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After breakfast, the Roswaal mansion swallowed them again with a normality Subaru found almost insulting.
Everything had been decided with painful ease. Subaru Natsuki would once again work as an apprentice servant, under the supervision of the twins. Link would be assigned to the gardens and exterior duties, where his strength, his sense of smell, and his ability to carry heavy things could be used without immediately endangering the fine tableware, the decorative lamps, or Beatrice's patience. Roswaal had accepted both requests with that smile of his that seemed amused and calculating at the same time. Emilia had expressed concern, just like the first time, insisting that they did not have to force themselves if they were still recovering. Puck had floated near her with curiosity, watching Subaru and Link as if the two of them were strange toys that had learned to speak too early. Beatrice had withdrawn with her book, muttering that she had no intention of taking responsibility for teaching two troublesome people how not to die from their own decisions.
Everything was too similar.
And precisely because of that, it was not the same.
Subaru walked down the hallway with the employee clothes folded in his arms, trying to maintain a smile that did not fully come out. In the previous loop, this same scene had been a bright, ridiculous disaster: him excited about wearing a uniform, imagining himself as a novel-style butler, promising to become useful, making unnecessary poses, and receiving one humiliation after another from Ram. Now he knew that behind that uniform came hours of back pain, knees punished by scrubbing floors, hands wrinkled from washing cloths, and a personal war against trays, napkins, and hallways that were far too long.
But he also knew he had wanted to do it.
That was what held him together.
He was not repeating that decision only to get closer to Emilia, though that part still burned in his chest like a stubborn ember. He was doing it because, if the world had returned to that point, he needed to rebuild every stretch as precisely as possible. He needed to find where death was hidden among those days. He needed to return to the village, to the puppy, to the fourth day, to the night. He needed to prevent Link from collapsing in a hallway again without a wound, without an explanation, without time to defend himself.
Ram walked ahead of him with her impeccable posture. Rem was a little behind, guiding Link toward the exterior area once the first explanation was finished. The difference became obvious the moment they left the dining room. They were no longer being treated as guests who needed care in bed. Roswaal had accepted them as temporary workers of the mansion, and Ram, with the administrative cruelty of someone who never wasted a chance to establish hierarchy, made that clear.
"While you are on duty," Ram said without turning around, "you will not be treated as guests. Subaru will work under Ram and Rem's supervision in domestic tasks. Link will work outside. Guests are respected in the mansion, but employees are expected to perform. Do not expect unnecessary courtesy to be maintained simply because yesterday you were in a bed."
Subaru cautiously raised a finger.
"Question: when you say unnecessary courtesy, does that include not destroying my self-esteem before lunch?"
"Yes."
"I appreciate the honesty even though it hurts."
Link, walking with his hands in the pockets of the borrowed clothes, glanced at Ram from the corner of his eye.
"So we're no longer 'dear guest' or anything like that."
Ram looked at him over her shoulder.
"Now you are Link, exterior worker. If you wish for a more formal title, Ram can call you 'novice gardener who has yet to demonstrate competence.'"
"Link is perfect."
"Ram thought the same."
Subaru brought a hand to his chest dramatically.
"And me?"
"Subaru."
Subaru waited.
Ram kept walking.
"Just Subaru?"
"Would you prefer 'apprentice servant with no proven skills'?"
"Subaru is perfect. Beautiful. Short, dignified, and with no additional damage."
Rem spoke with her usual calm.
"Subaru and Link must remember that, although you now work in the mansion, you are still under observation. If your bodies show effects from recovery or if your actions cause problems, your tasks will be adjusted."
Subaru looked at Link.
Link looked back.
Both of them heard something else beneath that phrase: if they acted too strange, if they knew too much, if they got ahead of what they were not supposed to know, suspicion would grow.
And in this loop, suspicion could kill.
The first stop was the service room where Subaru would receive his uniform and basic instructions. The scene repeated almost like a copy, but Subaru was no longer the same actor. He took the clothes with both hands, looked at them, and this time made no comment about butler fantasies, elegant service, or definitive symbols of refined discipline. He simply nodded, as if receiving a work tool.
Ram noticed.
Of course she noticed.
"Subaru seems less excited than his personality suggested during breakfast."
Subaru felt a chill.
"I'm trying to be serious."
"An unnatural decision."
"It hurts, but it's necessary."
"Ram will observe whether it lasts."
Subaru gave a moderate bow. Not too low. Not too stiff. The correct inclination, or at least close to correct, because he remembered Ram's corrections from the previous loop. The problem was that Ram had not yet given them to him in this cycle. Her visible eye narrowed slightly.
"The bow was not horrible."
