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Link woke with the feeling of having been torn out of somewhere cold.
It was not like opening his eyes after a bad night. It was not the slow, heavy, unpleasant awakening of someone who had barely slept. It was sharper, deeper, as if his consciousness had fallen from a great height and his body had caught it just in time. First, he felt air in his lungs. Then he felt the weight of a blanket over his torso. Then the smell of clean sheets, polished wood, dried flowers somewhere in the corner of the room, and two presences standing not far away. His body reacted before his mind did. His hand clenched the blanket, his breathing caught in his throat, and the memory of the moon returned like a blade.
The dark mansion.
The hallway.
His horns lighting the floor.
Rem approaching because of the smell.
Her voice saying his name.
And then nothing.
Nothing except the instant his body stopped belonging to him.
Link opened his eyes.
The ceiling was not the one from his room.
It took him one second to understand it. That second was enough for fear to crawl up his back with cold fingers. He was not in the room near the garden. He was not in the room they had assigned him after he began working as a gardener. There were no new gloves on the table, no work clothes folded by Rem, no faint smell of dry earth clinging to his boots. He was in the large guest room where he had first awakened after the library. The same enormous bed. The same elegant walls. The same clean light entering through the window. The same sofa where he had slept before they gave him his own room.
And Subaru was in the bed.
Subaru woke too.
He did not do it calmly. His body shot upright, as if someone had driven a needle into his chest. His eyes opened too wide, his mouth searched for air, and the first expression that crossed his face was not confusion, but recognized terror. Not the terror of someone who did not know what was happening. The terror of someone who knew exactly what he had just lost.
"No..." Subaru whispered.
Link remained seated on the sofa, motionless.
At either side of the bed stood Ram and Rem.
The two maids looked at Subaru with that twin composure that, in the previous loop, had taken days to become almost familiar. Ram with her pink hair, her dry eye, her perfect posture. Rem with her blue hair, her visible eye, her hands politely joined in front of her apron. Both of them were there. Alive. Calm. Without blood. Without screams. Without memory.
Rem looked at Subaru first.
"Dear guest, dear guest. It seems you have awakened in an agitated state. Are you feeling well?"
Ram observed Subaru's pale face with less softness.
"Dear guest, dear guest. If you move so abruptly after resting, you may fall from the bed and cause unnecessary trouble."
Subaru did not answer.
Link felt something close inside his chest.
Dear guest.
Not Subaru. Not Link. Not coworker. Not gardener. Not the idiot who made ice cream. Not the boy Rem had told that the mint with chocolate was very good. None of that existed. To them, they were strangers freshly awakened in a guest room. Two bodies rescued from a fight in the capital. Two strangers who had not yet eaten at their table, had not worked in their house, had not gone to the village, had not seen the puppy, had not filled the kitchen with vanilla, strawberry, cacao, and laughter.
Subaru slowly lifted his left hand.
Link followed the movement.
The puppy's bite mark had disappeared.
So had the small wounds from work. The tiny cuts, the kitchen marks, the new calluses that had begun forming from clumsy tasks. Everything was clean. As if the days had been washed from their skin with perfect cruelty.
Subaru brought his hand to his face.
"No... it can't be."
Rem tilted her head.
"Does something hurt?"
Subaru laughed.
It was a horrible sound.
It was not real laughter. It was a broken piece of air trying to escape through the wrong place. Link understood it far too well, because his own throat was about to do something similar. Subaru lowered his hand and looked at Ram and Rem as if seeing them there, so serene, so polite, so unaware, was worse than waking up alone.
"You..." he began.
He could not finish.
Link stood. His body responded immediately, too healthy, too whole. That perfection infuriated him. His back did not hurt from practicing with the kagune. His muscles were not tired from carrying sacks. He did not have the small aches of working in the garden. He brought a hand to his forehead and found no horns. Then he touched his back, beneath the clean shirt, where the kagune slept as if it had never come out in a maintenance clearing to turn him into human sushi. Nothing.
Everything was intact.
Everything was wrong.
"Link," Subaru said, his voice low.
Ram and Rem looked toward him at the same time.
Rem spoke politely.
"The other guest has also awakened. Do you feel dizzy?"
Link looked at her.
He saw her far too clearly.
He remembered her face beneath the reddish light of his horns. He remembered her voice asking him whether he looked at the moon when he could not sleep. He remembered her arms catching him before he hit the floor. He remembered her clean scent mixed with mint and night. He remembered that his last sight had been Rem, and now she looked at him as if he had never been anything more than a medical responsibility.
