Although the rest lasted less than ten minutes, for Natsuki Subaru, it felt as if all the exhaustion in his body had been swept away.
This was a rare moment of respite for him recently.
It had been a semester since he left that world and arrived at this school.
Of course, that was only one month on the surface.
In reality, counting the time spent in Return by Death, the time Subaru had experienced far exceeded a single semester.
Half a year?
A year?
Maybe even... several years?
Subaru himself didn't know. But it didn't matter; he wouldn't go out of his way to calculate that time.
Subaru opened his eyes, casting his gaze toward the silver-haired girl in front of him. He hadn't expected to actually fall asleep in front of Hiyori Shiina.
"You could have rested a bit longer."
Hiyori Shiina's voice, so soft it sounded slightly languid, rang out. Her fingers rested on the book from earlier, but her gaze was already cast upon Subaru's face. She wore a smile.
"It's enough," Subaru responded simply.
However, he didn't even notice that the fatigue hidden beneath his countenance had lessened considerably.
"Sorry to trouble you."
"No, it was no trouble at all. If it can make Subaru-kun feel more at ease, I'm happy too," Hiyori answered.
She cherished those twenty minutes deeply. This was the first time this boy named Natsuki Subaru had revealed his true self, and she needed to respond in kind.
Most importantly, it was summer vacation. It was a time when they didn't have to consider the struggles between classes. Once the next semester started, perhaps she would have to formally face off against Natsuki Subaru.
Subaru-kun, I will do my utmost to have you transfer to my class,
Hiyori thought to herself.
But before that, I will also do my utmost to fight against Subaru-kun. That is my response.
The summer vacation quietly slipped away.
The school had everything, so the students' activities were quite rich. However, Subaru stayed in his dorm room almost every day, and on the rare occasions he went out, it was only to the library.
Since that day, Subaru would sometimes ponder the words Hiyori had said to him.
It wasn't that others lacked color. It was that he believed they lacked color.
Until the tail end of summer vacation arrived quietly.
The cicadas on campus still chirped loudly; summer was in full swing. In a few days, the new semester would begin, and those temporarily shelved undercurrents would surge once more—Kikyo Kushida's hatred, Kakeru Ryuen's struggle, Kiyotaka Ayanokoji's exploration, and Arisu Sakayanagi's chess game.
But at this moment, everything was still quiet.
Subaru walked alone along the tree-lined path on campus, wandering aimlessly. Ever since falling asleep in the library that day, his sleep seemed to have improved slightly—not that he could truly fall asleep, but that sense of tightness seemed to have faded a little bit.
Just a little bit. But that was enough.
As he passed the central plaza, he noticed a small group of people gathered there. Not many, about a dozen students, standing in a semicircle as if watching something. Subaru intended to walk right past.
But just as he was about to avert his gaze, he saw that familiar touch of silver-white at the edge of the crowd.
Hiyori Shiina.
She was standing on her tiptoes, trying hard to look into the center of the crowd, her long silver hair glowing with a soft luster in the sunlight. She seemed to sense something and turned her head, meeting Subaru's gaze perfectly.
Those clear eyes immediately curved into crescents.
"Subaru-kun!"
She trotted over, her cheeks slightly flushed from standing on tiptoes just now. "Did you come to see the fortune telling too?"
Subaru raised an eyebrow slightly. "Fortune telling?"
"Mn!" Hiyori nodded, pointing to the center of the crowd. "For the last week of summer vacation, the school invited a fortune teller. They say she's very famous; many students have come to try it."
Subaru looked past the crowd and vaguely saw a figure wearing a long robe sitting behind a small table. A crystal ball, tarot cards, and the like were placed on the table; it certainly looked like the standard equipment for a fortune teller.
He had never had any interest in such things.
So-called fortune telling was nothing more than using vague language and human psychology to create some specious comfort or warning. For someone who had experienced the cycle of death countless times and witnessed the truest side of human nature with his own eyes, such things were laughably childish.
"Do you want to try, Subaru-kun?" Hiyori asked, her eyes shining with anticipation.
"No," he answered decisively.
Hiyori wasn't disappointed; she just curved her eyes slightly. "Then I'm going, okay?"
"I didn't expect you to believe in this."
Subaru looked at Hiyori. He thought that Hiyori, who liked mystery novels, should be a materialist and wouldn't believe in fortune telling.
"Strictly speaking, I indeed don't believe in fortune telling. And as long as one possesses sufficient observation and deductive skills, one can also investigate the other party's situation with complete clarity," Hiyori said with a smile. For her, these were the actions of a detective. "That's why I want to understand it a bit better."
"I see." Subaru nodded and sat down on a nearby bench.
He had intended to just watch her get her fortune told and then leave together. But for some reason, when Hiyori walked into the crowd and joined the line, his gaze remained fixed there.
Not looking at her. But looking at that fortune teller.
A person wearing a dark robe, features obscured, gender indistinguishable. Their fingers were slender, gliding gently over the tarot cards, movements slow and composed.
Subaru had seen many such people.
In countless timelines, he had seen various people who claimed to be able to predict the future. Swindlers, charlatans, or opportunists who just used information asymmetry to create a sense of mystery.
But this person—
There was something different. He couldn't say what it was.
Subaru hadn't needed to use Return by Death during this period; this was his first time arriving at this point in time. Yet, he felt a trace of familiarity from the other person. It was just an extremely faint, almost imperceptible intuition.
"Wh-Why are you here?"
Just then, a slightly trembling voice rang out from the side. Subaru turned to look; it was Mio Ibuki.
