It was only when Emilia added the part at the very end that her gaze shifted beyond the clearing. Subaru wondered what her gesture meant, but he had no time to pursue the matter.
Emilia exhaled briefly and turned back toward the tomb, walking toward the stairway at the entrance.
The next moment, there was— "A light, from the tomb…"
It was Otto who murmured it, but his surprise was shared by everyone present.
The five watched as the surface of the ruin Emilia was to challenge glowed with a faint light, seemingly welcoming the challenger, illuminating the Witch's final resting place with a green, phosphorescent glow that seemed to sink into the darkness.
"This is proof that the tomb recognizes Lady Emilia as being qualified to undertake the trial."
Ryuzu looked up at the phosphorescent light surrounding the tomb, putting into words the reason for the beautiful scene. Subaru and the others were speechless as they stared at it, with only Emilia unhesitant as she climbed the stairs.
Then, when she reached the top of the stairs, she was greeted by the entrance to the deep, dark ruin biding its time.
"—I am off."
Subaru felt like he heard her speak those words in a little voice.
He watched Emilia proceed into the tomb's corridor until he could no longer see her back. The entire ruin remained enveloped in the phosphorescent light; the trial had surely begun.
The ruin had rent Roswaal's body into tatters and had caused Subaru to faint and lose consciousness. When Emilia stepped within, worry welled in
Subaru, almost as if someone were grasping his beating heart—
"Do not be concerned, Young Su. The tomb has firmly welcomed Lady Emilia into it. The light you see is proof of that. You need not worry that she will bounce off like Young Ros."
"The image of him bouncing off is bouncing right off of me… Er, sorry.
You're just being concerned for me…"
"Ho-ho. I do not get upset when someone apologizes. Perhaps that is why
I was too soft in raising Young Gar."
Subaru put on a strained smile, struck by the great contrast between her little-girl appearance and the elderly smiling face she presented. As Ryuzu spoke, she glanced sidelong at Garfiel, watching over the tomb some distance away.
He crossed his arms, audibly clenched his fangs, and kept scraping the ground with the tips of his toes, unable to calm down.
"I was just thinking…"
"Mm? About what?"
"The trial of this tomb—only those of mixed blood affected by the barrier can take it, right? Now that I think about it, Ryuzu, have you or Garfiel done it already?"
"Logically, it is possible to merely undergo the trial. However, we cannot liberate the Sanctuary. This is because of the never-ending pact that binds us residents to this place."
"…Another pact, huh?"
Subaru's distasteful tone and the bitter look on his face made Ryuzu raise an eyebrow.
"Ohh? Young Su, you dislike pacts?"
"I don't have a good impression of them. I have bad memories of trials over the last few weeks, too. The guy I hate most in this whole world talked about them a bunch."
"My, my, what a poor impression indeed. It must cause the spirit-user girl no small amount of trouble."
Spirit mages took all oaths very seriously. Ryuzu's words were proof this was a publicly known fact.
As a matter of fact, pacts and oaths were among the reasons Subaru and Emilia had once split up. It went almost without saying that Subaru had
internally concluded it was his own fault. All the same—
"Accepting it and liking it are two different things. I'll keep putting a red line through them in my lexicon going forward."
"Obstinate, aren't you…? Well, a little stubbornness in a young one like you is adorable, too…"
It was really hard to wrap his head around the young one part. At the same time, Subaru saw a whiff of chagrin rising onto the side of Ryuzu's face. Perhaps it was nothing more than her having been robbed of the opportunity to challenge the trial for herself and having to rely on an outsider to lift the barrier. She might have quietly felt powerless on the inside.
Thinking along those lines, he could understand Garfiel's irritation, too. Considering the grasp of his personality Subaru had arrived at in a short time, there was no doubt he was the type who'd rather die than leave his problems for someone else to solve.
"…"
From there, time proceeded to flow. Subaru did nothing and said nothing as he waited for Emilia to return.
There was no visible change in Garfiel. Ryuzu continued to stand beside Subaru in silence. When he shifted his gaze a little, he was surprised to see pleasant-looking conversation passing between Ram and Otto.
To Subaru, who had experienced little pleasant conversation with Ram, this was an alarming development. He was about to think fruitless things, such as I'll have to get him to spill conversation tips for Ram later—but something happened first.
"Ah?"
When the change met the eyes of all others present, they instantly gasped as one.
Reflexively, Subaru blinked and looked back, by which time the source of light over all that time had already been lost. In other words, the almost dazzling phosphorescent glow surrounding the tomb…had been extinguished.
"The light's gone?! Hey, is everything all right?!"
"The light of the tomb should not cease so long as the trial continues…"
"Meaning something went wrong?! Emilia!"
Raising his voice at the sudden disaster, Subaru raced toward the tomb without a first or second thought. Ryuzu reached toward his back, shouting with urgency in her voice.
"W-wait, Young Su! You are not qualified to enter the t—!"
"Aaah? What the hell?!"
Ryuzu's voice trailed off in shock, leaving a bewildered Garfiel to send spittle flying as he picked up where she'd left off. Ram and Otto were just as surprised; even Subaru's breath faintly caught.
The tomb lit up the instant Subaru's foot hit the steps, beginning to radiate a green, phosphorescent light.
"The same as Lady Emilia… Er, Mr. Natsuki!"
"If I can get in, it's the answer to my prayers! Everyone stay outside! I'll call if anything happens!"
"Barusu!!"
Shrugging off the voices trying to stop him, Subaru raced up the stairs and dived into the tomb.
The ruin's air was cold and dry. The corridor in which his steps echoed was enveloped by the same green, phosphorescent light covering the outer walls, giving him a pretty good view of the moss- and vine-covered interior.
The strange sensation accompanying each and every step clawed at his chest. The scene, the location somehow seemed familiar to him, the inside of his head anguished as if being violated by some unknown memory.
"Of course I know this place… I came here before, in the dayt—!!"
Deciding that his memory from that time was the culprit, he impulsively stomped on the thought in his head with a shoe as he dived deeper.
The air deep in the ruin was stagnant, invading his nostrils with a dusty scent. He felt his lungs worsen with each and every breath. He shook his head as he went deeper, deeper, deeper— "A room?"
When he finally reached the end of the corridor, Subaru beheld a door before his eyes that led into a small room. The grimy stone door was already open, having abandoned its duty of warding off intruders, so Subaru slipped in without resistance.
"…"
He raced into the room, a cramped chamber surrounded by stone walls. Strangely, the vines and moss had not encroached upon it, and it had deteriorated only insofar as the ruin's age would suggest. In back of the notparticularly-large stone room was another closed door that likely led deeper still, and in front of it— "—Emilia!!"
A silver-haired girl was spread out on the floor, seemingly having sprawled her limbs when she collapsed upon it.
Unable to see her face from the entrance, Subaru desperately ran to her side.
He didn't know what had happened. All he knew was that he had to pick her up and escape from the tomb as soon as poss—
"—First, face your past."
The next instant, Subaru gasped when a voice seemed to whisper right into his ears.
"…"
Strength drained from him, leaving him no time to ponder what the voice might be.
His knees buckled, and Subaru's body went down like a doll, making no move to break his fall. Since he was in midrun, he tumbled onto the floor with limbs sprawled like a snow angel, ending up right next to Emilia by pure chance.
"…"
I've fallen right beside her once before, haven't I? he suddenly thought.
Before he could recall the memory, his first memory of death, Subaru's thoughts were swallowed up by the darkness—
6
As he always did, when Subaru awoke from slumber, he felt short of breath, as if his head were breaking the surface of the water.
The feeling was much like that of floating in a sea of unconsciousness, floating upward in search of the air called reality. Then, when his awakening lungs had breathed in enough of that reality, Subaru's mind awo—
"GOOD MOOOOOOOORNING, SOOOOON—!!"
"Hmrabhttnn?!"
That cool, refreshing morning, his poetic rise from slumber, was smashed to pieces by an incredibly destructive impact.
