Arc 6, Chapter 44 – “Medal of Blood”

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Within the stone room, Subaru was gazing down at his hands in shock at seeing the small girl who lay limp just beneath his eyes.

Subaru: [――――]

He could not understand what had just happened.

His wrists were wounded, his throat felt acrid, and his heart was racing. However, those things did not seem to be linked with his memory, he could only think of them was like glitches that had been born within the voids of his mind.

Apart from the physical evidence that remained, any traces of anyone had vanished.

Only one thing was certain, only one thing――

――The light within the eye of the little girl that lay in front of him had been extinguished.

Subaru: [――Guh, it’s still too early to give up.]

His breathing chaotic, Subaru shook his head and rushed over towards the girl who was lying face up.

His feet, with each step he took, were heavy, and his movements were sluggish, as if the soles of his shoes were glued to the floor. Somehow, he managed to peel his shoes off the floor and stooped down beside the girl―― Meili.

Subaru: [――――]

Meili lay there motionless, her pale arms in spread-eagled fashion, her mouth half-open. She had an expression that seemed like one of shock frozen on her face, and her lightless eyes seemed to be out of focus.

The girl had always given off a hard-to-figure-out impression, however her figure now only made that impression stronger――

Subaru: [M-Meili… Oy, Meili!]

He called out to her.

But there was no reaction.

Since his appeal had not roused her, Subaru shook her shoulders and tried to slap her cheek lightly, in the hopes of seeing a response.

But yet again, there was no response from her. Her eyelids, which remained open, did not even blink.

Subaru: [Me…]

Stopping himself, Subaru took a deep breath and decided that he would try to resuscitate her using what he recalled.

Putting his hands on her chest, he remembered learning how to administer emergency chest compressions. He remembered that the heart’s position was about two fingers’ length away from the top of the stomach and such. With this in mind, he started to push his palms down on her chest.

Subaru: [Haa… haaaaa…! Meili! Hey, Meili!]

Meili: [――――]

Subaru: [Fuck!]

There was no reply. With a pale face, her body feebly shook.

Cursing the situation he was in, Subaru brought her head up and secured her airway in preparation for giving her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The process of cardiopulmonary resuscitation included administering both chest compressions and artificial breathing.

Subaru: [What next. There’s something else. What is it, what is it, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK!]

Desperately clawing at his memory, Subaru searched for anything else that he could do.

However, he had obtained this smattering of knowledge from watching television; in the end, it was only half-complete. The more desperately he tried to resuscitate her, the more Subaru’s arms succumbed to fatigue, the more it started to feel like a fruitless attempt.

Simply, in the end, he was repeating the actions of chest compressions, followed by mouth-to-mouth, over and over again.

He could not feel any trace of a heartbeat against his palms whilst he pressed down on her chest. He could not get any response from the girl’s body even when he was breathing air into her lungs.

Continuing to administer CPR to the limit of his strength, he――

Subaru: [――Damn, it.]

Breathing in exhaustion and sweating profusely from his forehead, Subaru fell back towards the ground.

Subaru: [Haaa, haa… Fuck, fuuuck…!]

Clutching his fringe in frustration, Subaru could only swear.

Meili had not shown any signs of breathing. His first impression had been correct.

The light within this little girl’s eyes would never shine again.

――Meili, had died.

Ruthlessly, fate had snatched away this young girl’s life so cruelly. Such an expression was mere consolation and was not suitable in this place.

It had not been fate that had killed her. She had been murdered by someone.

Meili’s neck was blemished by a series of bluish-black bruises, serving as proof.

Subaru: [――――]

Catching his breath and filled with regret, Subaru looked towards his hands. Until now, both of those hands had been used in an attempt to save Meili’s life―― on his wrists, both his left and his right, there were numerous amounts of scratches grooved into them as if done by fingernails.

Quite entirely as if someone had scratched and clawed at them with all their might as if it was a life and death situation.

