her touch that terrified him.
Because beneath that display of twisted affection, pain surged through his body again — sharper, deeper, far more invasive.
Something cold slipped through his skin.
A shadowy hand — one of those inky, shifting appendages made of darkness — phased straight into his chest.
He gasped, eyes widening in disbelief and agony.
It wasn't cutting or tearing.
No, it was worse — it was touching.
It was feeling around inside him.
He could feel it.
The hand wasn't reaching for his ribs or lungs.
It was caressing his heart.
Every beat was met with that eerie, unnatural sensation — a cold, wet stroke that sent jolts of pain mixed with suffocating discomfort throughout his entire body.
It wasn't just painful.
It felt violating.
"Y-you gotta be kidding me…" he thought, his mind spinning, disbelief written all over his face as he struggled to process what was happening.
His breathing turned ragged.
His vision flickered between horror and confusion.
The Witch, meanwhile, continued her chant as if nothing was wrong — rubbing her face against his, moaning her love with each breath, while the shadows deepened around them both, tightening their hold on him.
It was madness.
Pure, inescapable madness.
Satella — the Witch of Envy — looked exactly like Emilia.
The same delicate facial structure, the same silky silver hair that shimmered faintly in the dim purple light, and the same amethyst eyes that could both melt and freeze your heart.
The resemblance wasn't just uncanny — it was identical.
If Emilia was the image of purity and innocence, Satella was that same image corrupted, older, more mature… and, infuriatingly enough, hotter.
Her presence alone radiated something both divine and sinful, like a goddess dipped in shadow.
Everything about her screamed danger — and yet, she looked so much like the girl Subaru loved that it made his blood boil with confusion.
'What the hell is this supposed to mean?' he thought bitterly, clenching his fists even as pain pulsed through his body.
Is Emilia actually Satella? Or is Satella Emilia?
Are they the same person, or two different beings sharing the same cursed face?
Was Emilia born from her? A clone? A daughter? A reincarnation?
The thoughts rushed through his mind like a storm — loud, violent, and endless.
Every possibility only made his chest hurt more.
Then came the sting — a deeper, sharper pain that wasn't physical this time.
It was the ache of betrayal.
He felt like he had been played with from the very beginning.
Like his entire journey, his struggles, his love — all of it had been nothing more than a cruel setup in some cosmic joke.
His eyes widened as memories came flooding back, one after another.
That first encounter.
That first moment when he was saved by "her."
He remembered it vividly — the mysterious silver-haired girl who helped him in that alley when he was beaten half to death.
But now, with Satella's image burned into his mind, a horrifying question twisted its way into his thoughts:
Was it ever really Emilia who saved me that day?
Could it have been Satella all along?
It sounded insane.
Ridiculous.
A conspiracy theory only a lunatic would entertain.
But when he pieced together every memory, every reaction, every strange inconsistency… it stopped feeling so impossible.
He remembered the way Emilia reacted the first time he called her "Satella."
Her eyes — wide with shock and fear — her trembling voice as she told him not to call her by that name.
And in later loops, when she outright declared that she would never use the name Satella, that even saying it went against everything she stood for…
Those words echoed in his mind now like a hammer slamming into his skull.
The more he thought about it, the more the idea made a twisted kind of sense.
If Satella and Emilia truly shared a face, if they were connected by something deeper — then what if his affection, his devotion, his so-called "love"… had been directed toward the wrong person all this time?
His throat tightened as that thought hit him like a blade.
Have I been in love with the wrong person all along?
His breath caught in his throat.
His pulse raced.
Every emotion he'd buried — love, anger, confusion, despair — surged all at once, overwhelming him completely.
Was Satella… the one who had truly saved him?
The one who brought him into this cursed world?
The one who gave him Return by Death — the power that had both saved and destroyed him countless times?
His hands trembled.
His vision blurred with rage and sorrow.
If Satella had always been the one behind it all, then what did that make his feelings for Emilia?
Genuine love?
Or just a delusion born from the face of the Witch who had chained his fate from the very beginning?
He didn't know anymore.
Then why?
Why make him go through all of this?
Why force him to crawl through hell over and over again if she could have stopped it so easily?
Why watch him die, scream, and break a thousand different ways when she supposedly loved him?
The thought clawed at his mind like a parasite, digging deeper with every second he listened to her soft, haunting voice echo through the purple fog.