From above, something heavy squeezed the air out of his body, forcing Subaru to let out a cry much like a frog being squished. He batted the top of the futon away as he hacked and coughed.
"Hey, hey, heyyy, what's the matter? That's just my diving press to wake you up with love! Same as usual. Really gets those carelessness-is-yourgreatest-enemy fires burning, huh?"
"Koff! Koff!… That's expecting way too…much from a guy who's asleep… Wait, just now…"
What the heck happened? he wondered, lifting his face with tearful eyes. As Subaru brought half his body out of bed, the other party pointed a finger to the ceiling right before Subaru's eyes.
And then—
"What is it with you? You've got the look of a guy looking at his father buck naked in the morning!"
It was his father—Kenichi Natsuki—as he posed half-naked there in the morning, blessing his son's awakening with a cackling laugh.
CHAPTER 4
PARENT AND CHILD
1
The annoying cackling, laughing voice made Subaru appreciate that yet another normal morning had arrived.
He was in his own, very familiar room. There was a bookshelf stuffed with manga and light novels on the wall, and the student desk he'd been using since a young age held a variety of small tools and the fruits of various hobbies scattered over it. In the back of the room was an old television used exclusively for gaming, and before that was the very familiar sight of his half-naked father.
Such was the morning scenery surrounding Subaru Natsuki atop the nowunmade bed.
"…"
But amid that very familiar scenery, he felt an odd stirring in his chest—
"Heyyy, are you ignoring me?! If you ignore me I'm gonna cry! I'm your real daddy related to you by blood and no spring chicken. Do you really think I can take that? There's no way. I'll die from embarrassment!"
"Same goes for me, then! Or rather, the press just now killed me. Now I will sleep forever."
Subaru responded appropriately to his half-naked father's statement and ducked under the futon. Faced with his son's cold demeanor, his father— Kenichi—groaned out in dissatisfaction.
"Well, whaaaat is this?! Is this your rebellious phase?! Shit, I thought it'd come someday, but I never expected it'd be this morning. I should've spent less time preparing breakfast and more time preparing to speak with my own son…!!"
"You say that, but what are you tryin' to do with a guy's legs… Hey, wait a— Ow! Owwww!"
"Okaaay, I've decided that today, I'll have a heart-to-heart talk with you! First, let's talk with our muscles! You just try breaking out of my figure-four
leg lock infused with looove! Oh yeaaah—!"
With Subaru's legs bound in a lock atop the bed, Kenichi lay down facing the opposite direction as he applied pressure to the joints. Unable to resist, Subaru let out a painful cry, which Kenichi greeted with a laugh as he mocked his son.
"Gwahahah! What's wrong, what's wrong? You work out every day so you can grow big and strong, so aren't you ashamed of having such a hard time against one middle-aged ma— Ah, wait a second! Ow! Owwww!"
"You're a fool to pick a figure-four leg lock, it's weak against reversals. You're getting old, Dad! All I have to do is reverse my body and the damage flies the other way! Here's my revenge for you putting a figure-four leg lock on… Ah, wait! You can't reverse my reversal… Owow! Owowowow!"
As the victim shifted that morning, painful cries arose, boisterous voices filling the Natsuki residence to the brim. Thus did the horseplay resembling a father-son dispute continue until—
"Put a sock in it, you two. Your mom is getting pretty hungry over here and wants to eat breakfast."
When an uneven knock and a casual voice flew into the room, the pair engaged in a war of holds came to a complete halt. Both of them teary-eyed from pain, they looked at the entryway, where a single woman stood—a middle-aged woman with a foul look in her eyes.
At first sight, one might think the look grave, filled with considerable displeasure, but in truth, she wasn't the kind of person to think anything of the sort on the inside, something Subaru knew from seventeen years of being acquainted with her.
Subaru could derive all that from a single glance at her foul look, for the woman appearing was his mother, Nahoko Natsuki.
Nahoko's words made Kenichi go "Whoopsie!" He stuck his tongue out while leaping to his feet and said, "Sorry, sorry. I lost myself scuffling with
Subaru there. You could've eaten without us, you know…"
"—? Why would I, when we can eat as a family? It's better to eat with everyone together."
When Kenichi turned his attention her way, Nahoko inclined her head with a mystified look. There was neither sarcasm nor resentment in her speech; it was simply how she really felt. His wife's reply sent Kenichi nodding strongly several times over.
"That's right, so very right. That's my bride! You really get it. Breakfast is much tastier when everyone's faces are gathered in one place! "
"The taste doesn't change. Everyone eating together means I can wash all the plates at once, though."
"Ah, you were talking about the cleanup? Sorry, I guess I got overly worked up by my lonesome."
Kenichi said a rather nice line, but Nahoko's statement bluntly shot it down. Nahoko looked curious as the blow sent her husband's shoulders sinking. Then she looked in Subaru's direction and said, "You're coming for breakfast, too, Subaru. Your mom worked hard for your sake today, after all."
To this, she added a thin smile, which only those close to her understood meant she was in a very good mood indeed.
2
"Whoa, this is amazin', Subaru. It's a super-special course. It's like a green forest."
Thus spoke Kenichi, gone from half-naked to clothed, as he went down to the first floor with Subaru. Standing by his father, who wore comically eyecatching glasses, Subaru gazed at the dining table and sighed.
"I'm straight-up grateful. Mm, I seriously feel that way…but what's up, Mom? Why is my plate the only one with a big pile of green peas plopped on top of it?"
Just as Kenichi had pointed out, before Subaru's spot on the dining table was a special course, a large heaping pile of green peas. Incidentally, Subaru really didn't like green peas. He was bad with green vegetables in general, but especially these.
"Hey now, you're always saying how you hate green peas, aren't you, Subaru? It's not good to be picky about your food, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to make you eat lots and put that whole business to rest."
"So you relied on a memory you'd eventually forget anyway and decided to correct my likes and dislikes. But what do you mean, this opportunity…?
Is today some kind of special day or something?"
"Heh, you're so naive, Subaru. The day that is today…no, any day, any hour is precious time that will never return again in your life, so today may not be special, but it's special in its own way…"
"You can, um, stop now."
When Kenichi wedged himself into the conversation, throwing him for a bit of a loop, Subaru sat down with resignation on his face. Then the first thing he did was push the plate packed with green peas away from him.
"Anyway, I'll accept the feelings you felt for me on their own merit…but
I'll pass on the green peas. I'm not eating these things even if it's Armageddon."
"Sheesh, that kind of like-and-dislike stuff will be a big hindrance to life down the road. Ah, Mom, there's some tomato in my salad. I hate tomato, so give me something else to eat."
"That's my father for you, damn it…the first part of what he says has nothing to do with the second."
The husband passed the tomato in his salad on to his wife, stealing the boiled egg from her salad in turn. Such trades between husband and wife were always occurring in the Natsuki residence. Glancing sidelong at that, Subaru pressed his hands together over everything on the menu except the green peas, which that morning consisted of tofu, miso soup, and honey toast heavy on the honey.
"I think you're always doing this, but why the eclectic Japanese-style food?"
"Mom used seaweed as an ingredient in the miso soup. I like strawberry jam on my toast, too."
The reply was not an answer, nor was it consistent with that day's menu. If he pointed that out, Nahoko would no doubt simply give him a mystified look. Accordingly, Subaru didn't trouble himself with pointing it out.
"Mm, this miso soup… That's Mom for you. You've gotten better at this behind my back, haven't you?"
"You can tell? Actually, I recorded a thirty-minute cooking channel video yesterday over lunchtime."
"No way she watched it."
Kenichi's statement felt strongly appropriate to the moment, and Nahoko's reply felt incongruous with equal strength.
Furthermore, if Nahoko's statement were dragged in line with the truth, it would likely go from her having recorded the show to her having only recorded it, most likely never to consider it again.
"Setting that aside, what are you gonna do about this plate of green peas? I tried to pass it to Daddy, Daddy passed it to Mom, and Mom passed it to me, and we've been going around in circles…"
"But Mom hates green peas. I hate even looking at them."
