"This reward..."
"I'm going to use it on the Gluttony Route."
Natsuki Subaru silently willed it to activate. The darkness within the screen seemed to stir slightly.
No new explanation appeared.
There was no cold notification.
Nor did anyone tell Natsuki Subaru what would happen next.
The next instant, he vanished.
"Subaru!"
Betty's voice came from behind him.
Emilia seemed to reach out and catch him, too.
But that hand rested in his palm for only an instant before slipping between his fingers, as though swallowed by darkness.
He felt as if he had been thrown into water with no visible bottom.
There was no light around him, no sound-only pitch-black silence.
An indescribable pressure closed in from every direction.
Natsuki Subaru opened his eyes.
He stood inside the Sage's Tower.
The same bookshelves.
The same dim light.
Only the air here felt much heavier than in the green room.
Very faint sobbing came from the distance.
Natsuki Subaru looked up.
In a corner of the tower, another version of himself lay in Shaula's arms.
His forehead was bloody, and his body was still trembling.
Shaula held him, repeating the same words over and over.
"Shaula is here."
"Shaula is right here."
"Master, don't cry alone."
Natsuki Subaru stopped in his tracks. He really had come to the Gluttony Route.
He wasn't watching through a screen, nor was he merely saying a few words in the comment section.
He was standing right here.
Standing behind the Natsuki Subaru who could no longer turn back.
But before he could take a step forward, his body suddenly grew heavy.
An invisible force seemed to squeeze his chest. His throat tightened, and a noise rang in his ears.
It wasn't a sound.
It was more like something invisible was checking his existence.
Natsuki Subaru braced himself against a nearby bookshelf, gripping it hard with his fingertips.
He quickly understood. This world was rejecting him. There was already a Natsuki Subaru here.
So when a second Natsuki Subaru entered, some kind of powerful rejection occurred.
"...Not too bad."
Natsuki Subaru spoke quietly through gritted teeth.
At least he could still hold on for now. He looked at his other self in the corner.
It was too late to say anything now.
Reikin was already dead.
The village was already gone.
Otto, Garfiel, Anastasia, Ricardo, and Mimi had all become names in the Book of the Dead.
Even if he walked over now and told his other self, "You're wrong," he couldn't undo everything that had already happened.
So he couldn't stop here.
He had to go back.
Back to before the Gluttony Route had gone completely wrong.
Natsuki Subaru closed his eyes. He knew what he wanted to do.
Not the Sage's Tower after this dead-end save.
Not Natsuki Subaru after his breakdown.
Earlier.
Back to before he had killed Reikin.
Back to before he had slaughtered the village.
Back to before he had begun treating everyone who knew "Natsuki Subaru" as a Book of the Dead.
Back to that fork in the road.
"Go back."
Natsuki Subaru silently activated World Rewind.
"Rewind this world to that point in time at the Sage's Tower."
The world fell silent for an instant.
The next moment, the entire tower began to run backward. Shaula's sobbing stretched out, and the Gluttony Route's Natsuki Subaru's whimpers retreated into his throat.
The bloodstains on the floor vanished little by little.
The open Book of the Dead closed.
The crossed-out names became whole again.
Reikin.
Otto.
Garfiel.
Anastasia.
Ricardo.
Mimi.
Those names receded from the pages, as though someone were erasing them stroke by stroke.
The bloody scenes in the Water Gate City flashed before his eyes. Garfiel's fallen body rose again, time swept Otto's final expression back to an earlier moment, and Anastasia, Ricardo, and Mimi's figures hurtled backward.
The royal capital, streets, corpses, white light, the tower, bookshelves, the village.
Every image was running backward.
Yet in that single instant, it felt as though far too much had been forcibly crammed into Natsuki Subaru's brain.
They weren't merely images. There were memories, smells, and everyone's dying gasps.
And there were even more jumbled voices, like countless hands reaching into his brain at once, as though he had watched all those long stretches of the past in a single instant.
Natsuki Subaru bit down hard on the tip of his tongue.
The taste of blood spread through his mouth.
He nearly passed out.
No.
