Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- Vol. 15 Read online

  The lights. Each and every one of the lights hovering in the darkness was a future that awaited Emilia.

  This Trial probably would not come to an end until she had witnessed them all.

  —Were the futures she would bear witness to all different from one another? Or would they be continuations of the one she just visited?

  The answer would come once she touched another light and saw its future.

  When she moved to the next light over from the blank space, it became a clear blue passage, like an azure sky—

  “It’s just like you said. That kid’s our enemy, and our wounds run deep. I can’t use healing magic, so even if we back out now, I might not be able to save you.”

  “Then…”

  “But that kid’s still a kid—Isn’t this enough?”

  The scene differed from the one before, with two figures standing atop sheer cliffs with a commanding view.

  One of them had his back turned toward the deep forest behind him—she could not see his face. But she remembered his voice.

  It was one of the people closest to her. Perhaps not as much as the other person, but she definitely remembered him…

  The person atop the opposite cliff was on one knee, and as he knelt in this position, he was looking down at the other. Though she could not see his expression, Emilia could tell both of them were making terribly melancholic faces.

  “You’re…you’re a hero. You can’t be…anything but a hero…!!”

  “I…”

  “Thank you…for saving me, damn it!!”

  When the other figure reached out with his hand, the figure with his back turned lobbed words of gratitude his way.

  —It was a parting of nigh-unbearable sadness. It was a moment of parting marred by indelible despair.

  “”

  The projection had run its course. She returned to the world of darkness.

  She had…pathos and melancholy both. But more than that, she held a question toward this Trial.

  She did not see herself anywhere within the world she had just visited.

  Neither of the people in that place was Emilia. She could guess who they were, but why had she witnessed a scene, a future without her?

  Was she being shown a “future” that was the result of her own choices?

  Then how was she supposed to face the calamity that would inevitably come?

  “”

  Amid that silence, the blue light vanished. Just like the initial silver light, a void had been born. Nearly twenty more lights continued to surround Emilia.

  —Awaiting within each and every one was a tragic future that was the result of her choices.

  Determined to accept them all, she stretched her consciousness toward the next one.

  In one future after another, Emilia’s choices, and the calamity they would invariably bring about, awaited her.

  2

  —She saw the future.

  “—without that, have you not even a sword to swing, you damn thief?!”

  “Subaru and Emilia are both tired, right? Sorry. And yet, even I’ve become a burden on you. I always, always wanted to say I’m sorry for never measuring up…”

  “Mm, mm… My granddaughter, my pride and joy…has grown to be…a good child…”

  As she touched the variously colored lights, Emilia continued to see different futures.

  “Sorry. I’m so sorry I can’t kill you because I’m weak. Sorry. Even so, I’ll keep you to myself—for all eternity. I’m sorry I’m so weak…”

  “What, you feel like this is fulfilling your promise? If so…then you should have left me to die wrapped in a mat in that cave! If… If you were going to show me a dawn like this, it should all have ended there! Damn it! Damn it all!”

  “I absolutely will not allow you to die for some nonsensical reason like a curse!”

  There were wails. There were angry shouts. In different forms, they indicated endings, renewals, meetings, and partings.

  “Oh look, I won again.”

  “To think someone I want to kill this much turned out to be such a gentle person…what a nightmare.”

  “You have bent your knees before irresistible despair, and you have lost even your sword… Just what is it you still cling to?”

  She asked herself whether the things awaiting her, the futures at which she would arrive, were not some kind of mistake.

  “Am I really that greedy? Do I really ask so much? I just don’t want to be alone. I don’t want to become alone… Is that so hard to understand?”

  “I’ll kill you, just as I promised!! Got that, Subaru Natsukiiiiii?!!”

  Was there really nothing but despair in these futures? Was there anything beyond the sadness, beyond the suffering?

  “I merely realized something… The days I’ve spent until now were by no means days I walked aloooone.”

  “In the end, ’twould seem we must atone with every last drop of our blood, does it not?”

  What had gone wrong? Did she wish for the wrong things?

  “Why…why won’t the soul take?!”

  “Whether it’s with justice or villainy, ya can’t solve every problem under the sun. That’s what you just stepped in. If you block my…our path, I don’t care if you’re a Witch or a dragon. I’ll crush you.”

  She was being shown untold tragedies and calamities. Amid that deluge of despair, which was enough to make her want to cry, she came to doubt everything she had done. If all that awaited the end of her journey was tragedy, that was simply—

  “—I believe praying for one’s desires is arrogance. Prayer is for seeking forgiveness.”

  In the future of the final light, a girl her waking self should never have set eyes upon spoke those words.

  It was not fleeting enough to be hopeful and too bold to be despairing. Her nonexistent pulse quickened.

  After all, she’d seen nothing, nothing but sad, agonizing futures in all that time.

  —I want to have a proper conversation with you, no matter what the future holds.

  She thought if a certain boy was with her, they could speak together and laugh about the futures they hoped for.

