In a stone-walled room, Subaru was staring blankly at his hands, dumbfounded, before the girl sprawled out in front of him.

“———”

What had happened? He couldn’t wrap his mind around it at all.

There were wounds on his wrists, his throat felt scratchy, and his heart was pounding stupidly fast. Yet none of these things connected to any memories; they felt like glitches born in the void of his mind.

Separately from the physical evidence, his spirit, his soul, was abandoned in this situation.

If he could say just one thing clearly——,

——the flicker of life in the girl lying before him had already been extinguished.

“——Ugh, it’s too early to give up!”

Breathing raggedly, Subaru shook his head and rushed to where the girl—Meily—was lying on her back.

Each step felt heavy, as if his shoes were glued to the floor. He finally managed to peel his shoes off the ground and crouched next to Meily.

“———”

Meily lay there, mouth slightly open, her pale, slender arms and legs thrown out, not moving an inch.

Her expression seemed stunned, and her dark eyes, lacking any light, were vaguely focused on something far away.

Originally, she had an elusive impression, but now that impression only intensified——.

“M-Meily… hey, Meily!”

He called out.

No response.

Thinking that if a voice wouldn’t work, Subaru shook Meily’s shoulders and gently slapped her cheek.

Still no response. Her open eyelids didn’t even flutter.

“Me……”

Stopping his calls, Subaru held his breath and attempted to perform the best resurrection techniques he could remember.

He placed his hands on her thin chest and pushed down with his body weight repeatedly for chest compressions. He recalled that the heart’s position was two fingers above the xiphoid process and pressed his palms down according to that knowledge.

“Hah… Hah…! Meily! Hey, Meily!”

“———”

“Damnit!”

There was no reply. The girl’s pallid face wavered weakly.

Cursing at the situation, Subaru tilted her head to secure her airway and attempted artificial respiration. The CPR steps involved repeating chest compressions and artificial breaths.

“What else is there? What else? What else, damnit, damnit, damnit!”

Desperately trying to pull together his memories, Subaru fought hard for anything else he could do.

But ultimately, it felt like his half-baked knowledge from television, just a bad recollection, only aggravated his frustration further, making it feel like he was reaching into a fog.

In the end, he did nothing but clumsily repeat chest compressions and artificial breaths over and over again.

He felt no heartbeat beneath his palms. Even when he kissed her and forced air into her lungs, he didn’t feel any response that would let him know this would convey his intentions to the girl.

And so, he continued resuscitating until his stamina ran out——,

“——Damnit!”

Sweat beaded on his forehead, and gasping for breath, Subaru collapsed onto the ground.

“Hah, hah… damnit, damnit…!”

Grabbing his bangs with his palm, Subaru could only curse in frustration.

Meily didn’t come back to life. Just as the first impression indicated.

The flicker of life in the girl had vanished, never to be rekindled.

——Meily was dead.

Mercilessly, fate had cruelly snatched the life away from the young girl. But those sorts of consolation expressions weren’t suited for this moment.

It was not fate that killed her; it was a more definite intent to murder that had taken her life.

The proof lay in the painful bluish bruise left upon Meily’s delicate neck.

“———”

In silence, Subaru steadied his breath, looking down at his palms.

Just moments ago, those hands had fought desperately to save Meily’s life——and now, both wrists had irregular scratch marks engraved into them.

As if they had been clawed out of pure desperation, as if fighting for their lives.

He wasn’t so dull as to not understand what that might imply.

“———”

Rising to his feet, Subaru made adjustments to Meily’s appearance.

He straightened her disheveled clothing, clasped her arms over her chest, and closed her slightly opened eyelids. Having paid at least a formal respect to the deceased, he gently placed a hand on her slender neck.

It filled him with an unpleasant chill as he traced the dark bruise remaining on Meily’s neck.

“…It fits perfectly.”

A dry murmur, devoid of strength or surprise, merely expressed the grim reality.

The bluish bruise on Meily’s neck—where his fingers had left their mark—matched exactly with the shape of Subaru’s fingers, even to an inexperienced eye.

At this point, it was impossible to doubt the facts anymore.

Meily had been strangled to death.

And the perpetrator was none other than——,

“——Ugh, no!”

The moment he realized that undeniable fact, a wave of nausea surged up Subaru’s throat. Instinctively turning his face away, he rolled to the side, avoiding staining Meily’s corpse.

What spilled out was nothing but the breakfast he had only ingested moments ago. After unloading it messily onto the floor, Subaru vomited until his stomach was empty.

