A young man in a shabby tracksuit stood just in front of the now closed door, hand in hand with a small girl clad in an elegant red and pink dress. The man set his sights directly in front of him, his posture relaxed yet strong and unmoving. He felt, and even heard, his stomach growl but paid it no mind. "I'll put up with a little bit of hunger if it means being there for my Emilia-tan."

The girl, on the other hand, stood beside him with unease, her stance rigid and her face clearly forced into its neutral position. At first glance, she appeared just as confident and determined as the man, but, should one look closer, they would notice her tight grip on her partner's hand as well as the anxious darting of her pupils as she scanned both ends of the hallway.

The girl knew that they'd be waiting in front of this door for quite some time. Breaking a long standing, complex contract with a powerful great spirit is no easy feat after all. "Betty's Subaru should not be going hungry, in fact. He needs to have the energy to praise Betty, I suppose," she thought, searching for any reason to move from her position.

A small smirk grew on her face and a sense of genuine relief was brought to her as she sensed an approaching figure. "She will be able to bring Betty's Subaru down to dinner, I suppose."

"Ah, Subaru-sama!" a voice called out from the pair's left, full of youthful energy.

The man turned at the call of his name and spotted an amber-haired maid a short way down the hall, giving him a small wave. He returned the gesture on reflex with his free hand, thinking, "That seems like rather informal behavior for a maid, but I guess I don't mind…"

Petra's eyes widened and her mouth gaped slightly as she saw Beatrice standing by his side, holding his hand. But, after a shocked moment, she quickly regained her composure, shaking her head.

"Does she know that her body language makes her an open book? It's adorable. No wonder you kept her around, other me. You're one weird loli-harem-having bastard but at least you've got good taste in them."

"What's the matter, Petra?" he asked, shifting his whole body to face her, pulling Beatrice along with him.

The maid stiffened at the call of her name and met Subaru's eyes, transfixed. She did not respond and, instead, found herself lost in thought, "Subaru looks so… lively. He always seemed like he was hiding away how he felt but now…"

Subaru, confused, walked up to Petra with Beatrice in tow, leaving their post at the front of the door.

The amber-haired girl did not know if it was his relaxed, natural demeanor or if it was the familiar yet almost forgotten look of his tracksuit but "I can see the true face of the hero who saved me now."

Put off by her silent staring, Subaru placed a hand on her shoulder and asked, "Are you okay?"

She flinched at the action and replied sheepishly, her eyes shooting to the ground as she blushed slightly, "I-it's nothing, S-subaru… -sama."

"The hell was that all about? Weird kid."

She raised her gaze again and suppressed her blush as she continued, "A-anyways, it's almost time for dinner!"

He retracted his arm and sighed at her, saying, "As hungry as I am, I can't leave here at the mo-"

Cutting him off, Petra interrupted him, raising a finger to his face and placing a hand on her hip, "No~ way~, Subaru-sama. You barely ate dinner yesterday, and you missed both breakfast and lunch today!"

She grabbed the sleeve of his jacket opposite of Beatrice and began to drag him down the hall, continuing to berate him, "If you don't eat properly, you won't grow big and strong! Isn't that what you told me? I think-"

Subaru began to tune her voice out as he stared at her in shock, not resisting the movement. "This pre-teen girl just made me, her master and the Sin Archbishop of Pride, the man who burned down the entire kingdom, the man who time itself bends to, the man who the Divine Dragon and the Sword Saint themselves could not stop... go down to dinner like I'm a spoiled child."

He suddenly burst into laughter as they walked, prompting the lolis on either side of him to give him confused looks.

"I-it's nothing." he said, smiling sheepishly, "I just… this place is really just something else isn't it?"


The group, content in a comfortable silence, wordlessly approached the large, ornate dining room doors, all previous conversations having died down naturally at that point. Petra stood in front of the pair, leading them to their destination while Beatrice and Subaru held hands behind her. All three of them were deep in thought.

"Petra confirmed what Elsa told me the other night about Meili. Furthermore, it seemed unusual to her that I had forgotten to visit Meili yesterday and wondered if I would be skipping out on it today as well. But it almost seemed like…"

Subaru frowned slightly and his eyes narrowed as he bore a hole into the ground in front of him with his gaze.

"Petra wanted me to stop seeing her? I could guess at a ton of reasons why but, considering this is Natsuki Subaru we're talking about, the real answer isn't even something I've come close to considering yet. I guess I'll just see her before I head to bed tonight."