"No," Link finally answered, though his voice came out rougher than expected. "I'm fine."
A lie.
Subaru released the blanket and climbed out of bed with clumsy movements. Ram stepped forward to stop him.
"Dear guest, you must not rise without permission. We have not yet informed Emilia-sama or Roswaal-sama of your awakening."
Emilia.
The name struck Subaru almost as hard as the "dear guest."
Link saw the Japanese boy's breathing change. The promise. The date. The morning that never happened. The fourth day erased. Emilia smiling beneath the moon before promising him a tomorrow that no longer existed for her.
"I have to go out," Subaru said.
Rem moved slightly.
"We do not recommend—"
"I have to go out."
He did not shout. That made it worse. Subaru, who normally turned every emotion into noise, said it in a flat, tense voice, as if he were holding on with his nails to the edge of something very deep. Ram noticed the change. So did Rem. But they could not understand it. They had no way to.
Link crossed the room and took Subaru by the arm before he could take another step.
"Wait."
Subaru turned toward him with burning eyes.
"Wait? Wait for what? For this to fix itself? For someone to come and tell me this was a joke? For Emilia to walk in and tell me she does remember? For Rem to say there's work waiting for us in the kitchen and for you to turn stupid because she called you by your name?"
Link tightened his fingers around his arm.
Not hard enough to hurt him.
Hard enough to silence him.
Ram and Rem observed the exchange with silent tension. The familiarity between the two guests was obvious. Too obvious for two people who, according to the mansion's information, had just awakened after the incident in the capital.
"Not in front of them," Link said quietly.
Subaru inhaled through his nose.
The phrase cut through the panic.
Not in front of them.
Not because they were enemies. Not because they were guilty. But because they did not remember. Because any word spoken there would sound like delirium, a threat, or madness. Because Subaru already knew what it was like for the world not to accept his truth until death forced it to repeat itself.
Subaru pulled back a little, trembling.
"I know."
Ram spoke with controlled dryness.
"It seems both guests are suffering from considerable confusion. Ram would recommend returning to bed."
Link looked at Ram.
At that Ram who had not yet said "novice gardener." At that Ram who had not yet criticized his appetite, his dead plants, or his broken spoons. It felt absurd to miss insults, but he did.
"We need air," Link said.
"It is not convenient for you to wander the mansion without guidance."
"Then guide us."
Rem observed him.
"Where do you wish to go?"
Subaru opened his mouth, but Link answered first.
"Somewhere quiet. We're not going to run. We just need not to stay here."
Rem and Ram exchanged a look.
It was brief. Almost invisible. A sisterly conversation that did not require words. Link recognized it and hated recognizing it, because those kinds of details were exactly what the erased days had taught him.
Ram was the one who spoke.
"Rem will inform Emilia-sama. Ram will accompany the guests to the hallway and prevent them from getting lost."
"Sister, Rem believes it would be better not to separate if both guests are agitated."
"Rem is right," Ram said without losing her calm. "Then we will both accompany them to a nearby room. Afterward, we will inform them."
Subaru looked at the floor. Link held his arm for one more second and then released him.
They walked.
Not toward freedom. Not toward an answer. Only out of the room.
The hallway bit them again with cruel familiarity. It was the same hallway they had learned to cross. The same one where Subaru had gotten lost, where Ram had insulted him, where Rem had corrected him, where Link had walked at night with his horns lit. But now every door seemed like mockery. Every painting, every carpet, every morning-unlit lamp, every elegant curve of the wall said the same thing: none of that had happened for anyone else.
Subaru walked with his fists clenched.
Link walked straighter, but only on the outside.
Rem was on his left. He could smell her. That was the worst part. The smell was the same. Soap, clean cloth, herbs, a trace of kitchen that perhaps did not come from the Carlota or the ice cream because those things had no longer existed, and a bit of soft iron his nose always found in her. It was the same Rem. And it was not.
"Link?" Subaru said quietly, when the maids were a few steps ahead.
"I'm here."
"You died, didn't you?"
Link took a moment to answer.
"Yes."
Subaru closed his eyes for an instant as he walked.
"I didn't."
"What?"
"I don't remember it. I fell asleep. The puppy bit me in the village, we had dinner, you made ice cream, I went to my room. I remember lying down. I remember thinking that the next day, maybe I could get closer to Emilia. Then I woke up here."
