This entry finally concludes the ninth volume of the original “Re:Zero” novels.

I tried to end the third arc of this retelling with a shortish chapter, but it turned into a 7,700 words long beast. Enjoy it if you can.

GPT-3 is a cutting-edge language processing algorithm used in the premium version of the online site AI Dungeon.

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Although the numerous glasses of wine Wilhelm has drunk haven’t changed his stoic expression, for a good while he has been monopolizing the conversation by telling war stories that Crusch, although her eyes have turned reflective and her neck a bit wobbly, listens to attentively, only stopping him to ask him to elaborate on some points. Emilia has slumped on her chair and keeps giggling while she plays with Puck as if the would be mass murderer was a regular cat, and the adult-sized cat who told you to avoid turning the celebration into a funeral service has drunk herself into oblivion. She has crossed her furry forearms over the table to lean on them, and most of the time she either hides her face behind them or peeks over them to look around pitifully. When her gaze falls on you, you smile to make her feel a bit better. Although you wanted to drink with moderation, and you would be the only one able to drive these people anywhere if you could read the traffic signs, you still feel light-headed and careless about pretty much everything. You are, however, lucid enough to know how dangerous this is for you. You could easily make a habit out of drinking as you did during your self-imposed loop, so you can forget all the pains in your life, and particularly the damage you can’t correct.

It must be around twelve in the morning. Behind the mirror-like windows, only the distant streetlights clear the darkness of this cloudy night. Wilhelm and Crusch keep talking as if they are having a private meeting, while Emilia, who had sat on a nearby sofa around twenty minutes ago because she was getting tired, is snoring softly against a pillow. You had to lower her skirt a bit, as she hadn’t realized that she was showing her panties, and when you touched her, she slurred your name softly and motioned for you to stay with her, but you didn’t even have to answer before she forgot about it in her drunkenness. You are getting more depressed by the minute.
You suddenly realize that Ferris has disappeared. The wine bottle she had opened recently, even though nobody else could stomach any more alcohol, is also gone.
You hadn’t intended to find the cat-girl, but as you left the dining room for a bit of fresh air, you beelined towards the patio where both girls, Crusch and Ferris, used to eat breakfast during every morning of your self-imposed loop. Ferris is leaning against the edge of the table that holds special memories for you. You sat in front of it to enjoy many conversations with Crusch, and also the first time you killed yourself, by plunging a broken bottle into your carotid artery.
A quick look tells you how drunk Ferris is. She’s hunched over, and when she hears you come into the patio, she tilts her head towards you and attempts to recognize you with her glassy eyes. Then you realize that she’s also crying.
The cat-girl goes for the wine bottle, which she had left on the table, but you grab it and put it away.
“You have had enough, Ferris”, you say, with a mixture of genuine care and apathy.
She struggles to steal the bottle away from you, but she either isn’t putting much effort into it, or her drunkenness has stolen her strength. She gives up and returns to rest her ass on the edge of the table. You imitate her by leaning next to the cat-girl.
“You came to save me from alcohol poisoning”, she says somewhat mockingly.
“I don’t want you to drink alone while you are already drunk out of your mind, and also crying. I’ve been there. It doesn’t lead anywhere good.”
She points at her eyes.
“I’m not crying.”
“Your falling tears suggest otherwise.”
“I’m not crying, just…” She stifles a sob.
You stay silent and give her time to collect herself. This night is much darker than the couple of nights you had become used to during your self-imposed loop. The sky is clouded, blocking the moonlight, and the breeze that blows through the open patio, ruffling the cat-girl’s fur, suggests that you and Emilia might end up travelling home under the rain. You close your eyes for a moment and listen to a couple of owls hooting. This is bad, you think. Merely resting like this is letting the flood of sad thoughts in.
“I needed to drink because there’s so much to celebrate”, Ferris says with difficulty. “Like my best friend from childhood… my only friend… having forgotten who I am. And sometimes when she looks at me now I feel like she’s wondering why she let me hang around in the first place.”
“Crusch would never think something like that. You are just depressed. Besides, I’m also your friend, Ferris.”
She lets out a small laugh, and then she bumps her shoulder into yours.
“Oh, are you? I thought I was your sister.”
“Yeah, that was… Well, you can be both, I guess.”
As she attempts to push herself off the table, she puts her hand on your arm, and when she staggers towards the railing she lets her hand slide down to yours as if caressing it. She sighs and crosses her forearms over the railing right in front of you, leaning forward. Her slender waist moves slightly while the cat-girl presents her bubbly ass, barely covered by grey tights, as if inviting you to ram her from behind.
A flush of warmth makes you shiver, and your throat tightens. Although you look up at the back of Ferris’ head, those two big, furry cat ears, your crotch is already tingling.
“You should be careful, bro”, Ferris says playfully. “We’ve both drunk a bit too much.”
“You have for sure”, you say with a dry voice.
“We might end up doing something that mommy won’t like one bit.”
She steps back while holding on to the railing as if stretching. Her cat tail ondulates gracefully in the air, bridging the space between her ass and your abdomen, and then she slides the fluffy tip up and down your shirt deliberately.
You have already gotten hard enough that it nullified your slight inebriation. You need to excuse yourself and return to the dining room. No, to your bedroom. To the darkness of your bedroom where nobody but Puck will be able to see you masturbating next to your comatose girlfriend.
“Ah… I think you need someone to be there for you in a more friendly way, Ferris, while you grieve. Not for your fake brother to do unsanitary things to your sexy cat-girl body.”
“What do you know about what I need, huh?”
She backs up until her bubbly ass bumps into your erection, which makes you tremble from head to toe. You grab her slim waist intending to move her aside, but you end up merely holding her. She rubs your dick up and down between her ass cheeks. Your breath is thickening while your vision whitens. When Ferris rests the back of her head against your neck, her soft, perfumed fur makes you tingle, and the tip of her fluffy cat ear touches your own human one.
She grabs your head to turn your face towards her as she lifts her mouth to yours. Her breath, which reeks of alcohol, invades your nostrils. She presses her mouth against yours, and when her tongue invades you, it stings. It feels as if her tongue is hooking on yours with dozens of little spines. Damn it, the half-cats around here are mostly cats in that regard! Her tongue gets stuck for a moment, and when she retracts it you feel it prickling your tongue. You taste blood, but it only makes your dick harder while Ferris cradles it between her bubbly ass cheeks. If you had thought about it, you would tell yourself you had intended to push the cat-girl off, but in reality you have merely moved your hands up to fondle her small tits. Ferris moans.
She stands on her tiptoes to suck on your earlobe. She’s breathing hard, and her flesh feels warmer and warmer through the thighs. The cat-girl whispers in your ear.
“How did you put it? Bend me over and test drive a half-pussy’s pussy?”
You are melting. Before you can muster what little resolve you have left in order to stop her, her hand takes your right one, which was caressing her right breast, and slides it into the crotch of her tights. Her wetness drenches your fingers. Her tail which had been swinging from side to side all this time now stills. You feel the cat-girl tremble as you slowly slide your middle finger into her tight folds. As your finger goes in, she trembles even more, and she breathes hard while she presses her ass against your crotch.
You are losing it. You need to drag her into any of the empty bedrooms and fuck this cat-girl so hard that she’ll be leaking your cum for a week.
She turns her head to look at you with her hazy eyes. Her pupils have transformed into vertical slits.
“Please fuck me. I can’t deal with this.”
Her flax-colored fur tickles your nose, and her sweet scent is overpowering your senses. Her hot insides are sucking your index and middle fingers as her vagina pulsates. You don’t deny it to yourself: you want to pick her up, throw her onto a bed and grasp her wrists while you push yourself hard inside her cat-girl pussy. You aren’t even sure if it’s her body, or her attitude, or the stuff you both have lived through, or the fact that her current gloominess makes her feel like the only real person around. Your arousal is close to breaking through the many formless barriers in your mind.
“You need to learn how to deal with things, Ferris”, you say almost breathless. “You are way too drunk, and you got me way too hard.”
“I don’t care. Just take me. I’m all wet and ready for you, just take me!”
Her words hit you like a hammer. A shiver goes down your spine as you imagine the hot, tight feeling of her insides clenching around your hard dick. She’s calling for you to grab her, pin her down, take off her clothes and fill her to the brim. You can’t do this. Rem is… You can’t do this to Rem, even if she sleeps forever. You pull out your fingers, and her wetness follows for just a moment. Her pussy juice runs down your palm. You attempt to push her away with your clean hand, and you manage to extract your erection from between her ass cheeks.
“What the hell!?”, she complains while looking over her shoulder. “I said take me, now!”
“We need to get you sober. You don’t know what you’re saying right now.”
“I know exactly what I’m saying! I want your dick inside me!”
“Oh, God… I-I have a girlfriend whom I love so very much, I can’t-…”
Ferris glares at you while a couple of tears jump from her glassy eyes.
“Who is in a coma! She won’t ever know! She won’t wake up, and you know that!”
“No, I… I won’t betray her. Please sober up. You would regret this. I’m sure you would go all like, ‘I can’t believe I let you stick your dumb dick inside me, Subaru’.”
“Fuck you! I need it bad. The male half-cats’ dicks have spines that rake your insides raw.”
“I didn’t want to imagine that.”
“I need you to fill me with your smooth cock. I’ve been touching myself thinking about it.”
Ferris turns around and grabs the waist of your pants, but before she pulls them down, you grab her wrists. You struggle with her drunken self while she breathes hard through her mouth and tears fall down her reddened cheeks.
“No”, you say seriously. “I’m not a traitor. I can’t do this while she’s in a coma.”
You get your pants up and push her away with a hand. She stumbles backwards until she hits the railing, and then she rests her elbows on it while her chest rises and falls fast. She narrows her eyes and stares at you with pure anger, as if you are at fault for everything that has gone wrong in her life.
You swallow to bring some saliva into your mouth. Your heart is beating hard against your ribcage, and your dick hasn’t softened at all.
“I’m sorry, Ferris, but…”
The cat-girl clenches her teeth and widens her nostrils. She closes her eyes tight, and then rubs her thighs together as if scratching an itch. She turns around and leans over the railing to look down at the dark city streets beyond the mansion’s grounds.
“Who is the pussy here?”, she mutters.
Before you know it you’ve ran away. You are barrelling down the first hallway you came across, while your heart pumps in your throat and your erect penis waggles with every step. When you locate the first bathroom, you burst into it, and then close the door with your back. Thankfully the bathrooms have bolts. You open the faucet so the water keeps gushing out, and then you pull down your pants and grab your rock hard penis with your right hand. The veins pump against your palm. You lean on the wall behind the toilet with your left hand. Control your breathing, clear your mind. Wipe all the images of Ferris from your inside theater, and instead remember Rem. Picture her, feel her on top of you, your penis caught in her hot insides, her vaginal muscles milking you, her hands running their fingers through your hair, her fangs plunged into your throat and sucking you dry, her jaw tightening and tightening and tightening until it crushes the esophagus and the trachea, and still your sweet Rem keeps sucking out and sucking out your filthy life.
You groan, it feels as if your heart is about to stop, your legs wobble, your crotch gets red hot, and with a final spasm you shoot cum all over the toilet, the ground around it, and the wall behind it. You keep jerking and jerking while you wheeze, until you squeeze the last drop.
You collapse on your knees, dipping your skin on the puddles of cum. Sweat runs down your face, some gets in your eye. You keep shivering. You focus on controlling your breathing and feeling your heartbeat as it stabilizes until you can breathe through your nostrils again.
When some seconds later your legs get strong enough to support your weight, you fill the sink with water and dunk your face so the coldness seeps in.

