"Just stop here—could I trouble you to wait for me a moment?"
Having skipped most of the back-and-forth and the detours, he'd saved a solid hour or so. Subaru glanced down at his flip phone. Since a phone like this was basically only good for making calls, it still had a decent charge after all these days. He had only a hazy sense of the time—right before dying, he hadn't checked it either.
The village looked peaceful enough, at least from a distance. One hour. He had no way to talk the whole village into fleeing, but it should be enough to find that white-haired guy, right? Even though last timeline he'd steamrolled the man the whole way, Subaru knew that was thanks to the stasis Yimi had placed on him. That unstable thing only needed one small slip and he'd die without even knowing how—and he had no way to kill the guy himself.
Not caring in the least about tipping his hand, Subaru grabbed a young man hauling a rice sack. "Have you seen a white-haired young man?"
The young man shook his head. "White hair? Only the old men in the village have white hair."
Then Subaru noticed the metal pendant hanging from the young man's neck, one that gave him a faint sense of déjà vu. It was really just something you could buy at a roadside stall, so unremarkable that even after spending all day with this young man you might not recall it when picturing his face. But Subaru had some impression of it—it was that burned man. At the time the guy had been a mangled, blood-soaked mess with severe burns over most of his body, his clothes surely long since gone, and the one identifiable thing about him had been this pendant.
Subaru quickly changed tack. "Do you know a girl with blue hair? Long, loose hair, very pretty."
He was describing the victim girl.
"Miss Shaman? What do you want with her?" The young man eyed Subaru warily—a look exactly like sizing up a love rival.
"Ah... some questions about her business." Subaru remembered that people in this world started working at a very young age.
Hearing that, the young man relaxed his guard a little. "You're looking to buy fabric?"
"Ah... right. It might be a bit urgent, but it'd be best if we could settle it before dark."
"Just now I think Miss Shaman said she was heading into the woods over there to pick some flowers as a birthday gift for her little sister. Something she could've done in daylight, and she only remembered at night..."
"Thanks!"
Subaru took off in the direction he'd pointed. That Regulus guy's target was this girl. Since he couldn't find where this world's Regulus was, he'd just go straight to the target.
The woods sat a little way from the village. Last timeline, when the village went up in flames, the fire hadn't seemed to reach here. Since he'd misjudged the distance, he hadn't gone back for Otto, and by the time he arrived the sky had dimmed, the canopy overhead turning it pitch-black. Subaru used his phone screen for faint light, feeling the stiffness in his body as he crept along. On the trees he could see barriers like the ones the villages in Roswaal's domain used to ward off demon beasts. But in woods this big, how was he supposed to find one person?
Yet he really did find a person—a whole crowd of them, to be exact. There looked to be a dozen or so, maybe more, every one of them a fairly good-looking girl, all standing expressionless in the clearing, motionless, waiting for something. Seeing such an eerie sight, Subaru went a little blank, but standing there with his phone he was far too conspicuous in the dark—impossible for them not to notice. Except the girls who saw him gave no reaction at all, which unnerved him even more.
"Good evening. I'm looking for a blue-haired young lady." Feeling the stiffness on him, Subaru just walked out and greeted them directly.
There were indeed blue-haired girls among them, but not the one Subaru was after.
He tried a different question. "What are you all doing here?"
Still no one answered. The two girls nearest him even stepped away, distancing themselves, which stung Subaru a little. Did he really smell that bad?
"Then—have you seen a white-haired man? He was dressed all in white too—"
"Stop asking. Talk to another man and he'll kill you." A slightly older-looking girl responded.
"Killed? By whom?" Subaru glanced around nervously.
"That man you mentioned—we're his wives." The girl answered again, even though she'd just said talking would get her killed. And the others showed no reaction at all to her "informing" like this. "We only met him last week, but he says he's our husband."
Because Regulus had lost his existence, the wives had all forgotten him, and forgotten the terror he'd brought them. But when it came to the "erasure of existence," if the erased person was someone who had come to occupy every part of another person's life, then the person left behind would also suffer a devastating blow, as if a huge hole had been gouged out of their heart. Unfortunately, every wife Regulus seized, he'd taken by slaughtering everyone around her, so he—as terror itself—could fill the entirety of the wives' remaining lives. Even with his existence erased, rebuilding that old relationship through despair, and rebuilding it fast, was a very simple thing.
