Chapter 156: The Lower Overthrows the Higher, So What?

["Subaru, are you in here?"

It had been a while since Rem had last seen Natsuki Subaru, so she had come to his room to look for him.

The moment she stepped through the door, she noticed Natsuki Subaru fast asleep on Emilia's lap.

"Shh!"

Emilia made a small hushing gesture at Rem, telling her not to wake Natsuki Subaru.

"Subaru's sleeping deeply." Rem blinked, staring at Natsuki Subaru, and only after a long pause did those words come out.

"He is. Look at him, he's just like a child, isn't he?" A gentle smile crept onto Emilia's face without her realizing it as she looked down at Natsuki Subaru.

"It seems that, in this state, he won't be finishing the rest of his work either..." Rem was quiet for a moment, then spoke with perfect practicality.

"That's right. Let's let him rest properly. Slacking off after only two days of work, what a naughty boy!"

"He'll have to be punished for it," Emilia said, joking.

Rem stepped forward curiously, studying the way Natsuki Subaru had curled his body up like a small child, the defenseless posture and sleeping face of someone who felt no safety in the world, and murmured aloud.

"Seeing him like this, I don't have the heart to punish him today."

"Well then, Rem will take her leave, Lady Emilia."

Rem lingered a moment longer, fixated on the sight of Natsuki Subaru sleeping, as though some part of it held her attention completely, but in the end she excused herself and turned to go.

"Rem."

Hearing Emilia call from behind her, Rem stopped walking, though she did not turn around.

"Subaru is a good boy, you know." That was what Emilia said.

Rem gave no answer. She simply turned, bowed respectfully, and left the room.

There had been no answer, but Emilia knew that Rem had taken her words to heart.]

"Heh. That little blue-haired maid says she doesn't have the heart to punish him today, but what did she really mean? What she wanted to say was that she didn't have the heart to kill him today, wasn't it?"

Priscilla's grip tightened around the flame-patterned fan in her hand, the veins standing out across the back of her hand.

The fan groaned under the strain, creaking, and a heartbeat later came a sharp crack as it snapped clean in two under the force of her hand.

"How very lofty of you. Both of you sisters, every last one."

Priscilla rose to her feet and turned, chin lifted, looking down at Rem and Ram from on high with a scornful, unrestrained smile.

"In all this world, only I am permitted to treat my husband so, because I am the favored child of heaven and earth, and because our marriage is a good one. At worst it amounts to a bit of playfulness."

"But the two of you?"

Priscilla's finger snapped out toward Rem and Ram, opening the fight herself.

That was it. She was done holding back. She had gone off entirely.

The viewing had left her with a bellyful of anger for some time now. She had disliked these two sisters from the start, and the longer she watched, the hotter that anger burned.

True, marriage and the nourishment of love had softened Priscilla's temper considerably, and being conquered by Natsuki Subaru, a man she regarded as genuinely strong, had settled her disposition a great deal.

But it would be a mistake to forget what she had been before that: a queen with a volcanic temper, arrogant enough that she never deigned to look anyone straight in the eye.

"You two sisters, shouldn't there be a limit to how ugly a person can be?"

Priscilla let out a mocking snort and pointed toward the screen.

"If Emilia hadn't stopped you, you'd have killed my husband one more time, wouldn't you? Hmm? Speak up, blue-haired maid!"

At those words, the light in Rem's eyes went cold.

Everything shown on the screen was familiar to her beyond question, because she had lived every bit of it herself. Of course she knew what she had been thinking back then.

She understood that the other woman was stating a fact, that the fault was her own, but she also understood that even if she admitted it outright here and now, Priscilla wouldn't let it drop.

And besides, she had to protect her sister.

"Lady Priscilla, aren't you concerning yourself with rather too much? Whatever else it is, this is a matter between Subaru and me. Love, hate, all of it. It isn't the place of an outsider like you to pass judgment!"

Rem pressed her lips into a thin line, striking back with the stubbornness of a small boat holding its course through a storm.

"You call yourself Subaru's wife, but Rem has never once heard of when Lady Priscilla supposedly married him!"

Whatever else was true, Rem said this with complete conviction, because in her eyes there was only one person present who could be called Subaru's wife, and that person was her.

"Maid. Remember your station! You are nothing but a servant, and you have no right to speak to me that way!"

Rem's words lit Priscilla's fuse at once.

Anyone told to prove that her own husband was her husband would feel that same nameless fury rise.

And Priscilla was hardly the sort to come out on the losing end. She laughed coldly and spoke.

"No wonder. I kept wondering why a certain pair always carries such a stench about them. So it isn't only that you're servants, you're low-born demi-humans as well?"

Derision spread across her face, her haughty gaze taking on a tinge of disgust, and she fanned deliberately at her nose with one hand.

"If I recall, on the screen you were the one saying Subaru reeked of the Witch, weren't you?"

"And yet now, why is it that the stench of the non-human races on you seems so much stronger to me? Like some uncivilized beast. How thoroughly it spoils the mood."

The further she went, the colder her eyes grew, until she drove the last words home like a hammer.

Rem's face paled at that. The words she had spoken in the past had come flying back like a boomerang to strike her here and now.

She knew perfectly well that the Priscilla before her was insulting her on purpose, deciding out of arrogance and prejudice that a demi-human stink clung to her.

But hadn't she done exactly the same thing back then, carrying her own prejudice, deciding all on her own that Subaru, who reeked so thickly of the Witch, had to be one of the Witch Cultists she hated?

What difference was there between the girl she had been then and the Priscilla standing here now?

The thought dimmed the light in Rem's eyes, and she no longer had the strength to answer Priscilla's mockery at all.

"You want to die!"

Seeing Rem reduced to that state in the space of a few breaths, Ram's expression darkened. She strode forward to stand in front of Priscilla and reached out to seize a fistful of her hair.

If this viewing space forbade the use of force, then surely grabbing the hair of this woman calling herself Priscilla was still allowed?

As for rank and station, that sort of thing might work on Rem. Ram had nothing but contempt for it.

So she'd be striking above her station. So what?

In an instant, Ram's hand was about to close on that long orange hair.

If this mysterious space had been rigid about following its own rules, that might well have worked.

Unfortunately, the one reviewing the rules was Natsuki Subaru, sitting in another space of pure white, and he did it by hand.

"So sorry, Ram. Violence is prohibited."

In that other space, Natsuki Subaru let out a sigh, and with a single thought he stopped Ram before she could carry out the deed.

"Damn it..."

Ram gritted her teeth, staring at fingers that would not move so much as an inch, her chest full of bitter frustration.

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