Sky Curtain
[Natsuki Subaru was born in Japan, on Earth, the third planet of the Solar System, the only child of an utterly ordinary middle-class family.
That sentence alone would suffice to briefly describe his roughly seventeen years of life. If anything had to be added, it would be "a third-year public high school student who refused to attend school."
When faced with a fork in life's road, such as further education or employment, people were forced to make a decision.
Everyone called that life, but compared with others, he was rather good at running away from things he disliked. As a result, his self-imposed absences grew more frequent, and before he knew it, he had become a school refuser who saddened his parents-
"And in the end, I got summoned to another world. Definitely a dropout now."
"Subaru?"
As Subaru muttered to himself and painstakingly sorted through his situation, a pair of pale hands seized his face.
He looked over to find a beautiful silver-haired girl.
-Honestly, she was a breathtaking beauty.
Her long silver hair shone like moonlight, her blue-violet eyes looked as though they were set with jewels, and her face, with its gently trembling long eyelashes, was so extraordinarily beautiful that artists the world over would want to snap their brushes.
And this beautiful girl was holding Subaru's face and staring at him from close enough for their breaths to mingle, a pleasant fragrance drifting from her.
"Hmm? Subaru?"
"Y-yesh, I'm Natsuki Subaru!"
Called again by that silvery voice, Subaru answered with a stiff smile.
His face and voice might both have been trembling. His smile might even have looked nauseating.
But the beautiful girl before him paid no heed to those anxieties of his, merely murmuring, "Mm."
"Mm... you're definitely Subaru. Sorry. You just seemed a little strange."
"S-strange?"
"-Emilia, it's too soon to say he's fine. Something still feels strange, I suppose."
"-? But I think Subaru's eyes look the same as always."
"How vicious Subaru's eyes look doesn't matter right now, I suppose. That isn't the point."
"Calling them vicious is going too far! Don't think you can get away with it just because you're a little cute... wait, you two..."
The words exchanged between the silver-haired beauty and the person speaking to her-a little girl in an ornate dress, with vertical ringlets straight out of a manga and a face as cute as a fairy's-made Subaru raise his voice in anger.
But his naturally thick skin was of no use before a beautiful girl and an adorable little girl he was meeting for the first time.
"Argh, damn it, what's going on here...?"
If the situation was as Subaru imagined, these two beauties ought to be important key characters.
They probably weren't merely the first villagers he encountered, but people of even higher standing-perhaps the beautiful girl was a heroine candidate, and the little girl a mascot who moved the plot along.
"Ahem."
With that thought, Subaru decided to straighten his appearance and make a good first impression. After clearing his throat, he turned to face the pair again and took a step back.
"-Let me introduce myself again. My name is Natsuki Subaru!"
He pointed one finger high into the sky, planting his other hand on his hip in a pose.
"An ignorant, foolish wandering rogue whose heavenly steed never dies! I may be lacking, but I look forward to getting along!"
"..."
Subaru loudly proclaimed his name, leaving the others stunned. After over ten seconds of silence, they exchanged looks and finally spoke.
"Um... we already know that, you know?"
"Making such an exaggerated introduction at this point, I suppose."
"What-!?"
Indeed, his enthusiastic introduction had failed to leave a strong impression. Those were the only responses it earned.
-It was not until a little later that the gravity of the situation truly became clear.
The lukewarm response to his carefully prepared introduction left Subaru puzzled. What the beautiful girl and the adorable little girl told him then was a shocking truth.
"So, what you're saying is, I've known you two for over a year...?"
"...You really don't remember anything? This tower, or the Water Gate City... no, never mind the Water Gate City. You don't remember Ram or Beatrice either?... You don't remember me?"
"Uh, yes. That's right. Exactly..."
Subaru sat upright, shrinking into himself, leaving the beautiful girl dumbfounded.
The shock and uncertainty in her eyes filled Subaru with intense guilt.
"Memory loss...? How could this happen...?"
The little girl reacted even more strongly to Subaru's answer than the beautiful girl did. Subaru sat on a bed made of vines, and the little girl beside him kept gripping his sleeve.
Seeing her tiny fingers tremble made Subaru's chest ache.
"..."
But Subaru's own heart was in turmoil, leaving him unable to comfort the confused pair.
-At first, Subaru had thought he had simply been summoned to another world. The sort of otherworld summoning that frequently appeared in anime and manga. In fact, that idea was not wrong. After all, this was not the world where Subaru had spent seventeen years.
He could tell that much from the two girls, with their unusual clothes and beauty beyond that of ordinary people.
If that was still insufficient evidence, the black lizard beside them, as large as a horse, was proof enough.
-Thus, this was a world vastly different from ordinary common sense: a so-called other world.
