"It's so hot…"
Natsuki Subaru struggled to sit up — and was stopped cold by a violent, searing pain in his abdon.
He looked down.
It wasn't just the kick that had sent him flying. In that single instant, his opponent had already drawn her blade and opened a gash across his stomach — a wound that made his vision swim just to look at.
"Elsa… I swear I'll kill you."
Emilia's eyes were locked on Elsa, burning with a fury that felt like it would crack her chest open.
The mories of those repeated loops lived inside her now — and they had told her the attacker's identity long before this mont. Watching Natsuki Subaru's face contort in agony before her, she felt a killing intent toward Elsa rise up from sowhere she couldn't suppress.
"How could this be… I killed Subaru with my own hands?"
Elsa paid no attention to the murderous gaze directed at her from beside her. She had sunk inward — into contradiction, into sothing almost like panic.
"This is wrong… this isn't how it's supposed to be!" Her heart was brimming with the joy and bliss of having tasted the warmth of Natsuki Subaru's entrails by her own hand.
And yet she felt nothing but envy and hatred toward the other version of herself on that screen.
"I have no mory of this scene. This has to be fa—"
Elsa stopped mid-sentence.
A mory had surfaced — the words Natsuki Subaru had said to her the first ti they'd t.
"I'll definitely kill you. Elsa."
It was the hatred and conviction packed into that one line that had captivated her.
And now, looking back — those words, which had seed to co from nowhere, suddenly had an explanation.
Thinking it through, the tension slowly drained from Elsa's expression. In its place, a faint flush crept across her cheeks.
"Of course. I've always been prepared to be killed."
"Ahh… if Subaru could kill with his own hands, that really would be a kind of happiness, wouldn't it."
["Subaru? What's wrong — Subaru?"
Outside the room, Emilia had heard sothing strange. She pushed the door open and stepped inside, looking around in bewildernt.
"Don't co in — run!"
Natsuki Subaru wanted to shout the warning, but his throat had stopped working. Not a sound ca out.
Thud.
With a dull, heavy impact, Emilia collapsed to the ground right in front of him.
A shaft of moonlight fell through a gap in the roof, cutting straight down between the two of them — between Natsuki Subaru and Emilia, both lying on the ground.
"Wait for …"
Natsuki Subaru was trembling. With every last scrap of strength he had left, he reached out toward Emilia — toward the girl who was already gone.
At last —
He caught her hand. And there, witnessed by that single beam of moonlight, he cried out his final, desperate refusal to accept this —
"Wait — just wait for …"
"I will save you. I swear it!"
The next mont, darkness swallowed everything before Natsuki Subaru's eyes.]
"How can this be…"
Reinhard's expression was shaken. He hadn't imagined that Natsuki Subaru would simply die like that.
"What about the Witch Cult? What about the path to becoming an Archbishop of the Seven Deadly Sins?"
"None of it! What on earth is…"
He was rattled, his thoughts spiraling — unable to stop himself from questioning whether the future his Blessing had shown him was sohow flawed.
If it was — then he, Reinhard, the Sword Saint of the Kingdom, had wronged an innocent man?
"No. It can't be that simple."
Reinhard slowly closed his eyes — then snapped them open.
With his composure restored, he made a quiet, firm decision: regardless of whether the future his Blessing had revealed was real or not —
He would watch the life of this man nad Natsuki Subaru without any malice or prejudice. From here on out.
["What's up with you, kid? You've had that blank look on your face."
The green-haired fruit stall uncle held out an apple, eyeing him with a furrowed brow.
"Huh?"
Natsuki Subaru put a hand to his ear, as if he hadn't quite registered the words.
"'Huh' nothing — I'm asking if you're buying the apple or not. Well? Are you buying it or not?"
The uncle impatiently tossed the apple from hand to hand and asked again.
"No — look, I told you, I'm a flat-broke nobody with nothing to his na."
The sowhat dazed Natsuki Subaru waved a hand, responding almost on pure reflex.
"Fine, then get lost if you're not buying. Stop scaring off my custors."
And just like that, Subaru was shooed away. He wandered down the street in a daze for a little while before the fog in his head finally began to lift.
"What just happened? Wasn't it nightti just a second ago?"
Natsuki Subaru swallowed, his expression tightening.
"The wound on my stomach… it's gone too."
He pulled up his tracksuit top. His stomach was completely unhard.
At the sa mont, the image of a silver-haired figure flashed across his mind.
His expression shifted in an instant — urgency flooded his face.
"Right — Satella!"
"Damn it — didn't Puck entrust Satella to ? And then I went and…"
Natsuki Subaru pressed his hands over his face in frustration, then started walking — faster and faster, until he broke into a flat-out run.
"Anyway — I have to get back to that shop right now!"]]
Elsa hugged her own arms, her gaze going distant and unfocused.
