Well, I used the first line to get you to read it. If it's not too much trouble, could you join my Patreon and support me in creating more content? On my Patreon, you can enjoy an early chapter, and if you'd like to help me out, you can donate and get five early chapters. It's not mandatory, and I won't stop uploading chapters; I'm just asking for a little help. I'd also like to hear your opinions and any advice you might have. Please be kind. Support this poor soul.
https://www.patreon.com/c/Panoli
-------
Subaru Natsuki woke up screaming.
It was not a heroic scream, nor an exclamation of surprise, nor one of those exaggerated reactions he used to turn fear into a joke before anyone could see him trembling. It was a raw scream, broken from the chest, loaded with a despair that had no time to disguise itself. His body jerked on the bed as if he were still falling through a dark hallway, as if the freezing chain were still wrapped somewhere around his flesh, as if the blow that had torn him out of the night were still crushing his bones. He opened his eyes and did not see the ceiling of his employee room, nor the shadow of the hallway where he had tried to reach Emilia, nor the impossible gleam of the weapon that had found him in the dark.
He saw the guest room.
The same room where he had woken after the library. The same wide bed, the same curtains, the same morning light entering through the window with unbearable innocence. The same smell of polished wood and clean sheets. The same elegant silence of a mansion that did not know it had just killed him again.
"No! No, no, no, no...!"
His hand went to his chest, then to his neck, then to his arm, searching for wounds that did not exist. There was no blood. No open flesh. No chain mark. No puppy bite on his fingers. The bandage from the night before was gone. His skin was intact, clean, too healthy. That perfection was what finally broke him. Subaru tried to get out of bed all at once, but his legs tangled in the blanket, and he nearly fell face-first onto the floor.
Two hands held him back.
Rem took one of his arms firmly. Ram held the other from the opposite side. Neither of them seemed frightened, but both were tense. To them, this was a guest waking in an inexplicable state of panic. To Subaru, they were living ghosts from a night that still smelled of death, even though he could not perceive the scent Link had felt clinging to his body.
"Subaru-sama, please calm down," Rem said.
Subaru froze.
Sama.
The word pierced his chest with more force than it should have. It was not "Barusu." It was not Ram's voice deforming his name with domestic cruelty. It was not Rem correcting him in the kitchen, nor Ram humiliating him over a badly folded napkin, nor Emilia laughing at his strange nickname, nor Link calling him an idiot for using dessert as emotional medicine. It was distance. Politeness. A maid's courtesy toward a guest.
The world had placed them far apart again.
"Subaru-sama," Ram repeated, her voice drier, "if you continue moving that way, you will hit the floor and cause trouble before breakfast."
Subaru let out a broken laugh, without joy.
"Subaru-sama... right. Right, that again."
Ram narrowed her visible eye slightly.
"You seem confused."
"Yes," Subaru murmured, his breathing still broken. "I'm really confused. I'm so confused I could vomit my soul."
"That would be inconvenient for the sheets," Ram said.
Normally, that line would have given him an excuse to answer something stupid. But Subaru could not. He looked at her and saw Ram remembering nothing, unaware that in another attempt she had called him Barusu, unaware that in another attempt her sister had been at the center of all his suspicions, unaware that he had run down a hallway with his body dying and the absurd idea of reaching Emilia before being torn apart.
From the sofa, Link woke with a choked sound.
He did not scream. His reaction was worse: a violent silence. He sat up abruptly, one hand digging into the edge of the sofa and the other closing over his own chest, exactly where the cold had killed him for the third time. His eyes opened, brown for an instant, then crossed by a red flash that almost failed to fully form. Something moved beneath the fabric of his back. Rem noticed it first. Ram too. Both turned their eyes toward him, and Subaru, still held by the twins, watched Link fight his own body before the kagune could come out.
The trembling beneath his skin stopped.
Link breathed once, deeply, through clenched teeth, as if he had been forced to strangle a beast inside his spine.
"No..." he whispered.
It was not denial directed at the maids. It was not for Subaru.
It was for death.
Rem released Subaru with one hand, without stopping her watch over him, and turned slightly toward the sofa.
"Link-sama, do you feel unwell too?"
Sama.
Link squeezed his eyes shut.