However, upon recognizing that fact, he discovered a vast discrepancy between his understanding and that of the two beauties.
"So I already knew you two, and I'm the only one who's forgotten... is that it?"
With conditions so different from an "ordinary otherworld summoning," Subaru clutched his head and pondered the problem.
The news really was a bolt from the blue. In Subaru's mind, he had seamlessly arrived in another world upon leaving a convenience store at night, with absolutely no memory of anything happening in between.
Yet even if the two before him were lying, it was hard to imagine any reason for them to do so.
After all, if it came down to a beautiful girl's word against his own, of course he ought to believe the beautiful girl.
"Just kidding... but these hands really are part of the body I had after leaving the convenience store, right?"
As he spoke, Subaru rolled up his right sleeve and opened and closed his hand. Was he imagining it, or had his arm grown sturdier? When had his palms developed calluses?
And then-
"What's this disgusting...?"
Markings like black veins ran from his elbow to the back of his hand. They certainly could not be tattoos. The abnormal state of his hand had a revolting, organic quality to it.
Besides that, white scars marked his body all over. Perhaps fortunately, Subaru did not attach much importance to scars.
Still, since his body was a gift from his parents, he felt guilty toward them. But his guilt toward his parents had already piled up considerably in everyday life, so this hardly made a difference.
-Clearly, however, quite a few episodes had taken place in between.
Based on those factors, reason told him that the two beauties' explanation was more credible.
"So I was summoned to another world at a convenience store, got close to two beautiful girls, and then lost my memory?"
That was far too rushed and frantic. As Subaru swallowed the situation whole and struggled to digest it, he noticed their expressions.
Their faces looked even more downcast than Subaru's, kindling a flame in his heart.
"Ah, um! I know you're both upset, but let's try to cheer up!"
"..."
"As far as I know, temporary amnesia like this can return to normal with certain stimuli. In movies, they can even solve it in under two hours and put everything back the way it was! It's okay not to worry too much!"
"Sorry, I don't really understand what you're saying again."
"Oh dear, really...?"
Subaru rattled on in an attempt to encourage them, only for the beautiful girl to give him an unreasonable response outright. His shoulders slumped, but she immediately continued.
"But Subaru really is still Subaru... yes, I'm relieved."
"Huh? R-really? Hearing you say that makes me feel a little better too... huh, wait!?"
"Hyah!"
Just as Subaru relaxed, the beautiful girl suddenly slapped her own cheeks hard.
Hard enough to turn her lovely face bright red.
"Right! I'm feeling better now. I can't be like that. Subaru's the one who's been struggling all this time. I can't keep looking so miserable."
"This girl's seriously fierce. It doesn't match her cute face..."
"Okay, Beatrice, you too!"
As Subaru marveled at the beautiful girl's imposing air and reddened cheeks, she called out to the little girl sitting frozen beside him.
"I know you're shocked and sad... but think about it. Who's suffering most right now? We have to do something for him, don't we?"
"B-Betty..."
Overwhelmed by the beautiful girl's forcefulness, the little girl faltered. The beautiful girl watched over that childish reaction, her eyes filled with boundless trust. It was a trust between the beautiful girl and the little girl that Subaru knew nothing of.
"Subaru... are you having trouble right now, I suppose?"
"...Ah, honestly, yes. Yeah, I'd like some help. I surrender."
"..."
Embarrassed though he felt, Subaru honestly told the little girl how he felt. At his words, she widened her azure eyes with their curious patterns.
Just as Subaru thought they looked like butterflies spreading their wings-
"-Ahh, honestly, this is so annoying! Subaru really is a contractor who needs looking after, I suppose!"
Then, like a butterfly's wingbeats stirring up a tornado, the little girl's attitude changed completely.
She folded her arms, puffed out her round cheeks, and spoke loudly in indignation.
"Always making so much trouble, always causing problems for Betty! This is the last time, or even Betty will get fed up, I suppose!"
"Oh, okay... um, so, what does that mean?"
"Since Subaru honestly asked for help, I'll let it slide this time.-Without Betty, Subaru is just a weakling too lonely to survive anyway."
"You had to go that far!?"
The little girl's fierce, spirited attitude took Subaru aback.
Calling him a weakling too lonely to survive without her was yet another exaggeration.
Still, seeing her expression brighten from its earlier dejection put him at ease as well. Though he heard plenty of words that caught his attention, such as "contractor," he held back from asking for now.
"..."
Honestly, Subaru still found it difficult to fully accept the situation. He was utterly confused, unable to face reality directly, and even swallowing the facts whole was difficult. Even so, he wanted to believe that the affection shown by the two before him was not false.
"My name is Natsuki Subaru. I don't know left from right, but I'm probably your friend. Fully aware of my own shamelessness, I still have one favor to ask."