When you have dried your face and you feel as if you can face the world again, you were about to exit the bathroom when you realize that you forgot to clean. If the staff members traced the destruction back to you, you would need to walk around the mansion’s grounds with your head down. You wipe the floor, the toilet and the wall behind it until it no longer looks as if a ghost has exploded, and then you peek out of the bathroom into the hallway. You don’t hear anyone coming. You have no idea how Ferris would react if you were to come across her. You wonder if it would be better to kill yourself and try getting through these last few days all over again.
You walk as fast as you can without running until you get downstairs, and as you turn a corner to reach a flight of stairs that would allow you to reach your bedroom quicker, you realize that there’s someone standing in front of a painting, staring up at it as if mesmerized. It’s the duchess. You approach her calmly. To eat dinner she had put her silky, green hair in a ponytail, and her profile is studying thoughtfully a portrait of her past self. The Crusch Karsten in the painting looks all regal in her military uniform and the pieces of plate armor that she had worn for your operation, and she’s resting her hand on the pommel of her sheathed sword that you had witnessed her using to kill one of Petelgeuse’s Fingers.
The current Crusch is wearing a black evening dress that’s covered by a red dressing gown that falls to her ankles, looking appropriately mature for your image of her. When she turns to address your presence and she smiles, you are overwhelmed by tenderness.
“Subaru. I was heading to bed, but I’ve made a habit to stop and take a good look at the lady of the house. Impressive, isn’t she?”
Crusch looks at the painting again as if inviting you to imitate her, but you keep staring at the living duchess.
“One of the most important figures of this nation”, you say. “And one of the most important women in my life.”
The duchess covers her mouth with her hand in feigned embarrassment.
“Flatterer.”
“Also, she’s the most likely to become the next queen, or however the people around here would call a female ruler.”
Crusch’s smile fades, and her lovely eyes turn mournful.
“But she’s so young. What does she know about anything?”
“Apparently she was groomed to rule her family’s domain since childhood, and she put her skills to use before she became an adult. She was well-respected, competent and liked by her subjects. Maybe she thought that she was too young for such a responsibility, and I’m sure she never enjoyed a proper childhood, but then again she also never suffered through the miseries that us lowly commoners, who are born with nothing, must endure.”
You intended to improve her mood with the levity of your tone, but when you remember her talking about how her brother was murdered by the Witch’s Cult, you shut your mouth and look down for a moment.
Crusch narrows her eyes, and after a few seconds she breathes deeply.
“It’s so disconcerting to rake my mind for any memory or feeling associated with this past, and yet find nothing. I can’t imagine how I must look like to you. Obviously all of you cared for me a lot, and now you insist on keeping me company so the void of everything I’ve forgotten about this world doesn’t contribute to my premature death. Still, at times it feels suffocating. The nature of this woman I seem to be demands some time alone for contemplation, or merely to recharge.” Crusch holds your gaze as if to judge your expression. “But I recall that I never got to ask you what you meant about you being my son”, she asks with curiosity.
You almost stutter, but you end up chuckling and scratching the back of your head. It’s too late for such a conversation, particularly after you came so close to betraying your Rem to fuck your first cat-girl.
“I kind of got into trouble with the most important people in this kingdom. Some decrepit bastards were insulting Emilia, so I jumped in to give them a taste of their own medicine. Along the way I ended up disparaging the Knights of Lugunica, and its captain, a proud guy with a personal harem of glowing groupies, beat me up to a pulp. In summary, I proved myself a fool unworthy of respect. Even though I had no relation to you, something about my shameful display convinced you to bring me home and have your particularly attractive cat-girl cure my wounds. You believed there was more to me than my talent to annoy everyone I come across.”
Crusch looks humbled by her previous self.
“That duchess you knew seems like such a great person. Big shoes to fill.”
“One of the coolest, for sure. Listen, I’m sure our previous Crusch felt the same way, but she had gained enough experience so that it didn’t show. You’ll get there. Don’t push yourself.”
You pat her shoulder, and when she keeps staring at you with a pleasant smile, you fear you will blush.
“Anyway, as I was saying,” you continue, “you housed me, and your numerous staff cleaned after my messes, so you became my new mother in my eyes. It’s as completely innocent as that, I assure you.”
Crusch nods as she rubs her chin thoughtfully. You are feeling increasingly nervous.
“I see… How long did you stay in this mansion… that apparently belongs to me?”, she asks.
For a moment you wonder how much Wilhelm and Ferris have told her about your presence here. You guess that they explained everything, but it doesn’t stop you.
“Oh, more than a year. We had such a great time.”
“What kind of stuff did we do?”
“Well, when we woke up at night and we couldn’t go back to sleep, we used to enjoy private conversations under the moonlight up there, in the patio of the second floor, as we tasted your fine wines. Sometimes we also ended up walking along the pond to relax. You opened your heart to me and shared your pains. We, ah… We used to slip under the covers of your fluffy four-poster bed, and you cuddled me against your warm, generous bosom while you ran your fingers through my hair, gave me soft kisses and called me a good boy.”
Crusch’s cheeks flush. She averts her gaze and begins fidgeting. You hope she’s considering that her past self did enjoy such intimate moments, but that she never dirtied them by sharing them with the rest of her household members.
“Are implying that we had sexual relations?”
“No! No, of course not! Never! That would be completely inappropriate! The responsible and kind thing to do was to keep our relationship only on a friendly basis. Well, we still failed at that. We shared very intimate moments that most human beings are spared. A few of the times I tried to kill myself in your mansion you rushed to stop me, and it didn’t bother you that you ended up drenched in blood.”
Crusch snaps her head back, wide-eyed.
“What are you… You tried to kill yourself?”, she asks with a low voice, concerned. “Why would you do such a thing?”
You smile to reassure her, and wave your hand dismissively.
“Ah, the usual. I was trapped in a hole I didn’t know how to get out of except by killing myself. It’s alright, though. Afterwards I always woke up in the bed you assigned me. Some of those times we enjoyed pleasurable conversations on the patio merely a few minutes later.”
You laugh while reminiscing, but Crusch has gone pale, and her pupils are trembling.
“We had quite the complicated relationship. I suppose I was concerned about someone so troubled…”
“No trouble at all, duchess! It was a wonderful time. One I’ll miss for the rest of my life, I’m sure.”
You pat her on the shoulder, but she doesn’t react. Her eyes are fixed on the floor.
“I mean, now that I think about it…”, you add, “I was horribly depressed and experienced suicidal thoughts, but every time you would cheer me up and convince me to keep going. And now I’m fine!”
“You aren’t, though. Lady Emilia even cried for you during our dinner because she realized you were heading towards suicide. You have never stopped hurting, have you?”
You hate yourself for having engendered such worry in the duchess on top of her personal nightmare.
“I assure you, my duchess, that despite the occasional ups and downs such as in recent days due to my girlfriend having fallen into an eternal sleep, I have learned to love life. I’ll only kill myself if… I mean, I won’t kill myself again for any reason!”
Crusch remains upset despite your convincing explanations. You put your hand on her back and motion towards her bedroom.
“Let’s just get some sleep, duchess. Everything will look clearer in the morning.”
You accompany her, because your bedroom awaits beyond hers. When you reach the duchess’ bedroom, Crusch grabs the door handle, but then she stops and lifts her gaze towards you.
“This world, it seems so strange to me.”
You sigh.
“I finally hear that from someone else.”
“Sir Wilhelm has explained in detail how our different camps fight to rule the kingdom, and after only one of us wins, the remainder will be at the mercy of whoever sits on the throne. The conflict might end up erupting into open warfare, and yet I’ve felt nothing but genuine care from you two. What sense does that make?”
“You are asking the wrong person, my dear duchess. Few things have ever made sense to me. And I don’t care either that you or the rest of your camp are technically our sworn enemies. As far as I’m concerned, Wilhelm is the terrifying, murderous grandpa that I never had, Ferris is the disturbingly sexy freak that I’ll regret over and over not having dragged into an empty bedroom, and you are my fake mother that has induced many cherished, shameful thoughts that accompany me during sleepless nights. I like all of you guys is what I mean. Those political machinations are beyond me.”
Crusch smiles softly.
“I see, you are poking fun at me. I prefer that to being handled with gloves.”
By now you are already used to telling the truth and people believing you are either joking around or spinning wild lies.
“Those political considerations, though…”, Crusch begins as she lowers her gaze. “They must have been vital for the Crusch Karsten I used to be. Maybe they kept her life running.”
“Sure, something has to pay for a few mansions and a similar number of wine cellars. And there’s the whole thing about developing her domain, keeping the peace, making sure her subjects don’t die of the plague and shit like that. I don’t know what you actually did. I mostly only remember you drinking wine and wearing sexy nightgowns as you invited me to get in bed with you.”
“I see…”, she says shyly, with a hint of blushing.
“But the fact we always remember is that you were always looking out for others. It’s not really something you have to force yourself to do, it’s just who you are. That’s the real you whether you like it or not.”
Crusch smiles as her big, honey-colored eyes regard you.
“I appreciate your words, truly.”
She holds your gaze warmly. You aren’t sure what to say or do now. Some seconds later, the duchess opens the door and takes a step inside.
“We should go to bed, Subaru. I need to rest, and you both will travel far to reach your camp’s headquarters. I’ve heard it’s quite the arduous journey.”