  Even if all that awaited her were worlds of tragedy, she felt in her heart that if she could at least have that much—

  3

  —When her vision opened up, Emilia was standing right in the middle of grass rustling in the wind.

  She had arrived immediately after the darkness, and the continually switching worlds had stopped. At first, Emilia thought she was being shown yet another future—but she immediately realized this was something else.

  “I have actual hands and feet…and my voice is coming out. So this must be…”

  Clenching both hands into fists, Emilia confirmed she possessed physical flesh. Then she surveyed her surroundings, realizing this grassland was unfamiliar and the presence of a little hill right behind her. Atop the hill, a large parasol was spread; naturally, this drew her to go closer.

  Climbing up the hill, she found a white table and chairs under the parasol, and the faint whiff of warm tea wafted in the air. Naturally, she surmised Echidna might be here, so Emilia was on guard, but—

  “No one’s here?”

  There were six chairs arranged by the round table. Set atop the table were confections and cups, equal in number to the chairs, leaving the distinct sense that she had shown up right before some kind of tea party. Yet, it seemed as if everything had been abandoned midway without even cleaning up, leaving nothing of the participants but empty seats.

  “”

  When she touched a cup, which still had some tea in it, she felt a faint trace of warmth—it felt like anyone would be shaken if they saw what Emilia was up to.

  “Echidna was having tea with someone. And then?”

  She understood as much already, but for a dead person, Echidna sure had considerable freedom of action in this place. She was amazed that beyond her work as the administrator of the Trials, she’d go as far as to
invite her guests to tea.

  Here, the dead—or their ghosts—were, to the greatest extent, free.

  Deeply moved by that fact, Emilia reached a hand toward one of the sweets without particular thought—

  “—You might be trying to act like a Witch, but put so much as a finger on those, and you’ll regret it.”

  “—?!”

  Shocked by the unfamiliar voice suddenly calling out to her from behind, Emilia tried to instantly turn around—and her shock deepened further, for a finger touch to the back of her head rendered her body completely immobile.

  “…Ah.”

  It wasn’t that she was being restrained by force—she was held in place by the sheer overwhelming pressure.

  The person standing right behind Emilia was a being beyond her comprehension. Gleaning this just from her aura and the touch of her finger, Emilia felt her entire body rapidly go numb.

  She sensed if she turned around, or at the slightest whim of the person behind her, she would be instantly and utterly annihilated.

  “Good girl. You are correct not to look back. For I…”

  “Y-you are…?”

  “I am, well, you know—A Witch so terrifying, she makes every hair on your body stand on end.”

  Witch—that single word entwined tightly around Emilia’s heart, making it even harder to breathe.

  Emilia, often slandered as a Witch because of her appearance, had complex feelings where the term was concerned. However, even so, the being she was standing in front of seemed completely beyond all her preconceptions.

  Were all the beings worthy of being called true Witches shrouded in such immense miasma?

  “…Hmph, I guess that’s that, then. It really is the boy with the foul look in his eyes who’s the strange one.”

  “Foul…look? Are you…talking about Subaru?”

  “Heh…”

  Letting out a snort, the Witch admired Emilia’s ability to wring out her voice.

  “The instant you hear that boy’s name, you perk up? That’s marvelous, but you don’t really have a good grasp of the situation, do you? And…and what do you think of that boy anyway?”

  “Subaru told me he loves me… He’s a very precious boy to me, but…”

  “O-oh…? Heh, hmm, so that’s it. Well, really it’s all the same to me!”

  To Emilia, it was not at all clear why she would dismiss with ragged breath the question she herself had just posed.

  However, at the same time, she felt her fear toward the Witch at her back faintly diminish.

  She did not know the reason. Perhaps she could simply tell the being was not impervious to dialogue.

  Relying upon that sense, Emilia swallowed once; then, hardening her will, she began to speak.

  “You’re a Witch, aren’t you…? Does that mean you’re one of the friends Echidna spoke of?”

  “Hmph. It’s not like that girl ever called us frie… Wait, I bet she did! And with a smug face, too, I’m sure!”

  “I don’t know about a smug look…but if you’re here, where’s Echidna?”

  In the first place, Echidna had been in a foul mood every time she’d come into contact with Emilia. Therefore, she felt when Echidna had let slip about her “friends,” it hadn’t been with pride or with a boastful face at all.

  Hearing Emilia’s reply, the Witch went, “Now hold on,” the tone of her voice lowering just a bit. “She said she doesn’t want to meet you. It looked like she had a pretty rough time in the Trials.”

  “…It seems that way. Echidna seemed really hurt the last time I met her.”

  Emilia couldn’t forget the hatred that filled Echidna’s voice and expression at the end of the second Trial.

  If that was truly the last time she would speak with Echidna, Emilia would be left with terrible regret.

  Even so, the relationship between Emilia and Echidna had been one of accepting the results head-on without anyone else’s intervention. Even if Emilia ended up being hated, she wanted to take responsibility for her choices.