Subaru froze.
"Thank you."
"Ram did not say it was good."
"I'll accept 'not horrible' as a beginner's prize."
Ram looked at him for another second, as if filing away the information.
"Change. Afterward, we will begin the service explanation."
Subaru went in to change with his heart pounding, not from excitement, but from fear that he had done something too well too early. For the first time in a long while, failing a little seemed safer than getting something too right.
While Subaru changed, Rem led Link outside to show him the tool area and access to the garden. He already knew the way. His feet remembered the turn toward the side hallway, the service door, the stretch leading to the storage rooms, the smell of earth growing stronger before they stepped out. But he acted as if he were seeing everything for the first time, slowing his pace when appropriate, observing the walls, asking simple questions.
"Do exterior workers always enter through here?"
"For most tasks, yes," Rem replied. "It prevents earth from being carried inside the mansion."
"Makes sense."
"It also prevents tools from being carried through the main hallways unless instructed."
"For safety?"
"For safety and cleanliness."
Link nodded.
The first time, he would have made some comment about how much the mansion seemed to fear a shovel. This time, he kept it to himself. When he stepped into the garden, the fresh air greeted him with painful familiarity. The stone path was intact. The planters were still in the positions they had been in before the work he remembered doing. The side fence he had reinforced in the previous loop was back to how it had been before, with a slight tilt his memory recognized immediately. The aristocratic plant he had accidentally killed was still alive, proud and ignorant of its alternate fate.
Link looked at it.
"That one stays," he said without thinking.
Rem stopped.
So did Link.
Bad.
She followed his gaze to the plant.
"Correct. That one must not be removed."
Link swallowed and tried to fix it.
"It looks... decorative."
Rem observed him carefully.
"Yes. It is."
The silence that followed was small, but uncomfortable. Link forced himself to look away, as if the plant had not reminded him of a vegetable funeral only he had lived through.
"It would help if you showed me which ones I shouldn't touch," he said. "I don't want to start my first day by murdering expensive flowers."
Rem accepted the explanation with a nod.
"That would be advisable. Roswaal-sama appreciates certain garden arrangements."
"I'll do my best not to earn his botanical hatred."
"Plants do not hate."
Link almost replied, "You said that before," but bit his tongue in time.
"Then I'll do my best not to give them reasons to start."
Rem looked at him for one more second.
Perhaps she found the comment strange. Perhaps not. Rem was hard to read even when he knew her a little better, and now that "little better" had been erased for her. Link had to remind himself that this Rem had not seen his clumsiness with stones, nor his attempts not to look at her too much, nor his mint ice cream. There was still no reason for her gaze to soften when she corrected him. There was still no history.
But the name was still there.
"Link," Rem said, "we will begin with the tools."
His chest tightened.
"Yes."
He did not say "yes, Rem" with the obedient speed of the previous loop.
He wanted to.
He did not.
Rem guided him to the exterior storage room. There were the shovel, the rake, the hoe, the pruning shears, the work gloves, the ropes, the sacks, and the smaller utensils. Link already knew which ones he could break with pressure, which ones he had to hold carefully, and which were sturdier than they looked. When he saw the thick gloves, he remembered the ones Rem had ordered for him after seeing him damage tool handles. In this loop, those gloves had not yet been bought. His hands were bare.
"You must control your strength when handling tools," Rem explained. "Ram and Rem were informed that you possess abnormal strength. If you squeeze too hard, you may damage the handles or break parts."
"Understood."
Rem offered him a shovel.
Link took it.
Too well.
He did not squeeze it. He did not mark it. He did not misjudge the weight. He held it exactly as he had learned, distributing the force into his palm, not his fingers. Rem looked at the tool, then at his hand.
"You seem comfortable with it."
"I've used tools before," Link said.
It was not a complete lie. He had used tools. Some in his world. Others in a time that no longer existed for anyone else.
"Even so, Rem will check your handling."
"Of course."
The first task was moving soil near a secondary cultivation area. Rem showed him how to insert the shovel, how much to lift, where to place the earth. Link followed the instructions with moderate, carefully manufactured clumsiness. He could not do it perfectly. He should not. So he allowed small mistakes: he tilted the angle wrong once, lifted too much soil another time, dropped a little outside the pile, asked whether he should compact or loosen. But he avoided the big mistakes, the ones he already knew. He did not break the handle. He did not drive the tool into the ground as if trying to reach the center of the world. He did not tear out important roots.
Rem noticed.
"You learn quickly."
The phrase hit Link harder than it should have.
"I have good muscle memory."
"That will be useful."
"I hope so."
Meanwhile, Subaru began his own training with Ram.