"And you were trying to overcome me being picky?!"
"Ah, don't misunderstand me, it's not just green peas that Mom hates, it's all food that's little and round like that. It feels icky to put them in my mouth."
"That's not a misunderstanding, then—if anything it just sounds even fishier than before!"
Deflated by his mother's impactful statement, Subaru grudgingly pushed the plate of green peas Kenichi's way.
"Well, it's the husband's place to take responsibility for the wife, so I'll leave it to Daddy to reap the fruits of defeat."
"Hey, don't make me feel all lonely here, Subaru. We're family getting along like few do these days, right? In other words, if Mom hates it, Daddy hates it, too."
"Man, I really feel for this forest of green, nobody's happy with it!"
In the end, Kenichi made a face like a mischievous brat as he said, "Guess we'll have to plop 'em into pilaf until they're all gone. Heh-hehheh…" And thus, how to dispose of them was settled. No longer having to solo the green peas, Subaru readily promised to cooperate in their disposal. For her part, Nahoko declared, "I hate even looking at them," completely rejecting them in every way.
In the end, it became a competition between the two men to dispose of the green peas, and the family breakfast finally came to an end.
"It was a feast."
"Oh, it was nothing special. OK, let's wash all the dinnerware in the sink, then it's a race to school to help with digestion, Subaru!"
"I keep telling you, give it up with this cliché rushing-me-off-to-school routine. I'm gonna sleep till noon."
As the dinnerware was piled into the sink, Kenichi made the offer with a glint of his teeth, leaving Subaru to listlessly shake his head. Then, as he watched both parents head off, Subaru scratched his head as he went toward his bedroom—then his feet stopped.
"—Ugnh!"
A throbbing pain ran across his temples, making Subaru strongly rub his head and eyes. The light flashing on the backs of his eyelids made him blink, and he felt like he could hear something hot smoldering inside his chest.
—Something was off. Something about that morning was odd.
"Subaru?"
From the back of his head, the halted Subaru felt the gazes of his parents. Subaru knew just what emotions were infused into his father's gaze, his mother's gaze, the gazes of both his parents.
He didn't turn around. He silenced his head, practically fleeing—no, literally fleeing to his own room.
"What? Why, why am I getting these weird feelings like this…?"
Touching a hand to his own breast, Subaru sensed his rapid heartbeats, and even fear. Practically crumbling, he knelt on top of the futon, focusing his restless mind on the clock mounted on the wall.
The time was eight AM—school started at eight thirty, and it was a twentyminute jog from home. If he changed clothes, he could just make it without being late.
" "
But Subaru made no sign of changing clothes as he stared at the movement of the clock from atop the futon.
Gradually, the second hand notched forward, and the minute hand moved to ten—crossing the deadline. From then on, he would not make it in time for school to begin. However he might struggle, that was absolute.
"…So it can't be helped. Yeah, it can't be helped."
Perhaps, if there'd been just a little more time until he could harden his resolve, he might have made it to school. But reality had imposed its time limit on Subaru to an exceptional extent.
He'd gone beyond it. Therefore, no more would the choice press upon him that day. And yet—
"…Usually, this would calm me down, wouldn't it? What gives…?"
His breath was ragged, his heart rate wouldn't settle, and Subaru desperately tried to suppress the shaking of his body.
This was the time for his daily ritual of fear to come to a close. Even though he knew that the same fear would come every day at the same hour, that day's had exceeded all bounds.
That morning, no one would censure Subaru any longer. No one would hurry him, or back him into a corner.
Whether to go to school—the time that tiny question would cause such powerful pain to Subaru had come to an end.
It had been several months since he had rejected school and become a delinquent. Though this had given root to a powerful sense of inferiority and self-revulsion, he became relieved every time he confirmed that the time to go to school had passed. This was something Subaru had repeated many times over.
Thus, the palpable sense of relief should have been well ingrained in
Subaru's flesh. And yet…
"What is it, today of all days…?"
The sense of guilt and self-hatred, the clinging sense of unpleasantness… they just wouldn't vanish.
He didn't know where the sense of nervousness plucking at his chest was coming from. Without understanding how to set his breathing straight, Subaru agonized on top of the futon, smeared in disagreeable sweat.
Now that he thought back, something had been off from the moment he'd awoken that morning.
His father, Kenichi, hatching schemes like that to wake Subaru up was a daily fact of life. Once Subaru stopped going to school, becoming a goodfor-nothing in name and fact, his father's approach toward him hadn't changed from before.
And yet, the physical contact, the conversing, the holds from his father, now hurt for a different reason.
Even if his mother, Nahoko, had all kinds of harebrained ideas that strayed from the mark, with those that misfired, like the one that morning, far more common than those that did not, she'd always put Subaru first—always, for seventeen years.
Even so, his mother's gaze that morning had instilled a sense of loneliness and thoughts of self-reproach well beyond the norm.
Everything was the same as usual, not a thing out of place. And yet, he'd sensed something off about his parents, and about himself.
"The heck. What the heck, what happened? Yesterday wasn't anything spec— Ugh!"
When he thought back to the day before in search of the cause of that morning's change in tone, fireworks scattered inside his head. The pain interrupted his thought process, feeling strangely as if it was preventing Subaru's attempt to touch on his own memory. To prove whether it was so, Subaru would have to challenge the sea of his memory once more—and this he did not do.
There was no special reason for the odd pain that morning. That day, his feelings of guilt had simply decided to assert themselves as pain. Probably he had been unable to look either of his parents straight in the eye because—
"Subaru, can I come in for juuust a bit?"
A voice came through the door, but the door opened before he could reply. When he let out a heavy breath and turned his head toward it, Kenichi was moonwalking his way into his own son's room. Subaru spontaneously smacked his forehead.
"…Coming in before I answer kind of defeats the point of asking me, doesn't it?"
"Hey, now. With the hard bonds tying me and you, father and son, together, that's not really nece— Er, it kind of is! Sorry, I wasn't considering that you're in puberty. I'll come again after you've taken care of things."
"Don't go back to form and lob weirdly realistic conclusions out like that!
I wasn't even doing anything!"
When a crack was evident in the chain between father and son, he made a show of consideration. When Subaru spoke with a ragged voice, Kenichi went "Reaaally?" with a suspicious air and entered the room once more. Then he sat on the futon and crossed his arms in Subaru's direction.
"Well, it's fine. We'll leave what just happened as a secret shared by the two of us alone."
"There's nothing that needs to be a secret! Just be honest, sheesh! All you're doing is assaulting me before I get back to sleep again!"
"I get it, I get it— So, then. Let's get to the point. Actually, Subaru, I took time off from work today. Surprised?"
"…Yeah, I figured that. Daddy's not at the house on a Monday morning very often. And?"
"Don't be hasty jumping to conclusions. A father-son conversation is like boxing. The jab comes first."
Kenichi's laid-back smile and demeanor made Subaru feel like he was just drawing out the conversation. He was dancing around the main issue, using words and gestures to make light of things and giving himself and his opponent time to harden their resolve. This was a kind of habit in interpersonal relations Subaru knew well.
It was not simply because the apple did not fall far from the tree—there was a separate reason, one steeped in incorrigible idiocy.
"—Ow!!"
The instant he embraced that sentiment, a sharp pain ran through Subaru's head once more. He began to vaguely suspect just what was causing the pain. But Subaru averted his gaze from Kenichi as he said, "…And? Now that you've landed the jab, what's Daddy's right-handed punch, your conversation topic, gonna be?"
"Yes, let's see. Subaru, do you have a girl you like?"
"What is this, middle school?!!"
"Ohh, that overreaction is like making a confession, don't ya know?" "What gives with you saying that with that smug look on your face?
Exasperated sighs of lament don't mean anything, you know."