It hurt Subaru to see it. Because he understood perfectly. For him, "Subaru-sama" was a wall. For Link, "Link-sama" in Rem's voice was almost a mockery from fate. In another loop, she had called him Link naturally, had supervised him in the garden, had tasted his mint-chocolate ice cream, had watched his kagune carry branches like clumsy arms, had walked with him through the village while Subaru entertained children with a borrowed tentacle. In another loop, perhaps she had seen his body fall from the roof and had felt no relief. But that Rem was not there. The one in front of him only saw an anomalous guest who had woken with a bad expression.
Link lifted his gaze.
"What day is it?"
The question came out too fast, too harsh.
Ram looked at Subaru and then at Link. Her expression did not change, but something in her gaze sharpened.
"You both ask strange questions upon waking."
Subaru swallowed and forced himself to speak before Link said something impossible to justify.
"We need to know. Please. What day is it? How long have we been here? Has Roswaal already returned? Is Emilia all right?"
Rem remained silent for a brief instant. Subaru noticed that Emilia's name had come out too quickly. Of course she had noticed. Rem was not someone who let details pass. Even so, she answered calmly.
"Emilia-sama is well. You were brought to the mansion after the incident in the capital and have been resting. Roswaal-sama has already returned. Ram and Rem came to confirm whether you had awakened."
Link lowered his gaze to his hands.
"First day..."
Subaru ran both hands over his face, but Ram grabbed him again when he tried to stand without permission.
"Subaru-sama should not move yet."
"I need air."
"Air will continue existing if you wait a few minutes."
"You don't understand."
"That is evident," Ram replied. "That is why Ram recommends explaining instead of flailing like a fish out of water."
Subaru opened his mouth.
And for a moment, he almost did it.
He almost said everything. That he had died. That he had lived those days. That she had called him Barusu. That Rem had looked at the dog bite. That Link had died on the roof. That something invisible was hunting them. That he could not bear to hear "sama" again because it meant everything they had built had crumbled like dust between his fingers.
But Link looked at him from the sofa.
He said nothing. He did not have to.
Subaru shut his mouth so hard his teeth hurt.
"I had a nightmare," he finally said, his voice lower. "A really bad one."
Ram did not seem convinced.
Neither did Rem.
But a nightmare was a human enough explanation to hold for a few seconds.
The door opened shortly after.
Emilia entered with contained haste, her silver hair moving over her shoulders and concern written across her face before she even spoke. Puck floated beside her, small and drowsy, though his eyes focused on Subaru and Link with an attention that disproved any remaining sleep.
"They told me you woke up distressed," Emilia said, approaching the bed. "Subaru, Link, are you all right?"
Subaru looked at her.
And the world became cruel in a different way.
Emilia was alive. Emilia was there, exactly like the first time, with the same clean kindness, with that terrible capacity to worry about others without knowing how much harm her tenderness could cause. She did not remember the promise. She did not remember the date that had never arrived. She did not remember seeing him ask for a reward to work, or his calisthenics, or his nonsense, or the Lemon Carlota, or the way Subaru had used every day to get a little closer to her.
To her, he had just woken up.
Subaru smiled.
It was such a fragile smile that Link had to look away.
"Emilia-tan... seeing you in the morning is still too good for my mental health."
Emilia blinked.
"Emilia... tan?"
There it was again. The first confusion. The first stumble. The nickname that already had days of history for Subaru had become a newborn oddity again.
Subaru brought a hand to his face and took a deep breath.
"Sorry. It's a habit of mine. A weird habit. One of many. You can ignore it for now."
"I don't think I can ignore that you're trembling," Emilia said softly.
Subaru lowered his hand.
He had not realized it. His fingers were still moving slightly, as if his body had not received the news that he was no longer dying in the hallway. Emilia sat beside the bed and extended a hand toward him. Subaru tensed, not because he feared her touch, but because he wanted it too much. She, noticing the reaction, stopped halfway.
"May I check you? Just to make sure nothing is wrong."
Subaru nodded.
Emilia placed a hand near his chest, activating a soft, warm, delicate magic. There were no wounds. No visible poison. There was nothing to heal except one thing magic could not touch. Subaru kept his eyes lowered, biting his tongue so he would not say something that broke the world.
Puck floated toward Link while Emilia checked Subaru.
"You're worse than you want to look."
Link let out a humorless laugh.
"What a kind diagnosis, cat."
"Spirit."
"I know. You already told me..." Link stopped.
Puck tilted his head.
"Already?"
Link closed his eyes.
"My head hurts. Maybe I dreamed it."