He was not so ignorant to not understand what it meant.

Subaru: [――――]

Subaru got up and fixed Meili’s disheveled appearance.

He adjusted her disorderly clothing, crossed her arms across her chest, and closed her eyelids. And, while he paid his respects to her corpse, he gently placed his hand against her thin neck.

Sensing a bad feeling about it, he traced his fingers against the bluish-black hues left on Meili’s neck.

Subaru: […A perfect match.]

His parched muttering came without any strength or surprise, and it only reaffirmed this fact.

The bruises left on Meili’s neck looked like they had been caused by fingers―― and to the untrained eye, the shapes of those fingers matched exactly with Subaru’s own.

No longer would he doubt the facts here.

Meili had been strangled to death.

And the culprit was no other than――

Subaru: [――Uh, gah.]

As soon as he realized this fact, the feeling of wanting to vomit ran up Subaru’s throat. He turned his face quickly and rolled to the side, so he could avoid befouling Meili’s body.

Subaru’s breakfast had been in his stomach for only a short while, and that was what came out. Emptying his stomach’s contents onto the floor, Subaru vomited until his stomach was completely empty.

Subaru: [I’m, really, done, puking…]

Wiping his mouth with his sleeve, Subaru mocked himself.

In fact, remembering how many times he had vomited now was something he was unable to do. This may have been the first time today, but last time it had been today, it had happened a terrible amount of times.

He felt that as of now he would not be able to stomach any food anymore. Subaru felt like apologizing with all his heart to all the farmers around the country.

His mind would likely crack and break into little pieces if he were not conscious of thinking such absurd thoughts.

Subaru: [――――]

The circumstantial evidence presented, matched too well.

There had been two people in the room, and the bruises on Meili’s neck matched Subaru’s fingers. Subaru was not optimistic enough to believe that he could escape the blame in this situation.

He did not even think someone had framed him.

The addition of another person’s hands was not required to create this situation. If someone had framed him here, then this place transcended all known dimensions.

If hands were needed to create this nightmare, then only two were necessary.

――Since Natsuki Subaru possessed two arms, then surely that was enough?

Subaru: […I don’t understand the meaning of this.]

Having accepted this reality head-on, Subaru put his lack of understanding into words.

Inexplicable, baffling, incomplete, regardless of the term used to describe this scene, it would be impossible to reproduce it―― he could only conclude that the crime had been perpetrated by Natsuki Subaru.

However, Subaru did not hold such a memory within himself.

Subaru: [What happened, what happened? Remember. Remember, remember, remember…]

He stood up and walked around the room, trying to wrench open his memories.

He had died, then woke up and met up with Emilia, Beatrice and Patrasche. He had hidden the fact that he had lost his memories of them and then eaten breakfast. He had tried to interrogate Julius whilst Shaula secretly kept an eye on them, before then hugging her. Then he came across Meili in the corridor.

Finally, Meili had stated she had some business with him, and wanted to talk to him about something――

Subaru: [Last night, she mentioned last night…]

Frowning at his vague memories, Subaru ruminated over Meili’s words.

However, shortly after she had tried to talk about it, Subaru had slipped out of consciousness. The words she had uttered had shattered into a thousand pieces, just like the thoughts one could get on the verge of falling asleep.

Subaru: [Night, I was asked about the night. Of that, I’m sure. Before I woke up, or before I went to bed? Either way, she asked me about one or the other… and then?]

From there, he did not know anymore.

The only thing he could fathom about the contents of what Meili had asked Subaru, was that it was related to his evening excursion[1]. Something he too wanted to know about.]

Emilia and such had told him that, this morning, Subaru had been found collapsed in the Library.

Subaru’s behavior during the night, before he had collapsed, was completely unknown to him. At least now there was no doubt that the incident was related to his memory loss.