He'd meant to paper over the sentiment, but that blow had been an unexpected one. But, as a matter of fact, the assertion was off the mark, because Subaru didn't have any interest in such things at that time. He had neither the interest nor a belief that he ought to have one.
"Keh, well, aren't you boring. I laid it all out when you were little, didn't I? Girls have a weakness for promises that happened years ago and situations like that, so go make some and set up some flags, damn it!"
"If I sincerely took that as truth, I'd have every girl in town pointing me out as a dishonest bastard. I already have too many sins to deal with…you trying to drive me down into a living hell?"
"…If only you'd inherited my gentle mask. You've got Mom's I-don'tgive-a-damn look, plus Daddy's short legs and bad jokes. Your status points are pretty low, huh?"
"I've been sayin' that since I had a umbilical cord…"
The tension dropped between father and son as they bantered about their hardwired genetic situations. As the diversion ran its course, Subaru returned to "So?" once more and asked, "What was the issue at hand, anyway? After this, I have an important duty to fulfill: sleeping two to three more hours. So if what you want draws a total beeeep, then talk to Mom downstairs, okay?"
"Don't brush me off all natural like that. Besides, this talk would just fly over Mom's head. My wife and your mom is the worst woman at guessing in
the whole world. That's why I can't let her out of my sight, but…"
The natural way he tossed out fond phrases bored Subaru, his adolescent son, to tears. When Subaru hung his head, Kenichi went "Hmm," then twisted his neck a bit and smiled mischievously as he said, "Well, it happens to be nice weather out—how 'bout we dress up and have a little father-son talk outside?"
3
"Ohh, Ken. Not often I see you in the morning. They finally fired you, huh?"
"Don't be stupid. Nothing's getting done in that place without me. Felt bad to work so much that I'm stealing everyone else's job, so I've gotta lay off once in a while."
Kenichi lobbed his insult with a raise of his middle finger, smiling toward the owner of a nearby bakery as he passed on his bicycle. He proceeded to toss warm words the store owner's way as the latter vanished around a bend, adding afterward, "Sheesh, everyone talks like I got fired just 'cause they see me taking a day off. Is it so bad I'm nurturing a loving family here? And if I was fired, I'd get a new job before I got busted."
"…As a person you're nurturing, I'm praying you don't toss any heartstopping surprises like that on me."
Hands thrust into his tracksuit pockets, Subaru watched the conversation with the baker from a distance, with sinking shoulders. "Hey, hey," went Kenichi at his son's demeanor, adjusting the position of his highly conspicuous glasses as he said, "It's bad enough in your own darned room, but there you are, making that suspicious face when I've dragged you out and the sun's shining this bright on a nice crisp morning like this. You might get stopped by a cop like that."
"If I got stopped by a cop, it'd be because Daddy dragged me out at a time like this!! I…said I didn't wanna, but you twisted my arm anyway."
"What are you sayin'? That foot dragging was just goin' through the motions. You really love everything about Daddy, don't ya, Subaru? Relax, I love you, too. Next after Mom, that is!"
Their stroll recommenced, and Kenichi's feelings didn't seem all that hurt as he gave Subaru a slap on his back. Subaru grimaced at the force of it, but that moment, his thoughts were stolen by an even greater ache in his breast.
After all, simply walking close to his father instilled so much pain, he felt like it would crush his chest.
"Don't be all guarded like that. It's not like I'm gonna talk about anything scary. It's an actual legit father-son talk."
"'Legit father-son talk,' eh?"
"Yep, legit father-son talk— Incidentally, Subaru, which would you rather have…a little brother or a little sister?"
"Being asked that at seventeen is nothing but scary!!"
He'd lost count of the unexpected blows, but this one left Subaru aghast, voice coarsened. Seeing his son like that, Kenichi went "I'm kidding, I'm kidding," showing off his teeth with a smile.
"Well, Mom and I are certainly still on lovey-dovey terms, but at our age we really don't wanna see more than one of you. So be happy. You're monopolizing my and Mom's love."
"Ahh, right, right. Happy, happy… You really are joking, right?"
"That sounds like the lead up to Nooo, do you hate me that much? and that kind of stuff, huh?"
When the possibility it wasn't merely a joke finally surfaced, Subaru wordlessly reflected on that possibility. Taking in the insecure, objecting gaze, Kenichi laughed keh, keh as he nodded.
Subaru and his father were walking on a footpath a short distance from home.
Subaru lived in a place with a mildly famous riverside doubling as a spring tourist spot, with cherry trees growing along the embankment. It was currently the wrong season for cherry blossoms, so the embankment was in full leaf instead. Subaru glanced at the trees as he walked with his father around town.
"Ken, what are you doing here in the morning? It's a late hour for starting pachinko, don't ya know."
"Oh my, Kenichi. By any chance, were you seduced by the aroma of curry
in the daytime?"
"Oh wow, you're here, Ken? Now that's really funny. Isn't this bad for you? It's funny, though…"
The bright, sunny, average day made the time fly as father and son walked around town that morning, with numerous voices tossed their way.
—No, the voices were not being tossed their way. They were limited to the father, Kenichi, alone.
Regardless of whether male or female, young or old, there seemed no limit to the people who knew Kenichi's face. That went for the store owner in the shopping district, the housewife taking out the garbage, the senior high school girl with the ganguro look that was rarely seen nowadays, et cetera, et cetera—
"Kenny, it's been a while. You still hanging out with Ikeda, hmm?"
"That Ikeda guy? He won big at horse racing and used the money to retire and vanish ten years ago. He still sends New Year's cards, summer greeting cards, winter greeting cards, Christmas cards, and cards on his mom and pop's birthdays, though."
"I wouldn't call someone in touch that much 'vanished'…"
When Subaru inadvertently interrupted with a quip, he quickly covered his mouth. Overhearing his murmur, Kenichi and the solidly built old man he was speaking to looked over. The other man was wearing green overalls and a tag with the name of the riverside on it, so he seemed like a caretaker of some sort.
The old man spurring the conversation must have gone way back with Kenichi, his eyes going round as he looked at Subaru.
"Kenny, it's not often you bring someone along with you… Could that child be…?"
"Ahh, yeah. This is my son. Nah, I should correct that, my beloved son!"
"Ohh, I knew it! Somehow, he seemed like the spitting image of you when you were… Ahhh, maybe not so much. He takes after his mother, perhaps?"
"Errr, ha-ha… I get that a lot. Especially about the look of my eyes."
Amid the very average construction of his face, he'd inherited Nahoko's extremely characteristic three-whites-eyes look. In terms of outward appearance, about the only thing Subaru had inherited from Kenichi was the somewhat limited length of his legs.
When Subaru gave that noncommittal reply, the old man eagerly nodded.
"I am surprised, though. That Kenny got old enough to have a boy this big? Guess I'm getting old, too. If Ikeda was drowning, I don't have any
strength in my body left to go swim and save him."
"Well, I don't think even that Ikeda guy is enough of a kid to go play in the river and drown…"
"I certainly hope not. Ikeda and your father just won't settle down like they should at their ages… Did you know they both used to be brats who
walked around town kicking up all kinds of ruckus?"
"…Well, kinda."
Subaru's reply was on the awkward side. Receiving this, the old man knotted his eyes with a somewhat suspicious look. However, the next moment, the creases of his brow deepened further.
"Come to think of it…today's Monday, isn't it? What are you doing with your father at this hour?"
"—!!"
The question he did not want asked, the words he did not want to hear, made Subaru's heart strongly jump.
Next came the sharp, stabbing pain like that which had visited him in his own bedroom. Spontaneously, Subaru clutched his painful head and closed his eyes, wringing out "I'm sorry" as he turned his back upon the old man.
"Ah, hey, Subaru! Sorry, pops. I'll come again when we can take our time!"
"R-right… It seems I shouldn't have said that. Apologize to the lad for me, would you?"
The conversation exchanged behind him did not enter his ears.
At any rate, Subaru tried to run from the pain threatening to crack his skull, seeking a place where he could get the pounding heartbeats in his chest to calm down, fleeing from the embankment with rapid steps.