Puck observed him for a few seconds, with that gaze far too old for such a small body.
"Mmm. Your mana is restless. And there's something inside you moving as if it wants to come out."
Rem took an almost imperceptible step.
Link noticed.
"It's not coming out."
Ram looked toward his back.
"That would be preferable."
Link exhaled through his nose.
"For me too."
The scene remained in an uncomfortable balance for several more minutes. Emilia insisted that both of them rest before breakfast. Subaru asked the exact time again, in a tone he tried to make casual and failed at obviously. Link asked whether the mansion was complete, whether Roswaal was present, and whether Beatrice was still in the library. Ram answered only what was necessary, increasingly convinced that those guests knew too much or were too broken to be simple convalescents. Rem did not speak much. That was what unsettled Link most. Her silence was not empty. It was observation.
When they were finally left to change and prepare for breakfast, Subaru and Link were alone for a few minutes.
The air between them weighed like stone.
Subaru sat on the edge of the bed, hands clenched over his knees. Link remained standing by the window, looking toward the gardens they had not yet worked in this loop. Outside, the sun touched the hedges and paths as if nothing had happened during the previous night. As if a body had not fallen from the roof. As if a chain had not hunted Subaru in the darkness.
"I didn't see who it was," Subaru said.
Link did not turn immediately.
"What do you remember?"
Subaru swallowed. The memory left a metallic taste in his mouth.
"Cold. Like when you say it happens to you before dying. I woke up or... I don't know if I was awake. My body felt heavy, wrong, like something was turning me off from inside. I tried to reach Emilia. I thought if I got to her or Puck, maybe..." He stopped, breathed, and continued. "I went out into the hallway. Something attacked me. A chain. A weight. I didn't see the face. Only the weapon. I tried to scream. I think I did. It didn't work."
Link clenched his fists.
"I was on the roof. I heard nothing."
"Nothing?"
"Nothing. Not you, not footsteps, not blows, no smell. As if the world were covered in glass."
Subaru lifted his gaze.
"Then someone isolated you."
Link did not answer immediately.
The memory of the previous night was worse now, with a clear mind. It had not been natural silence. It had been too perfect. His senses had not failed; something had surrounded them, diverted them, deceived them. The conclusion was simple and horrible: someone knew he was there, or at least someone had created a condition that made him useless even with all his monster deployed.
"Wind," he murmured.
Subaru frowned.
"What?"
"I don't know. I didn't feel wind. That's the strange part. On the roof, I should have felt it. But maybe... maybe there was something moving around me, and I didn't know how to recognize it. Beatrice said my horns were a mana organ. Puck said my flow was clumsy. Maybe there was magic, and I didn't sense it because I'm an idiot with powers who doesn't know how to use them."
Subaru stood, still unsteady.
"You're not an idiot."
Link looked at him.
"I climbed onto the roof with three kagunes, kakugan, and a dark protector speech, and I died without seeing anything. That deserves at least an honorable mention in stupidity."
"I went out into the hallway almost crawling toward Emilia, and I also died without seeing anything."
"Yours was more desperate than stupid."
"I accept the distinction with humility."
Both fell silent.
Then Subaru spoke with a different voice, lower, harder.
"This time, we're not going to work."
Link turned completely toward him.
"What?"
"In what happened before... when I repeated after dying the first time, I tried to do it the same way. I asked to work again. I got close to everyone again. I thought that if I repeated things, I could find the difference. It didn't work. They killed us. You on the roof, me in the hallway. This time, we have to change the approach."
"If I don't work, I'm not near the garden. I don't practice with the kagune. I'm not near Rem."
"Exactly."
Link felt that final word hit harder than necessary.
"Exactly?"
Subaru did not apologize.
"Yes. Exactly. Link, we don't know who killed us. We don't know if Rem is involved, if Ram is involved, if there's someone else, if the dog carries something, if Roswaal knows, if Beatrice can help us, or if Emilia is in danger. The only thing we know is that the more we get into the routine, the more emotionally tangled we become. You with Rem. Me with Emilia. And that routine drags us to the fourth day like a rope around the neck."
Link clenched his jaw.
"Don't talk to me like you can keep distance from Emilia."
"I can't," Subaru admitted. "That's why I'm saying this now, before I see her smile again and become a complete idiot."
The honesty was so brutal that Link did not find a quick answer.
Subaru lowered his gaze to his hands.