The uniform fit him just like the first time. Too proper for someone who was a knot on the inside. Ram began with the rules of posture, service, movement inside the mansion, and basic domestic tasks. Subaru knew many of the answers. Not all of them, because even in the previous loop he had still been a disaster, but enough that his body tried to get ahead of itself. When Ram taught him how to hold a tray, Subaru took it with a stability that did not match someone who had just started.
Ram looked at him.
Subaru felt he had made another mistake.
"The tray is not bad," she said.
"I've carried trays before."
"Where?"
Subaru opened his mouth.
His mind ran.
"In temporary jobs. I helped at... events. Things like that. Not as an elegant mansion butler, of course. More like a guy who carries things and hopes not to get fired before getting paid."
Ram observed him.
The explanation was vague enough to survive.
"Then perhaps Subaru is not completely useless."
Subaru brought a hand to his chest.
"That 'completely' saved and killed me at the same time."
"Ram can withdraw the kind part if you prefer."
"No, no. I'll keep it. It's my emotional treasure of the day."
Ram did not smile, but continued the lesson.
Subaru's problem was that remembering did not equal mastery. He could know that a napkin had to be folded a certain way and still have his hands turn it into a sad figure. He could remember that glass had to be cleaned with gentle circular movements and still leave a mark in one corner. He could know he should not speak while serving tea, but his tongue had a history of insurrection no loop had corrected. That mixture saved him from looking too competent. He was better than a beginner, yes, but he was still Subaru.
Ram summarized it with precision.
"Subaru seems to have watched someone competent work and understood only half."
Subaru stood there with the napkin in his hand.
"That is incredibly accurate."
"Ram knows."
"Can't you say it in a less painful way?"
"Subaru would not learn the same."
In the garden, Link had less luck hiding his advantage. The physical tasks were easy for him, and the memory of Rem's corrections made him improve too quickly. When moving sacks of soil, he did not try to carry all of them at once. Rem had said in the previous loop that he did not need to, and that phrase remained written into his muscles. He carried two. Then three when she authorized it. He did not break any of them. He did not drop fertilizer. He did not drag the sack by mistake. Rem watched him with increasingly fine attention.
"You have good control for your first day."
Link placed the sack where indicated.
"I'm trying not to break anything. I like continuing to be fed."
"Breaking tools would not eliminate your food."
"I'd rather not test the limits of the mansion's mercy."
"Ram would say they are narrow."
Link almost laughed.
"Ram would say that, yes."
Again.
Too familiar.
Rem looked at him.
"You speak as though you know my sister."
Link lifted another sack to avoid looking at her directly.
"I know her well enough to know she insults efficiently."
"You met her this morning."
"It was an intense morning."
Rem did not respond immediately. Link could feel the question floating nearby, but she did not ask it. Not yet. Rem was reserved, not impulsive. If she suspected something, she would keep it. That was worse.
At noon, both of them met again in a service room.
Subaru arrived with his uniform slightly crooked, a badly folded napkin in hand, and an expression that said he had only managed to survive because Ram had not yet decided to finish him off. Link entered from outside with less dirt than the first time, because he remembered to clean his boots before crossing in. Rem noticed. So did Ram.
"Link did not bring mud into the hallway," Rem said.
"Good," Ram said. "At least one of them understands the concept of not worsening the work."
Subaru lifted the napkin.
"I'm improving."
Ram looked at it.
"The napkin looks like a wounded animal."
"It's an abstract figure."
"It is a concrete failure."
Link sat beside Subaru when they were allowed a short break. The exhaustion existed, but it was not the same. Their bodies were more whole than in the previous loop, less worn down by accumulated days. Their minds, however, were worse. Pretending surprise, measuring every word, remembering what they knew and what they should not know was more exhausting than moving stones or washing dishes.
Subaru leaned toward Link while Rem served water nearby and Ram reviewed something at a table.
"This is horrible," he whispered.
"The work?"
"The acting. The work too, but the acting more. I feel like if I fold a napkin well, Ram is going to accuse me of domestic conspiracy."
"You couldn't fold a napkin well even by cheating."
"That was cruel and reassuring."
Link drank water.
Subaru looked at him from the corner of his eye.
"How's it going with Rem?"
Link set the glass down too quickly.
"Work. The work is going."
"I didn't ask about the garden."
"And I answered about the garden."
"She called you Link."
"That's my name."
"It hurt."
Link looked at him.
Subaru was not smiling.
That was why he could not respond with an immediate threat.
"Yes," Link admitted very quietly. "A little."
Subaru lowered his gaze to his hands.
"It happens to me with Emilia. She says my name and I feel like she should remember something. But no. I'm the one carrying all of it."
