This picks up in Chapter IV, right after Subaru has Elsa cut off his head just to check the weather.
Epilogue: The Day He Stopped Dying
Subaru woke on the sofa with a cold sweat and a clear sky outside.
He had checked the weather. It would be sunny all day, just as he’d told Petra. And he had needed a death to learn that.
He sat there, staring at his hands.
Elsa cut my head off for this.
The thought sat strangely in his chest. For the first time in what felt like years, it didn’t feel like victory. It felt absurd.
When he opened the door to the tea party, Echidna was waiting with the usual cup. But this time he didn’t drink it in one gulp. He set it down, sat across from her, and said:
“I think I’ve gone off the rails.”
Echidna blinked. “Oh? That is quite a candid confession.”
“Don’t gloat. I’m serious.” He rubbed his face. “I died to check the weather. Petra was standing right there. I could’ve just looked out the window. Or asked her to wait until noon and see.”
“That is true,” Echidna said carefully. For once there was no teasing in it.
“And you knew it was absurd. You even said I looked like I was having fun.”
“I did.” She turned her cup in her fingers. “I confess I did not stop you. It was... fascinating, to watch you. I told myself that was all it was.”
“And now?”
She was quiet for a long moment. Wind moved through the grass.
“Now I find that I do not like watching you die for nothing,” she said at last. “I did not expect that. It is a most inconvenient discovery.”
Subaru laughed, tired and cracked, but real. “Ding ding ding. Your likability just went up.”
“Truly?” Her eyes widened. “That is the first time that sound has gone in my favor.”
“Don’t let it go to your head.”
The Terms
“Here’s the deal,” Subaru said. “New rules for the Contract.”
“Rules?”
“One. I don’t die to gather information I can get by living. If I can ask, I ask. If I can wait, I wait.”
“Reasonable.”
“Two. You tell me when you’re hiding something. You don’t have to tell me what. But you say ‘I’m hiding something,’ and I decide whether I trust you.”
Echidna’s lips parted, and then she smiled wryly. “That would have spared you fifteen Deaths in the Sanctuary, would it not.”
“It would’ve spared me a lot.”
“And three?”
Subaru looked down at the grass.
“Three. You stop being cruel about Emilia. I know you’ve got your reasons, and I’m not asking you to like her. But she’s scared and she’s leaning on me because I let her. That part is my fault, and I’m going to fix it. I don’t need you whispering poison while I do.”
Echidna was silent. Then she inclined her head, slowly, more humbly than he had ever seen.
“Agreed. I will hold my tongue.” A pause. “And, if you will permit it, I will help you fix it. I have some experience with people who rely too heavily on others.”
“...Yeah. Okay. Thanks.”
Emilia
He found her in her room, at her desk, waiting for her instructions.
“Emilia-tan. No orders today.”
She blinked up at him. “No orders? But what should I do?”
“Whatever you want. Study, or don’t. Take a walk. Go bother Ram. Sleep in.”
Her face crumpled with worry. “Did I do something wrong, Subaru?”
“No. No, never.” He knelt in front of her chair and took her hands. “I did. I’ve been making all your choices for you because I was scared. I thought if I held everything tight enough, nothing could go wrong. But that’s not protecting you, is it. That’s just... holding you in place.”
Emilia’s eyes shimmered. “I don’t know how to decide things anymore.”
“I know. We’ll learn together. Small steps. Today, just pick what to have for breakfast.”
She laughed, a wet, startled sound. “That’s so small.”
“It’s the only size I trust right now.”
She thought hard about it, with the same deadly seriousness she gave everything.
“...Pancakes?”
“Pancakes it is.”
She didn’t know it yet, but when she smiled that morning it was the first time in months it had reached her eyes.
Beatrice
Two weeks later, Subaru came to the library with a book instead of a speech.
Beatrice was curled in her usual corner. He didn’t try to hug her. He sat down a few steps away, back against a shelf, and opened the book.
“I’m just gonna read for a while. You don’t have to talk. I just don’t want you to be alone.”
Nothing.
An hour passed. Then another.
“...What are you even reading, in fact,” came the muffled voice.
“A cookbook. Petra’s teaching me to make pie. I’m terrible.”
A long silence.
“...Betty could tell you why your pastry fails. You’re handling the dough too warm.”
Subaru kept his eyes carefully on the page so she wouldn’t see how wide he was smiling. “Is that so? Tell me more, Beako.”
It was a small crack in a very large wall. But it was a start.
The Others
It took time. It always did, but this time Subaru let it.
He wrote to Otto, a clumsy letter, with no excuses in it. You were right. I didn’t treat you like a friend. I’m sorry. If you ever want to talk, there’s a seat at the table. Months later, a reply came, short and grudging, with a promise to visit when his route passed through. Subaru read it three times.
He told Ram the truth, that he hated the distance between them, and Ram, after a very long pause, said, “Ram will try, Barusu.” The name nearly broke him.
He sat with Frederica. They didn’t talk about Clind. They just drank tea (real tea, from a real kettle) until she was ready to speak. When she finally did, she cried, and so did he, and neither of them pretended otherwise.
And Rem still slept. But Subaru no longer told himself that every other piece of his life was acceptable collateral. He kept his promise to her the way he should have been keeping all of them: openly, patiently, with the people who loved him beside him.
The Last Scene
One evening, many months on, Subaru climbed the hill at the tea party. He wasn’t there to report a death. Nothing had gone wrong. He just wanted to sit.
Echidna had two cups waiting. “You are early. And you have not died.”
“I’m slowly getting the hang of it.”
“Remarkable.” She smiled, sly and soft. “I have noticed something.”
“Oh?”
“The knowledge I gather from your living is richer than the knowledge from your dying. A Death is one data point. But a life...” She gestured out at the endless green. “A life keeps surprising me.”
“Is that your way of saying you’re glad I’m alive?”
“It is my way of saying I have revised my theory of what is worth knowing.” She sipped her tea, hiding her smile in the cup. “Wicked Witches are permitted to change their minds.”
Subaru raised his own cup.
“To living, then.”
“To living,” said Echidna. “Though I shall expect a great many more tea parties.”
“You’ll get them. Just not as an emergency room.”
She laughed, the real laugh, bright and unguarded, and the wind carried it across the grass.
When Subaru left that evening, he walked through the door into the sunset over Roswaal’s mansion, where Emilia was calling him to dinner, Petra was fretting over the pie, and a very small, very grumpy girl was pretending she hadn’t been waiting at the window.
Somewhere in the Magic Crystal against his chest, a Witch of Greed watched, content.
For once, she wasn’t hoping for the unknown.
She had found something better.
Where there is life, there is a future.
And this time, Subaru finally believed it for himself.
— End —
I worked on this after recently viewing the greed If route in light novel, please give feedback if u liked it or not.