"If we work, the mansion absorbs us. Ram calls me Barusu, Rem calls you Link, we make desserts, play with children, go to the village, the dog bites, you climb onto the roof, I go out into the hallway, and we die again. This time, we'll be guests. We observe. We ask. We don't touch the routine more than necessary."
Link looked out the window toward the garden.
He did not want to accept. That was the truth. Part of him wanted to rebuild everything, step by step, even if it hurt. He wanted Rem to tell him again that his movements were clumsy but useful. He wanted to buy the gloves. He wanted to make Carlota. He wanted to see her taste mint-chocolate, even if that moment belonged to a dead line. He wanted to be close because stepping away felt like abandoning something that had only just begun to exist.
But Subaru was right.
And that was unbearable.
"We'll be guests," Link finally said.
Subaru released the air as if he had been holding a stone in his chest.
"Thanks."
"Don't thank me. I hate your plan."
"My plans are rarely pleasant."
"Your plans are rarely plans."
"Also true."
From breakfast onward
Breakfast began with a normality Subaru felt as a threat.
The dining room of the Roswaal mansion was intact, clean, elegant, bathed in a morning light far too kind for two people who had just returned from yet another death. Emilia was there with Puck, concerned about both of them from the moment she saw them enter. Roswaal occupied the head of the table with his theatrical smile, as if every gesture of the newly awakened guests were an interesting note in a score only he could read. Ram and Rem served with their usual neatness, though that word, "usual," no longer meant anything reliable to Subaru or Link.
"Subaru-sama," Rem said as she placed water in front of him. "If you need anything else, please tell me."
Subaru felt the "sama" fall over him like a cold sheet.
It was not Barusu. It was not the nickname born on the third day of the previous loop, not Ram's dry familiarity nor the work routine that, although painful, had ended up becoming a kind of emotional rope. It was distance. It was the mansion returning him to the place of an unknown guest. Subaru smiled by reflex, but the smile did not fully take shape.
"Thank you, Rem. I'm fine. Well, 'fine' within the standards of someone who woke up screaming and may have permanently damaged everyone's image of him before there even was an image."
Ram, from the other side of the table, did not raise her voice.
"Subaru-sama does not need to worry about that. Ram did not have an especially high image of Subaru-sama."
Subaru brought a hand to his chest.
"There it is. One part of the world is still working."
Link, seated beside him, did not answer with a joke. His eyes were lowered, one hand near the glass, and his body was far too still. Rem served him food with the same professional courtesy.
"Link-sama."
The second "sama" was worse.
Link accepted the plate without looking at her too much.
"Thank you."
"It is part of Rem's duty."
The phrase entered cleanly, without memory, without softness, without anything that had existed in the other lines. Link had to remember not to squeeze the fork until it bent. It was not Rem's fault. This Rem had not tasted his mint-chocolate ice cream, had not walked with him through the village, had not supervised two clumsy tentacles lifting dry branches, had not seen his body fall from the roof. To her, Link was a strange guest with an odd scent and an incomplete report from Beatrice about an impossible nature.
Roswaal allowed a few minutes of light conversation to pass before steering breakfast toward the real matter.
"Well, well. Now that both of you have awakened, I believe it is appropriate to explain a few things. Emilia-sama, as you already know from the incident in the capital, is not just any young lady. The stolen insignia had considerable political value, for Emilia-sama is one of the candidates for the royal selection."
Subaru listened without interrupting.
He already knew that part. He had heard it at other breakfasts, under other states of mind, with other decisions on the table. This time, he could not act too surprised or too informed. He had to remain in that uncomfortable point between feigned ignorance and real exhaustion. Emilia, seeing that he was not making his usual comments, looked at him with more concern than relief.
"Subaru, are you really all right? You're very quiet."
He lifted his gaze toward her.
"I'm listening. It's weird, I know. It should probably be recorded as a historical event."
Puck floated over Emilia's shoulder.
"Mmm. Yes, it's weird. But at least you're not screaming."
"That deserves recognition too."
"Not yet."
Link almost smiled, but the conversation turned toward him before he could hide inside silence.
Beatrice, who had appeared in the dining room with her book as if being there were an enormous personal inconvenience, opened her eyes in annoyance when Roswaal looked at her.
"Beatrice informed me of something peculiar about Link-kun," Roswaal said. "A considerable mana reserve, a difficult-to-classify nature, and an affinity that, in her words, approaches the Oni, though he is not exactly a pure Oni."