You step out of Crusch’s mansion while your legs bear the weight of your beloved demon servant, who is hanging limply from your back. Emilia is covering you with an umbrella from the drizzle that falls from the completely clouded sky, that makes it so although it’s some minutes after sunrise, it still seems like night.
You head towards the carriage waiting for you, parked next to the road that leads out of the gate. The merchant who Emilia hired is waiting for you both while holding his hat to his chest. The very day you had returned to Lugunica from your operation, both you and Emilia knew that you would eventually need someone to drive you back home for a trip that would take, leisurely, a couple of days. Emilia had asked who you could trust, and you had a man’s name to offer: the fellow who had proven that he could outrun the White Whale herself without even thinking of sacrificing you as bait. His name is Otto Suwen. When you both get close enough, he bows slightly, which makes his messy hair, which needs a haircut, fall on his forehead. The guy is only a few years older than you, and yet his hair is as incongruously gray as Crusch’s is green or Rem’s is light blue. Fantasy world things.
In any case, when Otto straightens his back again and he combs his messy hair with his fingers, he mostly focuses on Emilia. He seems awed by her otherworldly presence, and you can’t blame him. Not only she’s exotic in a world where half-elves, particularly silver-haired ones, need to hide from people’s stupidity, but she’s a sight to behold. Her face alone could make any man, and some women, swoon, and she’s wearing her fancy, very expensive looking white and purple-lined dress that ends mid thigh, showing the rest of her perfectly proportioned legs. The fact that you aren’t head over heels for her, thanking your lucky stars because she has deluded herself into loving your sorry ass, probably signals that the many horrors you’ve struggled through have broken your brain.
You both had already left your luggage out for Otto to load on the back of his carriage, and although he does attempt to help you climb onto the back while Rem’s weight drags you down, the merchant ends up preferring not to interfere, in case he ends up pushing your beloved demon servant’s comatose ass. Once Rem lies on the floorboards and you have rested for a few seconds to recover your breath, you cover her with a blanket and kiss her forehead. Her servant outfit, which the mansion’s staff had washed, exposes too much skin for such a cloudy morning.
While Emilia waits outside under her umbrella, you take the opportunity to greet your also beloved ground dragon Patrasche. She’s one of the two beasts who are going to pull Otto’s carriage towards Roswaal’s mansion. When Patrasche realizes you are going to give her some attention, she closes her eyes and shakes her black, reptilian head happily. She nuzzles your chest as you stroke her neck. The thought that this majestic beast is going to run around free in Roswaal’s yard fills you with a pleasant warmth, and you need every positive emotion you can get these days.
When you turn towards Emilia, you realize that in the distance Crusch and her two best pals have just gotten out of the mansion and are walking towards you, but Emilia attracts your attention because she’s rubbing her temple, and she twists her expression as if she’s experiencing some pangs of pain in her head.
You walk to her side and slip under her umbrella.
“You did drink until you passed out on that couch, Emilia.”
“Yes, I cannot be surprised…”, she says with a voice intending to dismiss any worry. “When I came to the capital from time to time, I used to drink alcohol to take the edge off, given how nervous the crowds made me. When we first met back at that inn I was drinking, wasn’t I? Still, I had never drank as much as last night. My head is killing me.”
You put a hand on her bare shoulder, which feels comfortably warm. Emilia smiles at you, appreciating the contact.
“You’ll just have to tolerate it standing up for a while longer. Once we sit on the back of the carriage and we get rolling, you will be able to shut your eyes and sleep if you want. I’ll make sure to alert you if there’s any problem. You don’t have to worry.”
Her eyes glisten with gratitude, and when you lift your hand from her shoulder and let your arm hang, she grabs your fingers for a few seconds.
Wilhelm, Crusch and Ferris stop a couple of meters from you. Wilhelm is holding an umbrella so his lady doesn’t get wet, while the cat-girl is wearing a fantasy world hoodie with the hood up. She has shoved her hands into the pockets. Ferris is as hungover as can be, and you get the sense that the old man had to drag her out of bed to bid you both farewell. In the shade inside her hood, she’s narrowing her eyes at the natural light of this cloudy morning, and a side of her mouth occasionally twitches.
Despite the embarrassment you both must feel from almost having fucked wildly last night, and your suspicion that she must resent you for abandoning her all wet and ready, you sympathize with this cat-girl so much that you just want to step forward and squeeze her in your arms. You won’t, though. Even if she wanted you to, she wouldn’t accept it in public.
Crusch is carrying herself naturally with the poise of a dignitary sending you off, and yet her honey-colored eyes are sad.
“I don’t know how to properly bid you both farewell. As far back as I remember, you have always been here, and I admit it fills me with unease to realize that you will be gone from now on.”
A sharp pain pierces your heart for a moment. You are about to speak when you see that Ferris has turned her head towards the duchess while the cat-girl’s wide-eyed expression, with her lips slightly parted, shows dismay. Maybe she feels as if she barely matters any longer now that she’s dealing with a new Crusch. These two women seemed so close before; you remember fondly finding them every morning as they ate breakfast and spoke at length about whatever they had to deal with that day, or about their worries and hopes. Maybe the former Crusch didn’t need any other confidant. Poor Ferris. You feel so bad for her, and it pains you that you are about to leave her behind, but you also prevent yourself from recalling your interaction last night, in case you end up having to say goodbye to these great people while sporting an erection.
“Duchess, our friendship will remain intact no matter what”, Emilia says sweetly. “Write to me as often as you want. And when we leave, you will still have these two lovely people who have always stuck with you through thick and thin.”
Crusch smiles strainedly. A forced smile, clearly indicating her attempts to hide her sadness, but beautiful nonetheless.
“Thank you so much for your kind words. I’ll love to receive your letters as well, lady Emilia.” The duchess turns her attention to you. “I will sorely miss you as well, Subaru. I fear I will always worry about your well-being.”
You grimace, and are quick to wave your hand while smiling nervously.
“I’m perfectly fine! You have more than enough with your own troubles, duchess. Focus on staying strong. Hopefully we’ll end up catching the bastard who did this to you and to my Rem, and you’ll return to normal. And even if you never do, you are still awesome the way you are. There’s no cooler duchess in this entire fantasy world, I’m sure.”
Crusch smiles once again, a bit brighter this time.
“I’ll try to stay optimistic.”
When you look at the cat-girl, you realize she has been studying your expression, but she averts her gaze as if embarrassed. Thankfully she doesn’t seem angry.
“I am going to miss you, Ferris”, you say warmly. “I hope we remain in good terms.”
She takes a moment, and then she forces herself to hold your gaze while she narrows her eyes. Whether because of her hangover or because she’s dealing with conflicting emotions, you can’t tell.
“We are friends after all.”
You swallow. She does remember, and she won’t pretend that she doesn’t.
“Ah… I’m sure things would have been different if I hadn’t…”
You don’t know how to continue that sentence, and you also can’t say, ‘I would have gladly entered a romantic relationship with you that would have us fucking like wild beasts every day, if it wasn’t because I’m already in love with a comatose demon servant, and because the half-elf royal candidate belonging to an opposite camp to yours would hate it’.
Ferris shrugs, and looks down.
“Woulda coulda.”
You feel terrible.
“Take care of yourself, Ferris”, you say with a pained voice.
“Always have.”
While you try to push down your sudden gloom, you turn to Wilhelm. The old man nods.
“Wilhelm, I cannot thank you enough for lending your legendary murderous skills so we could ruin that ancient ghost’s plans, which could have potentially ended the world. And also thank you for trying to toughen up a piece of shit like me.”
You bow to him, a proper thank you to your former master, the one who taught you the joys of bloodsport and the pain it can bring, the one who showed you how to survive by being utterly merciless. And, ultimately, the one who showed you how to die with honor.
You could swear that the ghost of a smile flashed on the old man’s face.
“I expect you to continue with your training back at your camp, even if alone. You never know when you will be forced to put it to good use.” His lips tighten, and for a moment he seems to doubt whether to continue. “I wish you will remind your lord that I would appreciate if he would share his predictions regarding where that damnable monster is sure to appear, so we can eradicate it. I am to assume that Roswaal had his reasons for keeping this information a secret, but if he wants to trade, I am sure we can reach an agreement.”
You feel hollow, and you have to force yourself to keep holding the old man’s gaze. His fire burns so he can eventually avenge his beloved, but you had deceived him so his camp could lend you their strength. You want to apologize, to ask for his forgiveness, but you also know you can’t bring it up now, or maybe ever. Your throat is getting tighter. If someone did that to you, told you there was a chance to return Rem back to normal, but that person had only lied to take advantage of your time and effort, you don’t think you could ever forgive them. You might even turn murderous.
“I will tell the lord that…” Your voice breaks, and warmth rushes to your eyes. “We’ll figure something out.”
You feel Emilia’s gaze piercing you. She looks disturbed as if she fears you either doing or thinking something bad. Confused, you return your attention to Crusch’s camp. The duchess seems troubled as she stares at you. You then feel something warm and wet running down your cheeks. Mortified, you quickly dry your eyes and sniff.
“Sorry. It’s just… I will miss you guys very much.”
Wilhelm had opened his mouth, but the duchess takes a step forward and speaks up.
“Then stay! I have loved hosting you two, and we get along wonderfully. Lady Emilia, I already consider you a friend, and I’ll gladly take care of you, Subaru. Just live with us. I’m sure we c-…”
Wilhelm, alarmed, puts his free, gloved hand on Crusch’s shoulder.
“No, my lady, they cannot stay. They need to return to their own lives.”
Wilhelm turns to you and bows his head.
“We should part ways. I hope we will fight alongside again.”
“The same”, you say with a low voice.
As Wilhelm tries to get the duchess to turn towards the mansion, Crusch looks dismayed. Her eyes seem to ask, ‘why can’t people who like each other live together in such a big mansion?’. Why can’t she play outside after dinner? Why do we need to work from nine to six five days a week to pay for a house we can barely afford? These races for the throne are so silly, whatever form the race or the throne take, but people like Priscilla wouldn’t give up, and most people, whether they are human or any percent of beast, are savages unfit to govern themselves.
As both camps walk away from each other in silence, you look over your shoulder towards the hooded back of Ferris’ head. Had she ended up hating you? The cat-girl looks over her shoulder as well, and her gaze connects with yours. She must have noticed your worry, because she turns away again and raises her hand as if bidding you farewell. She then shoves both hands into the pockets of her hoodie and keeps walking.
As you move towards the back of Otto’s carriage, Emilia shuffles closer to you and wraps her arm around yours. When you get on the vehicle and sit on the bench, you hear the rain as it falls on the tarp that covers the back of the carriage. Emilia has gone pale and is stunned as if she’s recovering from bad news she just received.
“What’s bothering you, Emilia?”, you ask.
“For a moment I was sure you would stay and live with them”, she says softly, as if she doesn’t want to speak the words. “Join their household formally. It would be a great life, wouldn’t it? And these people care about you a lot.”
“About you as well. They wouldn’t have treated like this any of the other royal candidates.”
“My heart sank, Subaru. When I thought that you would prefer to remain in the capital instead of returning with me to Roswaal’s mansion, I… I don’t know what I would have done. I would have wished to throw everything away, the fight for the throne, everything.”
You are disturbed, and shift your weight on the bench. Just how much has this girl deluded herself into loving you?
“Don’t say that. You have an enormous opportunity to move up in this world. Just imagine the things you could do if you had that much power!”
She takes your hand and holds it on her thigh.
“I know, and I have… I have my own selfish reasons for reaching that throne as well. Roswaal had made a promise of his own.”
You are puzzled, and for a moment she looks as if she wants to tell, but she ends up shaking her head.
“The kingdom is secondary for me. What a great ruler I would be, right? I admit that much… But I don’t think I’ll ever get another chance like this.”
You take a deep breath. You have a long trip ahead of you, so you’ll let it rest.
“In any case, Emilia, I’m coming back home with you. You will have me all to yourself.”
You had said that playfully, but Emilia’s warm grin, and how she embraces your arm closest to her, make you regret it. Your gaze rests on Rem’s expressionless face as she lies on her back on the floorboards, covered up to her neck with a blanket. It’s like she’s not even here. A pain grows in your chest, and you can’t ignore for a few seconds the despair that has been running in the background ever since you first realized that your beloved demon servant had been taken away from you.
Emilia hasn’t missed it, as she seems eager to notice all your expressions. Although you wish you could be left alone for a while, you want to avoid making people around you worry, so you force yourself to smile.
“Listen, Emilia, this will come out of nowhere, but I’ve been wondering if you could assist me with something once we settle back in the mansion.”
Her mood improves just because you want her help.
“I’m sure I will be able to. What is it about?”
“Could you guide me regarding how one would go about learning how to read and write in this language that for some reason I’m able to speak? It’s getting beyond embarrassing for me. I can’t even buy food without having to argue with the vendors.”
She lets out a noise of delight. She claps, and then she clasps her hands as in prayer.
“I will teach you myself! Ah, that’s great! I wish we were doing it already.”
That she’s so eager to help warms your heart. You were about to mess her silver hair as if she were some younger protegée of yours, but you feel it would be disrespectful, so instead you run your fingers through the back of her hair. The pleased, slightly blushed look on Emilia’s face suggests you have sent her a different message than the one intended. Still, you would have never done it without thinking if she wasn’t so clearly receptive to whatever you want to do to her. And you have already kissed her, back when you abandoned the shell she had become in that broken reality. She had tasted like snot and blood. You wonder how she would taste now that she’s normal, and you feel guilty.
“So, ready to get going, general?”, Otto asks from the driver’s seat. How much of your conversation has he listened to?
“I told you, just call me Subaru. Becoming a general was a historical anomaly. I’m sure I won’t act like it again. But yes, let’s get going. I’m beginning to hate carriages, so I hope you manage to avoid every flying whale and crazed cultist before we reach the safety of Roswaal’s domain.”
“I’ll try for sure.”
A few minutes later you realize that after your carriage ventures through a wooded area, you are going to lose any sight of the capital. You stand up and peek out of the tarp to look at the receding, distant streets, at that mountain half covered in buildings and topped with a big, palace-like building. Goodbye, Lugunica, you think. When we first met you scared the shit out of me, and not even an hour later a bunch of your thugs beat me half to death, but I came to enjoy your seediness, your royal bullshit, your noisy crowds, and the luxurious mansions at which I could hang out without having to do any chores nor pay for the food and the drinks. I feel I am not going to see you again for a long, long time.

