Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-, Vol. 6 Page 9

“But he is your employer, you say? Er, I broached the subject because I rather expected a reply of that sort. Though I must confess that you do not look like a nobleman’s servant, Mr. Natsuki.”

  “I’m still in training. I only make the grade in sewing and making beds so far.”

  “Either way, I’ll trust your story about serving the marquis… But why hire all these dragon carriages? A marquis can surely afford his own?”

  Otto’s probing questions were proof that he doubted Subaru’s true intent.

  “Like I said, we need a bunch of dragon carriages. We have a lot to haul, so it’s best to have them as empty as possible. In your case, that means having to buy up all your oil.”

  “For which I am very grateful. What is the freight you intend to transport, then?”

  From Otto’s repeated questions, it seemed he did not doubt Subaru’s station. He appeared to be pressing out of simple concern that the freight to be transported might be dangerous.

  “—”

  There was no need to conceal it with a lie. He couldn’t let this talk foster doubt and lead to the deal being called off.

  “We’re transporting…people.”

  “Don’t tell me this is slave trading?!”

  “Nothing shady like that. There’s a village near the marquis’s mansion. It’s a small settlement, and the villagers put together don’t even number a hundred. I wanna get those people aboard and move them out.”

  —That flash of inspiration was why Subaru had hired Otto and the others.

  The large dragon carriage for commercial freight that Subaru and Rem were using could run with more than ten people aboard. With similar dragon carriages put together, he figured they could evacuate every last villager.

  “You are not telling us to carry corpses, I take it. If so, I would have to decline with deep regrets…”

  “…I want you to bring them out of there so it doesn’t come to that.”

  In his haste to reunite with Emilia, Subaru had forgotten about the villagers. He was upset with his own lack of consideration, but coming across Otto and the others was a very considerable stroke of good fortune. Be it coincidence or fate, Subaru was fortunate to be on something’s good side for once.

  “Actually, we’re planning on doing a large-scale mountain hunt in the area around the marquis’s mansion in the near future.”

  “A mountain hunt, you say?”

  “There’s been a bunch of demon beasts breeding in the wilderness around there since way back. Barriers isolated the people from the demon beasts until now, but… Not long ago, those monsters injured some people in the village.”

  “And this ‘mountain hunt’ is the result of that? But…”

  Otto couldn’t quite let it go; he seemed to be having trouble with something in Subaru’s explanation. Subaru remained silent as he rolled up the sleeve over his right arm, showing him the cruel scars the beasts had left on him.

  Otto drew a small, sharp breath at seeing the deep wounds of claw and fang. Many more had been carved into Subaru’s body that would never fade.

  “In his goodwill, the marquis sent me off to the royal capital to be healed. Now that I’m partly recovered and no longer at death’s door, I’m on my way back.”

  “I—I see… Er, but why, then, are you procuring dragon carriages along the highway without the marquis being directly involved…?”

  “The marquis decided to start the hunt right away before moving the residents. That’s why I want to make sure it’s covered. It’s not that I don’t trust my master; I just have prior experience with this.”

  As Subaru offered that humble statement, lowering his eyes, Otto made a small sound and sank into thought.

  “Understood. Sorry for prying into things you didn’t want to speak about. I shall explain this to the others without mentioning the scars.”

  A pained expression came over Otto’s good-natured face as he made a show of consideration for Subaru. No doubt he regretted unintentionally dredging up Subaru’s past trauma.

  Subaru thought that his sudden change in demeanor, shifting from thoughts about commerce to simply worrying about his business partner, showed that Otto was a real softie at heart.

  “Don’t sweat it. Please just explain it to everyone straight so that no one gets any weird doubts.”

  “Well, if you insist, though I’m not really cut out for that.”

  Making light of Subaru’s decision, Otto smiled apologetically.

  Subaru thought himself a far greater villain for internally making excuses.

  —Namely, that he wasn’t really lying; he just wasn’t telling the whole truth.

