The Oni had two horns, and twins like Rem and Ram were, from birth, a disgrace to the clan—because the two of them each had only a single horn.
Yet just as they were about to be disposed of like garbage, as clan law demanded, the infant Ram displayed astonishing power. She saved both their lives, and in doing so drew the high hopes of her parents and her people.
Beside her, the younger twin Rem was unremarkable—her very life spared only by riding on Ram's coattails.
Even with Ram caring for her so tenderly, Rem couldn't help nursing the inferiority and guilt of I'm the one who took one of my sister's horns. And so she threw herself into studying housework, wanting to give something back in another way.
As if a genius were fated never to be perfect, the turning point came when the Witch Cult invaded the Oni clan. Ram, then only a child, displayed the power to cut down all comers—but in a moment of distraction, fretting over her sister, she let her guard slip and had the horn that was the wellspring of her strength severed.
In that instant, Rem—who had always been the one protected—actually smiled. It's finally broken. That was the first thought of the child she'd been back then.
A wound that even healing magic could barely mend certainly couldn't be stuck back on with a single lick. That Yimi's saliva didn't carry its "Famine" starve-the-victim effect was already fortunate enough—so she simply transferred the severance itself away instead.
"Onee-san!" Rem hugged her tightly, nothing left in her but joy for Ram.
As a maid of the Roswaal Mansion, Ram often came across as a downright layabout: too cold to move in winter, too hot to work in summer, when it came to cooking she could barely do more than peel a potato, her pruned hedges always needing a second pass from Rem before they looked presentable.
But Rem, who shouldered most of the housework, took joy in it. When we were small, you protected me; now that we're grown, I look after you—it was something like that.
Because each of them was the most important person in the world to the other.
Mana had finally begun to circulate normally again—a sign the organ had regained its proper function. Ram reached up to touch a sensation she hadn't felt in over a decade, only for her fingertips to come away smeared with Yimi's strawberry-shortcake-scented saliva.
Ram narrowed her eyes.
In their eyes, it really did look as though Yimi had stuck Ram's horn back on with her spit.
"No Mister Ceiling today."
Gazing up at a sky already tipping over into daylight, Subaru once again used one of his slightly dated lines to announce that he'd come to.
He tried to move his body.
"Eh?"
Only to find himself tied to a tree.
"Subaru, you're awake?" Emilia hurried over to him.
"Oho, Mister Greed's up?" Puck popped out to greet him too.
"Emilia? Why am I…" Subaru twisted against the ropes.
He noticed there was something odd in the way Emilia was looking at him.
Puck had called him "Greed"?
Right—in the last moment before he blacked out, that slightly-more-handsome Petelgeuse had suddenly accused him first despite being the guilty party, then choked him out on top of it.
So now he was tied up here as a prisoner?
Why would they sooner take that Sloth's word for it?
"Emilia, I'm not with the Witch Cult!"
I only wanted to save you. Call it wishful thinking, call it a foolish thing to do—but at the very least, on this one point—
"Believe me!"
He was on the verge of hysteria—almost the same ugly state he'd shown during their earlier quarrel.
"Mm. I believe you, Subaru."
Emilia gently drew him into a hug. "You must have been through so much pain. You've already done more than enough."
That green-haired Sin Archbishop had slipped away in the night without saying much to her, leaving only the words It's just as well you've forgotten—which only made her dwell on it all the more.
She could feel it: that man had to share some deep bond with her. Someone who cared about her, forgotten by her—how could a thing like that ever be all right?
"…" Subaru looked at her, bewildered.
"Ah—Subaru, are you wondering why you're tied up? This was actually Yimi's doing. For the look of it, that child even added a bow."
The truth was, a bow was the only knot Yimi knew how to tie.
"Yimi? Why?" He'd thought that child might be the one person who understood him.
Puck answered him. "In my niece's own words: 'It's all that idiot 486's fault, making extra work for kitty!' And then she tied you up to keep her whole village-rescue operation from going up in smoke a second time."
He even pitched his voice up on purpose when imitating Yimi—but it couldn't reproduce the crisp ring of a child's voice, and only came out a little cringeworthy.
"If Lia hadn't held her back, she was going to give you a real kick. Little kids don't know their own strength, you know."
"She drew some deep black rings around your eyes, too. Lia meant to wash it off for you, but the face paint turned out really hard to get clean—she only ended up smearing your face darker."
"So clever Puck, not wanting his daughter to feel bad, hit on the idea that if it wouldn't come off, we might as well paint you back over in a different color. But the light was too dim, and Mister Puck picked the wrong paint—slathered pure white all over your face this time. Turns out I underestimated how strongly the black would bleed through. And now the white won't come off either."
Puck floated over to the ruins of the house, fetched a mirror, and drifted carefully back with it. "Then, with your whole face buried in paint, the pink of your lips got covered too—so I borrowed a red marker from my niece, and, well, this is what we ended up with."
Subaru took one look in the mirror.
A Gotham nightmare.
He let out a long breath and laughed a couple of times. "Say—you had yourself a grand old time playing with my face, didn't you?"
Puck scratched his neck with a hind leg and blinked. "Ehehe."
But after being used over the black paint, Yimi's white marker was no longer pure white, and right now Yimi didn't much feel like having anything to do with Puck.
"You don't need to worry about it, though—Yimi says the bad cat back in the Royal Capital got it scrubbed off fine, so it should last a week at most. The paint on your mouth might give you the runs, mind. Blame Puck for that. Oh, and also…"
Emilia worked at the ropes to free him. "What you said earlier, Subaru—about how I once saved you—could you tell me about it properly?"
"Saved me…"
Hearing the subject again, Subaru let his gaze fall dispiritedly to one side. "That was just me talking nonsense. An excuse I dreamed up for making trouble for you without your leave."
"Can't you tell me?" Emilia patted the back of his hand. "Yimi already told me—that you can turn back time."
Subaru's pupils contracted, and he instinctively made to step back—only to catch sight, at the edge of his vision, of Yimi tending to the nearby villagers caught up in Capella's rampage.
It seemed that as long as this child was present, even the one who threatened him didn't dare surface.
"You came to know me at some time I have no memory of, Subaru. Could we sit down and talk about exactly what happened?"
She already knew. Emilia knew.
He wasn't ready for this.
Subaru looked into those clear, guileless eyes. At a moment like this, even if he spun a lie—said the two of them used to be together—Emilia might just believe it, mightn't she? After all, Yimi—the only one who truly knew what had happened—hadn't been present the whole time.
Subaru gave a soft laugh, which, paired with the makeup on his face, came off a little frightening. "Just a single day. But to me, it was an encounter that gave me a new beginning."
But to pursue someone through lies—how could anyone be so despicable?