“I’m really just throwing up again, aren’t I…”

Wiping his mouth roughly with his sleeve, Subaru self-deprecatingly muttered those words.

In truth, he couldn’t remember how many times he had thrown up. This might have been the first since the start of this new day, but the previous day had been a complete mess.

It felt as if he had never properly processed anything he had eaten. He felt a deep remorse for the farmers, wishing to apologize wholeheartedly to every farmer in the nation.

Diverting his thoughts like this would only cause cracks in his heart, threatening to shatter it completely.

“———”

The circumstantial evidence was overwhelming.

They were alone in the room, and the finger marks on Meily’s neck matched Subaru’s own. He wasn’t naive enough to believe that he could escape this situation.

He never even considered that someone had framed him.

Creating this situation didn’t require anyone’s assistance. This place existed beyond the dimension where someone could help create a setup.

If there were hands needed to manifest this nightmare, it would only take a pair.

——Two arms belonging to Natsuki Subaru were all it took.

“…I don’t get it.”

Facing that reality head-on, Subaru voiced his incomprehension.

Unfathomable, nonsensical, a partial resolution—whatever words he chose, this was an irreproducible situation——yet the crime could only be concluded as one committed by Natsuki Subaru.

However, the very Subaru himself had no memories of such acts left behind.

“What happened? What happened? Remember. Remember, remember, remember…!”

Standing up, Subaru started pacing the room, trying to pry open his memories.

He had died, awoken, met Emilia, Beatrice, and Patrasche. He had hidden the fact that he had no memory during breakfast, pressed Julius with his surreal responses, embraced Shaula who was secretly keeping an eye on him, and then encountered Meily in the hallway.

And then, Meily had come to him, mentioning that she had something to talk about——.

“Something about last night… what did she say…”

Subaru frowned, recalling the hazy memory.

However, just after she had mentioned her purpose, his consciousness had cut off, scattering her supposed words like thoughts right before drifting off to sleep.

“The night, she asked about the night. That’s certain. Was it before I woke up, right before bed? Anyway, she must have asked about one of those… and then?”

He couldn’t remember what happened after that.

All he knew was that what Meily asked him was likely related to the “night’s actions” he also wanted to know.

According to Emilia and the others, Subaru had been found collapsed in the library this morning.

His actions the night before collapsed, completely unknown. At the very least, it was unmistakable that the matters that had unfolded during that time were related to the loss of Subaru’s memory.

And surely, it was correct to assume that Meily had some connection to that lost memory——.

“She died. And I had strangled her…? Why would I…”

Looking down at his hands, vivid sensations resurfaced that he didn’t remember having.

With sheer force, the arms that had strangled the young girl until her breath ceased. The scrapes on his wrists must have been made by Meily desperately resisting as she was being choked.

Upon closer inspection, blood was on the nails of the girl whose hands were clasped together. It was concrete evidence of their struggle.

The deep gashes carved into his arms felt as if they were the vengeful voice left behind by the girl——.

“——Huh?”

While letting his train of thought wander, Subaru suddenly let out a choked breath.

A stunned exhale; the cause lay in Subaru’s own arms. It wasn’t the wounds around his wrists that he had stared at intently. His gaze turned towards the nails of his right hand.

On those nails, much like Meily, were dried blood and torn flesh from scratching someone.

“———”

Dubious of the strange bloodstain, Subaru looked again at Meily’s corpse.

The deceased, laid out with respect. Perhaps it was no comfort, but except for the bluish bruise around her neck, the girl maintained her fleeting beauty.

At the very least, there were no visible scratch marks within reach. The ugly pain-inducing marks inflicted on Subaru’s nails were not remaining on the girl’s body.

Then, what was this blood and skin remaining on his nails——what were the traces of malice?

“——No way.”

Glancing down at his painfully throbbing arm, a bad feeling gripped Subaru’s lips.

The grotesque transformation from elbow to wrist was fresh in his memory, but the pain pulsating now was coming from his left arm.

As sensations emanated from the inner elbow where the fabric concealed it, Subaru slowly started rolling up his sleeve. The slightly clingy feeling of the fabric was from dried blood peeling away.

He then gasped and quickly rolled his sleeve up to his shoulder.

Upon seeing quite a bit of blood on his left arm, he let out the breath he was holding.

“———”

Rubbing off the dark red blood from his arm with his fingers, he focused his gaze on the injury that was crying out in pain.

