"Cough, cough!"
He'd been beaten to a pulp—nearly had a filthy foot stomped right on top of him.
"Petra!"
Calling out the name of a girl he'd known for barely a day, Natsuki Subaru forced his eyes open, struggling to piece together his foggy thoughts about where his save point might be. But the room he found himself in wasn't the layout of his own—his room had already been blasted clean through by Yimi in a single shot.
No Return by Death?
A weight settled in Subaru's chest, yet when he looked in the mirror, he didn't see the black-and-blue face he'd been bracing for.
He pushed open the door. The first thing he saw, naturally, was the demolished corridor. Ram stood there with an expression like she'd been personally wronged, wielding a broom to sweep up the debris—mostly witchbeast remains—while a coppery smell of blood hung in the air.
At her feet crouched two little girls. One of them was Petra, whom Subaru had convinced himself was dead. The other had a tail behind her that wouldn't stop swaying back and forth.
"The village elder always said the meat from most witchbeasts isn't edible," Petra said, her eyes tracking the swing of Yimi's tail from side to side.
"If you cook it right, it's fine. This one needs to be flipped." Yimi pressed her hand against the massive rhino-like carcass in front of her and pushed. It didn't budge.
With so many witchbeasts, there was no way Yimi could eat them all—she'd just sliced off a piece from each one in the spots she figured would taste best.
She summoned The World, then immediately noticed that even The World looked somewhat small by comparison. Still, The World's build, while no giant, was more than strong enough to flip the rhino barehanded without needing to invoke any lever principle.
Petra offered a tip: "Grab that rock over there, put it here, then use a stick as a lever—that should do it."
"Mm."
Yimi directed The World to follow her instructions. Sure enough, it worked—the rhino flipped onto its other side.
How remarkable!
"Congratulations, Host, for unlocking the achievement 『Archimedes』. Reward: portal energy +5%."
The ninth achievement!
Yimi looked at the clever Petra and patted her on the shoulder. "From now on, you're Little Green Bug #2."
"Somehow… that feels really gross to be called…"
Subaru came stumbling out and slid down against a pillar, back scraping against it as he sank to the floor.
"You're awake."
"Rem? Are you alright?" Subaru turned his head to find Rem wringing out her wet hair. "What happened?"
"My hair? Just a casualty of giving Yimi-sama a bath. I had assumed bathing a small child wouldn't require getting wet myself—that was an oversight on my part."
The moment you put Yimi in water, even a shallow amount, she'd thrash around like she was drowning, splashing everything in sight. With the bathtub being so large, she'd dart off in every direction too—if Beatrice hadn't come in to help pin her down, there would have been no getting her properly cleaned.
"That Witch Cultist—was he dealt with?"
Setting aside the reset timelines, he'd been in this world for less than a week, and he'd already been through this many near-death experiences. Was this world actually dangerous and terrible at its core?
Rem shook her head. "Yimi-sama said he escaped. Yimi-sama is far more powerful than her appearance suggests."
Then she looked at Subaru's face and paused. "You should properly thank Emilia-sama. Treating Subaru's injuries was particularly difficult—she's worn herself out and fallen asleep."
Because she'd detected something abnormal about Subaru, Yimi hadn't redirected his injuries using Love Train.
"Injuries?"
Subaru only remembered getting pummeled by that strange man—black eye, swollen face, and a stabbing ache in his gut—but nothing so severe he'd consider it truly dangerous. It was probably that odd eternity fixation that was keeping Emilia's magic from working properly on him.
He turned his head away, a little embarrassed. "Sorry about that."
"Why are you apologizing?" Rem paused her sweeping.
Subaru turned back, voice low: "For things like, uh… striking a heroic pose in front of a girl and then immediately making a fool of myself. I actually thought I'd finally get my chance to be the hero…"
The real reason was harder to admit. If he hadn't learned what had supposedly happened to Petra and gotten hit with that mental shock, he'd been maybe a hair away from surrendering to protect himself and Rem—taking a beating for reasons he couldn't even explain, looking at it objectively, wasn't worth it at all.
"A strange way of thinking." Rem paused her sweeping and walked off in a certain direction. "Thank you."
Even if he still reeked of that disgusting smell, and even if he might be running a scheme to get close to Roswaal-sama—after all, taking a thorough beating and coming out without critical injuries was suspicious—he was worth a longer period of observation.