And surely, Meili remembered what Subaru had forgotten; there happened to be some connection, of that there was no mistake――

Subaru: [She’s dead. And I strangled her…? Why did I do such a thing…?]

Looking down at both of his hands, although not present in his memories, he felt that it revived a raw sensation in his palms.

Both arms had squeezed her neck until the girl’s breath had stopped. There was evidence on his wrists that showed that Meili had desperately tried to resist.

If he looked carefully, there was blood left in Meili’s fingernails, the evidence of a fight.

Very deep fingernail marks had been left there on his arms; he could not help but feel like this had been the echo of a deep-seated resentment that the little girl had left behind.

Subaru: [――Ah?]

Subaru’s thinking had been gripped by the reins of delusion, and suddenly he let out a hoarse gasp.

He had gasped as if he had been taken aback by something, the cause being his arm. The wounds at the vicinity of his wrists were not that which he was staring at. He was looking at his right hand’s fingernails.

Just like Meili, his fingernails were jam-packed with blood and flakes of skin as if he had scratched someone.

Subaru: [――――]

With these baffling bloodstains in mind, Subaru turned to face Meili’s corpse again.

Showing respect to her death, he had fixed up her disheveled appearance. It was not of great consolation, but except for her bluish-black bruises on her neck, the little girl’s corpse still looked as cute as she did in life.

At least, there were no traces of any fingernail scars visible on her body. Subaru’s fingernails were unkempt and hideous, and there were no traces of such pitiful gouge-marks on her body.

Then the remains of skin and blood left stuffed inside his nails―― what were these vestiges of harmful intent?

Subaru: [――No way.]

He looked down at the arm that had been hurting him; Subaru’s lips quivered as he got a bad feeling about it.

Fresh in his mind was the fact that, from the elbow of his right arm, there was a grotesque black coloration to it. But it had been his left arm that was throbbing in pain.

Subaru started to slowly roll up his sleeve, all the way up to the pit of his elbow, where the source of the pain was coming from. He felt the fabric trying to stick to his arm, dried blood peeling off as he continued to unroll his sleeve.

Taking a sharp breath, Subaru finished rolling his sleeves all the way to his shoulder.

There he saw his own left arm bleeding quite a bit, and Subaru let out the breath he had taken.

Subaru: [――――]

He scraped away the dark-red blood that was dirtying his arm with his fingers, and gazed at the wound that had been bringing him this pain.

As he had imagined, there were scratches in his skin, as if it had been carved by his own right hand. From the inside of his elbow all the way to his upper arm, there was a wound that had been painfully carved into it. However, it was not merely just an ordinary wound.

There were characters.

Carved there on his flesh by fingernails, were some crudely etched characters.

Engraved there, it said,

――“Natsuki Subaru was here”.[2]]

Subaru: [――Ahh.]

It was as if his breath had been knocked out of him.

Subaru wiped the scar left on his left arm with his fingers to see if he had been mistaken. Over and over again. Once the flow of blood had stopped, he rubbed the wound once more and confirmed it.

There was no other way of reading it. No matter how he looked at it, it was written as “Natsuki Subaru was here”. The handwriting was messy, written in Japanese, and said, “Natsuki Subaru was here”.

It was easy to understand. It was a very easy-to-understand self-assertion. It was like when the criminal left evidence at the scene of the crime as proof of his own crime. Leaving behind the name had clearly conveyed who had committed this crime. How kind of him, what ambition, oh how must he have craved being in the limelight――

Subaru: [You… What is it with you!?]

In the face of such unacceptable facts, Subaru’s voice shook as he shouted out in grief. Shaking his left arm, and keeping it far away from him whilst turning his face away from it, his feet ended up getting tangled.

He fell flat on his backside. Subaru’s left arm hit the floor and his teeth clattered together. Many, many times he banged his arm on the floor over and over again. He bit his lip as the pain in his bone resounded, blood began to pool out of his mouth.

But even so, the reality of the situation would not change. The wounds on his arms would not disappear.

