Chapter 6: Reflecting

Early the next morning, Natsumi abruptly woke up due to feeling her idiot brother getting hurt somehow through their connection.

From what she felt, it wasn't very serious, but she couldn't live with herself if he got seriously hurt without not at least checking up on him.

'You won't let me get a proper amount of sleep, baka!'

With this flash of tsundere sentiment shining through, Natsuki probably wasn't going to have an easy time today either.

Natsumi judged that he wasn't in any imminent danger, so she decided to do something about the sweaty clothes she had worn during the past two days first.

She didn't want to think too hardly on the events that transpiered, but she estimated about two days had passed at least. Actually it might be more, depending on if she counted the day full of activities before coming to Lugunica.

'I put the clothes on in the morning, got isekai'd later that night, suddenly jumped timezones in a single moment into the afternoon, got attacked at around dusk by an assasin, met up with Ram a couple of hours later, travelled to the mathers domain for about 8 hours, at which point it was a new day. Then I made sure than pesky brother got treated well, then I went to sleep... Wait a second, did I sleep the day away?! At least it explains why I'm not very tired at the moment.'

Seemingly, she had already forgotten her earlier outburst of tsundere-ness, but it would be more accurate to say that she was ignoring it.

Walking over to the closet, she could only find outfits that felt a little too medival. Her sense of fashion wouldn't be dissuaded by this fact though, as she was confident she had the best fashion sense in the entire mansion.

Her perception was fundamentally flawed though, given that the person who truly wielded the best fashion sense just didn't give a shit about it most of the time, preferring a comfy tracksuit instead.

Natsumi grabbed the clothes best suited to her, and placed them in a neat pile on he bed.

She proceeded to the mirror to get an exhaustive look at her previous outfit, trying to figure out out to replicate her usual style using medival clothing.

She stood in front of the mirror for a couple of seconds in order to build a mental image of what to do.

She wore plain black leggings and a black for modesty.

Upon a base of thin black garments, layered upon this, she wore a skirt spangeled with stars that looked as if it was a picture taken from outer space.

Instead of a dry black and white scientific interpretation of the stars, the skirt was a vibrant portrait of the endless abyss being healthily spattered with various colours. The most prominant colours were black and orange, but there was a healthy amount of white, green, blue, purple, red and so on to represent the various stars and nebulas.

As for her upper body, she wore a thick, mostly white crop top with a couple of orange stripes on the sides to ensure it doesn't look too monotone, layered upon a thin black tshirt

Since neither the crop top or the skirt were sweary or particularly dirty, she just had to find something to replace the modest black layer with, which wasn't very difficult, essentially meaning she didn't have to change outfits into some hideous medival dress for now.

With the very important clothing issue out of the way, she hurried towards her brother's location.

The unreasonable drill loli had used some sort of magic to throw him out, and Natsuki wasn't very cheerful about that fact.

If Beatrice had been little less careful, he would've flown out of a window, so he wanted to chastise her for being so reckless.

Beatrice's actions were intended as a warning, but Natsuki hadn't yet seen through her intentions, leaving him to curse the loli with powerful drill curls for her perceived recklessness.

Even without flying through a window, getting slammed into a wall was a painful ordeal, even if it couldn't compare to the pain from getting stabbed in the abdomen.

He stood up, trying to shake off any stray dust particle that would've found itself attracted to his clothes somehow, which was something he was unlikely to find due the hard working nature of a maid he had yet to meet.

After walking around for a while, he didn't run into a maid with the cleaning skills of a sci-fi robot, but he did run into a peeved looking female version of himself.

"Why hello there, exalted onee-sama, did I do something to incur thy wrath today?"

"Who even speaks like that in this day and age? And I think you know very well what you did!"

He had in fact known that she'd be this peeved when they finally met up since the time a loli shot him out of the library, due to a sudden spike of worry coming through their connection after that.

He wasn't blind to her tsundere nature either, which is a minor miracle in and of itself, given how he doesn't seem to recognise those very same traits in himself.

