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Subaru Natsuki didn't know how long he spent staring at Rem's body.
Time inside that room had stopped advancing normally. Every second seemed to fall into a well before reaching the next, dragging with it the sound of Ram's sobs, Emilia's contained breathing, Beatrice's silent presence somewhere behind him, and Roswaal's voice explaining the cause of death with a calm that Subaru would have wanted to hate. Rem was there, lying on the bed, dressed in a delicate nightgown that made her look younger, smaller, more vulnerable than Subaru had ever seen her. She wasn't wearing her maid uniform. She wasn't holding a tray. She didn't have the chain in her hands. There was no coldness in her blue eye, no accusations, no duty, no hatred, no suspicion. Only stillness. A stillness so perfect that Subaru's brain immediately tried to reject it, as if accepting that Rem could be dead was harder than accepting that he himself had died several times.
He told himself that maybe it was a trick. The idea was miserable, cowardly, dirty, but it appeared anyway. Maybe Rem was pretending. Maybe the mansion was testing him. Maybe Roswaal, Beatrice, Ram, everyone was participating in a cruel staging to see if he lowered his guard. Maybe, if he approached and took her wrist, he would find a pulse. Weak, slow, but real. Maybe Rem would open her eyes, look at him with that sharp courtesy she always had, and tell him that Subaru-sama was surprisingly easy to fool. Subaru would have accepted that humiliation with joy. He would have let Ram insult him for an entire month if that meant Rem was breathing.
He took a step.
His hand moved toward her.
It didn't reach her.
—Don't touch her.
Ram's voice wasn't loud, but it stopped Subaru as if a wall had been born between him and the bed. His hand was slapped away. It wasn't a strong attack, not compared to the things he had already suffered, but the pain in his fingers seemed absurd, out of place, almost offensive for being so small compared to everything else. Subaru raised his gaze and saw Ram. The same Ram who called him Barusu. The same Ram who in other lines had corrected him, insulted him, taught him, forced him to carry trays and endured his clumsiness with a patience disguised as disdain. But now that Ram had disappeared behind a broken older sister.
She had tears on her face.
That was what finally destroyed any defense Subaru still tried to raise.
Ram cried without shame, without beauty, without control. It wasn't the soft and elegant cry one imagined in a sad scene. It was a loss tearing the air from her lungs. She had her arms around Rem's body, as if with enough strength she could prevent death from taking what it had already taken. Her face, normally so dry, so exact, so difficult to alter, was deformed by a desperation that Subaru didn't know how to look at without feeling guilty.
—Don't… touch my little sister —Ram repeated, and that second time her voice broke in a way that shouldn't have been possible.
Subaru stepped back.
Not because he wanted to.
Because he had no right to advance.
Rem was dead.
There was no trick.
There was no hidden breathing.
There was no possible forgiveness in a cold wrist.
Roswaal spoke then, not with total indifference, but with that strange distance of someone who could look at a tragedy and name its pieces without crumbling.
—Apareeentemente, death by weakening. Her vigor was stolen while she slept. The beats became slower, gentiiilmente, until the fire of her life went out. From what we see, it seems more the work of a curse than ordinary magic.
Curse.
The word entered Subaru like a blade that finally found the right wound.
Curse.
Not Rem.
Not the chain.
Not the mace.
Not the blue-haired maid appearing in the night like a silent executioner.
Curse.
Subaru felt the floor tilt. In the first loops, he had died weakened, emptied, feeling his body shutting down from within without understanding the reason. Then Rem had attacked him, and he, desperate to find a way to organize the horror, had joined both things in a single explanation. Rem was the attacker. Rem was the threat. Rem had to be connected to the invisible death. Rem, Rem, Rem. It was easier to hate a person than a unknown rule. It was easier to imagine a concrete assassin than to admit that there was another enemy, one that didn't show a face, that could touch you without you knowing and steal your life while you slept.
But Rem was dead for the same reason.
Rem wasn't the origin.
Rem was also a victim.
—No… —murmured Subaru, and the sound came out as if someone had pushed it from his own chest—. It can't be.
No one responded. Maybe no one heard him. Maybe everyone heard him and decided it wasn't worth answering such a useless murmur. Subaru brought both hands to his head. The room started to fill with broken connections: the puppy's bite that he no longer had on his hand, the village he hadn't visited in this loop, Rem leaving to fulfill tasks while he remained locked under Beatrice's protection, the warm hands that held him during his nightmares, two presences on both sides of the bed, two maids he had turned into dangerous shadows because he couldn't bear to be afraid without giving it shape.
Ram and Rem had been there.
