V12 - CHAPTER 5 : ENDING LIST

Subaru's consciousness was greeted by the same sensation of a cold, hard floor.

"_______"

Still lying faceup, Subaru opened his eyes and coughed out the dirt inside his mouth. When he grimaced at the stench of dirt and looked around the area, he saw he was in a dimly lit stone room—back within the tomb.

Subaru returned to the world in the exact same place right after the old one had ended, going back only in time.

His eyeball had returned to his left eye socket, restoring his vision. Though on the one hand, he was relieved by this, the fear that this left eye would see Hell and a sense of inescapable confinement made him feel an ache from a wound that surely no longer existed.

The main thing holding back his sense of despair and the creeping feeling that he would only reach another dead end was the presence of the girl lying by his side.

There, beautiful silver hair spread over the floor, moaning in anguish, was Emilia, the girl with whom he had surely met his demise—here she was tormented by the Trial, seeing a nightmare of the past from which she could not awaken.

"_______"

Quietly, with his fingers, Subaru gently touched not Emilia but his own parched lips.

In the back of his mind arose the sight of Emilia just before Return by Death—when, putting the dying Subaru on her lap, she did not notice his loss as she kissed him.

He could not imagine what Emilia's mental state was like the moment she kissed Subaru's bloody lips. Nor was Subaru, then on the verge of death, able to bring with him the sensations or feelings from the final moment of his passing.

It would have been the first kiss with Emilia in Subaru's life, and it was death that had gotten in the way.

"_______"

But if Subaru had to answer whether he regretted feeling the touch of her lips, he would resoundingly say no.

Reminiscing about the kiss in that final moment was to reconfirm his sense of crisis at seeing Emilia becoming wholly dependent on Subaru as she fled from reality after her mental state had deteriorated so much…

Unable to rely on Puck, enduring the pressure from those around her, losing the support of Subaru's consoling words must have pushed Emilia's mind to its limits.

He'd taken pride in the best start to date, but if Emilia's collapse was the result…

"If I'm not at her side…then that happens. I don't want to…make her sad…"

Even if she'd temporarily recovered from the tomb, the nighttime conversation, the letter, it all backfired.

Swallowed up by a tremendous snowfall, a great many became victims to the Great Rabbit's invasion. Roswaal had slain Ram and Garfiel in a fit of madness. And finally, having Emilia kiss him on the lips was Subaru's final moment as he went to his death—

"I knew. I should have known."

To Subaru, that world had offered the cruelest, the most senseless of fates.

Therefore, as if by design, Emilia, Beatrice, and even Elsa and Roswaal were arranged in the most formidable configuration possible.

"I'll save…Emilia, the Sanctuary, the mansion. I'll save them all. If I don't, then…"

—Can you do it?

—It's not a matter of whether I can. I have to. I will. Me.

Subaru bared his fangs and silenced the inner voice that he'd heard many times already. He would permit no excuses, no lifelines. He swore a vow, one that would absolutely never be rescinded.

All he had to do was list the problems, obstacles, issues, and walls in his way; clarify his victory conditions; put them in chronological order; then challenge them with trial runs over and over, as many as time and his mind would permit.

Even if Subaru's mind was whittled down with every failure, he would be satisfied so long as a future worth holding on to still existed… No matter how many horrific things he had to see, like what he had already bore witness to.

And so—

"—Emilia, are you all right?"

He stretched out his hand, shook the shoulder of the adorable girl lying on her side, and gently brought her back to reality.

As Subaru watched her long eyelashes tremble and her purple eyes slowly open, he decided.

All over again, he made a vow inside of himself, making it hard and strong so that it would never be broken.

—I'll protect Emilia and save everyone else. Even if it costs me my life.