When the anime began, Souhei, sitting in front of the television, noticed something unusual the moment the opening started.
In the credits, under the Kantoku listing, Sumire - who had served as assistant Kantoku last season - now appeared alongside Sora as one of the main Kantokus. The sight caught him completely off guard. So they could really run a production with two Kantokus like this?
But after a second thought, it made perfect sense. Sora was still responsible for the production of Re:Zero Season 2, so splitting the burden like this was only natural.
Then his attention was drawn to something else.
The length of Episode 13, airing that night.
Just like the very first episode of the summer cour, tonight's Episode 13 had been expanded into a full one-hour special, clearly arranged to give the story room to breathe and to better set up the coming developments.
And Sora had a very clear reason for making that choice.
In the early part of the Royal Selection arc, Subaru's behavior as the protagonist was simply too frustrating.
There was no softer way to put it.
As he watched, Souhei had originally assumed that after Subaru dealt with the threat at the mansion and arrived in the royal capital with Emilia, the story would move into a more heartwarming phase - one where the two of them would finally grow closer.
But reality went in the exact opposite direction.
At the Royal Selection meeting, because the kingdom's upper ranks kept attacking Emilia over her half-elf bloodline, Subaru lost control and exploded on the spot, lashing out at everyone in the room without the slightest restraint.
Standing up for the girl you loved was not, in itself, a problem. Anyone could understand that impulse.
The real issue was that Subaru lacked both the strength and the standing to do it.
His actual ability was that of an ordinary person.
And his status, as someone serving in Count Roswaal's household and following Emilia, gave him no weight in a place like that.
Watching him roar in the middle of such a meeting only made his actions look childish, reckless, and painfully immature.
Because in the end, none of it helped Emilia.
If anything, it only turned her into an even bigger target.
The story wasted no time proving that point.
Julius, the knight of Anastasia - one of the five royal candidates - stepped forward and challenged Subaru from every possible angle. And Emilia, in order to stop him from becoming the target of even more hostility and aggression, could only answer him harshly, without leaving any room to spare his feelings.
That was when he began to lose control.
Arrogance.
At that moment, that flaw revealed itself in Subaru with brutal clarity. Even though he lacked the power to back it up, he still acted as though anything concerning Emilia had to be something he personally stepped into first.
And the result was disastrous.
Not only did he cause Emilia serious trouble in the middle of the meeting, he also ended up challenged by Julius after insulting him in front of everyone - and was utterly crushed in the duel that followed.
Watching that entire sequence unfold, with the protagonist being swallowed alive by his own arrogance and then beaten down for it, nearly dragged Souhei into depression.
The worst part was that, after seeing the whole thing from beginning to end, he could not even bring himself to think the others were truly in the wrong.
To him, the one who had failed most here was Subaru himself.
He had become too arrogant.
In truth, the Re:Zero version produced by Sora had already toned this section down quite a bit. The overall direction of the plot remained close to the original, but some of the harsher details had been deliberately blurred out.
Subaru was still disappointing, of course, but not to the point where the audience would feel unbearable secondhand embarrassment just from trying to empathize with him.
"Oh, Subaru... stop throwing these useless tantrums and grow up already," Souhei muttered with a heavy sigh. "We, the audience, know you can return by death. You're not really just some ordinary guy. But nobody there knows that. To them, you just look like some reckless idiot with no self-awareness."
Because Sora had trimmed away some of the uglier details of Subaru's humiliation, the protagonist came off as a little less pitiful than he could have.
Even so, the story kept moving in a direction that only made Souhei feel worse.
Because Emilia, even now, had not truly blamed him.
She was still worried about the injuries he had suffered after being beaten by Julius.
It was just that, at the same time, she was angry at how immature he had been - at how little regard he had shown for himself, at how recklessly he had thrown himself into harm.
She decided that the next day she would return to the mansion with Roswaal first to handle some matters, while Subaru stayed behind in the capital to recover before going back.
But Subaru misunderstood everything.
The two of them argued.
And when he let slip that he had done all of it for her, the gentleness in Emilia's expression finally vanished.
"For me? No... all of that was for yourself, wasn't it?"