The night he trembled asleep, when dreams dragged him toward blood, chain, and open throat, someone had held his hands. Not Emilia. Not Beatrice. Not Link. Two different hands. One on each side. He had felt it without understanding. Now, looking at Ram hugging Rem's corpse, he understood with a late cruelty that made him want to tear off his skin.
They had held his hands.
He had rejected the food Rem prepared.
He had avoided looking at her.
He had thought of her as a threat.
And while he arrived alive at the fifth day hidden behind Beatrice, Rem had died.
—Subaru —said Emilia.
He barely turned his head. Emilia was pale. Her eyes were full of pain, concern, helpless confusion that she didn't deserve to carry. Subaru wanted to tell her not to approach. He wanted to tell her that everything he touched broke. He wanted to warn her that if she worried too much about him, the world would find a way to charge it. But his voice didn't obey.
Roswaal continued speaking, perhaps to give shape to the disaster, perhaps because the mansion needed someone to keep using words.
—A weakening curse doesn't appear out of nowhere. There must have been contact with whoever placed it, or with some means to transmit it. Rem left the mansion during these days for work matters. It's possible that the contact occurred there. But, for now, we don't have enough information to affirm it with certainty.
Subaru stopped breathing.
The village.
He hadn't gone.
In this loop, he hadn't accompanied Rem. Link had left. Subaru had stayed locked up, protected, trembling, alive. Rem had gone out alone to fulfill her duty, as always. The curse that had previously reached him, this time had reached her. It wasn't magical transfer due to Beatrice's protection. It wasn't an elegant punishment from the world. It was worse. It was simple causality. Subaru wasn't there. Subaru didn't receive the bite, the contact, the mark or whatever initiated the death. Rem did.
Subaru's life hadn't been saved.
It had been exchanged for ignorance.
Ram slowly raised her gaze.
Subaru felt the hatred before she spoke.
It wasn't an unfair deduction. That also hurt. From the outside, what did it look like? A stranger with a smell that bothered those who could perceive it. A guest who locked himself away for days under Beatrice's protection. A boy who explained nothing, who avoided the maids, who rejected food, who looked as if he knew too much and remained silent as if he was hiding something. And then Rem, Ram's little sister, the half of her world, woke up dead while Subaru survived intact. Subaru would have wanted to scream that it wasn't his fault, that he didn't know, that he also wanted to save her. But there was no phrase capable of entering the ear of a person who had just lost everything.
—Barusu —said Ram.
The nickname didn't sound like before.
There was no mockery. There was no domestic edge that in other days could even feel like a form of familiarity. It sounded like the name of someone about to be condemned.
—Ram… —said Subaru, and his voice came out trembling—. I didn't…
The air moved.
Subaru didn't have time to understand.
An invisible force cut the space where his body had been an instant before. If Emilia hadn't pulled him back, if Beatrice hadn't clicked her tongue and twisted a nearby door with violence, if fear hadn't bent his knees at the exact moment, the wind blade would have opened him right there. The wall behind him received the cut and a clean line appeared in the wood. Subaru looked at the mark, then at Ram, then at the bed where Rem remained motionless.
Ram didn't apologize.
She couldn't.
—You —she said, and she didn't need to finish the sentence.
Subaru stepped back. Beatrice appeared beside him, small, irritated, with her book pressed against her chest and her gaze fixed on Ram with a seriousness Subaru hadn't expected from her.
—The room of the dead is not a place to make more corpses, I suppose.
—Give him to me, Beatrice-sama —said Ram.
Ram's voice was still broken, but that didn't make her less dangerous.
—Don't give me orders with that face. It's unpleasant.
—That man survived.
—Rem didn't.
—That logic is so simple that even Barusu could understand it. It's also insufficient.
Subaru heard his nickname again and felt something move in his chest. Barusu. In another life, that name had been a daily mockery, almost a domestic mark. In this one, it was an accusation. And yet, beneath everything, it was still something only Ram called him. That thought was absurd. Undignified for the moment. But it appeared.
Ram raised her hand.
The wind responded.
Beatrice clicked her tongue.
—If you're going to act like a child throwing a tantrum, do it somewhere else.
—Don't speak to me as if I don't understand what happened.
—Then stop acting as if killing Subaru would bring Rem back.
Ram shuddered.
For a second, Subaru thought the phrase had been too cruel even for Beatrice. But then he saw that Beatrice wasn't being cruel for fun. She was trying to stop her. In her twisted, dry, almost unbearable way, but she was trying. Ram also understood it, and that only made her pain more visible.
—I have nothing left —said Ram.
The world fell silent around that phrase.