Link felt cold.
"I died in the night."
Subaru looked at him in horror.
"Who?"
Link clenched his jaw.
He did not look at Rem.
"I don't know."
Subaru understood what he did not say.
The Japanese boy's hand trembled. It was not cowardice. It was the terrible idea that death could arrive even if one was not awake to see it. Subaru had returned without knowing what killed him. Link, meanwhile, had felt the invisible cut of something immediate, unnatural, impossible to defend against. Neither had a complete answer. Together, they still only had fragments.
Ram opened a side door and indicated for them to enter.
The room was small compared to the rest of the mansion. A waiting room, perhaps, with elegant chairs, a low table, and a window facing the garden. Subaru sat because his legs seemed to have decided to stop negotiating. Link remained standing near the window, too restless to stay still and too inwardly exhausted to move any further.
Rem approached a pitcher of water.
"Would you like something to drink?"
Subaru released a weak laugh.
"Yes. Thank you, Rem."
Rem stopped for half a second.
Not because the thanks was strange. Because Subaru said her name with a naturalness that did not match the amount of time he had known her in this loop. Then she continued the gesture and poured water. Subaru received the glass with both hands, as if it were something more valuable than simple water.
Link accepted his when Rem offered it to him.
His fingers barely brushed hers.
Nothing happened.
Of course nothing happened.
Rem did not look at him like she had the previous night. Not with that shared calm before the moon. Not with that little trust built through gardens, recipes, gloves, and mint with chocolate. Only with professionalism.
"Thank you," Link said.
"It is part of Rem's duty."
The same phrase.
The first time, he had found it charming.
Now it hurt.
Ram observed them with growing suspicion.
"Both of you seem to know too much about the mansion for guests who have just awakened."
Subaru choked on his water.
Link answered without looking.
"We were told some things before losing consciousness."
"By whom?"
"Beatrice."
Ram barely raised an eyebrow.
"Beatrice-sama does not usually explain anything that does not interest her."
"I noticed."
The answer came out too bitter. Ram said nothing, but her eyes sharpened slightly. Link remembered too late that this Ram did not yet know his tone, his humor, his way of fighting with words so as not to show fear. To her, that comment was not familiar. It was insolent.
Rem intervened calmly.
"We will inform Emilia-sama."
Subaru lifted his head.
"Emilia is all right, isn't she?"
Rem looked at him.
"Emilia-sama is well."
Subaru breathed as if something small had been returned to him.
"Good."
Ram took note of that reaction, of course.
"You seem very worried about Emilia-sama."
Subaru went rigid.
Link answered for him.
"She saved our lives."
That was true.
True enough.
Ram accepted the answer for now, though she did not seem entirely satisfied.
When the twins left the room to inform them, closing the door behind themselves, Subaru set the glass on the table with such care that the gesture became absurd. As if he feared a sound too loud could break the day.
Link leaned his back against the wall.
For several seconds, neither spoke.
Then Subaru brought both hands to his hair.
"We went back."
"Yes."
"To the mansion."
"Yes."
"Not to the fruit stand. Not to the forest with your truck. Here."
Link looked at his own hands.
"It seems the point changed."
"That should be good, right? We advanced. We won part of it."
"Yes."
Subaru let out a joyless laugh.
"Then why does it feel like five days of my life were ripped away?"
Link closed his eyes.
Because that was exactly what had happened.
Five days did not seem like much in theory. People wasted five days, forgot them, let them fall into meaningless routines. But those five days had names. Emilia. Rem. Ram. Beatrice. Puck. Roswaal. The village. The children. The puppy. The garden. The first time Rem called him Link. The first time Ram admitted he was useful. The Carlota. The ice cream. The moon. All of it was alive only inside them.
"Subaru," Link finally said. "We need to think."
"I don't want to think."
"I know."
"I want to scream."
"I know that too."
"I want to go to Emilia and tell her she promised me a date, that the moon was there, that she smiled, that I..." Subaru covered his face with one hand. "I want to tell her it existed."
Link looked toward the door.
"But for her, it didn't."
Subaru clenched his teeth.
"I hate this."
"Yes."
There was no more elaborate comfort. It did not help. Sometimes pain did not need speeches. It only needed someone not to try dressing it up.
Subaru lowered his hand.
"And you?"
Link did not answer.
"You want to tell Rem she held you when you died."
