Chapter 99: Odd Art Style
Natsuki Subaru couldn't spare attention for the pain lingering in his mind; the temperament forged through the countless deaths he'd endured since Water Gate City let him swiftly calm down, and he first began to survey his surroundings.
This was a room that felt to him both familiar and unfamiliar.
The reason he called it familiar was that... this was none other than the luxurious bedroom he'd found himself in when he first awoke at Roswaal Manor!
But there were unfamiliar elements as well.
By now the sky had grown late, the sun sinking in the west. Shifting his gaze to the window, he found that many wooden boards had been nailed across it, horizontal and vertical, with only a few strands of blood-red sunset light piercing through the gaps between the boards, just enough to let one tell the current hour.
The countless boards blocked the window airtight. The purpose of doing so was either to keep the person inside the room from getting out.
Or else it was... to keep something outside from getting in!
Natsuki Subaru furrowed his brow—but this was the second floor, wasn't it?
So it could only be to stop him from escaping.
But why do this? What on earth had happened?
Only now did Natsuki Subaru think to collect his thoughts, recalling what exactly had happened before he passed out.
He remembered heading to the village together with Ram and Betty, where they ran into Elsa and Meili.
And then later... he had, for no reason whatsoever, come under attack by the Great Spirit Zarestia.
So did this mean he was dead?
But no, that wasn't right—if this were Return by Death, the save point should have brought him back to the moment he first awoke in the manor.
Aside from that, at the very most it would bring him back to the night Ram confided in him that she wanted to become his personal maid.
But that wouldn't match the timing, since right now he could plainly tell from the light filtering through the window that outside the sun was in the middle of setting, not yet fully dark.
And not like now... with a pile of sealing boards inexplicably added over the window. When Ram had sealed off the window of his bedroom back then, she'd used soundproof, sturdy material—that stuff was far more effective than wooden boards.
Natsuki Subaru knit his brow tightly, utterly unable to make sense of it, so he tried gripping the door handle and attempting to open the door.
The result.
With a click, the bedroom door swung open without the slightest resistance.
A flicker of astonishment crossed Natsuki Subaru's eyes.
What was this? The door could just be opened freely—so his earlier guess, that the boards over the bedroom window were meant to keep him from escaping the room, no longer held up.
Gazing out at the corridor beyond the bedroom door—empty of anyone, its depths swallowed in darkness—Natsuki Subaru sank into thought.
"I see. Sorry, everyone—I misjudged this."
Otto covered his face with his hand in chagrin.
Although this time the screen had, against everyone's expectations, unfolded the story from a first-person perspective.
Still, the subtitles on the screen rendering the inner voice, together with Mr. Natsuki's own voice echoing all around them, both pointed without a doubt to a single truth.
This first-person perspective on the screen was, in fact, Mr. Natsuki's own point of view.
Connecting that to the "mini-game" the screen had mentioned earlier, it wasn't hard to guess that the real Mr. Natsuki had likewise been dragged into this mysterious space.
The only difference was that, unlike them, Mr. Natsuki seemed to have entered a region created by this mysterious space in order to play a game.
It was just unclear what exactly this mysterious space was after, tossing Mr. Natsuki into a place so extremely similar to Roswaal Manor.
"Ah, this place Subaru's in is so strange—whether it's the window in the bedroom, the floor, or that bed, they all somehow look... like they were painted on, not normal objects at all, kashira!"
Otto had been about to turn around and discuss it with the others, but the instant he heard Betty say this behind him.
He hurriedly refocused his attention, scrutinizing and recalling everything seen on the screen through Natsuki Subaru's first-person view.
Sure enough, it was exactly as Miss Betty had said!
Whether it was the wooden table, the tea table in the room, or things like the carpet.
At a glance they seemed fine, but on closer inspection one would find their workmanship exceedingly crude, like the product of some abstract painter's brush.
Otto couldn't find words to describe the eerie scene before him; though he'd long understood in his heart that Mr. Natsuki wasn't in reality, a scene like this was simply too hair-raising.
Strangely enough, the Mr. Natsuki on the screen hadn't noticed this point at all, as if everything were utterly normal.
But for now, all he could do was keep watching.
Otto swallowed. Even saying that, for some reason a surge of anxiety rose up in his heart without any warning.
He kept feeling as though he'd overlooked something—was it a clue in the image on the screen?
Otto knit his brow tightly, forcibly pressing down the unease and agitation inside him, and watched Natsuki Subaru's first-person view on the screen with rapt concentration, unwilling to let any detail slip past.
Somewhat bewildered, Natsuki Subaru made a circuit of the second floor—the dining room, the kitchen, the bathroom... nowhere was there any sign of another person.
"Strange, where did everyone go? Could they be down in the main hall?"
Standing at the head of the stairs, Natsuki Subaru glanced back at the deserted second floor, and his heart sank.
Ever since he'd awoken, strange things had come one after another, though he still didn't know what exactly was happening.
But now all the clues pointed to one possibility: that something really had befallen the manor.
Some strange and unknown danger was drawing steadily closer, yet he remained completely oblivious to it.
This feeling of helplessness brought back to him the memories of the Manor Arc, of his own desperate struggle to survive.
"But... it's different now, isn't it? The me of the present has grown at least a little, hasn't he?"
Natsuki Subaru murmured, his calm gaze sweeping the second floor one last time, and then he resolutely turned and headed downstairs, toward the main hall.
Reaching the main hall, his field of view abruptly opened up.
Here, unlike the second floor with its many rooms, there was—aside from the toilet and the storage room—also an entrance near the stairs leading down to the cellar; it felt like it would make a good place to hide from danger.
After coming down and walking some distance along the corridor, he would arrive at the spacious main hall.
Natsuki Subaru had meant to hurry through the corridor and go see the situation in the hall, but partway there, the strangeness of this stretch of corridor he was in caught his attention.
Whether in the bedroom where he'd awoken or the second-floor corridor, every window he'd seen before had, without exception, been boarded up tight.
But the very moment he descended to the main hall, Natsuki Subaru sensed something was off.
How... the rows upon rows of windows in the main-hall corridor showed no change at all—none of them sealed shut with boards?
No—if it came to changes, there was one after all: every window in the main hall, without exception, had been fitted with thick black curtains, impenetrable to light, which made the main-hall corridor look even far darker than the second floor.
But however you put it, there was still a fundamental difference between curtains and boards.
Natsuki Subaru scratched his head in confusion.
Why did the manor now exude eeriness at every turn—the main hall merely shrouded with curtains, the second floor sealed shut with boards? What in the world was this guarding against?
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