Subaru looked at her.
Ram had nothing left.
Rem was her little sister. Her other half. Her reason. The person she protected, scolded, supported, imitated, and needed. Subaru didn't know anything important about them. He didn't know their past. He didn't know about their village, about their horns, about Rem's guilt or Ram's loss. He knew nothing. But he had seen enough to understand one thing: if Rem was dead, Ram wasn't simply in mourning. Ram was broken.
And Subaru was alive in front of her.
It was natural that she wanted to destroy him.
—Ram… —said Subaru.
She looked at him as if his voice were an offense.
Subaru swallowed.
He could stay there. He could beg. He could ask to be locked up. He could wait for Beatrice to protect him again, for Emilia to intercede, for Roswaal to find some explanation, for Link to return with his bag of money and his cold pride to drag him away from the mansion. He could survive. He had survived the fourth day. He had managed to cross the border. He could cling to that victory, even if it was rotten.
Rem would still be dead.
The idea was so clear that it took his breath away.
If he kept living, that world would continue. Emilia might keep trying to help him. Beatrice might insult him every day. Ram might end up killing him or Roswaal might stop her. Link might return, perhaps, and find Rem dead, and Subaru would have to look him in the eyes and explain that he had survived while she died. They could investigate the curse later, find the culprit, punish the shaman. They could close the case.
Rem would still be dead.
Subaru looked at his hands.
The hands that had been held by the twins.
The right one, perhaps by Ram.
The left one, perhaps by Rem.
He didn't know.
That was also unfair. He couldn't even remember which of them had held which hand. But he did remember the warmth. He remembered that they hadn't left him alone when he was lost in nightmares. He remembered Rem serving food. He remembered Ram calling him Barusu. He remembered both of them alive in days that no longer existed for anyone else. He remembered Rem killing him. He remembered Ram using wind. He remembered the pain, yes. But he also remembered the laughter, the routine, the food, the instructions, the absurd way in which the mansion had started to seem like a place where he could exist without being completely rejected.
And then he understood.
He couldn't choose to live in a world where Rem had died if there was a possibility of going back.
The conclusion didn't arrive like a heroic revelation. It wasn't a light opening between clouds. It was a weight falling into place. Something horrible, necessary, undeniable. Subaru Natsuki was afraid of dying. That fear hadn't disappeared. It would never disappear. He had died enough times to know there was no beauty in it. Death hurt. Death humiliated. Death tore. Death waited at the end with a patience that no speech could defeat. He didn't want to die. Every fiber of his body screamed against the idea. But for the first time in that loop, death wasn't only the enemy that hunted him.
It was a door.
A brutal, unfair, horrifying door.
But a door.
Subaru raised his gaze.
Beyond the garden, the terrain descended toward a rocky area where the path approached the edge of a cliff. It wasn't far. Enough to run. Enough to decide before anyone fully understood. Beatrice followed his gaze and her eyes opened slightly.
—Don't make that face.
Subaru smiled.
This time it came out.
Not well. Not pretty. Not brave. But real.
—Beatrice.
—No.
—Thank you.
—Don't say that.
—Thank you for protecting me.
—I told you not to say it.
—And sorry.
Beatrice took a step toward him.
Ram also noticed something. Her posture changed. The wind tensed.
—Barusu.
Subaru started to run.
Not toward the mansion.
Not toward Emilia.
Not toward safety.
He ran toward the cliff.
His body protested immediately. He had spent days locked up, eating little, sleeping badly. His legs felt heavy, clumsy, unworthy of such a big decision. He tripped once, almost fell, recovered his balance with his arms open, and kept going. Behind him, Ram screamed something. Beatrice too. He didn't distinguish the words. The world narrowed until it became earth under his feet, air in his throat, and the edge approaching.
—Wait!
The voice came from behind him.
He didn't know if it was Ram.
He didn't know if it was Beatrice.
Maybe it didn't matter.
Subaru ran with everything he had.
Every step tore a part of his fear and returned a bigger one. Dying was terrifying. Knowing he was going to do it of his own will was even more so. His body didn't understand the difference between sacrifice and suicide. It only understood fall, impact, end. Instinct screamed at him to stop. To turn. To ask for forgiveness. To live even if the world was wrong. Living was natural. Living was what every body desired. But Subaru wasn't just his body. He was memory. He was guilt. He was love for a silver-haired girl who shouldn't cry for him. He was gratitude toward a librarian who pretended not to have a heart. He was friendship with a Latino who walked alone because he couldn't bear to look at Rem. He was rage against an invisible enemy. He was the memory of two hands holding his while he slept.