  4

  It was another two hours until all preparations to pull out of the campsite had been completed.

  After the freight was transferred to the four large dragon carriages, Subaru and the others departed along the highway by night.

  There were eleven dragon carriages heading toward the Mathers domain. They might prove somewhat cramped, but they should be more than enough to get all the villagers out.

  Otto called to him as his dragon carriage ran parallel to Subaru’s.

  “By running through half the night, we’ll probably arrive in the Mathers domain near morning…”

  It was the land dragons’ wind repel blessings that enabled them to have a normal conversation while two dragon carriages ran side by side. They did more than nullify the effects of wind and vibrations on them, apparently.

  “Sorry to make you keep running without a break.”

  “Not at all! I have no complaints. Now that I can dispose of my stock and defray the freight costs, I am invincible. I could keep this up for three days and nights!”

  “And then you can fall asleep right after the deal is done?”

  “Huh?! Did you read my mind?!”

  The punch line to a classic joke was stolen right out of Otto’s mouth. From there, Subaru shifted his gaze toward Rem, holding the reins beside him. He could not read any emotion from the side of her face as she stared straight ahead. To Subaru, it wasn’t a very pleasant situation.

  “—Subaru.”

  “…Y-yeah. What is it, Rem? Something’s up?”

  “No. It is quiet, so I wondered if you might be tired. The dust makes for poor visibility, but with other land dragons about, the path is not uncertain. If you are sleepy, it is all right for you to rest.”

  “I’m happy to hear you say that, but it’s not cool to make you do all the work.”

  “But Subaru, you are still convalescing, so…”

  Rem’s considerate stance toward Subaru made him shut his mouth. Her manner of speaking was gentle, but there was a stubborn, steely will behind it. He keenly understood that she wished to reduce the burden on him as much as possible. But her tenacious efforts made him fearful that he didn’t know her true intentions. The thorns he could not dislodge from his chest were the product of both wanting to know and not wanting to know.

  “Rem, do…?”

  “Yes?”

  Subaru’s breath caught as Rem’s pale-blue eyes stared at him, as if seeing right through him. He wanted some way to redirect her attention from his doubting, hesitant silence, but Subaru shook his head, brushing aside such thoughts.

  If he doubted Rem’s intentions enough that it hurt, it was far better to get them out in the open.

  “Rem, do you have any doubts about what I’m doing? I didn’t explain anything to you. Not about the Witch Cult, not about the traveling merchants…”

  He was painfully aware of how Rem had kindly indulged him in spite of his duty to explain himself. That was precisely why he was worried about how Rem felt about following him without question or debate.

  Rem closed her eyes but once at Subaru’s question.

  “Master Roswaal told me to respect your actions in the royal capital.”

  “—”

  Subaru’s expression stiffened, the reply leaving him lost for words.

  “Roswaal…told you to…?�
��

  “Yes. He did not command me to do any specific thing, but rather, to go along with your plans in the royal capital, whatever they might be. I also planned do so as much as I could.”

  “Roswaal’s orders…”

  Rem’s words somehow weren’t sinking into his skull. Instead, the fact that Roswaal had ordered Rem repeated itself in his head, over and over.

  Rem’s lack of dissent toward Subaru’s actions was because her master had directed her to shut up and obey. Did that mean, in other words, that Rem’s actions to that point had not been of her own will? Hell, even her staying by his side at that very moment might not have been…

  “Subaru?”

  As Subaru fell silent, Rem peered at him, her shapely eyebrows drawing together. Yet in that moment, Subaru was unable to take even that expression of concern at face value.

  “I-I’m all right. It’s nothing.”

  Shaking his head to flee from Rem’s gaze, Subaru gave a perfunctory reply to keep the peace.

  Her caring concert, her support when he was on the brink of collapse, her being by the isolated Subaru’s side, were all of these because of Roswaal’s orders…? Beyond that, deep down, did Rem approve of what Subaru was doing…?

  “—!”