"Ahh… you really are sothing else, aren't you, Subaru."
"This power of yours — looping through ti — it can only be triggered through death? Subaru…"
Emilia watched Natsuki Subaru on the screen with a look full of worry and heartache.
Because of those mories, she had known that Natsuki Subaru possessed the ability to turn back the world — but she hadn't imagined the price it demanded.
Subaru didn't have to die at all.
It was all because of her badge. Because he was trying to get it back for her…
The images on the grey curtain seed to fast-forward as if soone had pressed a button.
[With the experience he'd gained, Natsuki Subaru took on all three thugs by himself this ti and won.
Then he headed straight for the Stolen Goods Warehouse, trading his smartphone and the snacks he'd brought from another world to Old Rom and Felt in exchange for the badge.
But at the very last mont — the Bowel Hunter appeared again.
"Surprised? When you slipped past , I opened up your stomach."
Elsa said this to Natsuki Subaru, who had been relieved — thinking he'd managed to dodge her attack.
Subaru looked down. A line of red slowly materialized across his torso.
It was a wound left by the blade's pressure wave — and there had never been any chance of escaping it.
"Does it hurt? Does it make you want to cry?"
Elsa looked down at Natsuki Subaru where he had fallen, her cold gaze threaded through with a barely-suppressed excitent.
"Yes. Just like that — feel your body slowly losing its warmth."
"Slowly, slowly… going cold."
"…Wonderful."
Thud.
Natsuki Subaru fell before Elsa once more. The blood in his body grew cold, and he moved toward death.]
Reinhard's eyes were grave — and filled with pity for Natsuki Subaru.
To be killed again and again by the Bowel Hunter, in different ways each ti — that could not have been anything other than suffering.
But what baffled him was this: two people with such fundantally opposed goals — how had they ever ended up together in the end?
Elsa stared at the look of excitent on the other version of herself in those final monts — and fell uncharacteristically quiet.
"So that's the expression I was wearing… after I cut open Subaru's stomach."
"It's a little… boring, isn't it."
She had watched Natsuki Subaru die one after another — and discovered that her heart wasn't feeling the satisfaction she had imagined.
She had always craved killing Natsuki Subaru, or being killed by him.
Whether in a past life or now — when either of those outcos was actually placed before her —
All she felt was boredom. And… sothing like grief.
Elsa pressed her hand over where her heart was and stared into nothing.
Could this feeling… be love?
"Good grief. It looks like I'll never be free of you for as long as I live, Subaru."
["Hey — you all right, kid?"
A bucket of water was suddenly dumped over his head. The cold shock snapped Natsuki Subaru back to his senses in an instant.
He looked up. It was the green-haired fruit stall uncle. The man had apparently dragged him into the shade at so point.
"This one's on the house. Here — take it."
The uncle handed over an apple and a bottle of water, his expression genuinely concerned.
"— What a good man."
That was what Natsuki Subaru thought to himself.
"Wait, what just happened? Damn — my mind just went completely blank…"
Natsuki Subaru didn't take the apple or the water. Instead, his gaze drifted blankly to so corner of the street, as though trying to rember.
And then — a familiar figure walked into his field of vision.
Just like that, his eyes snapped into focus.
"W-wait! Wait a mont!"
Seeing the figure moving rapidly past, Natsuki Subaru scrambled to his feet and ran after her.
The silver-haired beauty. Satella.
The fool who had helped him when he had been at his most helpless — who had done good without asking for anything in return.
What had happened to her? Had she survived the Bowel Hunter's attack?
Could this all be an illusion?
No — he had to ask her directly. He had to know.
"Please wait — I'm begging you, just wait!"
"Wait for — Satella!"
That last line — Subaru shouted the na he knew the girl by at the top of his lungs.
And with that single na, every pair of eyes on the entire street snapped toward him.
The noise around them died away in an instant. An invisible tension settled over everything.
But Natsuki Subaru — the one who had caused all of it — was completely oblivious.
In that mont, his eyes held only one thing: the silver-haired girl.
"Don't ignore !"
"It's my fault — for leaving without permission, and for not listening to you. I know that. But I went to the Stolen Goods Warehouse afterward too, and you weren't there."
Natsuki Subaru caught his breath, and after a long mont, broke into a relieved smile.
"But thank goodness you're safe, Satella!"
The silver-haired girl spun around sharply — but the eyes she fixed on Natsuki Subaru were full of nothing but suspicion and hostility. The eyes of a stranger looking at a stranger.
"What do you an by that?"
The silver-haired girl demanded.
"I don't know who you are — but you just called soone by the na of the [Witch of Envy]. What exactly do you an by that?!"
"Huh?"
Natsuki Subaru stared at the silver-haired girl, stunned, searching her eyes for so sign that she was joking.
But with every blink of those eyes, all they reflected back at him was the face of a complete stranger.]
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