Link clenched his fists.
"No."
"Liar."
"Of course I want to tell her. I want to ask what she saw. I want to know if she screamed, if she called Ram, if my body..." His voice cracked slightly, and that infuriated him. "I want to know if it hurt her to see me die or if I was just another mansion problem. But that Rem doesn't exist here. Not yet. This Rem doesn't know me. She owes me nothing. She doesn't remember the gloves. She doesn't remember the mint with chocolate. She doesn't remember my name the way she said it last night."
Subaru looked at him with a strange sadness.
"But she can learn it again."
Link released air through his nose.
"And what if it ends the same way again?"
The question remained between them.
Subaru did not answer because he had no way to.
The door opened before the silence became unbearable.
Emilia entered first.
Subaru immediately lifted his head, as if his body had been designed to respond to her. Emilia was alive, healthy, worried. Her silver hair fell over her shoulders, and her violet eyes looked first at Subaru, then at Link, with a mixture of relief and confusion. Behind her came Puck, floating small and awake, though with that spirit-like morning drowsiness that made him seem about to yawn. Rem and Ram remained by the door.
"Subaru, Link," Emilia said. "I was told you woke up very agitated. Are you okay?"
Subaru opened his mouth.
For an instant, Link thought he was going to fall apart.
But Subaru Natsuki did what he knew how to do when the world crushed him too hard: he placed a ridiculous mask over the pain.
"Emilia-tan..." he said with a tense smile. "Seeing you in the morning should be doctor-recommended. It heals more than any treatment."
Emilia blinked.
"Emilia... tan?"
Puck tilted his head.
"Oh. That was fast."
Subaru went still.
Of course.
She had not grown used to it yet.
There had been no days of insistence, no walks, no conversations, no promise beneath the moon. The nickname was new again. Strange again.
"Ah," Subaru said, his smile trembling. "It's a habit of mine. Sorry. I can... I can lower the level of weirdness."
Emilia looked at him carefully. The concern did not vanish. She did not remember, but her nature remained the same: she could not see someone hurt without wanting to come closer.
"You don't have to force yourself to joke if you feel bad."
That almost broke him.
Link saw it. Subaru felt it too. That was why he lowered his gaze and gripped the empty glass between his hands.
"I'm fine," he lied.
Emilia did not believe him.
But she did not pressure him either.
Puck floated toward Link, sniffing the air curiously.
"You're strange too."
"Thanks, cat."
"Spirit."
"I know."
Puck looked at him more carefully.
"You already knew?"
Link froze for a fraction of a second.
Subaru intervened quickly.
"We were told! Beatrice, I think. Or maybe Emilia. Or trauma. Trauma tells you many things."
Ram looked at him from the door.
"The dear guest speaks too much for someone who claimed to feel unwell."
"It's a defense mechanism," Subaru replied.
"A noisy one," Ram said.
Roswaal appeared later, as the development of the morning required.
He did not enter by surprise. He entered as if the world owed him attention for every step. His clothes, his makeup, his stretched smile, his singsong voice, all of it once again occupied the space of the room with that dangerous theatricality Link had already learned to distrust. Only this time, Roswaal was not the slightly familiar host of the last few days. He was the owner of a mansion where they were still newly awakened guests. A man who had not yet seen Link bring out horns in the dining room, or Subaru fail against a tray, or Puck devour strawberry ice cream.
"I am glad to see you awake," Roswaal said. "Emilia-sama was veeery worried about you."
Subaru looked at Emilia and then looked away.
"Sorry for worrying you."
Link noticed the tension and lowered his gaze toward the table. They could not get ahead of themselves. They could not react as if they knew every movement. They could not say that this conversation had already happened. They had to live it again, even if every phrase scraped them from within.
Roswaal began with the explanations.
The insignia. Emilia's position. Roswaal's sponsorship. The royal selection. The political weight of the stolen and recovered object. Subaru listened with attention that, to the others, could look like admiration or confusion. To Link, it was pain. Subaru already knew that information, but hearing it again confirmed that the world had returned to the same point and, at the same time, that nothing was really the same. Emilia did not remember the promise. Puck did not remember the strawberry. Beatrice did not remember the vanilla. Ram did not remember calling him useful. Rem did not remember his name beneath the moon.
The food was served efficiently.
Link ate.
Not as much as the first time, not with that beastly, open hunger that had made Ram comment on his appetite. This time, he held back out of pure strategy. Even so, his body still had absurd needs, and after a few portions, Ram looked at him as if she had begun mentally documenting an administrative anomaly.