  As paranoia brought bile up from his stomach, Subaru swallowed down the acidic liquid filling his mouth. With his nausea having nowhere else to go, fright and despondency raged inside his body. His limbs felt numb, his vision narrowed, and there was an unbearable, physical itch in his brain. His breath was ragged as he fought the urgent desire to crack his skull open and jab his fingers in to scratch at it.

  He didn’t want to think. About anything.

  The more he thought about things, the more he mulled them over, the more he sought answers—the more distant his desires would become, the more his ideals would turn to fantasies and his dreams to hopelessness and despair.

  “Subaru, did you fall asleep?”

  He hated it. He wanted no more of it.

  He didn’t want to think. He didn’t want to doubt. He didn’t want to trust. He didn’t want to be betrayed.

  He clutched his head, shutting himself in and cutting off all responses to the outside world.

  Rem called his name several times. Seeing that there was no response, she gave up after a while and shifted her gaze back to the highway.

  By then, Subaru had finally, and by his own hand, become truly alone in that world.

  5

  “—ru. I’m sorry, Subaru. Please wake up.”

  Subaru sensed someone calling him and shaking him awake.

  The touch on his shoulder roused him from the abyss of unconsciousness. When he absentmindedly rubbed his eyelids with his hand and opened his eyes, he found the face of a familiar girl right in front of him.

  “…Rem, huh. What’s wrong?”

  The instant he was sure it was Rem, Subaru remembered their exchange before he slept. He felt a dull ache in his chest.

  Rem, not noticing how hard Subaru was working to endure that pain, lowered her head apologetically. After another brief apology for waking him, she said, “We are about to reach a fork in the road. As it is a landmark that cannot be mistaken even in the dead of night, it should be all right…but I want to be certain before we reach it.”

  The area around them was filled with deep darkness. Even with Rem sitting right beside him, her face seemed indistinct. The crystal lamp hanging from the land dragon’s neck and a simple light attached to the dragon carriage itself provided the only illumination. It was very little to go on—if not for land dragons with good night vision, then certainly for the humans.

  “I see your point. What do you want me to do, though?”

  “I want to check the map, but I cannot take my hands off the reins… I put the map in the sack at your feet. Could you get it out for me?”

  “At my feet. This, huh?”

  In the dark, he pulled over a fairly heavy sack. He set it on his lap and thrust in his hand to fish around, but finding what he was after proved rather difficult.

  “I can’t even tell what’s a map and what’s not. Isn’t it too dark to even read it?”

  “That is… Mm, that could be a problem. What shall we do…?”

  “Yeah, what can we…? No, wait a sec.”

  Rem’s expression was clouded when a light suddenly turned on in Subaru’s head. Once again, he searched at his feet, picking something out of a different sack—the one with Subaru’s personal belongings.

  “Oh, I found it!”

  He took out the object, cool and hard to the touch, and thrust it in Rem’s face. Right in front of her wide eyes, Subaru pressed the power button of something he hadn’t held in ages.

  “It hasn’t been charged in a while, so I hope the battery isn’t dead… Ohh!”

  After a single tense moment, the boot-up sequence appeared on the screen. A few seconds later, a dazzling light shone from Subaru’s hand.

  Rem looked at Subaru with surprise at the brilliant sight.

  “Subaru, what is that?”

  “Lost technolo… Er, future technology. A cell phone. Looks like it still has a little juice left, luckily for us.”

  The cell phone had been off ever since his generous use of it on the day he had been summoned to this other world. It was one of Subaru’s few possessions from home. He had a few other personal belongings, but this was by far the priciest and most useful—at least, as long as its battery held out.

  “I never imagined the next time I’d use it would be as a flashlight, though.”

  Using it in a manner inconsistent with its original purpose, Subaru shone the light of civilization upon the contents of the luggage. After he easily found the map he’d been searching for in the sack, Subaru spread it out over Rem’s lap.

  “I’ll shine this on the map, so take a look-see.”

  “Yes, thank you very much.”