Link kept looking at the glass.
"We have to make it exist again."
"What?"
"As much of it as we can."
Subaru took a deep breath.
"Yeah."
Rem approached then.
Both of them moved slightly apart in a way that was far too obvious.
"Do you need anything else?"
Subaru lifted his glass.
"I'm fine. Thank you, Rem."
Link lifted his as well.
"Thanks."
Rem observed them for an instant. Something about the way they both answered, the way they fell silent when she came closer, the way they looked at her and then looked away, was strange. But she did not say it. She only nodded.
"The break will end soon. Subaru will continue with Ram. Link will return outside with me."
Subaru straightened.
"Understood."
Link did too.
"Understood."
Ram, from the table, spoke without looking up.
"Both of you answer like condemned soldiers."
Subaru murmured:
"Because it feels similar."
Ram heard him.
Of course she heard him.
But she did not ask.
The afternoon moved forward along that tightrope.
Subaru improved just enough to draw attention, but failed enough to maintain his natural cover of incompetence. Ram corrected his posture, his way of speaking, his way of placing dishes, his tendency to comment on every instruction as if he were narrating a sports competition. Subaru accepted more corrections than he would have accepted in the first loop, because he already knew which ones were useful. That, paradoxically, made Ram observe him more.
"Subaru obeys when the instruction is reasonable," she said.
"That sounds like a good thing."
"It is strange."
"That sounds less good."
"Ram has not decided whether it is suspicious or convenient."
"Let's vote for convenient."
"Ram does not accept suggestions from the object being evaluated."
Outside, Rem took Link to check tools, move materials, and learn basic pruning. There he made his first big mistake of the day, though this time it was partly deliberate. There was a hedge he had cut badly in the previous loop before Ram corrected his disaster. Now he knew which branches to touch and which ones not to. The problem was that doing it right on the first try would have been absurd. So he cut one extra branch.
Not too much.
Just enough.
Rem stared at the hedge.
So did Link.
"That was not meant to be cut," Rem said.
"I figured that out right after doing it."
"You must look at the line before using the shears."
"Yes."
Rem took the shears and corrected the damage with quick movements.
Link watched, feeling an absurd mix of relief and guilt. He had failed on purpose, but seeing Rem fix his mistake reminded him far too much of the first time. It was like reconstructing a small scene, but with the emotions reversed.
"You have a lot of patience," he said.
Rem handed the shears back to him.
"It is necessary when teaching."
"With me, more."
"Yes."
Link let out a brief laugh.
"Thanks for not denying it."
"Lying would not help your progress."
"That sounds very you."
Rem stopped slightly.
"Me?"
Link cursed himself internally.
"Practical. I meant practical."
Rem lowered her gaze toward the shears.
"I see."
She did not seem convinced.
When afternoon began to fall and both groups returned to the mansion, Subaru was tired, Link had hands somewhat marked by tools, and Rem carried a mental list of strange behaviors much longer than at the start of the day. Ram, for her part, seemed to have decided that Subaru was an uncomfortable mixture of real incompetence and badly hidden knowledge. Even so, the day had passed without major disasters. No one had died. No one had revealed too much. No one had opened forbidden doors. No one had tried to make ice cream that was not supposed to exist yet.
For dinner, both of them ate as employees in a less formal arrangement than breakfast. Emilia appeared for a moment before retiring, asking how their first day had gone. Subaru almost answered with too much nostalgia, but managed to turn it into a comic complaint about murderous napkins. Link said he had broken fewer things than expected. Rem, who was nearby, confirmed that he had not broken any important tools. Link decided to take it as a compliment. Ram said that only proved the day had been less costly than anticipated.
The world tried to repeat the calm.
But when night began to approach, Link noticed something.
It was after collecting some utensils and crossing paths with Subaru in the service hallway. Subaru had just washed his hands and face, exhausted from work, with his uniform a little wrinkled and his hair messier than acceptable. He was muttering something about Ram needing to be considered a strategic weapon of the kingdom when Link stopped dead.
The smell.
It struck him like a cord tightening inside his nose.
It was not ordinary sweat. Subaru smelled tired, yes, of mild soap, used cloth, kitchen, mansion wood. But beneath that was the strange smell. That same dark and unpleasant smell Link had perceived since the capital, since his first encounter with Subaru. Before, it had been strange. Annoying. A stain hard to describe. Now it was stronger. Much stronger than at the start of the previous loop. As if something had clung to Subaru with greater intensity after returning.
Link wrinkled his nose.
Subaru stopped.
"What?"
Link stepped closer and sniffed again, without making it too obvious, though it was impossible to hide completely.