"The other guest has a good appetite," Ram said.
Link lifted his gaze.
"Working in gardens consumes energy."
Rem tilted her head.
"You do not yet work in the gardens."
Subaru covered his mouth with his napkin, not to hide food, but a nervous smile.
Link held Rem's gaze with more calm than he felt.
"Then I'm preparing in advance."
Ram closed her eyes.
"A convenient excuse."
"A delicious excuse," Link corrected, taking another bite.
Puck floated a little closer to them, sniffing the air around Link with a curiosity that immediately made the Latino uncomfortable.
"Your smell is weird."
Subaru choked.
Emilia looked at Puck.
"Puck, you don't say that like that."
"But it's true. He isn't a normal human. He isn't exactly an ordinary demi-human either. There's something mixed in."
Beatrice, who until then had been pretending not to be interested, opened one eye.
"Betty already noticed it in the library, I suppose."
The table changed.
Not visibly to just anyone, but Link felt it. Ram and Rem grew slightly stiller. Roswaal rested his chin on one hand, smiling. Emilia looked at Link with concern. Subaru placed his glass on the table with too much care.
There it was.
The moment.
The first time, Link had waited for explanations. He had asked Beatrice for help. He had asked what the hell an Oni was in this world, because his knowledge did not match reality. This time, he already knew the basics. Not everything. Not even enough. But he knew the horns were an organ. He knew he could call them without losing control. He knew Ram and Rem would react. He knew doing it too quickly could seem suspicious.
And still, he preferred that to pretending complete ignorance for half an hour.
Roswaal smiled with that singsong voice.
"Beatrice informed me of a peculiar mana reserve and a nature difficult to classify. A part close to the Oni, if I understood correctly."
The word fell onto the table.
Oni.
Ram did not move.
Neither did Rem.
But Link felt it. Not because of magic. Because of memory. He had already seen that rigidity, that way the twins' silence became heavier. In the previous loop, that word had opened an invisible wound between them. Now it did again, only they did not know he had already seen the emotional blood behind it.
"Oni?" Subaru asked, acting surprised with an effort that almost hurt to watch.
Link thanked him for the attempt with a brief look.
Beatrice observed him suspiciously.
"He is not pure. There is something else. Something Betty does not recognize. But part of his root approaches that race, I suppose."
"And what does that mean?" Emilia asked, worried. "Is it dangerous for him?"
Puck tilted his head.
"It depends. Oni horns function as an organ related to mana. If he has something similar, it could affect how he uses or receives mana."
Link set the cutlery down on the table.
The sound was small, but enough to draw every gaze.
"Then I suppose we're talking about this."
Subaru turned toward him, tense.
"Link..."
Link took a deep breath.
He did not ask for instructions.
He did not look to Beatrice to tell him how to do it. He did not wait for Roswaal to push him with questions. He simply closed his eyes, lowered his head slightly, and searched for the familiar pressure behind his forehead. The heat appeared faster than the first time, not because it was easy, but because his body remembered even if the world did not. He did not call the kagune. He did not let fear seize his back. He only let the flow rise, like a contained current, until the skin of his forehead tightened.
The two horns emerged.
The entire table fell silent.
There was no violence. No roar. No change in his eyes. Only two dark horns, curved backward, complete, symmetrical, emerging from his forehead with a naturalness far too unsettling for someone who had supposedly just received that information. This time, in addition, a faint light vibrated at the base, barely a warm glow that did not illuminate the dining room but did make it clear that mana was circulating there.
Beatrice opened her eyes fully.
"You..."
Roswaal stopped smiling for the smallest fraction of a second.
Emilia brought a hand to her chest.
Puck floated closer, fascinated.
Subaru tightened his fingers around the napkin.
But Ram and Rem were the ones who made the dining room truly heavy.
Ram looked at the horns without blinking. Her expression remained controlled, but Link saw what others would not have seen: a small tension in her jaw, an exact pause in her breathing, a stillness that was not indifference but memory held tightly. Rem, on the other hand, lowered her hands slightly from in front of her apron and then joined them again, as if she had needed to correct an impulse. Her visible eye was fixed on the horns. Not on Link's face. On the horns.
Two.
Link could imagine the word crossing inside them.
Two complete horns.
"So these were it," Link said, opening his eyes.
