Chapter 125: Perhaps... in Barusu's eyes, she is just Ram

"Barusu—so in the end, you really did go through with it—"

Off-screen, Ram, who had been staring without blinking at the screen that had gone pitch black, listened to that final muffled sound drifting up from the snowfield and confirmed it.

Then, she let out a breath.

Her clenched fist slowly loosened and hung limply at her side, threads of blood winding down her palm from the wounds her own nails had torn open.

As someone who held the memories of this world line—someone who could even be called a firsthand witness to the very story unfolding on the screen—Ram of course knew that in the end she had not died here.

Otherwise, there would never have been the agonizing ordeal that followed!

Longing for release, yet unable to be released no matter what—that was precisely the tangled, cursed bond between her and Barusu.

At this thought, the eyes hidden behind her short pink hair revealed an unmistakable sorrow, and she unconsciously reached toward her neck, where there was nothing at all.

And yet she always felt that the restraining chain Barusu had fastened around her with his own hands still hung there.

Ram's rosy fingertips brushed against her own collarbone, the hollow emptiness within her almost driving her mad in that very moment.

——Why on earth had she survived in the snow that day?

Over the two years she had been imprisoned by Natsuki Subaru, she had pondered this question countless times.

In the end, she had found the answer in his gaze each time Natsuki Subaru came to the sealed chamber to visit her.

Barusu probably wanted to be released! And she was the most convenient tool for it!

A tool that could go on hating him forever—one that, when the day came, could let him die in peace—

But surprisingly, she felt no dissatisfaction about it.

Let it be her compensation to Barusu, for she had long since known that Rem's death had nothing to do with him, and that her own past pursuit and attempts to kill him had brought him boundless suffering.

So this was the last tenderness she could offer Barusu—

To grant him release with her own hands, at the moment he wished to die.

It was precisely for this reason that, even after learning the true cause of Rem's death and losing all purpose in life, she had forced herself to keep on living, waiting for that day to come.

Only, what a pity—

On the day Pandaemonium was attacked, she had heard the earth-shaking roar from outside, and with a calm heart she had waited for Barusu to come to her for his release.

But the next second, she was flung back into the past—and hadn't even managed to fulfill the promise she had one-sidedly sworn: to end Barusu's suffering.

And now, she had inexplicably appeared in this mysterious space, taking part in this so-called viewing.

She truly did not understand what this viewing space was trying to accomplish. Was it merely to expose her shameful past, to make her atone?

But the emotion of remorse—she had already savored it over and over during those days of imprisonment.

Her past experiences she had recalled countless times as well.

And so, even though she had learned from the earlier viewing that Barusu could Return by Death, she had already made her guesses about how the later plot would develop.

Or rather... she was certain of it!

In that frozen, snow-laden wilderness, even after killing her, Barusu would find it hard to survive.

He would probably, after being utterly exhausted, inevitably trigger Return by Death, wouldn't he?

And each time—perhaps Barusu, too, after trying countless times, had discovered that no matter what he did he could never rid himself of her, that fool filled with Wrath and suspicion, until he was driven to the brink of mental collapse...

Until he developed a kind of sick, twisted attachment to her?

Ram calmly analyzed the scenes that might appear next on the screen, feeling no embarrassment at all about what she had just considered.

After all... though she did not know exactly how Barusu regarded her in his heart, this so-called sick attachment was probably only toward a tool.

Saving her from the snow was probably only because he didn't want to give up on her, this tool that had, in some respect, been acknowledged.

But in the very next second, when the screen lit up again, Ram froze in place, all of her earlier guesses dissolving into nothing.

Or rather—they didn't hold up at all!

Because what was displayed on the screen was not, as she had imagined, Natsuki Subaru Returning by Death and then starting over again.

"Maybe—maybe he died so many times that it just skipped over it?"

Ram's voice trembled, an enormous panic surging into her heart, so much so that she carelessly let her inner thoughts slip out.

But her faint voice only drew the attention of Rem, who sat nearest to her.

"Sister, are you all right?"

Rem turned her face, casting a worried and pained gaze toward Ram.

In that moment, Rem's heart was aching too, for she understood clearly that more than half of those descriptions of Subaru's shattered inner world on the earlier screen were because of her own betrayals of Subaru in the previous loops.

Now, seeing the two most important people in her life—her sister and Subaru—turned into bitter enemies because of her death, her heart felt as though it were being cut by knives.

The only thing that could offer her a little comfort was that this viewing had, from the very start, explained that this was merely a story from a possible world, one that did not truly exist... probably?

Perhaps it was a little cunning to think this way, but Rem truly could no longer withstand any greater blow.

Yet at the same time she was grateful for this viewing, because a certain doubt in her heart had finally been answered.

That is, she now understood the reason Subaru, breaking down on the rooftop in the Royal Capital, had pleaded with her to run away.

It was because of the existence of Return by Death—Subaru had all along been silently enduring a suffering no one knew about.

Subaru had been facing these terrifying things all along; back then his spirit had already been on the verge of collapse, hadn't it?

And thankfully, back then she had gripped Subaru's hand and heard the cry for help from within his heart.