"Wives? Come to think of it, that guy did say he'd make that girl his wife." Subaru crossed his arms—maybe because he'd vented most of his frustration last timeline—and for once thought seriously. "There are really this many of you? He'd drag you all along even to do something like this—doesn't he find it inconvenient?"
Even a Witch Cult lunatic should have some logic to how he did things. That guy was clearly like some impotent creep, and yet he still had to grab this many girls as wives, still had to haul them everywhere—maybe his ability had something to do with it. Connecting Regulus's method of taking wives with his habit of killing someone over a single gesture, Subaru could more or less understand where these girls stood.
"What exactly is that guy's ability?"
"..."
"He must need you here for something, right? Just knowing that should tell me how to kill him—"
No one responded again. Setting aside their relationship, whether Regulus would even let the girls know his weakness—the girls, who had only a week of memory of him yet had gone numb in an instant, wouldn't be willing to trust a stranger like Subaru. From the standpoint of a wife, one ought to trust one's own husband, and they did have that layer of "trust" toward Regulus—a "trust," built on overwhelming violence and heart-rooted despair, that made them firmly believe they would never be saved. Clearly, words alone couldn't reach them.
"Kill? Ah, that's wonderful too! To advance by killing others—how diligent of you! Very good! Love! Life!"
The lunatic's words came from behind Subaru, raising goosebumps all over him, nearly buckling his legs and dropping him to the ground. This green-haired guy—had he been here from the very start? Or was it that when he came rushing over, the guy had spotted him, and there really was some smell on him that drew the Witch Cult? Come to think of it, every Sin Archbishop he ran into had to get curious about him.
Subaru glared at the guy, grinding his teeth. You couldn't reason with a lunatic, but there was one thing he knew: striking first was never wrong!
He swung his fist and charged at Petelgeuse, but before his eyes a mass of pitch-black hands spread out from behind the man, seizing him before he could even react. Last timeline, Subaru clearly remembered an invisible force twisting and breaking his limbs and neck—the main reason this voice put a sliver of fear in him.
Invisible hands, Petelgeuse? That sounded like the constellation's [Giant's Hand], the [Unseen Hand]—didn't that correspond exactly to this man's ability? Because his own name came from a constellation, Subaru's knowledge on this subject was actually quite rich. In the same way, the name Regulus corresponded to the star Regulus in the constellation Leo, which the ancient Arabs had called [the Lion's Heart].
"Dori, weren't you off dropping someone off? How'd you lose the cart too?"
Return by Death, once again.
"Bleargh!" Subaru trembled all over, sprawled on the ground, and vomited up his lunch.
"Hey, kid, you okay?" The fruit vendor patted his back in concern.
This time Subaru had died just as painfully, his neck twisted and broken—though compared to last time it had actually been a bit easier. But the new discovery he'd made right before dying made him feel a little better. Brushing off the fruit vendor with a rough excuse, he ran as fast as he could toward where Otto was.
"Sorry, Otto, could you wait here for me a bit?"
With experience now, this time he cut out even more time and skipped asking for directions altogether, heading straight for the woods. But arriving earlier didn't seem to be a good thing.
"Who are you?"
Regulus hadn't yet left his wives, and eyed Subaru with interest. The most troublesome part wasn't even that. If he weren't in stasis right now, Subaru would definitely be drenched in cold sweat, because he saw that green-haired lunatic walk out of the woods too, landing him face-to-face with two Sin Archbishops right from the opening.
"This feeling—could it be Pride? Or Greed? How comical, what a rousing, rousing sight!"
That line again.
Actually, Subaru had been a little puzzled earlier. Even though they were both members of the Witch Cult, Petelgeuse didn't seem to recognize Regulus, and kept treating Subaru as though he too were a Sin Archbishop... Using the side effect of the stasis to keep his face rigid, he pulled out a fake smile that was unlikely to falter, took out the Tome of Wisdom Yimi had given him, and spoke before Regulus could to introduce himself to Petelgeuse:
"I am the Witch Cult's Sin Archbishop representing Greed—Subaru Natsuki!"
Regulus: "?"