"It's nothing you need to apologize for—and the rest is his problem." While he fled, he never heard Kenichi utter those words behind his back.
4
"Here, a cold, tasty cola packed with loooove. If you give it a nice, good shake, it's even tastier… Well, I'd like to say that, but this doesn't seem to be the time."
"…No one has time to pack anything with love on the way back from the vending machine."
Accepting it, Subaru felt the coolness of the can on his palm as he put his fingers on the pull tab. Then, after a moment's thought, he pointed the can's lid toward no one in particular before putting strength into his fingers—The instant he opened the lid, the contents spewed out with incredible force, reducing its contents by about a third. And, witnessing this— "Tch."
"Don't click your tongue! I've seen this movie before! Aww, my hand's all sticky now!"
Shaking off his cola-bathed hand, Subaru clicked his own tongue at Kenichi's childish prank. Then he put the lightened can to his lips, swallowing down and healing his parched throat in one sitting.
He savored the carbonic acid bouncing down his throat, wishing it would wash away even the discomfort welling in his chest.
"So, you've calmed down?"
"…A little."
Replying with a sober look, Subaru sank his weight into the bench upon which his butt rested. As his son proceeded to heave a deep sigh, Kenichi, standing right in front of him, opened his can of cola and brought it to his own lips.
After fleeing from the footpath, father and son had ended up at a desolate public park for children. Naturally, it being morning on an ordinary weekday, there was no sign of anyone in the park, which liberated Subaru from the strange feeling of being backed into a corner.
Even then, the headache was asserting itself, but it had abated to the point that he could converse. He wanted to change the subject, and soon.
"…Incidentally, it took you a bit of time just to go to the vending machine and back. Did something happen?"
"Mm? Ah, nothing big. I just met a high school girl skipping class on my way to the machine. I lectured her about going to school, treated her to juice, traded e-mail addresses, and sent her on her way."
"There's no way I'm believing you got to trading e-mail addresses in that short a time!"
He had no words for the notion his father had gotten an e-mail address from a high school girl who was probably just going to the ladies' room for a few. "Is that so?" Kenichi asked Subaru, and he inclined his head as he said, "It doesn't take that much for a girl to give out her e-mail at least. My cell phone's address book has almost three whole pages full of high school girls' addresses I've picked up on the way."
"Even if I went to a government office or something I'd probably only get two. Daddy, you're not gonna get caught for some weird offense, are you?"
"Moron. I'm not interested in doing anything indecent with high school girls. They're children. The destination for my love was set long ago. My passions are for my family alone."
"Categorizing it like that makes it sound like I'm included, you know?!"
"…Well, I do love you. Like a puppy!"
"Like hell you do! Which one's the moron here?!"
Kenichi responded to Subaru's angry voice with a vulgar, cackling laugh.
That laughing voice left no refined echo upon the ear. And yet, for some reason, people didn't find it unpleasant at all. All Kenichi's actions were like that.
Everything he did was over the top, deprived of common sense, excessively theatrical, completely the sort of thing other people shunned you for, but for some reason, everyone took it in a really friendly way.
It was just that, merely by their going outside for a walk, the decisive difference between Subaru and his father was driven home to a distinctly painful extent.
"—!"
"Looks like you're in pretty bad shape across the board. That being the case, Subaru, how 'bout I carry you home on my back?"
"I don't need that, and I don't need to go back… Even if I go back, it'll be together and all."
If anything, his mother, Nahoko, was home, so Subaru's condition would probably get even worse.
He was coming to understand the cause of the pain arriving without cease. If his guess was right, the pain began to assert itself whenever he was in the same place as Kenichi and Nahoko, his father and mother. In other words—
"So what, even my body decided to finally chew me out?"
Did it mean his body had finally begun to cry out at the sense of guilt racking him from continuing to flee?
He spent day after day holding his knees inside his room as the hands of the clock reproached him for remaining inside his shell. He had an unpleasant feeling, almost as if someone were railing at him over his procrastination in a loud voice from inside his own head.
I dunno who you are or from where, but what the hell do you know about me?
"Hey now, Subaru. Let's change the topic—you have a girl you like, or something?"
With Subaru cowed into silence, Kenichi repeated the question Subaru had blown off once before.
The flippant way he asked it wasn't funny. The first time, Subaru had replied with a strained smile, but now that the question came a second time, it really got on his nerves for some reason.
With the aid of the unceasing headache, he felt like replying to the question with extremely crude language— "Subaru."
"Huh?"
Lifting his face, he tried to locate where the whisper in his ear had come from. But, however much his gaze wandered, he could not locate the speaker. The only person in the park besides Subaru was Kenichi.
Subaru's making that sudden, idiotic-sounding voice put a suspicious look over that very same Kenichi, who said, "What's wrong? You look like a guy just about to blurt out the name of the pretty girl he's not supposed to have."
"I really do look like that, so I can't say anything about it…but did someone call out my name just now? Daddy, don't tell me you've been
practicing mimicking a pretty girl's tone of voice?"
"Daddy has a variety of little tricks, but that one is not among them. OK, gimme about a month."
"I wasn't giving you suggestions! Really, the heck was that?"
The voice had a beautiful echo to it that resonated in the bottom of his heart like a silver bell. It was exceedingly gentle, its reverberation making his chest grow warm, and had such power to it that it made Subaru forget the headache that continued intermittently.
Subaru didn't know whence it had come, but the voice had saved Subaru.
"So, back to the earlier question. Have a girl you like?"
"…What is it with all this? Even if I had one, why ask her name? Not like you'd know who she is, Daddy."
"You're the one who doesn't know that. For all you know, maybe I have the e-mail address of the girl you like on my cell phone?"
"Even a century-long love grows cold."
To that blunt retort, Kenichi went "Whaaat?" raining "Boos" upon him in dismay. Glancing at the behavior wholly inappropriate for a man his age, Subaru drank the rest of his cola in one gulp, leaving the can dry.
"You don't need to put it off anymore. You can come right out and say it: 'Why aren't you going to school?' and whatever."
"And here I was actually being considerate to someone for once. You're a son who can't read the mood— Well, it's not like you're wrong, that actually is what I wanted to talk to you about…"
"…I think I'm doing a bad thing to both of you."
"You don't really need to think about that. I had a vague idea you had something on your mind, and even if you weren't thinking, well, I can
overlook a decent amount of that, so no need to dwell."
With Subaru airing his side of things a little, Kenichi drank his own pop can dry and sat on the bench. A gentle, refreshing breeze blew between father and son as they sat side by side.
The two proceeded to stare ahead, neither looking at the other's face as they wove their words.
"This might not exactly be the prevailing view, but I don't think school is everything. I mean, you won't hear that out of my mouth when I didn't take school seriously, either. I even skipped my graduation ceremony."
"And that's why, when you got your high school graduation certificate, you were with a woman two grades below you when she was graduating. My
ears are octopuses from hearing that one over and over."
"Well I'll make you listen to it till they turn to squids. Since this is me talking, if you don't want to go to school, I don't really think you need to. Now that I'm my age, I do think Sure would've been nice if I'd taken school seriously, but that's not something you're gonna get for a while."
Kenichi seemed to be gazing somewhere far off as Subaru stared at the side of his face, internally cursing his father for being underhanded. Even though he normally played dumb and showed only his flippant side, he'd set the clownish behavior aside in a place like that.
It wasn't fair, not fair at all, enough to make him feel like crying.
"These days, human beings seem to live till they're eighty years old. Isn't that great? If you have eighty years, you can get one or two of 'em back while you're still young. Luckily, I earn some pretty decent money. Like this," went Kenichi, tracing a circle with his finger as he laughed with a vulgar look. Subaru didn't even make a sound to Kenichi to show he was keeping up, but his father nodded several times, showing no sign of caring.