The word fell over the table like a glass filled to the brim.
Oni.
Ram did not move. Neither did Rem. But Link had already seen that kind of silence before. In the first second, there was no visible reaction; in the second, tension appeared in tiny details: Rem's hand adjusting barely on the tray, Ram's face becoming even more still, both of their breathing reducing as if the air itself had decided not to disturb an old wound.
Subaru looked at him from the corner of his eye.
Link understood the wordless warning: careful.
But this time, he was not going to ask for instructions, nor pretend he did not know how to call out that part of his body. He also was not going to let everyone talk about him as if he were a creature on a table. He had already died too many times because he did not understand what he was. He had already been on a roof without recognizing a wind barrier that perhaps a trained Oni would have felt. He could no longer allow ignorance to remain an excuse.
He placed the glass on the table.
"Then let's speak clearly."
Emilia tensed.
"Link..."
"I'm not going to do anything dangerous," he said before anyone stood. "I'm only going to show it."
He closed his eyes.
The pressure arrived behind his forehead, more familiar than the first time and less calm than he wanted to admit. He did not call the kagune. He did not allow fear to descend into his back. He only sought the flow he had used before, that strange heat connected to mana, and let it rise carefully. His skin tightened. The air around his forehead seemed to compress for an instant.
The two horns emerged.
Complete. Dark at the base, with a fainter reddish tone toward the tips, curved backward with a symmetry that made the dining room silence heavier. There was no roar, no kakugan, no red tentacles. Only two Oni horns appearing on the forehead of a boy who, according to the natural order of things, should not have them.
Rem looked at the horns.
Ram too.
Neither spoke.
Subaru lowered his gaze to his plate, not out of fear of Link, but because seeing the twins' faces made him feel like they were touching a wound that did not belong to them.
Beatrice was the first to break the silence.
"You are not saying everything, I suppose."
Link opened his eyes.
"I know."
"That is not an answer."
"It's the only honest one I have."
Beatrice frowned.
"If you do not know what you are, you should not have that degree of control."
"That's exactly why I want to talk to you."
Beatrice's gaze sharpened.
"Betty does not give free lessons to problematic creatures."
"I'm not asking for them to be free."
Subaru turned toward him with immediate alarm. He knew that tone. It was the tone of Link about to do something calculatedly stupid, which was worse than impulsive stupidity because at least it had time to seem like a good idea to him.
"Link," he murmured.
Link did not look at him.
He kept the horns exposed and his gaze fixed on Beatrice.
"I want you to teach me everything a normal Oni should know. Not advanced magic. Not mansion secrets. Not Roswaal's things. I'm talking about the basics: how to feel mana without depending on pain, how to regulate these horns, what signs I should recognize in the air, how not to spend energy like an idiot, how to detect when something around me is being altered by magic. Everything an Oni child would have learned before growing up and that I don't know because my body decided to arrive late to the explanation."
Ram closed her eye, but her face did not lose its rigidity.
Rem was still looking at the horns.
Beatrice set her book against the table.
"You say it as if Betty were an Oni teacher."
"No. I say it as if you're the most capable person at this table of telling me when I'm doing something wrong."
Subaru let out a low sound, almost a sigh.
"Dangerously flattering."
Beatrice looked at Subaru.
"You be silent, I suppose."
"Yes, Miss Library."
"Do not call me that."
Roswaal seemed delighted.
"What a curious request. Link-kun does not ask for work or money, but for education regarding a nature he does not understand."
"I'm asking not to be useless again because of ignorance," Link replied.
The phrase came out harder than expected.
Emilia looked at him with concern.
"Useless?"
Link realized too late how much he had let slip. He remembered the roof. The silence. The senses nullified. The fall. The rage of dying with three kagunes deployed and not having saved anyone.
"If I have something dangerous in my body," he said, correcting his tone, "I'd rather understand it before I hurt someone or hurt myself."
Puck, who had been floating silently until then, moved his tail.
"That does sound sensible. Lia, this boy is full of strange things, but at least he recognizes he doesn't know how to use them."
Emilia nodded, though she still seemed unsettled by the horns.
"I think learning would be good. As long as it isn't dangerous."
Beatrice made a gesture of annoyance.
"Everyone talks as if Betty has already accepted."
Link took a deep breath.
Here came the difficult part.
"In exchange, I'll prepare something for you."
Beatrice looked at him with absolute disinterest.