The edge arrived.
Subaru stopped just before falling.
The cliff's wind hit his face, colder, freer, more honest than the mansion's air. Below, the distance was enough. He didn't need to calculate it. The body knew it. A fall like that left no room for late regret.
Ram arrived behind him.
Beatrice too.
Ram had a broken face. The pain was still there, but now there was something else: incomprehension. Beatrice, on the other hand, seemed furious. Not annoyed. Furious. That fury was almost a gift. It meant that, for some reason, she didn't want to see him jump.
—Get down from there —said Beatrice.
Subaru looked back.
—I can't.
—Yes, you can. Humans always say they can't when they just want to do something stupid.
—This time I really can do something stupid.
—Don't play with words.
Ram took a step.
—Barusu… what are you doing?
Subaru looked at her.
His throat closed. There were so many things he wanted to tell her and so few he could. He wanted to tell her that Rem didn't have to die. That in another line Rem had lived. That in another line Ram had taught him to fold clothes, that she had insulted him in strangely familiar ways, that even her verbal attacks had become part of a life he wanted to recover. He wanted to tell her that her sister wasn't just a corpse in a bed. That she had been cruel, yes, and a murderer, yes, and also kind, hardworking, protective, clumsy at understanding her own value, someone who deserved to wake up again.
He couldn't say it.
Not all of it.
So he said the truth he could sustain.
—I don't know anything important about you two.
Ram clenched her teeth.
—Then don't speak as if—
—I don't know anything —Subaru repeated, stronger, not to interrupt her, but to prevent his own voice from breaking before reaching the end—. I don't know why Rem hated me. I don't know why that smell follows me. I don't know what happened to you two, I don't know what it means to be an Oni, I don't know what part of this mansion is rotten or what part is just trying to survive. I don't know anything important, Ram. You're right.
Ram remained still.
Subaru smiled with tears in his eyes.
—But I remember you.
Beatrice didn't speak.
The wind moved Ram's hair.
—You don't know. You can't know. And I can't explain it as I should. But I saw you. I heard you. I laughed with you. I worked with you. I failed in front of you. You insulted me, helped me, gave me food, corrected me, held my hands when I was lost. Those days existed. Even if only I remember them, they existed.
Ram opened her eyes a little wider.
The statement made no sense from her perspective. Subaru knew it. For her, it was the madness of a suspicious stranger standing at the edge of a cliff on the morning of her sister's death. But even without understanding, something in his words reached her. Not as proof. Not as reason. As an emotion too naked to be a simple lie.
Subaru took a deep breath.
He thought of Link.
Of his back walking away.
Of the phrase: everything you need is attached to something that hurts you.
—Link, forgive me —he murmured, so low that perhaps no one heard him—. If I'm wrong, you have the right to hate me.
Then he looked at Ram.
And shouted with everything he had left:
—I love you! Both of you!
Ram's expression broke.
Just an instant.
Just a crack.
But Subaru saw it.
Beatrice did too.
That crack was enough.
Subaru turned toward the void.
His legs trembled. Fear tried to plant roots in the rock. The body, desperate to live, begged him not to take the last step. Subaru closed his eyes for a second and saw Rem in the bed. He opened them and saw the sky.
—I'm going to save her —he said.
And he jumped.
The air received him like a cold hand, tearing the ground from under his feet and the voice from his throat. Behind, something screamed his name. He didn't know who. He didn't need to know. The mansion, Ram, Beatrice, Emilia, Roswaal, Rem dead in her bed, Link walking away with a bag of coins and too many questions, everything stayed above, moving away, while Subaru fell with his arms open toward a death chosen for the first time not to escape the pain, but to face it again.
He was afraid.
He was afraid until the last instant.
But beneath the fear there was a decision stronger than his cowardice.
Rem wouldn't end up in that bed.
Ram wouldn't be left without her sister.
Emilia wouldn't have to look at another corpse without understanding.
Beatrice wouldn't have to protect him only to see him run toward desperation.
And Link, wherever he was, would have to endure one more death without understanding why, because Subaru still didn't know the rule that united them. That guilt pierced him during the fall, quick and bitter, but it didn't make him change his decision. If there was a next attempt, he would look for it. He would drag it back if necessary. He would explain what he could. He would insult him if necessary. But first he had to recover the world where Rem breathed.
The bottom approached.
Subaru clenched his teeth.
He didn't ask forgiveness from death.
He didn't beg it to be gentle.
He only held a promise inside his chest until the impact.
I will save Rem.
I will save everyone.
And with that decision burning stronger than fear, Subaru Natsuki let fall the fourth loop.