Ashes of Anger and Hate

Zero days since the Last Death (Nine Deaths)

A veil of darkness shrouded everything around him, preventing him from understanding what was happening. Had he died...? Something, deep inside him, told him that he had already experienced something similar. Darkness? Shades? Nightmares? Death? It was all too confusing. He was extremely disoriented; indeed, as if he had died and returned to life. Was that the case?

"Sis! Sis! What happened…?" Then, abruptly, he received an unexpected external stimulus. Where did it come from? Of course, from the outside… But where exactly? From whom? It sounded like a voice, but in his current state, he could not discern who was uttering it. Frustrated, he put the matter aside and tried to make sense of the world around him. How had he ended up there, in that condition?

The last thing he remembered was the heat; the heat of the flames consuming the hostile Oni; the heat of anger and hatred burning within him; the heat of wounds lining his body and giving him the sensation of burning in life. Heat was all he remembered. Had the flames also killed him? Was he suffering the effects of the "parting shot" or memento of the entity that lived to kill?

He was not sure. Even so, whether he was dead or alive, it did not seem to matter much to him. Somehow, he felt particularly relaxed, even after he had killed a second time; quite the opposite of what happened after the first time. With the scorching that consumed him inside and out diminishing, Subaru felt that he could finally rest. He had died four times in a row in less than a couple of hours, so he felt this time he deserved a break. Or at least that is how he felt in that world of darkness, isolated from the reality he had left behind.

In that world of endless shadows, there was only him and his appeased sea of thoughts. There was no sense of guilt, no trauma, no pain, nothing at all apart from himself... It was empty, like his very existence. In this world of black loneliness, his uselessness and weakness were not a factor of importance. There was no one who could be affected by his lack of talent, courage, ingenuity, resourcefulness, and power.

There he would not have to think about the consequences of having taken another life, which is why he felt so calm. Like a calm sea just before the storm; that is how he felt. But he knew it would only be a matter of time before that storm would hit him, and he felt too mentally drained to deal with it. He wanted to stay there and ignore the consequences of his actions and lack of them.

If he returned, if he left that world of shadows, his mind would be ravaged by the storm. The pain of his physical, mental, and spiritual wounds would overtake him, and then he would no longer be able to ignore the blood that soaked his hands and the scars left behind by his sins. Meili had been his first victim, and now that girl of the Oni race had been the second.

By his world standards, he would be considered a woman killer, wouldn't he? He had simply acted in self-defense, that is true. However, it was difficult for him to ignore that he was acting totally against the morals that his family had instilled in him. He had previously given up on following in the footsteps of his father, his childhood role model; but now it would simply be impossible for him to so, even if he wanted to. Because, in order to lengthen his life, he had taken the life of others.

And that was not all. During the cycle of deaths that began with his head being cut off by the Oni, Subaru lost a part of his humanity after each new death. That was a negative development that, in his opinion, began when he broke the promise he had made while dying together with Emilia. But it became evident after suffering the torture at the hands of the sadistic Bowel Hunter.

That loss of humanity was, undoubtedly, also closely related to the alienated fragment of his being. The one that for the past two months he struggled to ignore, but faced with the need to defeat the false Zarestia and continue living, Subaru was forced to accept as part of himself.

In the end, this led him to use dozens of innocent civilians as human shields and begin to see everything as a game against fate, in which the lives of his allies were nothing more than pieces placed on the board; a mindset that only increased the self-loathing he already felt. Perhaps the only positive thing he could see in such a change was to stop suffering after each death; and even so, he felt that this did not make up for the negative aspects of it.

That is why staying there would be easier than facing the person he had become, the person he became under the pressure of the circumstances around him. He had gone through three cycles of death, and he felt that throughout them the Subaru that came to this world had actually died.

And while it was true that he had largely carried out these actions under the influence of the alienated fragment of his being, that did not mean that he could wash his hands of all responsibility and forget the matter. That fragment of him, after all, was still a part of himself and, therefore, Natsuki Subaru. He had killed Meili and the Oni that attacked him, no one else did...

For the same reason, he wanted to remain isolated in that world and ignore everything else. However… He could not stop thinking. What happened to Mimi and Halibel? Mimi had used up a lot of mana again in a short time, and Halibel had been struck by a rather powerful wind blast. It was not fair that he let himself be enveloped by darkness while they were still out there, dealing on their own with whatever the final outcome of the fight was. He had to go back, he had to wake up; he had to give up that projection of the shadowy world created by his mind.

