Subaru woke up as if a horrible monster had desecrated his dreams. His blood pressure was close to humanly impossible, his teeth were gnashing like castanets and his eyes had been reduced to shadowed marbles, devoid of color and soul.
He was able to grab his neck just in time to avoid vomiting. Even though he had evidently gone back in time, he could still feel everything. He could feel the infernal heat pain had spread throughout his body, as if shards of a star had crept into his veins. He still manifested the inhuman agony caused by his broken bones and desecrated vital tissues, comparable to that caused by millions of incandescent pebbles pierced all over the skin. He could still perceive her face, that face reduced to its most elemental facets, drained of life and sympathy, fused with the inexorable glow of twilight and bearer of those horrible pale, stiff, dead and dry eyes, accompanied only by the boiling, angry voice that confirmed her humanity.
His horror didn’t linger on the mental plane. He was so stunned that he didn't even realize the twins should have been in the room with him, so he didn't question this phenomenon either, but he could still smell it. The putrid stench of death itself, in every conceivable detail and variation, filtered through his nose: the adrenaline-charged smell of sweat and the metallic poison of blood exposed to the outside world came together and complemented each other in the air he inhaled. That somehow reactivated his wildest survival algorithms and, without saying a word to himself, he jumped out the window.
He didn't even remember if there were bushes that could cushion his fall in that part of the garden (and he was lucky there were), but he didn't care. He didn't even question how drastic his resolutions were. The risk of suffering a relatively painless death seemed insignificant if he thereby embraced the possibility of escaping without having to see them again.
Subaru ran and ran until the life began to escape from his lungs, all during an interval of time he wouldn’t have been able to define. He had no goal in mind and no hope to cling to, so time was a distant force of nature to him. His only wish was to escape the huge hole he was sinking into, the one with the appearance of a beautiful mansion with charming residents, even if it meant abandoning his sanity in the process. He wouldn't have even dared to look Emilia in the face, not when Rem had once shown him a smile as charming as hers. As a result, his breathing was completely out of sync and his heart seemed ready to collapse at any moment.
It wasn't until his reckless running made him stumble that he felt all vitality being driven from his being. The first hit of reality was always the most painful of all, and he had no idea how to overcome it. He was alone, lost and helpless, at the mercy of the fate of a world he didn’t know at all. He was unable to contain his own emotions any longer and his eyes betrayed him, releasing all the tears he had held back up to that moment.
She…she started hating me right when she saw me, didn't she? All because of a stupid smell that I have not decided to have...
That fact stuck in his memory with intense evil. If someone like Rem had been able to kill him for that, who could he interact with from now on? How could he know who's able to detect his scent?
Rem...Rem...
And yet, the past hurt him far more than any potential future. Despite the fact that he barely knew her, Subaru had been willing to die for her, and the only thing he had received in exchange was a pain that exceeded the limits of morality and justice. Interacting with the people of the manor again wouldn’t be easy.
Subaru lost track of time again as he sank into his own misery. And once he managed to get out of it and regain his sense of reality, he unleashed a scream comparable to the ones he had released during his recent torture.
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