Beatrice, meanwhile, was thoughtfully inspecting her contractor's silent form as they walked, a smile present on her face.

"I like this look on Subaru, I suppose. He often looks quite mad, in fact. But right now he seems deeply lost in thought and has an air of grace."

She made a quiet "hmpf" noise to herself and turned her head away from him.

"You really are hopeless, Betty's Subaru, but I will not give up on you, in fact. It is only fair after you refused to give up on me, I suppose."

Petra walked silently, trying her best to fight the urge to turn to look at Subaru. She did not believe herself capable of keeping her composure if their gazes met again.

"Subaru seems really different today. Ram-neesama and the others mentioned it as well and I even saw part of it when I went to wake him up earlier but…"

She blushed heavily at the recollection of that memory and, after a few seconds of savoring it, she dismissed it from her mind, careful to not let any of the precious details smudge or fade.

"Now I really do think he's different. He's better for sure, but I have this feeling that there's still something wrong with him that I can't quite put my finger on."

Without needing to think about it, Petra opened the doors in front of them, moved off to the side of the pair, and bowed her head.

Subaru and Beatrice refocused their minds on reality as they entered the almost fully attended dining room.

The room itself was, frankly, massive. Subaru had never been inside it before coming to this timeline, and each time he had been here, his mind was too full of more pressing matters. Thus, for the first time, Subaru was capable of, even if just for a moment, appreciating the lavish and grand nature of where the richest man in Lugunica eats his meals.

While Subaru's room in particular was almost entirely beige and brown with only the barest hints of gold patterning to liven up the decor, a mix of vibrant greens, rich browns, and an obscene quantity of golds covered the dining room. There were patterns adorning every surface, most notably the elegant blending of two distinct checkered designs upon the unreasonably smooth and reflective floor.

The monolithic windows directly across from the main doors served the dual purpose of highlighting the central table - adorned with a pristine, patternless white cloth that had not even a single stain upon it - and deemphasising the presence of the handful of side entrances on either side of the room that Subaru correctly assumed were intended for staff use.

Having darted his sights across the room in less than a second and quickly processing what he had seen, Subaru turned his attention to the aforementioned table. Reinhard was sitting patiently at the seat he had taken earlier and gave Subaru a genuine smile, which the madman tried his best not to scowl at. Garfiel pointedly ignored Subaru as he gave a questioning glance to the little girl standing beside him, and Ram's eyes betrayed an expression of shock for a moment before she calmed herself and looked at her master.

Sitting beside the standing Ram was the lord of the mansion: Roswaal L Mathers. And he had just dropped the glass of wine he had been sipping from onto the floor, shattering it. In the moment before he regained his composure, Subaru could see genuine emotion plain on the clown's face for the first time. He was very clearly shocked, partially overjoyed, yet also filled with a great guilt.

A second later, his usual jovial facade had locked back into place as all heads turned to see the source of the sound of the shattering glass. Only Ram, Subaru, and Beatrice saw his short moment of honest emotion.

"Oh my, Raaam it seems thaaaat I had my grip slip a taaaad. Could yoooou kindly tidy my mess pleeease," he kindly asked the maid beside him, a wide smile present on his face.

The pink haired maid immediately complied with her master's wishes and wordlessly began collecting the shattered glass. Doing so incredibly quickly, she turned to the still spaced-out girl at the door as her task came to close, "Petra."

The amber haired maid made a small yelp and turned towards Ram, having snapped out of her thoughts. The oni narrowed her eyes at her colleague's complacency and, frowning, said, "Seeing as how everyone has arrived, with the exception of Emilia-sama who I assume can not join us, you should go fetch and serve the meal promptly."

A nervous chill went down the girl's spine at her superior's harsh-toned words. Ram had made it sound like Emilia's absence, Subaru's lateness, and Roswaal dropping his glass were all somehow her fault and her fault alone. However, used to this, Petra did not falter in her role as an esteemed maid of the Mathers family and promptly accepted her task, "Y-yes, Ram-neesama!"

As the two maids went to perform their respective duties of mopping up spilled wine and distributing the food, the room's attention shifted back towards a grinning Subaru and neutral-faced Beatrice, both of whom still stood at the entrance.

"I saw how you looked for a second there, clown. Since when do you slip up?" the tracksuit-clad man said, smugly.