"… Can't you see it? Subaru Nii-san again took too many risks and exposed himself to danger, and ended up full of wounds." The darkness gradually gave way, thus returning to the reality from which he had escaped only a few minutes ago.

In front of his eyes was painted a scene he thought he would never see again after being caught in his most recent cycle of four deaths; Mimi hitting her brother with her staff, probably because he had made a comment that bothered her. From the look of annoyance on Tivey's face, it was obvious that he intended to retort, but he stopped when he realized that Subaru was waking up.

He blinked repeatedly to try to acclimate his eyes to the radical change in illumination and glanced back and forth, focusing on the faces he was able to recognize. First he observed Mimi, who immediately moved away from her brother and walked over to him. A wave of relief washed over him, partially easing the worries that had kept him clinging to this shadow world he had just left.

That moment of ephemeral peace was proof that his efforts had paid off, or so he wanted to believe; he needed to do so. Subaru was still dazed, so he did not understand better than before anything that was happening around him. And yet, the look of relief that blossomed on Mimi's face was proof that the worst was over.

Then his gaze moved to Tivey's face, who was in exactly the same place he had been when Mimi hit him on the head. Subaru, squinting, exchanged glances with him, who had his eyes wide open. By Tivey's surprised expression, it seemed that he had just seen a ghost or something similar; Subaru would later understand that what caused such reaction was not some supernatural being, but his deplorable state.

After a short moment, Tivey finally relaxed and smiled gently at him, while shaking her head, as if to say: "Subaru Onii-san's always the same." That was the second time that the little demi-human witnessed how Subaru, despite possessing no talent in combat, came out alive from a situation that would have surpassed even the most trained warriors.

Finally, Subaru moved his gaze with the aim of finding the last person who should be with them. But after a couple of frantic movements of his eyeballs, he realized that he could only see the two triplets. Where was Halibel? Had the same thing happened as before his last death? Had the Oni survived and had he been forced to hunt her down?

Subaru became restless, and therefore tried to force himself to move his injured and exhausted body. He grabbed the surface he was on and tried to push himself upward, but then a pain, similar to an electric current, ran through his two arms, forcing him to persist. Subaru dropped his head, overcome by tiredness and pain, and it was then that he noticed that his chin was leaning on something soft.

"Onii-san! Don't do that! You shouldn't move! Can't you see that you're not in a condition to be strainin' yourself?!" Mimi, upset, reprimanded him from the ground. The ground…? Subaru thought, realizing that Mimi, and also her brother, were at a much lower height than he remembered; almost as if they had shrunk, or if he had grown...

"She's right, Subaru." It was then that a carefree voice reached his ear. And it was not a distant voice, on the contrary, it resounded right beside his left ear. Moving his head in that direction with great effort, Subaru stumbled upon the profile of the face of the demi-human he had been looking for. "Don't make that face... It appears as if you've seen a monster or somethin' like that."

Subaru, not expecting to come face to face with Halibel, whose broad fangs were easily visible, reacted with a start, instinctively moving his face away. However, what Halibel mistook for paleness caused by fear and surprise, was none other than the result of Subaru's sudden movement.

Subaru's abrupt reaction, as he instinctively tried to distance himself from the snout composed of dozens of pointy fangs and the sharp gaze, caused intense pain to run through every cell of his body. The pain was such that blood drained from his skin, nausea took hold of his stomach and a thundering migraine ravaged his brain.

Unable to fight the wave of pain that drowned him, Subaru moved slightly forward and let out the whole content of his digestive system; that which he had managed to avoid vomiting after returning from his fourth death. The bitter-smelling liquid fell to the ground, inevitably smearing part of Halibel's kimono.

"Onii-san!"

"Subaru Onii-san!"

Both triplets, alarmed, approached Halibel and him. Avoiding coming into contact with the vomit that had fallen at the Shinobi warrior's feet, they both looked up at Subaru's contorted face. He, as he had been since the end of the fight, was leaning on Halibel's back, with his head placed over the beast man's right shoulder...

After the arduous fight against the Oni who was impersonating Zarestia, and after he made sure that she was dead, which involved analysis and subsequent… inspection of the corpse, Halibel approached Mimi and Subaru. Mimi, who had chosen to go with the raven-haired man just finished the fight, greeted him in considerable distress.

