Subaru felt a strange calm as the sunlight washed over his skin. Slowly and vigorously, his eyes could gradually free themselves from the daze and take in the strange landscape that surrounded them, remote in every way from the vast mansion in which he had been seconds before: he was outdoors, subjected to the heat of the day and in front of a scene of painful familiarity.
To his psyche, such an image would have been devastating under normal circumstances: it was a painful reminder of something he had desperately tried to escape from, sinking himself in the process. The idea of going back to his studies was somehow unthinkable: he had already moved so far away from his past, was immersed in such a complicated situation, that thinking about it was ridiculous. Not to mention the mental effort it would take not to correlate such a sight with the memory of perhaps the two most important people to him.
Fortunately, he had to start worrying about his life way too soon to think about it.
A withering-looking scepter had landed right in front of him; from the speed at which it had flown, it was obvious it could have been lethal had it been aimed at his head. It had been thrown with such force that it stuck to the ground like an arrow despite its complicated appearance, causing Subaru to instinctively jump and end up smashing his face into the ground in a display of frightened awkwardness. Before he could react to what was happening, a menacing female voice cut through the air until it stabbed into his eardrums:
"Look at me. Now."
Subaru didn’t notice a hint of emotion in those words: it was a desiccated and dead voice, like it belonged to a living corpse. Yet somehow it was so powerful that the ground seemed to tremble when its owner used it. He could feel slow, monotonous footsteps echoing closer, so he forced himself to open his eyes.
To his surprise, the figure that had assailed him was neither monstrous nor unpleasant: on the contrary, it was of a familiar elegance. She was a slender woman with amber eyes, with reddish hair fragmented into two long pigtails and wearing a maid's uniform that refined her aura of beauty. However, her face was so rigid that she looked like a machine about to execute a mission.
“Come a little closer. I can't see your face very well."
Subaru complied, his pulse trembling at full speed as he felt panic and bewilderment take over his face. He had somehow managed to break his former record: this time he was going to die half a minute after appearing in a new world.
His stalker froze in place as panic made his entire body vibrate. In fact, time seemed to stop, since even the wind seemed to die in front of such a situation. What could have been seconds or minutes took place as Subaru realized how hard it was for him to get any word out of his mouth. Everything was so absurd that it was exasperating: for an act as silly as pressing a button he had ended up separated from all his friends, in an unknown place, about to die at the hands of a murderous fury possessing the body of a beautiful woman. He could only pray that she wasn't like Elsa.
He eventually heard a few footsteps slowly approaching again once again, until...
"For God's sake," she said suddenly. “Stop shaking so much. It's so pathetic it makes me want to cry. How old are you? Seven years old?"
The woman adopted a tone of voice so different from the previous one that she could well have been possessed by an evil spirit: her machiavellian apathy was now a sarcastic indifference, her calm had been replaced by annoyance and where had once lived a mask of ice now rested a disgusted face. Her entire body seemed to have suddenly come to life.
“To be honest, I was going to interrogate you using fear, but you're so pitiful that I've lost the urge. A girl like you would be incapable of stealing a coin from an old man. The day someone like you turns out to be a devil is the day Ram loses all her faith in humanity.”
Subaru, still overwhelmed with bewilderment, had no choice but to accept all her words without questioning them. Or so he did until he heard a name familiar enough to wake him up.
“Wait a minute…did you say Ram?” he asked, surprised. "Do you know her from something?"
The mysterious attacker sighed for a moment, and then she shot at him a look full of pride.
“Of course I know her. She’s the only woman on this planet patient enough to endure the magnanimous clumsiness of someone like you, and beautiful enough to charm the meanest of beasts. She’s the best big sister in the world and the most trusted subordinate of the greatest magician of all time. She also happens to be me."
The young man felt as if a bullet had pierced his skull: it took him two seconds to compose himself, and another four to be able to speak again:
“S-Sister…? Is it really you? But…why did you suddenly attack me? And since when are you so hot?!” he exclaimed, totally exasperated.
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