"Going through life, you bump into questions without answers that leap out at ya. In my case, I move around and go looking for 'em, but for all I know, maybe you can find answers to some questions rolling around in your room. If you're mulling something over, I ain't gonna complain. If you give up, though…then I might give ya a piece of my mind."
"…Why?"
"Hm?"
"Why did you feel like talking about this all of a sudden today? It's not like it's some kind of special day, right? It's just a…green peas commemoration day."
"That plate sure was full of 'em, huh?"
Though he'd emptied the cola just moments before, it suddenly seemed very dry inside Subaru's mouth.
As Subaru seemed to gasp for air, his father patiently waited for a reply.
Watching from the side as Subaru became agitated, Kenichi went "Hmm," twisting his neck several times before saying, "Why, I wonder. I just happened to be off work, and I was wiping myself with a dry towel this morning, and I was like…the horoscope said Aquarius would have a great day, plus there was the look on your face this morning… Somehow, you looked just a little better, so I figured you might be up to talking about it." "My face looked better?
"I'm talking about the expression on your face. Your face itself is the same, and you still have that villainous look in your eyes just like your mother."
Setting the three-whites-eyes business aside, Subaru touched his own face with a hand as he mulled over Kenichi's words.
There was no proof for what his father had said. That his face was better meant that there had been a change. But whence in Subaru's way of life to date had such a change come about?
Nowhere. Therefore, Kenichi had to have misread him. Nothing had changed yesterday, nor would it tomorrow.
That was fine, and that was what he intended. If he kept it up, no doubt at some point Kenichi and Nahoko would realize it—just what, exactly, Subaru was really after.
"—Nhhha!"
The moment he thought it, an impact shot through his brain enough to make him think fireworks had gone off in front of his eyes.
His heart rate became like an alarm bell; he could hear the exaggerated sound of blood flowing through his eardrums. The world going hazy before his eyes and his having a rising urge to vomit had a common cause: the unpleasant feeling inside his chest had begun to assert itself once more.
The sharp pain in his head, the uncomfortable feeling in his chest—both were trying to tell Subaru something.
"Hey now, you seriously look like you're having a hard time. Are you all right, Subaru?"
Naturally, Kenichi couldn't ignore the sight; he reached out a hand to Subaru's shoulder with a worried look on his face. When Subaru felt the touch of his palm, he lifted up his face, sweat on his brow as he tried to think of some kind of reply.
"It's been hard for you, hasn't it?"
"—?!"
Subaru's entire body ran hot when the silver bell voice made his ears quiver once more.
It was a voice full of affection and sympathy. The voice seemed to melt Subaru's strained heart, impeding his suffering as the swelling heat swallowed up the pain and the cracks therein.
The voice was scorching him. He chased after it. Without restraint, he clung to it to take back—
"Thank you, Subaru."
"You're…"
The sight of silver hair dancing in the wind was seared into his vision. She gazed straight at Subaru with eyes like radiant, violet gemstones. The words she wove with her lips were all filled with loveliness. "For coming to save me."
What, what, what, what, what the hell?
Who, who, who, who, who, who, who was this?
"—Subaru."
His breath caught. His throat was hot. Something was welling behind his scorched eyes.
"May the blessings of the spirits be with you."
His fingertips trembled. He couldn't put strength into his legs. His lungs convulsed, and his soul began to scream.
"I think you're the one who's reaaally incredible, Subaru."
He covered his face with his shaking hands, holding back the sobs in his trembling throat. The welling heat was trickling from his eyes…
"—Subaru, why do you come to save me?"
The answers to his questions were already inside him.
The instant he found them, the ferocious emotions and the sense of discomfort inside Subaru both vanished.
The skull-splitting pain, the rising urge to vomit, the dizziness making the world grow hazy, the heartbeats growing more urgent as a decision seemed to draw near—where all of them converged, Subaru Natsuki found his answer.
He lifted his face, wiping away the tears that seemed due to trickle down any moment. As if to shake off the tears of regret on that sleeve, he strongly, strongly clenched his fist.
And then—
"Sorry to make you worry. I'm all right now."
"That so? If you're just down in the dumps, that's fine, but don't make me worry so much."
"Yeah, my bad. Besides, about the question from earlier…"
Shrugging off the hand of his father supporting his shoulder, Subaru turned toward him.
As they sat closely on the bench, his father's face was peering into his own with a look of concern. Now that he thought about it, he realized that even though they'd exchanged words many times that day, he had not looked straight at his father's face even once.
Wanting to flee even then, he smiled bitterly at his own weakness.
"I found a girl I like—so I'm all right now."
With the sight of the silver-haired girl still fresh in his mind, Subaru Natsuki confronted his own past.
5
"I found a girl I like."
When he put the words on his lips once more, Subaru had the palpable sense of his heart walking forward.
The inside of his head was clear. The pain, like a prolonged curse, had vanished. As he was then, Subaru had resolve sufficient to face his father and tell him everything.
Before his eyes, Kenichi blinked several times over, surprised by the confession disconnected from the conversation to that point.
"…Is that so?"
With a quiet voice, he lent the words of Subaru, the words of his own son, his ears.
His demeanor was a blessing to Subaru. Even though Subaru ought to have always known he was the kind of man to lend an ear like that, Subaru had continued to hold his tongue. But that had come to an end.
That was because there was someone gently pushing on his back, urging him forward.
"What might've shaken me up, what might've made me curl up in a ball, I remember it all now—no, I knew everything all along. I knew it, but I just pretended to not see the weakness in me that I thought only I noticed… But while I was pretending, someone…"
He couldn't hide it by saying someone. He knew who that someone was.
"I wanted…Dad and Mom to smack me."
"…"
"I was an unsalvageable little good-for-nothing idiot, a complacent piece of garbage, so I wanted you two to smack me…to make me give that up." Without a word, Kenichi gazed at Subaru, his eyes never wavering.
The face Subaru saw reflected in those eyes was altogether too weak, unworthy of pity, and thus, he continued.
"I've used any petty little tricks I could since a long time ago. Whether
it's studying or athletics, I easily pulled off stuff that not many people can do, leaving the people who can't do it all mystified."
Thinking back to his youth, he could have called what he'd had an adorable sense of omnipotence. At a young age, Subaru had been quicker on the uptake with both athletics and academics than the average person. As if by nature, he was more clever and fleeter of foot than those around him, inevitably becoming the center of attention among children his own age—
"He really is that man's son."
Thus was Subaru appraised; thus did the adults close to home praise him frequently.
Since that him was his father, the young Subaru had been proud to be valued as his son. For in the eyes of the son, the father—Kenichi Natsuki— was an attractive individual.
He laughed a lot, he smiled a lot, he cried a lot, he got angry a lot, he moved a lot, he worked a lot.
There were always a great deal of people around his father. He was adored by many, and his smiling face was the axis around which they revolved. And that very father announced in public that the two members of family—Subaru and his mother—were the most precious things to him of all.
Subaru took pride in that. He felt it gave him a special right to a boastful sense of superiority.
Someday, he wanted to be like his father—to Subaru, that was a natural wish.
"But at some point down the line… I don't remember it, but I lost a footrace to someone. I went from being number one to not being number one. Faster, smarter guys than me came out of the woodwork, and I dropped from number one bit by bit… I thought There's gotta be something wrong with this."
The more the wrongness got to him, the more the star above his head seemed to move away, with each and every glimmering star between him and it forming the path he needed to take to get closer.
He harbored nervousness that the star might disappear. But even with that impatience within him—
"He really is that man's son."
Those words alone were Subaru's salvation, the hope to which he clung.
Even if he was not as fleet of foot, even if he was not as good at studying, those words bolstered the young Subaru's dignity.
More than training to run fast, more than doing his homework, he came to put stupid things first.
He sneaked into school at night with his friends, wandered aimlessly around the town, chased a famously dangerous stray dog from everyone's hangout spot—in this way, Subaru ran around protecting his pride to keep everyone from being fed up with him, thus protecting the meaning of his own existence.
