This entry covers part of the tenth volume of the original “Re:Zero” novels.

In the previous part, Emilia attempts the trials for the first time, the protagonist riles up Garfiel for no good reason, we learn that the protagonist has parents and that his father in particular doesn’t know what a headbutt is.

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As you walk your way home, the sights of your hometown you have left behind make your heart ache. It looks subtly different, as if you were travelling as an adult through the neighborhood you lived at as a child, but you know it’s due to how you’ve changed ever since you were kidnapped into a fantasy world. In this fake reality, every person you come across gives you the impression that you have seen them before, as if every single detail is built from your memories. Such power is almost unimaginable, as not even the most powerful supercomputers of your previous world would have been able to reproduce reality to such an extent. This is the ability of one of the witches of old, from before the last Apocalypse. But should you be surprised? You already came across the Witch of Gluttony’s power, able to devour the memories of a person from every other person in the world, as well as rewriting reality to the extent that the actions of the missing person were assigned to someone else.
You finally reach the front gate of your parent’s two-story house. It took your dad so much effort and time in order to procure a nest for his family, but it now feels so small, so squeezed between the adjacent houses. The entire thing wouldn’t make even the fortieth part of Roswaal’s place. And yet, such a house was a pinnacle of middle class success in your country.
You step inside, and mom is where you would expect her. She’s reading a paperback that she holds with her left hand while she stirs a pot absentmindedly with the other. As you look at her, you feel that you hadn’t done so for a long time. She has tied back her long, brown hair in a ponytail, and her eyes are too similar to the ones that stare back when you look in the mirror. You know this isn’t your mother, but a construct made from your memories. Still, you feel for this version the same as you did for the real one.
“Subaru, you came back without your father?”, mom asks.
You realize that you must have stood near the doorway of the kitchen as in a daze, and it takes you a moment to return to this reality.
“Yeah, he’s gone to do some errands. More importantly, mom, I’m getting my backpack and going to school, to catch the remaining classes.”
Mom stands there confused, and contemplates your expression as if she doesn’t know if this is your idea of a prank. You guess she didn’t believe for a second that you would snap out of your state. But then she smiles softly.
“I told you those peas would give you energy.”
You exhale, then shrug.
“I’ll prepare my backpack then. I suppose every book is where I remember having left it.”
When you enter your room and look around at your shelves full of books, manga and music cds, you realize that the only thing you would miss more than your parents is all the stories you came across, that many artists from your previous world shared with others. You would never be able to get into a series that you had been interested in but never checked out, nor finish ongoing ones that hadn’t ended. You promise to yourself that you are going to learn how to read your new language properly, and figure out what interesting stories from your new home world you remain ignorant about.
After you clean your face in the bathroom and it doesn’t look anymore as if you had been crying, you walk down the steps to the front door only to find your mom waiting for you. She has dressed up and is holding her purse.
“I figure that I could accompany you for a bit. I have some shopping to do. It’s not too weird to walk out there with your mother, right?”
“Even if it’s weird, I’m fine with it.”
You walk to school next to mom. For five minutes she hasn’t mentioned you having decided to return to school after a long absence, nor the fact that you could barely leave your room for a long time. She goes on about stuff she saw on television, some bits of local news that you don’t even remember. It all turns into a droning sound in your ears, and you can barely bring yourself up to nod or reply with single words, even though it doesn’t seem to distract her from her thoughts.
“Where were you heading, mom?”, you ask with a thin voice.
“Oh, I need to go the mall to buy some groceries, but also a new dress for your cousin’s wedding. It’s in two weeks, you know”, your mother says with a smile.
Your mouth is dry, and your heartbeat is quickening. You swallow.
“Then we’ll part ways in front of the railway crossing, right?”
After she takes a good look at your face, she frowns slightly.
“Are you sure you are feeling well, Subaru? You seem a bit off. Maybe it’s not a good idea to go out if you’re feeling sick.”
“Never felt better.”
Your mother smiles weakly.
You realize that you’ve slowed your pace the closer you both get to the railway crossing, which you can already see at the end of the street. The barrier is down, and the sound is alerting of an incoming train. You have both reached the point of the street in which you would part ways. She turns towards you and smiles.
“Well then, have fun at school. I’ll prepare you some curry rice for when you come back.”
She had begun to turn, but you speak up. Your voice comes out thin.
“Mom, aren’t you going to say anything else about me returning to school?”