There, just as he imagined, was a scratch mark that he thought was carved by his right hand. The painful gash running from the inner elbow to the bicep was more than just an ordinary scratch.

It was writing.

It was a distorted sentence carved into flesh by his fingernails.

It read:

——”Natsuki Subaru is here.”

“——What?”

The moment he realized that, an unbearable breath escaped from him.

Convinced he must have misread something, Subaru wiped his fingers over the scratch on his left arm, rubbed it again and again, until the once stopped blood flowed once more.

But there was no other way to read it. This unmistakably said “Natsuki Subaru is here.” In filthy, Japanese script, clearly visible from Subaru’s perspective——.

How clear. It was an incredibly straightforward declaration of self. It can sometimes happen that a perpetrator leaves evidence at the scene to prove their guilt, but this was the same thing. Leaving his name behind boldly stated whose crime it was. What kindness, what self-importance, what a display of egotism——.

“You… what the hell are you!?”

Faced with an unwelcome truth, Subaru cried out in agony, his voice cracking. He swung his inseparable left arm, turning his face away from the filth as he stumbled.

He fell, plopping down onto the floor, and as Subaru grit his teeth, he slammed his left arm onto the ground. Again and again he struck, biting down so hard that blood flowed from the corners of his mouth.

Yet, even after doing that, the reality didn’t change. The gash on his arm wouldn’t disappear either.

“It didn’t exist! There was absolutely no scar like this!”

Shaking his head violently, Subaru declared in the room, where only the unmoving Meily remained, that the wound on his left arm came after he lost consciousness.

It was undeniable that the painful scratch on his left arm was new; it wasn’t a wound he had just never noticed until now. Whoever had strangled Meily had likewise inflicted injuries on Subaru——no, that wasn’t it.

No, no! That’s definitely incorrect. That’s wrong. It’s absurd.

It’s high time to acknowledge it. Understand it. He must know. It wasn’t someone else. This was no other being. It was the crime committed by Natsuki Subaru himself.

The “Natsuki Subaru” who was not Subaru strangled Meily and engraved a medal of his deed onto his own arm.

“I’m going crazy…”

His head felt twisted. It felt insane. He could only think he had gone completely off the rails.

——Was the name “Natsuki Subaru” the name of an incomprehensible monster?

“———”

This was not the first time Subaru had felt distrust towards “Natsuki Subaru.”

Including his still unanswered strange behavior from last night, “Natsuki Subaru” repeated clearly illogical actions.

The tactics that had clearly tormented Julius when he had pressed him for details about his clandestine relationship with Echidna, and this bewildering behavior—it would be much more satisfying to say that some other being had possessed Subaru’s body.

But that isn’t the case——.

It was infuriating, but focusing on the wounds on his left arm made it impossible to deny that suspicion.

The name written upon his arm, although it bore little resemblance to something made with a pen, still carried its own traits.

To be specific, there were idiosyncrasies in the characters he could consciously recognize. Unless one mimicked it very intentionally, such a level of similarity wouldn’t be achievable by others.

In other words, this was undoubtedly the handwriting of “Natsuki Subaru,” sharing roots with his own.

The moment that realization dawned, another fact surfaced visibly.

That is——,

“——While I was unconscious, did ‘Natsuki Subaru’ return?”

And that “Natsuki Subaru” had somehow clashed with Meily and killed her, leaving evidence of the act on Subaru’s very own arm, before retreating back into the abyss of unconsciousness.

That part simply didn’t make sense.

“With my body present, why would you… no, what am I? What are you really? Who the hell are you…”

Clenching his face tightly, Subaru muttered in a trembling voice.

In this foreign world, where he had no idea who his foes or friends were, he found himself needing to classify even himself as something less than harmless.

“———”

Doubts about his stability made him wobble, and he couldn’t even stand properly under the weight of uncertainty.

Nevertheless, Subaru fought against those feelings, taking a long, deep breath.

He couldn’t maintain his composure. His heart was thoroughly torn and in disarray.

But he absolutely refused to be toyed with by “Natsuki Subaru,” clueless and whipped around in circles.

So——,

“——Who are you?”

He whispered with hatred towards an enemy he couldn’t confront without a mirror, as he dug his left fingernails into his right arm——the grotesque skin covered in strange patterns.

With a plop, the blackened skin tore open, and red droplets of blood undeniably began to ooze out.

——How ironic that the blood flowing from this blackened skin was also red, he thought.