Originally written in December of 2020:

Some observations. Both in the original novels and the anime adaptation, Ferris is a guy, so I hope you either remembered that or managed to forget it, depending on your preferences. Very little survived of the original Ferris in this retelling beyond the fact that she’s supposedly the best healer in the kingdom and that she’s Crusch’s best pal from childhood. Until a day before I wrote that scene, so maybe three days ago, I thought I wouldn’t write a sex scene between her and the protagonist, but my subconscious wove those plot details by itself and demanded me to write them down. When the subconscious comes up with those kinds of solutions for a story, you need to add them in.

Given that the third arc of this series has just ended, and that the next entry will begin the fourth arc, which hasn’t yet ended in neither the translated novels (up to the 14th novel as of December of 2020) nor in the anime adaptation, this retelling goes through a turning point. To decide which setups to include, you better know how they are paid off, and I haven’t read the last act of this fourth arc. In addition, I know for sure that I won’t write a single word this afternoon, given that “Cyberpunk 2077” is waiting for me. That damn game better live up to the hype to a significant extent. I tend to get tired of games fairly quickly, but it’ll likely still keep me busy for a while.

This retelling gets closer and closer to when I will be able to write my version of the Witch of Greed. I’ll enjoy that very much.

Note from April of 2021:

“Cyberpunk 2077” was utter shit.

We are still in the ninth volume of the original “Re:Zero” novels. Man, getting through this volume is taking some time, although I think that part 36 is finally going to close it.

In the previous entry, the protagonist understands that he has sacrificed his girlfriend to save Emilia and the world, and he begins to grieve for the demon servant. Meanwhile, the Witch of Frost turns into a discount version of the Witch of Envy.

I intended for this entry and the following one, of which I’ve already written half, to be a single one, but they will likely turn into ten thousand words together. This one is around five and a half.

GPT-3 is a cutting-edge language processing algorithm used in the premium version of the online site AI Dungeon.

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Before Crusch had lost her memories, she had organized paying a local transport service to return the evacuated villagers back home. They left the next morning. One of the staff members had caught you going to the bathroom and he had informed you that a certain Petra wanted to talk to you, but you asked him to pretend he didn’t see you. The thought of dealing with Emilia, who expected so much from you, already made your stomach churn, and now this twelve year old villager wanted your attention as well.
After waking up next to Rem’s unchanged, emotionless face as she kept sleeping, and would likely never stop for the rest of her life, your heart hurt as if your wife had died after a decades-long relationship. You just wanted to mourn her in peace and quiet, but the people around you just didn’t want to leave you alone.
You ate lunch along with Emilia and Crusch’s camp around a big table illuminated by chandeliers. Everyone focused on how much the duchess remembered how to do, and whether she might suddenly recover her memories as if she had suffered a particularly nasty concussion. Crusch knew how to eat by herself. She couldn’t name the different kinds of foods present on the table, but their taste didn’t surprise her. Apart from knowing how to speak the language, she also knew how to write. She lacked all the memories of who she was, as well as all the people she had met. A very selective memory loss, then again you shouldn’t be surprised if it’s magic based.
The poor duchess had accepted that she used to have a full life but that someone had stolen it, and now she acted poised and genteel, but without any haughtiness. It seemed like the generations of rulers that eventually led to her birth had forged her talents to lead and inspire to the extent that they surged out of her nature. Whenever you were in the presence of Crusch Karsten, you just wanted to listen to her and be there to help her with whatever she wished, because you had the sense that it would lead to great things for everybody. In comparison, Emilia, insisting on sitting next to you whenever you shared a room, felt like an involuntary recluse that was doing her best to pretend she was comfortable in the outside world.

The nerdy doctor you had given hell to for no good reason returned to check on Rem. It seemed that the guy was a well-respected healer in this part of the capital. He wasn’t mad at you, and after you apologized for your outburst and he examined Rem, he informed you that those afflicted with this curse didn’t need to consume nutrients, nor did they age, although they could be killed by the usual methods. You are pretty sure such a condition violates the laws of thermodynamics, but then again this is a world where at least one whale can fly. It seemed that a couple of cases of people afflicted with this curse in another kingdom had been kept for centuries on display like works of art in a museum. When you imagine yourself getting old and eventually dying only for your beloved to remain young forever, it wrenches your heart. What will happen with Rem then? Who will care for her and keep her safe? The most you can hope for is that Roswaal will assign her a bedroom in his huge mansion, and that the clown’s future descendants, if anyone wants to procreate with that guy, will carry on caring for the demon servant.
Emilia wanted to remain in the capital for a few days longer, if only so you two could visit together a few interesting sights. Crusch knows you both to be friendly and helpful and can’t grasp fully that you belong to an opposite camp, but even those who care for her safety and political ambitions, Ferris and Wilhelm, are comfortable with having you here. It’s as if they implicitly don’t take Emilia’s candidacy seriously at all, not that it matters to you.
When you think about what must be going on at Roswaal’s mansion you think of Ram. The senior servant, who had chosen to stay behind after the fight and handle the bereaved villagers who refused to leave, as well as make sure that the mansion itself didn’t collapse, must be now dealing with the remaining villagers attempting to return to their regular lives even though a quarter of the buildings were destroyed. Has Roswaal made an appearance? Has he had to answer for abandoning his subjects in their moment of need? It all feels so remote to you. Rem is in a coma, and walking around with your current depression feels like wading through mud. What does anything matter beyond the fact that you failed to save your girl?

Emilia has organized an outing to experience the bustle of the capital and to browse the wares of the numerous stands set up in wide open plazas. Crusch, like in previous days, wanted to accompany the half-elf and discover more of a world about which she mostly only knows what her subconscious has integrated. Although you believe you are doing a great job of acting as if the merchandise that Emilia brings to your attention, or the food that she insists that you stuff your mouth with, is improving your mood, you want to return to your bedroom and lock yourself in. You feel as if you are looking at your body from above as it moves by itself. Most of the time you end up walking behind, close to Crusch’s perpetual bodyguard Wilhelm. You can tell that the old man understands your gloom. A similar one has probably accompanied him for a long time.
Far enough that you can’t hear their conversation, Emilia is speaking warmly with Crusch as she shows her the fruits of a stand. The duchess, who is wearing a casual dress with a floral motif, holds one of the appas, the local version of apples, as if learning the most about this wild world is her current duty.
You stand next to Wilhelm. Although you want to steel your voice, it comes out hollow.
“Crusch’s memory has been wiped clean, my girl is in a coma from which she’s unlikely to wake up… This feels like a miserable defeat.”
Wilhelm answers without missing a beat, as if he expected such a comment.
“Regarding our operation, we ended up facing an enemy far more adroit than we could have expected, and yet we vanquished his entire branch. If you mean beyond the constraints of the operation, I do not believe we truly win in this life, Mr. Natsuki. That fiend Petelgeuse proved to me that I have reached a point of my existence in which no amount of training will prevent my decline, and it will lead to my final defeat, the same one that awaits every living being.”
You feel the weight of this man’s grief. He must have lost his wife maybe a decade or two decades ago, to an enemy that nobody truly expects to kill. The White Whale is categorized by most as a natural disaster, so you might as well fight a tornado. Wilhelm has lived for nothing else than to hone his skills so one day he might achieve his impossible revenge. He hasn’t moved forward, and he likely doesn’t want to. It would be like spitting on his dead wife’s face. You can’t blame him, and now you wish to do the same. Like it has happened regularly without warning ever since you found Rem in a coma, now your throat is constricted, your chest feels as if it might cave in at any moment, and you are overwhelmed by a coldness that no fire will warm. Will I need to become as strong as you, Wilhelm?, you think. You have to keep struggling even if you lose your will to live, so you might no longer have a choice.
The old man has allowed your silence, but he continues.
“Nevertheless, you are young, Mr. Natsuki. Your future has much in store for you. Likely you sense a fire in the deepest part of your self that demands you to keep fighting until you correct the wrong that has been done to the people you care about. You must tend to that fire. The fiend that damaged both miss Karsten and miss Rem in such a way could be located, and he might have the means to revert the effects of his ability, even if only after being persuaded by some of the kingdom’s best torturers. Our spy network is already looking for them. Whenever we get a solid lead, I assure you I will contact you, no matter the state of the relationships between both our camps at that point.”
Even though you can’t help but feel a bit of resentment towards the old man after he restrained you against your will when you were on a rush to kill yourself, you understand the extent of the favor he’s granting you. Even more, after Wilhelm bought your lie that Roswaal had found the means to predict where the White Whale is going to appear next, the old man must be waiting for an opportunity to confront the clown for keeping such vital information from Wilhelm, who must be known throughout the kingdom for wanting to obliterate that damn whale. Still, he wants to help you pursue your own revenge.
“How do you tolerate this for years, decades…?”, you blurt out with a pained, low voice.
“You learn that you can survive it all, Mr. Natsuki. Every tide of the foulest emotions that nature has planted on us so we might succumb to them. You hold on tight and wait until you find yourself on the other side.”
Emilia is smiling as she pays a vendor for the bag of fruits she’s holding. Crusch is chewing on an appa while her expression reacts to the taste. The duchess has transformed into the most sophisticated six year old.
“Look around you at this crowd, Mr. Natsuki”, Wilhelm says. “Every individual member knows to a certain degree about the evils that beset this world, and yet they continue living their lives and raising the next generation because they hold the belief that someone is going to fight against those threats. But there are but a few men and women who are ready to put their lives on the line, and fewer yet that have the talent and the skill set to succeed. If even one of those generations failed to create a group of strong people to stem the tide, the peace that allows us to go on walks and browse random wares would cease to exist. Those who intend to ruin this world will never stop, and neither should we.”

