12.5.3

Subaru quickened his legs, his impatience difficult to endure.

After returning with Emilia, who finished her attempt to clear the Trial at the tomb, the usual review meeting at the Ryuzu residence had also been concluded. With the Sanctuary sunken deep into the dead of night, Subaru was earnestly running alone.

Put bluntly, Subaru didn't remember much of the contents bounced around the review meeting. But he probably didn't need to remember to have a full grasp of the contents.

This time, Emilia was distraught over the past. Therefore, with clumsy explanations and it being clear at a glance she was forcing herself, she tearfully vowed to challenge her nightmare again tomorrow and thereafter.

Subaru respected her sense of duty and the nobility of her resolve. —But she would fail. This he knew.

Accordingly, Subaru consoled the hurt Emilia, gently encouraged her, and saw her off to bed. After that, when Ram went to call him for his promised talk with Roswaal, Subaru brushed her off and rushed out of the house.

Breath ragged, brow sweaty, he headed straight toward the Witch's moonlit tomb—there lay the key to dealing with the situation, and even if not, there rested an ally with whom he could resolve some of the issues that troubled him.

He was worried that he'd be stopped as he ran to the tomb, but fortunately neither Ryuzu, nor Garfiel, nor Roswaal had interrupted his decisive move.

—That night, for the second time, the third if counting during the day, he charged toward the tomb.

"_______"

Arriving at the entrance, Subaru got his breathing under control in the corridor filled with cool, serene air. With the Trial having already finished for that evening, it was no longer illuminated by the light that welcomed the qualified challengers. Even so, he squinted, searching for the entrance to the castle of dreams that ought to have been there.

His vision was too poor to locate the door to that place. But the Witch had certainly spoken those words…

"If you have the desire to know…"

Echidna had said that this was the condition to be invited to the Witch's Tea Party once more.

Also that his voice had to be not only equal to but rise higher than at the time of his second invitation, when his entire body had been bitten away by demon beasts.

Did pain and fear even exist that could exceed what he had experienced then, enough to drive him mad?

—It did. The voice with which he cried out this time, for liberation from that dead end, rivaled that.

"_______"

The things he wanted to know, to ascertain, to mull over together were as innumerable as the stars.

As bottomless emotions smoldered quietly in his eyes, Subaru's footsteps echoed as he advanced down the corridor. With the chill permeating his body, it was dozens of seconds later when he arrived at the stonework room enveloped in a pale light.

Nearly one short hour before, he had left this place, Emilia in tow—and it had also been nearly one short hour since Subaru had died in that place and that the world had restarted through Return by Death.

In that place of Subaru's anguish, Subaru's death and resurrection, he yearned for an audience with the Witch.

"Please call me, Echidna…!"

He'd thrown his life away over and over. If casting away his pride as well was sufficient, he'd offer even that.

For displaying his pathetic nature with all his strength was all the ignorant, powerless Subaru Natsuki was capable of.

"_______"

Kneeling in the center of the stonework room, Subaru offered up his prayer, his wish to be reunited with the Witch.

In the back of his mind, he drew a portrait of a white-haired Witch, lining up his own emotions to make them a chorus with which to call out to her, fervently seeking the optimal possibility to bring those intertwined futures close.

Desperately, he sought her out.

With all his spirit, he craved.

And as he continued doing nothing but wish, droplets of sweat dripped from his brow.

—A moment later.

"—Uu."

Abruptly, Subaru saw a white light in the back of his closed eyelids. The hallucination—no, this was no hallucination.

Before he realized it, his kneeling body had come to lie on the ground. Unable to move his limbs, his lips were not even free to gasp at whatever might be happening. His consciousness was being peeled away from reality.

It was the situation he'd desired. He was invited to the castle of dreams—and so Subaru felt gratitude toward the unexpected omen.

As Subaru's consciousness grew hazy, he was relieved that there was a finger pointing the way to a heretofore closed future—

"—Behold the unknowable present."

The instant his consciousness vanished, he felt like he heard such a whisper.