"Hai hai, I understand, please let me off without turning me into mincemeat this time."

Natsumi's glare only increased, so he relented, showing his surrender by bowing and simply saying "I'm sorry".

The Japanese siblings decided to take a walk around the mansion. Given how Natsumi had a singlemindedly focused on keeping her brother safe the other day, this was the first time really exploring the mansion for the both of them.

"So, have you noticed anything weird since coming here?" Natsumi asked.

"Perhaps being a little more specific would help?" Natsuki made a genuine retort, causing Natsumi to retreat into herself trying to formulate an awnser based on something more than feelings.

"Just now, I felt a tingeling sensation."

"And what is that suppos-"

"Argh, mind letting me finish getting my thoughts together first?!"

After a few more seconds, Natsumi continued. "I had the same sensation yesterday when Beatrice-sama tried to... I don't know, drain my energy somehow?"

"Either way, I could sense a somewhat pronounced... 'aura' of hostility eminating from her while she was doing it, and based on her expression, as well as the fact that the malicious 'aura' disappeared at the same time she made said expression, I can only guess something happened on her end. At the same time as she drained... something... I felt the same tingeling sensation as I'm feeling now. The tingeling stopped as soon as her hostile aura disappared though, and she proceeded to continue draining it as soon right away, but without any hostile aura or tingeling."

"So your magical powers have finally showed themselvs! I wonder what my powers will be able to do?" Natsuki beamed.

"Idiot, didn't you hear me?! The last time I felt it, someone was doing something potentially harmful to me, and I felt the same thing just now!"

Natsuki froze in his tracks, having the meaning of Natsumi's words finally sink in.

"Oh shit, it's some sort of danger sense then? Let's go outside where we can at least see any potential hostile people from further away."

It was quite early in the morning for the guests to be walking around, so Ram had decided to keep an eye on them. That was the plan at least, but it seemed as if the female guest had managed to resist her clairvoyance somehow, even though it should have worked on her under normal circumstances.

She decided to try her luck with the male guest instead, and this time it worked as planned.

What she heard both intruiged and terrified her. It seemed as if Natsumi had recently gained an ability, which is what Ram assumes is the reason for clairvoyance failing, given how the guest had apparetly felt it at the same time she attempted to activate clairvoyance on Natsumi.

What really terrified her though, was the comment she made about feeling a hostile aura from Beatrice-sama. Ram knew Beatrice wasn't the sort of person to actually try and hurt people she didn't know under normal conditions, so if she had felt such a strong hostile aura eminating from Beatrice, she could only imagine what the guest had felt when looking at her younger sister.

Ram wasn't a fool, and she knew the sort of look Rem had given Natsumi the other day.

With a trembeling voice, she wispered "I can only pray that your plans won't lead Rem into certain death, Roswaal-sama"

Ram could prayed that the guests would stay as easygoing as what she had witnessed, but her main concern wasn't their actions, but rather, the actions of the person she loves the most in the world.

"You two are up early today it seems. Thank the spirits that Beatrice was able to heal you Suba- Natsuki-kun." Silver bells chimed in harmony with the the morning breeze, standing against the background that is the rising sun.

"That dill loli was the one to heal me?! It wasn't Emilia-tan then?"

Emilia got more confused for every word spoken by Natsuki, but she ultimately decided not to comment on Natsuki's antics, due to the knowing look Natsumi sent Emilia's way.

"Natsuki, I think we should really do something about these names, they only serve to confuse Emilia-sama even more than your very existence is doing. Even the twin maids that work here have less confusing names, since their names are at least short and snappy unlike ours".

After giving Emilia a look that said "ignore my brother, what he's saying doesn't make sense", Natsumi said something even more confusing than what Natsuki had said.

"Eeeh, those aren't your real names?" Emilia wondered why anybody would give her a fake name, not realising that she would have done the exact same thing to Subaru in a parallel universe.