  “It’s not that she doesn’t care. It’s that she’s accepted the results… You’re quite admirable, you know. Even though that rascal said nothing but mean things to you…”

  “That’s because Echidna spoke with me. I find it much harder to deal with the people who won’t talk to me. If I could, I’d love to face you and talk with you, too, but…”

  “—You absolutely cannot do that. If you do that, my fists, which have let so many people die, will cry out.”

  She spoke in a hard voice, but it was one that betrayed no hint of fabrication. Goose bumps broke out over Emilia once more.

  The Witch’s words truly did carry the weight of having let a great many people die. That weight remained as the Witch led off by saying, “One really should fulfill her duty, though. Echidna tossed the duty of administrator away, so I am taking it up in her place—What did you see in the third Trial?”

  “I saw…many sad worlds. The voice said this was the calamity that would inevitably come. Are these…? Will everything I’ve seen really happen? Are they really the future?”

  “In Echidna’s view, it is possible they might happen.”

  The Witch made a heavy sigh as she replied to the question Emilia harbored. It was close to confirmation, yet vague enough that one could not say for sure. If they had been mere fabrications, it would have been easier on her heart, but…

  “The futures you saw could all come true one day. Or you might not see a single one happen ever. However, they are not fabrications. That girl is very fair about these kinds of things. Well, the fact that she showed you only futures that’d leave a bad taste in your mouth is definitely because she has a bone to pick with you.”

  “Fair, but… Echidna is a really naughty girl, isn’t she?”

  “Does naughty even cover it…?”

  The Witch offered a wry comment in response to Emilia’s assessment of Echidna but said no more of the matter.

  Also, from Emilia’s perspective, the current Witch’s explanation was good news.

  “Why do you seem so relieved?”

  “Eh?”

  “I’m asking, how can you act relieved after what you just heard? That’s strange, isn’t it? I mean, you’ve been shown nothing but terrible futures, yet, in spite of that…”

  “But they’re not certain, right?”

  Emilia had seen nothing but tragedies. It had been an unrelenting series of lamentations and tears of blood.

  It had been enough to make her question whether she was making the right choices.

  But—

  “The futures I saw were a result of choices I’ve made. But there are also futures that won’t turn out that way. Now that I know that, I’ll be okay. I can clench my fists and fight.”

  “”

  “Someone really insisted that I have to do that, you see.”

  They might have all been painful futures, but even then there was still hope. That was what she had learned.

  If Emilia seemed ready to falter, her memories of her parents and her older brother would sustain her. And if she was ever inclined to give up, the feelings scribbled on those walls would ignite a fire in her heart.

  “If sad futures await, I’ll run around them. If that doesn’t work, I’ll leap over them with all my might. If people have fallen along the way, I’ll pull them up. If I keep doing those things, I’m sure I’ll wipe away all those tears from before.”

  “You say that so full of confidence, so recklessly… You might end up broken in no time flat.”

  “If it was just me, maybe—but I’m not alone.”

  Emilia puffed her chest out in response to the Witch’s provocation.

  Just as in the past and present, Emilia surely wouldn’t be alone in the future. And she had a large group of dependable people around her.

  That wasn’t to say it was good to blindly depend on them.

  But if they relied on her, and she on them, they would be together always.
>
  Even as she depended on others, Emilia would develop her own self-reliance.

  It was a choice she could never have made before, what with her lacking confidence and fear of the future.

  “…You’re strong. That part of you isn’t like your mother at all.”

  “—! You know my mother?”

  The unexpected connection surprised Emilia, leaving her voice slightly hoarse. Her reaction made the Witch hesitate for a time, after which she let out her breath.

  “Yes, I know her well. But I will say nothing of her—I’ve promised not to.”

  “”

  The depth of emotion and the echo of unhealed wounds infused into the Witch’s voice made Emilia’s words catch in her throat.

  If she was honest, she did want to know about her mother. But…

  “Mm, I understand. I won’t ask anything, then.”

  “…You’re fine with that?”

  “I can tell it isn’t that you don’t want to tell me. It’s that you can’t. Besides…”

  For a moment, she paused and closed her eyes and pictured her mother.

  “My mother…is Fortuna. The Trials helped me remember her. That’s plenty for me.”

  In her younger days, she was proud of having had two mothers. Even in the present, she might be able to say she had two—no, three fathers. Even so—

  “I remembered Mom, I remembered Dad, and I remembered my big brother and everyone in the forest. That’s plenty… This was all because of Echidna’s Trials, so…”

  “I see… So even that girl’s… Even Echidna’s wicked deeds result in something good once in a while…”

  As Emilia touched a hand to her chest and reminisced about her family, the Witch’s voice seemed to almost crack for a moment. Perhaps Emilia had misheard, but it sounded like a sob.

  “…Could it be that you’re…crying?”

  “…! I’m not…crying! I don’t cry. I don’t have the right to cry…not anymore.”

  “No one needs a right to…”

  Cry, Emilia was about to say as she turned, wanting to wipe away the Witch’s tears.