"Take a bath."
Subaru blinked.
"Excuse me?"
"A bath. Now."
Subaru looked down at his clothes, offended.
"I worked all day, of course I don't smell like Roswaal's noble roses, but saying it like that hurts."
"It's not that."
Link's voice dropped.
Subaru stopped joking.
"What is it?"
Link looked around. They were not entirely alone. In the mansion, one was never entirely alone. He could hear distant footsteps, the brush of a tray, a door closing. And closer than he would have liked, he could smell Rem.
She was somewhere in the side hallway.
Listening, or about to appear.
Link did not know whether that was good or bad.
"That strange smell you had since the capital," Link said carefully. "It increased."
Subaru went still.
"Increased?"
"Yes."
"How much?"
Link swallowed.
"A lot."
Subaru looked at his own hands, as if expecting to see something stuck to his skin.
"I don't smell anything."
"Because it's your smell. Or something stuck to you. I don't know. The nose gets used to its own body. I can't smell whatever I have on me either, if I even have something. Physiologically, it doesn't work like that. My sense of smell is enhanced, but I can't separate myself from my own trail as if I were someone else."
Subaru understood the part that mattered.
"Then... it could be on you too?"
Link clenched his jaw.
"I don't know. I can't perceive it on myself."
Silence fell between them.
It was a bad silence.
Subaru tried to smile, but the smile did not form properly.
"Maybe I just need a bath."
"Yes," Link said. "That's why I told you to bathe."
"And if it doesn't go away?"
Link did not answer.
Because that was the question.
From the side hallway, Rem appeared with a basket of folded laundry.
Subaru and Link turned toward her almost at the same time.
Rem looked at them calmly, but Link noticed the tension immediately. Her visible eye was not on his face. It was on Subaru. Or, more precisely, on the space around Subaru, as if she also smelled something she should not say out loud.
"Subaru," Rem said, "if you wish to bathe, Rem can show you where the baths are."
Subaru swallowed.
"Yes. Thank you. I think... yes. A bath sounds good."
Rem nodded.
"You should do it before retiring. Tomorrow's work will be more difficult if you do not rest properly."
The phrase was normal.
Too normal.
Link looked at Rem, trying to read something behind her expression. She did not look at him for more than a second. When she did, her face remained professional, but there was a shadow of caution in her gaze. Not fear. Not yet. But attention.
She could smell it.
Perhaps not the same way he did. Perhaps better. Perhaps with a meaning he did not know.
Subaru ran a hand through his hair.
"Then I'll go bathe. Link, you should too. Out of hygienic solidarity."
"I worked with dirt. I was already going to."
"What an elegant way to say you stink of garden."
"My smell is honest."
"Mine, apparently, is narratively suspicious."
Rem did not react to the phrase, but Link did.
Subaru was using jokes again to cover fear.
Rem indicated the way to the baths with a small bow.
"This way."
Subaru followed her, a little stiff.
Link stayed behind for an instant.
Before Rem turned down the hallway, their eyes met again. Link wanted to say something. Ask whether she smelled it too. Ask what it meant. Ask whether Subaru was in danger, whether he himself was dangerous, whether that smell was the reason everything would begin to fall apart.
But this Rem owed him no answers.
And he could not prove he knew there were questions.
So he only said:
"Thank you, Rem."
She looked at him in silence.
"It is part of Rem's work."
That phrase again.
Subaru, from the hallway, forced a laugh.
"Well, at least Rem's work is saving the hygiene of the mansion."
Ram appeared at the end of the hallway, as if the word "hygiene" had summoned her.
"Subaru, if you are going to bathe, try not to turn the bath into another area that requires supervision."
Subaru turned in horror.
"Another? I didn't destroy anything today!"
"Ram speaks of prevention."
"Prevention hurts when it comes with prejudice!"
"Then learn not to deserve it."
Link let out a short laugh, but it faded quickly.
Because the smell was still there.
Even as Subaru began moving away toward the baths, that dark trail remained floating in the hallway like a stain water might not be able to remove. Link stayed with his nose full of that unpleasant presence, trying to understand it without a name, without context, without knowing that for others in that mansion, that smell already had a history, a hatred, and a reason to kill.
He only knew it had increased.
And that, if the previous loop had ended with invisible death, that smell could be a clue.
Or a sentence.
That night, while Subaru bathed and tried to wash away something he could not smell, Link remained in the hallway for a few more seconds, looking at the long shadow of the windows and feeling that the second first day of work had ended with a warning no one knew how to fully read.
The mansion remained calm.
Too calm.
And the strange smell, clinging to Subaru like a damp shadow, did not fully leave.