Her eyes widen, and her face shows surprise.
“Do you want me to say something?”
“Yeah, of course I do. Don’t you have plenty you would have liked to tell me during this period of my life? About the fact that I refused to go to school, that I went through such a depression and anxiety attacks that I could barely leave the house? Isn’t the fact that I have found the strength to return something to comment on?”
“… Yes. You’re right. I had not thought about that until now, as I was too occupied with being happy that you were returning to school. But yes, you are correct. You are behind in all subjects, so returning to normal will involve studying extra hard. It might be too difficult for you to do it on your own, but if you find out that’s the case, we can pay for some private classes.”
As she says this, the train rushes past. The sound is shrill and loud. The crossing barrier lifts up.
You swallow the knot in your throat.
“What about my classmates, my teachers…? Everybody there seemed to consider me a freak who made them all uncomfortable. The atmosphere already solidified, so for all those remaining years I would have needed to deal with classmates who considered me an outcast to reject and to mock. What do you think about that?”
The pleasant look on her face hardens as she looks away from you.
“That I always feared would happen.”
She clenches her hands around the fabric of her dress.
“Then what should I do, mom?”, you ask, barely preventing your voice from breaking. “How do I deal with this life, with the future that expects me in this world?”
She looks fragile. It feels as if you haven’t visited her for ages, and despite being in her early forties, she seems like an old lady to you.
“You know it already. Look around you, notice what people expect from you, and act accordingly. If you act normal, it will eventually become second nature.”
You lower your head. You feel hollow, as if something that should have filled you ever since you were born had never been there, and you suddenly noticed it’s absence. Even though you don’t want to, you hold your mother’s gaze.
“Mom, for the longest time, I despised you.”
She flinches as if you slapped her.
“All I remember of you teaching me how to survive in this world involved pushing me to be someone I’m not”, you say with a voice drained of emotion. “Everything that seemed weird or uncomfortable to you, you either didn’t address it, or you wanted for me to drown it deep inside of myself. It just happens that those things you always rejected from me are most of your son. You always made me feel as if I wasn’t worth anything unless I fit the image you were interacting with.”
She speaks with a shuddering breath.
“Your father and I always wanted the best for-“
“You know what your only principle you imbued in me does to a person? For as long as I can remember, most of my life consisted of wondering whether I was making a weird face, whether I was standing incorrectly, whether I was saying something I shouldn’t, or speaking at the right time. Every thought of mine was directed to anticipating what others would want of me, and everything that didn’t match that image was a monster that should be restrained and locked up in a basement. And because I started integrating that when I was a child, a few years later it wasn’t a conscious process any longer. Under the parts of my brain I had access to, other parts were dedicated to suppressing every thought and every feeling that didn’t fit what you would have called ‘normal’. For most of my life I didn’t know who I was, and I had failed to identify with my impulses to such an extent that I didn’t register my own emotions. I didn’t believe I had any. There was the conscious part of me, the one that should maneuver the world, and the despicable beast under it, which should be disciplined into obeying in silence, and otherwise stay out of sight. I only begun to live in middle school because I rejected everything you pressed into me, but by then I already felt so damaged that I don’t believe I can ever be fully fixed.”
Her eyes are watering, and she’s tightening her lips. She can’t hold your gaze. You wouldn’t be surprised if she simply shut off and walked away.
“But I don’t understand, you could become anything”, she says almost breathless. “You have the potential to be anyone.”
“Potential is nothing more than an expectation placed upon you by others. I could have only been one person: myself. And that’s the person you didn’t want me to be.”
She looks back at you, and you try to read her eyes. There’s a part of you that wants to see hate, or disgust. She doesn’t even allow herself to feel her sadness or regret.
“Mom, I don’t know you at all”, you say. “And I don’t think you ever allowed yourself to find out who you are. I don’t know who put in your head such a ridiculous principle, but you wasted your life. You almost wasted mine. The most I can do now is to struggle as well as I can with the pieces that remain.”
She looks away from you, and although she must be trying as hard as she can to prevent it, a tear rolls down her cheek. She wipes it quickly. You can’t imagine her saying anything. In any other circumstance, having to handle far less hurtful comments, she would have tried to excuse herself and walk away.
“I’m an idiot, mom”, you say quietly. “So are you, and so is every other person I have ever come across. We have no clue what we are doing, and we keep hurting others without meaning to.”
