"What—what—what?!"
Subaru grabbed Yimi by the shoulders and shook her back and forth.
"You know, don't you? You've known all along. How long have you known? Why do you even know?!"
"Let go of me right now!"
Beatrice drove the hard sole of her little leather shoe straight down onto his foot. Subaru's eyes rolled back. And then, as if on cue, the eternity fixation flared at precisely the wrong moment—what should have been a single instant of pain hardened into something sustained, forcing him to clutch his foot and thrash around on the floor.
The biggest downside, on full display immediately.
"Making an exaggerated scene will only earn you contempt. Off with you." Beatrice waved him away and took Yimi by the hand, steering her well clear of him.
It took Subaru a good while to recover. He pushed himself up against the wall and looked at Yimi. "Why do you know I can… die—I mean, the thing you just described? Does that have something to do with Diego too? And speaking of Diego, what exactly is he?"
"You're asking too many strange questions all at once. How is anyone supposed to answer that?" Beatrice looked at him with thinly veiled contempt, running her fingers back and forth between Yimi's two ears. "Honestly. You'd actually believe the rambling of a small child."
"You—you've falsely accused me of that twice now." Yimi pointed at Subaru with righteous indignation.
She'd nearly managed to forget about it. This person just had to go and remind her.
Subaru gave an awkward laugh. "About that—I really am terribly, deeply sorry. Ha ha… ha ha…"
"Laughing that badly all of a sudden," Beatrice muttered, rubbing her arm as if she'd gotten a chill.
"Probably because my mood has started, just slightly, to improve."
Subaru let himself stay flat on the floor—the first time he'd fully relaxed every muscle in his body since arriving in this world. "Because this world is so dangerous."
The shock was real—the kind of shock that comes from someone knowing your deepest secret out of nowhere. If a stranger had crept up next to his ear and whispered "you have Return by Death," he would have handed that person the title of Most Oppressive Encounter of His Life without a second thought.
But perhaps because in this unsettling manor he had mentally filed this little girl under Unconditional Ally, it actually eased some of the tension wound tight around him.
He hadn't gone through that many loops. "Deal with tomorrow when it comes" had always been his way of living—he'd probably need to die quite a few times before learning the lesson about what to do and not do in any given situation. Give him a Return by Death ability and he'd likely rack up quite a body count just getting his bearings.
Back in the Royal Capital with the little thief girl, he'd tried to save her and ended up dead—nearly wiped out by the combined doubt of both Emilia and that girl—and then he'd found himself despised because of the name Emilia had given herself in that first timeline. Then in front of Roswaal, he'd tried to bring up Return by Death and something strange had seized his heart the moment he opened his mouth.
He'd never considered what he would do if a deadlock like that happened again. But somewhere inside, a quiet bitterness had been building—silently carrying the memory of Emilia's and Felt's deaths through each reset, watching Emilia forget their first warm meeting. None of it could be shared with anyone.
Now there was someone to share it with—even if only a child who didn't fully understand. He felt a kind of relief he'd never felt before.
Wait—this wasn't just about someone knowing about Return by Death. Yimi clearly still remembered everything from the previous timeline. Which meant Diego must too…
"Yimi—Diego—" Subaru sat up suddenly, then glanced at Beatrice.
This girl was a permanent fixture of the manor, wasn't she? She'd been denying anything to do with Diego, but he couldn't confirm her loyalties yet—and she was practically attached to Yimi at the hip.
Subaru looked at the cat. "Speaking of which, I had a few questions about my cellphone—the magic tool from my homeland. I'd rather not let outsiders know about it. Could we maybe meet privately tonight…"
Smack.
"…"
A small handprint on his face, courtesy of Beatrice.
Subaru sighed deeply and settled back onto the floor, staring up at the sky through the ruined ceiling.
Until Ram came through with her broom to chase him off: "Barusu. Witchbeasts have excretory functions. When they are killed, certain unpleasant things may also be expelled."
"Onee-sama, are you about to tell me that the spot where Mr. Natsuki Subaru who only owns one set of clothes is lying happens to be exactly where the cleaned-up waste used to be?"
"…"
…
…
The Gluttony invasion was over. Roswaal still hadn't returned to the manor. With no communication devices comparable to a smartphone in this world, there was no quick way to notify him of the destruction.
The witchbeast remains formed a perimeter of roughly forty meters around the manor. The blood smell wouldn't clear in a day or two, and cleanup was no small undertaking with so few servants at Roswaal Manor.
But Yimi—a guest, and one who had protected both the manor and its people; a child who looked to be no older than ten—obviously had no one demanding she help with the work.
As the only man currently at Roswaal Manor, Subaru felt obligated to take on some of the physical labor despite being pathetically weak. He didn't manage it well, and earned Ram's contempt as a bonus.
There was no making sense of the Witch Cult's motives, but then the lunatics in that organization rarely acted in ways that were easy to follow. From Yimi's perspective, someone had simply come to eat a cat, and the cat had eaten them instead.
"Xiaobai, keep watch here. Yell if anyone shows up."
Although she'd left the Forbidden Library, Beatrice had grown attached to the books there after staying so long—she wanted to check whether anything had been damaged. While she was briefly away, Yimi posted Xiaobai at the door to Roswaal's room and slipped inside.
Since Roswaal had flown out, he wouldn't have left any scent behind in the room. Tracking him was out of the question. Wearing her little dinosaur pajamas, Yimi was confident Diego couldn't detect a trace of her—she'd been wearing them before and he hadn't bothered her at all.
She stepped up onto the bookshelf in Roswaal's room and started pawing through everything on top of it, trying to find the device Diego used to cross between worlds.
Nothing, naturally. Anyone with a valuable item keeps it on their person. The whole room held nothing that felt special to her. So Diego definitely had a System too.
"Yimi-sama, what are you doing?"
Rem, drawn by the noise, watched the little troublemaker clamber over everything with a completely expressionless face.
"Hmm?"
Time to go.
Yimi hopped down in a sulk, darted past Rem with a flash, and grabbed Xiaobai on the way out.
She'd fed it all that junk, and it couldn't even call out once when someone walked up.
"Such a mischievous child." Rem watched Yimi's tail swaying from side to side as it disappeared from view.
Running from Roswaal's room, Yimi glanced out at Ram and Subaru clearing the yard, then something struck her, and she headed toward the basement.
She'd actually forgotten to check—with that many witchbeasts, had any of them gotten down there and eaten Meili?
She squeezed through the gap at the bottom of the door in cat form and found Meili W-sitting on the bed, bonking two stuffed dolls together. When she spotted Yimi, she quickly hid both dolls behind her back.
Apparently even with the miasma drawing witchbeasts toward the manor, none of them had made it down here—Gluttony's control had held.
"What are you hiding?" Yimi shifted back to human form and climbed up onto the bed, moving in close to Meili.
"Plushies," Meili said, no longer hiding them. She held out the two stuffed dolls.
"Plushies?"
"The pink-haired maid brought them down this afternoon to keep me company. Want to play?"
Meili smiled, eyes curving shut.
Meili looked at her—this girl who had supposedly finished off Elsa.