I can't collapse here.
Had the screen's reward not once suppressed that mental breakdown for him, Natsuki Subaru felt he would already have lost consciousness.
That thought flashed through his mind for only an instant.
The next moment, something even more terrifying happened.
His fingers began to fade.
First his fingertips, then the backs of his hands. As though an eraser were rubbing them out bit by bit.
Natsuki Subaru's pupils contracted. The rewind was erasing him.
It was killing him, deleting him from this world. Because in the past to which the world was rewinding, there was no "main-route Natsuki Subaru" at all.
He shouldn't be standing here. He shouldn't retain his memories. He shouldn't see any of this. He was something extraneous, and the world intended to clear away what didn't belong.
"You've got to be kidding..."
Natsuki Subaru grabbed his own wrist.
But that hand continued to fade.
He could feel his name being erased from somewhere he couldn't see.
Natsuki Subaru.
That name began to blur.
His reason for coming here began to waver along with it.
Who am I?
Why am I here?
Who am I trying to save?
Questions surfaced in his mind one after another, as though trying to churn his consciousness to pieces.
Natsuki Subaru clenched his teeth.
Cognitive Obstruction.
He thought of that reward.
It prevented the world from noticing Natsuki Subaru.
If this world wanted to erase "the Natsuki Subaru who shouldn't exist," then he would make it unable to see him.
Make it unable to find him.
Natsuki Subaru pressed his hand against his chest and activated Cognitive Obstruction.
"Don't notice me."
Natsuki Subaru spoke quietly.
His voice was almost swallowed by the world flowing backward.
"There is no second Natsuki Subaru here."
"There's nothing here."
He pushed Cognitive Obstruction to its limit.
His presence shrank inward, little by little.
He even forcibly suppressed the thought "I'm here" to the barest minimum.
The world's gaze swept over him.
By now, Natsuki Subaru was approaching his limit. He could barely hold on any longer.
Natsuki Subaru's eyes snapped open.
I can't forget.
He hadn't come here to prove how much he could endure, nor to take punishment in his other self's place.
He wanted to reach out and tell that person not to keep heading down that path.
Cognitive Obstruction-fully deployed.
The world's gaze lost its target.
Natsuki Subaru's body stopped fading.
But his head hurt as though it were splitting open.
Just then, the images flowing backward suddenly slowed.
He saw it-a point in time.
The Sage's Tower.
A gloomy corridor.
Meili.
The amnesiac Natsuki Subaru.
In that instant, Natsuki Subaru's body suddenly slipped out of his control. It was as though something else had taken possession of that body for a moment.
By the time he came to his senses again, Meili was already lying in blood.
The amnesiac Natsuki Subaru stood there, his expression utterly blank.
Fear slowly crept across his face.
His hands were shaking.
His lips opened and closed, but no sound came out.
Standing in a gap within the rewind, Natsuki Subaru watched the scene, his breathing gradually coming to a halt.
So that was it.
Gluttony. Gluttony did it.
Natsuki Subaru himself hadn't wanted to kill Meili. Gluttony had taken over his body, and his amnesiac self hadn't even known what had happened.
He had simply awoken to find that he had already killed someone.
He saw it-Natsuki Subaru opening a Book of the Dead.
Meili's life poured into his mind.
The world of an assassin. Being used. Being ordered around.
Being taught to deal with trouble in the quickest way possible.
Dangerous people had to be killed first.
People who might expose her had to be killed first.
Kill anyone who would get in your way first.
The first time you killed someone, it would break you.
The second time you killed someone, you would look for a reason.
By the third time, the first answer that came to mind would become-would killing them be quickest?
Natsuki Subaru watched that amnesiac version of himself.
He had not turned into a monster right away.
He had simply been too afraid.
Too desperate to find an explanation.
Too desperate to find a way to keep going.
And Meili's Book of the Dead had given him the worst possible method. That book had influenced his thinking.
Kill the potential threats.
Kill the people who knew Natsuki Subaru.
Kill the people who would stop him.
Then read their books.
Piece "Natsuki Subaru" back together.
Natsuki Subaru's fingers slowly tightened.