At this thought, Rem's heart gradually stirred back to life, as though a spring of nourishing water had been poured into her; her heart thumped and pounded, and her cheeks flushed faintly.

The guilt she had carried all this time—over eloping with Subaru and leaving her sister and Lady Emilia behind—loosened a little.

Because she loved Natsuki Subaru, because she had not let her husband walk down the miserable road the Subaru on the screen had walked in the past, she... felt genuine relief and a measure of redemption.

At this thought, Rem couldn't help but gaze tenderly and achingly at her sister Ram beside her, quietly tightening her grip and interlacing all ten of their fingers, hoping this small gesture might convey her feelings.

And what about you... the sister who most likely comes from that possible world on the screen?

With such a stricken face, her heart brimming with remorse and pain—Rem truly hoped that her dear sister could also find redemption, even if it was the sister from another world...

In a place no one noticed, Rem let out a faint sigh.

Meanwhile, on the other side—

Faced with the call of the little sister she had once cherished and loved most, Ram had no attention to spare for anything else.

She stared straight ahead with wide eyes, breathing rapidly like a gambler who couldn't afford to lose, waiting for the truth she had already guessed at yet dared not believe to be revealed.

But the screen itself had no consciousness; it merely, in a flat manner, continued to play the subsequent story with narrative text and flashback images.

And so Ram saw it.

The heavy stone gripped in Natsuki Subaru's hand was raised high, and then it crashed down!

It crashed down... onto the empty ground beside her, there in the image.

Had he... missed?

Ram's heart clenched, but the very next second she instantly negated her own thought—because of the look in Natsuki Subaru's eyes.

Following Natsuki Subaru's line of sight, everyone could see it clearly.

Ram lay collapsed and feeble in the snow, half her face buried in it.

Her entire body was covered in wounds, and the exposed half of her face and her lips were rapidly turning a dark bluish-black.

Anyone with eyes could see that this pink-haired girl's life was like a candle guttering in the wind—perhaps the next instant it would lose every last breath.

Natsuki Subaru could see it just as clearly.

And so he simply sat there in the snow, expressionless, the stone in his hand still resting on the empty ground beside Ram.

His gaze toward Ram was filled with loathing, with agony, and yet with hope—like a drowning man who had discovered the one and only straw upon the water's surface.

And he would absolutely not allow that sole straw to slip away like this!

So in the next moment, under the disbelieving stares of everyone in the viewing seats—

Natsuki Subaru lifted the stone again, and then smashed it viciously down against his own head!

"Thud, thud, thud!"

One muffled impact after another echoed in the ears of the audience in the viewing area.

Such brutal, such utterly merciless self-annihilation made everyone's eyes go wide and their mouths fall open, shock mingled with fright.

Some hadn't even figured out why Natsuki Subaru had suddenly killed himself.

But... Ram understood!

Seeing this scene, nearly every cell in her body was trembling.

Because this scene overturned all of her earlier guesses, along with the understanding of Natsuki Subaru she had presumed to have.

She knew why Natsuki Subaru had, without any warning, made such a self-destructive act.

It was because... she was about to go!

With the wounds on her body plus the overuse of her mana, she understood clearly that the version of herself on the screen was utterly beyond saving—ten deaths and not a sliver of life.

She had thought that in this loop Barusu had died from failing to make it out of the snow himself. But she never imagined that he... had, precisely because he knew she was dying, chosen without the slightest hesitation to take his own life.

"Don't..."

"Don't!!!"

At first Ram's cry was only unconscious, but gradually the panic and grief in her heart made her unable to hold back from shouting aloud, not caring in the least even as it drew everyone's eyes to her.

Because she had realized just how great a price Natsuki Subaru would have to pay to save this version of herself—covered in such wounds, her mana utterly drained.

That might be... an uncountable, immeasurable number of deaths!

Ram's eyes brimmed with tears, her face wracked with pain.

She had been wrong—wrong to an absurd degree!

She had presumed that ending Barusu's life was the tenderness she was bestowing upon him, a one-sided offering of her devotion and goodwill.

But only now did she suddenly understand.

Barusu had never treated her as a tool—she was the straw floating upon the water.

A drowning man grasps a straw and gains a brief moment to breathe.

And the straw, because it was grasped so tightly, was not swept away by the raging current!

Between her and Barusu, it had never been a matter of who saved whom!

The two of them had all this time been huddling together for warmth, saving each other—

Ram suddenly felt a wave of cold, and unconsciously wrapped her arms around herself, curling up into a ball.

All at once she was almost afraid to keep watching, because even knowing now that Return by Death existed, she could not imagine how her gravely wounded self back then had been carried out of the snow by an equally exhausted Natsuki Subaru.

In her memory, precisely because being rescued from the snow had come so easily, she had unconsciously overlooked this part of the experience.

But now, examining it again, she realized just how difficult this path Natsuki Subaru had taken to save her truly was.

And she realized just how extraordinary her place in Barusu's heart was. She had always thought she was nothing but a tool in Barusu's eyes—but who would ever stake his own life for the sake of a tool?

Perhaps... in Barusu's eyes, she was simply Ram.

____

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