Mom has lowered her head, and seems frozen. Having to deal with any of what you are making her feel right now would involve rejecting everything she has built her life on. It’s far too late to turn back.
You dry your eyes and sniffle. You decide the last words you will ever say to this person for the rest of your life.
“That day I disappeared forever, right as I was about to leave our home I saw you sitting in the living room’s sofa as you were reading a book. I didn’t say anything to you, because I didn’t want to handle you looking at me with disappointment, nor have to face my own resentment.”
You walk up to her, hold the back of her head and kiss her on the forehead.
“Goodbye”, you say.
You turn around and walk without looking back. It takes a couple of minutes for your throat to loosen up, for your lungs to hold the air properly, and for the tears to stop dripping from your chin.

The closer you get to your high school, the fewer people you come across. In your real life you never returned to this place, you never faced all those people who turned their backs on you. As you stand in front of the fence that surrounds the school grounds, you don’t spot a single soul moving behind the windows, nor can you hear anything but the wind and the distant traffic. After you enter the high school you walk by the lockers, then your steps echo down the hallway. You walk up the stairs to the second floor and go down the current hallway towards your class, although you need to follow the signboards that show the class numbers.
You stand in front of the door to what used to be your high school classroom. You hold the handle and close your eyes. You can’t hear a thing beyond your breathing. Maybe this witch-created simulation is hiding that whenever you decide to open the door you will face all of the half-remembered classmates that you never got to know properly beyond how they rejected you. You picture them all around you, the same way you did in the previous world whenever you couldn’t force yourself to return to your classes. Those faces and so many others in your life that regarded you the same way. In the theater of your mind you see them glaring at you, laughing at you, criticizing you, questioning your very existence, and everything else that in the past used to make you wish you could run to a dark room, crouch against a corner and see nothing but the enclosed space in front of you. Now you let the tide of foul emotions wash over you as you hold on tight, and when you open your eyes again you find yourself standing on your own two feet.
You open the door. Leaning against one of the tables close to the windows is a girl of around twenty years old. Her skin is strikingly white, close to the color of snow, but her long hair, which comes down to her waist, is even whiter. She’s wearing the female uniform: a short sleeved shirt with a navy blue bowtie, a blue plaid skirt that hugs her slender waist and that exposes half of her white thighs, and knee-high black socks. When you hold her gaze, her eyes smite you: the irises are black, and the pupils are white, vertical slits.
The girl smiles as if she couldn’t wait to welcome you. She speaks with a self-assured, intelligent voice.
“Congratulations, Subaru. You passed the first trial.”
When your bewilderment clears out, you take a step forward.
“Who are–“
The girl narrows her eyes, and as if she had just shot you in the head, you feel something open in it. A flood of moments spreads through the confines of your mind as if demanding you to revisit them. You stood at the base of a hillock as you looked up at this girl. You drank her tea mixed with her saliva. You annoyed the hell out of her until you made her cry. She granted you the qualification to participate in the trials.
“Echidna”, you say.
She smiles.
“Yes, that’s the one. The devious witch who prepared these trials a long, long time ago. What did you think of your experience, Subaru?”
You are trying hard not to look below Echidna’s eyes at the way her clothes complement that beautiful, pale body.
“First, let me tell you that you look fucking amazing in that high school outfit, Echidna. I mean, I don’t think I have retained half of the words you just said to me.”
She wields a charming smile that her intense, black gaze doesn’t blunt. Echidna steps forward and then spins around a couple of times, making her skirt twirl. You feel the tingles, and you swallow to recover yourself.
“Echidna, you old witch… That simulation was something else. I knew you were powerful, but shit, that was some god-level stuff.”
“I’m glad you appreciate it. I will let you in on a secret, Subaru. It just happens that every contestant unknowingly grants me access to all of their memories, from their first recollections as a baby to the moment when they entered the antechamber at our tomb and passed out. So I know plenty of things now. Starting with the fact that you are a very interesting man, Natsuki Subaru. The most fascinating news in hundreds of years, in fact.”
She’s breathing deeply while staring at you as if you are a scientific breakthrough. It makes you shudder, but not entirely uncomfortable. It feels as if she wants you, your entire being, without discarding a single atom.