However, at this moment, Ibuki had changed into casual clothes, and her short hair was tied up in a braid. She didn't look like a tomboy as she had before; instead, she looked a bit cuter. Looking at Subaru, Ibuki's gaze was full of wariness.
"I'm just passing by," Subaru said lightly.
To him, Mio Ibuki was an insignificant existence. However—Hiyori's words seemed to ring in his ears, and he couldn't help but look up at her.
Color... is it?
"Um, although I can't forgive the things you did last time, you did make that guy Ryuen regain his fighting spirit. Thank you."
"No need to thank me. I just had my own reasons," Subaru said dismissively.
Ibuki pursed her lips, glanced at Subaru, then at the queue nearby, seemingly embarrassed to say what she was doing. Finally, after saying a few simple sentences, she joined the line—though she still turned her head occasionally to look at Hiyori behind her.
Not long after, Hiyori finished her fortune telling. She stood up and waved at Subaru, a satisfied smile on her face.
"Subaru-kun! The teacher said my new semester will be very smooth!"
She trotted over and sat down beside Subaru.
"Is that so," Subaru responded indifferently.
"Mn! Although they were all very vague words, my mood improved after hearing them."
Hiyori curved her eyes slightly. "I saw Ibuki from your class just now."
"Did Ibuki-san come too? But it's true, Ibuki-san is actually someone who is cold on the outside but warm on the inside," Hiyori said with a smile. "However, I don't have many friends in the class, and my interactions with Ibuki-san aren't that frequent—Subaru-kun, are you really not going to try?"
Subaru was silent for a few seconds. He had wanted to refuse again. But when his gaze landed on the fortune teller's small table, he suddenly remembered something.
In that world, there was also a Witch who claimed to be able to see the future.
Though Subaru hadn't met her. It seemed there were clues about that Witch in the Sanctuary of the Roswaal Mansion. But Subaru hadn't been interested. Roswaal, too, had been killed by the blue lightning.
"...I'll go take a look."
The moment the words left his mouth, even he was a little surprised. Hiyori's eyes lit up, but she said nothing, only nodding quietly.
Subaru stood up and walked toward the crowd. There weren't many people in line, and it was soon his turn. He sat down in front of the small table.
The fortune teller looked up, and only then did Subaru clearly see the other person's face. That was an exquisitely beautiful woman; her skin was snow-white, and even her hair was white. However, her eyes were as pitch-black as dark pupils.
"Young man."
The fortune teller spoke, her voice ancient yet gentle. "What do you wish to have told?"
Subaru looked at her. "Whatever."
The fortune teller smiled slightly. "'Whatever'... is the hardest thing to divine," she said. "Because people who say 'whatever' often hide the question they want answered most in their hearts."
She didn't take out a crystal ball, nor did she turn over any tarot cards. She just quietly looked at Subaru.
She looked for a long time. Long enough that Subaru almost got up to leave.
In his boredom, Subaru's gaze finally noticed a black-covered book placed on the table, looking incomparably familiar—
At the same time, the woman spoke.
"Your path is long," she said. "Longer than anyone imagines. You have walked many night roads, seen many things that shouldn't be seen. The weight you carry far exceeds the limit this body should bear."
Subaru's eyelashes twitched slightly.
"But you are searching for something."
Her voice was soft and distant. These words sounded like standard fortune-telling tropes. But spoken from her mouth, they held a strange... certainty. As if she had truly seen it.
"You yourself might not have realized it, but you are searching. Searching for a place to stop. Searching for a... person who doesn't need to walk the night road anymore."
Subaru narrowed his eyes slightly, noticing the look in her eyes. In that gaze, there was something he couldn't name—not sympathy, not pity, but a more complex and more unsettling... satisfaction? Like seeing the result of some interesting experiment.
She didn't speak again. She just tilted her head slightly, looking at him with those deep, dark eyes, a smile that was there and yet not there hanging at the corner of her mouth.
As if waiting for something. Or as if savoring something.
"That is all, Natsuki Subaru."
"Why do you know my name?"
"Of course I know. After all, we have met—of course, not the current you, but you in other 'times'."
"Who are you."
"Who I am isn't important. But in a certain story, we were close partners."
"I don't believe that. You seem more like you're reading me like a book."
"Eh? What amazing observation skills. I am truly very curious about you. I feel curious about all knowledge, all unknowns; that is my greed."
"You are not a person of this world."
"That's right. I'm the same as you. However, I can only stay here briefly for a short while."
"What do you want to do?"
"Just observe."
"Then do you know why I came to this place?"
A smile appeared on the other person's face. "The answer doesn't lie with me."
Subaru observed her carefully again. Long white hair, dark robes, and those deep eyes that seemed to see through everything. She seemed to be the same kind as him.
"Of course, I didn't come here just to observe you."
"Oh?"
"For me, you were once an incomparably important person—though at that time, you should have had white hair, and were known as the Sa—"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Subaru interrupted her. He recalled his first crossing from the convenience store. Was it her doing? No, it seemed it wasn't. But his intuition told Subaru it was definitely related to the person before him.
"I came to confirm various possibilities. Your eyes have changed, Flu... Natsuki Subaru."
"I haven't changed at all."
"That's what makes it interesting, Natsuki Subaru."
A smile appeared on the face of the white-haired, black-eyed fortune teller, her gaze involuntarily falling upon Hiyori Shiina's face in the distance.
"Unknown possibilities are much more interesting. You need to walk every path, and eventually become that person again."
"Time is almost up, Natsuki Subaru."
"Perhaps we will meet again soon. I will wait for you in a dream. Of course, the me at that time might not necessarily be me—"
____
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