The words stabbed straight through Souhei's chest.
Because it was true.
Since arriving in the capital, Subaru had not discussed anything with Emilia even once. Not before shouting in the meeting, not before challenging Julius, not before getting himself into trouble. Every last choice had been made on his own, impulsively, without asking her.
So for him to say now that it had all been for her...
That suffocating feeling was far too familiar.
Kantoku Sora, Souhei thought, his heart sinking, so you really are taking it this far?
Reset the save already.
Hurry up and reset it.
This save file is ruined.
Subaru, all the affection you'd built up with Emilia until now... you just threw it all away with your own hands.
But then another realization struck him like a blow.
No one had come to kill Subaru.
If nobody killed him, then how was he supposed to restart?
Was the protagonist seriously going to go so far as to kill himself just to rewind after this fight?
On the screen, Subaru looked at Emilia with grief filling his eyes.
"Emilia... you don't trust me?"
"I want to trust you," she answered, her own emotions finally slipping loose. "But you're the one who broke the promise. You're the one who did all this. You ask me to believe in you, but you were the one who didn't keep your word. I can't do that."
And then Subaru broke too.
"I only did all of this to repay you for what you did for me!" he insisted.
But the gratitude Subaru carried came from the very first loop of the Bowel Hunter incident.
Only he remembered that past.
The Emilia standing in front of him now was the Emilia of the third loop - an Emilia who had never shared all the things he held sacred in his heart.
The gap in information between them was merciless.
Emilia could not understand why Subaru would lose control so completely - why a single insult directed at her was enough to make him cause a scene, throw himself into a duel, and reduce his own body to ruin.
But to Subaru, the girl before him was the star that had saved him from darkness.
Even if he had to die a hundred times in the process, he could not bear to watch her be mocked or humiliated.
Only then did Souhei truly understand why this argument had become inevitable.
Subaru's love for Emilia had been built across repeated loops - across death, despair, terror, and survival.
It was sincere to the point of extremity.
A feeling tempered in the space between life and death.
But for Emilia, it was not like that.
Her memories belonged to a single timeline.
A single life.
Everything Subaru carried inside him - the pain, the losses, the times he had nearly lost his mind for her sake - simply did not exist within her.
How could anyone endure a love that heavy when it came from a history they had never lived?
"It's too heavy..."
Not being understood by the person he loved - that, in the end, was the one thing capable of truly breaking Subaru from the inside.
"Why can't you understand? I thought... I thought that if it were you, then you'd understand..." Subaru clutched his chest, his face twisted with pain.
After that, the two of them began hurling words at each other that struck precisely where it hurt most.
"Everything's only gone this well because of me, hasn't it? You'll never be able to repay what you owe me!" Subaru shouted.
And those words came from the depths of a hell only he knew.
From all the times he had struggled, died, been torn apart, and stood back up again.
It was through all of that that he had secured the stable position Emilia now held as a royal candidate.
Souhei's chest ached.
Subaru had finally snapped.
"Yes... I owe you a lot," Emilia said, her expression hollow with sadness. "So once I repay all of that, then this ends here."
Souhei froze.
You really are cruel, Sora.
In barely over twenty minutes, the story had plunged to a point like this without the slightest hesitation.
What now?
His face twisted with helpless conflict as a hollow emptiness spread inside him. Watching the bond between Emilia and Subaru crack apart like that was almost unbearable.
Because it felt real.
Both of them had found the exact words that would hurt the other most, as if they had reached into each other's hearts and dragged out the things that should never have been said aloud.
It hurt.
It hurt too much.
The more warm and healing the story between Subaru and Emilia had been until now, the more suffocating it became to hear the exchange that left them standing on the verge of a complete rupture.
And this was still the softened version.
Sora had already put a filter over Subaru, cutting away details that would have made him look even uglier in the original.
Even so, the effect was already devastating.
And to make the first week of the autumn cour hit even harder - to push the story more quickly toward its most gripping stretch - he had turned that night's Re:Zero broadcast into a full one-hour special.
What Souhei was feeling now - that dark, crushing weight in his chest - was only the beginning.