3.4

"So, it's that time again, Beako!"

Those were the first words out of his mouth when he pushed open the door and entered the archive of forbidden books.

His grand and very pushy entrance made Beatrice, sitting on the footstool as she read a book, slump her shoulders.

"Really…? How do you breach the Passage with such ease…?"

"Intuition. It's all intuition. I've got a sixth sense about these things."

Beatrice wore a very sour face as Subaru approached, and she abruptly narrowed her eyes, no doubt because she noticed the seriousness in Subaru's.

"Another half a day and you have yet a different expression. I suppose you are a busy sort?"

"Hey, I want to take it easy, too. But the world's enough of a mess that it's not exactly giving me the chance."

Subaru, an ordinary person, had been buffeted by one problem arising after another. But he was confident that, at long last, he was catching up to the problems, instead of them purely catching up to him.

"I want you to check something for me, so I finished cleaning the bath in record time."

"If cleaning the bath came first, surely it is no great affair?"

This applied to Subaru as well, but time in the bath was one of the few respites in a world of few pastimes. Just thinking of Rem's reaction if she found out he'd slacked off in cleaning that place of rest was enough to give him chills.

After all, Subaru getting along with her big sister had put his friendship rating with Rem in the dumps. Even if he located the shaman, poor relations with Rem meant Subaru couldn't escape a BAD END. Having to advance along both routes simultaneously made Subaru feel like he was walking a tightrope.

"If it was just a problem of which girl to get lovey-dovey with, I'd be real happy, but…"

"Are you wandering off topic again, I wonder…? What did you want of me, then?"

"Ah, yeah, about that…"

Subaru sank in thought in front of Beatrice, who at least seemed tentatively willing to hear him out. After hesitating about how to put it exactly, he nodded once.

"I think there's a little curse on me. Can you check?"

"…What are you saying, I wonder?"

"I think there's a little curse on me. Can you check?"

"I did not tell you to repeat yourself! Has it been even half a day since we spoke about shamans in detail, I wonder?! Even gullibility has its limits…"

Beatrice stormed over and yelled, probably thinking Subaru had some sort of persecution complex. But her expression changed midway to one of surprise; she looked up at Subaru as if some doubt had just been answered.

"I sense a curse rite… You truly have been cursed."

"Seriously? I mean, I figured as much, but having it actually said out loud is still kind of a shock…"

The whole point of the decoy operation was to get cursed, but it was still a jolt to know that he really had been. What brought a pall over his face was not only fear but his own thoughts—in other words, the fact that one of those lighthearted villagers had been an assassin.

"Do you know what kind of curse it is?"

"I can say nothing from merely seeing the rite. But as we discussed, the odds are extremely strong that it is a curse to take your life."

Subaru calmly accepted Beatrice's statement when she looked up at him with a blink of her large eyes in apparent surprise.

"You do not look like you think dying is a frightening thing, you know?"

"Huh? What a stupid thing to say. I'm super scared of dying. There's nothing more frightening in this world than death. People who say there's worse stuff than dying should say that after they've tried death once or twice."

It was the one unshakable truth Subaru had learned from that world: Death was absolute. He could not abide it being treated lightly. Nor could he stand comparing death to other things by those who had not experienced it.

After all, Subaru, having experienced death multiple times, had returned to the world to start over because he had himself tasted despair worse than death.

"That's why I'm going to get through it this time, Fate."

If there was indeed a deity that governed fate, Subaru had just declared war upon him.

Subaru Natsuki would snatch back his happy ending to make up for the agonizing times he had suffered.

Having finished his rant at the supernatural being, Subaru turned back to Beatrice.

"So, could you lift that little curse for me? I'm short on time here."

But at the very moment Subaru was burning from the chance to strike the perpetrator when least expected, the girl who should have been his greatest ally cut him off at the knees.

"…Why do I have to save your life, I wonder?"

Subaru scratched his head as he replied, "I thought you might say something un-cute like that, so I came beforehand with a way to convince you. If I die, it'll make Puck sad, too."

"…Would Puckie's heart be greatly moved by your demise, I wonder?"

"No, no, if I die, it'll be a pretty huge shock to Emilia. If it's a shock to Emilia, that'll hurt Puck, too. And especially you, the one who could've stopped it beforehand!"

"You are completely touched in the head, unable to distinguish begging for your life from using it as a threat!"

Beatrice stomped on the floor, but apparently a rebuttal to Subaru's declaration was not forthcoming. She sighed in annoyance and gave him a reluctant look as she beckoned him with a hand.

"I suppose I shall yield. However, do not bother me any further, ever!"

"To be honest, I can't promise you that, either. If I'm in trouble, I'll be back to ask for your help. I'll pick the scraps from your table if I have to."

"Are you even aware that I am saving your life, I wonder?"

"I'm super aware that I'm annoying you with weakling logic. Sorry."

When Subaru bowed his head in apology, Beatrice shook her head with a look of annoyance. After that, her palm glowed with a white light, which she gently touched to Subaru's body.

"I shall now destroy the curse rite. Bear in mind that it is implanted in the place where the shaman touches your body directly."

"Sure, don't worry, I'm all set."

Subaru checked his own body as he felt the light in her palm convey its warmth.

He'd kept track of where the suspects in the village had touched him. Only the granny searching for her lost youth had touched his butt. So, if Beatrice moved her hand to his butt, he'd know that the granny was the perpetrator. He'd also complain to Beatrice about sexual harassment.

"—Eh?"

But the place Beatrice's palm touched was completely at odds with Subaru's expectations.

He felt a swirling heat where the white glow leaped from her palm into his flesh. There was an itchy feeling where she had touched, but it seemed to ooze right out of his body as a…

"Black…cloud…?"

The light in Beatrice's hand directly caught hold of the black fog that had been the curse.

The itchiness vanished as Subaru shuddered from that wriggling cloud having been inside his own body. Then…

"Must you be so abominable, I wonder?"

Beatrice crushed it in her hand before it vanished, then shook her hand as if having touched something icky. Realizing Subaru had gone silent, she harrumphed.

"It is done. I suppose you will be fine now?"

When she said it is done, Subaru realized that he'd stopped breathing. He rued his timid heart, but a more pressing concern came to mind.

"Hey, Beako."

"Would you stop addressing me that way already…?"

"Is the place you touched with your palm the place the shaman touched me?"

Faced with Subaru's grave question, Beatrice set her own complaints aside and reluctantly nodded.

Her nod affirmed in Subaru's mind the perpetrator behind the string of curses.

"I've got to…go to the village—!"

Now that he knew the culprit's identity, he had no choice but to act immediately.

He'd originally planned to wait until the next day, go to the village with Roswaal and the twins, flush the shaman in the village out of hiding, and deal with him. But he couldn't do that now.

Subaru's heart continued to race as he rushed to put his hand on the door. His breath was so ragged as he ran that he didn't even hear Beatrice call out for him to stop.

Fate's irrationality and poor taste in irony, dangling Subaru and the others on a string, filled him with rage. That anger gripped Subaru as he ran, yelling at the top of his lungs.

"Just how far are you gonna take playing me for a fool…?!"

He kept running.