"Betty does not need anything from you."
"Vanilla ice cream."
Subaru choked on his water.
Ram looked at him.
"Subaru-sama, drinking should not require supervision."
Subaru coughed, raising one hand.
"I'm fine. It was a spiritual reaction. Continue."
Beatrice did not take her eyes off Link.
"What is that?"
Link noticed the tiniest glimmer of interest. Small. Almost invisible. But it existed.
"A cold dessert. Sweet cream, milk, sugar, vanilla. Smooth texture, melts in your mouth, smells good, tastes better. If I make it badly or you don't like it, you pretend this conversation never happened. You lose nothing."
"Betty loses time listening to you."
"You're already losing it."
Subaru closed his eyes.
"Brother, provoking the most dangerous little girl in the room during breakfast seems like a bad strategy."
"It's not provocation. It's negotiation."
Beatrice narrowed her eyes.
"Betty could make you forget how to negotiate."
"You could also accept one session. Just one. You tell me the basics about Oni, horns, and mana. I make vanilla ice cream. You try it. If you don't like it, call me an idiot and I never mention it again."
"Betty can call you an idiot without trying anything, I suppose."
"But it would be less fair."
Puck started laughing.
"I like this negotiation. It has dessert and threats."
Emilia looked at Beatrice with a gentle smile.
"Beatrice, perhaps you could help him a little. If his mana is unstable, learning to control it will also make the mansion safer."
Beatrice clicked her tongue.
"Do not use that face, Emilia. Betty does not fall for that."
"I'm not making any face."
"That makes it worse."
Roswaal rested his chin on one hand.
"Besides, it would be beneficial. A guest with unknown abilities and complete Oni horns, without basic education on his own mana flow, could become problematic. Beatrice, seeing it as damage prevention would be reasonable."
"I do not need you to give me obvious reasons, Roswaal."
"Of course, of course."
Link did not move. The horns were still there, visible, uncomfortable, a declaration he could not withdraw without feeling like he was stepping back. Rem finally looked away from them and met his eyes.
"Can you withdraw them whenever you want?"
The question was serene, but Link felt what lay beneath it. Not open fear. Not trust. Caution.
"Yes."
"Do it."
It did not sound like a request.
Link obeyed.
He closed his eyes and let the flow lower. The horns slowly retracted beneath his skin, with that unpleasant sensation of reversed pressure. When he opened his eyes, his forehead was clean again. Rem observed the process until the end, without blinking. Ram too.
Beatrice sighed as if the entire world had just forced her to carry a sack of stones.
"One session."
Link looked at her.
"Yes?"
"One. Betty will tell you the basics any idiot with horns should know so he does not act like an untrained animal. Do not expect patience. Do not expect praise. Do not expect Betty to repeat twice what you could understand the first time if your head were not full of muscle."
Subaru pointed at Link.
"That almost sounds tailor-made for you."
Link did not answer because he was too busy trying not to look relieved.
"I accept."
Beatrice raised a finger.
"And the dessert will be today."
Subaru opened his eyes.
"Ah, look. Suddenly there's academic urgency."
"Subaru-sama," Ram said, "if you continue interrupting a negotiation that does not belong to you, Ram will request that your breakfast be removed for the safety of the atmosphere."
Subaru hugged his plate.
"I withdraw every comment. Breakfast is innocent."
Beatrice continued:
"If the vanilla ice cream does not fulfill what was promised, Betty will deny having accepted this."
"Deal," Link said.
"And you will not call it payment. Betty does not work for sweets."
"Of course. It will be a symbolic compensation for educational inconvenience."
Beatrice looked at him with tiny fury.
"I regret this."
"You haven't tasted it yet."
"I regret it in advance."
Puck floated toward Emilia.
"Lia, do you think I can ask for some too?"
Emilia smiled.
"First, let's let Beatrice decide whether she likes it."
"Oh, she's going to like it," Subaru said quietly, then pretended absolute interest in his food when Beatrice looked at him.
Roswaal allowed the moment to settle before returning to the main conversation.
"Then we have Link-kun's partial request: to remain in the mansion and receive basic instruction from Beatrice about his condition, in exchange for a culinary demonstration. Now comes the formal reward. Subaru-kun, Link-kun, after what happened in the capital, Emilia-sama wishes for you to receive appropriate compensation. You may ask for something within my possibilities."
Subaru straightened.