He finally understood why his self in the Gluttony Route had gone all the way down that path.
It was not because he was cruel by nature.
Nor was it because he had wanted to kill everyone from the start.
At his most terrified, he had been influenced by another memory.
The images continued to rewind.
He saw Shaula again.
She stood inside the tower, her head tilted, waiting for "Master's" orders.
She would enforce the rules.
She would guard the tower.
She would attack intruders.
But across countless fragments, Natsuki Subaru noticed another detail. Shaula would listen to "Master." When orders and rules became entangled, she would look to Natsuki Subaru first. Those chains were not completely unchangeable.
The rules were not stone. They were more like an old order.
An old order Shaula had obeyed for four hundred years.
If it was an order, there was room to add to it.
If Shaula would listen to "Master," then she was not merely the tower's weapon. She could also become someone who helped Natsuki Subaru.
Natsuki Subaru's breathing grew rapid.
The key was not just Meili.
Nor was it just Gluttony.
There was Shaula, too.
His self in the Gluttony Route had treated Shaula as the hand that carried out the killings.
But if he told Shaula from the very beginning-
When Natsuki Subaru was about to break, hold him down. When Natsuki Subaru ordered her to kill innocent people, stop. When Natsuki Subaru wanted to head down the wrong path alone, follow him. Then Shaula would no longer be merely the blade on that path.
She would become the hand that held him back.
The images were still rewinding.
The shelves of the Book of the Dead appeared before his eyes again.
Books closed one after another.
Names receded from view one after another.
Natsuki Subaru's consciousness was close to giving out.
The headache, the nausea, the world's rejection, countless fragments of information-all of it weighed down on him.
Yet his thoughts only grew clearer.
First.
He could not use other people's Books of the Dead to piece himself together.
What he truly needed to find was "Natsuki Subaru's" Book of the Dead.
Second.
When his body would not obey him, he had to have Shaula hold him down.
Do not let Gluttony control him.
Third.
He could not be allowed to think of looking for the "real Natsuki Subaru," or that he himself was a fake.
Because he was Natsuki Subaru.
Someone had to tell him that.
And not just once.
Have him go to Emilia, Betty, and Julius to talk it over.
Have those who were still alive watch him.
Let them doubt him.
Save him.
Do not let him keep going alone.
Natsuki Subaru raised his head.
The next moment, the rewind stopped.
Thud.
He slammed into the cold stone floor.
It felt as though a chunk of his chest had been hollowed out.
His ears were filled with noise.
He lay on the floor for several seconds before he barely managed to prop himself up on his arms.
The Sage's Tower.
Bookshelves.
Dim light.
And, not far away, a boy standing before a Book of the Dead.
That was Natsuki Subaru.
The Natsuki Subaru who had lost his memories.
His hand hovered in front of a book.
His fingertips were just short of its spine.
Shaula stood beside him, her head tilted as she curiously watched the man who had suddenly appeared.
"Huh?"
"Is this... another Master?"
The amnesiac Natsuki Subaru whipped his head around.
He saw another face almost identical to his own. No! Wasn't that him?
His face was pale.
He was drenched in cold sweat.
Yet his eyes were frighteningly bright.
As though he had just crawled out of hell.
"You..."
The amnesiac Natsuki Subaru instinctively took half a step back.
"Who are you?"
The main-route Natsuki Subaru braced himself against a bookshelf and barely managed to stand. His legs were trembling, and his vision was going dark.
He knew he could not hold on much longer. The world had not completely given up searching for him, and Cognitive Obstruction was nearing its limit.
But it was enough.
He had seen it.
He knew why the Gluttony Route would go down that path.
He also knew which words he needed to give this version of himself before him, who had not yet gone completely astray.
There was little time. He could only keep it brief.
Natsuki Subaru raised his head and looked at his amnesiac self.
His voice was terribly hoarse.
"Listen. Gluttony is targeting you right now."
The amnesiac Natsuki Subaru froze.
The main-route Natsuki Subaru gripped the bookshelf tightly and said, word by word:
"There are three things you have to do right now."