That evening, shortly before dinner, Emilia approached you and asked whether you wanted to take a walk around the pond where the old man likes to train. You declined. You wanted nothing more than to hole yourself up in your bedroom, lie next to Rem and stroke her soft, light-blue hair while letting your mind wander. Once again you erased Emilia’s smile. The girl never insisted after each time you refused, she only tried a slightly different strategy some hours later. You aren’t sure if you care any longer that you keep disappointing her. You aren’t sure if you feel anything except for this darkness pulling you to the ground.
You are lying on your shoulder next to Rem, who is sleeping face up. You run your fingers through her hair slowly, and occasionally dry the slight dribble of saliva that overflows from her slightly open mouth. She feels warm and her body smells like a healthy person’s, so your brain has a hard time convincing itself that the demon servant isn’t going to wake up at any moment.
Even though the first night you felt guilty, in the darkness, as you held Rem tight, you pressed your lips against hers, caught her lower lip between yours and felt her heartbeat pumping in the capillaries. You caressed her tongue with yours. For those moments Rem didn’t feel gone, but as if she was standing still to experience all you wanted to do to her. She’s become little more than a warm, moist doll. After the second night you ceased to whisper to her, as voicing your thoughts only brought you to tears.
While you are slowly and absentmindedly sliding your fingertip on Rem’s lower lip, a sudden movement a meter above the foot of the bed startles you. When you recognize the form of a little white cat hovering in the air, you instantly get annoyed.
“Sorry to appear at an inconvenient moment”, Puck says without sounding a bit sorry.
You dry your eyes with your forearm, and then frown at Emilia’s guardian.
“You only appear at inconvenient moments, Puck. What the hell do you want?”
“You have been hostile towards me ever since we came to the mansion, even when you pretended you weren’t. What’s going on, Subaru?”
“That’s why you appear without warning in my bedroom, interrupting a private moment?”
“You have done little else than seek private moments with your girlfriend during these last few days. It’s not as if I can speak to you in private when you are surrounded by the many current inhabitants of this mansion, can I?”
“So what is it?”, you ask with a prickly voice, “What do you want?”
He floats towards Rem’s bare legs, he lands on them, he sits and leans back against the bridge of her left foot. Witnessing this would be mass murderer taking such liberties makes you clench your teeth.
“Can’t I just be worried for you?”, he asks. “Everybody can see how much you are hurting because this girl that nobody else but you remembers, and who apparently you were sweet on, has gone to sleep for a long time. We gave you space, but maybe allowing you to escape into yourself day after day isn’t good for your recovery.”
“Don’t lie on my girlfriend’s leg”, you warn him with a growly voice.
He narrows his eyes, but he jumps up and hovers as if he were suspended from the ceiling.
“I wasn’t lying on her leg. How dare you suggest such a thing? I was perching. There’s a difference. I am merely having a conversation with my friend, despite his total lack of respect for me.”
“Respect has to be earned.”
Puck sighs with exasperation.
“Anyway, what do you want me to do? I’ll do whatever you want, but I think we should talk about this together… Can’t let a crisis go to waste, as they say.”
“Why would I want you of all people to do anything for me?”
“This depression is making you all grumbly, Subaru. It’s not a good look. It brings everybody’s moods down.”
A burst of rage reddens your vision. You turn, grab a small statue of a ground dragon that came with the nightstand, and hurl it at Puck. You would have thought that he would have evaded it while laughing, but it hits him square in the face throwing him to the ground behind the foot of the bed. Before you can think about it or control your breathing, he flies up and hovers in place while grinning.
“Just kidding! Can’t hurt me like that. I only have a semblance of a physical existence.”
“Glad you find my emotional turmoil so entertaining”, you say while gritting your teeth.
“I’m just trying to lighten your mood.”
“Fuck off, Puck. I don’t want my mood to be lighter. My girlfriend is in a coma. I have a right to be depressed.”
“You should at least want to get better, Subaru! It’s not right to enjoy pain.”
“That’s up for debate.”
“I have something that’ll make you feel better.”
“Unless it’s suicide, I’m not interested.”
“Don’t be like that, Subaru. I’m here to help.”
You shake your head.
“What the hell did you even mean with a ‘semblance of a physical existence’? Do you show yourself as a little cunt cat by choice?”
“I didn’t choose this form, no, but I do have to make an effort to remain visible for you lot. Most of the time I’m just hovering and flying around while invisible!”
“And you can jump to the location of whoever you know without them realizing you are there?”
“That’s right. A spy’s dream, isn’t it?”
“A pervert’s dream, you mean. What if you caught me masturbating? No matter when you decide to jump to my position, there’s a significant probability you might find me with my pants down!”
Puck smirks and tilts his head.
“In your case I set up a magical alarm that alerts me whenever you start masturbating, so I can come over and watch.”
You want to be angry, but after you think for a moment about your own sexual depravity, you just shrug.
“Well, if that’s a fetish of yours, I won’t complain.”
Puck looks weirded out. He quickly shakes his paw to deny it as if he’s been accused of it before.
You won’t let this pass.
“It’s funny to you how you go around acting all high and mighty when you’ve just admitted to being a pervert.”
“I haven’t admitted to anything! But at least I got you to stop crying.”
You get annoyed, and narrow your eyes at him.
“I will start crying again out of spite. Anyway, what do you really want, Puck? I don’t believe for a second that a great spirit actually gives a shit about my well-being.”
“I would care if only by proxy. It’s Emilia, of course!”
You look away and want to groan, but you feel guilty for having wanted to. Emilia isn’t at fault for anything.
“Yes, I gathered that.”
“I want to steer her away from the path of darkness, but given that she insists on attempting to collide with you, I’ll have to clean your soul.”
“A nightmare level mission.”
“Although I wish I didn’t have to say this, Emilia needs you. She needs the support of someone from the physical realm that truly has her back, and you have shown how much you want to keep her safe. You moved so many pieces to pull off this operation successfully that I still can hardly believe it. I took you for someone that had to be assisted to walk down the stairs, because you would find a way to trip and impale yourself on the handrail.”
You look at him with your face twisted into a frown.
“I guess that Roswaal took me in because he wanted a jester of his own. He needed to draw attention away from his own clown self.”
Puck ignores your annoyance, as usual.
“Ever since your apparently not so dumb self showed up again, Emi has been optimistic and giddy like a little girl, even though at the village she looked as if she were about to break. She keeps going on about how she will try this or that so you will feel better and spend more time with her.”
You lie down and rub your eyes for a few seconds. Then you rest on your elbow to hold Puck’s gaze.
“Puck, can I level with you for a moment, even though you are such a lowlife that I’ll need to metaphorically dig a hole in the ground and crouch inside of it?”
Puck smiles in response, and he makes a gesture which means go ahead.
“Emilia isn’t in love with me”, you say. “She’s in love with the idea of loving a guy who would fight the world to save her. You know what I mean?”
“Except that you have done so. She’s not confused about that. I have tried to tell her that you are full of flaws and not such a great guy, but she won’t have any of it. Sorry, kid, one of the sweetest, most beautiful girls in the world has fallen for your unworthy self.”
You shake your head. You find yourself looking at Rem, and you feel that you are insulting her by having such a conversation while she sleeps forever.
“Puck, I just want time alone with my girl.”
“Emilia doesn’t like that a bit, as you might imagine, but she’s also too good-natured to resent this servant when she’s fallen under such a curse.”
“Don’t tell me that the mighty Witch of Frost feels threatened by a girl in a coma.”
“The mighty Witch of Frost is afraid of losing her one and only love. I’m just trying to look out for my bestie’s best interest. Everything is in your hands now.”
You heave a heavy sigh. You sit up on the bed and lean forward to hug your knees.
“I might have unleashed a beast by pulling off such a stunt for her sake. I’m not into needy people. The thought of someone constantly wanting to be close to me feels suffocating.”
“Well, you’re just going to have to deal with it, because she’s worth it. Now, are you going to try to make this work out or not? You have to do it. You fought against an unbeatable opponent to save her, even though most of the world has proven to her over and over that it wants her gone. After you woke up from the beating that knight rightfully gave you and then you and Emi had your ridiculous fight, Emilia regretted exiling you. She believed that you had ended up hating her. Now you have turned into almost a mythical figure for her, and it’s your own damn fault. You need to take responsibility.”
You lie down again and look at the ceiling, the same one that welcomed you at the end of every segment of two days during your self-imposed loop. Most of those segments ended up with your detached head flying away and sometimes hitting some horrified onlooker, which back then you found funny even though you no longer had the vocal cords to laugh. You hide your face with your hands.
“That’s the thing, Puck, I don’t want responsibility. I’m a damn kid, and that will never change.”

You convinced Emilia that you should probably return home instead of keep fucking around in the capital, particularly when she is using the stay as a source of opportunities to get closer to you. Crusch herself suggested that you all should conmemorate your friendship by carousing the night before you left. That was your opportunity to ransack Crusch’s wine cellar and taste again all those wines that you had drank during your self-imposed loop.
You gather in the dining room in front of a lavish dinner that Crusch, who likely doesn’t feel much connection to her money anymore, spared no expense in. Emilia sits next to you, and keeps talking to you while you eat slowly and savor your food, enjoying the rare treat. Although you already feel sad because you will miss Crusch’s camp, ever since you returned from the operation, by this time of the day you are already too tired and you want nothing more than to return to your bed next to Rem. However, it only takes looking at the duchess, for whom everybody in this room might as well represent the only real people in the world, and at Wilhelm, who seems lost in memories as he cuts his food with precision, and at Ferris, who puts on a front of normality while assisting Crusch but whose distress at her best friend’s state shows on her face every couple of minutes, to realize that you will be leaving a family, one that due to your unnatural life you have spent much more time with than with Roswaal’s camp. Your emotions are playing tug of war, and added to your underlying depression you feel as tired as if you were trying to get through forty eight hour days.
Emilia is already tipsy. She keeps seeking your gaze, and when you face her glistening eyes, and all that attention she wants to give you, it increases your remorse. A part of you loves that someone as sweet and beautiful as Emilia has convinced herself that she wants you as a romantic partner, but the rest of you wants to flagellate itself for your failures. You had a single goal in this life, a promise you had made to yourself above all others, which was to keep Rem safe, to use your witch-given power to make sure your beloved would live a long, happy life. Now that you have failed catastrophically, what point is there to keep going? What do you have to enjoy? You have no right to. You can’t even talk yourself out of your gloom.
Emilia kisses you on the cheek and holds your hand closer to hers. She must have been trying to talk to you, even though all the noises and conversations around you had faded into background noise. As you hold Emilia’s increasingly watery gaze, the half-elf chokes up while a tear falls from her eye. This startles you out of your sulking as you look at her with concern.
“What’s wrong, Emilia?”
“I’m… I’m sorry, I’ve been trying to cheer you up for the past few minutes and you weren’t answering me. You seemed all gloomy and depressed, as if the entire world was coming to an end.”
Emilia has drunk too much to care about whether other people around the table are listening to her words. Wilhelm shoots you an understanding look while taking a drink of his wine glass, while Crush, sitting in front of you, observes your interaction as if attending class; you guess that every new development must feel vital for someone emptied of memories and who wants to regain her place in the world as soon as possible. You hate that Emilia would push for a confrontation in front of other people, even if she’s just doing it from a place of worry.
“I’m just going through a phase”, you say with a low voice. “Can’t get out of it for the moment, but I suppose I will get used to the world as it is now. I appreciate that you keep trying to help me, Emilia, but don’t blame yourself if it doesn’t quite work.”
You flash a reassuring smile at the half-elf, who looks back at you with an expression ranging from guilt to sadness. She strokes your hand with her thumb.
“Can’t help but being worried. You’re more than just my friend, you’re… If you hadn’t fought the Witch’s Cult for my sake, that servant wouldn’t have fallen to such a curse, wouldn’t she? Of course she wouldn’t have.”
You place your hand on the back of her head and pull her so she rests it on your shoulder. She hugs you from the side. You feel much warmer, and your heart skips a beat.
“It comes natural to you to blame yourself for everything. I don’t regret that we stopped those bastards, and we can’t change what happened. I’ll probably feel more normal in a short while. Just focus on enjoying yourself. Our graceful duchess has prepared such a regal dinner, it would be a waste to sour it.”
Although you were referring to Emilia bringing up the topic of your comatose girlfriend, when you look in front of you and face Crusch’s warm smile, as innocent as a child’s due to how she’s having to relearn the world, Puck’s words hit you. You are bringing everyone around you down because you don’t want to feel better, because you feel that you don’t have any right to.
You kiss Emilia’s silver hair and stand up straighter. At least you can try to enjoy yourself, even if you’ll have to push through it all.