This was the point that mattered.
The trap of the third loop could not begin the same as the previous ones. They could not return to routine, to uniforms, to the garden, to the third day, to the fourth day, to the village without a plan, to the dog, to the roof, to the hallway. They had to look from the outside, even if it hurt.
"I want to stay here as a guest," Subaru said.
Emilia looked at him in surprise.
"As a guest?"
Subaru nodded.
"Yes. I don't want to ask for money or a job yet. I haven't fully recovered, I understand almost nothing about this place, and honestly, if I try to work right now, I'll probably cause more problems than solutions. I want to stay for a few days, learn about the mansion, about this world, and about what I should do next."
Ram observed Subaru with her flawless expression.
"Subaru-sama has said something unexpectedly sensible."
"Thank you. I think."
"It was not praise. It was surprise."
"I'll accept it as emotionally recycled praise."
Rem looked toward Link.
"Does Link-sama also wish to remain as a guest?"
Link felt the impulse to answer that he wanted to work in the garden. He did. That was the miserable part. He wanted to feel the earth in his hands again, practice with the kagune among dry branches, hear Rem correct him with "less force," buy gloves that perhaps did not yet exist in this loop. But if he accepted work, he would enter the same current that had already dragged him twice toward death.
"Yes," he finally said. "As a guest. At least for now."
Rem's expression did not change.
"You do not wish to work outside?"
The question was simple.
That was why it hurt.
"I do want to," Link replied. "But I shouldn't. Not yet. If I don't understand what I am, I can break tools, walls, or something worse. I'd rather learn first. If Beatrice fulfills her part of the educational threat, maybe later I can be less dangerous."
Beatrice clicked her tongue.
"Do not call it that."
"Hostile instruction?"
"Neither."
"Violent pedagogy."
"Betty is going to cancel before the dessert."
Subaru raised both hands.
"Don't cancel. Vanilla ice cream is a noble cause. A light in this dark world."
"Subaru-sama speaks as if he has already tried it," Rem said.
Subaru froze.
So did Link.
Rem did not say it with open accusation. Only with calm. But that calm was enough to remind them that every word could leave a trace.
Subaru smiled too quickly.
"I speak with faith. Faith in sugar, Rem. It is a universal religion."
Ram closed her eye.
"Subaru-sama has just made the conversation worse."
"That happens to me often."
Roswaal laughed softly.
"Accepted, then. Subaru-kun and Link-kun will remain in the mansion as guests for a few days. Beatrice will offer Link-kun a basic session on his Oni-related condition and elementary mana handling, so long as she does not change her mind before the appointed time."
"Betty already wants to change her mind," Beatrice murmured.
"And Link-kun will prepare that curious vanilla ice cream."
"It is not for everyone," Beatrice said immediately.
Puck raised a little paw.
"I vote for it to be for everyone."
"Your vote does not count, cat," Beatrice said.
"Spirit, actually. And my vote counts in dessert matters."
Emilia laughed softly, and for one second, the table seemed less heavy. Only for one second. Subaru felt it like air entering a closed room. Link did too, though he did not let his face show it much.
Rem served more water.
"Then Rem will prepare the kitchen if Roswaal-sama authorizes it and if Link-sama needs ingredients."
"Thank you, Rem," Link said.
"It is part of Rem's duty."
The phrase returned.
But this time, beneath the distance, there was something different. Not trust. Not closeness. Not memory. Only clearer attention, born from having seen him bring out horns, ask for help, and offer dessert as if negotiating with Beatrice were the most normal thing in the world.
Breakfast continued with that new form of balance: Subaru and Link remained guests, not workers; Ram and Rem still treated them with respectful distance; Roswaal seemed far too pleased by the new variables; Emilia was worried but relieved that both of them wanted to stay; Puck was planning how to taste ice cream without declaring war on Beatrice; and Beatrice feigned disinterest so poorly that Subaru had to bite his tongue not to ruin everything.
As for Link, he did not bring out his horns again for the rest of breakfast.
But the decision had already been made.
This time, he would not climb onto a roof without knowing how to recognize a wind barrier. He would not allow his Oni side to remain an unknown organ used blindly. He would not wait for the fourth day as a clumsy monster roaring too late against invisible enemies.
If he had horns, he would learn what they meant.
If Beatrice wanted vanilla ice cream, he would make it for her.
And if death walked through the mansion again, this time he would try to meet it with something more than rage.