Completely ignoring Subaru's obvious taunt and having never shifted his attention away from the spirit girl, Roswaal spoke out to the pair, "Weeeell Betty-san, it's marvelous to finally seeee you join us for dinner."

Subaru's smile grew irritated at being ignored while Beatrice shared in that same frustration. She turned her head away from Roswaal and gave her best "hmpf".

"Betty has nothing to say to you, I suppose. Not after you burned down Mother's library, in fact," she spat, looking at the clown out of the corner of her eye.

In response, Roswaal feigned hurt and replied, placing his hand on his chest, "Betty dooon't be like that. We're suuuuch good friends aren't we? You woooound my fragile heart."

The pair ignored the clown's poor show and marched on over to sit at the table. Subaru sat where he did last time, despite Emilia's absence, and Beatrice took the seat beside him. Looking up and facing directly forward, he was greeted by the sight of a smiling Reinhard on the opposite side of the table. Subaru almost automatically scowled at him but instead looked back down at his empty plate.

"Fucking Reinhard and his perfect smile and his perfect attitude. What a perfectly irritating fuckhead. Earlier I wasn't this annoyed because I had so much on my mind but now that this room is silent and my head is empty... his goddamn smile won't stop pointing at me! Seeing him like this makes me want to burn everything down again so badly."

His scowl shifted into a mad grin as his thoughts grew darker, "Yes, yes this can work. I have Emilia and Beako on my side this time. If I can get the clown to support me again, I can eradicate the Witch Cult and destroy his name once more. I can still kill the oh-so-perfect Swords Saint just like how I did before. This is going to be so fu-"

Just before he was going to enter into a bout of insane laughter, he felt a hand on his arm. He turned to see Beatrice standing beside him, a small frown on her face.

"You'll hurt yourself if you keep your grip so tight, I suppose. I will have to heal you again, in fact," she said, her tone gentle and soothing.

In response, Subaru's body relaxed and he opened his hands to reveal bleeding palms. Beatrice took them into hers and healed them almost instantly. Not meeting his gaze, she then crawled her way onto his lap, her face almost as red as her dress.

"Beako…?" he started but quickly stopped, too stunned by her behavior to properly articulate himself.

"B-betty is not doing this because she wants to, in fact. Betty simply needs to keep her contractor from doing something reckless, I suppose," the girl stammered out, her eyes fixed to the empty plate before her.

Subaru took a moment to take in her tsundere energy and wrapped his now healed arms around her, eliciting a quiet yelp from the spirit loli.

"I love you, Beatrice," he said, his words as genuine and caring as he could make them; as genuine and caring as ones he would direct towards his beloved.

"T-t-truly B-Betty's S-Subaru is a hopeless m-man, I suppose," she struggled to articulate, her face now the most red object in the room.

He held her tight and took a deep breath, allowing the closeness of her form to calm him further. After a moment, Subaru lifted his gaze to meet Reinhard's again, who seemed quite confused. However, behind the perplexed look on his face, Subaru could tell that the knight was thinking something self deprecating.

"As much as I want to encourage that behavior, I can't start throwing a wrench into this place yet. I still don't know what exactly Emilia will decide she wants to do with Puck gone. I guess I'll have to… have to…"

Subaru almost vomited at the mere thought of apologizing to his nemesis. It was too repulsive of an idea to even think of.

However, picking up on Subaru's pain and noticing his attitude towards Reinhard thus far, Beatrice spoke up for him, her blush having only somewhat subsided, "Betty would like to apologize in place of her contractor, I suppose. Betty's Subaru is sorry for staring at you with hateful eyes, in fact."

At her words, Subaru, on one hand, was incredibly relieved he did not need to feign remorse towards his enemy while, on the other hand, was still incredibly disgusted by the fact that Reinhard received an apology from him at all, even if it was through Beatrice.

"Fucking perfect asshole forcing my Beako to lie for me. Fucking hate that prick," he thought, reflexively clenching his fists yet again.

But his self harming action was stopped and his fury waned as Beatrice turned to speak to him, an incredibly smug look on her face, "Feel free to praise Betty for her excellent work, I suppose. Betty has stopped your foolishness twice-over, in fact."

A soft smile coming to his face, Subaru gave her a gentle pat on the head and a soft hug, saying, "Good work, Beatrice. I couldn't live on without you."