His voice came out calmer than he felt.
Beatrice looked at him with a frown.
"You manifested them too quickly."
Subaru let out the smallest breath.
Link did not look away from Beatrice.
"It seemed better to try before everyone kept talking about my body as if I weren't sitting right here."
The answer was reasonable enough to cover the danger.
Not perfect.
But reasonable.
Beatrice kept observing him.
"You should not have that control if you did not know what they were."
Link lifted a hand and carefully touched one of the horns. He felt the internal pressure, the tingling of mana, the discomfort of having a new organ exposed to the air. He also felt Rem's gaze fixed on him.
"I wouldn't call this control," he replied. "It's more like not panicking."
Subaru immediately jumped in, grateful for any opening to redirect suspicion.
"That counts as advanced control for us. Our emotional standard is on the floor, but it's honest."
Ram looked at Subaru.
"The other guest speaks as if he shares the first one's strangeness."
"We share misfortunes," Subaru replied. "The strangeness is debatable."
"It does not seem debatable," Ram said.
Subaru lowered his head.
"It hurts more because we barely know each other again."
Ram did not understand the last part.
Link did.
Roswaal recovered his smile.
"Fascinating. Truly fascinating. Two complete horns, conscious manifestation, visible mana flow, and the absence of that red limb Beatrice mentioned. Link-kun, you seem to have more pieces than can be seen at first glance."
"I'm not a puzzle," Link said.
"We all are, in a way."
"That sounds nice until you're the one saying it."
Emilia looked at Link with honest concern.
"Does it hurt?"
The question softened him more than he wanted.
"Not much. It's uncomfortable. Like... pressure from the inside. But I can hold it."
Puck floated around him, keeping a respectful distance.
"The flow isn't stable, but it doesn't seem out of control either. That's good."
Beatrice crossed her arms.
"It is clumsy. He is spending more mana than necessary."
"Thanks for the evaluation, Doctor Sympathy," Link muttered.
"Betty is not a doctor or sympathy."
"It shows."
Subaru almost smiled.
Almost.
Then Rem spoke.
"Can you withdraw them?"
Link turned toward her.
It was a simple, practical question. But beneath that calm, there was something else. Not exactly fear. Not trust either. A caution crossed by something Link felt pain recognizing without being able to say it.
"Yes," he answered.
He closed his eyes again.
He did not want to do it too perfectly. He could not look as if he had already practiced several times. But he also did not want to fake clumsiness until he lost control. He released the flow little by little, let the pressure lower, and felt the horns retract beneath his skin with that unpleasant sensation of something living hiding inside him. When he opened his eyes, his forehead was clean.
Ram was still watching him.
So was Rem.
The dining room did not immediately return to normal.
Roswaal was the one who resumed the conversation, as if they had just witnessed an interesting curiosity and not a racial wound breathing over the table.
"Well. That confirms part of what Beatrice reported. You are not simply human. Nor a pure Oni, if the anomaly of your other ability is real. But there is a clear connection to that race in you."
Subaru glanced sideways at Rem and Ram.
"Are Oni rare here?"
The question was not to obtain information. Subaru already knew it was delicate. He asked because, if no one did, the silence would become worse.
Roswaal intertwined his fingers.
"Very rare. In other times, they were known for their strength, their physical ability, and their horns as organs of great value for mana handling. Currently, it is not common to find survivors."
Emilia lowered her gaze slightly, saddened.
"I didn't know that..."
Ram interrupted her with measured calm.
"Emilia-sama does not need to worry about old matters during breakfast."
It was polite.
It was a closed door.
Rem remained silent.
Link did not ask more. In the previous loop, he had already learned that this story could not be torn from the table by curiosity. Much less in front of everyone. Much less when, to them, he was still a stranger with two complete horns.
"Then," Link said, forcing himself to breathe normally, "I'm partially Oni and partially something Beatrice doesn't know."
"Correct, I suppose," Beatrice said.
"And that answers almost nothing."
"Also correct."
"How reassuring."
Subaru raised a hand.
"As representative of the confused guests, I request that breakfast include fewer identity crises and more job explanations."
Ram looked at him.
"The guest asks a lot for someone who has demonstrated no usefulness."
"I'm about to do that."
"That sounds like a threat."
Subaru rose slightly from his chair, not all the way, but enough to make himself noticed.
"Roswaal. You said we could ask for a reward, right? For helping Emilia and everything with the insignia."