“I just realized the obvious”, you say, startled. “You have built this very room, and I doubt there’s any school resembling my old one in your fantasy world, so that means…”
“I will correct you, Subaru, on behalf of the people of this world. You keep referring to it as a ‘fantasy’ world, but it only serves to regard its inhabitants as mere characters in a play. I agree that this reality resembles to a significant extent the imaginings of artists from your previous world, but that’s one of the miracles of the multiverse. You need to give us some credit. We have been surviving in this reality of ours, which is now and for the foreseeable future yours as well, for a long time.”
You must have stood there with your mouth hanging open for a while, merely staring into this witch’s black eyes. You have tried for as long as you’ve wandered around in this kingdom to get through people’s heads that you came from a completely different world, and here is a person to whom you don’t have to explain anything. She has seen every memory of yours, she says. You swallow.
“You mean you know that I have died, and that when that happens…”
Echidna tilts her head and slightly raises an eyebrow as if amused because you are using a wildly imprecise euphemism.
“That you have died? How many times did you jump from that roof so that weirdly shaped fence could behead you? Do you want me to tell you the exact number? All because you wanted to repeat those two days again, sometimes just to get drunk with the same wines you had stolen in the previous iteration. Or to have sex again and again with your beloved. You have some wild ways of putting a witch’s blessing to use.”
Echidna has seen every moment of your life like you did through your eyes. She has witnessed all the deranged shit you have done, and she doesn’t just stay there, leaning against that table, she’s staring at you as if she accepts it all. No, as if she wants it all.
Overwhelmed, you rub your eyes for a moment, trying to digest the news at breakneck pace.
“You know, Echidna, other people must freak out when you tell them that you know everything about their lives, far beyond the extent than any other regular being would be able to. But I’m relieved. It’s been so hard to get people to understand. Like that one time I had to argue with what seemed like everybody in my new life because I needed to kill myself, and they wouldn’t leave me the fuck alone. But you get it, don’t you?”
“I do. You are a god-like being’s mortal favorite, and you have unlimited lives to spend.”
Your mouth is dry, and it’s getting hard to get a handle on the vortex of thoughts swirling in your mind. You can’t possibly grasp all the consequences of this unimaginably powerful dead witch knowing every single detail of your life. Still, the relief is making you want to choke up.
“You know, if I had imagined this moment, when I would face someone who would properly understand the shit I have gone through, I would have thought it would be more climactic.”
“Yes, I know what you mean. But that’s life, isn’t it? It rarely lives up to our expectations.” She gives you a smile that would make any man shiver. “You hold an unimaginable power that has gone relatively untapped. You can do anything, have everything. You escaped death in so many occasions, you may as well be considered immortal.”
“Well, what do you, a super powerful dead witch from the pre-Apocalyptic world, think about this whole shit? Is it as wild for you as it is for me?”
Echidna looks to the side to think about it. From your previous interaction with this witch you remember her almost putting on airs, or desperately trying to prove herself, as a self-described repository of knowledge of the world, after four hundred years of isolation had stolen her access to pretty much anything else but her dream-like grass world. Now she seems relaxed.
“During our first interaction you were as rude and disrespectful as nobody had been to me in my long existence. Worse yet, you touched me right where it hurts the most. But you were right, I didn’t have a clue. For starters, I now understand that you are as rude and disrespectful to everyone you come across, so I can’t feel special about that.”
“I’m not sure if I can deny that characterization of myself, but I had to figure out if Emilia was fine, and you were trying to delay me by involving me in your fetishes. You know, that whole making a stranger drink your saliva stuff. Which is fine, I mean. It’s just that it felt I was short on time at the moment. I’m okay with you now, you seem pretty cool.”
Echidna puts her hand on her mouth and laughs softly.
“Why, thank you. And now you understand me as well, what I am capable of, so we are even.”
“What’s your deal, Echidna? That Witch of Envy traitor just repeats ‘I love you’ over and over and sends me to the past, but you seem much more put together for a four hundred years old dead lady.”
She holds your gaze intensely, as if pleased that you want to know.
“It’s simple. I’m the Witch of Greed, and I want everything. Predictable, isn’t it?”
“Is it because you have to live up to that moniker?”
Echidna laughs, sounding as if she’s having the time of her life.
“Amusing a dead witch who has been trapped for hundreds of years… You are one peculiar man. Of course, I know that you aren’t aware, but in this world of ours when people are born there is a chance that they will be blessed or cursed, depending on how you see it, with certain incarnations of concepts. It just happened that I was granted the maximum exponent of greed. I don’t have to force myself to live up to anything, the same as Daphne, the Witch of Gluttony, cannot help but feel an all-consuming hunger every moment of her life. Such are the burdens we bear.”