  At that moment, Otto poked his head in from the side, his interest keenly piqued.

  “Mr. Natsuki, what is that? I’ve never seen such a thing.” Leaning over from his dragon carriage, immediately to the left, he tilted his head in confusion. “A crystal lamp I have never seen bef— No, not a crystal. It seems to be made of some material unfamiliar to me.”

  Noticing Otto’s reaction, a man in his prime with a bandanna wrapped around his head pulled his dragon carriage along the right side as well. The eyes of the driver glimmered as his gaze remained pinned to Subaru’s cell phone.

  Ordinarily, their reactions would have doubtlessly brightened Subaru’s mood, inspiring him to casually show off and brag. However, the current Subaru was in no mood for such pleasantries.

  “Sorry, it’s a secret item the marquis gave to me. If I told you about it, you might vanish without a trace. Best to forget you ever saw it.”

  “Whew, that secretive explanation just reeks of money…”

  Otto’s interest seemed to have only deepened. But before a long cover-up conversation became necessary, Rem lifted her head from the map and nodded.

  “I realize where we are now. A little farther and we should be able to see the Great Flugel Tree. From there, we take the road northeast and enter the Mathers domain shortly after.”

  “The Great Flugel Tree?”

  Subaru inclined his head at the unfamiliar term. Otto raised a finger.

  “The Great Flugel Tree is a huge tree found along the Liphas Highway that seems to pierce the very clouds. The tree really is huge like you wouldn’t believe. According to legend, a sage named Flugel planted it.”

  “So that’s why it’s the Great Flugel Tree. Why’d the sage do that, anyway?”

  “Er, well, this was hundreds of years ago, you see. Aside from the story of how he planted the tree, next to nothing is known about Flugel, not even why he is treated as a sage.”

  “The hell is that? Why treat him like a big shot if you don’t even know what good he’s done?”

  Subaru was itching to hear the rest after
Otto’s incomplete account, but when he saw that Rem and the other merchants weren’t adding to the story, it was apparent that his exploits really hadn’t been passed down.

  Subaru mulled over the thought, and around half an hour later, he saw the Great Tree for himself, to his shock.

  “Whoa… Yeah, incredible is about the only word I can use for it.”

  The venerable tree, its branches rising into the night sky, towered over Subaru and the others with an overwhelming presence. Its size dwarfed the trees from his old world that were often said to be more than a thousand years old. According to Otto, this specimen was centuries old, making Subaru wonder if plants grew at a much faster pace in his current world. Before he realized it, he was seized by a considerable sense of awe.

  The enormous tree had put down its roots not in a great forest, but alone in an open field. Along the Liphas Highway, there was no landmark more prominent.

  Passing by the calmly towering Great Tree, the dragon carriages headed northeast in accordance with the map. As the distance to the Mathers domain lessened, Subaru finally began to feel a little regretful at leaving the Great Tree behind.

  “Geez, this isn’t the time to get all sentimental. Er, ah?”

  If he had been less troubled, he might have taken a picture of it with his cell phone. Subaru, who was sitting on the driver’s seat when he had the thought, felt uneasy as he redirected his attention from the Great Tree.

  “Where’d the bandanna guy to the right of us go?”

  Subaru could see no sign of the dragon-carriage owner who had shown interest in his cell phone while running on their right. Subaru checked behind him to see if it had suddenly slowed down, but he saw only the dragon carriage that had been running behind the bandanna man; he was gone from the convoy, leaving an empty space.

  “Don’t tell me he was so enchanted by the big tree that he wandered off?”

  “What is it, Mr. Natsuki? Are you looking for something?”

  “Not something—one of your guys, the one who was running on this side till just now, a manly looking guy with a bandanna. This ain’t the time to go tree climbing like a little kid.”

  Subaru harshly answered the carefree Otto with sarcasm, inwardly scolding him for poor management. But Otto, on the receiving end of that annoyance, stared blankly and tilted his head, as if he had no idea what Subaru meant.