Standing up again, Subaru pointed at the ceiling and declared his name. Then he pointed at the two of them and winked.
"-May I ask your lovely names?"
"..."
For some reason, those words left the beautiful girl speechless in astonishment, while the little girl blinked. But only for a moment. A beat later, they each smiled.
"My name is Emilia. I don't have a surname, just Emilia. It's nice to meet you again, Subaru."
"Betty is the Great Spirit Beatrice, and Subaru is Betty's contractor."
And so, they each gave their names.]
"I see."
Vincent lightly tapped a finger against the edge of his demon mask,
"So this is what he was like before coming to this world. An ordinary boy who fled reality, fundamentally no different from the commoners of the Empire struggling to survive."
His gaze darkened slightly,
"But that ordinariness makes every choice he made afterward all the more worthy of scrutiny-a person who originally fled life, yet faced death again and again in this world. What happened in between? How exactly did he come to this world?"
"Was Subaru's homeland somewhere called Earth? Subaru once said his homeland was beyond the Great Waterfall, but I never imagined it was an entirely different world."
Emilia rested her pale index finger against her chin, her beautiful violet eyes full of curiosity and questions.
"So for Mr. Subaru, the turning point in his life was being summoned to this world."
Otto offered his own thoughts as well.
"Looking at it that way, Mr. Subaru was originally someone who 'ran away from things he disliked.' That's quite a contrast to how he acts now... the Subaru of the past would run away, while the Subaru of today faces things head-on-though he's forced into it more often than not. Still, that change certainly couldn't have happened overnight."
"A school refuser... was Lord Subaru like that in his original world? Poor Lord Subaru. He already had so many problems to face in his own world, and after coming here, he still has to stake his life again and again to save others. Such hardship and cruelty-why do both worlds have to bully my Lord Subaru?"
Petra's voice grew a little softer than before. After seeing Subaru's rather chuunibyou remarks, the smile they brought her eased her heart for a moment.
"Lord Subaru really has had it so hard. He had nothing when he came to this world. Yet in just one year, he made himself into someone everyone could trust. Lord Subaru has been working hard all along! So even if he's lost his memories, Lord Subaru is still Lord Subaru."
Petra silently encouraged herself. Looking at her solemn, worried face, Garfiel could only force a faint smile as well.
"I really didn't expect the captain's first introduction after losing his memory-to turn out this hard to keep a straight face through..."
"Still, at least it's a good start. That's the captain's style."
Garfiel had finished venting and was leaning against the wall, panting heavily. Seeing this scene on the Sky Curtain, he could not help letting out a snort,
"He didn't know a thing, yet he could still say something like 'an ignorant, foolish wandering rogue whose heavenly steed never dies' in that situation. Most people would already be dazed in unfamiliar surroundings, but he could still clown around. That's probably the captain's gift-no matter what happens, he never lets himself look too pitiful."
His voice lowered,
"...Even though he might be the one who needs pity most."
"That foolish pose-"
Priscilla's folding fan swayed gently between her fingers, her gaze resting on the image of Subaru on the Sky Curtain, his arm raised high in an exaggerated pose,
"He lost all his memories, yet still chose to introduce himself that way. In an unfamiliar world, facing unfamiliar people, the very first thing he did was try to look impressive."
The corners of her mouth curved slightly, the movement very faint.
"That behavior itself reveals a truth he will probably never admit-his nature does not change simply because he has lost his memories. Natsuki Subaru is still the sort of person who does inappropriate things at inappropriate times. That, at least, I do not dislike."
Emilia watched the scene on the Sky Curtain. When Subaru first faced her in the green room as someone who "did not know her," her heart felt as if someone had clenched it.
She told herself to stay calm, to believe that Subaru was still Subaru, but the sting of "being forgotten" still almost left her unable to breathe.
"If Subaru really forgets everything... if he really can't even remember meeting me for the first time, I'll stay strong too. I'll make sure Subaru remembers!"
Seeing Subaru introducing himself with that exaggerated pose on the Sky Curtain, Beatrice's lips curved into a smile, only for her to immediately suppress it.
Watching him struggle to force his old expression onto that unfamiliar face, Betty had nearly cried when he said those stupid things.
"Betty doesn't care about him being a school refuser. All Betty knows is that after Subaru came here, no matter what happened, he never stopped. He gets scared and wants to run, but he hasn't run away. So Betty won't run away either."
Her voice was muffled against her knees,
"Subaru even forgot Betty's name, but he still introduced himself in that utterly stupid way."
"But Subaru is Betty's contractor. Even if Subaru forgets, Betty won't. No matter which world we're in, Betty will never let Subaru walk alone!"