“I see… But you didn’t want the clown’s money when I offered it.”
She dismisses the suggestion by waving a hand.
“There’s nothing more dull and empty than money. No, I want a taste of every fact of this world, or I guess now of every world, as well as of all the experiences and emotions. Every single possible one. I feel a curiosity that cannot be quenched, I cannot help but needing more and more. And I also want all the time in the world to be able to achieve this impossible goal.”
“That’s nuts, but surprisingly reasonable. Someone did mention to me that you were working on becoming immortal.”
Echidna lowers her head and sighs.
“I was researching a way to live forever, but I ended up dying. That’s like the opposite result of what I intended.”
“Because that Satella bitch killed you, didn’t she?”
She looks up at you again. She tightens her lips and nods slowly.
“The Witch of Envy, more appropriately. But yes, she ruined everything. She caused us to be thrown into this prison that we might never be able to escape. Can you imagine how hard it is to remain sane in such circumstances, no matter how powerful we are?”
“You seem… pretty sane, despite the whole drooling into people’s tea thing.”
“I’m really not, but I’ve had a long time to come to terms with my madness. However, I believe we have that in common, don’t we, Subaru?”
“Yeah, I suppose we do.”
You are feeling it bad. You hate that this person who knows everything about you, and whose words you are interested in hearing, has been jailed as a ghost in this ruin for hundreds of years. You want to save her. But she’s a witch of old, considered one of the most dangerous people to ever exist, and she herself said that she wants everything. You have no clue what means she would use to satisfy such a relentless need. Are you now like those stupid women who write to serial killers in prison and then they want to figure out a way to break them out?
“We got so derailed from my original question”, Echidna says. “I want to know how you feel about your experience with the first part of my trials. That’s the whole point of all this.”
“Ah, yes!”
You walk up to Echidna and put your hands on the dead witch’s shoulders. She’s surprised for a brief moment, but then she looks up at you with her black eyes as if this is just the kind of stuff you do.
“You should patent this shit, Echidna, or set up a clinic or something”, you say excitedly. “You must have learned about therapists and psychiatrists from my memories of my previous world, right? You could make a killing. Wait, you aren’t interested in money. But you would be able to get the memories of everyone you helped, and in turn they would make psychological breakthroughs, work through their traumas. It would help a lot of people.”
Echidna’s eyes widen a bit. She looks as if she hasn’t been taken seriously by anyone for quite some time.
“That… does sound nice. But I’m dead, Subaru. My range of operations is seriously constrained.”
“Yeah… I keep forgetting that you are a ghost.”
You feel sad. Then you stop resting your hands on the witch’s shoulders to instead hug her tightly, lifting her off the ground and spinning for a bit. Echidna lets out a few weird noises between incredulity and amusement. The old witch’s smell reminds you of an antique shop, but the slender body pressed against your own feels as young and solid as they come. When you finally lower her to the floor and you pull away from her, she has blushed, and is having trouble holding your gaze. You stare at her intently.
“My lovely yet terrifying Echidna, even though those weren’t my real parents, and that you had ulterior motives for putting me through that simulation, I managed to say to those two past owners of mine everything I would have never been able to otherwise. I got closure. I feel cleansed, a weight lifted off my shoulders and all that. And it’s thanks to you, old broad. I could kiss you.”
“Now now, calm down!”, Echidna shoots back, her cheeks puffed and red. “The trial was supposed to be difficult, it should require a significant change in your perspective, but you cleared it almost immediately. Also, you are still holding my waist. You are being too inconsiderate with a maiden trapped for hundreds of years.”
You stop touching the witch, and step back.
“I would apologize, but not only I don’t feel like doing so, you don’t look as if you disliked it.”
“A maiden’s body is still a maiden’s body, no matter how long it has been trapped. It responds to stimulus. You are a stimulus.”
“Well, I’m glad I got to stimulate that dried up body of yours. Regarding your comment, though, that test came way too late for me. I have already gone through so much shit in this current world that I had to figure those things out on my own to keep pushing forward. So for me it was mostly a nice way to see my parents for the last time.”
Echidna swallows and tidies up her clothes.
“You are right, I vastly underestimated you. It just means I’ll need to make a more interesting maze for the next segment of your trial.”
You smile.
“A maze, huh? And I’m the rat that would run through it? Is that your perspective?”