Something that even Subaru himself did not realized during the heat of the battle was that, while the impostor was consumed alive by the flames that represented his anger, she was able to cast a last desperate wind attack in his direction. One that, due to her condition and the fire that covered her, did not hit him with the necessary power to kill him.

However, coupled with the wounds already covering his body, now he had multiple cuts throughout it, as a result of thousands of microbursts that the hostile Oni managed to cast in her last moments of life. So, seeing that Subaru's health was deteriorating every second due to blood loss, Halibel picked him up and together with Mimi they headed for Anastasia's mansion; and being a few blocks from it, they met with Tivey...

Now that Subaru had left the world of darkness that was keeping him from the reality that awaited him outside of it, he became truly aware of how much damage he had received during the fight against the false Zarestia. Now that the veil of convenient, obscure ignorance had been lift, Subaru was once again forced to deal with the consequences of his actions and, at the same token, the consequences of his lack of them.

Suppressing a squeak of pain, Subaru struggled to regain his composure. The concerned gazes of the triplets rested on him, and the same applied to Halibel, who had refrained from saying anything about the vomit that had stained his tattered kimono. That is not what he wanted. Subaru did not want looks of pity and concern; he no longer wanted to be seen as the pathetic being who was incapable of anything.

"I-Is s-he de-ad?" He forced himself to mumble. The pain was overwhelming, so much so that it was difficult for him to think clearly. Even so, Subaru could not forget why he had abandoned the false peace offered by the darkness of his subconscious; he had to make sure that his plan had worked...

Subaru, as a last resort, had asked Mimi to bring him as many bottles of cheap liquor as she could, since he didn't want to be so shameless as to waste Anastasia's fine liquor, and one of the lighters that he had created, before heading out in his direction. Mimi had seemed reluctant, due to the urgency of the situation; still, he had managed to convince her that this might determine the outcome of the fight. This was probably why Mimi had taken a little longer to reach the battle zone than the previous time.

Considering that the liquor served to paralyze, for some reason he did not know, his enemy, Subaru had thought that he could pour plenty of it on her, so Halibel's sake bottle would not be enough, and then set her on fire; just what he had achieved. But the plan depended on Halibel weakening her enough first, and her losing the wind shield she used when she felt in danger; conditions that would not be easy to meet while making sure he didn't die in the process.

At the end he had succeeded, but at the cost of his health; a price that seemed ever lower for Subaru, even considering the terrible pain that was overwhelming him. After all, that pain was being inflicted by his inability to avoid getting hurt, so he would have to learn from the experience, there was no other way; especially if he wanted to get his desired revenge. Ignoring that last thought that had crept into his head, Subaru looked Halibel straight in the eye, urging him to respond.

"Ahhhhh… She died. The fire reduced her to ashes. There was nothin' left… Well, it's true that somethin' was spared. But I'll explain it to you after you've been healed. For now make sure you don't move anymore; I don't want to end up covered in vomit." Sighing, Halibel finally answered Subaru's question.

After that, the four continued on their way to the mansion; Subaru on the back of the most powerful warrior in Kararagi. Subaru really wanted to ask more, he needed to understand everything that had happened after his blackout; above all he wanted to know about that mysterious comment that Halibel had made. However, fatigue would not allow him to do so. Now that he knew that all were well, it was impossible for him to continue forcing his mind to remain awake.

Two hours since the Last Death (Nine Deaths)

"… He is out of danger now. I healed all the wounds on the front of his body, removed most of the splinters and closed most of the cuts. However, it would be advisable to repeat the treatment to get rid of the small remainin' splinters and completely heal the rest of the wounds. I could do it right now, but the best thing would be to stop for today, because I don't think he will be able to stand the pain any longe-"

"Ke-ep on… w-with the tre-treatment… T-This pain is no-thing… I-I don't wa-nt to be a n-nuisance any-more, so just finish with the healing. " With an expression of utter agony on his face drenched with sweat and blood traces, Subaru grabbed the doctor's forearm and asked, no, he ordered him to finish the treatment in-one-sitting.

Subaru was used to pain, of that there was no doubt. After the torture she suffered in Priestella, anything he had suffered since then could well be considered a mere caress. Or at least that's what he wanted to happen. However, even though he had actually acquired a certain degree of tolerance for pain, that didn't mean he could simply ignore it.