"It's stupid to work hard. Having fast feet is nothing to be proud of. How I made everyone laugh was a lot stronger, a lot more impressive than that."
What others feared, he made his priority; what others detested, he made his own desire. Thus, he continued to challenge himself with precious care, with bold recklessness, so that he did not lose his place.
"But of course, the longer that continued, the next thing I was gonna do had to be even bigger. I couldn't do anything that was smaller than what came
before it. I didn't want anyone to think I was boring."
Thus, Subaru's actions had to be more and more extreme.
Subaru Natsuki had to be braver than anyone, more extravagant than anyone, more liberated than anyone—he had to be someone everyone could continue to look up to.
That was the veneer he adopted. Using the veneer, he hid the fact that it was a veneer so even he couldn't notice it, and he had to do more, more, more, to deceive himself and the people around him.
After all, he was Kenichi Natsuki's son—Subaru Natsuki.
"I thought I can do anything. I made myself think I can do anything. That's how what I did got stupid, just me flailing around without any thought…"
And so he was like a moth drawn to the flame, seeking light, never realizing that it would burn him.
However, Subaru was not a moth, and the same went for Subaru's friends. His friends had gotten it a long, long time ago.
There hadn't been any particular trigger for it. The number of friends associating with Subaru's recklessness dwindled.
"I thought Those guys are dimwits. You'll never have this kind of fun if you aren't together with me. I'd make those guys regret it. They could just idly pass the time away with boring stuff. I was aiming for even higher places."
If he continued chasing the star like that, he'd lose sight of the other stars above his head.
Unable to see all the stars filling up the sky, Subaru desperately chased after the glimmer of the one star that remained, gazing at that star alone as he continued running after it—when he suddenly realized.
"There was no one left around me but me."
Naturally. With Subaru continuing to do things his own way, heedless of everything around him, even the people who'd thought it was funny at first would not follow as he escalated his exploits to new heights.
Not noticing this, he distanced himself from them, laughing derisively at them and calling them dimwits, but Subaru, now the only one left, found his thoughts harboring worry and doubt, and thus, he distanced himself even
more. And thus did the cycle repeat itself until—
"Even though the sky has so many glittering stars, I lost sight of every last one."
Having lost sight of the starlight, and having lost all the friends around him, when Subaru was left all alone, enveloped by darkness, he finally came to realize it for himself.
—He wasn't a special person at all.
"He really is that man's son."
Those were the magical words that the young Subaru had embraced with pride. But somewhere along the line, the words transformed into a curse.
The curse rotted his heart. When he lost his place, he felt as if someone was chasing him, making him unable to breathe.
"By going outside, walking around town, I understood. Wherever I went, whatever I saw, there were traces of my dad everywhere… Of course there were."
In Subaru's confined world, he had come to admire his father. He'd wanted to see the same sights his father had.
To Subaru, who sought the same things his father had found everywhere he went, there was nowhere he could look within that confined world and not sense traces of his father.
In stages, the world became a scary place to Subaru.
What simultaneously rotted Subaru's heart was the realization he himself was mediocre, and the realization he didn't want either of his parents or any of the people who knew his father to know this; in other words, shame.
Subaru Natsuki, the son of Kenichi Natsuki, could not become known as a person who shrank in timidity from the public's gaze, a coward whose head harbored misconceptions and fear about a widening world.
From late elementary to middle school, through strenuous effort, Subaru managed to pass the time without standing out whatsoever.
Classmates who knew Subaru from his lower school years couldn't wrap their heads around the change in Subaru, but even they, children at an emotionally sensitive point in their lives, never noticed the darkness enveloping their fellow classmate's heart.
And what put him beyond salvation was that Subaru was crafty where the issue was concerned. Though he passed his school days without standing out, he continued to behave in the same old uninhibited manner at home.
"Even just remembering it, I shudder at how I passed the time back then. But that's how I managed to get through middle school… Even though we lived in the same town, most of my classmates stopped going to the same school as me. Guess because of test results?"
Even Subaru, who'd spent several years in such a backward-thinking fashion, harbored a faint hope from the radical change in environment. When he advanced into high school, the environment, one where no one knew his past, might generate new relationships—and if that was to happen, no one would see Subaru as Kenichi Natsuki's son.
Mustering all the meager courage inside himself, Subaru decisively stepped off the beaten path.
"Even for me, I totally blew my grand high school debut. A guy who couldn't have proper interpersonal relationships in little and middle school was never gonna cut it in a place with all new faces. I did bold and reckless stuff to shake off the tension, and the result was… Even an idiot could guess."
Even though it would be plain to an idiot, to Subaru it was not. The result hardly needed to be spelled out.
Subaru had never seen examples of how to approach other people beyond those of his father. He had nothing save his father as a reference for how to build relationships in a new environment.
Even if he knew stuff to make people laugh at a young age, to classmates undergoing psychological changes on the way to the second stage of their lives, it was nothing but poison.
From the first step into a new environment, he had gone badly astray. Thus, Subaru established his isolated position as a dork, someone who couldn't read the mood.
He wasn't ostracized. He simply spent his school life being treated like thin air. And then, as the days passed, one morning, he thought…
"I just don't wanna go to school today. It was a morning when errands meant Dad and Mom were both out, so even when it was past the usual wake-up time, I turned over and nodded back off—I was super surprised when I realized it was just before noon. After that, when I got up to change in a huge hurry…"
Subaru realized that his own mind and body were exceptionally at ease.
"After that, it was just a drag. I skipped one day a week, then it was once every three days, then once every two… It didn't take even three months before I stopped going to school altogether."
The days that followed hardly needed to be spoken of.
Once he stopped going to school, Subaru's heart was filled with a sense of relief. Yes, he was liberated from the painful times he underwent while at school, but that wasn't the main reason.
It wasn't a big reason, either. He'd become Subaru Natsuki, smug juvenile delinquent.
Looking at that Subaru, no one would think He really is that man's son anymore. But more than that, the exceedingly pathetic sight of Subaru like that would make both his father and mother stop loving him.
No matter how unsightly, how deplorable Subaru had become, both his parents had loved him.
That's what scared him the most. Nothing frightened Subaru as much as that fact.
And then, to Subaru Natsuki, Kenichi Natsuki and Nahoko Natsuki would say—
"'I don't love you. I hate you. You're…not my child.' I wanted you to do that, to say that, to throw me aside. I wanted to make you…give up on me."
With fleeting hope, he'd looked up at the sky, expecting to find the star that could never have been.
A human being as pathetic and mewling as Subaru was a fool unworthy of being Kenichi Natsuki's son. And thus, he wanted to be cast aside.
Not even Subaru himself realized that was what rested within Subaru's heart.
Unable to accept how weak and stupid he was, pushing onto others the task of cleaning up the mayhem that appeared in his wake, he averted his eyes, hating himself all the same.
In spite of all that, Subaru had not ended up shunned and abandoned by all, because someone had been there to support him.
"It is easy to give up— However…it does not suit you, Subaru."
The image of the silver girl imprinted on the backs of his eyelids now had a flickering blue radiance superimposed upon it.
With that, a warm breeze blew into Subaru's heart, making him pledge to move his listless limbs once more.
"Subaru, I love you."
With those words, she had given Subaru a push right when he should have been finished.
Because he realized that, because he remembered that, he set his heart on walking forward from zero—and to do that, he had to settle things with the past, the minus that came before zero.
"—Yes. My hero…is the greatest in the whole world."
"…"
Having listened to Subaru's long monologue to its completion, Kenichi closed his eyes, sinking into thought.
—In the end, the same as before, Subaru was forcing someone else to clean up after him.
Because he lacked the courage to identify his own flaws, because he didn't want to become the greatest villain in his own world, because he wanted to be the heroic main character, he kept making someone else play the villain.
He'd believed that if he did that—someday, Kenichi would break the door down, bringing it all to an end.
He'd spent day after day in foolish sloth, expecting that someone else would handle things.