Emilia tensed.
"Subaru, you don't have to—"
"I want to work here," Subaru said.
The table went still.
The phrase had already existed. It had already been said. But this time, it came out with a different weight. Subaru was not acting like the excited boy who wanted to stay near Emilia. Or not only that. There was desperation hidden beneath. A need to remain in the place where death had happened, to follow the path again, to not let the loop erase everything without fighting.
Roswaal smiled.
"Work?"
"Yes. As an employee of the mansion. I have no money, no home, I don't understand this place, and honestly, my useful skills are still in an experimental stage. But I want to stay. I want to learn. I want to repay what I owe."
Emilia looked at him with a mixture of surprise and concern.
"You don't have to repay anything."
"I feel like I do."
Ram closed her eyes.
"The guest seems poorly suited for domestic work."
"That may be true," Subaru admitted, "but I'm persistent."
Rem observed him.
"Persistence does not wash dishes correctly."
"But it helps you keep trying until you manage it."
Ram opened one eye.
"Or until more dishes break."
Subaru endured the blow with surprising dignity.
"I accept strict training."
Link looked at him.
Subaru was not entirely joking.
Roswaal then turned toward him.
"And you, Link-kun? Do you also wish to remain as a worker of this mansion?"
Link felt the gazes.
Beatrice's, suspicious. Puck's, curious. Emilia's, kind. Roswaal's, calculating. Ram's and Rem's, contained for reasons he barely had the right to touch. And Subaru's, silent, asking him not to step away.
"Yes," Link said. "But not inside the mansion."
Ram raised an eyebrow.
"A sensible decision."
"Thank you for the immediate confidence."
"It was not confidence. It was preventive evaluation."
"I deserve that a little."
Subaru murmured:
"A lot a little."
Link ignored him.
"I want to work in the gardens. Exterior maintenance, carrying materials, moving soil, repairing fences, whatever. I'm strong, I have a good nose for detecting things in bad condition, and I can learn. Besides, if I break something, it's better for it to be a shovel and not expensive tableware."
Rem looked at him attentively.
"Do you have experience as a gardener?"
"No."
"Do you know gardening tools from this region?"
"No."
"Can you distinguish weeds from ornamental plants?"
Link opened his mouth.
Closed it.
He remembered the aristocratic plant he had buried as if it were a war victim.
"I'm willing to learn before pulling anything out."
Ram closed her eyes.
"At least he knows one of his limitations."
"I have several. I'm making an inventory."
Roswaal laughed softly.
"Accepted. Subaru-kun will be trained in domestic duties, and Link-kun will be assigned outside. Of course, both will be supervised by Ram and Rem."
Subaru tried to smile.
Link could not help looking at Rem.
She gave a small bow.
"Rem will follow Roswaal-sama's instructions."
There was no memory.
No "Link" spoken beneath the moon.
No mint with chocolate.
But there was a possibility.
That was the dangerous thing about resets. They did not only erase the good. They also tempted you to rebuild it.
Beatrice rose from her chair with the book against her chest.
"Betty has no intention of teaching a clumsy Oni to use horns in the dining room every time he wants to show off, I suppose."
Link looked at her.
"I wasn't showing off."
"Then it was worse."
Subaru pointed at Beatrice.
"That means she's worried about you."
"Do not invent emotional translations," Beatrice said.
"I'm an expert at surviving insults from magical girls."
"Betty can make it so you do not survive the next one."
Subaru lowered his hand.
"Message received."
Emilia smiled faintly, though the concern remained. Puck settled on her shoulder, observing the two guests with renewed interest. Roswaal seemed satisfied, far too satisfied. Ram remained impeccable, but her eyes returned once more to Link's forehead, to the place where the horns had appeared. Rem did the same only an instant later, and Link, though he pretended not to notice, felt it as if both horns were still exposed.
Breakfast continued.
But it was no longer the same breakfast.
Subaru had recovered his place in the mansion, though without the nickname that had not yet been born. Link had introduced himself again as gardener, though this time with horns manifested without help. Beatrice suspected more than she said. Roswaal smiled as if an unexpected piece had just moved by its own will. Emilia wanted to understand without invading. Puck was intrigued. Ram and Rem silently held the blow of having seen two complete horns on a stranger's forehead.
And Link, seated before a still half-full plate, understood that the second loop was not going to be a comfortable repetition.
They had changed too much.
The world did not remember them, but their mistakes still walked with them.