And the pain that he had come to experience during the treatment he had just undergone had been enough to wake him completely, bringing him back to reality at a stroke; even though he was totally exhausted. It was a kind of pain that made him feel the need to tear his skin off. This due to the fact that, although it was easy to heal wounds in that world, by using magic, the same did not apply to such surgeries.

The Hoshin Company's healer began by healing most of the deep wounds he received before he passed out, caused by the last attack of the Oni. These wounds had been easy to heal because there were almost no splinters involved. However, the healer couldn't just use healing magic on the back of his body and discharge him afterwards.

With that part of his body covered in cuts and thousands of wood splinters, there was nothing else to do but deal with the splinters first, and then apply healing magic; or else the skin would heal over them, making further extraction almost impossible. So before he could cure him, he had to remove the splinters, and this process was the one that resembled medieval torture.

With a kind of metal sponge, the doctor had scraped the affected areas to remove the splinters that were embedded deeper in the skin. As if it were cheese, the doctor scraped and scrubbed his neck and back. Not before having cleaned his wounds and bandaged both his feet and arms, which he did prior to Subaru's awakening, on the advice of Mimi.

Now that he had finally finished treating the most urgent areas, those with the most life-threatening wounds, the healer had decided it was best to leave both arms and feet, which thanks to the bandage were no longer bleeding, to the next day. Something that Subaru did not agree with.

The injuries to his limbs had not yet been treated, which would make it extremely difficult for him to move. He would have to lie flat on a bed, unable to do anything on his own, unable to make progress with his designs, depending on the kindness of Anastasia and her employees. Subaru was fed up with that.

He turned his back on Emilia, Felt, and the Old Man Rom, due to his inability to do anything to save their lives. His weakness prevented him from immediately warning Anastasia about the attack of the two assassins upon his return by death. His lack of wit and courage led him to, again, turn his back on all those innocent victims of the inn mabeasts' siege; victims whose names he had not even bothered to remember...

Furthermore, his fragile spirit had been shattered after taking the life of Meili, the assassin girl whose mabeast had once killed him. And while this was his darkest sin, it was one of the few useful deeds he performed during Priestella's cycle of death, and yet it had resulted in more traumas to add to the list. With his mind and spirit reduced to a heap of pieces, Subaru had once again been devalued.

The useless and incapable Subaru continued to depreciate; his value was plummeting in spite of possessing an ability that allowed him to remake reality itself to his liking. He had the power to shape the fate of those around him, but he hardly used it to keep himself alive. And yet, the fear of death remained rooted deep in his heart. After nine deaths, he was sure to state that his fear of death had only increased.

His usefulness was decreasing, no matter how hard he tried to obtain the opposite effect. So Subaru was frustrated, extremely frustrated. After the traumatic two months following his narrow victory at Priestella, Subaru was more desperate than ever to change his situation.

It was precisely for this reason that he went to the Hoshin Company headquarters without his usual escort; which, apparently, had prompted the Oni to take the opportunity to attack him. Ironically, his effort to overcome his traumas had led him into another cycle of death, one that began almost exactly the same as the previous one.

The impostor Zarestia appeared before him, just like Elsa, and he perished without being able to do anything about it. Afterwards, everything spiraled out of control. He hurt Mimi with his pathetic death. Like the hopeless sinner that he was, he died buried in the viscera and blood of the dozens of people he used as a shield of flesh and of the only person who was there to give him a hand. And, icing on the cake, he finally died at the mansion gates, leaving behind a loop in which he was unable to do anything but be a burden.

Subaru could not get his mind off the possibility that his ability might be a leapt between dimensions and not the ability to rewind time. If it was the former, then he had left behind four worlds marked by his sins and failures; this would be the ultimate biproduct of his inability, of his uselessness. For Subaru, who longed to overcome his weaknesses, all this was unacceptable...

"But Subaru-sama, are you sure you want to keep goin'? This treatment is remarkably aggressive, and I'm sure it's just as painful. Waitin' one day would be…"

"J-Just fuck-ing do it!" Subaru needed to push himself further, he needed to keep moving forward. Waiting one day was not even an option, especially considering that he had a huge target on his back. Remaining a burden was not an option, he simply did not want to accept his weakness anymore without doing anything about it. Was it a stupid and stubborn way of doing it? Yes, and he knew it; but that wouldn't stop him.

"You're more of a nuisance when behave so stubbornly, Subaru Onii-san." Tivey muttered, sitting not far from his stretcher.