"I love you…"
Those three words — the same three words she had been whispering nonstop since the moment she materialized — now felt like knives digging into his skull.
What once might've sounded like affection now felt twisted, mocking, wrong.
His breathing grew uneven as a dark, disturbing thought surfaced from the pit of his mind.
'Was all of this just to make me love her?'
That single idea made his stomach twist with disgust.
His heart throbbed painfully in his chest as rage mixed with sorrow, betrayal, and disbelief all at once.
If what she felt for him was "love," then it was the most deranged, warped, and cruel form of love imaginable.
He wanted to deny it — to throw away that thought as nonsense — but the more he recalled everything, the more it made sense in a horrifying way.
Every death, every loss, every loop… all of it could've been her doing.
All of it could've been her way of molding him.
To shape him into someone who would eventually break so badly that he'd have no one left but her.
'She loves me so much,' he thought bitterly, his lips twisting into a pained grimace, 'like some obsessive maniac — like a goddamn yandere — that she'd let me suffer through endless deaths just so I'd finally say I love her back?'
The thought disgusted him, but it also terrified him.
Because somewhere deep down, in the part of him that still feared her — that still felt her presence even when she wasn't around — he knew she was capable of it.
His mind spiraled further, dragging him deeper into the pit of doubt and paranoia.
'What if that's been her goal from the start?' he thought, his chest tightening with grief and fury.
'What if every single loop, every single time I broke apart, every tear, every scream, every death… was just her way of guiding me into her arms?'
The image played vividly in his mind — him, stripped of pride, sanity, and humanity, reduced to nothing but a hollow shell of a man who lived and died for her alone.
A puppet.
A broken toy.
Someone who didn't even care if he died again and again, as long as it made her smile.
That thought — that horrifying possibility — burned through his veins like poison.
His entire body trembled, his jaw clenched so tightly it hurt, and his fists curled until his nails dug deep into his palms.
He didn't even notice the warm blood dripping between his fingers, or the sting of torn skin.
All he could feel was rage.
Rage at her.
Rage at himself.
Rage at the cruel, twisted joke this entire world had become.
His shoulders shook, his breath ragged, eyes wide with raw emotion as that single question refused to leave his head:
'Did she make me suffer… just so I'd love her?'
The more he thought about it, the more it hurt — because deep inside, he feared the answer was yes.
All this time… all the pain, all the deaths, all the tears — it suddenly felt like everything had been a setup.
Every single emotion he had poured out, every desperate attempt to protect Emilia, every ounce of resolve that had kept him crawling through hell — all of it might have been nothing more than a puppet show.
He had been dancing to her tune.
The thought struck him like lightning.
His entire existence since coming to this world — every decision, every sacrifice — had been because of her.
Because of Satella.
Because of that damned Witch who had twisted his life into this endless nightmare.
He had been dying for her.
Over and over again.
And what was worse — he had been doing it willingly.
He had thrown himself into despair, smiling through the pain, bleeding out for Emilia, because that smile — her smile — was what kept him alive.
But now, in this twisted realization, it hit him like a cruel punchline.
He hadn't been fighting for his will.
He had been fighting for hers.
The man he used to be — the normal, stupid, awkward Natsuki Subaru who once stood in convenience store light and thought the world was boring — that man was long gone.
He had died somewhere between one of those countless loops.
What stood here now wasn't the same person anymore. Something inside him — something fragile that he never noticed before — finally snapped.
It wasn't loud.
It wasn't dramatic.
It was just a click.
A silent, irreversible click inside his mind that changed everything.
And that was the moment Natsuki Subaru broke — and was reborn into something else.
Satella leaned forward, her movements slow and deliberate, her purple eyes glowing with a hunger that made the air itself shiver.
Her face inched closer to his — her lips parting slightly, trembling with desperate longing.
She wanted him.
Entirely.
Utterly.
She didn't just want to touch him — she wanted to consume him, to merge, to become one with him.
Her breath ghosted over his skin, hot and cold at once, her voice trembling with emotion as she whispered his name between her broken repetition of "I love you."
And she would have gotten what she wanted — the kiss, the union, the twisted, sick fantasy — if Subaru hadn't moved.
Because the moment her face hovered above his, waiting for that kiss, she didn't get tenderness.
She got a fist.
To be continued...