“That is one way to describe it, yes. Every interaction with the world and its inhabitants is an experiment, and I’m eager to see the results. It just happens that when you push people to the limits, they produce the most interesting results.”
“I’m not sure how to feel about that, but I’m afraid I won’t see your next maze, dear old witch.”
She frowns slightly, and her smile drops.
“Your people are trapped in Sanctuary. You need to break the barrier. I wouldn’t be able to lift it if I wanted to make things that easy, because in my current circumstances I don’t have the means to undo what I set up those hundreds of years ago.”
“Someone needs to break the barrier, for sure. But Emilia should be the one to do it. You saw her in my memories. She needs this for her aspirations, and to feel better about herself. A bit of therapy would help. Don’t worry, I will visit you again for sure, you old bones.”
Echidna seems frustrated.
“You are way too casual about how often you will be able to meet me.”
“What, you don’t want to?”
“The requirements for a living being to access the death-dream get more and more harsher. It might easily come to a point in which you won’t be able to do so again.”
Your mood sours. It seems you really want to keep seeing this black eyed loon, no matter how much she drools in your beverages.
“Your mind could become seriously unstable”, she continues. “As a practical immortal, Subaru, it all goes to waste if your mind breaks. I will do my best to keep you stable, but even I can’t promise anything.”
“Then I’ll look forward to drinking more of your spit.”
Echidna blushes even harder, a huge contrast with her snow white skin, and looks around as if trying to compose herself. She clears her throat.
“You have unsettled this maiden a bit too much for the moment, Subaru. I will bid you farewell until the next time. I hope you decide to attempt the next segment of the trial, though.”
The edges of the classroom are fraying quickly, and the surrounding furniture is vanishing.
“Probably not, Witch of Greed”, you say with a smile. “Emilia needs this, I think. I have always sensed that she has some tough shit to work through regarding whatever happened in her childhood. This might be her only opportunity, and I certainly cannot help her at all. So she’ll be the one to lift the barrier.”
The world has already gone white. You are both floating in nothingness, and even the witch herself begins to fade away. She gives you a look between frustration and apprehension.
“I wouldn’t count on it. Until next time, Natsuki Subaru.”

You are lying on the flat stones of the antechamber, resting on your forearms, and when you try to sit up and breathe, you cough for a while as if you had been breathing dust. Your mouth is dry, and you swallow to produce enough saliva again.
You are dazed as if you just woke up from a nap that ended suddenly. While you rub your eyes, you try to gather your thoughts. You went through the trial, you remember that well. You met a simulation of your parents, and although you get the sense that it should have traumatized you, you feel lighter, calmer. For a nasty trial set up by some witch of old, it was oddly beneficial to your mental health. How did it end, though? You recall standing in front of the door to your old classroom. You grabbed the handle, opened the door, and… nothing, you returned to reality. For some reason you are sure that you have passed the first trial, even though nothing in the simulation confirmed it.
Emilia! You remember that she must be here as well. She’s lying where you last saw her, near the center of the antechamber, lying face down as if she almost avoided faceplanting. You call out her name and run to her side. You hold her in your arms to sit her up. Her face still twitches as if she’s suffering through a nightmare, but that twelve year old elf who is somehow a grandmother had said that Emilia’s trial must have ended. Should your risk waking her up?
You can’t deal with the idea that she’s experiencing a nightmare and yet you will just wait for her to snap out of it. You shake her while repeating her name, and she finally opens her eyes. She stares at you with a blank expression. Midway through saying your name, it’s as if some horrible image flashed in her mind. Emilia grimaces, her cheeks twitch, and she shrieks so loud that it makes you hunch over and clench your teeth.
“Emilia, it’s alright! You are awake now! You don’t–…”
The half-elf holds her head with both hands as if she fears it would burst otherwise. She tries to roll around in your arms, but you hold her tight.
“I-I didn’t want to!”, she says with a panicked voice. “It wasn’t me! P-Please don’t leave me! No! Don’t leave me alone! I didn’t mean it!”
Your heart is pumping hard, and the warmth has escaped your body. Emilia doesn’t seem to understand that you are there, or that she’s awake. You hold her tighter, resting her face on your cheek, and she keeps pleading to some unseen ghost for a minute and a half until she passes out.

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Note from December 2020:

Another emotionally taxing scene. Damn you Echidna, who is going through the trials here? Also, I just want to have that old witch around at all times.