She quickly came to the preemptive conclusion that it had to do something with her race.

"I'm sorry Emilia-sama, but our situation is a bit complicated. My real name is indeed Natsumi Subaru, and my brother's real name is Natsuki Subaru. This isn't the problematic part."

Natsumi was unsure about how to explain it, so Natsuki took the lead.

"Is it alright for me to tell her about our circumstances, onee-san?"

Natsumi pondered for a bit. This was the first time her brother had simply called her onee-san, which hammered home that he wasn't kidding around.

Natsumi tried to asses Emilia right then and there, and she came to the conclusion that Emilia was just as pure as she seemed. Not only had her actions in the capital, and Reinhard's attitude towards her told Natsumi most of what she needed to make a judgement, but Natsumi's as of yet unreliable danger sense ability, if that was what it was, hadn't yet detected any hostile intent from Emilia.

Coming to a conclusion, Natsumi gave him the go ahead.

"Where we are from, our given name comes after the family name, so both of us have Subaru as our first name, while Natsuki or Natsumi are our second names".

Emilia had a habit of tilting her head, but this time she tilted it just ever so slightly further than usual.

"Eeeeeh? But if you're not related, then why do act as if you are?"

"That would be more complicated, especially since we just met for the first time on the very same day we first met you."

You're getting sidetracked, so please return to the topic, Subaru". Natsumi faltered ever somslightly when calling him Subaru, since it felt a bit wierd to call your carbon copy by your own name, but she did anyways to make sure she didn't add to Emilia's confusion.

"Right, so basically there's this theory that is somewhat famous in my hometown, which claims there are an infinite amount amount of worlds in exisence. Given the nature of infinity, an infinite amount of those worlds are exact replica's of an infinite number of other parallel worlds, and there are even more worlds that are almost the same as those, but with slight diffrences."

Emilia's head tilted another couple of millimeters for every second that Natsuki spoke.

"From what we were able to gather from talking to each other, we are from two very simular worlds, where the only major diffrences that we could find is that our respective family names are different, and that that in one of us is a male and the other is female. We even seem to have the same parents."

Natumi was getting worried that Emilia would break her neck soon at the rate of head tilting, so she intervened.

"Good grief Natsuki, I could practically feel you struggling trying not to mention Heisenberg or something."

"Look, imagine that you're out taking a walk. You blink, only to find yourself in a country not on any map you've seen before in your life, and next to you is some guy named Emilio, who looks just like you, and acts somewhat like you. The next thing you know, you get dragged into some sort of assasinstion plot. That's the sort of situation we found ourself in". Natsumi finished.

Just as Emilia's eyes were starting to water from trying to comprehend such a foreign concept that went against everything she had ever learned, a floating cat appeared.

"Good morning Lia."

Puck lazily flated closer to his contractor, and continued: "These two don't seem to be lying, but I don't really get how any that could happen."

"Don't look at us, there's no magic where we come from, so whatever brought us here probably originates from this world."

Emilia's eyes widened at the the way Natsumi said "this world."

"No way, are you guys from across the Great waterfall?"

"What even is that? Don't tell me that this is the sort of fantasy world which is flat, and where all of the water falls off at the end of the world... hey guys, what's with the look in your eyes?"

And so the hours went by, until two maids appeared.

Thank you for reading!

It seems the Subaru siblings found themslevs in a situation where they couldn't evade explaining their situation, firstly because their tendency to talk too much is multiplied when together, as well as it being impossible for them to give an airtight excuse for a long period of time without sharing a single mind, well, I mean an excuse that wouldn't make Emilia think they don't trust her.

A single Subaru that works alone is a master of bullshiting his way out of any situation, but two Subarus bullshitting would just contradict each other, so they sort of had to be open.

It's just another example of the characters writing themselvs, huh? Even an author has to respect it when their characters come to life like that.

Thank you Tappei for giving me an extremly versitile cast to work with!

Please share any ideas, tips, corrections and so on with me!