Subaru: [This wasn’t there! There was no such wound here!]

Shaking his head in refusal, Subaru cried out his appeal that his wound was something that had happened after the loss of his consciousness, in the room where there only the motionless Meili lay.

The wound on his left arm had been newly created, he had never noticed it before. Someone had strangled Meili, and had scratched him as well―― no, that was not it.

No, no! That was absolutely wrong. It was all wrong.

Admit it. Understand it. He ought to know. It had not been someone else. It had not been performed by another being―― this crime had been committed by Natsuki Subaru.

It had not been Subaru, it had been “Natsuki Subaru” who had killed Meili and carved this medal in his arm to show off his achievement.

Subaru: [Cra… zy.]

Insane. Crazy. It seemed he was going insane.

――Was “Natsuki Subaru” the name of a monster that he just could not comprehend?

Subaru: [――――]

This was not the first time Subaru had held great distrust of “Natsuki Subaru”.

“Natsuki Subaru” would obviously repeat non-sensical actions, starting with the unusual behavior from the previous night, which was yet to be answered.

When he had questioned Julius, he had heard of his misdeeds with Echidna from him, and how those actions had driven Julius into some sort of mental anguish―― the Subaru that came back from the convenience store, and the “Natsuki Subaru” here, no longer resembled the same person. As if it was a counterfeit version of him[3].]

Subaru was seriously convinced that his body possessed a completely different being inside it.

Subaru: [But, that’s not right…]

Although it annoyed him to, if he paid close attention to the scar engraved on his left arm, he would not be able to deny his suspicion.

His name had been engraved on his arm. Of course, it was quite different from how he would write it using a pen or a brush. However, there was a certain peculiarity within how the letters were written.

Specifically, there was a certain habit that Subaru had when doing calligraphy. Unless one were to deliberately copy them, it would be practically impossible for someone else to have coincidentally written it like this.

In other words, it was unmistakable that Subaru’s handwriting and “Natsuki Subaru’s” handwriting had the same origin.

As soon as he had noticed that, the facts became clear. That was――

Subaru: [――When I lost my consciousness, did “Natsuki Subaru” return?]

And then that “Natsuki Subaru” had had some form of argument with Meili, and ended up killing her. He had then left that fact behind in his arm, and then gotten back to hiding in the confines of his consciousness?

Just that, he truly did not understand.

Subaru: [Why are you using my body when you have your o… Why… my… No, what on earth am I? What are you planning to do!? Who the hell are you…]

Clutching his face, Subaru’s voice trembled as he muttered this. In this different world in which he had no allies, in this different world in which he could not tell who the enemy was, in this different world where he could not discern between friend and foe, in the end, Subaru had removed even himself from the frame of innocence.

Subaru: [――――]

He was staggering around, barely able to keep upright as the feeling of anxiety overwhelmed his heart.

Subaru attempted to take long, deep breaths to ward off this overpowering feeling.

He could not remain calm. His mind was in complete disarray.

But, as it was currently, he wished not to be brandished about by whatever will “Natsuki Subaru” possessed without knowing about them. And so――

Subaru: [――Who are you?]

Whilst muttering words of hatred at the impossibility reflected in his arm, Subaru placed his left index fingernail against his right arm. He placed it right against the grotesque looking skin, and began etching that on his arm.

Droplets of red blood were oozing from his black skin.

――He thought it ironic that the blood flowing from his black skin was red.

 

Translation notes:

[1] More like “behavior of the evening” but “evening excursion” sounds snappier.

[2] Fun fact, this was carved into the Flugel tree in the anime as “Flugel was here”, in Season 1 Episode 19, and they were also the words he wrote on paper when studying at the mansion, in Season 1 Episode 6. Furthermore, you can also see kid Subaru graffiti this on a wall in Season 2 Episode 4.

[3] The gist seems to be okay, but this part’s translation could be improved here.