"…"
Subaru tilted his eyes to one side and sat with his thoughts for a while.
He was remembering what Lye had said earlier—something about "holding back the urge to kill you."
That had to be nonsense, right? A guy who by all appearances had never met Rem in his life—what basis did he have to say something like that?
And then Roswaal had conveniently flown away right before all this happened. He couldn't have known the manor was going to be invaded… could he?
Bzzt… bzzt…
"Xiaobai, just a moment please."
Lost in thought, Subaru watched Rem dump the freshly swept-up debris in front of a small robotic sweeper for it to consume.
"Wait, what is that thing?!"
"Yimi-sama's pet. A little thing with an extremely indiscriminate appetite that is perpetually on the hunt for food," Rem replied.
"A 'pet' she's had for two whole days and is only just now producing?"
Noticing that Subaru had woken up, Yimi trotted over on little legs, then solemnly pressed the broken stethoscope she'd swiped from Eirin against his stomach and began listening with theatrical seriousness.
Subaru looked down at her ears. "I've lost track of where to even start with all the weird things you keep pulling out. Why not just produce an actual handgun while you're at it."
Yimi lowered the stethoscope and looked up at him with a stiff little face. "You're sick."
"…?"
She had no particular sensitivity to Kaguya's power of eternity—if she were more perceptive, she would have noticed it long before so many days had passed. But when Subaru had been carried in, he'd had the look of someone frozen solid, and after Beatrice pointed it out, Yimi finally remembered the whole incident with her tail.
Beatrice, after all, knew some magic for fixing objects in a temporal stasis, so she'd been able to identify what was happening to Subaru at a glance.
Kaguya's power of eternity could render an object immobile—after which, that object would never be subject to any change again. It was a force considered extraordinarily powerful even by Gensokyo's standards. But when it had passed through Yimi and been redirected by Love Train onto her tail, the effect had become intermittent and unstable.
Yimi raised a hand and tried to explain to Subaru: "Before—tail stiff—then transferred out—now you're stiff instead."
"…"
A bare-bones explanation that conveyed essentially nothing concrete, but combined with his own condition, Subaru could roughly piece it together—this uncontrollable ability affecting him was actually something this little cat had passed along?
Yimi's eyes drifted guiltily to one side. "I'll transfer it back out for you."
After all, they were companions who had both suffered under Diego Brando's persecution. She should be kind to him.
"Transfer it out—does that mean you'll cure me?" Subaru looked down at his own palm.
Perhaps because of his Return by Death, what should have locked him completely motionless had instead left him able to move, albeit with a persistent stiffness—like when you were a kid and shoved your arm into a long cardboard box and played at being a knight, then tried to force your joints to bend anyway.
The occasional flare-ups were genuinely uncomfortable for daily life.
Subaru flexed his fingers, then edged a good distance away from Yimi. "If you don't cure it completely, I'm not going to turn into a vegetable someday, am I?"
"Probably not." Yimi had redirected to him the portion of the misfortune that hadn't posed any serious danger to her tail.
Subaru let out a breath of relief. "If it's nothing too serious, then this is fine as-is. Without it, I'd already be dead."
Technically he had died once—he'd accepted it calmly and come back to reset.
An ability that keeps you from getting hurt. Fits someone like him perfectly.
The little cat tilted her head, and a platinum Stand emerged from behind her. "Then I can make it permanent for you."
"Don't make it permanent! This is enough." Subaru shook his head frantically and sat back down on the floor, gaze sliding sideways.
If he hadn't watched a witchbeast come charging at him with a maw full of blood and torn flesh, the part of him that feared pain and death would probably have agreed right away. The stiffness would be an inconvenience, sure, but the terror of being gutted and left to die slowly—that wasn't something he ever wanted to go through again.
The thought of an innocent little girl dying horribly because he'd pointed her in the wrong direction—that would genuinely break him.
"This is enough…"
At least he still had the chance to make things right.
"Mm." Yimi held a finger between her teeth, puzzling something over. "Is it—related to… that thing of yours…"
She remembered Homura Akemi had mentioned this phenomenon before.
"Time rewind?" she asked. She'd been curious about it since the beginning—that was the whole reason she'd been following Subaru around in the first place. The business with Diego had gotten in the way before she could ask.
Subaru: "?"