A few minutes later you realize that Ferris is taking over some of the staff’s work by carrying dirty plates back to the kitchen, and her expression, as well as her occasional sighs, suggest she’s looking for a break. You excuse yourself from the table, gather a few empty plates and follow the cat-girl. You find her in the kitchen scrubbing a plate, while a male staff member on the other side of the room prepares a cake for dessert. You stand next to Ferris and you begin scrubbing one of the plates she brought. When you turn your head to look at her expression, even before you register it you feel a coldness in your chest. You had recalled the cat-girls outraged disappointment as she looked down at you back when you botched your suicide, as well as the shock when you asked her to kill you by boiling your blood, even though she suffers for every life she fails to save. When you come back to your senses, Ferris is staring back at you as if studying your expression. Her face shows a cat-like indifference, but her eyes tell a different story. She worries for you even though she has every reason not to care about you at all.
“Guess you also wanted some peace and quiet.”
You clear your throat. Your heartbeat has quickened.
“You haven’t taken any clients ever since we returned, have you?”
Ferris shrugs and looks down at the plate she’s scrubbing.
“I have a new full time job. You could consider it healing as well.”
You take your time to continue.
“I’m so fucking sorry about it all, Ferris.”
“You look sorry about everything these days.”
“If I didn’t tangle you people in my operation, Crusch would have carried on as usual, sipping fine wine and wearing those sexy nightgowns while sleeping in her warm bed.”
Ferris turns to look at you. She narrows one eye as a corner of her mouth turns up in a small smile.
“If that’s what you miss about the old Crusch, I assure you she recovered those habits almost immediately.”
“Still, I’m being serious. You are hurting as well, Ferris.”
“Pain is a fact of life. Half of my nature remains aloof and indifferent about these things.”
“I know you think we are enemies or something, but you can just lay it on me.”
Ferris leaves her last plate on the dish drainer and dries her hands. She lets out a heavy sigh.
“I want to be angry at you, Subaru, but I’m not. You also lost someone that you clearly cared a lot about. The blame lies on the two bastards who ambushed the caravan. I imagine that they must belong to another branch of the cult. Maybe they got information that we were foiling their attempt at kidnapping Emilia and resurrecting their witch, and it could be that one of those cultists we wiped out had told them. We knew they had at least one communications-based metia.”
You pass your arm behind her neck to squeeze her opposite, and furry, shoulder. As you open your mouth to speak, Ferris shivers, which reminds you that she insisted on you asking for consent before you initiate any kind of physical contact with her cat-girl self.
“Ah… I spoke to Wilhelm about it”, you say. “I suppose he has already told you, but there is the chance that Crusch’s memories aren’t lost forever. If we catch those responsible, they might be able to reverse the damage. We can hope that’s the case, at least. Even though I belong to an opposite camp, I’m very fond of Crusch and I want her to be well again. She’s also the only one around here that has any business sitting on that throne.”
Ferris shoots you a puzzled look, and then looks over her shoulder as if Emilia was standing there. By now your half-elf friend must be woozy from all the wine in her system, so she would have had a hard time following this conversation even if she had followed you.
After you put your last plate on the dish drainer and you turn to Ferris with your gaze lowered, she pats your cheek, and then moves that hand downward to lift your chin. The intensity in her eyes surprises you, particularly because you would have imagined that by this point of a conversation with the cat-girl she would have walked off angrily.
“Quit dissing your own lady, Subaru. That girl wants you by her side, and tomorrow you will return home and promptly forget all of us.”
“You are sorely mistaken about that last part.”
Ferris shakes her head slightly.
“Let’s try to get through the rest of this celebration without turning it into a funeral service.”

I thought I had already covered the entirety of the ninth volume of the original “Re:Zero” novels, but I was mistaken. Although most of what’s told in this entry doesn’t happen in the original or the anime adaptation, it would fall in that volume.

The previous part concluded maybe the most harrowing of the loops that the protagonist has gone through so far. He discovered that the people that like him, pieces of shit as they are, don’t agree with him killing himself. When the time comes to choose between the Apocalypse on one side and recovering his dick on the other, the man makes his choice. However, the Witch of Envy is a traitorous whore, so the whole thing ends up being a waste of time. You are welcome.

By the way, both in the original and the anime adaptation, all that happens after the protagonist discovers that Rem has fallen into a magical coma is that he suicides himself once, but after he discovers that Satella has updated the save file to a later point of time and he can no longer go further back, he gives up on saving Rem. That’s how much he cares. To be fair, he had “I love Emilia”-ed her in the later half of the first season, so it’s not as if he hasn’t proven already how much of a bastard he is.

GPT-3 is a cutting-edge language processing algorithm used in the premium version of the online site AI Dungeon.

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As your ass rests on the bench while Emilia’s head reposes on your shoulder, and the tween takes similar liberties with the opposite side of your body, you use the excuse of needing to sleep to close your eyes and disappear from reality. Usually you could rely on your emotions to guide you. If you needed to pull yourself out of a loop, your rage or your shame could impel you to perform way beyond what you would have believed possible of someone as useless as yourself. However, contradictory emotions keep now pulling you in circles inside of your mind. You feel relieved as if waking up slowly from an operation for which they pumped you full of drugs. Merely sensing your legs, your feet, your genitals, or something as small as slightly sliding your feet forward and backwards while you pretend to sleep, mainly so other people don’t bother you, makes your heart race. But merely moments later you are overwhelmed with despair. Your life is controlled, puppeteered by the ghost of a mass murderer who died hundreds of years ago, someone considered by your new world as the worst creature to ever exist, and she has shown you in no uncertain terms, despite her lack of communication skills, that you are going to keep living on her terms.
Rem is lost. Rem is asleep already, maybe forever. You try swatting away the bobbing feeling of impotence that threatens to make you cry, because you already know it to be worse than useless: it’s like ruining your day because you can’t help remembering a beloved pet who died a long time ago. Those feelings won’t bring the dead back, nor will they return Rem to her previous state. And despite what you confidently told Puck before you ruined that reality, the fact that you can confide in nobody else makes you feel as if you are being kept in solitary confinement.
Also, you can barely look at the current Emilia in the face. In this reality she hasn’t yet dared to clarify that you are accepted back into her camp, and more importantly that she wants you to remain forever by her side, because with your terrorist hunting stunt involving two armies, you have turned into something closer to a symbol in the half-elf’s mind. The first person in this world, possibly the last ever, who would fight impossible odds for this girl’s sake. You can’t exactly blame her for having fallen, or believing herself to be, in love with you. Only a fool in love would have risked his life to that extent for someone who had thrown him away in no uncertain terms.
Rem will remain in a coma likely for the rest of her life. You will take care of her body, of course you will, and seeing her withering away slowly while you fail to help her wake up will be your punishment. If you had never dragged her into saving Emilia, she would be fine. You sacrificed her. For a moment you ask yourself whether it was worth it, but you didn’t only risk losing everyone at the mansion, but Puck destroying the entire world. You had no choice. You should repeat it to yourself until your emotions believe it.

At one point you realize that your carriage isn’t moving anymore, and that people are raising their voices both outside and on the back of your carriage. You snap out of it and open your eyes. The kids sitting in the opposite bench seem worried as well as the couple of male teens, one of which seems to have a savior complex that could rival yours.
“Are we under attack?”, he asks you as if you have a clue about anything right now.
“What’s going on?”, you mutter.
“The driver said that we have come across remains of a few carriages nearby,” Emilia says next to you, “as well as some dead ground dragons, as if another caravan has suffered an attack. He has gotten off his seat to get more information.”
Ah, you have reached that point of the journey. Even though you don’t want to handle any of it, you are itching to get away from such a confined space, and from being surrounded by these people. You also want to walk around on your own two legs. You stand up. They don’t hurt.
“I’ll check it out. Stay here. Whoever attacked the caravan is already gone.”
“We don’t know that for sure…”, Emilia says, concerned.
You get off the carriage. It’s the right hour for breakfast, and the sun burns bright. As you walk towards the crowd that is inspecting the remains of the carriages strewn on the grass, you feel your throat tighten, and you want to smile purely out of relief. This is true magic, being able to propel your heavy, cumbersome torso and all the shit attached to it without experiencing excruciating pain for every step forward, such pain that if you had a gun at hand you would have blown your head off. You want to run around, do somersaults and in general bother all these concerned people by acting like a weirdo, but suddenly your emotions are pulled to the opposite side of the spectrum. You haven’t won anything. This is the relief of a slave that isn’t shackled for a day, although he shouldn’t have been a slave in the first place. And yet, at moments it feels wrong not to feel those shackles, not to suffer those tides of acid-like pain splashing against your mind and corroding your sanity. When pain cares so intently for you, you can’t help but care back.
You shake away those thoughts, and the first thing that strikes your eye is a dead ground dragon lying next to some broken wooden boards that must have belonged to a carriage. You crouch down to the dragon’s side. A gash runs across his midsection, tearing through flesh and organs alike, but the cut seems made as if by a scalpel handled by a giant surgeon.
“Subaru!”, Julius calls from the small crowd of people inspecting the destruction.
You stand up as the knight approaches. I told you we would see each other again, you think, even if the current you has never heard those words. The guy is appropriately worried.
“These carriages belonged to the duchess’ caravan. It’s her coat of arms. I don’t see any corpse of the many wounded that they were transporting, nor or the duchess, but there are splashes of blood without corpses, so they likely were hauled off by the survivors.”
“Yeah…”
Julius stops himself with his lips separated, and his brow furrows in confusion.
“You aren’t surprised by this?”
You feel a rush as if you’ve been caught masturbating. How tiresome. As if you didn’t have enough dealing with your regret and your guilt because Rem’s comatose body will be waiting for you in Crusch’s mansion’s yard, you have to figure out how to act properly even though you are an open book.
“After that Petelgeuse invaded my brain, I don’t think that many things are going to surprise me. But I’m certainly concerned.”
Julius seems to accept your excuse. He looks around for someone, and his gaze fixes on Ferris, who is standing alone near a broken part of a carriage that features Crusch’s coat of arms. The hairs on Ferris’ cat tail are standing up, and before you know it you are staring at her bubbly ass.
You shake your head and walk towards her. Halfway through you realize that Julius isn’t accompanying you, because he’s checking out the wound in the dead ground dragon. As you approach the cat-girl from her side, you see in her profile that she’s gone pale from worry. You suddenly feel that you shouldn’t speak to this person. You stop. Even though you can’t help but feel regret at how much you hurt Ferris through your failed suicide attempt, the current version of the cat-girl has no reason to despise you. In fact, after that whole business of hauling her ass through the village’s streets, she might have warmed up to you. Your brain isn’t built to separate the different versions of the same people you know, particularly whatever groove or fold of that mushy garbage filling your skull where emotions spark.
When Ferris notices you standing nearby, she shoots you a look that glistens with distress.
“Subaru. Who would have ambushed their caravan? My lady might be…”
You step forward and hug her. You feel her soft, flax-colored fur as you hold her head against you.
“H-Hey!”, Ferris complains, stunned.
“It was a terrible attack and it took the most precious person in the world, but Crusch is alive. Injured, but still kicking. If any of her limbs are missing, you will be able to reattach them.”
Ferris pushes you off without too much effort. Her arms are trembling.
“Your words mean little when we haven’t found any member of her caravan. And don’t hug people without their consent, especially being yourself.”
You sigh.
“Always going on about consent.”
“What do you mean always…!? And of course I should! Ah, I can’t deal with your weirdness right now…”
“You can deal with surprisingly little.”
A likely angry retort dies in her lips. She has clenched her fists. She frowns, turns away and walks off.
You briefly attempt to reach out to her by lifting your arm, but you give up. No matter what you try, you always end up hurting this cat-girl.