It was with that deadlocked mental state that he had arrived in that other world. And, even in a place like that, Subaru had continued his conceited ways, until finally—
"Subaru."
Eyes closed, Kenichi stood before Subaru and addressed him by name.
When those words brought him back to reality, Subaru looked up at his father. To Subaru, ready to accept whatever Kenichi might say, whatever Kenichi might think, in its full, unvarnished form, he— "Father head!!"
"Gahhh?!"
Taking an unexpected blow to his cranium, Subaru reeled as fireworks scattered in his eyes. Toward his son, eyes tearful from the sharp pain, Kenichi powerfully thrust a finger and said, "You see that, Subaru? That's my angry blow, the father head move I've filled with love."
"Wasn't that a heel drop?! What 'head'?! Was that just to throw me off?!"
"That's what stretching after a bath does for you. Got my leg pretty high up there, didn't I?"
Kenichi began stretching his supple hip joints on the spot. His father's demeanor defied his expectations, leaving Subaru half in tears, unsure what he should say.
Subaru had been expecting something else—
"Gotta say, though, Subaru. You're, well…a pretty big moron."
"Uhh…?"
Insulted by the rather disconnected words, Subaru couldn't get a single word out when Kenichi crossed his arms and continued.
"In the first place, there's a lot that rubs me the wrong way, but there's one thing that's the biggest. You're the one who thought you'd get me to hate you. The way you did it was by rejecting school. And you thought, somewhere along the line, your dad would blow a fuse and yell at you…
That's stupid on a fundamental level, you know?"
"I can't really say I disagree, but…"
"I mean, if you want me to abandon you, you've gotta be more proactive about it. Who abandons his own kid just because he crawls into his own shell? If you want me to hate you, you should commit genocide on half of
humanity for no particular reason. Then I'll hate you."
"That's a crazy thing to ask for!! You don't see many villains like that even in shonen manga!!"
"To me, what you wanted me to do is just as crazy." The blunt retort silenced Subaru.
"Got it? Even if you were as slow-witted as a snail, a big idiot who can't even pick a banana hanging in front of his face, or even someone who
bragged about harming yourself on some big high-profile blog…"
"I ain't that slow-witted or stupid…"
"But even if you were slow-witted, an idiot, or a moron, I wouldn't hate you or abandon you. That's how it should be, right? I'm your father, and you're my son."
Exhaling in exasperation as he spoke, Kenichi made a nggh sound as he stretched his back. When he sat, and Subaru, dumbfounded, gazed up at his father, Kenichi closed one eye.
"It's my son's twisted nature to be just short of dumb, just shy of an idiot, and on a straight line toward being a moron. If you really want, I can smack that out of you by force, but…"
"…"
"It seems like you got up again after breaking down to the point that I don't need to."
Perhaps Kenichi had seen something in Subaru's face. His words made Subaru slowly get up. When father and son faced each other head-on, the son's expression made the father moisten his lips.
"This morning, I thought You've changed from before all of a sudden.
What happened to your face?"
"…I told you. I found a girl I like."
A silver radiance led Subaru Natsuki by the hand.
"Besides, there was a girl who said she would love even a guy like me." A warm, blue light gently pushed on Subaru Natsuki's back.
"Those girls, they don't know me as the son of Kenichi Natsuki. When I'm with them, I'm just Subaru Natsuki… No…"
Shaking his head, he gazed firmly at the father before him and went on.
"I was Subaru Natsuki in front of everyone. All on my own, I worried about being some poster child and ended up crushed by a weight that wasn't even really there. I finally get that now."
"Took ya long enough. I'm the central pillar of the family. A guy who didn't inherit the job had better not carry any social burdens like that till you're a full member of society. I'll slap you silly otherwise."
"This coming from a guy who dropped his heel onto my head just now?!"
When Subaru complained again about the painful blow, Kenichi went "Sorry, sorry," smiling without a shred of guilt. Then Kenichi's eyes became tense. "More importantly, you said you found a girl you like, and you said there was a girl who said she likes you… What's up with that? Are you twotiming them? A guy like you…?"
"Whaddaya mean, a guy like me?! To be honest, even I think I'm not qualified! But I can't help it! So I have two number one stars, what's the big deal?!"
It was unforgivable no matter how he might frame it, but at the moment, those were Subaru's honest feelings.
He loved Emilia. He loved Rem. They had given Subaru the strength to stand, to walk, and to face his own past, even in front of Kenichi.
The light that the pair gave off rivaled the starry sky Subaru had once had above his head.
When Subaru was outside his room, unexpectedly invited to another world, he became desperate, suffered pain and anguish, cried out in tears, lamented and raged, laughed in delight, and finally obtained a new sky filled with stars.
"Well, it's fine if you can get by without making the two of 'em cry… By the way, don't make 'em cry. If you can manage that, I won't object. Looks like you've got your own way with people."
"If I had that, my high school debut wouldn't have been such a black stain on my past. I can't do it like you, Dad."
"Do you really think that? You're my son, y'know. Besides, seems like you've got a bunch of misunderstandings about me, but that one's the worst, I figure."
"That?"
As Subaru inclined his head, Kenichi wagged a finger atop his crossed arms.
"Yeah. I'm all bouncy like this in front of you and your mom, but Daddy completely behaves according to time, place, and occasion, okay? Maybe you wouldn't know it because I'm always in full-throttle family-love mode in front of you, but what, you think Daddy can pull an act like that and it'll just work on everyone…?"
"Wait, wait, hold on…"
"Ain't it obvious? No one wants to get close to a guy who's that high tension the first time you meet him. That's why you've gotta keep your collar straight until you get along better. You've gotta wait a while before you undo the buttons. If you start in April, gotta hold out until the end of June for that."
The Shocking Truth: Father Revealed to be a Man of Common Sense and Appropriate Conduct.
Ignorant of this until now, Subaru had been shallow enough to believe he could just mimic his father to become a popular guy.
"Why'd I agonize for all that time, then…!"
"Aww, don't worry about it. It's my fault for not noticing how much you looked up to me because I'm simply that awesome. Sorry that I'm just too big a presence in your life!"
"Even though it's true, I really don't feel like acknowledging it!!"
Patting the lamenting Subaru on the shoulder, Kenichi did what he always did: step on the naive parts of Subaru and grind them underfoot.
As he quipped at his father, Subaru felt something hard and heavy inside his heart fade away and vanish. The dark recesses were brightening with the approach of daybreak, and his vision opened to greet the dawn.
Subaru had confessed that he was conceited and self-serving, and yet the result was only relief.
Facing his past like that was making a statement: parting ways with his weakness and embracing what he wanted for himself in the future, his current self could walk forward with pride from now on. That was why—
"Ha-ha-ha. Don't blush so much. You're still my son with my blood in ya. I'm sure you've got it in you to be half as cool as I am."
"Only half, eh? Normally, your genes get refined as you spend time in the world, right?"
"But half of you comes from your mom, y'see. Even if you've got my coolness in ya, the Nahoko part cancels it out, so I don't feel like I can expect much from the final judgme—"
"Sorry, Mom, he's got me there!"
Unable to stand up for his mother, who wasn't present, Subaru put his empty hands together and apologized. Laughing at the sight, Kenichi let his shoulders sink in exasperation as he moved on.
"This should lessen the burden on your shoulders a bit. The rest is talk about the future. It's all ahead from here."
"Ahh, yeah. Err, I really am sorry for causing you all that tr—"
"If you feel sorry for it, just spend a proper amount of time paying us back. You're the oldest son, so you'd better take real good care of me and your Mom later in life."
—When those words were spoken to him, Subaru was unable to move.
"…"
He'd had the resolve to apologize for how he had been to date. He'd had the determination to confess his current feelings.
These things, he had accomplished, finally dissolving that which had haunted Subaru for many long years, making him think he could face his father and mother again with sunny feelings.
He'd confessed everything about himself to date— "Ugh!!"
But the instant the conversation broached "from there on," what permeated Subaru's entire being was—
"…I-I'm sorry…"