The two siblings were sharing a chair, near the stretcher on which he was being treated, while Halibel, who had a pair of bandages rolled up on his arm, watched silently away from them. The Shinobi had also been treated. Subaru had not noticed it before due to his daze, but Halibel had not come out entirely unscathed after receiving the attack from the Oni, with which she threw him away in order to escape.

So after the healer stabilized the unconscious Subaru, he proceeded to treat the multiple injuries that Halibel received when the Oni managed to hit him with one of her powerful wind attacks. Even so, he had managed to attenuate much of the damage received thanks to his combat prowess and bestial agility, so he had never really been in danger.

Considering that Halibel had the golden kiseru on his snout, there was a huge possibility that the healer was responsible for having pushing him away from the stretcher where he was treating Subaru. From the grimace of boredom on the warrior's face, and the annoyed look on both triplets, it was clear that his stubborn attitude was being unwelcome. It was to be expected, but he was not going to budge; they wouldn't understand it, after all.

"Onii-san, you'd stop pushin' yourself so hard..." Mimi added, looking dejected. It was clear that she, who had come to know him better than anyone else in the mansion, perhaps second only to Anastasia, knew that Subaru would not give up no matter how much they insisted.

"If it's really what you want, Subaru-sama, I guess I have no choice. After all, it's your decision, not mine; I'm just doin' my job." With a gesture similar to Mimi, the healer accepted his "request." Once Subaru released his arm, the man proceeded in silence. He took one end of the bandage from one of his arms and set out to uncover it. However, he was stopped by Subaru's voice.

"Not the arms." Subaru said, looking at him seriously. Neither Mimi nor Tivey seemed surprised by his words. Still, what then came out of his mouth did. "Just apply healing magic, leave the splinters there."

"B-But if I do that, you may spend the rest of your life with discomfort and aches in your arms, Subaru-sama. You work drawin' designs, don't you? Leavin' the splinters could prevent you from movin' your arms and hands like you used to. Besides, you would feel pain every time somethin' pressed hard on your skin… "

"I don't care, I'll learn to cope with it. Leave the splinters there and apply the healing magic on top of them, that will be the mark of this new sin."

"New sin?! What are you talkin' 'bout, Onii-san?" Exclaimed Mimi, leaping up from her chair and approaching him. "You didn't commit any sin! You just did what you'd to do!"

"I killed the assassin girl… Meili…" He replied, looking into her eyes. "... And so now I've these scars on my arms. It's natural that there should be some kinda mark that won't let me forget that I'm still alive just because I took someone else's life." With those words, Subaru ignored the pained expression on Mimi's face and looked back at the healer. "Do whatever you've to do with my legs, but just use healing magic on my arms."

"Miss Hoshin will be very displeased with me…" The healer replied with a barely audible voice.

"I'll talk to her if I necessary. After all, I ain't gonna let a few damn splinters stop me from doing my job." And with that, the discussion was over...

Subaru had not decided to leave the splinters in his arms just for the reason he had given to those present in the room. He did not really want the scars hidden by the bandages to come to light either; he didn't want to see them. Over the past two long months that had passed, Subaru had struggled to ignore the existence of the scars, which had led him to suffer panic attacks simply by looking at them.

But he could no longer do so, he could no longer deny their existence, the existence of the sin they represented. From the moment he decided to leave behind the false security of his subconscious darkness, Subaru knew that he would have to deal with everything he had left behind, in the real world. And that included, in addition to the pain, the exhaustion, and his growing loss of humanity, the new sin he had committed.

Once again the desire for revenge and hatred had led him to take a life, in exchange for keeping his own and those around him. However, unlike the first time this happened, this time he did not resist. He allowed hatred and wrath to be the fuel that kept him going, and he let that fragment of himself sway him without resistance.

So he could not have the nerve to keep looking away from his actions. And that meant acknowledging and accepting the existence of the scars. He didn't want to see them, but he didn't want them to go away either. And the metal sponge that would get rid of the splinters could also do exactly this. That sponge would take away the mark left behind by his sins, and he could not let that happen.

The fingernail scars, both Meili's and his, depicted his mental weakness. The pain from the splinters would then depict his physical weakness. Learning to cope with that pain, learning to live with it, would be part of the process of dealing with his weaknesses. Those scars would be a reminder to his weak self, a permanent sign of the eternal need to take the next step toward his goals.

"You're really somethin', Subaru…" It was the last thing heard before the healer resumed his tortuous treatment.