On the way to the capital, Emilia is too concerned about the ambush on Crusch’s caravan to bring up how things have changed between you two, but she does interrogate you about how you organized the operation, how many enemies you faced, where were they hiding, and particularly about Petelgeuse. You want to redact the details of how they were going to use her for their ritual, but in the end you come up clean about everything. It’s her life, she has the right to know. By how Emilia lowers her head and wrings her soft hands over her lap, you can tell that it must feel like an echo of all the hate she has received over the years for having been born a silver-haired half-elf. Those birth characteristics made her a suitable vessel for the Witch of Envy.
You again relate to Emilia’s situation. She is trapped in a way of life she never asked for nor wanted. You are both victims of circumstance. However, you still avoid looking at her in the face to an extent that must be confusing her. Your brain expects the half-elf to cry her eyes out half-crazed, until the point that she breaks. After how you abandoned Emilia in that ruined reality, you can hardly imagine her behaving like a normal human being, as if she were forcing herself to act normal while her broken self pushes to emerge. Everything she confessed to you, how she wishes you would remain by her side forever, how she was determined to take care of your every need after you destroyed your lower half, and even Puck’s words about how Emilia would love you to the end, all that must be resting under the surface she exposes to the world. It might be more need than love, though, for someone who seems to have been abandoned by everyone in her past, and whom the world has attempted to exile almost every day of her life.

Your caravan reaches Crusch’s mansion a few minutes after the sun has set. While Otto maneuvers to find some place to park the carriage, a rush of nerves constricts your throat. Even though you know that Rem has already fallen to that magical coma, you feel as if there’s a chance that this time reality played out differently, or that Satella did listen to your pleas and somehow intervened to change Rem’s fate. None of that has happened, of course. You already know that no matter how many times you guillotine yourself from now on, you won’t return to a moment where Rem isn’t already lost.
You stand up along with everyone else on the back of your carriage.
“What should we do? Should we gather in some building?”, Petra asks you.
You don’t want those adoring eyes she insists on attracting your attention to. They make you feel ashamed, as if you have deceived her to gain her trust.
“No idea. You guys should ask the mansion staff. The duchess is a smart one, she will likely have ordered her people to make your stay comfortable.”
When you exit the carriage, Emilia catches up to you and walks by your side close enough that her hand touches yours a couple of times. A crowd of people are unloading the carriages, hauling shit around or just hindering your movement in general, and you manage to lose Emilia in the tumult so you can beeline towards the wounded. You want to feel bad about it, but you don’t.
You reach the area set up for the wounded. As some low level healers tend to the many injuries, a few of the wounded moan, wail, swear and scream. One of the wails comes from Ferris, who is kneeling and hugging the lying body of the duchess. Next to her rests Crusch’s detached left arm from the elbow to the hand. Although Julius told you in the previous reality that the duchess had survived and that the cat-girl had managed to reattach her arm, you hate to see the duchess injured, and it disturbs you to witness someone as tough-minded as Ferris crying her eyes out.
You are stalling here. You should run straight to Rem, but you feel cold sweat on the back of your neck, and your stomach is churning.
“Crusch is alive, isn’t she?”, you ask cautiously, because you don’t want Ferris to snap at you.
The cat-girl contains her sobs for a moment to look over her shoulder. Her eyes are red and teary.
“Something is wrong with her brain.”
A sharp pain pierces your heart. You counted Crusch amongst the saved despite her temporarily losing half of an arm. You don’t want to see someone as wonderful as the duchess spend the rest of her life half-retarded from brain damage, and it would have been your fault to an extent, given that you dragged everybody into your operation.
“What do you mean?”, you ask with a thin voice. “Did she get hit in the head or something?”
Ferris dries her eyes and passes over Crusch’s legs so she can begin reattaching her arm. She must have gotten such a shock initially that she forgot that time is of the essence. Crusch’s face looks a bit paler than usual, but there’s intelligence in her lovely eyes, and she’s looking at you confused as if she doesn’t know what you are doing here.
“Crusch, how are you feeling?”, you ask.
“Is… my name Crusch? This girl also called me that. I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything.”
You go cold. The duchess’ voice had trembled with fear, as if she woke up in someone else’s body and couldn’t understand anything about her current situation. You crouch next to her and grab the metallic hand of the gauntlet that contains the duchess’ remaining hand.
“Crusch, it’s me, your son! Please tell me you haven’t forgotten me!”
Ferris lets out a surprised noise, and Crusch stares at you bewildered.
“My son…?”, she asks with a vulnerable voice. “But I feel much younger…”
The cat-girl glares at you while she illuminates the cut-off point of Crusch’s left arm with her healing magic.
“What the hell are you doing, Subaru!? Don’t fuck with her mind!”
You excuse yourself and stagger away from Ferris. You feel woozy, and your legs are trembling. As you dry the cold sweat on your forehead, you try to integrate the news even though your thoughts are muddled. All the memories of Rem have been stolen from the world except from your cursed self, and Crusch’s memories have disappeared as well, but only her own? It’s too big of a coincidence. One of the people who ambushed the duchess’ caravan must have that ability, which could mean that there’s a way to reverse it. No, that doesn’t make sense necessarily. Wilhelm can chop someone’s head and his limbs off in a couple of seconds, but that doesn’t mean he can reattach them back. However, you need such a hope to go on.
You progress through the line of wounded, shuffling half the way, until you spot Rem’s beautiful light blue hair. She’s lying on a sheet with her arms at her sides. Her eyes are closed and her mouth slightly open, and there is no expression on her face. It looks as if she’s sleeping peacefully, except that nobody has woken up from such a sleep.
It doesn’t matter that you already knew. You can’t save Rem. While your heartbeat become painful, as if your blood isn’t pumping properly, you let yourself fall to your knees. You hug Rem tight, pressing your cheek against hers, and you cry silently.
Maybe a minute and a half later a male voice you recognize, that of the nerdy doctor that led you to Rem in your previous reality, speaks to you from behind.
“You know this woman?”
You are too busy grieving to answer, and you also wish that everybody else in the world except for your comatose girlfriend would disappear. A moment later you hear the doctor again, and he sounds closer.
“Excuse me, but if you don’t actually know her, I’m afraid I have to ask you to stop touching her.”
You clench your teeth, and turn enough to glare at him over your shoulder.
“She’s my girl. Leave me alone!”
“But nobody knows who she is, and she has-…”
“She’s fallen into a perennial sleep like in the cases you read in your medical reports! And she will never wake up again! Leave me alone! Leave me the fuck alone!”
The doctor stares at you dismayed, with his mouth open, but he must have recognized your grief.
“I… apologize.”
He walks away.
A couple of minutes later your anger dissipates and you feel sorry for the guy, who likely has worked hard to treat the wounded. Nobody else but the Witch of Envy is at fault for people around you not knowing everything you would need to explain to them, and you should be grateful that some people, like Emilia, would want to spend time with you, but for the foreseeable future you just want to lock yourself in the bedroom that Crusch assigned to you, hug Rem through the night and hope that your dreams allow you to forget for a while about your present.
If you had forgotten about Rem as well, what would this world do with a young woman who nobody knows and that has fallen into a coma for the rest of her life? You don’t want to think about it. You push Rem into a seated position, and after you hug her from behind, you manage to lift her up and lock her knees so she stands upright enough for you to maneuver to her front, rest her armpits over your shoulders and squeeze her breasts against your back. Once you lean forward and your legs bear Rem’s dead weight, you feel as if you would have needed several years of weightlifting to handle this task. You hobble along the line of wounded towards the mansion’s entrance.
“Subaru, we finally find you.”
Julius approaches you shortly after you’ve walked past the area reserved for the wounded. Emilia is standing next to him, and when your gaze falls on her face, for a moment you don’t see her as she is now but as the pale ghost that had stared at your detached head while your consciousness faded. A moment later the stream of tears running down her face, the dribble of saliva coming out of her mouth, as well as those dead eyes, disappear, and you stare back at a curious and confused Emilia who has no clue why you are carrying a sleeping girl on your back.
“Sorry”, you say with a raspy voice. “My legs might give out at any minute. We can speak along the way.”
You continue towards the mansion’s entrance. Although Julius does glance at Rem, he doesn’t know her and he must have figured that it’s a personal matter of yours, so he doesn’t bring it up.
“So, what’s up?”, you ask.
“I asked around regarding who ambushed the duchess’ caravan. Surprisingly, it wasn’t an army, but-…”
“Two men with superpowers. One with his hair almost bleached white and who wore a maybe military uniform, and the other a mix between a homeless person and a caveman.”
“… You must have asked the same soldier, because he used that very expression to describe the second man. I shouldn’t be surprised that you found out about important information before anyone of us.”
A woman in her thirties wearing a servant uniform more modest than Rem’s, you guess part of Crusch’s staff even though you don’t recall seeing her during your self-imposed loop, opens the mansion’s main door as she notices you three coming. You thank her and keep going.
“I just found out something real bad, though”, you say with a low voice. “One of those men must have some ability to steal or manipulate memories related to people, because Crusch doesn’t remember who she is, nor did she know Ferris, her best friend from childhood.”
Julius stops in his tracks. When you briefly stop as well, even though your legs are wobbling and feeling Rem’s breasts pressed against your back is stealing blood away from the limbs that should carry her, you see in the knight’s face that he probably shouldn’t have learned this information. He belongs to a camp opposite to Crusch’s, and the duchess having lost her memories probably means she won’t ever reach the throne. Whatever. Unless Priscilla wins the race, which would likely end up in disaster for the kingdom, Anastasia Hoshin would likely do a decent enough job leading this nation, even if it involves turning it into a subsidiary of her company. And it’s not like you care about the politics of this weird world anyway.
“That is terrible”, Julius says with concern. “The ambush turned then into a successful assassination of a royal candidate, which might have been the original purpose.”
“Because without her memories she’s basically disqualified”, you add for him.
Julius looks troubled.
“The duchess is a wonderful woman. My lady doesn’t want to win by losing a person who would become one of her most competent vassals. I hope that this is merely temporary, but I…”
“You need to return to your household and inform Hoshin. I know. Right in time, too, because I’m not strong enough to carry such weight for long. Not that I’m calling her fat.”
Julius glances at Rem, but otherwise he pretends he hasn’t noticed her. He nods at you as he rests his hand on the pommel of his sheathed sword.
“I’m glad to have taken part in your operation, Subaru. We did a great service to the world, despite our regretful losses. And I apologize, again, for my behavior at the royal summons.”
“You can’t win me at regrets. Thank you for everything, man. All the spirits and the support and in general for having my back when nobody else would. I’m sure we’ll see each other again.”
Julius smiles agreeably, and then he leaves.
When you turn towards your assigned bedroom, which is located near the end of this long hallway, Emilia is standing in your way. She isn’t blocking your path purposefully, and when she realizes you intend to pass she steps aside, but she looks as if she wants to ask you a million questions while she alternates between attempting to read your expression and studying Rem’s face.
“This girl is wearing one of Roswaal’s servant uniforms, and it’s stained as if she has fought in the operation, but I don’t recall seeing her, and she certainly wasn’t working at lord Roswaal’s mansion…”
You want to wipe the sweat beading on your face.
“I’ll explain as much as I can bear to about the situation, but please let me reach the bedroom first. It’s been a horribly long day.”
“Sorry, of course…”
Once you reach your bedroom, Emilia opens the door for you, and then you carefully place Rem on the bed as if she fell asleep over the bedspread. You repose her head on a fluffy pillow. You doubt she will notice, but you want to make her as comfortable as possible. After Rem looks as if you can do nothing else for her at the moment, you sit heavily on the edge of the bed, rest your forearms on your thighs and you breathe a deep sigh.
You had forgotten about Emilia. She’s waiting for you to address her existence, and she looks worried and uneasy.
“Subaru, who is she? This is the bedroom where we had our fight. Did the duchess house this girl here after they cured you?”
“No, this is still my bedroom, because Crusch hasn’t officially told me to leave her place.”
Emilia attempts to smile, but the corners of her mouth are trembling.
“She looks similar to Ram, very much so. Subaru… Why is she wearing one of our servant uniforms, where do you know her from? I mean…”
“You know her, Emilia, even though her memories have been erased from your mind. As you heard, one of the men who ambushed the caravan had some ability to manipulate people’s memories, either making someone lose theirs or erasing the memories of a certain person in everyone else. That last ability sounds godlike and I would have never expected it of anything else than that damn whale, but…”
“The memories of this servant have been stolen from other people? Is that what you mean? But how come you remember her?”
“How come I was able to defeat Petelgeuse, an ancient great spirit, inside my mind? Maybe I’m just that great.”
Your self-aggrandizing remark steals a smile out of Emilia despite her concern, as if she believes it.
“Even though I’ve never had to live through it, the White Whale is known to erase people as if they had never existed, so it’s certainly possible… This woman worked at our mansion, then.”
You look back at Rem. For a moment you expect to see her awake and smiling softly as she listens to your conversation, but she’s gone. It’s as if she isn’t present, as if you care for a shell. You feel the warmth behind your eyes signalling incoming tears. You don’t want Emilia to see you cry for Rem; you feel it would soil the relationship with the demon servant somehow. And you want to be left alone with your beloved.
“Her name is Rem, and she’s Ram’s little sister.”
Emilia lets out a surprised noise. She walks to Rem’s side and leans to look closer.
“I mean, I can’t deny the resemblance. That’s horrible. We need to bring her home. I don’t know how Ram will take this… I can’t even imagine her having a relationship with a sibling, alone as she always is.”
“Yeah, Rem has been removed from all the memories you hold of Ram, but the sisters are really close. Rem is the sweet one, and Ram the one who would make you want to throw yourself off a window after having to stand her insults for an hour.”
You are exhausted, you are hurting, and you wish to get under the sheets and hold your comatose girlfriend through the night. However, Emilia seems to be winding herself up to speak.
“Is she…”, she begins cautiously, with a nervous smile, “going to sleep in your bed…?”
You want to sigh, but don’t.
“I suppose you have noticed she isn’t merely asleep. The doctor told me she’s fallen into a sort of perennial sleep. It seems there have been other cases through the years. She might never wake up.”
Not only your words cause Emilia’s pupils to tremble, but you realize that she’s caught something else in your tone that she hasn’t liked. She stares at you worried, with her lips separated.
“That’s… I think I have heard of such cases”, she says with a low voice. “I mean, did you…”
You wipe whatever remains of the sweat from your face. Your legs are tingling from exhaustion.
“I’m not going to have sex with Rem while she’s in a coma, if that’s what you are implying.”
Emilia blushes and looks away.
“You speak so freely about such a thing…”
“Well, it wouldn’t be my first rodeo, if you know what I mean. But given the amount of half-beasts running around in this fantasy world, that phrase might have unintended connotations.”
“Still, I’m not sure if it would be appropriate. I mean, she’s a girl and you are… You are taking it too casually is what I mean.”
You stare up at Emilia, who is forcing herself to hold your gaze even though she seems embarrassed and concerned about whatever relationship you might have with this other girl. Emilia, with her otherworldly beauty, her silky silver hair and those big purple eyes, is one of the most gorgeous sights you have come across, and merely looking at her brightens your day. However, while initially, the first time you met her, she seemed remote and unapproachable, now she seems like a silly teenager. Why wouldn’t she look like that to you, though? Merely hours ago you won after fighting everyone in your life who wanted to stop you from guillotining yourself. You had possibly, likely, condemned another world to die, and now this Emilia is having trouble articulating her jealousy. You aren’t such a suitable vessel for Satella then, you think.
“Emilia, I want to sleep next to Rem, and she would have wanted to as well. It wouldn’t have been the first time. I’ll take care of her.”
Emilia snaps her head back in surprise, and although she tries to contain it, her face shows a dismay as if she had asked you out on a date after working herself up for days, only for you to tell her that you already have a girlfriend. You don’t want her to suffer in any way, but you are also way too tired about everything, and beyond this kind of shit.
“It’s okay, Emilia. We’ll speak in the morning. I’m going straight to sleep, I need a serious break from all the nonsense we’ve been dealing with.”
The half-elf lowers her head and shows you her back. After a couple of steps she turns towards you again and holds her hands in front of her waist.
“Subaru, I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry that we ever fought.”
You sigh.
“Yeah, me too.”
“I feel like you truly… are there for me. I don’t like how you broke into the royal palace and interrupted the summons, but I understand your intentions. Still… I should have realized how hard you will push yourself for my sake. I would have never believed… I can hardly believe that you organized such an operation to save me. I would have never thought that someone would care about me that much.”
“I do, Emilia. I want you to be happy and free.”
She lifts her hand to her heart, and tears come to her eyes. She dries them quickly. Her emotions surface on her expression, but after she glances at the sleeping girl lying close to you, Emilia lowers her head.
“You will return to the mansion with us, right?”
“If you let me. I will fight for your sake, regardless of whether or not you reach the throne.”
Although Emilia smiles gratefully, she’s also confused as if you are sending her conflicting messages. Maybe only a fool in love would have pulled off what you did. But then again, this world would have ended if you hadn’t fought your way to Emilia.
“Well, ah… See you tomorrow, Subaru!”, she says, and leaves.

After she’s gone, your heart sinks. You hide your face with your hands. A few people are having an animated conversation somewhere on the other side of the hallway. You listen to Rem’s soft breathing, as remote as if it came from another planet.
When a few minutes later you pull one side of the sheets off to move Rem under them, you realize that her clothes are way too dirty and bloodstained. She should look comfortable even if she likely won’t feel it. You leave the bedroom to locate some servant, and you come across a blonde guy with short, curly hair and a thin moustache. You had seen this guy almost every day during your self-imposed loop of two days, but you never bothered to learn his name, if he even has one.
“I need a change of clothes for my girl.”
“What size?”
You don’t know, so you lead him to your bedroom. When he peeks inside as if he doesn’t want to enter it, he sees the unconscious woman wearing a bloodstained servant uniform. To his credit, his expression doesn’t change.
“Is the miss dead? Has there been… an accident?”
“C’mon, man. She’s just in a coma.”
He arches an eyebrow while looking at you.
“I need to change her clothes”, you add. “All that damn blood, it’s unsanitary. Bring me something fresh. One of Crusch’s nightgowns would be fine.”
“One of the lady’s…!?”
“You can grab one from her laundry basket.”
“I will certainly not do that. I can bring you something reserved for the servants.”
“From the female servants, please.”
Before he closes the door, for a brief moment he looks as if he’s suffering. He does bring you a beautiful, silky white nightgown a couple of minutes later. You undress Rem, although it’s more difficult than the other times because she’s not contributing. After you have undressed her to her panties, the sight of her pale breasts and her pink nipples makes you want to bury your face in them like you’ve done often. You want to lick every centimeter of her soft skin. Once you pull down her panties, the sight of her pussy, as well as the slightly sweaty smell after all that fighting, makes you salivate. You realize how hungry you are, although right now you wouldn’t take anything less than that delicious meal in front of you.
After you have dressed Rem with her beautiful new nightgown and she looks so inviting that you want to jump in the bed with her and cuddle all night long, you shiver and realize that you’ve gotten harder than the crotch of your pants allows. You perk up, and from your mouth escapes a sound of delight. You grab your genitals through the pants, feeling up the bulge. That’s right, you have a dick! Until a few hours ago a part of your brain had ran a process in the background to prevent you from thinking about your mangled genitals, but you are complete again!
You pull down your pants to your ankles and grab your dick. The smooth flesh thickens against your palm and your fingers. What a miracle of nature! Truly, no wonder some people believe in a creator of the universe. Such a magnificent organic device to procure you pleasure must have been created by God himself!
The door opens, and after Ferris takes a single step inside, she freezes with her mouth open. She stares wide-eyed at your genitals.
“I have a dick, Ferris!”, you proclaim, elated. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
The cat-girl lifts her gaze to your eyes and slightly raises one side of her mouth as if she’s tasted something sour.
“It’s okay, I guess. I came to ask if you wanted to eat dinner, but I see you are busy.”
“Ah… Ferris, I want to apologize.”
She narrows her eyes while doing her best not to look down.
“I’m the one who burst into your room without knocking. I truly should have known better, as in I must have hit my head really hard not to imagine I might bump into a situation like this.”
“I mean that I’ve been a piece of shit to you. I always manage to make you mad, even though you’ve been cool with me.”
“You haven’t been that bad, beyond your weird utterances and your pathetic attempts at pretending you aren’t checking out my ass. And I can’t blame you for the image that just got burned into my eyes. You are still holding your erect penis, Subaru.”
“Yeah, well. I had to celebrate.”
“I better leave.”
As she closes the door, she mutters something about how they need to install some door bolts in this mansion.

A few minutes later you shut the light off and you lie under the sheets next to Rem, whom you have turned so she rests on her left shoulder and her weight leans on you. You feel her warm breath on your face. By now you have gone soft; the sexual arousal had shielded you from this gloom and loneliness. While tears run down your right temple and moisten the pillow, you hug Rem’s limp body and let her personal smell overwhelm you. You are home, even though Rem is somewhere far away.
“It’s just the two of us from now on, Rem”, you whisper, and then sniffle. “Plenty of it will involve me holding you in bed, just like you wanted.”